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• Born: 19 January 1807
• Birthplace: Stratford, Virginia
• Died: 12 October 1870 (natural causes)
• Best Known As: Leader of Confederate armies in the Civil War

Name at birth: Robert Edward Lee

Lee was the Confederacy's most famous general in the American Civil War. He attended West Point (graduating second in his class) and became an engineer in the United States Army, serving with distinction in the Mexican-American War. As the Civil War broke out he resigned his commission and joined the forces of the South. In 1862 he was made commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, and over the next three years became famous as he led the army to a series of victories over the larger and better-equipped Union forces. He was defeated at the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg and finally surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865, effectively ending the war.

Lee was the son of Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, a cavalry commander during the Revolutionary War and a onetime governor of Virginia... After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee became president of Washington College in Virginia, a post which he held until his death. After his death the school was renamed as Washington and Lee... Lee's horse Traveller served him throughout the Civil War and is now regarded as one of history's famous steeds.

Lee, Gen Robert E. (1807-70), aristocratic Confederate commander in the eastern theatre of the American civil war and ‘Lost Cause’ icon. He was at heart a Unionist who, despite owning slaves, believed the practice was a moral and political evil. But he despised northern demagoguery and declined an offer to command all Union forces in 1861 in order to ‘go with his people’.

The fecklessness of his father, independence hero ‘Light Horse Harry’, ensured an early life of genteel poverty. Himself a conscientious and detail-oriented officer, he seemed to value these qualities less than blood and breeding in others, a weakness compounded by his refusal to replace underperforming subordinates. This caused major battlefield errors, becoming more serious as the war progressed. His background similarly coloured his strategic vision, limiting it to events immediately affecting his beloved Virginia. Both before and especially after the war, his reputation was due above all to being the epitome of an officer and a gentleman, and the emblematic image of the civil war was Brady's photograph of him in impeccable uniform, surrendering to the mud-spattered Grant at Appomattox.

On the staff of Scott, he performed reconnaissance and co-ordination duties with distinction during the Mexican war but was only a cavalry colonel when Scott called him to Washington and offered him overall field command in the midst of the secession crisis. For the Confederacy he first commanded in north-west Virginia and in South Carolina, emerging with the not entirely unmerited nickname of ‘Granny Lee’. Subsequently appointed Davis's military adviser, he deserves some credit for the Shenandoah campaign, during which he negotiated considerable freedom of action for Jackson, no easy task. After Johnston was wounded at Seven Pines and his second in command collapsed, Lee assumed command when the threat of fighting on two fronts was relieved by the retreat of McDowell, leaving him free to browbeat McClellan in the Seven Days battles.

Comparison with Jackson is inevitable and casts Lee in a less favourable light. At second Bull Run and at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, he should have learned that his own and his outnumbered army's strength lay in counterpunching, and when circumstances forced him onto the defensive he was indomitable. But his Mexican experience convinced him that offensive tactics could best compensate for inferior numbers, and Longstreet was to comment on a characteristic ‘subdued excitement, which occasionally took possession of him when the hunt was up, and threatened his superb equipoise’. To put this in context, ‘subdued excitement’ in Lee was the equivalent of killing rage in a less tightly controlled man, the only logical explanation for costly frontal assaults at Malvern Hill and elsewhere, and for his fatal insistence on launching Pickett's unsupported charge at Gettysburg.

Lee was fortunate that McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker were generals seemingly designed by nature to make him look good, and that he possessed in the Confederate States Army a remarkable instrument for war. His ability also shines by comparison with the performance of the other Confederate full generals and their C-in-C Davis, but he shared with them a deep conservatism in all things. Because they believed in a natural human hierarchy, they failed to develop professional staffs to mobilize Confederate resources systematically, or to match the pragmatic command experimentation that transformed the Union war effort.

