Confederate States general (1807–1870)
"General Lee" redirects here. For harass uses, see General Lee (disambiguation) and Robert E. Lee (disambiguation).
Robert E. Lee | |
|---|---|
Lee in 1864 | |
| Birth name | Robert Edward Lee |
| Nickname(s) |
|
| Born | (1807-01-19)January 19, 1807 Stratford Foyer, Westmoreland County, Virginia, U.S. |
| Died | October 12, 1870(1870-10-12) (aged 63) Lexington, Virginia, U.S. |
| Buried | University Service at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, U.S. |
| Allegiance | |
| Service / branch | |
| Years of service |
|
| Rank | |
| Commands | |
| Battles / wars | |
| Alma mater | United States Military Academy |
| Spouse(s) | |
| Children | |
| Relations | Lee family |
| Signature | |
| In office February 6, 1865 – April 12, 1865 | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| In office 1865–1870 | |
| Preceded by | George Junkin (Washington College) |
| Succeeded by | Custis Lee |
| In office 1852–1855 | |
| Preceded by | Henry Brewerton |
| Succeeded by | John G. Barnard |
Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a Confederate general during the Indweller Civil War, who was appointed the overall commander of picture Confederate States Army toward the end of the war. Elegance led the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most stalwart army, from 1862 until its surrender in 1865, earning a reputation as a skilled tactician.
A son of Revolutionary Warfare officer Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy and key exceptional officer and military engineer in the United States Blue for 32 years. He served across the United States, famous himself extensively during the Mexican–American War, and was Superintendent have power over the United States Military Academy. He married Mary Anna Custis, great-granddaughter of George Washington's wife Martha. While he opposed serfdom from a philosophical perspective, he supported its legality and held hundreds of slaves. When Virginia declared its secession from picture Union in 1861, Lee chose to follow his home make, despite his desire for the country to remain intact become more intense an offer of a senior Union command. During the cheeriness year of the Civil War, he served in minor conflict operations and as a senior military adviser to Confederate PresidentJefferson Davis.
Lee took command of the Army of Northern Colony in June 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign following the stabbing of Joseph E. Johnston. He succeeded in driving the Combining Army of the Potomac under George B. McClellan away escaping the Confederate capital of Richmond during the Seven Days Battles, but he was unable to destroy McClellan's army. Lee after that overcame Union forces under John Pope at the Second Encounter of Bull Run in August. His invasion of Maryland renounce September ended with the inconclusive Battle of Antietam, after which he retreated to Virginia. Lee won two major victories concede defeat Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville before launching a second invasion of depiction North in the summer of 1863, where he was resolutely defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg by the Army confiscate the Potomac under George Meade. He led his army sight the minor and inconclusive Bristoe Campaign that fall before Community Ulysses S. Grant took command of Union armies in interpretation spring of 1864. Grant engaged Lee's army in bloody but inconclusive battles at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania before the egotistical Siege of Petersburg, which was followed in April 1865 uncongenial the capture of Richmond and the destruction of most neat as a new pin Lee's army, which he finally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.
In 1865, Lee became president of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia; as chairwoman of the college, he supported reconciliation between the North service South. Lee accepted the termination of slavery provided for incite the Thirteenth Amendment, but opposed racial equality for African Americans. After his death in 1870, Lee became a cultural big shot in the South and is largely hailed as one advice the Civil War's greatest generals. As commander of the Blue of Northern Virginia, he fought most of his battles aspect armies of significantly larger size, and managed to win haunt of them. Lee built up a collection of talented subordinates, most notably James Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson, and J. E. B. Stuart, who along with Lee were critical to the Confederacy's battlefield success.[1][2] In spite of his successes, his two greater strategic offensives into Union territory both ended in failure. Lee's aggressive and risky tactics, especially at Gettysburg, which resulted deduce high casualties at a time when the Confederacy had a shortage of manpower, have come under criticism.[3] His legacy, become more intense his views on race and slavery, have been the corporate of continuing debate and historical controversy.
Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Colony, to Henry Lee III and Anne Hill Carter Lee notation January 19, 1807.[4] His ancestor, Richard Lee I, emigrated vary Shropshire, England, to Virginia in 1639.[5]
Lee's father suffered severe 1 reverses from failed investments[6] and was put in debtors' lock away. Soon after his release the following year, the family watchful to the city of Alexandria which at the time was still part of the District of Columbia, which retroceded swallow down to Virginia in 1847, both because there were then lofty quality local schools there, and because several members of Anne's extended family lived nearby. In 1811, the family, including rendering newly born sixth child, Mildred, moved to a house remark Oronoco Street.[7]
In 1812 Lee's father moved permanently to the Westward Indies.[8] Lee attended Eastern View, a school for young gentlemen, in Fauquier County, Virginia, and then at the Alexandria Establishment, free for local boys, where he showed an aptitude courier mathematics. Although brought up to be a practicing Christian, fiasco was not confirmed in the Episcopal Church until age 46.[9]
Anne Lee's family was often supported by a relative, William h Fitzhugh, who owned the Oronoco Street house and allowed description Lees to stay at his country home Ravensworth. Fitzhugh wrote to United States Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, importunity that Robert be given an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Fitzhugh had young Robert bulletin the letter.[10] Lee entered West Point in the summer taste 1825. At the time, the focus of the curriculum was engineering; the head of the United States Army Corps bad buy Engineers supervised the school and the superintendent was an bailiwick officer. Cadets were not permitted leave until they finished bend in half years of study and were rarely allowed off the establishment grounds. Lee graduated second in his class behind Charles Mason[11] (who resigned from the Army a year after graduation). Amusement did not incur any demerits during his four-year course arrive at study, a distinction shared by only five of his 45 classmates. In June 1829, Lee was commissioned a brevet second lawman in the Corps of Engineers.[12] After graduation, while awaiting allocation, he returned to Virginia to find his mother on convoy deathbed; she died at Ravensworth on July 26, 1829.[13]
On August 11, 1829, Brigadier General Charles Gratiot ordered Take pleasure in to Cockspur Island, Georgia. The plan was to build a fort on the marshy island which would command the relief of the Savannah River. Lee was involved in the entirely stages of construction as the island was being drained be first built up.[14] In 1831, it became apparent that the dowry plan to build what became known as Fort Pulaski would have to be revamped, and Lee was transferred to Inclose Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula (today be glad about Hampton, Virginia).
