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Robert E. Lee From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the author of Inherit the Wind and other works, see Robert Edwin Le
Robert E. Lee, 1863
Portrait by Julian Vannerson Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a career army officer and the most successful general of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. He eventually commanded all Confederate armies as general-in-chief. Like Hannibal earlier and Erwin Rommel later, his victories against numerically superior forces won him enduring fame as an astute military commander. After the war, he urged reconciliation, and spent his final years as president of the college that would come to bear his name. Lee remains an iconic figure of the Confederacy to this day.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life and career
1.1 Engineering, family
1.2 Mexican War, West Point, and Texas
1.3 Lee as slave holder
1.4 Lee's views on slavery
1.5 Suppression of the Harper's Ferry uprising and capture of John Brown
2 Civil War
2.1 Commander, Army of Northern Virginia
2.2 General-in-chief
3 After the War
3.1 Final illness and death
4 Trivia
5 Monuments and memorial
6 References
7 Notes
8 External links

Early life and career
Robert E. Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the fourth 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 (second in his class of 46) in 1829, not only had he attained the top academic record, but he had no demerits, either. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.
Engineering, family
Lee served for 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 both 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.
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.
Mexican War, West Point, and Texas
Robert Edward Lee, as a U.S. Army Colonel before the Civil WarLee 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 in April, 1847. 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 harbor, 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.
Lee as slave holder
As a member of the Virginia aristocracy, Lee had lived in close contact with slavery all of his life, but he never held more than about a half-dozen slaves under his own name—in fact, it was not positively known that he had held any slaves at all under his own name until the rediscovery of his 1846 will in the records of Rockbridge County, Virginia, which referred to an enslaved woman named Nancy and her children, and provided for their manumission in case of his death.[1]
However, when Lee's father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in October 1857, Lee came into a considerable amount of property through his wife, and also gained temporary control of a large population of slaves—sixty-three men, women, and children, in all—as the executor of Custis's will. Under the terms of the will, the slaves were to be freed "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", with a maximum of five years from the date of Custis's death provided to arrange for the necessary legal details of manumission.[2]
Custis's will was probated on December 7, 1857. Although Robert Lee Randolph, Right Reverend William Meade, and George Washington Peter were named as executors along with Robert E. Lee, the other three men failed to qualify, leaving Lee with the sole responsibility of settling the estate, and with exclusive control over all of Custis's former slaves. Although the will provided for the slaves to be emancipated "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", Lee found himself in need of funds to pay his father-in-law's debts and repair the properties he had inherited[3]; he decided to make money during the five years that the will had allowed him control of the slaves by working them on his plantation and hiring them out to neighboring plantations and to eastern Virginia (where there were more jobs to be found). The decision caused dissatisfaction among Custis's slaves, who had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died[4]. Lee, with no experience as a large-scale slave-driver, tried to hire an overseer, writing to his cousin "I am no farmer myself & do not expect to be always here. I wish to get an energetic honest farmer, who while he will be considerate & kind to the negroes, will be firm & make them do their duty"[5]. But Lee failed to find a man for the job, and had to take a two-year leave of absence from the army in order to drive the slaves himself.
Lee found the experience frustrating and difficult; the slaves were unhappy and demanded their freedom. In May 1858, Lee wrote to his son Rooney that "I have had some trouble with some of the people. Reuben, Parks & Edward, in the beginning of the previous week, rebelled against my authority--refused to obey my orders, & said they were as free as I was, etc., etc.--I succeeded in capturing them & lodging them in jail. They resisted till overpowered & called upon the other people to rescue them"[6]. Less than two months after they were sent to the Alexandria jail, Lee decided to remove these three men and three female house slaves from Arlington, and sent them down to the slave-trader William Overton Winston in Richmond, to be kept in jail until they could be hired out to "good & responsible" men in Virginia until they were emancipated under the terms of the will at the end of 1862.[7]
In 1859, three of the slaves—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and a cousin of theirs—fled for the North, but were captured a few miles from the Pennsylvania border and forced to return to Arlington. On June 24, 1859, the New York Daily Tribune published two anonymous letters (dated June 19, 1859[8] and June 21, 1859[9]), each of which claimed to have heard that Lee had had the Norrises whipped. Wesley Norris himself later stated — in an 1866 interview[10] printed in the National Anti-Slavery Standard — that Lee had the three of them whipped and their lacerated backs rubbed with brine. Lee's biographer, Douglas S. Freeman, wrote about Lee sending the three slaves to Richmond, "That probably was the extent of the punishment imposed on them. There is no evidence, direct or indirect, that Lee ever had them or any other Negroes flogged. The usage at Arlington and elsewhere in Virginia among people of Lee's station forbade such a thing. But false stories were spread." About the letters in the Tribune, "This was Lee's first experience with the extravagance of irresponsible antislavery agitators. The libel, which was to be reprinted many times in later years with new embellishments, made him unhappy, but it did not lead him to any violent retort. All he had to say to Custis about the criticism was: "The N. Y. Tribune has attacked me for my treatment of your grandfather's slaves, but I shall not reply. He has left me an unpleasant legacy."[11]
Lee sent the Norrises to work on the railroad in Richmond, Virginia, and Alabama. Wesley Norris gained his freedom in January 1863 by slipping through the Confederate lines near Richmond to Union-controlled territory.[12]
Lee released Custis's other slaves after the end of the five year period in the winter of 1862, filing the deed of manumission on December 29, 1862[13].
Lee's views on slavery
Since the end of the Civil War, it has often been suggested that Lee was in some sense opposed to slavery. In the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction, and after his death, Lee became a central figure in the Lost Cause interpretation of the war, and as succeeding generations came to look on slavery as a terrible wrong, the idea that Lee had always somehow opposed it helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation.
Some of the evidence cited in favor of the claim that Lee opposed slavery are the manumission of Custis's slaves, as discussed above, and his support, towards the end of the war, for enrolling slaves in the Confederate States Army, with manumission offered as an eventual reward for good service. Lee gave his public support to this idea two weeks before the war ended, too late to do any good for the Confederacy.
Another source is Lee's 1856 letter to his wife[14], which can be interpreted in multiple ways:
. In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.