In his crowning moment at Chancellorsville Lee suffered the first major symptoms of the congestive heart condition that eventually killed him. He knew it had diminished him, but although he asked to be relieved after Gettysburg he did not recommend a successor, a judgement both on the sincerity of his modesty and on his ability to nurture talent among his subordinates. Nonetheless, among civil war generals exercising independent command, only Jackson and Sheridan ever elicited comparable devotion from their troops. Grant, who was not given to making excuses for his own shortcomings, judged that knowledge of Lee's arrival at Petersburg alone halted a near-certain 1864 breakthrough.

Revisionism can identify his many errors, but it cannot explain away his charisma. Even those who hated him have contributed to his legacy: the historic estate he acquired by marriage at Arlington was vengefully turned into a burial ground for Union dead, but became the national shrine to American valour. He leads Jackson and Davis in the huge bas-relief equestrian sculpture carved into Stone Mountain, Georgia, his gaze averted from the vulgar commercialism all around.

Bibliography

• McKenzie, John, Uncertain Glory (New York, 1997).
• Thomas, Emory, Robert E. Lee (New York, 1995)

— Hugh Bicheno

(1807–1870), Confederate Civil War general

Born at Stratford, a family plantation in Virginia, Robert E. Lee was the son of Henry Lee (“Light‐Horse Harry”) of the Revolutionary War. He graduated with great distinction from West Point in 1829, and in 1831 he married Mary Custis, daughter of Martha Washington's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, who was also George Washington's adopted son. The Lees made their home at Arlington, the Custis mansion overlooking Washington, D.C. The marriage produced four daughters and three sons. The sons—George Washington Custis Lee, William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, and Robert E. Lee, Jr.—all served as officers in the Confederate army.

Lee's continuous and distinguished service in the U.S. Army before the Civil War included highly acclaimed action in the Mexican War, the superintendency at West Point from September 1852 to March 1855, and western Indian fighting. Lee was a protégé of Gen. Winfield Scott, general‐in‐chief of the U.S. Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. When Virginia seceded, Colonel Lee resigned his commission in the U.S. Army (he had previously been offered high Federal command, but rejected it) and accepted command of his state's military forces. After service that included a position as military adviser to Confederate president Jefferson Davis, Lee in June 1862 succeeded Joseph E. Johnston as commanding general of the Army of Northern Virginia. Three years later, in February 1865, he was also appointed general‐in‐chief of the Confederate forces. In April 1865, having been besieged in the Richmond defenses, he surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia. Lee and his soldiers were paroled by Grant to go home.

After the war, Lee rejected lucrative business opportunities and accepted the presidency of Washington College at Lexington, Virginia. An excellent educational administrator, Lee's leadership was marked by curriculum development in advance of the times. He died there in 1870 and is buried on the campus of the college, subsequently known as Washington and Lee University.

Lee was a man of high personal character and intelligence, charismatic and charming, a natural leader. As a leading actor in the Civil War legend of martial glory, he has become a legendary figure, an American hero of exceptional nobility. The legend rationalizes or rejects characteristics of the man that might lessen his appeal.

Lee's fame rests principally on his leadership of the Army of Northern Virginia. Having driven a numerically superior Federal army from the Virginia Peninsula near Richmond in 1862, Lee, ably supported by “Stonewall” Jackson, won a series of brilliant tactical victories in 1862 and 1863 at the Second Battle of Bull Run, and the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and he fought George B. McClellan to a standstill at the Battle of Antietam. These battles were followed, however, by defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Subsequently, Lee conducted a skillful, costly defense against Grant's Overland Campaign in Virginia in 1864–65, but in this he eventually failed.

Questions have been raised about Lee's leadership. In strategic terms, Lee believed that the South had to defeat the North militarily, that is, by actual combat in the field as distinguished from conducting the contest so that the North would give it up as too costly in blood and treasure. Thus, in a letter to President Davis on 6 July 1864 he wrote that it was necessary for the Confederacy to “defeat or drive the armies of the enemy from the field.” Accordingly, before being besieged, Lee took the offensive whenever possible. Critics argue that in view of the South's manpower and materiel disadvantages, it could not defeat the North militarily. Lee's strategic and tactical aggressiveness produced unnecessarily large and disproportionate Confederate casualties, which the outnumbered South was unable to replace. These casualties significantly reduced the number of troops, increasing the South's disadvantage. This, in turn, deprived his army of mobility and ultimately led to its being caught in the fatal siege.

