Robert E. Lee

The Confederate soldiers were given food and were allowed to keep their horses, however, the Southerners had to surrender their rifles. Most Southern soldiers would return to their farms for Spring planting.

Lee was an Episcopalian, brought up in that religion, though he was not confirmed in that Church until he was 46. Little is known of Lee's childhood, but he lived his early years on a family plantation until the property was lost due to his father's business failings. The family probably attended the nearest Episcopal Church. After the farm was gone the family moved to Alexandria, Virginia, and no doubt attended the same denomination there. Lee however spent several years at boarding schools, which in that era all had compulsory chapel attendance. Chapel was also mandatory at West Point where Lee was a cadet from 1825-29, and there was an influential Episcopal clergyman. Lee's adult life was spent as an Army officer at many remote Army posts, and he and his family likely attended any church available. During the Civil War Lee frequently attended St. James Episcopal Church in Richmond (Reverend Dr. Peterkin), still standing on the corner of 5th and Marshall in Richmond, and also sometimes at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, which still stands on Grace Street in Richmond, Virginia. Confederate President Jefferson Davis was also a faithful attendee at St. Paul's, which is directly across the street from the Virginia capitol. Both Lee and Dais were in the congregation on Sunday, April 1, 1865, when word was brought to Lee that disaster had come to his Army at Five Forks, leading to the evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg the next day and Lee's surrender eight days later. Returning to Richmond after the surrender Lee continued to attend at St. Paul's in the summer of 1865. There is a fairly well known incident that occurred one Sunday. In the back of the church was a railed off area, behind which the slaves of the well-to-do families who made up much of the congregation had been accommodated for services. When the Reverend Dr. Charles Minnigerode called for those who wished to take communion, an elderly black man made his way forward and knelt at the altar rail. This was shocking to the white congregants, as communion had always been an all-white ceremony at St. Paul's. For a time no one quite knew what to do, then another elderly man rose and went and knelt with the old black man. It was, of course, General Lee. At the end of that summer Lee took the position offered him of President of tiny Washington College, in Lexington, Virginia. The school had been devastated by the war, but Lee's prestige and able leadership soon had it flourishing. The College trustees built a house on campus for their new President and his family, then built a new chapel. Lee, the College President, made his office in a basement room of this new chapel. His office is preserved today just as he left it when he went back to his home after his last day at work, and Lee's tomb is on the other side of the basement (his horse, Traveler, is buried out back). The College today is Washington and Lee University.

General Samuel Cooper, who served as Adjutant General and Inspector General was the highest ranking military officer in the CSA.

Cooper technically outranked General Robert E. Lee because he had been advanced to the rank of full general at an earlier date, 16 May 1861. That said, Lee's, later, appointment by the CSA Congress as general-in-chief, 23 January 1865, could be looked upon as an advancement to five star level.

He wasn't particularly known for being a politician, he was most known for his skilled commanding of the Confederate's important army in Virginia. He was an important icon for many people though.

As a very strong willed man, he would do anything he was told by a solider higher of a rank than him, always believed in slavery. He refused to ever surrender until the last battle he was in.

• 1807-1870
• Washington and Lee College is named after him
• 63 years old when he died
• Had two horses Grace Darling and Traveller
• Had 7 kids
• One of his daughters, Annie, died of Typhoid
• His wife, Mary Custis was the step great-granddaughter of George Washington.
• His father, an officer in the Revolutionary war was well-liked by Washington

He was tall, a brilliant man, a great leader, and an even better engineer! He was soft spoken but rigid in military discipline. He loved his state and his family and was a Christian by religion. He was a hero of the Mexican War and lead the marines that captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry. Had Virginia stayed in the union he would have been commander of their army after Winfield Scott retired.

Appomattox Court House, which despite the name was actually a small village rather than a single building. The specific building where the surrender was concluded was the home of Wilmer McLean.

Lee was Commandant at West Point prior to the Civil War. He resigned when he was offered the command of the Union Army, from President Lincoln, but took the command of the Confederate Army.

Believe it or not, Ulysses S. Grant actually owned slaves, and Robert E. Lee did not. It is so sad that so many people just follow the crowd instead of truly looking for the truth on the Civil War. Both were very good, wise, and noble men, fighting a war that was over so much more than slavery. As i mentioned at the beginning , if the north's main general owned slaves and the south's did not, was the Civil War really about slavery, or about something more than that? You answer the question. Ulysses was a god man and especially a good president, I am not prejudice against him; but Robert E. Lee was so much more, for he fought for a cause hidden today, and still kept going.