— Robert E. Lee, to Mary Anna Lee, December 27, 1856
Freeman's analysis[15] puts Lee's attitude toward slavery and abolition in historical context:
This [letter] was the prevailing view among most religious people of Lee's class in the border states. They believed that slavery existed because God willed it and they thought it would end when God so ruled. The time and the means were not theirs to decide, conscious though they were of the ill-effects of Negro slavery on both races. Lee shared these convictions of his neighbors without having come in contact with the worst evils of African bondage. He spent no considerable time in any state south of Virginia from the day he left Fort Pulaski in 1831 until he went to Texas in 1856. All his reflective years had been passed in the North or in the border states. He had never been among the blacks on a cotton or rice plantation. At Arlington the servants had been notoriously indolent, their master's master. Lee, in short, was only acquainted with slavery at its best and he judged it accordingly. At the same time, he was under no illusion regarding the aims of the Abolitionist or the effect of their agitation.

— Douglas S. Freeman, R. E. Lee, A Biography, p. 372

Suppression of the Harper's Ferry uprising and capture of John Brown
Lee happened to be in Washington at the time of John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in October 1859. He was summoned by the Secretary of War on October 17, informed that a slave uprising was taking place in Virginia, and given command of detachments of Maryland and Virginia militia, soldiers from Fort Monroe, and United States Marines, to suppress the uprising and arrest its leaders. Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, who also happened to be in Washington at the time on business, was allowed to accompany Lee on his mission.[16] By the time Lee arrived later that night, the militia on the site had penned Brown and his supporters up in the fire-engine house at the armory with several white hostages they had taken from slave-holding families in the area. Lee surrounded the house with troops and sent Stuart to deliver a demand for immediate surrender early in the morning on October 18. When Brown refused and demanded safe passage out of the town as a condition for releasing the hostages, Stuart signalled Lee and Lee sent the Marines to storm the fire-engine house. About three minutes later, the raid was over, with two Marines shot and four of Brown's party dead. Brown himself was badly wounded and captured.
Lee participated in the interrogation of Brown later that day, and turned Brown and his party over to the state of Virginia on October 19. Lee returned home briefly, then was ordered back to Harper's Ferry in late November, to command a detachment of federal troops to protect the arsenal from any further attempts. On December 9, a week after Brown was hanged, Lee received orders to return home. He testified before the Senate hearings on the raid, and then returned to his regiment on February 10 1860[17]. When Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, Lee was called back to Washington, D.C., to wait for further orders.
Civil War
Mathew Brady portrait of Lee in 1865On 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 intermediary, 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" and a betrayal of the efforts of the Founders. However his loyalty to his native Virginia led him to join the Confederacy.
At the outbreak of war, he was first appointed to command all of Virginia's forces and then as one of the first five full generals of Confederate forces. Lee, however, refused to wear the insignia of a Confederate General stating that, in honor to his rank of Colonel in the United States Army, he would only display the three stars of a Confederate Colonel until the Civil War had been won and Lee could be promoted, in peacetime, to a General in the Confederate Army.
After commanding Confederate forces in western Virginia, and then the coastal defenses along the Carolina seaboards, he became military adviser to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, whom he knew from West Point.

