Who was Robert E. Lee and why did he dicide to fight for the confederacy?

Answer 1

He was a highly distinguished U.S. Army officer, to whom Lincoln offered supreme command of all the Union forces in the run-up to the Civil War.

Lee said he would have to wait to see whether his home-state of Virginia voted to join the Confederacy. He was one of many prominent Virginians who disapproved of secession, but who considered themselves Virginians first and Americans second.

When Virginia did secede, Lee reluctantly resigned his commission and threw in his lot with the Confederates.

In the first year, he was not able to influence the war very much, but when Joe Johnston was severely wounded at Fair Oaks, Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia and led it to a series of brilliant victories, in partnership with Stonewall Jackson. He then failed in his two attempts to invade the North, and after Stonewall was killed at Chancellorsville, neither he nor his army were quite the same again, being forced to surrender to Grant after a long siege in defence of the Confederate capital, Richmond.

Much more than his President, Jefferson Davis, he is regarded as the true figurehead of the Lost Cause, a largely mythical interpretation of the Southern life as a world of chivalry and honour.