Robert E. Lee

Robert Edward Lee
January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870 (aged 63)
Robert Edward Lee.jpg
Robert E. Lee, officer of the Confederate Army (1863, Julian Vannerson)
Place of birth Stratford Hall, Virginia
Place of death 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
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, an engineer, and among the most celebrated generals in American history. Lee was 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). He was a descendant of Sir Thomas More and of King Robert II of Scotland through the Earls of Crawford.[1]

A top graduate of West Point, Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the U.S. Army for thirty-two years. He is best known for fighting on behalf of the Confederate Army in the American Civil War.

Contents

Overview

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 seceding from the Union, despite Lee's wishes. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state. Lee's eventual role in the newly established Confederacy was to serve as a senior military adviser to President Jefferson Davis. Lee's first field command for the Confederate States came in June 1862 when he took command of the Confederate forces in the East (which Lee himself renamed the "Army of Northern Virginia").

Lee's greatest victories were the Seven Days Battles, the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Fredericksburg, and the Battle of Chancellorsville, but both of his campaigns to invade the North ended in failure. Barely escaping defeat at the Battle of Antietam in 1862, Lee was forced to return to the South. In early July 1863, Lee was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. However, due to ineffectual pursuit by the commander of Union forces, Major General George Meade, Lee escaped again to Virginia.

In the spring of 1864, the new Union commander, Lieutenant General 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 unable to replace his own losses. In early April 1865, Lee's depleted forces were turned from their entrenchments near the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and he began a strategic retreat. Lee's subsequent surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865 represented the loss of only one of the remaining Confederate field armies, but it was a psychological blow from which the South could not recover. By June 1865, all of the remaining Confederate armies had capitulated.

Lee's 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.

In the final months of the Civil War, as manpower reserves drained away, Lee adopted a plan to arm willing slaves to fight on behalf of the Confederacy, but this came too late to change the outcome of the war. After Appomattox, Lee discouraged Southern dissenters from starting a guerrilla campaign to continue the war, and encouraged reconciliation between the North and the South.

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 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

Early life and career

Robert E. Lee was born January 19, 1807 at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the fifth child of Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee ("Light Horse Harry") and Anne Hill (née Carter) Lee. Lee's parents were members of the Virginia gentry class and true tuckahoes. Lee's paternal ancestors were among the earliest settlers in Virginia. His mother grew up at Shirley Plantation, one of the most elegant homes in Virginia. His maternal great-great-grandfather, Robert "King" Carter, was the wealthiest man in the colonies when he died in 1732. "Light Horse Harry Lee" met severe financial reverses from failed investments. Historian Gary W. Gallagher wrote, "Harry Lee had not been able to exercise self-control or take care of his family, and so he abandoned them." That was a stark lesson for young Robert E. Lee."[2] However, in Lee of Virginia it is noted that Harry Lee "was very seriously injured by a mob in Baltimore while attempting to defend the house of a friend. Later he made a voyage to the West Indies seeking restoration for his shattered health. On his way home ... he died..."[3] Lee of Virginia also notes "...in the West Indies, Henry Lee wrote a series of letters to his son, Carter..."During his young life,. later described by Robert E. Lee as "'Those letters of love and wisdom.'"[4]

Lee's father died when Lee was eleven years old, leaving the family deeply in debt. When Lee was three years old, his older half-brother, the heir to the Stratford Hall Plantation, having reached his majority, established Stratford as his home. The rest of the family moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where Lee grew up in a series of relatives' houses. Lee attended Alexandria Academy, where he obtained a classical education along the lines of quadrivium. Lee was considered a top student and excelled at mathematics. His mother, a devout Christian, oversaw his religious instruction at Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria.

He entered the United States Military Academy in 1825 and became the first cadet to achieve the rank of sergeant at the end of his first year. When he graduated in 1829 he was at the head of his class in artillery and tactics, and shared the distinction with five other cadets of having received no demerits during the four-year course of instruction. Overall, he ranked second in his class of 46.[5] He was commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.

Engineering career

Lee served for just over 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 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.

