Lee, Robert Edward

Robert Edward Lee
January 19, 1807 (1807-01-19) – October 12, 1870 (1870-10-13) (aged 63)
Robert E. Lee, General of the Confederate Army. (1863, Julian Vannerson)
Place of birth	Stratford Hall, Virginia
Place of death	Lexington, Virginia
Resting place	Lee Chapel Washington and Lee University Lexington, Virginia
Allegiance	United States of America Confederate States of America
Years of service	1829–61 (USA) 1861–65 (CSA)
Rank	Colonel (USA) General (CSA)
Commands held	Army of Northern Virginia
Battles/wars	Mexican–American War Harpers Ferry Raid American Civil War
Other work	President of Washington and Lee University

Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a career United States Army officer and combat engineer. He became the commanding general of the Confederate army in the American Civil War and a postwar icon of the South's "lost cause." A top graduate of West Point, Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the U.S. Army for 32 years. He is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War.

In early 1861, President Abraham Lincoln invited Lee to take command of the entire Union Army. Lee declined because his home state of Virginia was, despite his wishes, seceding from the Union. When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state.^[1] Lee's eventual role in the newly established Confederacy was to serve as a senior military adviser to President Jefferson Davis. Lee soon emerged as the shrewdest battlefield tactician of the war, after he assumed command of the Confederate eastern army (soon christened "The Army of Northern Virginia") after the wounding of Joseph Johnston at the Battle of Seven Pines. His abilities as a tactician were quickly made evident in his many victories such as the Battle of Fredericksburg (1862), Battle of Chancellorsville (1863), Battle of the Wilderness (1864) Battle of Cold Harbor (1864), Seven Days Battles, and the Second Battle of Bull Run. His strategic vision was more doubtful—his invasions of the North in 1862 and 1863 depended on the conviction that Northern morale was weak, hoping that a handful of rebel victories could shatter the North's willpower and possibly help to gain recognition and aid from European nations through negotiations. After a defeat at Antietam (1862) and disaster at Gettysburg (1863), hopes for victory were dashed and defeat for the South was almost certain. However, due to ineffectual pursuit by the commander of Union forces, Lee escaped after both defeats to Virginia. His decision in 1863 to overrule his advisers and invade the North, rather than protect Vicksburg, proved a major strategic blunder and cost the Confederacy control of its western regions,.^[2] Nevertheless Lee's brilliant defensive maneuvers stopped the Union offenses one after another, as he defeated a series of Union commanders in Virginia.

In the spring of 1864, the new Union commander, Ulysses S. Grant, began a series of campaigns to wear down Lee's army. In the Overland Campaign of 1864 and the Siege of Petersburg in 1864–1865, Lee inflicted heavy casualties on Grant's larger army, but was forced back into trenches; the Confederacy was unable to replace his losses or even provide adequate rations to the soldiers that did not desert. In the final months of the Civil War, as manpower drained away, Lee adopted a plan to arm slaves to fight on behalf of the Confederacy, but the decision came too late and the black soldiers were never used in combat. In early April 1865, Lee's depleted forces were overwhelmed at Petersburg; he abandoned Richmond and retreated west as Union forces encircled his army. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, marking the end of Confederate hopes; the remaining armies soon capitulated. Lee rejected the folly of starting a guerrilla campaign against the Yankees and called for reconciliation between the North and the South.

Lee's numerous victories against superior forces won him enduring fame as a crafty and daring battlefield tactician, but some of his strategic decisions, such as invading the North in 1862 and 1863, have been criticized by many military historians.

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 freed slaves the vote and take the vote away from ex-Confederates. He urged them to re-think their position between the North and the South, and the reintegration of former Confederates into the nation's political life. Lee became the great Southern hero of the war, and his popularity grew in the North as well after his death in 1870. He remains an iconic figure^[3] of American military leadership.

Stained glass of Lee's life in the National Cathedral, depicting his time at West Point, his service in the Army Corps of Engineers, the Battle of Chancellorsville, and his death

Farewell address by Lee to the Army of Northern Virginia, Appomattox Court House, Virginia, April 10, 1865

Early life and career

Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the son of Major General Henry Lee III "Light Horse Harry" (1756–1818), Governor of Virginia, and his second wife, Anne Hill Carter (1773–1829). One of Lee's great great grandparents Henry Lee I was a prominent Virginian colonist of English descent.^[4] Lee's family is one of Virginia's first families, originally arriving in Virginia from England in the early 1600s with the arrival of Richard Lee I, Esq., "the Immigrant" (1618–1664).^[5] His mother grew up at Shirley Plantation, one of the most elegant homes in Virginia.^[6] Lee's father, a tobacco planter, suffered severe financial reverses from failed investments.^[7]

Little is known of Lee as a child; he rarely spoke of his boyhood as an adult.^[8] Nothing is known of his relationship with his father, who, after leaving his family, only mentioned Robert once in a letter. When given the opportunity to visit his father's Georgia grave, he remained there only briefly, yet while president of Washington College, defended his father in a biographical sketch while editing Light Horse Harry's memoirs.^[9] In 1809, Harry Lee was put in debtors prison; soon after his release the following year, Harry and Anne Lee and their five children moved to a small house on Cameron Street in Alexandria, Virginia, both because there were then good local schools there, as well as several members of her extended family.^[10] In 1811, the family, including the newly-born sixth child, Mildred, moved to a house on Oronoco Street, still close to the center of town and with the houses of a number of Lee relatives close by.^[11] In 1812, Harry Lee was badly injured in a political riot in Baltimore, and Secretary of State James Madison arranged for Harry Lee to travel to the West Indies. He would never return, dying when his son Robert was 11.^[12] Left to raise six children alone in straitened circumstances, Anne Lee and her family often paid extended visits to relatives and family friends.^[13] Robert Lee attended school at Eastern View, a school for young gentlemen, in Fauquier County, and then at the Alexandria Academy, free for local boys, where he showed an aptitude for mathematics. Although brought up to be a practicing Christian, he was not confirmed in the Episcopal Church until age 46.^[14]