Lee's defenders reply that a desperate situation required desperate gambles, and that his battlefield successes were perhaps the principal encouragement to the continued Confederate resistance. Whatever his shortcomings, Lee became the white South's greatest hero, and many northern and foreign commentators have praised both the man and the general.

[See also Civil War: Military and Diplomatic Course; Civil War: Changing Interpretations; Petersburg, Siege of; Wilderness to Petersburg Campaign.]

Bibliography

• Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee, 4 vols. 1934–35.
• J. F. C. Fuller, Grant & Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, repr. 1957; 1982.
• Thomas L. Connelly, The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society, 1977.
• Alan T. Nolan, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History, 1991.
• Emory H. Thomas, Robert E. Lee, 1995.
• Joseph L. Harsh, Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861–1862, 1997

Lee, Robert E. (1807-70) Confederate general, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, and general in chief of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, born Robert Edward Lee in Westmoreland County, Virginia. In 1862 and 1863 Lee won a series of brilliant victories— Second Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg—as well as a standoff with Gen. George B. McClellan at Antietam. But his strategy of taking the offensive in battle and confronting the enemy on their own territory led to a costly defeat at Gettysburg (1863). This was followed by a skillful but ultimately failed defense against Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign in Virginia (1864-65), ending with Lee's surrender of his army at Appomattox (1865). Though some have questioned his leadership as a general, he remains a hero much revered not only in the South but throughout the country. After the war Lee served as president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University), where he proved an excellent administrator. He is buried on its grounds. Before the Civil War Lee's performance in the Mexican War (1846-48) and on the frontier had established his reputation as a proven combat leader. He had also served as superintendent of West Point (1852-55).

Lee's three sons— George Washington Custis Lee, William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, and Robert E. Lee, Jr.—all served as officers in the Civil War. Lee opposed secession and disliked slavery (he emancipated the few slaves he owned before the Civil War), but felt he could not take up arms against his native Virginia.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

General in chief of the Confederate armies in the American Civil War, Robert Edward Lee (1807-1870) displayed strategic sense and tactical skill that rank him among the great military captains of history.

Robert E. Lee was born in Virginia's Westmoreland County on Jan. 19, 1807, the third son of Henry ("Light Horse Harry") and Ann Hill Carter Lee. Declining fortunes forced the family's removal to Alexandria, where Robert distinguished himself in local schools. His father's death in 1811 increased responsibilities on all the sons; Robert, especially, cared for his invalid mother.

Lee graduated number two in his class from the U.S. Military Academy in 1829. Commissioned a brevet lieutenant of engineers, he spent a few years at Ft. Pulaski, Ga., and Ft. Monroe, Va. At Ft. Monroe on June 30, 1831, he married Mary Ann Randolph Custis. The Lees had seven children. Lee worked in the chief engineer's office in Washington, D.C., from 1834 to 1837. He was transferred to Ft. Hamilton, N.Y., where he remained until 1846.

Mexican War

In August 1846 Lee joined Gen. John E. Wool's army in Texas. In the battle of Buena Vista, Lee's boldness drew his superiors' attention. Transferred to Gen. Winfield Scott's Veracruz expedition, in the battle at Veracruz and in the advance on Mexico he won additional acclaim. Following American occupation of the Mexican capital, he worked on maps for possible future campaigns. Already a captain in the regular service, he was made brevet colonel for his gallantry in the war.

Lee returned to engineer duty at Baltimore's Ft. Carroll until 1852, when he reluctantly became superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. In 1855 he was made lieutenant colonel of the 2d Cavalry, one of the Army's elite units.

The years 1857-1859 were bleak. Lee had to take several furloughs to deal with family business and seriously thought of resigning his commission. However, in 1859 he and his men successfully put down John Brown's insurrection at Harpers Ferry, Va. (later, in W.Va.). In 1860 he became commander of the Department of Texas.

Coming of the Civil War

Talk of secession in the South grew strident during Lee's Texas sojourn. No secessionist, he was loyal to the Union and the U.S. Army; yet he had no doubts about his loyalties if Virginia departed the Union. Ties of blood bound him to the South.