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.[3]

Marriage and family

While he was stationed at Fort Monroe, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis (1808–1873), great-granddaughter of Martha Washington by her first husband Daniel Parke Custis, and step-great-granddaughter of George Washington, the first president of the United States. They were married on June 30, 1831 at Arlington House, her parents' house just across from Washington, D.C. The 3rd U.S. Artillery served as honor guard at the marriage. They eventually had seven children, three boys and four girls:

  1. George Washington Custis Lee (Custis, “Boo”); 1832–1913; served as Major General in the Confederate Army and aide-de-camp to President Jefferson Davis; unmarried
  2. Mary Custis Lee (Mary, “Daughter”); 1835–1918; unmarried
  3. William Henry Fitzhugh Lee (“Rooney”); 1837–1891; served as Major General in the Confederate Army (cavalry); married twice; surviving children by second marriage
  4. Anne Carter Lee (Annie); 1839–1862; unmarried
  5. Eleanor Agnes Lee (Agnes); 1841–1873; unmarried
  6. Robert Edward Lee, Jr. (Rob); 1843–1914; served as Captain in the Confederate Army (Rockbridge Artillery); married twice; surviving children by second marriage
  7. Mildred Childe Lee (Milly, “Precious Life”); 1846–1905; unmarried

All the children survived him except for Annie, who died in 1862. They are all buried with their parents in the crypt of the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

Mexican-American War, West Point, and Texas

Robert Edward Lee, as a U.S. Army Colonel before the Civil War

Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican-American 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 brevet major after the Battle of Cerro Gordo on April 18, 1847.[6] He also fought at Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec, and was wounded at the last. By the end of the war, he had received additional brevet promotions to Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel, but his permanent rank was still Captain of Engineers and he would remain a Captain until his transfer to the cavalry in 1855.

After the Mexican War, he spent three years at Fort Carroll in Baltimore harbor. During this time his service was interrupted by other duties, among them surveying/updating maps in Florida, an offer from Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to lead an attack on Cuba (Lee declined), and a brief military assignment out west. In September 1852, Lee became the superintendent of West Point. During his three years at West Point, Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee improved the buildings and 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's tour of duty at West Point ended and he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the newly formed 2nd U.S. Cavalry regiment. It was Lee's first substantive promotion in the Army since his promotion to Captain in 1838, despite having been brevetted a Colonel, which was an honorary promotion. By accepting promotion, Lee left the Corps of Engineers where he had served for over 25 years. The Colonelcy of the regiment was given to Albert Sidney Johnston, who had previously served as a Major in the Paymaster Department, and the regiment was assigned to Camp Cooper, Texas. 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. Robert's wife was treated by homeopath Alfred Hughes[7]

Lee as a slaveholder

As a member of the Virginia aristocracy, Lee lived in close contact with slavery before he joined the Army and held variously around a half-dozen slaves under his own name. When Lee's father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in October 1857, Lee (as executor of the will) came into control over some 196 slaves on the Arlington plantation. Although the will provided for the slaves to be emancipated "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", providing a maximum of five years for the legal and logistical details of manumission, Lee found himself in need of funds to pay his father-in-law's debts and repair the properties he had inherited.[8] He decided to make money during the five years that the will had allowed him control of the slaves by working them on the plantation and hiring them out to neighboring plantations and to eastern Virginia.

Lee, with no experience as a large-scale slave owner, tried to hire an overseer to handle the plantation in his absence, writing to his cousin, "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."[9] 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 run the plantation himself. He found the experience frustrating and difficult; some of the slaves were unhappy and demanded their freedom. Many of them had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died.[10] In May 1858, Lee wrote to his son Rooney, "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."[9] 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 under lock and key to the slave-trader William Overton Winston in Richmond, who was instructed to keep them in jail until he could find "good & responsible" slaveholders to work them until the end of the five year period.[9]

In 1859, three of the Arlington 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[11] and June 21, 1859[12]), each of which claimed to have heard that Lee had the Norrises whipped, and went so far as to claim that Lee himself had whipped the woman when the officer refused to. Lee wrote to his son Custis that "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."[13] Biographers of Lee have differed over the credibility of the Tribune letters. Douglas S. Freeman, in his 1934 biography of Lee, described the letters to the Tribune as "Lee's first experience with the extravagance of irresponsible antislavery agitators" and asserted that "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." Michael Fellman, in The Making of Robert E. Lee (2000), found the claims that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris "extremely unlikely," but not at all unlikely that Lee had had the slaves whipped: "corporal punishment (for which Lee substituted the euphemism 'firmness') was an intrinsic and necessary part of slave discipline. Although it was supposed to be applied only in a calm and rational manner, overtly physical domination of slaves, unchecked by law, was always brutal and potentially savage."[14]