Anne Lee's family was often succored by a relative, William Henry Fitzhugh, who owned the Oronoco Street house and allowed the Lees to stay at his home in Fairfax County, Ravensworth. When Robert was 17 in 1824, Fitzhugh wrote to the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, urging that Robert be given an appointment to the United States Military Academy (commonly referred to as "West Point"). Fitzhugh wrote little of Robert's academic prowess, dwelling much on the prominence of his family, and erroneously stated the boy was 18. Instead of mailing the letter, Fitzhugh had young Robert deliver it.^[15] In March 1824, Robert Lee received his appointment to West Point, but due to the large number of cadets admitted, Lee would have to wait a year to begin his studies there.^[16]

Lee entered West Point in the summer of 1825. At the time, the focus of the curriculum was engineering; the head of the Army Corps of Engineers supervised the school and the superintendent was an engineering officer. Cadets were not permitted leave until they had finished two years of study, and were rarely permitted to leave the grounds of the Academy. Lee graduated second in his class behind Charles Mason,^[17] who resigned from the Army a year after graduation, and Lee did not incur any demerits during his four-year course of study—five of his 45 classmates earned a similar distinction. In June 1829, Lee was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.^[18] After graduation, he returned to Virginia while awaiting assignment to find his mother on her deathbed; she died at Ravensworth on July 26, 1829.^[19]

Combat engineer career

Portion of a map drawn by Robert E. Lee of the head of the Des Moines Rapids, 1837, showing Fort Des Moines No. 1, later Montrose, Iowa.

On August 11, 1829, Brigadier General Charles Gratiot ordered Lee to Cockspur Island, Georgia; plans were to build a fort on the marshy island which would command the outlet of the Savannah River. Lee was involved in the early stages of construction, as the island was being drained and built up.^[20] In 1831, it became apparent that the existing plan to build what became known as Fort Pulaski would have to be revamped, and Lee was transferred to Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula (today in Hampton, Virginia).^[21]

While home in the summer of 1829, Lee had apparently courted Mary Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, whom he had known as a child. Lee obtained permission to write to her before leaving for Georgia, though Mary Custis warned Lee to be "discreet" in his writing, as her mother read her letters, especially from men.^[22] Custis refused Lee the first time he asked to marry her; her father, George Washington Custis did not believe the son of the disgraced Light Horse Harry Lee was a suitable man for his daughter.^[23] She accepted him, with her father's consent, in September 1830, while he was on summer leave,^[24] and the two were wed on June 30, 1831, at the Custis home at Arlington House in the southern portion of the District of Columbia (today in Arlington County, Virginia).^[25]

Lee's duties at Fort Monroe were varied, typical for a junior officer, and ranged from budgeting to designing buildings.^[26] Although Mary Lee accompanied her husband to Hampton Roads, she spent about a third of her time at Arlington, though the couple's first son, Custis Lee was born at Fort Monroe. Although the two were by all accounts devoted to each other, they were different in character: Robert Lee was tidy and punctural, qualities his wife lacked. Mary Lee also had trouble transitioning from being a rich man's daughter to having to manage a household with only one or two slaves.^[27] Beginning in 1832, Robert Lee began a platonic, but close relationship with Harriett Talcott, wife of fellow officer Andrew Talcott.^[28]

Life at Fort Monroe was marked by conflicts between artillery and engineering officers; eventually the War Department transferred all engineering officers away from Fort Monroe, except Lee, who was ordered to take up residence on the artificial island of Rip Raps across the river from Fort Monroe, where Fort Wool would eventually rise, and continue work to improve the island. Lee duly moved there, then discharged all workers and informed the War Department that he could not maintain laborers without the facilities of the fort. In 1834, Lee was transferred to Washington as General Gratiot's assistant.^[29] Lee had hoped to rent a house in Washington for his family, but was not able to find one; the family resided at Arlington, though Lieutenant Lee rented a room at a Washington boarding house for when the roads were impassible.^[30] In mid-1835, Lee was assigned to assist Andrew Talcott in surveying the southern border of Michigan.^[31] While on that expedition, he responded to a letter from an ill Mary Lee, which had requested that he come to Arlington, "But why do you urge my immediate return, & tempt one in the strongest manner[?] ... I rather require to be strengthened & encouraged to the full performance of what I am called on to execute."^[21] Lee completed the assignment and returned to his post in Washington, finding his wife ill at Ravensworth. Mary Lee, who had recently given birth to their second child, remained bedridden for several months. In October 1836, Lee was promoted to first lieutenant.^[32]

Lee served as an assistant in the chief engineer's office in Washington, D.C. from 1834 to 1837, but spent the summer of 1835 helping to lay out the state line between Ohio and Michigan. As a first lieutenant of engineers in 1837, he supervised the engineering work for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Among his projects was blasting a channel through the Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi by Keokuk, Iowa, where the Mississippi's mean depth of 2.4 feet (0.7 m) was the upper limit of steamboat traffic on the river. His work there earned him a promotion to captain. Circa 1842, Captain Robert E. Lee arrived as Fort Hamilton's post engineer.^[33]

Marriage