Robert E. Lee

:For the author of Inherit the Wind and other works, see Robert Edwin Lee.

Early life and career

Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the fourth child of Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee ("Lighthorse Harry") and Anne Hill (née Carter) Lee. He entered the United States Military Academy in 1825. When he graduated (second in his class of 46) in 1829 he had not only attained the top academic record but was the first cadet (and so far the only) to graduate the Academy without a single demerit. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers.

Related Topics:
Stratford Hall Plantation - Westmoreland County, Virginia - Revolutionary War - Henry Lee - United States Military Academy - 1825 - 1829 - Demerit - Army Corps of Engineers

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Lee served for seventeen months at Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island, Georgia. In 1831, he was transferred to Fort Monroe, Virginia, as assistant engineer. While he was stationed there, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis (1808–1873), the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, at Shirley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia, where she had been born. They lived in the Custis mansion, which today is a National Memorial on the banks of the Potomac River in Arlington, just across from Washington, D.C.. They eventually had three sons and four daughters: George Washington Custis, William H. Fitzhugh, Robert Edward, Mary, Agnes, Annie, and Mildred.

Related Topics:
Fort Pulaski - Cockspur Island - Georgia - 1831 - Fort Monroe - Virginia - Mary Anna Randolph Custis - 1808 - 1873 - Martha Washington - Shirley Plantation - Charles City County, Virginia - Custis mansion - National Memorial - Potomac River - Arlington - Washington, D.C. - George Washington Custis - William H. Fitzhugh

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Engineering

Lee served as an assistant in the chief engineer's office in Washington from 1834 to 1837, but spent the summer of 1835 helping to lay out the state line between Ohio and Michigan. In 1837, he got his first important command. As a first lieutenant of engineers, he supervised the engineering work for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. His work there earned him a promotion to captain. In 1841, he was transferred to Fort Hamilton in New York Harbor, where he took charge of building fortifications.

Related Topics:
1834 - 1837 - 1835 - Ohio - Michigan - First lieutenant - St. Louis - Mississippi - Missouri - Captain - 1841 - Fort Hamilton

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Mexican War, West Point, and Texas

Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican War (1846–1848). He was one of Winfield Scott's chief aides in the march from Veracruz to Mexico City. He was instrumental in several American victories through 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.

Related Topics:
Mexican War - 1846 - 1848 - Winfield Scott - Veracruz - Mexico City - Mexicans

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He was promoted to major after the Battle of Cerro Gordo in April, 1847. He also fought at Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec, and was wounded at the latter. By the end of the war he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Related Topics:
Major - Battle of Cerro Gordo - 1847 - Contreras - Churubusco - Chapultepec - Lieutenant colonel

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After the Mexican War, he spent three years at Fort Carroll in Baltimore harbor, after which he became the superintendent of West Point in 1852. During his three years at West Point, he improved the buildings, the courses, and spent a lot of time with the cadets. Lee's oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, attended West Point during his tenure. Custis Lee graduated in 1854, first in his class.

Related Topics:
Fort Carroll - Baltimore - West Point - 1852 - George Washington Custis Lee - 1854

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In 1855, Lee became Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Cavalry and was sent to the Texas frontier. There he helped protect settlers from attacks by the Apache and the Comanche.

Related Topics:
1855 - Texas - Apache - Comanche

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These were not happy years for Lee as he did not like to be away from his family for long periods of time, especially as his wife was becoming increasingly ill. Lee came home to see her as often as he could.

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He happened to be in Washington at the time of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859, and was sent there to arrest Brown and to restore order. He did this very quickly and then returned to his regiment in Texas. When Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, Lee was called to Washington, DC to wait for further orders.

