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Always outnumbered but never outfought, Robert E. Lee was one of the most brilliant tacticians in American military history and the embodiment of Southern military prowess during the Civil War. The Confederate States of America could not have lasted as long as it did without his battlefield virtuosity.
For three years, he defied and outmaneuvered superior numbers of Union troops, though his Army of Northern Virginia was perpetually short of men, equipment, and supplies. Furthermore, Lee's humanity, high sense of duty, and utter selflessness made him a popular figure, respected in the North and revered throughout the South.
Robert Edward Lee was born in Stratford, Virginia. The third son of American Revolution hero Henry Lee, he gained appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1825 and graduated second in his class four years later without a single demerit. He fought in the Mexican-American War.
In 1859, while on a furlough home (from lieutenant colonel of the Second U.S. Cavalry), Lee was called on to suppress abolitionist John Brown's uprising at Harpers Ferry, which he did bloodlessly with a company of marines. Lee advanced to colonel of the First U.S. Cavalry and was commanding the Department of Texas in 1860 when the specter of civil war awakened a crisis of loyalties.
As a soldier, Lee supported neither secession nor slavery, but he felt deeply obliged to support his native state of Virginia. When President Abraham Lincoln offered him command of all federal armies, he respectfully declined and tendered his resignation in April 1861.
By May, he was made a lieutenant-general of Confederate forces by President Jefferson Davis. Lee relieved Union pressure on the Confederate capital of Richmond by dispatching Gen. Stonewall Jackson on his famed Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862.
His tactical trademark—a relentless series of hard-hitting and punishing attacks against the Union forces. The Union forces were never seriously defeated, and Confederate loses were heavy, but Lee had correctly gauged McClellan as overly cautious. Having gained the strategic initiative, Lee then carried the war north into Maryland, and on September 17, 1862, he fought McClellan again at the Battle of Antietam. The battle was a near disaster for the South, but Lee's army was saved by Union bungling and the last-minute appearance of Ambrose P. Hill's division.
It was the bloodiest single day of the entire Civil War, with 12,400 Union and 13,700 Confederate casualties, and a strategic defeat for the South. Nevertheless, when McClellan failed to pursue the enemy, Ambrose Burnside was appointed his successor. Burnside cornered Lee into strong defensive positions at Fredericksburg in December 1862.
He then resorted to unimaginative frontal assaults against entrenched Confederate positions and was repulsed with heavy losses. The year ended with the Army of Northern Virginia enjoying high morale, world renown, and an aura of invincibility. Lee himself had become an objective of veneration to his men and genuinely beloved.
The Battle of Chancellorsville was another major Confederate victory, but the gallant, strategically perceptive “Stonewall” Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men. For the rest of the war, Lee was forced to depend on less reliable subordinates and never had decisive victories.
Taking advantage of Union confusion and demoralization, Lee took the war north again into Pennsylvania. The contending armies collided at the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, but Lee, deprived of intelligence when Gen. J.E.B. Stuart took most of his cavalry on a deep raid, could not fight to advantage. Having lost the most decisive engagement of the Civil War, the high tide of the Confederacy had crested.
In the spring of 1864, Lee was confronted by a new adversary, Ulysses S. Grant, whose Army of the Potomac numbered 120,000. The Army of Northern Virginia scarcely mustered 60,000. When Grant advanced on Richmond, Lee bested him and Grant did not retreat. Union forces under Gen. William T. Sherman broke through Georgia and advanced on Lee from behind. The defeat in the fall of 1864 signaled the coming collapse of the Confederacy.
For nearly a year, Lee maintained his dwindling army in the trenches before Richmond and Petersburg. His position untenable, Lee abandoned Richmond and made a run for North Carolina to link up with Joseph E. Johnston's army. Grant, however, pursed vigorously and the Army of Northern Virginia was cut off by Sheridan's cavalry at Appomattox.
Lee, realizing the game was finally up, surrendered there with great dignity on April 9, 1865 to spare his ragged, hungry troops further bloodshed.
After the war, Lee turned down lucrative employment offers and served as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. He accepted defeat gracefully and urged his former compatriots to work for a restored Union. Following his death in Lexington, Virginia on October 12, 1870, the college renamed itself Washington and Lee University in tribute. His citizenship was officially restored by an act of Congress in 1975.
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