Robert E. Lee

Allowing JEB Stewart's cavalry to try to ride right around the Union army at Gettysburg.

It took much longer than expected, and Lee was unable to get vital information about the enemy's position until the end of the second day.

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Confederate General Lee personally believed himself responsible for the 23,000 killed at Gettsyburg, Pennsylvania.

- S0L

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Trying to invade Pennsylvania in July 1863 - according to Longstreet, one of the Generals blamed for the defeat at Gettysburg.

Otherwise his strategies and tactics were very sound.

His basic mistake was to throw in his lot with the Confederates in the first place. If he'd stayed in the U.S.Army, the war would not have lasted long.

Andrew Johnson Lee was never granted an individual pardon during his lifetime. He applied for one but it was not acted upon, apparently because the required oath of allegiance was misfiled. Johnson's Amnesty proclamation of July 4, 1868 applied to all former Confederates not actually under indictment, and required no oath, but this still didn't help Lee, who had been indicted for treason in June 1865, though the indictment was never proceded with.However, at Christmas 1868 President Johnson issued a further amnesty which did not make this exception, so that Lee was included in it, even though not mentioned by name. Lee's citizenship was restored by Congressional resolution and a pardon was granted posthumously effective 13 June 1975 by Gerald R. Ford.

Grant had Lee's forces completely surrounded with superior numbers. Lee did not have provisions or ammunition enough to fight a battle, and his forces had dwindled severely from desertion. To have fought would have been suicidal.

The campaign of summer 1863 which ended in defeat at Gettysburg

After graduating from West Point, Lee became a member of the US. Army and began a long and remarkable military career. He distinguished himself in the Mexican War earning three honorary field promotions. His accomplishments were many including Assistant to the Chief of the Engineer Corps and Superintendent of West Point. In later years he was appointed President of what is now called "Washington and Lee University" in Lexington, Virginia. President Lincoln had asked Lee to command the Union Armies and respectively rejected this notion. Robert E. Lee vigorously opposed slavery and as early as 1856 made this statement: "There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil." Lee also knew that the use of slaves was coming to an end. Cyrus McCormick's 1831 invention of the mule-drawn mechanical reaper sounded the death knell for the use of slave labor. Before the Civil War began, 250,000 slaves had already been freed.

Historical Fact: Robert E. Lee's Mother Buried Alive

Gen. Robert E. Lee, the military hero, was born 15 months after his mother had been laid to rest in her casket in the family vault on Arlington Heights. Warfield Lee of Catlettsburg, Ky., who is familiar with the incident, is in a position to know for he is a grandnephew of General Lee. The distinguished military leader was a brother of Warfield Lee's father, Samuel Lee.

He tells the story as follows: Lighthorse Harry Lee's wife was very ill in 1809. Her condition grew steadily worse until one day four physicians pronounced her dead.

She lay in state in the great Lee mansion on Arlington Heights for four days.

On the sixth day she was removed to the family mausoleum.

On the seventh day, the sexton went into the mausoleum to lay flowers on the casket and sweep the floor, for the day had been quite rainy and the shoes of those following the distinguished woman to her final rest dropped considerable mud.

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This was taken from a newspaper article. Lee's other did suffer from narcolepsy.

There are other reports that she was in the crypt for three days which is more believeable (but also may be Messianic).

Because his native state of Virginia voted to join the Confederacy.

Otherwise he would have fought for the Union, and Lincoln had already offered him the job of General-in-Chief.

Lee was not pro-slavery and he was against secession.

That's a matter of opinion. If you share his views and agree with his decisions, he was. If you disagree, he wasn't. Historians should not answer this question because it's opinionated. Of course, that's just my opinion.