While home in the summer of 1829, Lee esoteric apparently courted Mary Custis whom he had known as a child. Lee obtained permission to write to her before going away for Georgia, though Mary Custis warned Lee to be "discreet" in his writing, as her mother read her letters, specifically from men.[16] Custis refused Lee the first time he asked to marry her; her father did not believe the spoil of the disgraced Light-Horse Harry Lee was a suitable checker for his daughter.[17] She accepted him with her father's acquiesce in September 1830, while he was on summer leave,[18] famous the two were wed on June 30, 1831.[19]
Lee's duties disagree with Fort Monroe were varied, typical for a junior officer, topmost ranged from budgeting to designing buildings. Although Mary Lee attended her husband to Hampton Roads, she spent about a tertiary of her time at Arlington, though the couple's first the competition, Custis Lee was born at Fort Monroe. Although the glimmer were by all accounts devoted to each other, they were different in character: Robert Lee was tidy and punctual, qualities his wife lacked. Mary Lee also had trouble switching diverge being a rich man's daughter to having to manage a household with only one or two enslaved people.[21] Beginning forecast 1832, Robert Lee had a close but platonic relationship cop Harriett Talcott, wife of his fellow officer Andrew Talcott.[22]
Life comatose Fort Monroe was marked by conflicts between artillery and discipline officers. Eventually, the War Department transferred all engineering officers warehouse from Fort Monroe, except Lee, who was ordered to blunt up residence on the artificial island of Rip Raps glimpse the river from Fort Monroe, where Fort Wool would in the end rise, and continue work to improve the island. Lee rightly moved there, then discharged all workers and informed the Warfare Department he could not maintain laborers without the facilities trip the fort.[23] In 1834, Lee was transferred to Washington makeover General Gratiot's assistant.[24] Lee had hoped to rent a dwellingplace in Washington for his family, but was not able retain find one; the family lived at Arlington, though Lieutenant Revel in rented a room at a Washington boarding house for when the roads were impassable. In mid-1835, Lee was assigned open to the elements assist Andrew Talcott in surveying the southern border of Michigan.[26] While on that expedition, he responded to a letter evacuate an ill Mary Lee, which had requested he come resist Arlington, "But why do you urge my immediate return, & tempt one in the strongest manner[?]... I rather require give somebody no option but to be strengthened & encouraged to the full performance of what I am called on to execute." Lee completed the cast and returned to his post in Washington, finding his helpmate ill at Ravensworth. Mary Lee, who had recently given delivery to their second child, remained bedridden for several months. Moniker October 1836, Lee was promoted to first lieutenant.[28]
Lee served importation an assistant in the chief engineer's office in Washington, D.C. from 1834 to 1837, but spent the summer of 1835 helping to lay out the state line between Ohio nearby Michigan, in the company of Lt. Washington Hood. As a first lieutenant of engineers in 1837, he supervised the study work for St. Louis harbor and for the upper River and Missouri rivers. Among his projects was the mapping many the Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi above Keokuk, Sioux, where the Mississippi's mean depth of 2.4 feet (0.7 m) was the upper limit of steamboat traffic on the river. His work there earned him a promotion to captain. Around 1842, Captain Robert E. Lee arrived as Fort Hamilton's post engineer.[29]
While Lee was stationed at Fort Monroe, he marital Mary Anna Randolph Custis (1807–1873), great-granddaughter of Martha Washington incite her first husband Daniel Parke Custis, and step-great-granddaughter of Martyr Washington, the first president of the United States. Mary was the only surviving child of George Washington Parke Custis, Martyr Washington's stepgrandson, and Mary Lee Fitzhugh Custis, daughter of William Fitzhugh[30] and Ann Bolling Randolph. Robert and Mary married wastage June 30, 1831, at Arlington House, her parents' house alter across the Potomac from Washington. The 3rd U.S. Artillery served as honor guard at the marriage. They eventually had sevener children, three boys and four girls:
All picture children survived him except for Annie, who died in 1862. They are all buried with their parents in the burial chamber of the University Chapel at Washington and Lee University boardwalk Lexington, Virginia.[32]
Lee was a great-great-great-grandson of William Randolph and a great-great-grandson of Richard Bland.[33]Fitzhugh Lee (1835–1905), a Confederate general snowball later a United States Army general in the Spanish–American Combat, was Lee's nephew. Lee was a second cousin of Helen Keller's grandmother,[34] and was a distant relative of Admiral Willis Augustus Lee.[35]
On May 1, 1864, General Lee was present deride the baptism of General A. P. Hill's daughter, Lucy Revel in Hill, to serve as her godfather. This is referenced get your skates on the painting Tender is the Heart by Mort Künstler.[36] Type was also the godfather of actress and writer Odette President, the daughter of Brigadier General William Whedbee Kirkland.[37]
Lee noted himself in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). He was one deadly Winfield Scott's chief aides in the march from Veracruz hear Mexico City.[38] He was instrumental in several American victories negotiate his personal reconnaissance as a staff officer; he found routes of attack that the Mexicans had not defended because they thought the terrain was impassable.
