Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a Confederate general whose early actions in the American Civil War led to his appointment as the overall commander of the Confederate States Army near the end of the war. He led the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most powerful army, from 1862 until its surrender in 1865, earning a reputation as one of the war's most skilled tacticians.
A son of Revolutionary War officer Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, of the Lee family of Virginia, Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy and an exceptional officer and military engineer in the United States Army for 32 years. He served across the United States, distinguished himself during the Mexican–American War, and was Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He married Mary Anna Custis, great-granddaughter of George Washington's wife Martha. While he stated that he opposed slavery from a philosophical perspective,. he supported its legality and enslaved hundreds. When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. During the first year of the Civil War, he served in minor combat operations and as a senior military adviser to Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia in June 1862 during the Peninsula campaign following the wounding of Joseph E. Johnston. He succeeded in driving the Union Army of the Potomac under George B. McClellan away from the Confederate capital of Richmond during the Seven Days Battles, but he was unable to destroy McClellan's army. Lee then overcame Union forces under John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August. His invasion of Maryland that September ended with the inconclusive Battle of Antietam, after which he retreated to Virginia. Lee won two major victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville before launching a second invasion of the North in the summer of 1863, where he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg by the Army of the Potomac under George Meade. He led his army in the minor and inconclusive Bristoe campaign that fall before General Ulysses S. Grant took command of Union armies in the spring of 1864. Grant engaged Lee's army in bloody but inconclusive battles at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania before the lengthy Siege of Petersburg, which was followed in April 1865 by the capture of Richmond and the destruction of most of Lee's army, which he finally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.
In 1865, Lee became president of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia; as president of the college, he supported reconciliation between the North and South. Lee accepted the termination of slavery provided for by the Thirteenth Amendment, but opposed racial equality for African Americans. After his death in 1870, Lee became a cultural icon in the South and is largely hailed as one of the Civil War's greatest generals. As commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, he fought most of his battles against armies of significantly larger size, and managed to win many of them. Lee built up a collection of talented subordinates, most notably James Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson, and J. E. B. Stuart, who along with Lee were critical to the Confederacy's battlefield success. However, his two major offensives into Union territory ended in failure, and his aggressive and risky tactics, especially at Gettysburg, resulted in high casualties at a time when the Confederacy had a shortage of manpower. His battlefield record, his views on race and slavery, and his legacy have been the subject of continuing debate and historical controversy.
Early life and education
Robert Edward Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to Henry Lee III and Anne Hill Carter Lee on January 19, 1807.Pryor, Elizabeth Brown (October 29, 2009). "Robert E. Lee (ca. 1806–1870)" . Encyclopedia Virginia . Retrieved February 18, 2011. He was named after Robert and Edward Carter, his maternal uncles. He was his parents' fourth child. His ancestor, Richard Lee I, emigrated from Shropshire, England, to Virginia in 1639.Harrison Dwight Cavanagh, Colonial Chesapeake Families: British Origins and Descendants, vol. 2 (Dallas, Tex.: p. p., 2014), 118–125, esp. 119.
Lee's father suffered severe financial reverses from failed investments, including for an unfulfilled project to build a town near the Potomac River. He had once lent a man named Robert Morris $40,000 but, after Morris died, never received it back. Twice he was put in debtors' prison. Soon after his release in 1810 from his second stint, the family moved to the city of Alexandria which at the time was still part of the District of Columbia, which retroceded back to Virginia in 1847, both because there were then high quality local schools there, and because several members of Anne's extended family lived nearby. In 1811, the family, including the newly born sixth child, Mildred, moved to a house on Oronoco Street..
In 1812 Lee's father moved permanently to the West Indies.. Lee attended Eastern View, a school for young gentlemen, in Fauquier County, Virginia. Although brought up to be a practicing Christian, he was not confirmed in the Episcopal Church until age 46.. During Lee's childhood he, his mother and his siblings visited his cousins on his mother's side of the family, who lived on Shirley Plantation, at least once annually; Lee was fond of and had a close relationship with them. After his brother Smith enlisted in the navy in 1820, Robert became the only one responsible for caring for his increasingly invalid mother, and for his sickly sister Ann. In that same year he left Eastern View and entered the Alexandria Academy, free for local boys, where he showed an aptitude for mathematics but did well academically in general. By the time he completed his education at Alexandria in 1823 he was certain that he ought to join West Point and become a soldier.
