Robert Edward Lee

(1807-1870)

Lee was the son of “Lighthorse” Harry Lee, a revolutionary cavalry officer and a Virginia governor; but his father’s business failure and early death meant that Lee was raised in genteel poverty. He graduated second in the 1829 class at West Point and took routine posts as an army engineer officer. He served in the Mexican War in 1846, supervised construction of Fort Carroll in Baltimore Harbor and then acted for a short time as superintendent of West Point. In 1855 he was transferred to the 2^nd Cavalry Division and spent some time in Texas. Lee happened to be in Washington when John Brown carried out his raid at Harper’s Ferry and was assigned to lead the Federal Troops that put down this “rebellion”.

As the North and South moved rapidly toward a major confrontation, Lee had little sympathy for the arguments justifying either slavery or states’ rights, but realized that his first loyalty was to his home state. When Virginia voted to secede, Lee resigned his commission. He hoped not to have fight against the Union, but by June 1861 Jefferson Davis had appointed him a general and his personal military advisor. Lee helped organize defenses of the Atlantic coast, but his first true field command came in June 1862, at 55 years old, when he was named to head the Army of Northern Virginia. McClellan’s troops were invading Richmond and Lee moved quickly and decisively, collaborating with Stonewall Jackson, to force then to withdraw. His troops went on to defeat General Pope’s army at Second Bull Run. Lee next moved his force into Maryland during two weeks which cost the Federals some 27,000 casualties and cost the outnumbered Confederates some 13,000. He defeated Burnside’s troops at Fredericksburg in November and also Hooker’s Union forces in May 1863 at Chancellorsville, but lost Stonewall Jackson form a wound in this battle. Lee then reorganized the Confederate Army in Virginia and erred in placing too many inexperienced officers over too many unfamiliar units. He tried to move north but was turned back at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July with casualties of 28,000. Lee’s subsequent offer to resign his command was rejected. In May 1864 he defeated Grant in the Wilderness Campaign, but then the long campaign at Petersburg began – dragging on month after month as Lee’s units suffered casualties, malnutrition, exhaustion and desertion. Confederate Forces elsewhere were also in retreat. In February 1865 when Lee was named general-in-chief of all Confederate armies, it was virtually an empty title and command. Lee was forced to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond on April 2-3 and eventually surrendered on April 9 at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

Up to this point, Lee would have been known as a superb commander in a lost war, but from the time he rode to Appomattox on his horse, Traveller, the mythical Lee began. Grant refused to take Lee’s sword, but Lee inspired such idealism. He was paroled home and officially indicted for treason but never brought to trial. Lee urged his troops and all Southerners to accept the outcome and get on with rebuilding their homeland; he himself accepted the presidency of the small, destitute Washington College (later Washington and Lee University). A man of faith, dignity and patience, Lee was one of the few heroes who owes his greatness to his actions in defeat.