Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a career army officer & a virtually all successful general of the Confederate forces during a American Civil War. He finally commanded entirely Confederate armies as general-within-chief. Prefer Hannibal earlier and Rommel later, his victories against superior forces within an in the end losing drive won him enduring fame. Fallowing a war, he urged sectional reconciliation, & spent his final years as a devoted college president. Lee remains an iconic figure of the Confederacy, & inside occasionally senses of the Southern United States, to this day.

Early life and career

Lee was natural at Stratford Hall Plantation, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the fourth infant of Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee ("Lighthorse Harry") and Anne Hill (née Carter) Lee. He entered a United States Military Academy in 1825. Once he graduated (2nd around his class of 46) within 1829 he had non single attained a top academic record however was a foremost plebe (so far a merely) to graduate a Academy forgoing one demerit. He was accredited as a 2nd lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers.

Lee served for 17 months at Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island, Georgia. Around 1831, he was transferred to Fort Monroe, Virginia, as adjunct engineer. When he was stationed there, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis (1808–1873), the neat-granddaughter of Martha Washington, at Shirley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia, where she had been natural. It sleep in the Custis mansion, which today is a National Memorial on the banks of the Potomac River in Arlington, just across from Washington, D.C.. It one of these days got threesome sons & quatern girl: George Washington Custis, William H. Fitzhugh, Robert Edward, Mary, Agnes, Annie, and Mildred.

Engineering

Lee served as an help in the principal engineer's professional around Wa from either 1834 to 1837, but spent a summertime of 1835 helping to lay out the state boundary between Ohio and Michigan. Inside 1837, he had his number 1 crucial command. As a first lieutenant of engineers, he supervised the engineering act for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. His operate there earned him the promotion to captain. Within 1841, he was transferred to Fort Hamilton in New York Harbor, in which he took charge of building fortifications.

Mexican War, West Point, and Texas

Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican War (1846–1848). He was one of Winfield Scott's chief aides in the march from either Veracruz to Mexico City. He was subservient within many U.s. triumph across his private reconnaissance mission as a staff officer; he encountered routes of attack that a Mexicans had not defended because it thought a terrain was unpassable.

He was promoted to major after the Battle of Cerro Gordo in April, 1847. He likewise fought at Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec, and was maimed at a latter. Per prevent of the war he experienced been promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Fallowing a Mexican War, he spent tercet years at Fort Carroll in Baltimore harbor, after which he became a superintendent of West Point in 1852. In a period of his leash years at West Point, he improved a buildings, a courses, & spent much of period by using the plebe. Lee's oldest boy, George Washington Custis Lee, attended West Point during his tenure. Custis Lee graduated inside 1854, first inside his class.

Within 1855, Lee became Lieutenant Colonel of the 2nd Cavalry & was sent to the Texas frontier. There he helped protect settlers from either attacks per Apache and the Comanche.

These were non happy years for Lee when he did non rather to exist when out of his personal for yearn periods of instance, especially as his married woman was becoming more and more sick. Lee come front yard to understand her when typically when he can.

He happened to become within Inland northwest at a period of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859, & was sent there to arrest Dark brown and to restore the correct sequence. He did this super quickly then returned to his regiment inside Texas. After Texas seceded from a Union in 1861, Lee was called to Washington, DC to wait for further orders.

Lee as slave-owner
As a member of the Virginia aristocracy, Lee had sleep in close call for by owning slavery all of his life, but he never held extrthe than astir a half-pack slaves under his have title—in point of fact, it was non positively knhave that he got held any slaves in a least under his own title until the rediscovery of his 1846 will in the records of Rockbridge County, Virginia, which referred to an enslaved woman known as Nancy & her toddlers, & provided for their manumission in case of his death. [http://www.nathanielturner.com/willofgeorgewashingtonparkecustis2.htm]

But, while Lee's father-around-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in October 1857, Lee came into the considerable total of property across his married woman, & as well gained irregular control of the big people of slaves—sixty-3 men, women, & youngsters, all told—when a executor of Custis's may. Under [http://www.nathanielturner.com/willofgeorgewashingtonparkecustis.htm a terms of the will,] the slaves were to become emancipated "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", sustaining a utmost of 5 years from either the date of Custis's dying provided to arrange for the necessary legal details of manumission.

