Robert E. Lee was born January 19, 1807 at "Stratford" in Westmoreland County. Continuing in the military tradition of his father, Lee entered West Point in 1825 and graduated second in his class in 1829. Serving various military duties in Georgia, Virginia, New York, Texas, and Mexico over the next 23 years, Lee's reputation increased in recognition and respectability, and in 1852 he was named superintendant of West Point. From February of 1860 until February of 1861, Lee commanded the Department of Texas -- the largest number of troops he had ever commanded. It was during this time that the secession movment began, and Lee had to evaluate his position as a Whig devoted to the Union and as a Virginian. At this point, he did not agree with the political and economic arguments for Southern independence. Though, unfortunate as the choice was, if pressed to choose between fighting for Virginia or for the Union, Lee realized the decision would be simple. Lee's loyalities proved to be on the side of the South because of his family tradition in and association with the state of Virginia.
On April 18, 1861 Lee was offered field command of the United States Army. On the following day, he received word that Virginia had seceeded from the Union; he submitted his letter of resignation from the United States Army on April 20. Three days later, Lee accepted the position of commander of Virginia forces. From this point onward, Lee's identity became intrinsically linked to the Confederate cause. At the age of 55, on May 31, 1862, Robert E. Lee was assigned to command the troops which he named "The Army of Northern Virginia". During the Civil War he worked closely with Jefferson Davis, J.E.B. Stuart. He is best known for his victories in the Battle of second Manassas (second Bull Run), and the Battle of Chancellorsville. Named General-In-Chief of all Confederate Armies on February 6, 1865, his tenure in this position was cut short by his surrender to General Grant at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, thus ending the Civil War.
After the war, Lee returned to Richmond. During the last five years of his life, he served as President of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, and he was indicted for treason though never brought to trial. Lee was stricken on September 28, 1870 in Lexington and died a few weeks later on October 12. Robert E. Lee was buried in Lexington and remembered as an educator, a soldier, and a Christian gentleman who lived his life with dignity. Lee has been compared to General George Washington in terms of the respect which he earned from his soldiers, his region, and the nation.
An article on Gen. Robert E. Lee written by James Robertson and used with his permission:
�Lee the hero through time�
Americans used to crave heroes. Our country used to thrive on them. Not anymore. Today it is open season on the great figures�largely, one suspects, because we have no truly outstanding figures in our society. Robert E. Lee offers a strong example of the decline.
Once upon a time, when one considered Lee, eyes naturally lifted. So did the mind. That reverence is now under attack largely because a mountain is a mystery when one looks only at the low lands. Our generations tend to have eyes fixed on the ground; we appear incapable of viewing the heights. As a result, too many Americans have grown deaf to the silence of Robert E. Lee. That is sad, not for Lee, but for us.
The very words that Lee used�gentleman, honor, duty, and valor�have a quaint sound these days because they are unfamiliar terms. Cynics sneer that no one like Lee could have existed. They say this because no one like Lee exists now. Winston Churchill observed that there was about Lee �a quality of selflessness which raises him to the very highest rank of men � who have been concerned with the fortunes of nations.�
Here was a man who did not exult in victory or rationalize in defeat. At Chancellorsville, his greatest triumph, Lee stood among the cheers of his soldiers but his thoughts were of his wounded lieutenant, �Stonewall� Jackson. At Fredericksburg, he watched a Confederate victory that was close to a massacre and sighed: �It is well that war is so terrible; else we should grow too fond of it.� After the failure of the Pickett-Pettigrew assault at Gettysburg, Lee rode among the survivors and sought to reassure them by saying: �All this is my fault.� At Appomattox, he was most intent not about personal redemption but about what terms of surrender he could secure for his starved and exhausted army.
It was because of Lee that the Confederacy lived as long as it did. It is because of Lee that modern America lives at all. Trapped at Appomattox, Lee could have ordered his army to disperse, take to the hills, and wage guerrilla warfare. Such a strategy would have obliterated the American dream, and Lee would have none of it. The South had waged war honorably, he said. Just as honorably must the South accept defeat? Thus, in the last, indomitable act of his military career, Lee ordered the Army of Northern Virginia into history.
Lee was the one man, the only man, who could exercise decisive influence over a defeated Southern people; and from the day he affixed his signature to surrender documents, to that cold October morning five and a half years later when death came in Lexington, Lee�s course was as consistent as it was commendable.
Just weeks after the Civil War ended, Lee announced that the duty of all countrymen should be to �unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and to restore the blessings of peace.� Lee became the model of that conciliatory spirit. The general never wrote his memoirs: he felt no need to justify the course he had taken on behalf of his native state or his conduct as a commander in the field.
Nor would he re-fight the war to any measurable extent. He silently endured hateful attacks from those who thought him a traitor; he made no response to the vengefulness of a federal congress that refused to restore his citizenship. Lee accepted the verdict of arms as conclusive and would have no truck with those Southerners who assumed an irreconcilable attitude. To a mother complaining that her offspring wished to go north to college, Lee responded quietly: �Madame, forget your animosities, and make your sons Americans.�
He was�without a doubt�the icon of the Confederacy, the personification of all that had been good and courageous and noble about the Southern quest for independence. More importantly, Lee achieved victory in defeat by pointing the way for his own and subsequent ages toward a better, united country.
At his death in 1870, hundreds of tributes expectantly came from Southern states. However, expressions of admiration flowed as well from the North. None was as moving as the lines composed by Julia Ward Howe, the poet who had inspired Union soldiers with the stirring lyrics of �The Battle Hymn of the Republic.� Mrs. Howe said of Lee: �A gallant foeman in the fight / A brother when the fight was done / And so, thy soldier grave beside / we honor thee, Virginia�s son.�
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