Stephen D. Lee
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- For the billiards player, see Stephen Lee. For the chemist, see Stephen Lee (chemist).
Stephen Dill Lee (September 22, 1833 – May 28, 1908) was the youngest lieutenant general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, and later became a Mississippi planter, legislator, and president of Mississippi A&M College. Late in life, he was the commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans.
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[edit] Early life and career
Lee came from a family distinguished in the history of South Carolina, and was born at Charleston. Graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1854, he served for seven years as a lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Artillery and resigned in 1861 upon the secession of his home state.
He joined the South Carolina Militia as a captain and was transferred to the Confederate States Army artillery in March 1861, becoming aide-de-camp to General P.G.T. Beauregard and assistant adjutant general for the forces at Charleston. On April 11, 1861, Lee delivered an ultimatum from Beauregard to Union Major Robert Anderson, demanding the evacuation of Fort Sumter. Anderson refused and the Confederates began bombarding the fort, which fell on April 14, precipitating the beginning of the Civil War.
[edit] Civil War
Lee commanded a light battery in Hampton's Legion in General Joseph E. Johnston's army later in 1861. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in March 1862, soon becoming the artillery chief for Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws's division of the Army of Northern Virginia. In this division and also under brig. Gen. John B. Magruder, he fought in the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battles. He was promoted to colonel on July 9, 1862, and assumed command of the artillery battalion of Maj. Gen. James Longstreet's Corps.
Under Longstreet, Colonel Lee fought at Second Bull Run and Antietam, where his guns played a prominent role in defending the ground near the famed Dunker Church. He rose to the rank of brigadier general on November 6, 1862, and was ordered to take command of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton's artillery at Vicksburg, Mississippi. He served there with great credit, being wounded in the shoulder at the Battle of Champion Hill, until Pemberton's surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant in July 1863. On becoming a prisoner of war, he was immediately paroled and promoted to major general on August 3, 1863.
His regimental service had been chiefly with artillery, but he had generally worked with and at times commanded cavalry, and he was now assigned to command the troops of that arm in the Southwestern Theater (the Department of Mississippi, Alabama, West Tennessee, and East Louisiana). After harassing, as far as his limited numbers permitted, the advance of William Tecumseh Sherman's column on Meridian, Mississippi, he took General Leonidas Polk's place as commander of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana. On June 23, 1864, on John B. Hood's promotion to command the Army of Tennessee, Lee was made a lieutenant general, the youngest in the Confederacy, and assigned to command Hood's old corps in that army. Thus, Lee became one of the few officers to have senior commands in all three combat arms—artillery, cavalry, and infantry.
In the Atlanta Campaign, Lee fought at Ezra Church and Jonesboro. He then accompanied Hood in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign, and fought in the battles of Franklin and Nashville, after which, in the rout of the Confederate army, Lee kept his troops closed up and well in hand. For three consecutive days, they formed the fighting rearguard of the otherwise disintegrated army. Lee was wounded in the foot at the Battle of Spring Hill, but did not give up the command until an organized rearguard took over the post of danger.
On recovery, he joined General Johnston in North Carolina for the Carolinas Campaign, and Lee surrendered with Johnston in April 1865 at Bennett Place.
[edit] Postbellum
After the war Lee settled in Mississippi, which was his wife's home state and during the greater part of the war his own territorial command, and devoted himself to planting. He was the first president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi (now Mississippi State University) from 1880 to 1889, served as a state senator, and was an active member (and at the time of his death commander-in-chief) of the United Confederate Veterans society.
He also helped promote women's rights, wrote about history, and made efforts to preserve the Vicksburg battlefield sites. He died in Vicksburg and was buried in Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Mississippi.
Lee is memorialized with a statue in the Vicksburg National Military Park. The Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee Camp #545 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Vicksburg is named in his honor.
[edit] References
- Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
- Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders, Louisiana State University Press, 1959, ISBN 0-8071-0823-5.
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