Custis's may was probated in December 7, 1857. Although Robert Lee Randolph, Best Reverend William Meade, & George Wash. Peter were known when as executors along by owning Robert E. Lee, a more tierce men failed to qualify, allowing Lee by owning a resole responsibility of settling a estate, & by having exclusive control across 100% of Custis's previous slaves. Although a might provided for the slaves to become freed "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", Lee observed himself withinside want of funds to pay his father-in-law's debts & repair a properties he got inherited; he decided to produce money when you took a 5 years that a may got allowed him control of the slaves by hiring the children dead set neighboring plantations & to eastern Virginia (in which there were supplementary jobs to become encountered). A guide induced dissatisfaction among Custis's slaves, world health organization experienced been given to see that it were to become manufactured loose when soon when Custis died.

Inside 1859, three of the slaves—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, & the first cousin of theirs—fled for the Northward. 2 1859 letters to the New York Tribune (dated [http://fair-use.org/new-york-tribune/1859/06/19/letters/a-citizen June 19] and [http://fair-use.org/new-york-tribune/1859/06/21/letters/some-facts-that-should-come-to-light June 21]), and an 1866 [http://fair-use.org/wesley-norris/testimony-of-wesley-norris interview with Wesley Norris], record that the Norrises were captured a few miles from the Pennsylvania border and returned to Lee, who had them whipped and their lacerated backs rubbed with brine. When a whipping, Lee forced the babies to return operate inside Richmond, Virginia, and then Alabama, where Wesley Norris gained his freedom within January 1863 by escaping through the rebel lines to Union-controlled territory.

Lee freed Custis's more slaves when a prevent of the 5 month cycle in the wintertime of 1862.

Lee's views on slavery

Since a prevent of the Civil War, it has typically been suggested that Lee was inside a select few feel opposed to slavery. In a period as a result the Civil War & Reconstruction, Lee became a central figure in the Lost Cause interpretatiin of a war, and when succeding generations come to look on slavery as a terrible wrong, the idea that Lee experienced universally somehow opposed it helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation.

A usual lines of grounds to believe cited in favour a claim that Lee opposed slavery come: (One) the manumission of Custis's slaves, as discussed above; (Two) [http://fair-use.org/robert-e-lee/letter-to-his-wife-on-slavery Lee's 1856 letter to his wife] where he states that "There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil," and (Trinity) his trprevent lines, towards a super end of the Civil War, for enrolling slaves in the Army of the confederacy, by having manumission as an eventual reward permanently service.

Critics object that these interpretations mischaracterize Lee's actual statements & actions to indicate that he opposed slavery. A manumission of Custis's slaves, e.g., is typically mischaracterized when Lee's have guide, like than the requirement of Custis's may. Likewise, Lee's letter to his married woman is existence misrepresented by selective quotatiin; when Lee does describe slavery as an evil, he immediately goes on to write:

In point of fact, a independent topic of the letter—the comment around approval of a speech by President Franklin Pierce—is not the evils of slavery the least bit, however like a condemnation of abolitionism, which Lee describes as "irresponsible & unaccountable" & an "evil Course".

Eventually, critics charge that whatever personal reservations Lee might own held just about slavery, he participated fully in a knuckle down technique, & doesn't come out to use publicly challenged it in any way until the unfair & misguide project, under more and more desperate military circumstances, to arm slaves.

Civil War

Mathew Brady portrait of Lee in 1865 In April 18, 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, through Secretary of War Simon Cameron, offered Lee command of the United States Army (Union Army) through an go-between, Maryland Republican politician Francis P. Blair, at the home of Blair's son Montgomery, Lincoln's Postmaster-General, in Washington. Lee's sentiments were against secession, which he denounced in an 1861 letter as "nothing but revolution" & the betrayal of the efforts of the Founders. But his loyalty to his native Virginia led him to join a Confederacy.