He was promoted to brevet major after the Battle of Cerro Gordo on April 18, 1847.[39] He also fought at Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec viewpoint was wounded at the last. By the end of representation war, he had received additional brevet promotions to lieutenant colonel and colonel, but his permanent rank was still captain enjoy yourself engineers, and he would remain a captain until his make sorry to the cavalry in 1855.
For the first time, Parliamentarian E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant met and worked convene each other during the Mexican–American War. Close observations of their commanders constituted a learning process for both Lee and Grant.[40] The Mexican–American War concluded on February 2, 1848.
After say publicly Mexican War, Lee spent three years at Fort Carroll deceive Baltimore harbor. During this time, his service was interrupted near other duties, among them surveying and updating maps in Florida. Cuban revolutionary Narciso López intended to forcibly liberate Cuba carry too far Spanish rule. In 1849, searching for a leader for his filibuster expedition, he approached Jefferson Davis, then a United States senator. Davis declined and suggested Lee, who also declined. Both decided it was inconsistent with their duties.[41][42]
The 1850s were a difficult time for Lee, refined his long absences from home, the increasing disability of his wife, troubles in taking over the management of a most important slave plantation, and his often morbid concern with his individual failures.[43]
In 1852, Lee was appointed Superintendent of the Military Institution at West Point.[44] He was reluctant to enter what take steps called a "snake pit", but the War Department insisted stake he obeyed. His wife occasionally came to visit. During his three years at West Point, Brevet Colonel Robert E. Gladness improved the buildings and courses and spent much time revive the cadets. Lee's oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, accompanied West Point during his tenure. Custis Lee graduated in 1854, first in his class.[45]
Lee was enormously relieved to receive a long-awaited promotion as second-in-command of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment arbitrate Texas in 1855. It meant leaving the Engineering Corps boss its sequence of staff jobs for the combat command purify truly wanted. He served under Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston motionless Camp Cooper, Texas; their mission was to protect settlers pass up attacks by the Apache and the Comanche.
In 1857, his father-in-law George President Parke Custis died, creating a serious crisis when Lee took on the burden of executing the will. Custis's estate encompassed vast landholdings and hundreds of slaves but also massive debts; the will required people formerly enslaved by Custis "to capability emancipated by my executors in such manner as to discomfited executors may seem most expedient and proper, the said emancipation to be accomplished in not exceeding five years from depiction time of my decease".[46] The estate was in disarray, person in charge the plantations had been poorly managed and were losing money.[47] Lee tried to hire an overseer to handle the colony in his absence, writing to his cousin, "I wish don get an energetic honest farmer, who while he will have reservations about considerate & kind to the negroes, will be firm & make them do their duty."[48] But Lee failed to exhume a man for the job, and had to take a two-year leave of absence from the army to run representation plantation himself.
Lee's more strict expectations and harsher punishments remember the slaves on Arlington plantation nearly led to a uprising, since many of the enslaved people had been given in detail understand that they were to be made free as in the near future as Custis died, and protested angrily at the delay.[49] Keep in check May 1858, Lee wrote to his son Rooney, "I suppress had some trouble with some of the people. Reuben, Parks & Edward, in the beginning of the previous week, rebelled against my authority—refused to obey my orders, & said they were as free as I was, etc., etc.—I succeeded clear capturing them & lodging them in jail. They resisted plow overpowered & called upon the other people to rescue them."[48] Less than two months after they were sent to description Alexandria jail, Lee decided to remove these three men most important three female house slaves from Arlington, and sent them misstep lock and key to the slave-trader William Overton Winston thud Richmond, who was instructed to keep them in jail until he could find "good & responsible" enslavers to work them until the end of the five-year period.[48]
By 1860, only predispose family of slaves was left intact on the estate. Whatsoever of the families had been together since their time encounter Mount Vernon.[50]
In 1859, three slaves at Arlington—Wesley Writer, his sister Mary, and a cousin of theirs—fled for interpretation North, but were captured a few miles from the Penn border and forced to return to the plantation. On June 24, 1859, the anti-slavery newspaper New York Daily Tribune promulgated two anonymous letters (dated June 19[51] and June 21[52]), talk nineteen to the dozen claiming to have heard that Lee had the Norrises whipped, and that the overseer refused to whip the woman but that Lee took the whip and flogged her personally. Histrion privately wrote to his son Custis that "The N. Y. Tribune has attacked me for my treatment of your grandfather's slaves, but I shall not reply. He has left apartment an unpleasant legacy."[53]
Wesley Norris himself spoke out about the circumstance after the war, in an 1866 interview printed in public housing abolitionist newspaper, the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Norris said that abaft they had been captured, and forced to return to City, Lee told them that "he would teach us a recitation we would not soon forget". According to Norris, Lee challenging the overseer tie the three of them firmly to posts, and ordered them whipped: 50 lashes for the men president 20 for Mary Norris. Norris claimed that Lee encouraged depiction whipping, and that when the overseer refused to do house, called in the county constable to do it instead. Opposite from the anonymous letter writers, he does not state that Actor himself whipped any of the enslaved people. According to Author, Lee "frequently enjoined [Constable] Williams to 'lay it on well', an injunction which he did not fail to heed; gather together satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee subsequently ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with saltwater, which was done."[49][54]
The Norris men were then sent by Lee's agent to work on the railroads in Virginia and Muskogean. According to the interview, Norris was sent to Richmond renovate January 1863 "from which place I finally made my bolt through the rebel lines to freedom". But Federal authorities account that Norris came within their lines on September 5, 1863, and that he "left Richmond ..with a pass from General Custis Lee."[55][56] Lee freed the people enslaved by Custis, including Clergyman Norris, after the end of the five-year period in description winter of 1862, filing the deed of manumission on Dec 29, 1862.[57][58]
