Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a career U.S. Army officer and the most celebrated general of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War.

Lee was the son of Maj. Gen. 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. A top graduate of West Point, Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the U.S. Army for 32 years, during which time he fought in the Mexican-American War.

In early 1861, Lee opposed the secession of his home state of Virginia, but rejected President Lincoln's offer to command the United States forces. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April of 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state. Lee's 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, Maj. Gen. George Meade, Lee escaped again to Virginia.

In spring 1864, the new Union commander, Lt. Gen. 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 1864–65, 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 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 of 1865, all of the remaining Confederate armies had capitulated.

Lee's victories against superior forces won him enduring fame as a crafty and daring battlefield tactician, but some of his strategic decisions, such as invading the North in 1862 and 1863 have been criticized by many military historians.

In the final months of the Civil War, as manpower reserves drained away, Lee adopted a plan to arm slaves to fight on behalf of the Confederacy, but this came too late to change the outcome of the war. After Appomattox, Lee discouraged Southern dissenters from starting a guerrilla campaign to continue the war, and encouraged reconciliation between the North and South.

After the war, as a college president, Lee supported President Andrew Johnson's program of Reconstruction and inter-sectional friendship, while opposing the Radical Republican proposals to give freed slaves the vote and take the vote away from ex-Confederates. He urged them to rethink their position between the North and South, and the reintegration of former Confederates into the nation's political life. Lee became the great Southern hero of the war, and his popularity grew in the North as well after his death in 1870. He remains an iconic figure of American military leadership.

Robert E. Lee was born at Stratford Hall Plantation, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the fifth child of Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee ("Light Horse Harry") and Anne Hill (née Carter) Lee. Lee's parents were members of the Virginia gentry class and true tuckahoes. Lee's paternal ancestors were among the earliest settlers in Virginia. His mother grew up at Shirley Plantation, one of most elegant homes in Virginia. His maternal great-great-grandfather, Robert "King" Carter, was the wealthiest man in the colonies when he died in 1732. "Light Horse Harry Lee" met severe financial reverses from failed investments. Historian Gary W. Gallagher wrote, "Harry Lee had not been able to exercise self-control or take care of his family, and so he abandoned them. That was a stark lesson for young Robert E. Lee." However, in Lee of Virginia it is noted that Harry Lee "was very seriously injured by a mob in Baltimore while attempting to defend the house of a friend. Later he made a voyage to the West Indies seeking restoration for his shattered health. On his way home ... he died..." Lee of Virginia also notes "...in the West Indies, Henry Lee wrote a series of letters to his son, Carter..." later described by Robert E. Lee as "'Those letters of love and wisdom.'" Lee's father died when Lee was twelve years old, leaving the family deeply in debt. When Lee was three years old his older half-brother, the heir to the Stratford Hall Plantation, having reached his majority established Stratford as his home. The rest of the family moved to Alexandria, Virginia where Lee grew up in a series of relatives' houses. Lee attended Alexandria Academy, where he obtained a classical education along the lines of quadrivium. Lee was considered a top student and excelled at mathematics. His mother, a devout Christian, oversaw his religious instruction at Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria. He entered the United States Military Academy in 1825. When he graduated in 1829, second in his class of 46, not only had he attained the top academic record, but he had no demerits, an achievement of only five cadets in that graduating class. He also was the first cadet to be named sergeant at the end of his first year. He was commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.

Lee served for just over seventeen months at Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island, Georgia. In 1831, he was transferred to Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula and played a major role in the final construction of Fort Monroe and its opposite, Fort Calhoun. Fort Monroe was completely surrounded by a moat. Fort Calhoun, later renamed Fort Wool, was built on a man-made island across the navigational channel from Old Point Comfort in the middle of the mouth of Hampton Roads. When construction was completed in 1834, Fort Monroe was referred to as the "Gibraltar of Chesapeake Bay." While he was stationed at Fort Monroe, he married (see below Marriage and family).