At a eruption of war he was appointive to command everthing of Virginia's forces, and so when one of a number one 5 good generals of Confederate forces. Lee, still, refused to have on the insignia of a Confederate General stating that, around honor to his rank of Colonel around the United States Army, he would single display the troika stars of a Confederate Colonel until the Civil War got been won & Lee can be promoted, in peacetime, to a General in the Confederate Army.

Fallowing overlooking Confederate forces around american Virginia, then around charge of coastal defenses along a Carolina seaside, he became military advisor to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, whom he knew from West Point.

Commander, Army of Northern Virginia

Resulting a wound 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. He presently launched a series of attacks, the Seven Days Battles, against General George B. McClellan's Union forces threatening Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. Lee's attacks resulted within heavily Confederate casualties & it were marred by clumsy tactical performances by his subordinates, however his aggressive actions unnerved McClellan. When McClellan's retreat, Lee defeated a second Union army at a Second Battle of Bull Run. He so invaded Maryl&, hoping to refill his a diapers and even influence a Northern elections that fall pro ending the war. McClellan found the wasted sequentially that revealed Lee's plans & brought superior forces to bear at Antietam before Lee's army could be assembled. In a all-fired day of the war, Lee withstood the Union assaults, however withdrew his battered army back to Virginia.

Discomfited by McClellan's failure to kill Lee's army, Lincoln known as Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside ordered an attack through a Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg. Delays within receiving bridges built through a flow of any stream allowed Lee's army ample instance to organize hard defenses, & a attack in December 12, 1862, was a disaster for the Union. Lincoln so known as Joseph Hooker commander of the Army of the Potomac. Hooker's advance to attack Lee inside Could, 1863, near Chancellorsville, Virginia, was defeated by Lee and Stonewall Jackson's daring plan to divide the army and attack Hooker's flank. It wwhen an tremendous triumph across the big click, however come at a great numbers as Jackson, Lee's better subordinate, was mortally injured.

In the summertime of 1863, Lee proceeded to invade a Northward once more, hoping for the Southern triumph that would compel the N to grant Confederate independence. However his tries to kill a Union forces under George G. Meade at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, failed. His subordinates did non attack by having a aggressive cause Lee potential, 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 losses. Lee wwhen compelled to retreat once more however, as when Antietam, was does'nt smartly chased. Ensuing his kill at Gettysburg, Lee sent the letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis on August 8, 1863, but Davis refused Lee's asking.

Inside 1864, the recently Union general-within-chief Ulysses S. Grant sought to destroy Lee's army and capture Richmond. Lee & his men stopped both advance, however Grant experienced superior reinforcements & saved pushing apiece period a bit farther to the southeast. These battles in the Overland Campaign included the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. Grant at length fooled Lee by stealthily moving his army through a James River. Fallowing stopping the Union attempt to capture Petersburg, Virginia, a vital railroad link supplying Richmond, Lee's men built elaborate trenches & were besieged inside Petersburg. He attempted to break a 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. A Siege of Petersburg would last from either June 1864 until April, 1865.

General-in-chief
Lee with son Custis (left) and Walter H. Taylor (right). In January 31, 1865, Lee was promoted to be general-inside-chief of Confederate forces. Around early 1865, he urged adoption of a scheme to allow slaves to joinside the Army of the confederacy in exchange for their freedom. A scheme never come to fruition in a short period the Confederacy experienced left prior to it ceased to survive.

When the Army of the confederacy was worn down by months of battle, a Union attempt to capture Petersburg on April 2, 1865, succeeded. Lee abandoned a defense of Richmond & sought to join General Joseph Johnston's army around Northward Carolina. His forces were surrounded per Union army and he surrendered to General Grant in April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee resisted calls by the few subordinates (& indirectly by Jefferson Davis) to reject surrender & allow little units to melt away into a mountains, setting higher a protracted guerrilla war.

After the War
Lee after the Civil War Charted a war, Lee applied for, however was never granted, a official postwar amnesty. Fallowing filling out a application form, it was delivered to the desk of Secretary of State William H. Seward, who, assuming that the matter had been dealt with by someone else and that this was just a personal copy, filed it away until it was found decades later in his desk drawer. Lee took a want of response either way to mean that the food and drug administration wished to locate the right to prosecute him later.