Wesley Norris himself discussed the incident after the war, in an 1866 interview[10] printed in the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Norris stated that after they had been captured, and forced to return to Arlington, Lee told them that "he would teach us a lesson we would not soon forget." According to Norris, Lee then had the three of them tied to posts and whipped by the county constable, with fifty lashes for the men and twenty for Mary Norris (he made no claim that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris). Norris claimed that Lee then had the overseer rub their lacerated backs with brine.

After their capture, Lee sent the Norrises to work on the railroad in Richmond and Alabama. Wesley Norris gained his freedom in January 1863 by slipping through the Confederate lines near Richmond to Union-controlled territory.[10] Lee freed all the other Custis slaves after the end of the five year period in the winter of 1862, filing the deed of manumission on December 29, 1862.[15]

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 immorality, 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 Appomattox, too late for it to do any good for the Confederacy.

In December 1864, Lee was shown a letter by Louisiana Senator Edward Sparrow, written by General St. John R. Liddell, which noted that Lee would be hard-pressed in the interior of Virginia by spring, and the need to consider Patrick Cleburne's plan to emancipate the slaves and put all men in the army that were willing to join. Lee was said to have agreed on all points and desired to get black soldiers, saying that "he could make soldiers out of any human being that had arms and legs."[16]

Another source is Lee's 1856 letter to his wife,[17] 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. ”

Freeman's analysis[17] 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. ”

Harpers Ferry and Texas, 1859-61

When John Brown led a band of 21 men (including five African Americans) and seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in October 1859, Lee was given command of detachments of Maryland and Virginia militia, soldiers, and United States Marines, to suppress the uprising and arrest its leaders.[18] By the time Lee arrived later that night, the militia on the site had surrounded Brown and his hostages. When on October 18 Brown refused the demand for surrender, Lee attacked and after three minutes of fighting, Brown and his followers were captured.

When Texas seceded from the Union in February 1861, General David E. Twiggs surrendered all the American forces (about 4,000 men, including Lee, and commander of the Department of Texas) to the Texans. Twiggs immediately resigned from the U. S. Army and was made a Confederate general. Lee went back to Washington, and was appointed Colonel of the First Regiment of Cavalry in March 1861. Lee's Colonelcy was signed by the new President, Abraham Lincoln. Three weeks after his promotion, Colonel Lee was offered a senior command (with the rank of Major General) in the expanding Army to fight the Southern States that had left the Union.

Civil War

Main article: American Civil War
Mathew Brady portrait of Lee on April 16,1865, Richmond, Virginia. (detail)

Lee privately ridiculed the Confederacy in letters in early 1861, denouncing secession as "revolution" and a betrayal of the efforts of the Founders. The commanding general of the Union army, Winfield Scott, told Lincoln he wanted Lee for a top command. Lee said he was willing as long as Virginia remained in the Union. Lee was asked by one of his lieutenants if he intended to fight for the Confederacy or the Union, to which he replied, "I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty."[19] After Lincoln's call for troops to put down the rebellion, it was obvious that Virginia would quickly secede and so Lee turned down the offer on April 18, resigned from the U.S. Army on April 20, and took up command of the Virginia state forces on April 23.

Early role

At the outbreak of war, Lee was appointed to command all of Virginia's forces, but upon the formation of the Confederate States Army, he was named one of its first five full generals. Lee did not wear the insignia of a Confederate general, but only the three stars of a Confederate colonel, equivalent to his last U.S. Army rank; he did not intend to wear a general's insignia until the Civil War had been won and he could be promoted, in peacetime, to general in the Confederate Army.

Lee's first field assignment was commanding Confederate forces in western Virginia, where he was defeated at the Battle of Cheat Mountain and was widely blamed for Confederate setbacks.[20] He was then sent to organize the coastal defenses along the Carolina and Georgia seaboard, where he was hampered by the lack of an effective Confederate navy. Once again blamed by the press, he became military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, former U.S. Secretary of War.