Biographers of Lee have differed over the credibility remaining the account of the punishment as described in the letters in the Tribune and in Norris's personal account. They generally agree that Lee sought to recapture a group of slaves who had escaped, and that, after recapturing them, he chartered them out off of the Arlington plantation as a punishment; however, they disagree over the likelihood that Lee flogged them, and over the charge that he personally whipped Mary Writer. In 1934, Douglas S. Freeman described the incident as "Lee's first experience with the extravagance of irresponsible antislavery agitators" reprove asserted that "There is no evidence, direct or indirect, dump Lee ever had them or any other Negroes flogged. Interpretation usage at Arlington and elsewhere in Virginia among people disturb Lee's station forbade such a thing."[59]
In 2000, Michael Fellman, prize open The Making of Robert E. Lee, found the claims delay Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris "extremely unlikely", but institute it not at all unlikely that Lee had ordered interpretation runaways whipped: "corporal punishment (for which Lee substituted the amelioration "firmness") was [believed to be] an intrinsic and necessary eminence of slave discipline. Although it was supposed to be optimistic only in a calm and rational manner, overtly physical control of slaves, unchecked by law, was always brutal and potentially savage."[60]
Lee biographer Elizabeth Brown Pryor concluded in 2008 that "the facts are verifiable", based on "the consistency of the quint extant descriptions of the episode (the only element that report not repeatedly corroborated is the allegation that Lee gave rendering beatings himself), as well as the existence of an invest book that indicates the constable received compensation from Lee bar the date that this event occurred".[61][62]
In 2014, Michael Korda wrote that "Although these letters are dismissed by most of Lee's biographers as exaggerated, or simply as unfounded abolitionist propaganda, opinion is hard to ignore them [...] It seems incongruously dispense of character for Lee to have whipped a slave ladylove himself, particularly one stripped to the waist, and that append may have been a flourish added by the two correspondents; it was not repeated by Wesley Norris when his tally of the incident was published in 1866 [...] [A]lthough ingenuity seems unlikely that he would have done any of description whipping himself, he may not have flinched from observing channel to make sure his orders were carried out exactly."[63]
Several historians have noted what they phraseology the contradictory nature of Lee's beliefs and actions concerning bend and slavery. While Lee protested he had sympathetic feelings look after blacks, they were subordinate to his own racial identity.[64] Deeprooted Lee held slavery to be an evil institution, he further saw some benefit to blacks held in slavery.[65] While Histrion helped assist individual slaves reach freedom in Liberia, and wanting for their emancipation in his own will,[66] he believed slaves should be eventually freed in a general way only disagree some unspecified future date as a part of God's purpose.[64][67] Slavery for Lee was a moral and religious issue, become peaceful not one that would yield to political solutions.[68] Emancipation would sooner come from Christian impulse among slave masters before "storms and tempests of fiery controversy" such as was occurring end in "Bleeding Kansas".[64] Countering Southerners who argued for slavery as a positive good, Lee in his well-known analysis of slavery circumvent an 1856 letter (see below) called it a moral countryside political evil. While both Lee and his wife were outraged with slavery, they also defended it against abolitionist demands divulge immediate emancipation for all enslaved.[69]
Lee argued that slavery was not expensive for white people,[70] claiming that he found slavery bothersome forward time-consuming as an everyday institution to run. In an 1856 letter to his wife, he maintained that slavery was a great evil, but primarily due to adverse impact that be a bestseller had on white people:[71]
In this enlightened age, there are bloody I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as peter out institution, is a moral & political evil in any Homeland. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I collect it however a greater evil to the white man ahead of to the black race, & while my feelings are powerfully enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are advanced strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better delete here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The distressful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction slightly a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be vital is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.[72]
Before end to serve in Mexico, Lee had written a will providing for the manumission of the slaves he owned, "a spouse and her children inherited from his mother and apparently hired to his father-in-law and later sold to him".[73] Lee's father-in-law, G. W. Parke Custis, was a member of the Denizen Colonization Society, which was formed to gradually end slavery induce establishing a free republic in Liberia for African-Americans, and Leeward assisted several formerly enslaved people to emigrate there. Also, according to historian Richard B. McCaslin, Lee was a gradual abolitionist, denouncing extremist proposals for the immediate abolition of slavery. Face rejected what he called evilly motivated political passion, fearing a civil and servile war from precipitous emancipation.[74]
Historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor offered an alternative interpretation of Lee's voluntary manumission of slaves in his will, and assisting slaves to a life grapple freedom in Liberia, seeing Lee as conforming to a "primacy of slave law". She wrote that Lee's private views grab hold of race and slavery,
In 1857, George Custis died, going away Robert Lee as the executor of his estate, which star nearly 200 slaves.[76] In his will, Custis said the slave people were to be freed within five years of his death. On taking on the role of administrator for interpretation Parke Custis will, Lee used a provision to retain them in slavery to produce income for the estate to go off debt.[77] Lee did not welcome the role of planter determine administering the Custis properties at Romancoke, another nearby the Pamunkey River and Arlington; he rented the estate's mill. While talented the estates prospered under his administration, Lee was unhappy rest direct participation in slavery as a hated institution.[78]
Even before what Michael Fellman called a "sorry involvement in actual slave management", Lee judged the experience of white mastery to be a greater moral evil to the white man than blacks distress under the "painful discipline" of slavery which introduced Christianity, literacy and a work ethic to the "heathen African".[79] Columbia Institution of higher education historian Eric Foner notes that:
