Lee, Robert Edward

Robert Edward (1807-1870), an American soldier. He was a member of the famous Lee family of Virginia. The Lees were Cavaliers in the Old World, and supported the cause of the Stuarts and Governor Berkeley in the New. The Lees furnished two signers of the American Declaration of Independence and two representatives of the American colonies abroad. Henry Lee, known in his country as Light Horse Harry, was a match for the British Tarleton. Robert E. Lee, the subject of this sketch, was born in Westmoreland County, and received his elementary education in an academy at Alexandria. He completed the course at West Point in 1825. His conduct was a model of propriety. In scholarship he was second in his class. In 1832 he married Mary Custis, through whom he inherited the Arlington estates on the Potomac. He served in the Mexican War, making an excellent record. He entered as a captain. He was made major at Cerro Gordo, lieutenant-colonel at Churubusco, and colonel at Chapultepec. In 1852 he was made superintendent of the United States military academy at West Point. He saw service in the West in suppressing the Comanches, and had charge of the marines who took John Brown and his party prisoners at Harper's Ferry. When the Civil War came on he hoped that Virginia would not secede. President Lincoln offered him high command, but Lee sent in his resignation, feeling in duty bound to follow the flag of his native state. "With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty as an American citizen," wrote he, "I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home." After the war was over, he felt still that he had done right.

He was placed in command of the Virginia troops, and when that state joined the Confederacy he was given an important command. In 1862 he was assigned to the army of northern Virginia. He chased McClellan's army back from Richmond, routed Pope on the battlefield of Manassas, met McClellan at the battle of Antietam, and fought the battle of Fredericksburg. He suffered his great military reverse on the third day at Gettysburg. When Grant concentrated on Richmond for the last campaign with 275,000 well equipped and well fed men, Lee had but 70,000 ill provisioned troops, with which to oppose him; yet he fought the battles of the Wilderness and defended Richmond with a skill which won the admiration and the respect of his opponents. When his thin ranks had been reduced to the verge of starvation, and were literally in rags, he surrendered at Appomattox, April 9, 1865. When he rode into Richmond after the surrender, he received an ovation from the Federal soldiers such as they accorded only to favorites among their own generals.

Lee accepted the results of the war in good faith and strove to bring about a settled condition of affairs. Like Grant, he had no bitterness in his nature. In October of the same year he became president of Washington and Lee University at Lexington, a position which he held until his death. Virginia has ordered a statue of Lee, as one of two representative men, to be placed in the rotunda of the capitol at Washington. By North and by South alike, the choice is considered a fitting one.

See Jackson