Robert Edward Lee
19 January 1807 – 12 October 1870
Robert Edward Lee was a career U.S. Army officer and the most successful general of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. Lee at first opposed the Confederacy and nearly accepted a major Union command, but when his home state of Virginia seceded he chose to join with his family and neighbours and fight for Virginia. His first major command came in June 1862 when he took over the Confederacy's premier combat force, the Army of Northern Virginia, with responsibility for defending Richmond.
Robert E. Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the fifth child of Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee ("Lighthorse Harry") and Anne Hill (née Carter) Lee. He entered the United States Military Academy in 1825. When he graduated in 1829, second in his class of 46, not only had he attained the top academic record, but he had no demerits. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.
Lee served for just over seventeen months at Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island, Georgia. In 1831, he was transferred to Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula and played a major role in the final construction of Fort Monroe and its opposite, Fort Calhoun. Fort Monroe was completely surrounded by a moat. Fort Calhoun, later renamed Fort Wool, was built on a man-made island across the navigational channel from Old Point Comfort in the middle of the mouth of Hampton Roads. When construction was completed in 1834, Fort Monroe was referred to as the "Gibraltar of Chesapeake Bay."
While he was stationed at Fort Monroe, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis (1808–1873), the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, at Arlington House, her parents' home just across from Washington, D.C. They eventually had seven children, three boys and four girls: George Washington Custis, William H. Fitzhugh, Robert Edward, Mary, Annie, Agnes, and Mildred. All the children survived him except for Annie, who died in 1862.
Lee served as an assistant in the chief engineer's office in Washington from 1834 to 1837, but spent the summer of 1835 helping to lay out the state line between Ohio and Michigan. In 1837, he got his first important command. As a first lieutenant of engineers, he supervised the engineering work for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. His work there earned him a promotion to captain. In 1841, he was transferred to Fort Hamilton in New York Harbor, where he took charge of building fortifications. There he served as a vestryman at St. John's Episcopal Church, Fort Hamilton.
Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican War (1846–1848). He was one of Winfield Scott's chief aides in the march from Veracruz to Mexico City. He was instrumental in several American victories through his personal reconnaissance as a staff officer; he found routes of attack that the Mexicans had not defended because they thought the terrain was impassable.
He was promoted to major after the Battle of Cerro Gordo on 18 April 1847.[2] He also fought at Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec, and was wounded at the latter. By the end of the war, he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel.
After the Mexican War, he spent three years at Fort Carroll in Baltimore harbour, after which he became the superintendent of West Point in 1852. During his three years at West Point, he improved the buildings, the courses, and spent a lot of time with the cadets. Lee's oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, attended West Point during his tenure. Custis Lee graduated in 1854, first in his class.
In 1855, Lee became Lieutenant Colonel of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry (under the command of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston) and was sent to the Texas frontier. There he helped protect settlers from attacks by the Apache and the Comanche.
These were not happy years for Lee, as he did not like to be away from his family for long periods of time, especially as his wife was becoming increasingly ill. Lee came home to see her as often as he could.
When John Brown seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in October 1859, Lee was given command of detachments of Maryland and Virginia militia, soldiers , and United States Marines, to suppress the uprising and arrest its leaders. [17] By the time Lee arrived later that night, the militia on the site had surrounded Brown and his hostages. When on October 18 Brown refused the demand for surrender, Lee attacked and in three minutes of fighting Brown himself was captured.
When Texas seceded from the Union in February 1861, General David E. Twiggs surrendered all the American forces (about 4000 men, including Lee) to the Texans. Twiggs immediately resigned from the U. S. Army and was made a Confederate general. Lee went back to Washington, where he was offered a senior command of the U.S. Army.
At the outbreak of war, Lee was appointed to command all of Virginia's forces, but upon the formation of the Confederate States Army, he was named one of its first five full generals. Lee did not wear the insignia of a Confederate general, displaying only the three stars of a Confederate colonel, equivalent to his last U.S. Army rank, until the Civil War had been won and he could be promoted, in peacetime, to general in the Confederate Army.
Lee's first field assignment was commanding Confederate forces in western Virginia, where he was defeated at the Battle of Cheat Mountain and was widely blamed for Confederate setbacks.[19] He was then sent to organize the coastal defences along the Carolina and Georgia seaboard, where he was hampered by the lack of an effective Confederate navy. Once again blamed by the press, he became military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, former U.S. Secretary of War.
In the spring of 1862, during the Peninsula Campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac under General George B. McClellan advanced upon Richmond from Fort Monroe, eventually reaching the eastern edges of the Confederate capital along the Chickahominy River. Following the wounding of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston at the Battle of Seven Pines, on June 1, 1862, Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, his first opportunity to lead an army in the field. Newspaper editorials of the day objected to his appointment due to concerns that Lee would not be aggressive and would wait for the Union army to come to him. He oversaw substantial strengthening of Richmond's defences during the first three weeks of June and then launched a series of attacks, the Seven Days Battles, against McClellan's forces. Lee's attacks resulted in heavy Confederate casualties and they were marred by clumsy tactical performances by his subordinates, but his aggressive actions unnerved McClellan, who retreated to a point on the James River where Union naval forces were in control. These successes led to a rapid turn-around of public opinion and the newspaper editorials quickly changed their tune on Lee's aggressiveness.