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I disagree. Does anyone really believe that 620,000 men, two per cent of the population of the entire United States prior to the Civil War, died over "... so much more than Slavery" ?

THAT is the position of the crowd --- THAT is what has been taught in our schools since the close of the first decade following the Civil War

Did the South lose 280,000 plus men, and have one-fourth to one-third of its surviving soldiers with at least one limb missing, over the issue of Tariffs (which was a major bone of contention between the increasingly industrial North and the Agricultural South) ? Please.

Did the average Confederate soldier fight to defend slavery ? We are asked. Did the average Union soldier fight to free the slaves ?

Let me respond to those questions by asking some of my own.

Did the US Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Coast Guard fight in World War II to free France, to save Britain, to help those poor Belgians ? Did we fight in Vietnam to guarantee the freedom of the South Vietnamese ? In Iraq to liberate the Iraqis ?

In all those instances, the answer is, essentially, No --- but that is what they did (the South Vietnamese government's failure of nerve led to the victory of the Vietcong.)

When the Union private slogged his way through the Wilderness in 1864; when his Confederate counterpart routed the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville a year earlier, they were mostly fighting for their state, their country, or both --- But it was the issue of Slavery that put them there.

Without the existence of Slavery, there would have been no Civil War. That is the essential element at the core of the conflict. To contend otherwise, as we have been doing for the past 140-150 years, is simply wrong.

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Grant was a terrible President. His ownership of slaves was circumstantial and relatively fleeting.

As for Lee, if you could go back in time and talk to General Pickett, you'd get a vastly different opinion of Robert E. Lee than we normally hear. General Lee was a risk taker who against all reasonable judgment sent Pickett's forces to their death... simply because Lee's "blood was up." Generals Montgomery and Eisenhower, touring the Gettysburg Battlefield after WWII, both agreed that Lee and Meade should have been subject to courtmartial for their actions during those pivotal three days of July 1-3, 1863.

They called Grant a butcher, but every time Grant outmaneuvered Lee during the 1864 campaign, and it was more frequent that one would expect, Lee successfully sped his forces through territory with which he was familiar and turned to face Grant again. If Grant was a butcher, so was Lee.

Robert E. Lee was a patrician and he wears well. Grant was not, and grates on our sense of civility. Remember this though, Lee defeated every Union general he faced, until he came up against Grant.

Of course, Grant had been used to that throughout the entire war.

Lee was asked by Lincoln to be in charge of the entire Union Army but he turned it down. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, Lee decided to follow his own state and fought for the Confederate Army. Lee's greatest victories were the Seven day battles. In the spring of 1864, the new Union commander, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, began a series of campaigns to wear down Lee's army.

During the American Civil War, General Robert E. Lee led his army into Pennsylvania in 1863 with the hope of achieving several objectives. First, he aimed to relieve the pressure on northern Virginia, the scene of many battles in the previous years. Second, he intended to ravage Northern soil in order to demoralize the North's will to fight. Third, he hoped to secure a decisive military victory over any Northern armies that might oppose him, perhaps leading to the seizure of the North's capital.

Robert E. Lee became the leading general in the Confederate army. His goal was to win as many battles against the Union as possible and force the Union to simply give up on its war to end the Confederate rebellion.

Robert E. lee had taken an oath, as did all West Point graduates did to defend the United States. He however, believed he could not fight against his home state, so he resigned and later took a position in the Confederate army. Before he resigned his US Army commission, he had been asked to take on a significant position in the US Army. In those days, loyalty to one's state was important, as opposed to today's standards.

Robert E. Lee is best remembered as the commander(leader) of the Confederate army during the Civil War. As a young man, he attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was involved in the War with Mexico. Interestingly, President Lincoln offered Lee a field command in the U.S. Army when the Civil War broke out. Although Lee opposed slavery and the idea of secession, he felt that his allegiance belonged to his family, friends, and state. He declined the President's offer, resigned his commission in the U.S. Army, and returned to his plantation in Virginia. He surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, 1865. He was born in Stratford, Westmoreland County, Virginia on January 19, 1807. He died in Lexington, Virginia on October 12, 1870.

Commander of the confederate army

Robert E. Lee became the commander of the Confederate Army in the last few months of the Civil War. Until that time Jefferson Davis had tried to micromanage a number of battles from Richmond, Virginia. That was especially costly in the case of the Battle of Vicksberg. Instead of having General Joseph E. Johnson be in charge of all Confederate forces, Davis insisted on having two armies use different strategies. After the fiasco in Atlanta, the Confederate congress lost confidence in Davis. When Fort Monroe fell and no east coast port remained in Confederate hands, the Confederate Congress put all Confederate troops under Lee. Before that, he was the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.