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. As a first lieutenant of engineers in 1837, he supervised the engineering work for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Among his projects was blasting a channel through the Des Moines Rapids on the Mississippi by Keokuk, Iowa, where the Mississippi's mean depth of was the upper limit of steamboat traffic on the river. 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. There he served as a vestryman at St. John's Episcopal Church, Fort Hamilton.

While he was stationed at Fort Monroe, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis (1808–1873), great-granddaughter of Martha Washington by her first husband Daniel Parke Custis, and step-great-granddaughter of George Washington, the first president of the United States. They were married on June 30, 1831 at Arlington House, her parents' home just across from Washington, D.C. The 3rd U.S. Artillery served as honor guard at the marriage. They eventually had seven children, three boys and four girls: # George Washington Custis Lee (Custis, “Boo”); 1832–1913; served as Major General in the Confederate Army and aide-de-camp to President Jefferson Davis; married, but had no children # Mary Custis Lee (Mary, “Daughter”); 1835–1918; unmarried # William Henry Fitzhugh Lee (“Rooney”); 1837–1891; served as Major General in the Confederate Army (cavalry); married twice; surviving children by second marriage # Anne Carter Lee (Annie); 1839–1862; unmarried # Eleanor Agnes Lee (Agnes); 1841–1873; unmarried # Robert Edward Lee, Jr. (Rob); 1843–1914; served as Captain in the Confederate Army (Rockbridge Artillery); married twice; surviving children by second marriage # Mildred Childe Lee (Milly, “Precious Life”); 1846–1905; unmarried All the children survived him except for Annie, who died in 1862. They are all buried with their parents in the crypt of the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Mary Anna Custis Lee visited her home, Arlington House, for the last time as the home was rapidly becoming the most famous cemetery in the world, Arlington National Cemetery. It was said that she was heartbroken and forever grieved by the loss.

Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican-American 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.

He was promoted to brevet major after the Battle of Cerro Gordo on April 18, 1847. He also fought at Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec, and was wounded at the last. By the end of the war, he had received additional brevet promotions to Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel but his permanent rank was still Captain of Engineers and he would remain a Captain until his transfer to the cavalry in 1855.

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, Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee 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.

In 1855, Lee's tour of duty at West Point ended and he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the newly formed 2nd U.S. Cavalry regiment. It was Lee's first substantive promotion in the Army since his promotion to Captain in 1838, despite having been brevetted a Colonel, which was an honorary promotion. By accepting promotion, Lee left the Corps of Engineers where he had served for over 25 years. The Colonelcy of the regiment was given to Albert Sidney Johnston, who had previously served as a Major in the Paymaster Department, and the regiment was assigned to Camp Cooper, Texas. There he helped protect settlers from attacks by the Apache and the Comanche.

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.

As a member of the Virginia aristocracy, Lee lived in close contact with slavery before he joined the Army and held variously around a half-dozen slaves under his own name. When Lee's father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in October 1857, Lee (as executor of the will) came into control over some 196 slaves on the Arlington plantation. Although the will provided for the slaves to be emancipated "in such a manner as to my executors may seem most expedient and proper", providing a maximum of five years for the legal and logistical details of manumission, 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 working them on the plantation and hiring them out to neighboring plantations and to eastern Virginia.

Lee, with no experience as a large-scale slave-owner, tried to hire an overseer to handle the plantation in his absence, writing to his cousin, "I wish to get an energetic honest farmer, who while he will be considerate & kind to the negroes, will be firm & make them do their duty." But Lee failed to find a man for the job, and had to take a two-year leave of absence from the army in order to run the plantation himself. He found the experience frustrating and difficult; some of the slaves were unhappy and demanded their freedom. Many of them had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died. Custis did not agree with this at all, for he wished to give his slaves to a son of his, or perhaps a son-in-law. Yet, at the time, young Custis had no intentions of even having a family. Many say that the reason Custis disagreed was because he did not like the thought of his possessions being taken from him at any time, not even at the grave. In May 1858, Lee wrote to his son Rooney, "I have had some trouble with some of the people. Reuben, Parks & Edward, in the beginning of the previous week, rebelled against my authority--refused to obey my orders, & said they were as free as I was, etc., etc.--I succeeded in capturing them & lodging them in jail. They resisted till overpowered & called upon the other people to rescue them." Less than two months after they were sent to the Alexandria jail, Lee decided to remove these three men and three female house slaves from Arlington, and sent them under lock and key to the slave-trader William Overton Winston in Richmond, who was instructed to keep them in jail until he could find "good & responsible" slaveholders to work them until the end of the five year period.