Lee accepted a commission as colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry in March 1861. But offered command of the entire U.S. Army a month later, he hesitated. If he accepted, he might have to lead the Federal Army against Southern states and, if Virginia seceded, he might have to lead troops across its borders. He could do neither. So, painfully, Lee resigned his army commission in April 1861.

Secession and Virginia Service

Appointed commander of Virginia forces, Lee devoted himself to building an effective state army. He was so efficient that the new president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, asked him to become a full general in the Confederate Army and serve as presidential military adviser. This appointment was confirmed by the Confederate Senate.

A bad brush with field command in western Virginia - in a campaign marked by military rivalries, lack of supplies, wretched weather, and overly ambitious strategy on Lee's part - tarnished the new general's reputation. Davis still regarded him highly and sent him to organize southern Atlantic coastal defenses. Lee pursued this task efficiently until recalled to the Confederate capital, Richmond. In his role as presidential adviser, he tried to smooth the abrasive personalities of Davis and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and to utilize the daring of Gen. Stonewall Jackson to frustrate Federal plans for sending aid to Gen. George B. McClellan's army, which was approaching Richmond.

Lee's Army

When Johnston was wounded in May 1862, Davis gave Lee command of Johnston's army. Lee renamed his force the "Army of Northern Virginia." The new commander looked the part: 5 feet 10 1/2 inches tall, robust at 170 pounds, Lee had graceful, almost classic features. He attracted men and women alike, was easy in manner, courteous and kind as a friend, and was a loving husband and father.

Though Lee's was the largest Confederate army in the field, it was outnumbered almost 3 to 2 by McClellan's Federal Army of the Potomac, which was preparing for siege operations on Richmond. While Lee struggled to fortify Richmond, he and Jackson planned a daring campaign, which Stonewall executed brilliantly and victoriously in the battles of Cross Keys and Port Republic, June 8-9, 1862. Lee promptly called Jackson to Richmond and added his 18,000-man force to the Army of Northern Virginia.

Toward the Battle of Second Manassas

Inexperience and haste led Lee to plan an overelaborate attack on McClellan's lines. Coordination failed, as Lee's campaign stuttered onward in a series of actions. McClellan was defeated in the Seven Days Battles and finally retreated to the Federal gunboats on the James River. Richmond was freed of threat, but Lee's planned annihilation of the Federal force had failed. Lee was unhappy with his results; but his men, almost completely rearmed with superior Federal arms, had developed great confidence in him.

Meanwhile another Federal army appeared in Virginia under Gen. John Pope. Lee sent Stonewall Jackson against Pope early in August. Jackson defeated part of Pope's force, then joined Lee for a combined campaign to destroy the rest. Lee planned more simply this time. Jackson captured Pope's supply base at Manassas Junction. Near the battlefield of First Manassas (Bull Run), Jackson stood off Pope's entire army while Lee's remaining force under Gen. James Longstreet concentrated close to Jackson's lines. On August 30 a sweeping assault by all Confederate troops won the Battle of Second Manassas. Lee had hoped for annihilation, but Pope's remnants escaped.

To Maryland and Sharpsburg

Lee's army could not subsist in war-ravaged northern Virginia, so he determined to carry the war into the North. With Virginia cleared of invaders and his army's morale superb, this seemed a likely time to force European recognition of the South by threatening Washington, D.C., and changing the locale of the war. In a campaign distinguished for daring - Lee broke his army into segments, each with a specific task - he crossed the Potomac River and reached Frederick, Md., sending Jackson's men to capture Harpers Ferry and open a supply route through the Shenandoah Valley. However, McClellan, restored to Federal command, was fighting with unexpected skill. Lee sought to reconcentrate his scattered men near Sharpsburg, Md., behind Antietam Creek. There on Sept. 17, 1862, with badly reduced strength he withstood searing assault; the arrival of Gen. A. P. Hill's division saved him from defeat. Several lessons had been learned, but Lee had lost 13,000 men in Maryland, and replacements were the scarcest commodity in the Confederacy.

Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville

Reorganizing his forces occupied Lee until December 13, when his men, holding high and virtually impregnable ground overlooking Fredericksburg, Va., beat off gallant attacks by the Army of the Potomac (now commanded by Gen. Ambrose Burnside). During the rest of the winter Lee tried to increase ranks and supplies. Jackson and Longstreet, his two corps commanders, improved their commands, new men were elevated to leadership, and Lee's army was ready by the time a new Federal general, Joseph Hooker, started his campaign in April 1863. Jackson clashed with Hooker in Virginia's Wilderness at the end of April. When Hooker withdrew to entrenchments near Chancellorsville, the initiative passed to Lee. He sent Jackson to a flanking position from which he almost destroyed Hooker's force. Jackson might have completed the destruction had he not been wounded, and his death later robbed the victory of any savor as the whole Confederacy mourned. Lee mourned especially, for there were no officers to match Jackson. With the initiative in his grasp, Lee had to decide how to use his army.

Battle of Gettysburg

Vicksburg, Miss., the South's last bastion on the Mississippi River, was under siege; its loss would cut the South in two. Food supplies in northern Virginia were scarce. However, Europeans were becoming convinced of the South's right to recognition, and peace sentiment was growing in the North. All these factors influenced Lee's summer strategy. Another invasion of the North might relieve Vicksburg, feed his men, and win recognition.

Lee reorganized his army into three corps: one under Longstreet, a second under Richard S. Ewell, the third under Hill. Subordinate commands were shaken up, so a new command structure guided the Confederate Army as it moved toward Harrisburg, Pa. Lee's vanguard encountered opposition near Gettysburg and on July 1 won modest spoils. Lee wanted to push the advantage. But Ewell delayed, and the next day Longstreet, convinced of defeat, also delayed attacking the Federal left. On July 3 Gen. George Pickett charged against the Federal center and was repulsed.

For the first time Lee's army had been defeated. Lee assumed all blame. Questions still arise over why he ordered the attack on July 3. But Lee seems to have had no choice. To miss this chance would have been a miserable compromise. Typically, he did not lament for long; instead, he planned to refit his army and renew the offensive. But the loss of 20,000 men and as many arms was unrecoverable. Vicksburg's loss, with a 30,000-man garrison, on July 4 confronted the South with a double disaster in men and supplies.

Loser's Game

Lee could not resume the offensive; his army was divided, with Longstreet moving west to help Gen. Braxton Bragg and the rest committed to holding Richmond. Lee maneuvered against Gen. George Meade throughout the remainder of 1863, and in spring 1864 he met the advance of Meade and Ulysses S. Grant. A series of bloody engagements followed. On June 3 at Cold Harbor the Federal assault on Lee's entrenchments was repulsed. Meade and Grant moved south of the James River, hoping to take Petersburg and enter Richmond from the south. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard saved Petersburg, with help from Lee. The formal siege of Petersburg ran from June 18, 1864, to April 2, 1865.

In those months, attrition cut Lee's ranks. Daily casualties and desertion whittled down his strength; dwindling food for men and animals almost immobilized the army. Heavy actions through the summer, combined with the necessity of keeping Richmond's southern rail connections open, sapped Lee's resources.

The Confederacy's military situation worsened throughout the summer as Federal general William T. Sherman forced the Army of Tennessee backward through Georgia to the sea. Lee, appointed general in chief of all Confederate armies in February 1865, could give only general direction to lingering disaster.

Sherman marched upward through the Carolinas, threatening Petersburg. Lee failed to split Grant's front. On April 2 Grant's attack snapped Lee's lines; the Confederates began evacuating Petersburg and Richmond. Lee was compelled to surrender his shadow force of no more than 9,000 soldiers at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

Last Years

Arlington, the Custis family seat, was gone now; the Lees had no real home. They remained in Richmond, well treated by the Federals. In September Lee accepted the presidency of Washington College, in Lexington, Va., where he remained until his death.