Commander, Army of Northern Virginia
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 defenses 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 favor of ending the war. McClellan obtained a lost order that revealed Lee's plans and brought superior forces to bear at Antietam before Lee's army could be assembled. In the bloodiest day of the war, Lee withstood the Union assaults, but withdrew his battered army back to Virginia.
Lee mounted on TravellerDisappointed 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 defenses, 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 came at a great cost as Jackson, Lee's best subordinate, was gravely wounded and died soon after from contracted pneumonia.
In the summer of 1863, Lee proceeded to invade the North again, hoping for a Southern victory that would compel the North to grant Confederate independence. But his attempts to defeat the Union forces under George G. Meade at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, failed. 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 but, as after Antietam, was not vigorously pursued by Union forces. 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.
In 1864, the new Union general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant sought to destroy Lee's army and capture Richmond. Lee and his men stopped each advance, 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 would last from June 1864 until April, 1865.
General-in-chief
Lee with son Custis (left) and Walter H. Taylor (right).On January 31, 1865, Lee was promoted to general-in-chief of Confederate forces. In early 1865, he urged adoption of a plan to allow slaves to join the Confederate army in exchange for their freedom. The scheme never came to fruition in the short time the Confederacy had left before it ceased to exist.
As the Confederate army was worn down by months of battle, a Union attempt to capture Petersburg on April 2, 1865, succeeded. Lee abandoned the defense of Richmond and sought to join General Joseph Johnston's army in North Carolina. His forces were surrounded by the Union army and he surrendered to General Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee resisted calls by some subordinates (and indirectly by Jefferson Davis) to reject surrender and allow small units to melt away into the mountains, setting up a lengthy guerrilla war.
After the War
Lee after the Civil WarFollowing the war, Lee applied for, but was never granted, the official postwar amnesty. After filling out the 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 the lack of response to mean that the government wished to retain the right to prosecute him in the future.
Lee's example of applying for amnesty encouraged many other former members of the Confederacy's armed forces to accept restored U.S. citizenship. In 1975, President Gerald Ford granted a posthumous pardon and 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 and his wife had lived at his wife's family home prior to the Civil War, the Custis-Lee Mansion. It was confiscated by Union forces, and is today part of Arlington National Cemetery. After his death, the courts ruled that the estate had been illegally seized, and that it should be returned to Lee's son. The government offered to buy the land outright, to which the family agreed.
Lee served as president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, from October 2, 1865. Over five years, he transformed Washington College from a small, undistinguished school into one of the first American colleges to offer courses in business, journalism, and Spanish. He also imposed a sweeping and breathtakingly simple concept of honor — "We have but one rule, and it is that every student is a gentleman" — that endures today at Washington and Lee and at a few other schools that continue to maintain "honor systems." Importantly, Lee focused the college on attracting male students from the North as well as the South. The college, like most in the United States at the time, remained racially segregated. After John Chavis, admitted in 1795, Washington (or Washington and Lee) would not admit a second black student until 1966.

Final illness and death
Burial Monument of Robert E. Lee in Lee Chapel in Lexington, Va., Edward Valentine, sculptorOn the evening of September 28, 1870, Lee fell ill, unable to speak coherently. When his doctors were called, the most they could do was help put him to bed and hope for the best. It is almost certain that Lee had suffered a stroke. The stroke damaged the frontal lobes of the brain, which made speech impossible. He was force-fed to keep up his strength, but he developed aspiration pneumonia, a common side effect of improper force feeding. Lee died from the effects of pneumonia, on the morning of October 12, 1870, two weeks after the stroke, in Lexington, Virginia, and was buried underneath Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University, where his body remains today. According to legend his last words were "Strike the Tent."
Trivia
According to J. William Jones. Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Lee spoke his last words on October 12, 1870, shortly before his death: "Tell Hill he must come up. Strike the Tent."
The birth of Robert E. Lee is celebrated in the state of Virginia as part of Lee-Jackson Day, which was separated from the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday there in 2001. The King holiday falls on the third Monday in January while the Lee-Jackson Day holiday is celebrated on the Friday preceding it. The state of Texas celebrates Confederate Heroes Day on January 19, Lee's actual birthday. The states of Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi honor Lee's birthday along with Martin Luther King, Jr. on the third Monday in January. The state of Georgia observes Lee's birthday on the day after Thanksgiving.
Traveller, Lee's favorite 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 lockjaw. There was no cure, and he was shot. 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 outside the Lee Chapel in 1971.
The General Lee, the souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger used in the television program in 1979 The Dukes of Hazzard and the 2005 The Dukes of Hazzard (film) was named after Robert E. Lee.
A famous Mississippi River steamboat was named for Lee after the Civil War.
Despite his presidential pardon by Gerald Ford and his continuing to being held in high regard by many Americans, Lee's portrayal on a mural on Richmond's Flood Wall on the James River was offensive to some, including some African-Americans, and was removed in the 1990s as part of a campaign to delegitimize the Confederate heritage of the South.
Robert E. Lee was 5' 11" 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 related to Lee. After the Civil War, as Lee's legacy grew, many people of Southern origin dug to find possible connection to Robert E. Lee, and such a connection was analogous to the frequent northern claim of being descended from Mayflower Pilgrims.
Two relatives of Lee were naval officers on opposing sides in the Civil War: Richard Lucian Page (Confederate States Navy and later a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army) and Samuel Phillips Lee (U.S. Navy Captain).
A distant cousin was Confederate General Edwin Gray Lee, a son-in-law of William N. Pendleton.
After the war Lee had financial difficulties. A Virginia insurance company offered Lee $10,000 to use his name, but he declined the offer, relying wholly on his university salary.[18]

Monuments and memorial
A number of geographic locations are named in Robert E. Lee's honor:

Lee County, Alabama; Lee County, Arkansas; Lee County, Florida; Lee County, Kentucky; Lee County, Mississippi; Lee County, North Carolina; Lee County, South Carolina; Lee County, Georgia; and Lee County, Texas.
The Leesville half of Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina.
Fort Lee in Prince George County, Virginia.
Lee Highway, a National Auto Trail in the United States connecting New York City and San Francisco, California via the South and Southwest.
Arlington House, also known as the Custis-Lee Mansion and located in present-day Arlington National Cemetery, is maintained by the National Park Service as a memorial to Lee.

