Beech Tree News Network

Robert E. Lee was the leading general of the Confederate Army and has been recognized as one of the most brilliant strategist in the Civil War. Lee was born on January 19, 1807, in Stratford Hall, Virginia. His family was from the Virginia aristocracy. Lee’s extended family included a President, a chief justice of the U.S., and signers of the Declaration of Independence. His father was Colonel Henry Lee, known as “Light-Horse Harry,” served as a cavalry leader during the Revolutionary War, and won praise from General George Washington as one of the war’s greatest heroes.
    Lee saw himself as an extension of the family greatness, and put his mind and drive to work at West Point Military Academy. He was just one of six cadets in his graduating class who finished without a single demerit. Robert E. Lee wrapped up his studies with perfect scores in artillery, infantry, and cavalry. After graduating from West Point, Lee met and married Mary Custis, the great-granddaughter of George and Martha Washington. They had seven children: Custis, Rooney, Rob, Mary, Annie, Mildred, and Agnes. While Mary and the children stayed at her father’s plantation, Lee’s military commitments sent him all around the country. In 1846, Lee got a real taste of battle in the Mexican War. Serving under General Winfield Scott, Lee distinguished himself as a brave commander and brilliant tactician. In the aftermath of the war, Robert E. Lee was heralded as a hero, and General Scott recommended Lee to lead the Army if war ever broke out. When Lee returned back to his father-in-law’s plantation, he found that it fallen onto hard times after the death of his father-in-law. Lee tried for two years to make the plantation profitable, but he never enjoyed the mundane task of managing the plantation.
    Robert E. Lee returned to the Army in 1859, and in October of that year, he stopped a slave revolt in Harper’s Ferry led by John Brown. Lee’s attack took just an hour to end the revolt, but his success put him on a short list of names to lead the Union Army into war. Lee, however, was more loyal to his home state of Virginia than to the Union Army. After turning down an offer from President Lincoln to command the Union forces, he resigned from the military and returned home. While Lee was uneasy that war was centering on the slavery issue, he agreed to lead the Confederate forces when Virginia seceded from the Union on April 18, 1861.
    General Lee distinguished himself in battle over the next year. In May 1862, he took control of the Army of Northern Virginia and drove the Union Army out of Richmond in the Seven Days Battle. In August 1862, General Lee gained another crucial victory at the Second Manassas. The victories did not last, however. In 1862, Lee suffered a crushing defeat at Antietam, and again in 1863, Lee was defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg. During the summer of 1864, Ulysses S. Grant had gained the upper hand and decimated most of Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia. By early 1865, the war’s fate was clear, and it was solidified on April 2 when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
    In mid-September 1865, Lee was offered the position of president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. He wrote the trustees saying that he believed “it is the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the Country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony.” Robert E. Lee served as president of Washington College for five years, and the college was eventually renamed in his honor: Washington and Lee University. Robert E. Lee suffered a massive stroke on September 28, 1870, and he passed away on October 12, 1870, at his home on the college campus.