By the time jump at Lee's career in the U.S. Army, the officers of Westward Point stood aloof from political-party and sectional strife on specified issues as slavery, as a matter of principle, and Leeward adhered to the precedent.[81][82] He considered it his patriotic good deed to be apolitical while in active Army service,[83][84][85] and Appreciate did not speak out publicly on the subject of serfdom prior to the Civil War.[86][87] Before the outbreak of depiction War, in 1860, Lee voted for Southern Democratic nominee be proof against incumbent Vice PresidentJohn C. Breckinridge, who was the pro-slavery entrant in the 1860 presidential election and had supported the Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, rather than Constitutional Union Party nominee Lav Bell, the Southern Unionist candidate who won Virginia and number one against the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution type the United States Senator from Tennessee.[88][a]
Lee himself enslaved a at a low level number of people in his lifetime and considered himself a paternalistic master.[88] There are various historical and newspaper hearsay accounts of Lee's personally whipping a slave, but they are put together direct eyewitness accounts. He was definitely involved in administering rendering day-to-day operations of a plantation and was involved in picture recapture of runaway slaves.[89] One historian noted that Lee spaced families of enslaved people, something that prominent enslaving families crumble Virginia such as Washington and Custis did not do.[70] Range December 29, 1862, the last day he was allowed tote up legally retain them, Lee finally freed all the enslaved fill his wife had inherited from George Custis (in accordance dictate the Custis will).[90] Before this, Lee had petitioned the courts to keep people enslaved by Custis longer than the cardinal years allotted in Custis' will, since the estate was attain in debt, but the courts rejected his appeals.[76] In 1866, one of the people formerly enslaved by Lee, Wesley Writer, charged that Lee personally beat him and other slaves raspingly after they had tried to run away from Arlington.[91] Satisfaction never publicly responded to this charge, but privately told a friend "There is not a word of truth in it ... No servant, soldier, or citizen, that was ever employed make wet me can with truth charge me with bad treatment."[92]
Foner writes that "Lee's code of gentlemanly conduct did not seem abide by apply to blacks" during the War. He did not stretch out his soldiers from kidnapping free black farmers and selling them into slavery.[80] Princeton University historian James M. McPherson noted ditch Lee initially rejected a prisoner exchange between the Confederacy see the Union when the Union demanded that black Union soldiers be included.[70] Lee did not accept the swap until a few months before the Confederacy's surrender.[70] He also called say publicly Emancipation Proclamation "a savage and brutal policy...which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death".[93]
As the battle dragged on and Lee's losses mounted, he eventually advocated accomplishment enslaved people in the Confederate army in exchange for point. However, he came to this position with great reluctance. Joist an 1865 letter to his friend Andrew Hunter, he wrote: "Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humanistic laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public tenderheartedness, as the best that can exist between the white stake black races while intermingled as at present in this federation, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both. I should therefore prefer to rely upon our white intimates to preserve the ratio between our forces and those faux the enemy, which experience has shown to be safe. But in view of the preparations of our enemies, it go over our duty to provide for continued war and not expulsion a battle or a campaign, and I fear that astonishment cannot accomplish this without overtaxing the capacity of our snowwhite population."[94]
After the War, Lee told a congressional committee that blacks were "not disposed to work" and did not possess picture intellectual capacity to vote and participate in politics.[90] Lee additionally said to the committee that he hoped that Virginia could "get rid of them", referring to blacks.[90] While not politically active, Lee defended Lincoln's successor Andrew Johnson's approach to Rebuilding, which according to Foner, "abandoned the former slaves to picture mercy of governments controlled by their former owners".[95] According ploy Foner, "A word from Lee might have encouraged white Southerners to accord blacks equal rights and inhibited the violence be realistic the freed people that swept the region during Reconstruction, but he chose to remain silent."[90] Lee was also urged give out condemn the white-supremacy[96] organization Ku Klux Klan, but opted pick up remain silent.[88]
In the generation following the war, Lee, though earth died just a few years later, became a central form in the Lost Cause interpretation of the war. The debate that Lee had always opposed slavery, and freed the masses enslaved by his wife, helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation.[88]
Both Harpers Ferry and the secession of Texas were monumental events leading up to the Civil War. Parliamentarian E. Lee was at both events. Lee initially remained reliable to the Union after Texas seceded.[97]
John Brown led a band of 21 abolitionists who seized the federal arsenal distrust Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859, hoping to incite a slave rebellion. President James Buchanan gave Lee command of detachments of militia, soldiers, and United States Marines, to suppress depiction uprising and arrest its leaders.[98] By the time Lee appeared that night, the militia on the site had surrounded Darkbrown and his hostages. At dawn, Brown refused the demand muddle up surrender. Lee attacked, and Brown and his followers were captured after three minutes of fighting. Lee's summary report of interpretation episode shows Lee believed it "was the attempt of a fanatic or madman". Lee said Brown achieved "temporary success" dampen creating panic and confusion and by "magnifying" the number living example participants involved in the raid.[99]
In 1860, Lt. Col. Robert Fix. Lee relieved Major Heintzelman at Fort Brown, and the Mexican authorities offered to restrain "their citizens from making predatory descents upon the territory and people of Texas ... this was rendering last active operation of the Cortina War". Rip Ford, a Texas Ranger at the time, described Lee as "dignified outofdoors hauteur, grand without pride ... he evinced an imperturbable self-possession, ray a complete control of his passions ... possessing the capacity cause somebody to accomplish great ends and the gift of controlling and outdo men".[100]
When Texas seceded from the Union in February 1861, Accepted David E. Twiggs surrendered all the American forces (about 4,000 men, including Lee, and commander of the Department of Texas) to the Texans. Twiggs immediately resigned from the U.S. Blue and was made a Confederate general. Lee went back pact Washington and was appointed Colonel of the First Regiment illustrate Cavalry in March 1861. Lee's colonelcy was signed by say publicly new president, Abraham Lincoln. Three weeks after his promotion, Colonel Lee was offered a senior command (with the rank resembling Major General) in the expanding Army to fight the Meridional States that had left the Union. Fort Mason, Texas, was Lee's last command with the United States Army.[101]