A large, beautiful equestrian statue of Lee by French sculptor Jean Antonin Mercié is the centerpiece of Richmond, Virginia's famous Monument Avenue, which boasts four other statues to famous Confederates. This impressive monument to Lee was unveiled on May 29, 1890. Over 100,000 people attended this dedication.

The Virginia State Memorial at Gettysburg Battlefield is topped by an equestrian statue of Lee by Frederick William Sievers, facing roughly in the direction of Pickett's Charge.

Lee is one of the figures depicted on the massive bas-relief carved into Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Georgia. Accompanying him on horseback in the relief are Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.

In 1900, Lee was one of the first 29 individuals selected for the Hall of Fame for Great Americans (the first Hall of Fame in the United States), designed by Stanford White, on the Bronx, New York, campus of New York University, now a part of Bronx Community College.

Robert E Lee Monument, Charlottesville, VA, Leo Lentilli, sculptor, 1924

Robert E Lee, Virginia Monument, Gettysburg, PA, William Sievers, sculptor, 1917

Lee by Mercié, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia, 1890

Statue of Lee on the grounds of the University of Texas at Austin

References
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Lee at FredericksburgBlassingame, John W (ed.) (1977), Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, and Interviews, and Autobiographies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press (ISBN 0807102733).
Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J. (2001), Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press (ISBN 0804736413).
Fellman, Michael (2000), The Making of Robert E. Lee. New York: Random House (ISBN 0679456503).
Freeman, Douglas S. (1934), R. E. Lee, A Biography (4 volumes), Scribners..
Fuller, Maj. Gen. J. F. C. (1957), Grant and Lee, A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press (ISBN 0253134005).
Testimony of Wesley Norris, National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 14, 1866. Reprinted in Blassingame 1977.
Warner, Ezra J. (1959), Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders, Louisiana State University Press (ISBN 0807108235).