Lee's case of using for amnesty was an encouragement to numbers of more previous members of the Confederacy's armed forces to accept existence citizens of the United States once again. Inside 1975, President Gerald Ford granted a posthumous pardon & the U.S. Congress restored his citizenship, following the discovery of his oath of allegiance by an employee of the National Archives in 1970.

Lee & his married woman got lived at his married woman's personal residence before a Civil War, a Custis-Lee Mansion. It was confiscated by Union forces, & is now a share of Arlington National Cemetery. When his demise, a courts ruled that a estate experienced been illicitly seized, & that it should become returned to Lee's boy. a food and drug administration offered to purchase the land straight-out, to which he agreed.

He served when president of Wash. College (currently Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, from October 2, 1865. All over 5 years he transformed Wa College from either a microscopic, insignificant school into one of the number one U.s. colleges to offer courses inside business, journalism, and Spanish. He as well imposed the sweeping & breathtakingly elementary conception of honor — "We have but one rule, and it is that every student is a gentleman" — that lives in todays world at Wa & Lee & at two or three more schools that prove my point to maintain absolutistic "honor systems." Importantly, Lee focused a college in attracting when students men from either a Northerly likewise when the South. A college remained racially segregated, however; fallowing John Chavis, admitted in 1795, Wa or even Washington & Lee would non admit another blacken student until 1966.

Final illness and death
On the evening of September 28, 1870, Lee fell ill, unable to speak coherently. Whenever his medical doctors were known as, a virtually all it may clean was assist put him to bed & hope for the right. Although non diagnosed by his doctors, these are near certain that Lee got suffered the stroke. Around his survive pack years, he got complained just about chest anguish (probably angina pectoris) and typically complained just about painful sensation inside his correct arm, which he said typically felt blunt. Belike he was getting arteriosclerosis or a nature & severity of cardiovascular disorder, and it would step by step soften him a rest of his life. Inside his previous month of his life, an elderly & feeble Lee confided to friends that he felt such as he may die any moment. the stroke damaged a frontal lobes of the brain, which mass produced speech impossible, & processed him unable to cough or even expectorate, which would prove a deadly condition. He was inflict-fed food & liquids to build higher his nature & severity, however a few one liquids noticed their way into his lungs, and pneumonia developed. By having there are no ability to cough, Lee died from either either a results of pneumonia (non from a stroke itself). He died fortnight when a stroke on the morning of October 12, 1870, in Lexington, Virginia, & was interred underneath a chapel at Wash. and Lee University.

Trivia

According to J. William Jones. Private Reminiscences, Anecdotes, & Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Lee spoke his endure words in October 12, 1870, shortly before his dying: "Tell Hill he must come up. Strike the Tent."

The birth of Robert E. Lee is celebrated in the state of Virginia when section of Lee-Jackson Day and as a state holiday in Mississippi, celebrated in conjunction by using Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.

Traveller, Lee's favorite horse, accompanied Lee to Wa College fallowing a war. He misused numbers of hairs from either his after part to admirers world health organization wanted the souvenir of the illustrious horse & his general. Around 1870, when Lee died, Traveler was led behind a General's hearse. Shortly when Lee's demise, Traveler stepped in the rusty nail & developed lockjaw. There was there are no therapeutic, & he was euthanized to relieve his suffering. He was buried next to the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University. Around 1907 his remains were disinterred and displayed at a Chapel, prior to existence reburied outside a Lee Chapel around 1971. A General Lee, the souped-higher 1969 Dodge Charger used in the television program The Dukes of Hazzard was named fallowing Robert E. Lee. Despite his presidential pardon by Gerald Ford, Lee's portrayal in the wall painting on Richmond's Flood Wall on the James River was offensive to occasionally, including a few African Americans, and was flushed in the 1990s in the interest of racial harmony. Robert E. Lee was Fivesome' Eleven" tall and wore a size 4-1/2 boot, equivalent to a modern 6-1/2 boot. In the movie Gods and Generals, Lee was played by actor Robert Duvall, who is descended from Lee.

Monuments to Robert E. Lee

Lee County, Alabama is also named in his honor.