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. Early in the war his men called him "Granny Lee" because of his allegedly timid style of command.[21] After the Seven Days Battles until the end of the war his men called him simply "Marse Robert." 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 to fall in favor of ending the war. McClellan's men recovered a lost order that revealed Lee's plans. McClellan always exaggerated Lee's forces, but now he knew the Confederate army was divided and could be destroyed by an all-out attack at Antietam. Yet McClellan was too slow in moving, not realizing Lee had been informed by a spy that McClellan had the plans. Lee urgently recalled Stonewall Jackson and in the bloodiest day of the war, Lee withstood the Union assaults. He withdrew his battered army back to Virginia while President Abraham Lincoln used the reverse as sufficient pretext to announce the Emancipation Proclamation to put the Confederacy on the diplomatic and moral defensive.

September 1866 Lee mounted on Traveller

Disappointed 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 a victory over a larger force, but it also came with a great cost; Jackson, one of Lee's best subordinates, was accidentally wounded by his own troops, and soon after died of pneumonia.

Battle of Gettysburg

In the summer of 1863, Lee invaded the North again, hoping for a Southern victory that would shatter Northern morale. A young Pennsylvanian woman who watched from her porch as General Lee passed by remarked, "I wish he were ours." He encountered Union forces under George G. Meade at the three-day Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July; the battle would produce the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War. Some of his subordinates were new and inexperienced in their commands, J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry was out of the area, slightly ill, and thus Lee was less than comfortable with how events were unfolding. While the first day of battle was controlled by the Confederates, key terrain which should have been taken by General Ewell was not. The Second day ended with the Confederates unable to break the Union position, and the Union more solidified. Lee's decision on the third day, against the sound judgement of his best corps commander General Longstreet, to launch a massive frontal assault on the center of the Union line was disastrous. The assault known as Pickett's Charge— was repulsed and resulted in heavy Confederate losses. The General rode out to meet his retreating army and proclaimed, "This is all my fault." Lee was compelled to retreat. Despite flooded rivers that blocked his retreat, he escaped Meade's ineffective pursuit. Following his defeat at Gettysburg, Lee sent a letter of resignation to President Davis on August 8, 1863, but Davis refused Lee's request. That fall, Lee and Meade met again in two minor campaigns that did little to change the strategic standoff. The Confederate army never fully recovered from the substantial losses incurred during the three-day battle in southern Pennsylvania. The historian Shelby Foote stated, "Gettysburg was the price the South paid for having Robert E. Lee as commander."

Ulysses S. Grant and the Union offensive

In 1864, the new Union general-in-chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, sought to use his large advantages in manpower and material resources to destroy Lee's army by attrition, pinning Lee against his capital of Richmond. Lee successfully stopped each attack, but Grant with his superior numbers 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 was able to stealthily move 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. (This development presaged the trench warfare of World War I, exactly 50 years later.) He attempted to break the stalemate by sending Jubal A. Early on a raid through the Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., but was defeated early on by the superior forces of Philip Sheridan. The Siege of Petersburg lasted from June 1864 until March 1865, with Lee's outnumbered and poorly supplied army shrinking daily because of desertions by disheartened Confederates.

General-in-chief

Lee with son Custis (left) and aide Walter H. Taylor (right). Photographed at Lee's Richmond, Virginia residence by Brady on April 16, 1865.

On January 31, 1865, Lee was promoted to general-in-chief of Confederate forces.

As the South ran out of manpower the issue of arming the slaves became paramount. By late 1864 the army so dominated the Confederacy that civilian leaders were unable to block the military's proposal, strongly endorsed by Lee, to arm and train slaves in Confederate uniform for combat. In return for this service, slave soldiers and their families would be emancipated. Lee explained, "We should employ them without delay ... [along with] gradual and general emancipation." The first units were in training as the war ended.[22] As the Confederate army was decimated by casualties, disease and desertion, the Union attack on Petersburg succeeded on April 2, 1865. Lee abandoned Richmond and retreated west. His forces were surrounded and he surrendered them to Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Other Confederate armies followed suit and the war ended. The day after his surrender, Lee issued his Farewell Address to his army.