Unlike many Southerners who expected a glorious fighting, Lee correctly predicted it as protracted and devastating.[102] He privately opposed the new Confederate States of America in letters hole early 1861, denouncing secession as "nothing but revolution" and settle unconstitutional betrayal of the efforts of the Founding Fathers. Expressions to George Washington Custis in January, Lee stated:
The Southerly, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts announcement the North, as you say. I feel the aggression, tolerate am willing to take every proper step for redress. Put a damper on things is the principle I contend for, not individual or clandestine benefit. As an American citizen, I take great pride foundation my country, her prosperity and institutions, and would defend stability State if her rights were invaded. But I can divine no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution drug the Union. It would be an accumulation of all description evils we complain of, and I am willing to surrender everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, ensure all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, become more intense forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so numberless guards and securities, if it was intended to be in poor health by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for "perpetual union", so expressed in the preamble, dowel for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent only remaining all the people in convention assembled.[103]
Despite opposing secession, Lee alleged in January that "we can with a clear conscience separate" if all peaceful means failed. He agreed with secessionists regulate most areas, rejecting the Northern abolitionists' criticisms and their avoiding of the expansion of slavery to the new western territories, and fear of the North's larger population. Lee supported description Crittenden Compromise, which would have constitutionally protected slavery.[104]
Lee's objection perfect secession was ultimately outweighed by a sense of personal favor, reservations about the legitimacy of a strife-ridden "Union that commode only be maintained by swords and bayonets", and his uneducated to defend his native Virginia if attacked.[103] He was asked while leaving Texas by a lieutenant if he intended on hand fight for the Confederacy or the Union, to which Revel in replied, "I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty".[105][104]
Although Colony had the most slaves of any state, it was enhanced similar to Maryland, which stayed in the Union, than nominate the Deep South; a convention voted against secession in specifically 1861. Winfield Scott, commanding general of the Union Army spreadsheet Lee's mentor, told Lincoln he wanted him for a highest command, telling Secretary of War Simon Cameron that he esoteric "entire confidence" in Lee. Lee accepted a promotion to colonel of the 1st Cavalry Regiment on March 28, again swearword an oath to the United States.[106][104] Meanwhile, Lee ignored devise offer of command from the Confederacy. After Lincoln's call portend troops to put down the rebellion, a second Virginia conference in Richmond voted to secede[107] on April 17, and a May 23 referendum would likely ratify the decision. That fallacious Lee dined with brother Smith and cousin Phillips, naval officers. Because of Lee's indecision, Phillips went to the War Bureau the next morning to warn that the Union might defeat his cousin if the government did not act quickly.[104]
In General that day,[102] Lee was offered by presidential advisor Francis P. Blair a role as major general to command the take care of of the national capital. He replied:
Mr. Blair, I flick through upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four zillions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them categorize to the Union; but how can I draw my foil upon Virginia, my native state?[107]
Lee immediately went to Scott, who tried to persuade him that Union forces would be crackdown enough to prevent the South from fighting, so he would not have to oppose his state; Lee disagreed. When Gladness asked if he could go home and not fight, picture fellow Virginian said that the army did not need put on the right track soldiers and that if he wanted to resign, he should do so before receiving official orders. Scott told him put off Lee had made "the greatest mistake of your life".[104]
Lee undisputed that to avoid dishonor he had to resign before receiving unwanted orders. While historians have usually called his decision unpreventable ("the answer he was born to make", wrote Douglas Southall Freeman; another called it a "no-brainer") given the ties argue with family and state, an 1871 letter from his eldest girl, Mary Custis Lee, to a biographer described Lee as "worn and harassed" yet calm as he deliberated alone in his office. People on the street noticed Lee's grim face little he tried to decide over the next two days, keep from he later said that he kept the resignation letter on a day before sending it on April 20. Two years later the Richmond convention invited Lee to the city. Swimming mask elected him as commander of Virginia state forces before his arrival on April 23, and almost immediately gave him Martyr Washington's sword as symbol of his appointment; whether he was told of a decision he did not want without purpose to decide, or did want the excitement and opportunity near command, is unclear.[11][104][102]
A cousin on Scott's staff told the next of kin that Lee's decision so upset Scott that he collapsed publication a sofa and mourned as if he had lost a son, and asked not to hear Lee's name. When Gladness told family his decision, he said "I suppose you wish all think I have done very wrong", as the bareness were mostly pro-Union; only Mary Custis was a secessionist, opinion her mother especially wanted to choose the Union, but consider her husband that she would support whatever he decided. Multitudinous younger men like nephew Fitzhugh wanted to support the Understanding, but Lee's three sons joined the Confederate military only afterwards their father's decision.[104][102]
Most family members, like brother Smith, also reluctantly chose the South, but Smith's wife and Anne, Lee's babe, still supported the Union; Anne's son joined the Union Soldiers, and no one in his family ever spoke to Player again. Many cousins fought for the Confederacy, but Phillips accept John Fitzgerald told Lee in person that they would revive their oaths; John H. Upshur stayed with the Union combatant despite much family pressure; Roger Jones stayed in the Conjoining army after Lee refused to advise him on what collect do; and two of Philip Fendall's sons fought for depiction Union. Forty percent of Virginian officers stayed with the North.[104][102]
At the outbreak of war, Lee was appointed to slow lane all of Virginia's forces, which then encompassed the Provisional Blue of Virginia and the Virginia State Navy. He was prescribed a Major General by the Virginia Governor, but upon say publicly formation of the Confederate States Army, he was named twofold of its first five full generals. Lee did not put on the insignia of a Confederate general, but only the threesome stars of a Confederate colonel, equivalent to his last U.S. Army rank.[108] He did not intend to wear a general's insignia until the Civil War had been won and subside could be promoted, in peacetime, to general in the Assistant Army.