In 1859, three of the Arlington slaves—Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and a cousin of theirs—fled for the North, but were captured a few miles from the Pennsylvania border and forced to return to Arlington. On June 24 1859, the New York Daily Tribune published two anonymous letters (dated June 19, 1859 and June 21, 1859), each of which claimed to have heard that Lee had the Norrises whipped, and went so far as to claim that Lee himself had whipped the woman when the officer refused to. Lee wrote to his son Custis that "The N. Y. Tribune has attacked me for my treatment of your grandfather's slaves, but I shall not reply. He has left me an unpleasant legacy." Biographers of Lee have differed over the credibility of the Tribune letters. Douglas S. Freeman, in his 1934 biography of Lee, described the letters to the Tribune as "Lee's first experience with the extravagance of irresponsible antislavery agitators" and asserted that "There is no evidence, direct or indirect, that Lee ever had them or any other Negroes flogged. The usage at Arlington and elsewhere in Virginia among people of Lee's station forbade such a thing." Michael Fellman, in The Making of Robert E. Lee (2000), found the claims that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris "extremely unlikely," but not at all unlikely that Lee had had the slaves whipped: "corporal punishment (for which Lee substituted the euphemism 'firmness') was an intrinsic and necessary part of slave discipline. Although it was supposed to be applied only in a calm and rational manner, overtly physical domination of slaves, unchecked by law, was always brutal and potentially savage."

Wesley Norris himself discussed the incident after the war, in an 1866 interview printed in the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Norris stated that after they had been captured, and forced to return to Arlington, Lee told them that "he would teach us a lesson we would not soon forget." According to Norris, Lee then had the three of them tied to posts and whipped by the county constable, with fifty lashes for the men and twenty for Mary Norris (he made no claim that Lee had personally whipped Mary Norris). Norris claimed that Lee then had the overseer rub their lacerated backs with brine.

After their capture, Lee sent the Norrises to work on the railroad in Richmond, Virginia, and Alabama. Wesley Norris gained his freedom in January 1863 by slipping through the Confederate lines near Richmond to Union-controlled territory. Lee freed all the other Custis slaves after the end of the five year period in the winter of 1862, filing the deed of manumission on December 29, 1862.

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, and after his death, Lee became a central figure in the Lost Cause interpretation of the war, and as succeeding generations came to look on slavery as a terrible immorality, the idea that Lee had always somehow opposed it helped maintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation.

Some of the evidence cited in favor of the claim that Lee opposed slavery, are the manumission of Custis's slaves, as discussed above, and his support, towards the end of the war, for enrolling slaves in the Confederate States Army, with manumission offered as an eventual reward for good service. Lee gave his public support to this idea two weeks before Appomattox, too late for it to do any good for the Confederacy.

In December of 1864, Lee was shown a letter by Louisiana Senator Edward Sparrow, written by General St. John R. Liddell, which noted that Lee would be hard-pressed in the interior of Virginia by spring, and the need to consider Patrick Cleburne's plan to emanicipate the slaves and put all men in the army that were willing to join. Lee was said to have agreed on all points and desired to get Negro soldiers, saying that "he could make soldiers out of any human being that had arms and legs."

Another source is Lee's 1856 letter to his wife, which can be interpreted in multiple ways:

... In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.