Devoted to education and to resurrecting the South, Lee became a symbol of reunification. He refused to abandon his distressed country, hoped for Southern re-assimilation, and set a lofty example. Without bitterness, he obeyed the law and counseled all Southerners to do the same. Indicted for treason, he never stood trial; and although never granted a pardon, he lived in comfort and in great honor. In September 1870 he was stricken, probably with an acute attack of angina, and died on October 12. Mourning swept the South and the world. Lee was the embodiment of a cause and the symbol of an age.

Assessing Lee

Lee had better strategic than tactical sense. As a logistician, he became a consummate master of troop deployment. He had audacity in abundance; caution he could display when needed, but attack was his way. He inspired men as did few other generals and earned respect from friend and foe. He had one command weakness - an inability to deal with disgruntled subordinates. For example, when Longstreet sulked and dallied at Second Manassas and at Gettysburg, Lee deferred to, rather than commanded, him.

History knows Lee as a man of uncommon devotion, calmness, and goodness. His biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, concludes that Lee was duty's man, "that is all. There is no mystery in the coffin. … ."

Further Reading

Lee's writings were collected in Lee's Dispatches, edited by Douglas Southall Freeman (1915) and revised by Grady McWhiney (1957), and in The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee, edited by Clifford Dowdey (1961). The outstanding biography is Douglas Southall Freeman, R. E. Lee (4 vols., 1934-1937). Among more recent works are Burke Davis, Gray Fox: Robert E. Lee and the Civil War (1956); Earle Schenck Miers, Robert E. Lee (1956); Clifford Dowdey, Lee (1965); and Margaret Sanborn, Robert E. Lee (2 vols., 1966-1967).

Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command (3 vols., 1942-1944) discusses Lee as army commander. A study of Lee's last years is Marshall William Fishwick, Lee after the War (1963). Good studies of the South during the war are Ellis Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 (1950), and Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (1954). A documentary account of the war is Henry Steele Commager, ed., The Blue and the Gray: The Story of the Civil War as Told by Participants (2 vols., 1950). A solid general history is Bruce Catton, The Centennial History of the Civil War (3 vols., 1961-1965).

For more information on Robert Edward Lee, visit Britannica.com.

(1807-1870), Confederate general. Lee was born in Virginia, the son of Ann Carter Lee and Henry ("Light-Horse Harry") Lee, who had earned fame as a cavalry commander in the American Revolution. The elder Lee, however, suffered financial reverses, and Robert grew up primarily in the care of his mother. In 1829 he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy second in his class and received a commission in the Engineer Corps. Two years later he married Mary Custis, heir to Arlington Plantation.

Lee served in the Engineer Corps at various posts until the Mexican War broke out, when he joined the staff of Winfield Scott in the campaign against Mexico City. His skill and daring at Cerro Gordo and Chapultepec won for him Scott's lasting admiration and a promotion to brevet colonel.

From 1852 to 1855 Lee was superintendent of West Point. Then he commanded a regiment in Texas, where in 1857 he learned of the death of his father-in-law. He took protracted leave to settle the snarled estate and was still living at Arlington when news of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry reached Washington in October 1859. In command of a detachment of marines, Lee captured Brown and several of his followers with no harm to Brown's thirteen hostages.

During the secession crisis in 1861, Lee declined an offer of principal field command from Scott and followed Virginia into the Confederacy. That fall he presided over a failed campaign in western (now West) Virginia and spent the winter overseeing coastal defenses in Georgia and South Carolina. Recalled to Richmond in March 1862, Lee advised Confederate president Jefferson Davis as the peninsular campaign of Union general George B. McClellan developed. Then in the Battle of Seven Pines/Fair Oaks, Confederate general Joseph E. Johnston suffered serious wounds, and on June 1, 1862, Davis appointed Lee to command what became the Army of Northern Virginia.

Lee plotted a brilliant campaign that resulted in the Seven Days' Battles (June 25-July 1) and drove the federals from the outskirts of Richmond. On August 30, 1862, he led the army to victory over John Pope in the Second Battle of Bull Run/Manassas. Lee then launched an invasion of Maryland that came to grief in the bloody stalemate at Antietam on September 17, 1862. But at Fredericksburg on December 13, his troops defeated Ambrose E. Burnside's Union troops and stabilized the Virginia front.