A very poor one. The battle has been described as actually being three separate battles, as the northerners made unconnected, unsupported attacks in the north of the field, then the center, then the south. This allowed the Confederates to move troops to the threatened sectors to meet each attack. The north had the south outnumbered three to one on the field, and had they attacked simultaneously on all sectors of the field could undoubtedly have overwhelmed the Confederates and ended the war then and there. As it was, it was all the Confederates could do to hang on desperately through the three separate Union attacks. Union commander McClellan had seven corps in his army, and two of them took no part in the battle and did not fire a shot all day.

Lee lost 20,000-28,000. The South never kept records of the soldiers they lost, but they did keep record of the Generals they lost. At Gettysburg they lost General Armistead, General Garnett, and General Pettigrew, all from General George Pickett's division. General Sam Hood was also wounded in Gettysburg. He lived and would live through the Civil War, despite taking six more bullets.

4 reasons 1. winning the seven days battle and the second bull run gave Robert E. Lee the confidence to fight the Union. 2. the invasion helped out the farmers so they can rest during the Harvest season. 3. Lee hoped that a victory in the North would have France and Britain join forces with them. 4. lastly so that the Confederates could steel food from the Northern farms.

Basically yes he was.

Lee was capable of being both bold and aggressive when necessary but was also understand the value of defending fortified positions.

Lee was not afraid to take enourmous risks, he frequently split his Army in the face of a superior enemy and used it to out manoveur and destroy larger forces. The most famous example of this is Chancellorville where leaving only a few brigades to defend his front he sent Jacksons entire wing of the army on a flanking march that crushed the Union position and ended the immediate threat to Richmond.

Following this and other victories Lee became something of a bogeyman for Union commanders and often caused unwarranted hesitancy and fear in his opponants minds.

After the death of Jackson he was however unable to find a replacement corps commander of suitable iniative and aggression and this was the main reason for the dfeat at Gettysburg.

Towards the end of the war dwindling numbers of Confederate troops and the strategy of the Union forces under US Grant forced Lee to abandon his prefered style of a war of manouver and instead dig trenches and other field fortifications. He proved to be equally adept at this aspect of warfare and inflicted further tactical defeats on Union forces as they tried to storm Confederate defenses.

Ultimately Lee's forces where worn down by a relentless was of attrition and handicapped by the need to defend ever longer trench lines against a numerically superior enemy, Lee was eventually forced to surrender his army which largely marked the end of armed Confederate resistance.

Lee's weaknesses were that when 'his blood was up' meaning he was in an aggressive state of mind he would tend to prefer frontal attacks on the enemy which resulted in heavy losses for his forces, the most famous example if Picketts Charge on the third day of Gettyburg, another noticable example would the battle of Malvern Hill. As stated he found it hard to find a replacement for Jackson and Lee was never able to operate as effectively offensively again, his choices to replace Jackson (Ewell and Hill) in retrospect turned out to be poor choices

no; Robert E Lee was confederate. He surrendered to Ulyssess S Grant(Union) in 1865.

Name of General Lee's Horse That most noble of all steeds was named Traveller. There is a very fun book by that title. It puports to be a first person account of the war as told by the horse. More information: Although it is true that Traveller was the more famous of Gneral Lee's mounts, he also rode a mare called Lucy Long for a period as well. Lucy was a present to General Lee from General J.E.B. Stuart in 1862, and General Lee rode Lucy Long for two years until, when in the lines around Petersburg, she got with foal. He sent her to the rear and once more mounted Traveller. xaver

He had three others:, Brown Roan, Richmond, and Ajax.

Pickett's division was only one of several confederate units ordered to attack that day. To understand why Picketts charge was ordered, you have to understand the larger picture. The reason for Robert E. Lee's campaign against the North at this time in the war was his desire to follow up his victory at Chancellorsville with a successful invasion far enough into the North that the northern politicians would be convinced to give up their support of the war. In other words, he hoped to destroy their morale and their will to fight by gaining so much ground that they would think their cause hopeless. His advance into the north was stopped at Gettysburg where a fierce battle took place over three days. On the third day, Lee hoped to finally win the battle. He ordered the union lines bombarded with cannonfire and then 12,000 confederate troops were to charge across the open field. Picketts charge was just one part of that attack, but has gained historical significance due to the 50% loss of Confederate soldiers, including nearly all the officers who participated that day.

He is one of the most famous and prominent generals of the Confederate South.