Freeman's analysis puts Lee's attitude toward slavery and abolition in historical context:

This [letter] was the prevailing view among most religious people of Lee's class in the border states. They believed that slavery existed because God willed it and they thought it would end when God so ruled. The time and the means were not theirs to decide, conscious though they were of the ill-effects of Negro slavery on both races. Lee shared these convictions of his neighbors without having come in contact with the worst evils of African bondage. He spent no considerable time in any state south of Virginia from the day he left Fort Pulaski in 1831 until he went to Texas in 1856. All his reflective years had been passed in the North or in the border states. He had never been among the blacks on a cotton or rice plantation. At Arlington the servants had been notoriously indolent, their master's master. Lee, in short, was only acquainted with slavery at its best and he judged it accordingly. At the same time, he was under no illusion regarding the aims of the Abolitionist or the effect of their agitation.

When John Brown led a band of 21 men (including five African Americans) and seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia in October 1859, Lee was given command of detachments of Maryland and Virginia militia, soldiers, and United States Marines, to suppress the uprising and arrest its leaders. By the time Lee arrived later that night, the militia on the site had surrounded Brown and his hostages. When on October 18 Brown refused the demand for surrender, Lee attacked and after three minutes of fighting, Brown and his followers were captured.

When Texas seceded from the Union in February 1861, General David E. Twiggs surrendered all the American forces (about 4,000 men, including Lee, and commander of the Department of Texas) to the Texans. Twiggs immediately resigned from the U. S. Army and was made a Confederate general. Lee went back to Washington, and was appointed Colonel of the First Regiment of Cavalry in March 1861. Lee's Colonelcy was signed by the new President, Abraham Lincoln. Three weeks after his promotion, Colonel Lee was offered a senior command (with the rank of Major General) in the expanding Army to fight the Southern States that had left the Union.

Lee privately ridiculed the Confederacy in letters in early 1861, denouncing secession as "revolution" and a betrayal of the efforts of the Founders. The commanding general of the Union army, Winfield Scott, told Lincoln he wanted Lee for a top command. Lee said he was willing as long as Virginia remained in the Union. Lee was asked by one of his lieutenants if he intended to fight for the Confederacy or the Union, to which he replied, "I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty." After Lincoln's call for troops to put down the rebellion, it was obvious that Virginia would quickly secede and so Lee turned down the offer on April 18, resigned from the U.S. Army on April 20, and took up command of the Virginia state forces on April 23.

At the outbreak of war, Lee was appointed to command all of Virginia's forces, but upon the formation of the Confederate States Army, he was named one of its first five full generals. Lee did not wear the insignia of a Confederate general, but only the three stars of a Confederate colonel, equivalent to his last U.S. Army rank; he did not intend to wear a general's insignia until the Civil War had been won and he could be promoted, in peacetime, to general in the Confederate Army.

Lee's first field assignment was commanding Confederate forces in western Virginia, where he was defeated at the Battle of Cheat Mountain and was widely blamed for Confederate setbacks. He was then sent to organize the coastal defenses along the Carolina and Georgia seaboard, where he was hampered by the lack of an effective Confederate navy. Once again blamed by the press, he became military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, former U.S. Secretary of War.

In the spring of 1862, during the Peninsula Campaign, the Union Army of the Potomac under General George B. McClellan advanced upon Richmond from Fort Monroe, eventually reaching the eastern edges of the Confederate capital along the Chickahominy River. Following the wounding of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston at the Battle of Seven Pines, on June 1, 1862, Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia, his first opportunity to lead an army in the field. Newspaper editorials of the day objected to his appointment due to concerns that Lee would not be aggressive and would wait for the Union army to come to him. Early in the war his men called him "Granny Lee" because of his allegedly timid style of command. After the Seven Days Battles until the end of the war his men called him simply "Marse Robert." He oversaw substantial strengthening of Richmond's defenses during the first three weeks of June and then launched a series of attacks, the Seven Days Battles, against McClellan's forces. Lee's attacks resulted in heavy Confederate casualties and they were marred by clumsy tactical performances by his subordinates, but his aggressive actions unnerved McClellan, who retreated to a point on the James River where Union naval forces were in control. These successes led to a rapid turn-around of public opinion and the newspaper editorials quickly changed their tune on Lee's aggressiveness.