After McClellan's retreat, Lee defeated another Union army at the Second Battle of Bull Run. He then invaded Maryland, hoping to replenish his supplies and possibly influence the Northern elections that fall in favour of ending the war. McClellan's men recovered a lost order that revealed Lee's plans. McClellan always exaggerated Lee's forces, but now he knew the Confederate army was divided and could be destroyed by an all-out attack at Antietam. Yet McClellan was too slow in moving, not realizing Lee had been informed by a spy that McClellan had the plans. Lee urgently recalled Jackson and in the bloodiest day of the war, Lee withstood the Union assaults. He withdrew his battered army back to Virginia.
Disappointed by McClellan's failure to destroy Lee's army, Lincoln named Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside ordered an attack across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg. Delays in getting bridges built across the river allowed Lee's army ample time to organize strong defences, and the attack on December 12, 1862, was a disaster for the Union. Lincoln then named Joseph Hooker commander of the Army of the Potomac. Hooker's advance to attack Lee in May, 1863, near Chancellorsville, Virginia, was defeated by Lee and Stonewall Jackson's daring plan to divide the army and attack Hooker's flank. It was an enormous victory over a larger force, but it came at a great cost, as Jackson, Lee's best subordinate, was fatally wounded by his own troops.
In the summer of 1863, Lee ignored the threat to Vicksburg and invaded the North again, hoping for a Southern victory that would shatter Northern morale. He encountered Union forces under George G. Meade at the three-day Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania on July 1-3, 1863. His subordinates did not attack with the aggressive drive Lee expected, J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry was out of the area, and Lee's decision to launch a massive frontal assault on the center of the Union line—the disastrous Pickett's Charge—resulted in heavy Confederate losses. Lee was compelled to retreat again. Despite flooded rivers that blocked his retreat, he escaped Meade's ineffective pursuit. Following his defeat at Gettysburg, Lee sent a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis on August 8, 1863, but Davis refused Lee's request. There was no more major fighting for Lee until spring 1864.
In 1864, the new Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant sought to destroy Lee's army by attrition, pinning Lee against his capital of Richmond. Lee stopped each attack, but Grant had superior reinforcements and kept pushing each time a bit farther to the southeast. These battles in the Overland Campaign included the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. Grant eventually fooled Lee by stealthily moving his army across the James River. After stopping a Union attempt to capture Petersburg, Virginia, a vital railroad link supplying Richmond, Lee's men built elaborate trenches and were besieged in Petersburg. He attempted to break the stalemate by sending Jubal A. Early on a raid through the Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., but Early was defeated by the superior forces of Philip Sheridan. The Siege of Petersburg lasted from June 1864 until April 1865, with Lee's heavily outnumbered army shrinking daily because of desertions by disheartened Confederates.
On January 31, 1865, Lee was promoted to general-in-chief of Confederate forces.
As the South ran out of manpower the issue of arming the slaves became paramount. By late 1864 the Army so dominated the Confederacy that civilian leaders were unable to block the military's proposal, strongly endorsed by Lee, to arm and train slaves in Confederate uniform for combat. Everyone understood that those slave soldiers and their families would be emancipated. Lee explained, "We should employ them without delay....[along with] gradual and general emancipation." The first units were in training as the war ended.[20] As the Confederate army was decimated by casualties, disease and desertion, the Union attack on Petersburg succeeded on April 2, 1865. Lee abandoned Richmond and retreated west. His forces were surrounded and he surrendered them to Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Other Confederate armies followed suit and the war ended.
Lee's greatest victories were in the Seven Days Battles and at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, but he suffered reverses in his two invasions of the North. Narrowly escaping defeat at the Antietam in 1862 Lee was forced to return to Virginia. He was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, with his escape routes cut off by flooded rivers. Because of a desultory chase by General George Meade, Lee escaped to Virginia. There was little further action in 1863, but in spring 1864 the new Union commander, Ulysses S. Grant began a massive war of attrition with multiple battles designed to wear away Lee's army. In the Overland Campaign of 1864 and the Siege of Petersburg in 1864–65, Lee inflicted massive casualties on a foe superior in terms of men and materiel, but was unable to replace his losses and his army crumbled away. Lee was forced into defensive trenches and had no resources to mount a significant offensive. Vastly outnumbered in spring 1865 Lee was forced to flee but was soon surrounded. Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865 marked the end of the war. His victories against numerically superior forces won him enduring fame as an astute and audacious battlefield tactician, but his strategic decisions—such as invading the North in 1862 and 1863 and neglecting the Mississippi Valley—have generally been criticized by military historians.
In 1865, as manpower reserves drained away, Lee promoted a plan to arm slaves to fight for the Confederacy (and free them); the first black Confederate combat units were in training as the war ended, though one unit is known to have fought during the retreat from Richmond in April 1865. He blocked dissenters from starting a guerrilla campaign to continue the war after his surrender at Appomattox.
After the war, as a college president, Lee supported President Andrew Johnson's program of Reconstruction and inter-sectional friendship, while opposing the Radical Republican proposals to give newly freed slaves the vote and take the vote away from ex-Confederates. He urged reconciliation between the North and South, and the reintegration of former Confederates into the nation's political life. Lee became the great Southern hero of the war, and as his popularity grew in the North as well after 1880. He remains an iconic figure of American history.
Traveller, Lee's favourite horse, accompanied Lee to Washington College after the war. He lost many hairs from his tail to admirers who wanted a souvenir of the famous horse and his general. In 1870, when Lee died, Traveller was led behind the General's hearse. Not long after Lee's death, Traveller stepped on a rusty nail and developed tetanus. There was no cure, and he was put down. He was buried next to the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University. In 1907, his remains were disinterred and displayed at the Chapel, before being reburied beside the Lee Chapel in 1971.
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