Lee, Robert E.

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(b. January 19, 1807; d. October 12, 1870) Leading Confederate General during the Civil War.

Robert E. Lee was the most notable Confederate commander of the Civil War, and a figure of mythic proportions. Son of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, a

Revolutionary War hero who had fallen into financial and personal disgrace, Lee was born at the family plantation named Stratford, in the tidewater region of Virginia. When Lee was four, his father fled the country, plunging his family into impoverished dependence on relatives. In 1829, Lee graduated West Point with a perfect conduct record (and a reputation as the most handsome man in the army) and embarked on a long career as an army engineer. In 1831, he married Mary Custis, daughter of George Washington's adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, and moved to the Custis plantation at Arlington, near Washington, D.C.

In 1861, at the apex of a distinguished army career, including service in the Mexican War and a tour as superintendent of West Point, Lee was offered the most important command in the Union army after the lower South seceded. Instead, choosing to align himself with his state and his slaveholding class, Lee resigned his commission to ally his fortunes with the Confederacy. At first his military record was undistinguished, particularly when he mishandled Confederate forces in West Virginia, and lost that state to the Union. Confederate President Jefferson Davis still valued him, and made Lee his military advisor. When General Joseph E. Johnston was badly injured in battle in June 1862, Davis placed Lee in charge of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Reorganizing the Confederate army, Lee skillfully beat back the offensive of General George McClellan during the Peninsula Campaign, and went on to a year-long series of victories, albeit at the loss of irreplaceable troops and material. Indeed, his military leadership was sometimes marked by unconventional audacity. With the exception of a draw at Antietam in September 1862, his army won every battle until the stunning defeat at Gettysburg in July 1863. There, having grown contemptuous of his opponents and perhaps too prideful of his own forces, as well as ignoring the enemy's solid defensive position, Lee fell into haphazard attacks, ending with the slaughter of Major General George E. Pickett's division.

Falling back to Virginia, Lee waged a tenacious defensive struggle, blocking General Ulysses S. Grant's relentless attacks during the Wilderness Campaign of May and June, 1864. Driven into a line of trenches south of Richmond, the Confederate capital, Lee's army gradually wore out during a prolonged siege. The Army of Northern Virginia finally crumbled in early April 1865, after Lee abandoned his Petersburg defenses and Richmond and fled eastward. Finally, surrounded by Union troops, Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.

After the war, Lee went on to become president of Washington College (later renamed Washington and Lee College) in Lexington, Virginia, where he also played a vital, behind-the-scenes role in the rebirth of conservative white rule in his state. During this period, and even more after his death, Lee became the chief symbol of the nobility of the Lost Cause.

Ever since the Civil War, historians have debated General Lee's military leadership, particularly in contrast to Grant. At the moment of his surrender, Lee began the narrative that the Union had won only because of superior material resources. While it is true that the Union had had far better resources, it also had talented generals and tenacious soldiers of its own, and so material inferiority was only part of the explanation for Confederate defeat. Lee squandered his limited resources through willingness to commit his army to bloody battles. He believed that only by defeating the Union army on the battlefield could the South gain independence. However, one could also argue that the South needed only to keep from losing the war until horrified Northern public opinion turned against it and elected a government that would allow Southern independence. This nearly happened in the Union elections of 1864, but the aggressive tactics of Grant, and, even more importantly, defeats of other Confederate generals led Southern popular opinion to wear out first, even while Lee continued to hold off Grant. Lee's focus on defending Virginia and winning victories in the eastern theatre proved insufficient in a far vaster conflict. Yet Lee's determined leadership doubtless enabled the South to hold out for as long as it did.

After the war, Lee also gained wide national admiration as the perfect Christian general, the calm stoic gentleman always doing his duty for a cause that he supposedly did not support—the defense of slavery. In fact, Lee was at the core of the pro-slavery leadership cadre of the Confederacy. The values of that class, white supremacy included, now seem less attractive to most Americans, and therefore Lee's reputation as the ideal American is fading somewhat. Nevertheless, as the naming of the college in Lexington symbolizes, the great hero of the Revolution, Washington, and Lee's romanticized heroism in defeat have been linked as icons of honor that are used to define American character and national identity.

Lost Cause.

Connelly, Thomas L. The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society. New York: Knopf, 1977.

Fellman, Michael. The Making of Robert E. Lee. New York: Random House, 2000.

Freeman, Douglas Southall. R. E. Lee: A Biography. 4 vols. New York: Scribners, 1934–36.

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