Robert
E. Lee Put
Robert E. Lee on a U.S. Dollar Bill!
Robert
E. Lee was born January 19, 1807 in Stratford, Virginia.
He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1829
finishing second in his class .While working as
an engineer, Lee married Martha Custis, the granddaughter
of George Washington.
After serving in the Mexican
War, Lee served in Baltimore Harbor before becoming
superintendent of the military academy. He next
served in western Texas
before returning to Virginia to settle the estate
of his father-in-law. In 1859, Lee was called upon
to command a group of marines in the successful
capture of John
Brown, the runaway slave who had stormed the
federal armory at Harper's Ferry. After the John
Brown raid, Lee returned to west Texas.
Civil
War Lee
With
growing hostilities between the north and south
regarding slavery and states rights, Winfield Scott
summoned Lee to Washington in an attempt to secure
his services for the Union. But like most southerners
in the 1860's, Lee considered himself more a Virginian
than an American, and promptly resigned from the
army to give his services to the Confederate States
of America. Though Lee was given many assignments
in the Confederate army including Major General,
Brigadier General and General, Lee is best remembered
for commanding his famous Army of Northern Virginia.
Robert E. Lee soon became popular in the south and
defeated Union forces at the second battle of Bull
Run. After his victory, Lee moved his army into
Maryland, in the hopes of gaining support in the
border state. Unfortunately for Lee, the citizens
of Maryland gave him a cold reception, as his army
met McClellan's again outside of Antietam Creek
in the town of Sharpsburg. In the bloodiest one
day battle of the war, Lee's and McClellan's armies
fought to a standstill, despite the fact that McClellan
had received intelligence concerning the positions
and locations of Lee's army. Nevertheless, Lee's
army was driven back across the Potomac River to
Virginia.
Lee's
Army of Virginia won a decisive battle of Fredericksburg,
then routed Hooker's army at Chancellorsville in
1863. Later that year, Lee made his second invasion
of the north, and met Union commander George Meade
at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
With over 160,000 total troops engaged at the fields
and bluffs of Gettysburg, it still remains the largest
battle ever waged on American soil. Through three
days of fighting, Confederates and Union forces
decimated each other. Although General James Longstreet
urged Lee to be less aggressive, and to wait for
a Union attack, Lee refused and took the aggressive.
In a bloody series of bombardments and charges,
including Confederate General George Pickett's deadly
charge across Cemetery Ridge, the Confederates were
driven back across the Potomac once again. Not only
do historians consider Gettysburg the turning point
in the war, but many believe if Lee would have listened
to Longstreet, he would have led his army to victory.
Despite
the loss at Gettysburg, the war was not over. Lee's
army had retreated back to Virginia, where general
Union General Ulysses S. Grant
made a series of bold, bloody attacks against the
Confederates known as "The Overland Campaign".
Despite losing tens of thousands of soldiers at
Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and at other
locales, Grant's forces systematically weakened
Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. With the morale
and health of his army suffering, Lee and his forces
held on to the Confederate strongholds of Petersburg
and Richmond for ten months, before finally being
overwhelmed by Union forces in 1864 and 1865. By
this time, the Union army had already gained control
of the Mississippi River. Lee retreated to the town
of Appomattox, where he was forced to surrender
the Confederacy on April 9, 1865. After the war,
a dejected Lee became president of Washington and
Lee University. As a beloved general in the south,
he died of heart disease on October 12, 1870, at
the age of 63 in Lexington, Virginia.