Anne Lee's family was often supported by a relative, William Henry Fitzhugh, who owned the Oronoco Street house and allowed the Lees to stay at his country home Ravensworth. Fitzhugh wrote to United States Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, urging that Robert be given an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Fitzhugh had young Robert deliver the letter.. Lee entered West Point in the summer of 1825. At the time, the focus of the curriculum was engineering; the head of the United States Army Corps of Engineers supervised the school and the superintendent was an engineering officer. Cadets were not permitted leave until they finished two years of study and were rarely allowed off the academy grounds. Lee graduated second in his class behind Charles Mason (who resigned from the Army a year after graduation). Lee did not incur any demerits during his four-year course of study, a distinction shared by only five of his 45 classmates. In June 1829, Lee was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.. After graduation, while awaiting assignment, he returned to Virginia to find his mother on her deathbed; she died at Ravensworth on July 26, 1829..
Military engineer career
On August 11, 1829, Brigadier General Charles Gratiot ordered Lee to Cockspur Island, Georgia. The plan was to build a fort on the marshy island which would command the outlet of the Savannah River. Lee was involved in the early stages of construction as the island was being drained and built up.. In 1831, it became apparent that the existing plan to build what became known as Fort Pulaski would have to be revamped, and Lee was transferred to Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula (today in Hampton, Virginia).
While home in the summer of 1829, Lee had apparently courted Mary Custis whom he had known as a child. Lee obtained permission to write to her before leaving for Georgia, though Mary Custis warned Lee to be "discreet" in his writing, as her mother read her letters, especially from men.. Custis refused Lee the first time he asked to marry her; her father did not believe the son of the disgraced Light-Horse Harry Lee was a suitable man for his daughter.. She accepted him with her father's consent in September 1830, while he was on summer leave,. and the two were wed on June 30, 1831..
Lee's duties at Fort Monroe were varied, typical for a junior officer, and ranged from budgeting to designing buildings. Although Mary Lee accompanied her husband to Hampton Roads, she spent about a third of her time at Arlington, though the couple's first son, Custis Lee was born at Fort Monroe. Although the two were by all accounts devoted to each other, they were different in character: Robert Lee was tidy and punctual, qualities his wife lacked. Mary Lee also had trouble switching from being a rich man's daughter to having to manage a household with only one or two enslaved people.. Beginning in 1832, Robert Lee had a close but platonic relationship with Harriett Talcott, wife of his fellow officer Andrew Talcott..
Life at Fort Monroe was marked by conflicts between artillery and engineering officers. Eventually, the War Department transferred all engineering officers away from Fort Monroe, except Lee, who was ordered to take up residence on the artificial island of Rip Raps across the river from Fort Monroe, where Fort Wool would eventually rise, and continue work to improve the island. Lee duly moved there, then discharged all workers and informed the War Department he could not maintain laborers without the facilities of the fort.. In 1834, Lee was transferred to Washington as General Gratiot's assistant.. Lee had hoped to rent a house in Washington for his family, but was not able to find one; the family lived at Arlington, though Lieutenant Lee rented a room at a Washington boarding house for when the roads were impassable. In mid-1835, Lee was assigned to assist Andrew Talcott in surveying the southern border of Michigan.. While on that expedition, he responded to a letter from an ill Mary Lee, which had requested he come to Arlington, "But why do you urge my immediate return, & tempt one in the strongest manner[?]... I rather require to be strengthened & encouraged to the full performance of what I am called on to execute." Lee completed the assignment and returned to his post in Washington, finding his wife ill at Ravensworth. Mary Lee, who had recently given birth to their second child, remained bedridden for several months. In October 1836, Lee was promoted to first lieutenant..
Lee served as an assistant in the chief engineer's office in Washington, D.C. from 1834 to 1837, but spent the summer of 1835 helping to lay out the state line between Ohio and Michigan, in the company of Lt. Washington Hood. As a first lieutenant of engineers in 1837, he supervised the engineering work for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Among his projects was the mapping of the Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi above Keokuk, Iowa, where the Mississippi's mean depth of was the upper limit of steamboat traffic on the river. His work there earned him a promotion to captain. Lee's engineering works on the Mississippi were consequential. They opened up a large portion of the river to commercial navigation, allowing for the transport of agricultural products from the grain-producing areas of the upper Mississippi, and the eventual creation of a long list of new cities.. The historian Michael Korda said, "Had Lee never become a hero of the Mexican War or commanding general of the Confederacy he would have deserved fame — and what is more, gratitude — for the two years he spent opening the Mississippi."
Around 1842, Captain Robert E. Lee arrived as Fort Hamilton's post engineer.
Marriage and family