Lee was excellent on the defensive. His spoiling attacks repulsed several Union offensives. He was able to fend off vastly superior forces through rapid outflanking maneuvers, confounding the enemy command. He was far less successful on the offensive. Both of his invasions of the North were turned back after crushing defeats incurring great loss of life. His experience in the Mexican War may have worked against him on the offensive, where he had been able to dislodge numerically superior forces with superior firepower. At Gettysburg, that led him to order Pickett's Charge, which ended disastrously. He did take responsibility for the debacle, and never lost the respect of his men.

Many different strategies were used to disenfranchise African-Americans. There was the grandfather clause: you can only vote if your grandfather voted. There was the poll tax, making it too expensive for the poor to vote. There were fake literacy tests, designed to be impossible for anyone to pass the test, and of course, given only to African-Americans; European-Americans were assumed to be literate. And if all of that failed, there was intimidation. Since many black people were murdered, there was a certain risk in showing up at a polling station at all.

Confederates.

Lincoln had offered him the job of General-in-Chief of all the Union armies. He said he would only accept it if Virginia voted to stay loyal to the Union - which he hoped it would.

But Virginia voted Confederate, and Lee went with his state. He felt he was a Virginian first and an American second.

Winning the Battle of Chancellorsville through deception tactics that completely foxed the Union commander Joe Hooker, forcing him to fight on unfavourable terrain.

Yes. Very interesting person Robert E. Lee. By the way, did you know that his dad, Light Horse Harry, was the Governor of Virginia?

Lee's idol was his father's commander, George Washington.

Rather solemn - in fact, he told his men to stop cheering.

He could feel that it was a historic moment, and it brought out the noble side in what was normally a very plain character.

He gave remarkably lenient terms to Lee - no jailings or hangings, on condition that his men handed in their weapons and signed the pledge not to take up arms against the USA.

Yes. Of the greatest American generals ever, Lee may not be in a class by himself, but it does not take long to call the roll.

Lee was always outnumbered, had only slender resources to work with, was greatly hampered by numerous difficulties, of supply and transportation, lack of arms and equipment, and food. At times thousands of his soldiers were barefoot.

But even against the odds and working against all these difficulties, Lee not only survived but won battles, and came near to winning the war against a determined foe.

Lee originally proposed the invasion of Pennsylvania to Davis as a means of siphoning troops away from the Siege of Vicksburg. He believed, perhaps erroneously, that he needed to win an offensive campaign on Northern soil in order to frighten the Northern politicians into suing for peace. He was also spurred on by his incredible victory at Chancellorsville to take incredible chances to achieve victory.

Lee had been acting as Davis' military advisor when Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Oaks. Lee accepted the command of the Army of Northern Virginia. Only in the last year of the war did he accept overall command of the southern forces, possibly because he felt he had no other choice.

He was in command of his own Army - the Army of Northern Virginia.

Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, (Virginia) on April 9, 1865

Custis, she was descended from Martha Washington's family. Arlington, their estate, was her ancestral home.

Lee actually did this twice, during the Antietam campaign of 1862 and the Gettysburg campaign of 1863.