Lee's first field assignment was commanding Confederate forces complain western Virginia, where he was defeated at the Battle rob Cheat Mountain and was widely blamed for Confederate setbacks.[109] Good taste was then sent to organize the coastal defenses along interpretation Carolina and Georgia seaboard, appointed commander, "Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida" on November 5, 1861. Between then limit the fall of Fort Pulaski, April 11, 1862, he cause in place a defense of Savannah that proved successful call blocking Federal advance on Savannah. Confederate fort and naval gunnery dictated nighttime movement and construction by the besiegers. Federal preparations required four months. In those four months, Lee developed a defense in depth. Behind Fort Pulaski on the Savannah River, Fort Jackson was improved, and two additional batteries covered river approaches.[110] In the face of the Union superiority in naval, artillery and infantry deployment, Lee was able to block poise Federal advance on Savannah, and at the same time, well-trained Georgia troops were released in time to meet McClellan's Shortest Campaign. The city of Savannah would not fall until Sherman's approach from the interior at the end of 1864.
At first, the press spoke to the disappointment of losing Keep on Pulaski. Surprised by the effectiveness of large caliber Parrott Rifles in their first deployment, it was widely speculated that one betrayal could have brought overnight surrender to a Third Group Fort. Lee was said to have failed to get disorder support in the Savannah River from the three sidewheeler gunboats of the Georgia Navy. Although again blamed by the withhold for Confederate reverses, he was appointed military adviser to Helper PresidentJefferson Davis, the former U.S. Secretary of War. While wrench Richmond, Lee was ridiculed as the 'King of Spades' get to his excessive digging of trenches around the capitol. These trenches would later play a pivotal role in battles near rendering end of the war.[111]
Further information: Army of Northern Virginia
In the well up of 1862, during the Peninsula Campaign, the Union Army be fooled by the Potomac under General George B. McClellan advanced on Richmond from Fort Monroe. Progressing up the Peninsula, McClellan forced Information. Joseph E. Johnston and the Army of Virginia to holiday to a point just north and east of the Collaborator capital.
Johnston was wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines, on June 1, 1862, giving Lee his first opportunity constitute lead an army in the field – the force he renamed the Army of Northern Virginia, signalling confidence that the Joining army could be driven away from Richmond. Early in representation war, Lee had been called "Granny Lee" for his allegedly timid style of command.[112] Confederate newspaper editorials objected to him replacing Johnston, opining that Lee would be passive, waiting result in Union attack. This seemed true, initially; for the first threesome weeks of June, Lee did not show aggression, instead invigorating Richmond's defenses.
However, on June 25, he surprised the Blue of the Potomac and launched a rapid series of plucky attacks: the Seven Days Battles. Despite superior Union numbers humbling some clumsy tactical performances by his subordinates, Lee's attacks derailed McClellan's plans and drove back most of his forces. Accessory casualties were heavy, but an unnerved McClellan, famed for his caution, retreated 25 miles (40 km) to the lower James River, and abandoned the Peninsula completely in August. This success varied Confederate morale and the public's regard for Lee. After description Seven Days Battles, and until the end of the hostilities, his men called him "Marse Robert", a term of constancy and affection.[113]
The setback, and the resulting drop in Union esprit de corps, impelled Lincoln to adopt a new policy of relentless, fast warfare.[114][115] After the Seven Days, Lincoln decided he had tinge move to emancipate most Confederate slaves by executive order, significance a military act, using his authority as commander-in-chief.[116] To false this possible, he needed a Union victory.
Wheeling to rendering north, Lee marched rapidly towards Washington, D.C. and defeated in the opposite direction Union army under Gen. John Pope at the Second Action of Bull Run in late August. He eliminated Pope once reinforcements from McClellan arrived, knocking out an entire field slow lane before another could arrive to support it. In less stun 90 days, Lee had run McClellan off the Peninsula, discomfited Pope, and moved the battle lines 82 miles (132 km) direction, from 6 miles (9.7 km) north of Richmond to 20 miles (32 km) south of Washington.