Related Topics:
John Brown - Harpers Ferry - West Virginia - 1859 - Texas - Union - 1861 - Washington, DC

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Lee as slave-owner

As a member of the Virginia aristocracy, Lee had lived in close contact with slavery all of his life, but he never held more than about a half-dozen slaves under his own name—in fact, it was not positively known that he had held any slaves at all under his own name until the rediscovery of his 1846 will in the records of Rockbridge County, Virginia, which referred to an enslaved woman named Nancy and her children, and provided for their manumission in case of his death. http://www.nathanielturner.com/willofgeorgewashingtonparkecustis2.htm

Related Topics:
Virginia - Slavery - 1846 - Rockbridge County, Virginia - Manumission

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However, when Lee's father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in October 1857, Lee came into a considerable amount of property through his wife, and also gained temporary control of a large population of slaves—sixty-three men, women, and children, in all—as the executor of Custis's will. Under the terms of the will, the slaves were to be freed "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", with a maximum of five years from the date of Custis's death provided to arrange for the necessary legal details of manumission.

Related Topics:
George Washington Parke Custis - 1857 - Manumission

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Custis's will was probated on December 7, 1857. Although Robert Lee Randolph, Right Reverend William Meade, and George Washington Peter were named as executors along with Robert E. Lee, the other three men failed to qualify, leaving Lee with the sole responsibility of settling the estate, and with exclusive control over all of Custis's former slaves. Although the will provided for the slaves to be emancipated "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", Lee found himself in need of funds to pay his father-in-law's debts and repair the properties he had inherited; he decided to make money during the five years that the will had allowed him control of the slaves by hiring them out to neighboring plantations and to eastern Virginia (where there were more jobs to be found). The decision caused dissatisfaction among Custis's slaves, who had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died.

Related Topics:
December 7 - 1857

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In 1859, three of the slaves—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and a cousin of theirs—fled for the North. Two 1859 letters to the New York Tribune (dated June 19 and June 21), and an 1866 interview with Wesley Norris, record that the Norrises were captured a few miles from the Pennsylvania border and returned to Lee, who had them whipped and their lacerated backs rubbed with brine. After the whipping, Lee forced them to go to work in Richmond, Virginia, and then Alabama, where Wesley Norris gained his freedom in January 1863 by escaping through the rebel lines to Union-controlled territory.

Related Topics:
1859 - New York ''Tribune'' - 1866 - Pennsylvania - Brine - Richmond, Virginia - Alabama

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Lee released Custis's other slaves after the end of the five year period in the winter of 1862.

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Lee's views on slavery

Since the end of the Civil War, it has often been suggested that Lee was in some sense opposed to slavery. In the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction, Lee became a central figure in the Lost Cause interpretation of the war, and as succeding generations came to look on slavery as a terrible wrong, the idea that Lee had always somehow opposed it helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation.

Related Topics:
Reconstruction - Lost Cause - Southern

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The most common lines of evidence cited in favor of the claim that Lee opposed slavery are: (1) the manumission of Custis's slaves, as discussed above; (2) Lee's 1856 letter to his wife in which he states that "There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil," and (3) his support, towards the very end of the Civil War, for enrolling slaves in the Confederate army, with manumission as an eventual reward for good service.

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Critics object that these interpretations mischaracterize Lee's actual statements and actions to imply that he opposed slavery. The manumission of Custis's slaves, for example, is often mischaracterized as Lee's own decision, rather than a requirement of Custis's will. Similarly, Lee's letter to his wife is being misrepresented by selective quotation; while Lee does describe slavery as an evil, he immediately goes on to write:

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In fact, the main topic of the letter—a comment in approval of a speech by President Franklin Pierce—is not the evils of slavery at all, but rather a condemnation of abolitionism, which Lee describes as "irresponsible & unaccountable" and an "evil Course".

Related Topics:
Franklin Pierce - Abolitionism

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Finally, critics charge that whatever private reservations Lee may have held about slavery, he participated fully in the slave system, and does not appear to have publicly challenged it in any way until the partial and conditional plan, under increasingly desperate military circumstances, to arm slaves.

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