During the spring of 1863 Lee became ill, probably with the onset of the heart disease that plagued him thereafter. He recovered in time to confront Joseph Hooker's federal offensive at Chancellorsville, May 1-4, 1863. Lee daringly divided his inferior numbers and dispatched Thomas J. ("Stonewall") Jackson on a day-long march to the Union rear. Chancellorsville may have been Lee's greatest battle. Jackson, however, sustained accidental wounds that proved fatal.

Lee reorganized his high command and in June 1863 sent dispersed elements of his army through Maryland and into Pennsylvania. Union troops followed, and they met at Gettysburg, July 1-3. On the final day Lee sought victory with a desperate charge at the center of the Union line. Gen. George G. Meade rendered "Pickett's charge" a grand disaster.

The following spring Ulysses S. Grant assumed command of all Union armies, and his men confronted Lee's southerners in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania Court House, and at Cold Harbor. Grant then appeared south of Richmond and the James River and attacked a crucial railroad junction at Petersburg. But Petersburg held, and Lee made brilliant use of trenches to compensate for his dwindling numbers. The siege persisted through the winter, until on April 2, 1865, Lee's lines broke, and he evacuated Richmond. Grant's forces overtook and surrounded Lee's remnant army, and on April 9 Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

After the war Lee counseled reconciliation and served as president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee University) in Virginia. Called the American Napoleon, Lee displayed audacity and initiative in his zeal to "strike a blow" as an offensive commander. His use of trenches to offset his inferior numbers proved his genius on the defense. He has remained an American hero--revered for the strength of his character and the brilliance of his battles.

Bibliography:

Thomas L. Connelly, The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society (1977); Douglas S. Freeman, R. E. Lee: A Biography, 4 vols. (1934-1935).

Author:

Emory M. Thomas

See also Civil War.

1807–70, general in chief of the Confederate armies in the American Civil War, b. Jan. 19, 1807, at Stratford, Westmoreland co., Va.; son of Henry (“Light-Horse Harry”) Lee.

Pre–Civil War Career

After graduating second in his class from West Point in 1829, Lee was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers. He married (1831) Mary Anne Randolph Custis, a great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, and Arlington House, her father's residence in Virginia, was their home until the Civil War (see Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial). In the Mexican War, Lee made a brilliant record as captain of engineers with Gen. Winfield Scott's army, winning three brevets; his reconnaissances during the advance on Mexico City were important to the American success.

Lee was superintendent at West Point from 1852 to 1855, when he was made lieutenant colonel of the 2d Cavalry and sent to W Texas. He commanded that regiment from 1857 to 1861. While at Arlington House on an extended leave, he was called to lead the company of U.S. marines that captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry in Oct., 1859.

Civil War Leadership

In Feb., 1861 (after the secession of the lower South), General Scott, with whom Lee was a great favorite, recalled him from Texas. Lee had no sympathy with either secession or slavery and, loving the Union and the army, deprecated the thought of sectional conflict. But in his tradition, loyalty to Virginia came first, and upon Virginia's secession he resigned (Apr. 20, 1861) from the army. His resolve not to fight against the South had already led him to decline (Apr. 18) the field command of the U.S. forces.

On Apr. 23 he assumed command of the military and naval forces of Virginia, which he organized thoroughly before they were absorbed by the Confederacy. Lee then became military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis and was made a Confederate general. After the failure of his efforts to coordinate the activity of Confederate forces in the western part of Virginia (July–Oct., 1861), Lee organized the S Atlantic coast defenses.

In Mar., 1862, Davis recalled him to Richmond. Lee's plan to prevent reinforcements from reaching Gen. George B. McClellan, whose army was threatening Richmond, was brilliantly executed by T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. When Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at Fair Oaks in the Peninsular campaign, Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia (June 1, 1862). His leadership of that army through the next three years has placed him among the world's great commanders.

