Robert E Lee

Within a year, the talk of secession and breaking away from the north by southern states was becoming stronger throughout the south. Robert E Lee and his wife had settled at her family ancestral home Arlington, which lay directly across the Potomac River from Washington. As an army officer, Robert E Lee was against such talk and never entertained the idea of a revolt against the nation to which he had sworn an oath. Only if Virginia would secede would he then have to make a decision. Lee continued his work in Washington, living in his family home at Arlington. In 1861, the south did secede and Virginia followed. Lee was offered a command in the Union Army, though he declined to accept the assignment because of his loyalty to Virginia. It was a difficult decision for Lee, to give up his career and his country. But his personal allegiance was to his family and his roots which were a part of Virginia. With some regrets Lee resigned his commission and with his family, moved away from Arlington which he would never see again.

Robert E Lee offered his services to the state of Virginia and he was placed in command of all forces from that state. He was later assigned as the military advisor to President Jefferson Davis which was a very difficult job. Lee had to coordinate many operations involving many different officers who were very sensitive about their command positions and obligations. It was a difficult time for him and Lee had many critics, but his fortunes soon changed. In the spring of 1862, General George McClellan's Union Army of the Potomac was poised to strike the city of Richmond. In a pitched battle at Seven Pines, the general commanding the Confederate Army was seriously wounded and Lee was immediately assigned to command the Confederate army, which he renamed theArmy of Northern Virginia, and his career as an army commander began.

It was a difficult assignment for an officer who had never commanded troops in battle, but Lee undertook the new assignment with vigor and spirit. Co-ordinating his troops with those of "Stonewall" Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, Lee met the Union threat on two fronts. Quickly driving back Union forces in the Valley, General Jackson rushed his troops to Richmond and joined with General James Longstreet's Corps in attacking the Union forces. Together, Lee and his officers were able to throw back McClellan's forces in a series of battles called The Seven Days Battles. Lee was successful in stopping McClellan and Richmond was safe.

What followed was a set of victories against seemingly insurmountable odds. General Lee's army was always outnumbered, out gunned, and often in a poor position to attack or defend. But Lee understood tactics on the field and with an engineer's sense and the support of excellent commanders, he was able to defeat the Union Army again and again. General Robert E Lee had several setbacks during the Maryland Campaign on 1862 which resulted in the Battle of Antietam. Lee's thin line still held the field at the end of a single day of battle, giving him a strategic victory, but one which he could not take advantage of. He was forced to retreat across the Potomac River and back to Virginia. After the Battle of Fredericksburg that December, Lee spent the winter rebuilding his battered army. The Union Army rebuilt itself as well and opened the spring of 1863 with a surprise move against Lee's forces. The Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia turned out to be a great victory for Lee and truly made him a southern legend, but it was also a setback when General "Stonewall" Jackson was mortally wounded. Despite the loss of his beloved corps commander, Lee carried on and invaded the north once again. His troops successfully marched through Maryland and southern Pennsylvania until they came together at Gettysburg. The Battle of Gettysburg was a costly defeat for the Army of Northern Virginia and Lee felt a great personal responsibility for the loss, but the Confederate government displayed great confidence in the commander of so many men and refused to allow him to resign.

The following year, General Robert E Lee had a new general to face in the personage of General U.S. Grant. General Grant came to the east after succeeding in several victories in Tennessee and Mississippi. President Lincoln assigned him to command all of the Union Armies, and Grant chose to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac in Virginia. Grant knew that Lee must be defeated to end the war, and chose to challenge Lee in a strategic duel beginning in the spring of 1864. Dubbed "The Wilderness Campaign", the two armies grappled continuously for many weeks through middle Virginia southward to the outskirts of Richmond. The fighting was bitter and brutal, though Lee was able to block every move which Grant made. But time was running out for Lee- his losses could not be replaced so easily and material shortages were greater and greater as time wore on. General Grant shifted his forces around Richmond to Petersburg, Virginia, an important railroad junction for railroads from the south. The Union attacks were stopped, and forts and trench lines constructed. General Lee was not to be outdone. He sent part of his army northward to re-invade Maryland. This force, under General Jubal Early, succeeded in reaching the outskirts of Washington before they retired back into Virginia. Later defeated in the Shenandoah Valley, Early's troops rejoined Lee's main force around Petersburg.

Robert E Lee knew that his army could not last through a long siege but he bitterly held on against a growing force of two armies. In March, 1865, Lee made one last desperate gamble to break the Union siege line of the city which failed. Forced to abandon both Petersburg and Richmond, Lee moved his dwindling army west hoping to eventually move south to join up with General Joseph Johnston's Army in North Carolina. Disaster followed Lee with every hour of the march. Despite his best efforts, Lee knew that the end was near and finally his few surviving soldiers were stopped near Appomattox Court House, Virginia on April 9, 1865. Here General Robert E Lee, dressed in his finest Confederate gray uniform, met with General Grant to sign the terms of surrender to save the lives of his last 7,500 remaining soldiers. Lee left Appomattox and his army forever and returned to Richmond. It was bleak time for the general, branded a traitor by many who wished to see him imprisoned and hanged. But many others had a high regard for Lee, upheld his honor, and responded with generous offers of financial help and jobs.

In the autumn of 1865, Lee accepted a position as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. It is called Washington and Lee University today. With the help of an enthusiastic faculty, Robert E Lee brought the school up to a high standard of education. He also set an example for the south, working to rebind the wounds of a divided nation by obedience to civil authority. He quietly encouraged his veterans to return to their homes and rebuild their lives as Americans. The aged Lee never discussed the war nor wrote about his war-time experiences. He was given many offers of money for his memoirs which an adoring public wished to read, but he turned the offers down. Lee was sincere in his feelings in not discussing the war or the results of it, and paid homage to his old corps commander, General Jackson, by visiting the general's grave in Lexington. On October 12, 1870, General Robert E Lee died after a short illness and is buried in the chapel of the university which today bears his name.

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