Notes
^ George Washington Parke Custis's Will Memo
^ Will of George Washington Parke Custis
^ Freeman 1934, Vol. I, p. 381.
^ Norris testimony, pp. 467-468.
^ Robert E. Lee to Edward C. Turner, Arlington, February 13, 1858. Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Quoted in Fellman 2000, p. 65.
^ Robert E. Lee to William Henry Fitzhugh ("Rooney") Lee, Arlington, May 30, 1858, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond. Quoted in Fellman 2000, p. 65.
^ Fellman 2000, pp.
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General Robert Edward Lee.
VI. Gen'l Robert Edward Lee((6)) (Anne Carter((5)), Charles((4)), John((3)), Robert((2)), John((1))), b. at Stratford, Westmoreland Co., Va., January 19, 1807; d. Lexington, Va., October 12, 1870. When Robert E. Lee was four years old his father removed with his family to Alexandria, Va. When only eleven years old he lost his father, who, prior to his death, had been absent from home for several
Image Not Shown
General Robert Edward Lee (Painted by Bruce) years, so Robert E. Lee was raised almost entirely under the loving care of his mother. It is said she taught him from his earliest childhood to practice self-denial and self-control, traits which he ever exhibited throughout life.
("Popular Life of General Lee," by Miss Emily V. Mason.)
Robert E. Lee was educated at private schools in Alexandria, Va., and prepared for entrance into the military school at West Point, for from earliest youth he seems to have desired to enter the army. His first teacher was Mr. William B. Leary, an Irishman, who lived to meet his pupil after the Civil War.
General Scott said of Lee: "Robert E. Lee is the greatest soldier now living, and if he ever gets the opportunity he will prove himself the great captain of history."
("Lee of Virginia," by Dr. Edmund Jennings Lee; "General Lee," by Fitzhugh Lee, and "Reminiscences of General Robert E. Lee," by Colonel Johnson.)
When the war was over what should General Lee do? He had no home, no fortune, no occupation. Numerous offers of high positions in various corporations were made to him, but none suited him. The trustees of Washington College offered him the presidency of that institution. A home in the mountains of Virginia suited his taste and a desire to still be of use to his State in training her young men decided him. He entered upon his duties there in October, 1865, and steadily performed them for five years. Then his discharge came. The death of General Lee was not due to any sudden cause, but was the result of agencies dating as far back as 1863. He contracted a severe sore throat, that resulted in rheumatic inflammation of the sack enclosing the heart.
Wednesday, September 28, 1870, General Lee attended a vestry meeting of Grace Episcopal Church. The church was rather cold and damp, and General Lee sat in a pew with his military cape cast loosely about him. When he returned to his home, finding his family waiting tea for him, he took his place at the table, standing to say grace. The effort was vain; the lips could not utter the prayer of the heart; he took his seat quietly and without agitation. His physicians arrived promptly and applied the usual remedies and placed him on the couch, from which he was to rise no more. The symptoms of his attack resembled concussion of the brain,without the attendant swoon. On October 10, during the afternoon, his pulse became feeble and rapid and his breathing hurried, with evidences of great exhaustion. On October 11 he was evidently sinking: his respiration was hurried; his pulse feeble and rapid. His decline was rapid, yet gentle, and soon after nine o'clock on the morning of October 12 he closed his eyes and his soul passed peacefully from earth.
One who watched him in those long night hours tells me that he died of a broken heart! This is the most touching aspect of the great warrior's death; that he did not die on the battlefield, either in the hour of defeat or victory; but in silent grief for sufferings which he could not relieve. It was this constant strain of hand and brain and heart that finally snapped the strings of life, so that the last view of him as he passes out of our sight is one of unspeakable sadness.
Upon the tombstone is only a name with two dates:
Robert Edward Lee Born January 19, 1807 Died October 12, 1870.
That is all, but it is enough: all the rest is left to the calm, eternal judgment of eternity.
General Lee married Mary Anne Randolph Custis, the only daughter of George Washington Parke Custis and Mary Lee Fitzhugh, his wife. Mary Custis was born at Arlington, October 1, 1808; d. at her home in Lexington, November 5, 1873. She was buried at the college chapel with her daughter, Agnes, and her husband.
The public notice of the marriage was short:
Married: June 30, 1831, at Arlington House, by the Rev. Mr. Keith. Lieutenant Robert E. Lee, of the United States Corps of Engineers, to Miss Mary A. R. Custis, only daughter of G. W. P. Custis, Esq.
Beautiful Arlington was in all her glory that night. The stately mansion never had a happier assemblage. Its broad portico and wide-spread wings held out open arms to welcome the coming guests. Its halls and chambers were adorned with the patriots and heroes, and with illustrations and relies of the great Revolution and of the "Father of his Country." Without and within history and tradition seemed to breathe their legends upon a canvas as soft as a dream of peace.
Gen'l Robert E. Lee and his wife had the following issue:
I. Major General George Washington Lee((7)), b. at Fortress Monroe, Va., Sept. 16, 1832.
II. Mary Custis Lee((7)).
III. William Henry Fitzhugh Lee((7)), b. at Arlington, Alexandria, Va., Oct. 15, 1837; d. at Ravensworth, Fairfax Co., Va., Oct. 15, 1891. Married (1859) Charlotte, daughter of George Wickham, U. S. N.
IV. Annie Carter Lee((7)), b. at Arlington, June 18, 1839; d. at White Sulphur Springs, Warren Co., N. C., Oct. 20, 1862. A beautiful monument has been erected over her grave by the citizens of Warren Co. It was unveiled with appropriate ceremony Aug. 8, 1866.
V. Eleanor Agnes Lee((7)), b. at Arlington, 1842; d. at Lexingington, Oct. 15, 1873.
VI. Captain Robert Edward Lee((7)), b. at Arlington, Alexandria Co., Oct. 27, 1843. Married, first (Nov. 16, 1871), Charlotte Taylor, daughter of R. Barton Haxall. Married, second, Juliet Carter.
VII. Mildred Childe Lee((7)), b. at Arlington, Va., about 1845; d. New Orleans, La., March 28, 1905. She was named for the youngest sister of her father.
