Who was Robert E. Lee?

Robert E. Lee was the commanding general of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia from June 1, 1862 to his surrender on April 9, 1865, and named general in chief of all Confederate armies on January 31, 1865, and is generally considered the most skilled Confederate general of the Civil War. He was born on January 19, 1807 at Stratford Hall plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the fifth child of Revolutionary War general Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee III. His father's bankruptcy and abandonment shaped his disciplined character. Lee graduated second in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1829 with no demerits, an exceptional record.

He served in the Army Corps of Engineers, fought with distinction in the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848 under General Winfield Scott, and was superintendent of West Point from 1852 to 1855. He was the federal officer in charge of suppressing John Brown's October 16 to 18, 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. When Virginia seceded in April 1861, Lee turned down command of the Union army on April 18, 1861 and instead resigned his commission on April 20, 1861. He took command of Virginia state forces and was named a Confederate general.

After his predecessor Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31, 1862, Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia. He drove General George B. McClellan from the Peninsula in the Seven Days Battles of June and July 1862, defeated the Union at Second Bull Run in August 1862, fought the bloodiest one day battle of the war at Antietam on September 17, 1862 (a tactical draw that forced him to retreat from Maryland), routed Union forces at Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, and won his greatest victory at Chancellorsville from May 1 to 4, 1863, although Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by friendly fire there. His invasion of Pennsylvania ended in defeat at Gettysburg from July 1 to 3, 1863.

After Grant became Union general in chief in March 1864, Lee fought the Overland Campaign, then settled into the long siege of Petersburg from June 1864 to April 1865. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

After the war Lee accepted the presidency of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia (now Washington and Lee University), where he served from October 1865 until his death from a stroke on October 12, 1870. He never sought a postwar political role. His legacy is contested: he was a brilliant tactician and personally honorable in many respects, but he fought to defend slavery, owned and at times brutally treated enslaved people, and his postwar reputation was shaped by Lost Cause mythology that downplayed slavery as the cause of the war.