Lee immediately took the offensive, and after ending McClellan's threat to Richmond in the Seven Days battles (June 26–July 2), he thoroughly defeated John Pope at the second battle of Bull Run (Aug. 29–30). McClellan, however, checked him in his first Northern invasion, the Antietam campaign (Sept.). Advances by Ambrose E. Burnside and Joseph Hooker were brutally repulsed in the battles of Fredericksburg (Dec. 13; see Fredericksburg, battle of) and Chancellorsville (May 2–4, 1863), though in the latter victory Lee lost his ablest lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson.

Lee's second invasion of the North resulted in the Confederate defeat in the Gettysburg campaign (June–July). He sorely missed the services of Jackson, and some historians attribute his defeat at Gettysburg to the failures of his subordinates, particularly James Longstreet. Other authorities argue that Lee underestimated his opposition and failed to impose his will upon his subordinates. Lee assumed full blame for the defeat, but Davis refused to entertain his offer of resignation. After Gettysburg, Lee did not engage in any major campaign until May, 1864, when Ulysses S. Grant moved against him. He repulsed Grant's direct assaults in the Wilderness campaign (May–June), but was not strong enough to turn him back, and in July, 1864, Grant began the long siege of Petersburg.

Lee's appointment as general in chief of all Confederate armies came (Feb., 1865) when the Confederacy had virtually collapsed. On Apr. 2, the Army of the Potomac broke through the Petersburg defenses, and Lee's forces retreated. One week later Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse (see under Appomattox).

After the war Lee became president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee Univ.). Although President Andrew Johnson never granted him the official amnesty for which he applied, Lee nevertheless urged the people of the South to work for the restoration of peace and harmony in a united country.

Character and Influence

Many historians consider Robert E. Lee the greatest general of the Civil War, and it is generally agreed that his military genius, hampered though it was by lack of men and materiel, was a principal factor in keeping the Confederacy alive. Others point out, however, that he never developed a coordinated overall strategy, that he failed to provide an adequate supply system for his armies, and that he was reluctant to deal with difficult subordinates, such as Longstreet. Of admirable personal character, Lee was idolized by his soldiers and the people of the South and soon won the admiration of the North. He has remained an ideal of the South and an American hero, although some late 20th cent. historians have tended toward a more critical view of him as a general and as a man.

Bibliography

The definitive biography, R. E. Lee (4 vol., 1934–37; abr. ed. 1961), is by D. S. Freeman. See also Capt. R. E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (2d ed. 1924; new ed., My Father General Lee, 1960); S. F. Horn, ed., The Robert E. Lee Reader (1949); D. S. Freeman, ed., Lee's Dispatches (new ed. 1958); The Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee (ed. by C. Dowdey, 1961); M. W. Fishwick, Lee after the War (1963); T. L. Connelly, The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society (1977); C. Dowdey, Death of a Nation: The Story of Lee and His Men at Gettysburg (1988); A. T. Nolan, Lee Considered: Gen. Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (1991); E. M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee: A Biography (1995); J. D. McKenzie, Uncertain Glory: Lee's Generalship Reexamined (1997); E. H. Bonekemper III, How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War (1997); B. Alexander, Robert E. Lee's Civil War (1998); M. A. Palmer, Lee Moves North (1998).

A general of the nineteenth century; the commander of Confederate troops during the Civil War. Before the war, he led the marines who put down the insurrection by John Brown at Harpers Ferry and took Brown captive. In the war, he led the Army of Northern Virginia and won the Battle of Chancellorsville but lost the Battle of Gettysburg. He surrendered to the Union army, under the command of Ulysses S. Grant, at Appomattox Court House in 1865.

Lee's excellence of character and brilliance as a general won him the respect of people on both sides of the war.

Quotes:

"Duty is the sublimest word in the language. You can never do more than your duty. You should never wish to do less."

"The education of a man is never complete until he dies."

"Let the tent be struck."

"Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or to keep one."

"My experience through life has convinced me that, while moderation and temperance in all things are commendable and beneficial, abstinence from spirituous liquors is the best safeguard of morals and health."

"I like whiskey. I always did, and that is why I never drink it."

See more famous quotes by Robert E. Lee