After McClellan's retreat, Lee defeated another Union army at the Second Battle of Bull Run. He then invaded Maryland, hoping to replenish his supplies and possibly influence the Northern elections that fall in favor of ending the war. McClellan's men recovered a lost order that revealed Lee's plans. McClellan always exaggerated Lee's forces, but now he knew the Confederate army was divided and could be destroyed by an all-out attack at Antietam. Yet McClellan was too slow in moving, not realizing Lee had been informed by a spy that McClellan had the plans. Lee urgently recalled Jackson and in the bloodiest day of the war, Lee withstood the Union assaults. He withdrew his battered army back to Virginia.

Disappointed by McClellan's failure to destroy Lee's army, Lincoln named Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside ordered an attack across the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg. Delays in getting bridges built across the river allowed Lee's army ample time to organize strong defenses, and the attack on December 12, 1862, was a disaster for the Union. Lincoln then named Joseph Hooker commander of the Army of the Potomac. Hooker's advance to attack Lee in May, 1863, near Chancellorsville, Virginia, was defeated by Lee and Stonewall Jackson's daring plan to divide the army and attack Hooker's flank. It was a victory over a larger force, but it also came with a great cost. Jackson, one of Lee's best subordinates, was accidentally wounded by his own troops, and later died of pneumonia.

In the summer of 1863, Lee invaded the North again, hoping for a Southern victory that would shatter Northern morale. A young Pennsylvanian woman who watched from her porch as General Lee passed by remarked, "I wish he were ours." He encountered Union forces under George G. Meade at the three-day Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July; the battle would produce the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War. Some of his subordinates were new and inexperienced in their commands, J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry was out of the area, and Lee's decision on the third day to launch a massive frontal assault on the center of the Union line—the disastrous Pickett's Charge—resulted in heavy Confederate losses. The General rode out to meet his retreating army and proclaimed, "This is all my fault." Lee was compelled to retreat. Despite flooded rivers that blocked his retreat, he escaped Meade's ineffective pursuit. Following his defeat at Gettysburg, Lee sent a letter of resignation to President Davis on August 8, 1863, but Davis refused Lee's request. That fall, Lee and Meade met again in two minor campaigns that did little to change the strategic standoff. The Confederate army never fully recovered from the substantial losses incurred during the three-day battle in southern Pennsylvania. The historian Shelby Foote stated, "Gettysburg was the price the South paid for having Robert E. Lee as commander."

In 1864, the new Union general-in-chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, sought to destroy Lee's army by attrition, pinning Lee against his capital of Richmond. Lee stopped each attack, but Grant had superior reinforcements and kept pushing each time a bit farther to the southeast. These battles in the Overland Campaign included the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. Grant eventually fooled Lee by stealthily moving his army across the James River. After stopping a Union attempt to capture Petersburg, Virginia, a vital railroad link supplying Richmond, Lee's men built elaborate trenches and were besieged in Petersburg. He attempted to break the stalemate by sending Jubal A. Early on a raid through the Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., but Early was defeated by the superior forces of Philip Sheridan. The Siege of Petersburg lasted from June 1864 until April 1865, with Lee's outnumbered army shrinking daily because of desertions by disheartened Confederates.

On January 31, 1865, Lee was promoted to general-in-chief of Confederate forces.

As the South ran out of manpower the issue of arming the slaves became paramount. By late 1864 the army so dominated the Confederacy that civilian leaders were unable to block the military's proposal, strongly endorsed by Lee, to arm and train slaves in Confederate uniform for combat. In return for this service, slave soldiers and their families would be emancipated. Lee explained, "We should employ them without delay ... [along with] gradual and general emancipation." The first units were in training as the war ended. As the Confederate army was decimated by casualties, disease and desertion, the Union attack on Petersburg succeeded on April 2, 1865. Lee abandoned Richmond and retreated west. His forces were surrounded and he surrendered them to Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Other Confederate armies followed suit and the war ended. The day after his surrender, Lee issued his Farewell Address to his army.

Lee resisted calls by some officers to reject surrender and allow small units to melt away into the mountains, setting up a lengthy guerrilla war. He insisted the war was over and energetically campaigned for inter-sectional reconciliation. "So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South."

