The city that Henry Lee (Robert’s Father) left behind him, the city of Robert Lee’s widening consciousness, was a pleasant place of 7500 people, situated on the west bank of the Potomac River, six miles below the fields where the capital of the republic was rising.
Robert E. Lee Childhood Home
Organized in 1749, Alexandria had been peopled in part by Scotch of good station, but had later received Pennsylvania Quakers and native Virginia colonials in such numbers that by 1815 it differed little from the other towns of the Old Dominion.
Despite war, smallpox, building booms, and fires, the kindred plagues of most early American cities, Alexandria had grown. Ships of many flags tied up at its ample wharves. Fishermen brought thither their weighty catches from the lower stretches of the river. Hundreds of hogsheads of tobacco rolled in from nearby plantations and disappeared in the deep holds of ships bound for England. Thirty-four tavern keepers and more than 260 merchants competed sharply for the trade of sailor, farmer, traveller, and resident. Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker, Baptist, and Roman Catholic churches all offered the comforts of religion to the pious, or held the threat of hell above the profligate’s head. Justice sat with dignity, for Alexandria had become a part of the District of Columbia in 1791 and was under exclusive federal jurisdiction. A town hall Alexandria boasted, a market place, a Library even, and a jail atop whose chimneys stood grim pikes where once the town had set in lasting warning the heads of slaves who had preached insurrection. In her prosperity the city abandoned wooden building dwellings for enduring brick, but in her thrift she allowed herself few gardens. At some of her corners deep wells rewarded with clear water those who would tug at the complaining windlass. Buried cannon, placed there before the Revolution, marked other crossings. There were oil lamps on the streets, and in each ward the town paid a watchman to go the rounds every night, to cry the hours, and to make the drowsy burgher glad of his shelter by telling him in loud tones how hard the wind was biting. And if fire broke out, was not the Friendship Company ready to race to the flames with its engine? Did not each member of the Sun Company hasten with his two leather buckets and with his two-bushel Osnaburg bag, in which to store salvaged valuables?
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Biography (1807-1870), American soldier, general in the Confederate States army, was the youngest son of major-general Henry Lee, called ” Light Horse Harry.” He was born at Stratford, Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 19th of January 1807, and entered West Point in 1825. Graduating four years later second in his class, he was given a commission in the U.S. Engineer Corps. In 1831 he married Mary, daughter of G. W. P. Custis, the adopted son of Washington and the grandson of Mrs. Washington. In 1836 he became first lieutenant, and in 1838 captain. In this rank he took part in the Mexican War, repeatedly winning distinction for conduct and bravery. He received the brevets of major for Cerro Gordo, lieut.-colonel for Contreras-Churubusco and colonel for Chapultepec. |
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After the war he was employed in engineer work at Washington and Baltimore, during which time, as before the war, he resided on the great Arlington estate, near Washington, which had come to him through his wife. In 1852 he was appointed superintendent of West Point, and during his three years here he carried out many important changes in the academy. Under him as cadets were his son G. W. Custis Lee, his nephew, Fitzhugh Lee and J. E. B. Stuart, all of whom became general officers in the Civil War. In 1855 he was appointed as lieut.-colonel to the 2nd Cavalry, commanded by Colonel Sidney Johnston, with whom he served against the Indians of the Texas border.
In 1859, while at Arlington on leave, he was summoned to command the United States troops sent to deal with the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry. In March 1861 he was made colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry; but his career in the old army ended with the secession of Virginia in the following month. Lee was strongly averse to secession, but felt obliged to conform to the action of his own state. The Federal authorities offered Lee the command of the field army about to invade the South, which he refused. Resigning his commission, he made his way to Richmond and was at once made a major-general in the Virginian forces. A few weeks later he became a brigadier-general (then the highest rank) in the Confederate service. The military operations with which the great Civil War opened in 1861 were directed by President Davis and General Lee. Lee was personally in charge of the unsuccessful West Virginian operations in the autumn, and, having been made a full general on the 31st of August, during the winter he devoted his experience as an engineer to the fortification and general defense of the Atlantic coast. Thence, when the well-drilled Army of the Potomac was about to descend upon Richmond, he was hurriedly recalled to Richmond. General Johnston was wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) on the 31st of May 1862, and General Robert E. Lee was assigned to the command of the famous Army of Northern Virginia which for the next three years ” carried the rebellion on its bayonets.” Little can be said of Lee’s career as a commander-in-chief that is not an integral part of the history of the Civil War.
His first success was the ” Seven Days’ Battle ” in which he stopped McClellan’s advance; this was quickly followed up by the crushing defeat of the Federal army under Pope, the invasion of Maryland and the sanguinary and indecisive battle of the Antietam. The year ended with another great victory at Fredericksburg. Chancellorsville, won against odds of two to one, and the great three days’ battle of Gettysburg, where for the first time fortune turned decisively against the Confederates, were the chief events of 1863.
In the autumn Lee fought a war of maneuver against General Meade. The tremendous struggle of 1864 between Lee and Grant included the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor and the long siege of Petersburg , in which, almost invariably, Lee was locally successful. But the steady pressure of his unrelenting opponent slowly wore down his strength. At last with not more than one man to oppose to Grant’s three he was compelled to break out of his Petersburg lines (April 1865).
A series of heavy combats revealed his purpose, and Grant pursued the dwindling remnants of Lee’s army to the westward. Headed off by the Federal cavalry, and pressed closely in rear by Grant’s main body, General Lee had no alternative but to surrender. At Appomattox Court House, on the 9th of April, the career of the Army of Northern Virginia came to an end. Lee’s farewell order was issued on the following day, and within a few weeks the Confederacy was at an end. For a few months Lee l ived quietly in Powhatan county, making his formal submission to the Federal authorities and urging on his own people acceptance of the new conditions.
In August he was offered, and accepted, the presidency of Washington College, Lexington (now Washington and Lee University), a post which he occupied until his death on the 12th of October 1870 He was buried in the college grounds. By his achievements he won a high place amongst the great generals of history. – Though hampered by lack of materials and by political necessities, his strategy was daring always, and he never hesitated to take the gravest risks. On the field of battle he was as energetic in attack as he was constant in defense, and his personal influence over the men whom he led was extraordinary. No student of the American Civil War can fail to notice how the influence of Lee dominated the course of the struggle, and his surpassing ability was never more conspicuously shown than in the last hopeless stages of the contest.
The personal history of Lee is lost in the history of the great crisis of America’s national life; friends and foes alike acknowledged the purity of his motives, the virtues of his private life, his earnest Christianity and the unrepining loyalty with which he accepted the ruin of his party.
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