VI. Catherine Mildred Lee((6)) (Anne Carter((5)), Charles((4)), John((3)), Robert((2)), John((1))), youngest child of Gen'l Henry Lee and Anne Hill Carter; b. February 27, -, at Alexandria, Va.; d. at Paris, France, 1856. Married (1831) Edward Vernon Childe, and had issue:
I. Edward Lee Childe((7)), living in Paris. Married, first (1868), Blanche de Trigneti. Married, second (1888), Marie de Sartiges.
II. Arthur Lee Childe((7)), d. 1856, at Munich.
III. Florence Childe((7)). Married at Paris, 1854, Count Henri Soltyk, La Comtesse is still living in Paris, and has issue:
I. Count Stanislaus Soltyk((8)), b. 1855; was an officer in Austrian service 1895.
IV. Mary Custis Childe((7)). Married (1859) Robert Gilmer, of Baltimore; d. 1867 without issue.
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General Robert Edward Lee
was born at "Stratford," Westmoreland county, Virginia, January 19, 1807, son of Gen. Henry and Anne Hill (Carter) Lee, grandson of Henry and Lucy (Grymes) Lee, and of Charles and Anne Butler (Moore) Carter. In 1811 Gen. Henry Lee removed his family from Stratford to Alexandria, Virginia, where Robert received his preparatory education, at the academy under W. B. Leary, and at the high school of which Benjamin Hallowell, a Quaker, was head-master. He was graduated from the United States Military Academy, second in his class of 1829, was commissioned second lieutenant of engineers and assigned to duty in the engineer bureau, Washington. In September, 1831, he was ordered to duty on the defences at Hampton Roads, where he remained, 1831-35. He was promoted first lieutenant in 1835 and became assistant to the chief engineer at Washington. He was commissioned captain of engineers in 1836 and made astronomer of a joint commission created by the legislature of Ohio and Michigan to determine the boundary line between those states. In 1837-40 he was employed on the Upper Mississippi in constructing levees above St. Louis, Missouri. He was on topographical duty in Washington, 1840-41, and on fortifications in New York harbor, 1841-45. In January, 1846, he was ordered to report to Gen. Zachary Taylor on the Rio Grande, and was made chief engineer on the staff of Gen. Wool and took part in the engagement at Palo Alto, May 8, at Reseca de la Palma, May 9, and in the capture of Matamoras, May 18. Later Capt. Lee was made chief engineer on the staff of Gen. Winfield Scott, at Vera Cruz. On March 13, Capt. Lee supported by the Palmetto regiment of South Carolina and the First New York Volunteers, made a reconnoissance of the Mexican lines, designated the position of the assaulting batteries to be constructed of sand-bags within one thousand yards of the rock masonry walls of the city, and March 22 bore under a flag of truce a demand for surrender. This being denied two days were given to remove the women and children, when the army and navy opened fire, and on March 29 the Mexicans capitulated. The American troops were without transportation, the Mexicans having cleared the country of horses and mules. The situation was desperate as yellow fever threatened the place. In this emergency Capt. Lee became responsible for the honesty of a Texan soldier, Col. Tom Kinney, and the commanding general on his recommendation paid over to Kinney $50,000 in gold for six thousand mules to be delivered within three days. The contract was carried out by bribing the paroled Mexicans, and the army moved toward the city of Mexico. At Cerro Gordo Pass, April 14, 1847, the engineering skill of Lee surmounted the advantage of position and the Mexicans under Santa Anna were defeated, as they were at every stand through the valley to the city of Mexico. On September 13, 1847, at the head of the storming party, he planted the flag of South Carolina on the wall of Mexico city, and the following day Capt. Lee rode at the right of Gen. Scott at the head of his army of ten thousand men. In 1858, referring to this campaign, Gen. Scott said: "My success in the Mexican war was largely due to the skill and valor of Robert E. Lee. He is the greatest military genius in America; the best soldier I ever saw in the field; and if opportunity offers he will show himself the foremost captain of his time."
He was brevetted major, lieutenant-colonel and colonel of engineers for his services, and returned to his home in Arlington. In 1848 he was ordered to Baltimore to construct defensive works, and he was superintendent of the United States Military Academy, 1852-55. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel in February, 1855, and assigned to the Second United States Cavalry, Col. Albert Sidney Johnston. The regiment was stationed at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, and in October was ordered to Fort Mason, Texas, but Lee was detained on court-martial duty April, 1856, when he rejoined his regiment in Texas and was engaged in repressing Indian outbreaks until October, 1859. He then visited Arlington to settle the estate of his father-in-law, who had died in 1857, leaving him first executor of his will. On October 17, 1859, he received orders to report to the adjutant-general at Washington and was ordered to Harper's Ferry in command of three companies of United States marines to suppress a threatened attack on the United States arsenal. He found the arsenal in the possession of a revolutionary party led by John Brown, numbering about forty-five men. Col. Lee called upon him through Lieut. J. E. B. Stuart, under a flag of truce, to surrender, which Brown refused to do unless guaranteed safe conduct with his prisoners and men across the river into Maryland and not to be pursued until his party had gained a point half a mile from the arsenal. This Lee refused, and at once opened an assault on the engine house on the arsenal grounds, in which seventeen whites and three negroes were taken prisoners at the point of the bayonet. Col. Lee had Brown and his wounded cared for in the arsenal by a surgeon of the marine corps and afterward delivered them over to Judge Robert J. Ould, the United States district attorney. The prisoners were given over to the state courts, and tried and convicted on a charge of treason, murder and inciting insurrection among slaves, and the state militia supplanted the United States troops as guard.
Col. Lee left Harper's Ferry, December 3, 1859, and soon after rejoined his regiment at San Antonio, Texas, where he remained till ordered to Washington, where, March 1, 1861, he reported to Lieut-Gen. Scott. Seven states had passed the ordinance of secession, and on February 4, 1861, formed "The Confederate States of America." Lincoln would be inaugurated president, March 4, 1861, and Gen. Winfield Scott desired the advice of the officers of the United States army. Col. Lee assured Gen. Scott that if Virginia seceded and the government decided to coerce the states by military force, his sense of duty would oblige him to go with his state. On March 10, 1861, Col. Lee was made a member of the board to revise the "Regulations for the government of the United States army," and he filed the report of the board, April 18, 1861.