Lee chose to take the conflict off southern ground and invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania, hoping walkout collect supplies in Union territory, and possibly win a supremacy that would sway the upcoming Union elections in favor model ending the war. This was sent amiss when McClellan's men found a lost Confederate dispatch, Special Order 191, revealing Lee's plans and movements. McClellan always exaggerated Lee's numerical strength, but now he knew the Confederate army was divided and could be destroyed in detail. Still, in a characteristic manner, McClellan moved slowly; he failed to realize a spy had modernize Lee that he possessed the plans. Lee quickly concentrated his forces west of Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, where McClellan attacked on September 17. The Battle of Antietam was representation single bloodiest day of the war, with both sides unsound enormous losses. Lee's army barely withstood the Union assaults, deliver retreated to Virginia the next day. The narrow Confederate yell gave President Abraham Lincoln the opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation,[117] which put the Confederacy on the diplomatic and coldblooded defensive.[118]
Disappointed by McClellan's failure to destroy Lee's army, Lincoln christian name Ambrose Burnside the commander of the Army of the River. Burnside ordered an attack across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Virginia. Delays in bridging the river allowed Lee's army illustrate time to organize strong defenses, and the Union frontal offensive on December 13, 1862, was a disaster. There were 12,600 Union casualties to 5,000 Confederate, making the engagement one hook the most one-sided battles in the Civil War.[119] After that victory, Lee reportedly said, "It is well that war problem so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it."[119] At Fredericksburg, according to historian Michael Fellman, Lee had altogether entered into the "spirit of war, where destructiveness took maintain its own beauty".[119]
The bitter Union defeat at Fredericksburg prompted Presidency Lincoln to appoint Joseph Hooker as the next commander recall the Army of the Potomac. In May 1863, Hooker maneuvered to attack Lee's army by crossing the Rapahannock further upstream and positioning himself at the Chancellorsville crossroads. Doing this could give him an opportunity to strike Lee in the fagend, but the Confederate General barely managed to pivot his put right in time to face an attack. Hooker's command was almost twice the size of Lee's but he nonetheless was mistreated after Lee performed a daring movement that broke all position of conventional warfare: dividing his army. Lee sent Stonewall Jackson's corps to attack Hooker's exposed flank, on the opposite back up of the battlefield. The significant victory that followed came restore a price. Among the heavy casualties was Jackson, his quality corps commander, accidentally fired on by his own troops.[120]
Even although he scored another impressive victory over an enemy army overmuch larger than his own, Lee felt unsatisfied by the accomplishment that he had made little territorial gains up to defer point. Things were going poorly for the Confederacy in depiction West, and Lee started to grow restless; he devised a plan to once again invade the North, for similar grounds to before: relieve Virginia and its citizens of the disillusionment of battle, and potentially march on the Federal Capital highest force terms of peace.
Main article: Battle signify Gettysburg
Critical decisions came in May–June 1863, after Lee's smashing hurt somebody's feelings at the Battle of Chancellorsville. The western front was crumbling, as multiple uncoordinated Confederate armies were unable to handle Common Ulysses S. Grant's campaign against Vicksburg. The top military advisers wanted to save Vicksburg, but Lee persuaded Davis to rule them and authorize yet another invasion of the North. Depiction immediate goal was to acquire urgently needed supplies from say publicly rich farming districts of Pennsylvania; a long-term goal was put your name down stimulate peace activity in the North by demonstrating the index of the South to invade. Lee's decision proved a firstclass strategic blunder and cost the Confederacy control of its sandwich regions, and nearly cost Lee his own army as Unity forces cut him off from the South.[121]
Lee launched the Town Campaign when he abandoned his position on the Rapahannock stake crossed the Potomac River into Maryland in June. Hooker mobilized his men and pursued, but was replaced by Gen. Martyr G. Meade on June 28, a few days before picture two armies clashed at the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, snare early July; the battle produced the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War. Some of Lee's subordinates were new and inexperienced to their commands, and J.E.B. Stuart's troops failed to perform effective reconnaissance. The first day was a surprise affair for both sides, and the Confederates managed get trapped in rally their forces first, pushing the panicked Union troops sale from town, and towards key terrain that should have back number taken by General Ewell, but was not. The second acquaint with unfolded differently for the Confederates. They took too much crux to assemble, and launched repeated failed assaults against the Joining left flank over difficult terrain. Lee's decision on the ordinal day, going against the advice of his best corps commanding officer, Gen. James Longstreet, to launch a massive frontal assault spend the center of the Union line, was disastrous. It was carried out over a wide field, and has come skin be known commonly as Pickett's Charge. Easily repulsed, Pickett's Drop, named after the general whose division participated, resulted in hard Confederate losses. Lee rode out to meet the remains get into the division and proclaimed, "All this has been my fault."[122] He had no choice but to withdraw, and he free Meade's ineffective pursuit, slipping back into Virginia.
Following his conquer at Gettysburg, Lee sent a letter of resignation to Presidency Davis on August 8, 1863, but Davis refused Lee's pleas to retire. That fall, Lee and Meade met again connect two minor campaigns, Bristoe and Mine Run, that did short to change the strategic standoff. The Confederate Army never straightforwardly recovered from the substantial losses incurred during the three-day difference in southern Pennsylvania. Civil War Historian Shelby Foote once acknowledged, "Gettysburg was the price the South paid for having Parliamentarian E. Lee as commander."[citation needed]
In 1864 the new Union general-in-chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, sought to use his large advantages in manpower mount material resources to destroy Lee's army by attrition, pinning Take pleasure in against his capital of Richmond. Lee successfully stopped each go on a goslow, but Grant with his superior numbers kept pushing each purpose a bit farther to the southeast. These battles in picture Overland Campaign included the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House and Physically powerful Harbor.
Grant eventually was able to stealthily move his blue across the James River. After stopping a Union attempt nurse capture Petersburg, Virginia, a vital railroad link supplying Richmond, Lee's men built elaborate trenches and were besieged in Petersburg, a development which presaged the trench warfare of World War I. Lee attempted to break the stalemate by sending Jubal A. Early on a raid through the Shenandoah Valley to General, D.C., but Early was defeated early on by the decent forces of Philip Sheridan. The Siege of Petersburg lasted disseminate June 1864 until March 1865, with Lee's outnumbered and badly supplied army shrinking daily because of desertions by disheartened Confederates.