Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a career United States Army officer, an engineer, and among the most celebrated generals in American history. Lee was the son of Major General Henry Lee III "Light Horse Harry" (1756–1818), Governor of Virginia, and his second wife, Anne Hill Carter (1773–1829). He was a descendant of Sir Thomas More and of King Robert II of Scotland through the Earls of Crawford.[1] A top graduate of West Point, Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the U.S. Army for thirty-two years, during which time he fought in the Mexican-American War.

In early 1861, General Winfield Scott invited Lee to take command of the entire Union Army. Lee declined because his home state of Virginia was seceding from the Union despite Lee"s wishes. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state. Lee"s eventual role in the newly established Confederacy was to serve as a senior military adviser to President Jefferson Davis. Lee"s first field command for the Confederate States came in June 1862 when he took command of the Confederate forces in the East (which Lee himself renamed the "Army of Northern Virginia").

Lee"s greatest victories were the Seven Days Battles, the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville, but both of his campaigns to invade the North ended in failure. Barely escaping defeat at the Battle of Antietam in 1862, Lee was forced to return to the South. In early July 1863, Lee was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. However, due to ineffectual pursuit by the commander of Union forces, Major General George Meade, Lee escaped again to Virginia.

In the spring of 1864, the new Union commander, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, began a series of campaigns to wear down Lee"s army. In the Overland Campaign of 1864 and the Siege of Petersburg in 1864–1865, Lee inflicted heavy casualties on Grant"s larger army, but was unable to replace his own losses. In early April 1865, Lee"s depleted forces were turned from their entrenchments near the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and he began a strategic retreat. Lee"s subsequent surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865 represented the loss of only one of the remaining Confederate field armies, but it was a psychological blow from which the South could not recover. By June 1865, all of the remaining Confederate armies had capitulated.