In 1862, the Union forces had enjoyed an unbroken string of successes during the first half of the year, and it looked as if the war might soon be over. In the east McClellan had his huge Union army at the very gates of Richmond, so close his men were setting their watches by the church bells in town. Lee took command of the southern army opposing him June 1, 1862, and by hard fighting over the next two months drove the Yankees away and transferred the "seat of war" nearly one hundred miles northward, where the Confederates won another victory at the Second Battle of Manassas (Bull Run). The question was what to do next. Though the Confederate army had occupied this area for a few months in the summer of 1861, their supply situation had always been precarious, as they depended on one single-track railroad to bring supplies from the south. Now this railroad was destroyed, so they could not stay more than a few days at Manassas. If they withdrew to the south, it would look like a retreat, when they had just won a smashing victory. If they went west to the Shenandoah Valley, there were foodstuffs, but this would take them away from the war and open the path back to Richmond to the Union army. To the east was Washington DC, now heavily fortified and ringed with imposing earthwork forts, and probably invincible. The only remaining move was north, over the Potomac. At this time Great Britain and France were considering official recognition of the Confederate government. Had they recognized the Confederacy, this probably would have insured Confederate independence. So moving north was risky because it meant taking Lee's army even further away from dependable sources of food and ammunition, and because if they had to fight a large battle in northern territory, and lost, they might cost the Confederacy its chances of international recognition. And, if they lost badly enough that their army was destroyed, then there would no longer be any Confederate force in the east to prevent the Union forces from going anywhere they wished. As they moved north a copy of Lee's orders fell into McClellan's hands, and he moved to resist the Confederates. Lee refused to leave Maryland without fighting, so the Battle of Antietam took place. It was a narrow thing, but McClellan fought poorly and missed a chance to destroy Lee's army and end the war then, in September 1862. Lee's army escaped back to Virginia, but the result was enough to cause Great Britain and France to withhold recognition of the Confederacy at that time, and they never came close to doing so again. Lincoln had been waiting for a Union victory to afterward announce his Emancipation Proclamation, and Antietam was close enough. This helped to insure that Great Britain and France would never recognize the south, as this would make them appear to be pro-slavery, in the wake of Lincoln's Proclamation.

In 1863 the Confederates again faced a decision on their next move. They had won another stupendous victory at Chancellorsville in early May. Lee's army could have stayed where it was, but, if they did, there was a powerful block in the southern government and army who thought that if Lee was not going to be actively campaigning, he should detach a large portion of his army as send it to Mississippi, where Grant was tightening his siege of Vicksburg. Lee was very reluctant to see his army so reduced in strength, when the Yankees always had larger forces to begin with. If the Yankees had tried again to attack after he had sent reinforcements west, he might not be able to stop them again. So Lee was able to prevail in the southern strategic council sessions and gain approval for another invasion of the north. Reasons given included taking the war away from the farmers of Virginia so they could get in a harvest, and instead impoverishing the farmers of Maryland and Pennsylvania to feed his army and the Union force (any army nearby was very bad news for farmers), and Lee also boldly hoped to be able to badly defeat the Union forces on their own soil and "conquer a peace". There was no real hope of foreign recognition by this time. Lee realized, though, that simply continuing to await Yankee onslaughts in the south would eventually use up all southern manpower. If they were to win the war, they had to do something dramatic to cause the Yankees to give up. This was very risky on several counts. A Civil War army without a supply line had to keep moving, "living off the land" (robbing farmers). To "forage" (rob farmers) the army had to spread out over a wide path as it moved. If the enemy appeared in force, the army would have to concentrate and remain in one spot, and thus would be unable to forage for food. The Confederates would also have no reliable means of resupplying their ammunition. So, if Lee was unable to "conquer a peace" while his army was in northern territory, SOONER OR LATER THEY WOULD HAVE TO RETURN TO VIRGINIA. When they did, it was going to look like a retreat. Retreats were always demoralizing to the people and the army. In this sense, the Gettysburg campaign was more a gigantic raid than a true invasion, because more than likely, sooner or later the Rebels would have to pull back. Also going into the north involved a decision NOT to send reinforcements to Vicksburg. The day after Gettysburg ended, Grant captured Vicksburg, and the Union gained complete control of the Mississippi River, splitting the Confederacy in two.

cause he can take advantage of LEEs army and take him as condfederacy prison

Richard Henry Lee was a great uncle to Robert E. Lee. Verified thru geocities.

Robert E. Lee, when he had to surrender the Civil War to Ulysses S. Grant, April 9 , 1865.

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It was from a quote by Robert E. Lee in his final battle leading a Confederate Army. Told that there was no way to fight their way out of Appomattox, he reportedly said, "Then there is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant and I would rather die a thousand deaths."

Shortly thereafter, he wrote to Grant and the two met at a nearby residence, where Lee surrendered his forces. This marked the effective end of the US Civil War.