Before the Civil War, Lee and his wife had lived at his wife's family home, the Custis-Lee Mansion on Arlington Plantation. The plantation had been seized by Union forces during the war, and became part of Arlington National Cemetery; immediately following the war, Lee spent two months in a rented house in Richmond, and then escaped the unwelcome city life by moving into the overseer's house of a friend's plantation near Cartersville. (In December 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, returned the property to Custis Lee, stating that it had been confiscated without due process. On March 3, 1883, the Congress purchased the property from Lee for $150,000.)

While living in the country, Lee wrote his son that he hoped to retire to a farm of his own, but a few weeks later he received an offer to serve as the president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. Lee accepted, and remained president of the College from October 2, 1865 until his death. Over five years, he transformed Washington College from a small, undistinguished school into one of the first American colleges to offer courses in business, journalism, and Spanish. He also imposed a sweeping and breathtakingly simple concept of honor — "We have but one rule, and it is that every student is a gentleman" — that endures today at Washington and Lee and at a few other schools that continue to maintain "honor systems." Importantly, Lee focused the college on attracting male students from the North as well as the South. It was during this time that the Kappa Alpha Order, a national collegiate fraternity, was started at Washington College. Years later, Kappa Alpha Order would designate Lee as their "Spiritual Founder", providing a model of character for all members to model themselves after.

Lee, who had opposed secession and remained mostly indifferent to politics before the Civil War, supported President Andrew Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction that took effect in 1865-66. However, he opposed the Radical Republican program that took effect in 1867. In February 1866, he was called to testify before the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction in Washington, where he expressed support for President Andrew Johnson's plans for quick restoration of the former Confederate states, and argued that restoration should return, as far as possible, the status quo ante in the Southern states' governments (with the exception of slavery). Lee said, "every one with whom I associate expresses kind feelings towards the freedmen. They wish to see them get on in the world, and particularly to take up some occupation for a living, and to turn their hands to some work." Lee also expressed his "willingness that blacks should be educated, and ... that it would be better for the blacks and for the whites." At a time in early 1866 when most northerners opposed black suffrage, Lee warned that granting suffrage would be unpopular. "My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the [vote] would lead to a great deal of demagogism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways."

In an interview in May, 1866, Lee said, "The Radical party are likely to do a great deal of harm, for we wish now for good feeling to grow up between North and South, and the President, Mr. Johnson, has been doing much to strengthen the feeling in favor of the Union among us. The relations between the Negroes and the whites were friendly formerly, and would remain so if legislation be not passed in favor of the blacks, in a way that will only do them harm."

In 1868, Lee's ally Alexander H. H. Stuart drafted a public letter of endorsement for the Democratic Party's presidential campaign, in which Horatio Seymour ran against Lee's old foe Republican Ulysses S. Grant. Lee signed it along with thirty-one other ex-Confederates. The Democratic campaign, eager to publicize the endorsement, published the statement widely in newspapers. Their letter claimed paternalistic concern for the welfare of freed Southern blacks, stating that "The idea that the Southern people are hostile to the negroes and would oppress them, if it were in their power to do so, is entirely unfounded. They have grown up in our midst, and we have been accustomed from childhood to look upon them with kindness." However, it also called for the restoration of white political rule, arguing that "It is true that the people of the South, in common with a large majority of the people of the North and West, are, for obvious reasons, inflexibly opposed to any system of laws that would place the political power of the country in the hands of the negro race. But this opposition springs from no feeling of enmity, but from a deep-seated conviction that, at present, the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power."

In his public statements and private correspondence, however, Lee argued that a tone of reconciliation and patience would further the interests of white Southerners better than hotheaded antagonism to federal authority or the use of violence. He repeatedly expelled white students from Washington College for violent attacks on local black men, and publicly urged obedience to the authorities and respect for law and order. In 1869-70 he was a leader in successful efforts to establish state-funded schools for blacks. He privately chastised fellow ex-Confederates such as Jefferson Davis and Jubal Early for their frequent, angry responses to perceived Northern insults, writing in private to them as he had written to a magazine editor in 1865, that "It should be the object of all to avoid controversy, to allay passion, give full scope to reason and to every kindly feeling. By doing this and encouraging our citizens to engage in the duties of life with all their heart and mind, with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past and fears of the future, our country will not only be restored in material prosperity, but will be advanced in science, in virtue and in religion."