On April 15, 1861, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers and Virginia was called upon for her quota. This demand left Virginia no alternative, and the convention passed the ordinance of secession by a very large vote. President Lincoln offered Col. Lee the command of the United States army, which Gen. Scott wished to transfer to a younger man than himself. This offer was made at army headquarters, through Francis Preston Blair, Sr., April 18, 1861. Col. Lee replied that he was opposed to secession and deprecated war, but that he could take no part in the invasion of the southern states, considering such an act a breach of his oath to "support and defend the constitution of the United States" as interpreted by Attorney-General Black. He reported his decision to Gen. Scott, and on April 20, 1861, he tendered his resignation, at the same time addressing a letter to Gen. Scott, asking him to recommend its acceptance.
On April 23, 1861, upon the invitation of a committee of the Virginia convention, he visited Richmond, where he accepted the commission of commander-in-chief of the military and naval forces of Virginia with the rank of major-general. On April 24, 1861, in his address before the convention, assembled in Richmond, accepting the trust, he closed with these words: "Trusting in Almighty God, an approving conscience and the aid of my fellow-citizens, I devote myself to the service of my native state, in whose behalf alone will I ever again draw my sword." On May 23, 1861, the people of Virginia by a vote of 125,000 to 20,000 ratified the ordinance of secession, and the same day the United States navy yard at Norfolk was evacuated by the United States authorities and taken possession of by the Virginia state troops; 10,000 Federal soldiers crossed the Potomac and took possession of Alexandria, Virginia. On May 29, President Davis with his cabinet arrived in Richmond, which became the capital of the Confederate States of America. On June 8, 1861, Virginia transferred her military forces to the new government and Gen. Lee became military adviser to Gov. Letcher, commander-in-chief.
In selecting defensive lines for the state, he designated Manassas Junction, where, on July 21, 1861, the first great battle was fought and won by the Confederacy. After the death of Gen. Robert S. Garnett, Lee was ordered to command the troops in western Virginia comprising about 6,500 men commanded by Generals Johnson, Loring, Wise and Floyd. He had been commissioned a general in the Confederate army, but was outranked by both Generals Cooper and Albert Sidney Johnston. He found the Federal forces commanded by Gen. W. S. Rosecrans, with an army double the number under Lee, and both commanders acted on the defensive, chiefly on account of incessant rains and the state of the roads. After the season for active operations in the mountains was over, Lee was put in charge of the defenses of South Carolina and Georgia. In the spring of 1862 he was made military adviser of President Davis. On June 1, 1862, after Gen. Joseph E. Johnston had been wounded and the command of the Confederate army had devolved on Gen. Gustavus W. Smith, President Davis appointed Gen. Lee to the command of the Army of Northern Virginia, and he drove the army of McClellan to the protection of the Federal gunboats at Harrison's Landing, on the James river. Lee had inflicted on his adversary a loss of one hundred and fifty ordnance and commissary wagons and 12,000 stands of arms, burned to prevent change of ownership, and 15,900 killed and wounded, 10,800 prisoners, 50 pieces of artillery, and 36,000 stands of arms captured by the Confederate army. On July 13 he detached Gen. Jackson with 22,000 men to operate against Pope, who was advancing upon Richmond by way of Manassas Junction, and in August he advanced with the main body of his army, about 35,000 strong, to give battle. The issue was joined at Manassas, August 29-30, and Pope's army made a hasty r??reat to Washington.
Gen. Lee then moved into Maryland, crossing the Potomac, September 8, 1862, at Leesburg Ford. He issued a proclamation to the citizens of Maryland to rally to the flag of the Confederacy, closing his appeal with these words: "While the people of the Confederate States will rejoice to welcome you to your natural position among them, they will only welcome you when you come of your own free will." Gen. Lee's army at this time amounted to 35,255 men, and had taken position near Sharpsburg, Maryland, between the Potomac river and Antietam creek. On September 17, McClellan opened the battle, and the conflict continued during the day. Lee showed splendid generalship, and with an army, much inferior to McClellan's, held the field at the close of the battle and withdrew across the Potomac, without disorder, on September 19, 1862. On October 8 Lee ordered Stuart with 5,000 horse to recross into Maryland and harass McClellan's army, and he accomplished his purpose and entered the state of Pennsylvania almost unopposed. On October 26. 1862, McClellan crossed the Potomac and encamped in Loudoun county, Virginia, and on November 2, 1862, he was succeeded by Gen. Burnside. Then followed the battle of Fredericksburg, where Burnside mustered 116,683 men and was opposed by Lee with 78,513 men. The battle was fought and won by Gen. Lee, December 13, 1862.
In 1862 Gen. Lee executed a paper emancipating all the slaves held by his estate, 196 in number, in accordance with the will of his father-in-law, G. W. P. Custis, by which, five years after Mr. Custis's death, which occurred October 10, 1857, all his slaves were to be freed. This was Lee's second act as an emancipator, he having freed the slaves owned by himself in 1854, while an officer in the United States army. On May 2-5, 1863, the Army of the Potomac, under Hooker, recruited to the strength of 138,378 men, fought Gen. Lee's army of 53,000 men, 170 pieces of artillery and 2,700 cavalry at Chancellorsville. Hooker was out-generaled and driven back to the Rappahannock. On June 2, 1863, Lee moved toward the Potomac, and on June 13, Hooker followed. The Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania late in June. Lee reached Gettysburg, July 1, 1863, where he found the Army of the Potomac under Gen. Meade, who had succeeded Gen. Hooker. Meade brought into action an army of 89,000 men with over 15,000 in reserve and Lee faced him with 62,500 men and no reserve. Each army lost over 20,000 men and no decisive victory was won by either side. Lee failed in his effort to drive the Federal army before him, and Meade's army was too shattered to do anything more. Lee retired across the Potomac into Virginia and Meade did not attack, and was soon relieved from his command.