Lee resisted calls by some officers to reject surrender and allow small units to melt away into the mountains, setting up a lengthy guerrilla war. He insisted the war was over and energetically campaigned for inter-sectional reconciliation. "So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South."[23]

After the war

One of the last known images of Lee, post-Civil War

Before the Civil War, Lee and his wife had lived at his wife's family home, the Custis-Lee Mansion on Arlington Plantation. The plantation had been seized by Union forces during the war, and became part of Arlington National Cemetery; immediately following the war, Lee spent two months in a rented house in Richmond, and then escaped the unwelcome city life by moving into the overseer's house of a friend's plantation near Cartersville, Virginia.[24] (In December 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, returned the property to Custis Lee, stating that it had been confiscated without due process of law.[25][26] On March 3, 1883, the Congress purchased the property from Lee for $150,000.[27])

While living in the country, Lee wrote his son that he hoped to retire to a farm of his own, but a few weeks later he received an offer to serve as the president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. Lee accepted, and remained president of the College from October 2, 1865 until his death. 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 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.

Postwar politics

Lee, who had opposed secession and remained mostly indifferent to politics before the Civil War, supported President Andrew Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction that took effect in 1865-66. However, he opposed the Radical Republican program that took effect in 1867. In February 1866, he was called to testify before the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction in Washington, where he expressed support for President Andrew Johnson's plans for quick restoration of the former Confederate states, and argued that restoration should return, as far as possible, the status quo ante in the Southern states' governments (with the exception of slavery).[28] Lee said, "every one with whom I associate expresses kind feelings towards the freedmen. They wish to see them get on in the world, and particularly to take up some occupation for a living, and to turn their hands to some work." Lee also expressed his "willingness that blacks should be educated, and ... that it would be better for the blacks and for the whites." At a time in early 1866 when most northerners opposed black suffrage, Lee warned that granting suffrage would be unpopular. "My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the [vote] would lead to a great deal of demagogism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways."[29]

In an interview in May, 1866, Lee said, "The Radical party are likely to do a great deal of harm, for we wish now for good feeling to grow up between North and South, and the President, Mr. Johnson, has been doing much to strengthen the feeling in favor of the Union among us. The relations between the Negroes and the whites were friendly formerly, and would remain so if legislation be not passed in favor of the blacks, in a way that will only do them harm."[30]

Jefferson Davis, Lee and Stonewall Jackson
at Stone Mountain

In 1868, Lee's ally Alexander H. H. Stuart drafted a public letter of endorsement for the Democratic Party's presidential campaign, in which Horatio Seymour ran against Lee's old foe Republican Ulysses S. Grant. Lee signed it along with thirty-one other ex-Confederates. The Democratic campaign, eager to publicize the endorsement, published the statement widely in newspapers.[31] Their letter claimed paternalistic concern for the welfare of freed Southern blacks, stating that "The idea that the Southern people are hostile to the negroes and would oppress them, if it were in their power to do so, is entirely unfounded. They have grown up in our midst, and we have been accustomed from childhood to look upon them with kindness."[32] However, it also called for the restoration of white political rule, arguing that "It is true that the people of the South, in common with a large majority of the people of the North and West, are, for obvious reasons, inflexibly opposed to any system of laws that would place the political power of the country in the hands of the negro race. But this opposition springs from no feeling of enmity, but from a deep-seated conviction that, at present, the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power."[33]

In his public statements and private correspondence, however, Lee argued that a tone of reconciliation and patience would further the interests of white Southerners better than hotheaded antagonism to federal authority or the use of violence. He repeatedly expelled white students from Washington College for violent attacks on local black men, and publicly urged obedience to the authorities and respect for law and order.[34] In 1869-70 he was a leader in successful efforts to establish state-funded schools for blacks.[35] He privately chastised fellow ex-Confederates such as Jefferson Davis and Jubal Early for their frequent, angry responses to perceived Northern insults, writing in private to them as he had written to a magazine editor in 1865, that "It should be the object of all to avoid controversy, to allay passion, give full scope to reason and to every kindly feeling. By doing this and encouraging our citizens to engage in the duties of life with all their heart and mind, with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past and fears of the future, our country will not only be restored in material prosperity, but will be advanced in science, in virtue and in religion."[36]

Lee attended a meeting of ex-Confederates in 1870, during which he expressed regrets about his surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, given the effects of Republican Reconstruction policy on the South. Speaking to former Confederate Governor of Texas Fletcher Stockdale, he said:

Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people [Yankees] designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.[37]

Citizenship

Oath of amnesty submitted by Robert E. Lee in 1865.

