Lee, Robert E(dward) (1807–1870)

US Confederate general Robert E Lee. During the American Civil War he was commander of the army of North Virginia, and military adviser to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. At the onset of the Civil War he resigned from the US army to accept command of the Confederate forces.

US military strategist and Confederate general in the American Civil War. As military adviser to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, and as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, he made several raids into Northern territory, but was defeated at Gettysburg and surrendered in 1865 at Appomattox.

Lee was born in Virginia. He graduated from West Point, was commissioned in 1829, and served in the Mexican War 1846–48. In 1859 he suppressed John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. On the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 he joined the army of the Confederacy of the Southern States, and in 1862 received the command of the Army of Northern Virginia and won the Seven Days' Battle defending Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, against General George McClellan's Union forces.

In 1863 Lee won victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and in 1864 at Cold Harbor, but was besieged in Petersburg from June 1864 to April 1865. He surrendered to General Ulysses Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House.

Following the war he was paroled and served as president of Washington College, Lexington, Virginia (now Washington and Lee University). His home had been seized by Union forces and is now part of Arlington National Cemetery.

Lee had freed his own slaves long before the war began, and he was opposed to secession, however his devotion to his native Virginia led him to join the Confederacy.