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ROBERT E LEE

Robert Edward Lee was an American general. He was born in 1807 at Stratford, Virginia and died in 1870). The great general of the American Confederacy, he was the son of Henry Lee. He was graduated with high standing at West Point in 1829. In the Mexican War he served as chief engineer on the staff of General Wool, and was distinguished in the advance on the capital, especially at Chapultepec.

From 1852 to 1855 he was commandant at West Point. In 1859 he was sent against John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and he had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel by 1861. When his State seceded, Robert Lee resigned, on April the 20th, from the US army, accepted the command of the State forces, and in May was appointed a general in the Confederate army. For a year he was inconspicuously employed in Virginia and South Carolina.

The wounding of General J E Johnston at Fair Oaks, on May the31st, 1862, called Robert Lee to supreme command. Henceforth his history is that of the Army of Northern Virginia. He commanded in the Seven Days' battles, beat Pope at the second Battle of Bull Run, and immediately began his first invasion of the North. Chance revealed his plans to McClellan. His prestige was not impaired by the drawn battle of Antietam, and the army and its general gained new honours by the victories of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. His second invasion of the North resulted disastrously at the Battle of Gettysburg.

In the next year, 1864, he was pitted against Grant, whom he opposed stubbornly at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. The long siege of Petersburg and Richmond followed. Robert Lee's efforts to ward off the break-up of the Confederacy were unavailing. Compelled to evacuate Richmond on April the2nd, 1865, he sought to effect a junction with Johnston, but was hemmed in by Grant's army and forced to surrender at Appomattox on April the 9th. Soon afterward he became president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia (now Washington and Lee University), and remained there until his death.
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