Lee sent his request for a complete individual pardon, along with an oath of allegiance, to President Andrew Johnson in 1865,[38] and his application for amnesty encouraged many other former members of the Confederacy's armed forces to accept restored U.S. citizenship. However, the application 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. Lee took the lack of response to mean that the government wished to retain the right to prosecute him in the future. (Lee's right to vote was restored in 1888.)[38] Elmer Oris Parker, an employee of the National Archives, found the oath of allegiance in 1970[39] among old State Department records.[38]

In 1975 after a five-year campaign by Senator Harry F. Byrd, a resolution to posthumously restore Lee's full rights of citizenship passed by a unanimous April U.S. Senate vote and a 407-July 10, U.S. House of Representatives vote,[38] with the resolution effective June 13, 1975. President Gerald R. Ford signed the resolution on August 5, 1975 on the portico of the Lee mansion, with a dozen of Lee's descendants attending (including Robert E. Lee V, great-great-grandson).[38]

Illness and death

So-called "Recumbent Statue" of Robert E. Lee in Lee Chapel in Lexington, Virginia, of Lee asleep on the battlefield, sculpted by Edward Valentine. It is often mistakenly thought to be a tomb or sarcophagus, but Lee is actually buried elsewhere in the chapel.

On September 28, 1870, Lee suffered a stroke that left him without the ability to speak. Lee died from the effects of pneumonia, a little after 9 a.m., October 12, 1870, two weeks after the stroke, in Lexington, Virginia. He was buried underneath Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University, where his body remains today. According to J. William Jones' Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, his last words, on the day of his death, were "Tell Hill he must come up. Strike the tent," but this is debatable because of conflicting accounts. Since Lee's stroke resulted in aphasia, last words may have been impossible. Lee was treated homeopathically for this illness.[40]

Legacy

Among Southerners, Lee came to be even more revered after his surrender than he had been during the war (when Stonewall Jackson had been the great Confederate hero, particularly after Jackson's death at Chancellorsville). Admirers pointed to his character and devotion to duty, not to mention his brilliant tactical successes in battle after battle against a stronger foe. Military historians continue to pay attention to his battlefield tactics and maneuvering, though many think he should have designed better strategic plans for the Confederacy. However, it should be noted that he was not given full direction of the Southern war effort until very late in the conflict. His reputation continued to build and by 1900 his cult had spread into the North, signaling a national apotheosis.[41] Today among the devotees of "The Lost Cause," General Lee is referred to as "The Marble Man."

“ He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbour without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward. ”

—Benjamin Harvey Hill of Georgia referring to Robert Edward Lee during an address before the Southern Historical Society in Atlanta, Georgia on February 18, 1874[42][43]

Civil War-era letters

On September 29, 2007, General Lee's 3 Civil War-era letters were sold for $61,000 at auction by Thomas Willcox, much less than the record of $630,000 for a Lee item in 2002. The auction included more than 400 documents of Lee's from the estate of the parents of Willcox that had been in the family for generations. South Carolina sued to stop the sale on the grounds that the letters were official documents and therefore property of the state, but the court ruled in favor of Wilcox.[44]

Monuments, memorials and commemorations

Monuments

"In Tivoli Circle, New Orleans, from the centre and apex of its green flowery mound, an immense column of pure white marble rises in the ... majesty of Grecian proportions high up above the city's house-tops into the dazzling sunshine ... On its dizzy top stands the bronze figure of one of the worlds greatest captains. He is alone. Not one of his mighty lieutenants stand behind, beside or below him. His arms are folded on that breast that never knew fear, and his calm, dauntless gaze meets the morning sun as it rises, like the new posperity of the land he loved and serve so masterly, above the far distant battle fields where so many thousands of his gray veterans lie in the sleep of fallen heroes." (Silent South, 1885, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine)
Unveiling of the Equestrian Statue of Robert E. Lee, May 29, 1890. Richmond, Virginia.

