Robert E. Lee

Robert Edward Lee, who lived from 1807 to 1870, was an American military officer who became the overall commander of the Confederate States Army in the final months of the Civil War, after leading its most powerful force, the Army of Northern Virginia, from June 1862 until its surrender in 1865. Born into Virginia's prominent Lee family, the son of Revolutionary War officer Henry Lee III, he graduated second in his class at West Point in 1829 and spent thirty two years as a United States Army officer, earning distinction as a military engineer and serving in the Mexican-American War before commanding West Point itself as superintendent from 1852 to 1855. When Virginia seceded in 1861, Lee turned down an offer of senior Union command and chose to follow his home state, despite having personally opposed secession. As a Confederate general he was widely regarded as one of the war's most skilled tacticians, repeatedly defeating larger Union forces and developing capable subordinates including James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, though his two invasions of Northern territory both failed and his aggressive tactics produced casualties the Confederacy could not easily replace. After the war he served as president of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, and urged reconciliation, though his historical legacy, and his record on slavery and race, remain the subject of ongoing debate.