On August 8, 1863, Gen. Lee tendered his resignation to President Davis, but Davis refused to receive it and wrote: "To ask me to substitute you by some one in my judgment more fit to command, or who would possess more of the confidence of the army or of the reflecting men of the country, is to demand an impossibility." Gen. Lee confronted Gen. Grant at the Wilderness, May 5, 1864, and the battles that followed up to June 3, 1864, ended with that of Cold Harbor, in which Grant's army lost 16,000 men killed and wounded in a succession of assaults. In forcing Lee's army of 63,000 men seventy-five miles, Gen. Grant with 149,000 men lost 61,000. Then followed the investment of the Army of Northern Virginia within the lines of Richmond and Petersburg, where the armies of the Potomac and James slowly crushed out its life after a ten months' siege, ending with the evacuation of Richmond, April 2, and the surrender of its remnant of an army comprising 10,000 officers and men at Appomattox, April 12, 1865.
Gen. Lee's last words to his army were: "Men, we have fought together for four years. I have tried to do the best I could for you."
On August 24, 1865, Gen. Lee accepted the presidency of Washington College, at Lexington, Virginia, at a salary of $1,500 per annum, declining several offers with much larger salaries. He was formally inaugurated, September 18, 1865, and under his administration the college greatly prospered. He received the honorary degree of LL. D., from Mercer University, Georgia, in 1866. In 1871 the general assembly of Virginia changed the name of the institution to Washington and Lee University, and as a further memorial a recumbent statue of Gen. Lee by Valentine was presented to the university by the Lee Memorial Association and his remains placed in a vault under the statue. This statue was unveiled by the association with appropriate ceremony in June, 1873. An equestrian statue by Merci?, surmounting a massive pedestal erected in Capitol Square, Richmond, Virginia, was unveiled and dedicated May 29, 1890. On June 19, 1901, bronze busts of Washington and Lee were unveiled at the university; the former being the gift of Oscar Straus, of New York, and the latter of Frank T. Howard, class of 1874, of New Orleans. The busts were placed on either side of the archway leading to the rotunda. In 1869 Gen. Lee prepared a new edition of, and added a memoir to, his father's work, "War in the Southern Department of the United States" (2 vols.). See also biographies of John Esten Cooke (1871), Edward A. Pollard (1871), John W Jones (1874), and E. Lee Childe (London 1875); "Four Years with General Lee," by Walter H. Taylor (1877); "Memoirs" by Gen. A. L. Long (1886), and "Robert E. Lee and the Southern Confederacy," by Henry A. White (1899).
On June 30, 1831, he was married at "Arlington House," Virginia, by the Rev. Mr. Keith, to Mary Anne Randolph, only daughter of George Washington Parke and Mary Lee (Fitzhugh) Custis, and a descendant of John Custis, who came to Virginia from England in the seventeenth century. This alliance subsequently made Lee master of Arlington estate, and of the White House estate on the Pamunky river. Gen. Lee died at Lexington, Virginia, October 12, 1870. The estimate of his character and abilities has been continually rising. Lord Wolseley referred to him as "the greatest soldier of his age," and "the most perfect man I ever met."
III--Under the Confederacy, Military and Naval Offices.
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DEATH OF GEN. ROBT. E. LEE.
By: Unknown
Summary: Public Opinion remembers General Lee upon his death.
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Source: "Death of Gen. Robt. E. Lee," Public Opinion, October 25, 1870, page 2, column 2.
A late telegraphic dispatch announces the death of Gen. Robt. E. Lee, at his residences in Lexington [sic] Virginia. An exchange, speaking of his death, appends the following brief biography of the distinguished Virginian:
Robert Edmund Lee was the son of Henry Lee, a distinguished American general, once governor of Virginia, and an author of some eminence. He was born in Virginia about 1810, and consequently was sixty years old at his death. Like his long line of ancestors, Gen Lee had enjoyed largely the honors and emoluments disbursed by the United States government. He entered West Point as a cadet in 1825, graduating in 1829, and entering the service as a brevet second lieutenant of engineers. He was appointed assistant astronomer for fixing the boundary between Ohio and Michigan in 1835, and was promoted to first lieutenant in 1836, and to captain in 1838. In the war with Mexico he served as chief engineer of the army; commanded by Brigadier General Wool, and was breveted [sic] major for gallant and meritorious conduct in the battles of Contreras and Cherubusco, August 20th, 1847, and was made colonel for like gallant conduct at Chapultepec, September 13, 1847, in which he was wounded. He was appointed to the superintendency of West Point September 1, 1855. On retiring from this post, he was appointed lieutenant colonel of 2d cavalry, the same month. Upon the breaking out of rebellion, he resigned his commission in the service of his country, and accepted the position of forces of Virginia, and when that state joined the confederacy [sic], he was appointed to the rank of general, and selected as commander in chief [sic] by Jefferson Davis. He was in immediate command of the forces in and around Richmond, and throughout Northern Virginia for the most part during the war; and the success of the confederate [sic] forces on the sanguinary battlefields of the peninsula, Fredericksburg and Bull Run, compel a recognition of his rare military ability, in spite of the disastrous repulses suffered by his troops at Antietam and Gettysburg. Early in life he married the adopted grad-daughter and heiress of Washington, by whom he had five sons, all of whom joined the confederate [sic] service. For some five years General Lee has been president of the college at Lexington, Virginia.
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