Holidays

The birthday of Robert E. Lee is celebrated or commemorated in:

Geographic features

Schools and universities

Memorials

Films/Documentaries

Notes

  1. ↑ "The Descent Of General Robert Edward Lee From Robert The Bruce, Of Scotland. He was also related to Meriwether Lewis (1774 - 1809) .". American Civil War Home Page. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
  2. ↑ Davis 1997, p. 135
  3. ↑ Lee 1983, pp. 338–339
  4. ↑ Lee 1983, p. 343
  5. ↑ "The Education of a Cadet". University of Chicago. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
  6. ↑ "A Day Under a Log Contributes to Victory". University of Chicago. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
  7. ↑ "DR. ELIZA CLARK HUGHES". Linda Pages. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
  8. ↑ Freeman 1934, p. 381
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Fellman 2000, p. 65
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Blassingame 1977, pp. 467–468
  11. ↑ Freeman 1934, p. 393
  12. ↑ Freeman 1934, pp. 390–393
  13. ↑ Freeman 1934, pp. 390–392
  14. ↑ Fellman 2000, p. 67
  15. ↑ Freeman 1934, p. 476
  16. ↑ Hughes Jr. 1997, pp. 192–193
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Freeman 1934, p. 372
  18. ↑ Freeman 1934, pp. 394–395
  19. ↑ Freeman 1934, p. 425
  20. ↑ Fellman 2000, §6
  21. ↑ Freeman 1934, p. 602
  22. ↑ Nolan 1991, pp. 21–22
  23. ↑ Nolan 1991, p. 24
  24. ↑ Fellman 2000, p. 229
  25. ↑ United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196 (1882).
  26. ↑ Kaufman v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196 (1882).
  27. ↑ "Historical Information". Arlington National Cemetery. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
  28. ↑ Fellman 2000, p. 265
  29. ↑ Fellman 2000, pp. 267–268
  30. ↑ Freeman 1934, p. 301
  31. ↑ Freeman 1934, pp. 375–377
  32. ↑ Freeman 1934, pp. 375–376
  33. ↑ Freeman 1934, p. 376
  34. ↑ Fellman 2000, pp. 258–263
  35. ↑ Pearson, Charles Chilton (1917). "The Readjuster Movement in Virginia". American Political Science Review (Yale University Press): 60. 
  36. ↑ Fellman 2000, p. 275–277
  37. ↑ Adams, Charles. "The High Ground". When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession. 
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 38.2 38.3 38.4 "Citizenship For R. E. Lee", The Gettysburg Times (August 7, 1975). 
    NOTE: The 10 objecting Congressmen against Lee's citizenship resolution argued it should include amnesty for Vietham war draft dodgers (subsequently granted in 1977).
  39. ↑ "Pieces of History: General Robert E. Lee's Parole and Citizenship". Prologue 37 (1). Spring 2005. 
  40. ↑ "The Lexington Physicians of General Robert E. Lee". Medscape. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
  41. ↑ Weigley, Russell F. (February 2000). "Lee, Robert E.". American National Biography. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
  42. ↑ [1]
  43. ↑ [2]
  44. ↑ "General Lee letters sold at auction". US Auction Info (2007-09-30). Retrieved on 2008-04-01.
  45. ↑ "History of Confederate Memorial Hall". Confederate Memorial Hall. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.
  46. ↑ "The 2007 Florida Statutes". Florida Legislature. Retrieved on 2008-05-20.

References

Further reading

Biographical

Military campaigns

Primary sources

External links

Primary sources

Biographies

Monuments and memorials

Military offices
Preceded by
Henry Brewerton		 Superintendent of the United States Military Academy
1852 – 1855		 Succeeded by
John Gross Barnard
Preceded by
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston		 Commander, Army of Northern Virginia
1862 – 1865		 End of Confederate States
Preceded by
None, position was created with Lee's appointment		 General-in-Chief of the Confederate States Army
January 31, 1865 – April 9, 1865
Persondata
NAME Lee, Robert Edward
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION American general
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH Stratford Hall, Virginia
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1870
PLACE OF DEATH Lexington, Virginia