Lee applied for, but was never granted, the postwar amnesty offered to former Confederates who swore to renew their allegiance to the United States. After he filled out the application form, it was delivered to the desk of Secretary of State William H. Seward, who, assuming that the matter had been dealt with by someone else and that this was just a personal copy, filed it away until it was found decades later in his desk drawer. Lee took the lack of response to mean that the government wished to retain the right to prosecute him in the future.

Lee's example of applying for amnesty encouraged many other former members of the Confederacy's armed forces to accept restored U.S. citizenship. In 1975, Lee's full rights of citizenship were posthumously restored by a joint U.S. Congressional resolution effective June 13, 1975. At the 5 August 1975, signing ceremony of the pardon, President Gerald R. Ford acknowledged the discovery of Lee's oath of allegiance by Elmer Oris Parker, an employee of the National Archives in 1970.

On September 28, 1870, Lee suffered a stroke that made speech impossible. Lee died from the effects of pneumonia, a little after 9 a.m., October 12, 1870, two weeks after the stroke, in Lexington, Virginia. He was buried underneath Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University, where his body remains today. According to J. William Jones' Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, his last words, on the day of his death, were "Tell Hill he must come up. Strike the tent," but this is debatable because of conflicting accounts. Since Lee's stroke resulted in aphasia, last words may have been impossible.

Among Southerners, Lee came to be even more revered after his surrender than he had been during the war (when Stonewall Jackson had been the great Confederate hero, particularly after Jackson's death at Chancellorsville). Admirers pointed to his character and devotion to duty, not to mention his brilliant tactical successes in battle after battle against a stronger foe. Military historians continue to pay attention to his battlefield tactics and maneuvering, though many think he should have designed better strategic plans for the Confederacy. However, it should be noted that he was not given full direction of the Southern war effort until very late in the conflict. His reputation continued to build and by 1900 his cult had spread into the North, signaling a national apotheosis. Today among the devotees of "The Lost Cause," General Lee is referred to as "The Marble Man."

On September 29, 2007, General Lee's 3 Civil War-era letters were sold for $61,000 at auction. The 11 folders of old papers were retrieved from Thomas Willcox's sport utility vehicle. The auction included hundreds of documents but dismal sales brought in less than $400,000. South Carolina tried suing to stop the sale but a judge ruled against it.

*Since it was built in 1884, the most prominent monument in New Orleans has been a -tall monument to General Lee. A sixteen and a half foot statue of Lee stands tall upon a towering column of white marble in the middle of Lee Circle. The statue of Lee, which weighs more than 7,000 pounds, faces the North (because he believed that you should never turn your back on your enemy). Lee Circle is situated along New Orleans' famous St. Charles Avenue. The New Orleans streetcars roll past Lee Circle and New Orleans' best Mardi Gras parades go around Lee Circle (the spot is so popular that bleachers are set up annually around the perimeter for Mardi Gras). Around the corner from Lee Circle is New Orleans' Confederate Museum, which contains the second largest collection of Confederate memorabilia in the world. In a tribute to Lee Circle (which had formerly been known as Tivoli Circle), former Confederate soldier George Washington Cable wrote: ::"In Tivoli Circle, New Orleans, from the centre and apex of its green flowery mound, an immense column of pure white marble rises in the ... majesty of Grecian proportions high up above the city's house-tops into the dazzling sunshine ... On its dizzy top stands the bronze figure of one of the worlds greatest captains. He is alone. Not one of his mighty lieutenants stand behind, beside or below him. His arms are folded on that breast that never knew fear, and his calm, dauntless gaze meets the morning sun as it rises, like the new posperity of the land he loved and serve so masterly, above the far distant battle fields where so many thousands of his gray veterans lie in the sleep of fallen heroes." (Silent South, 1885, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine)

*A large equestrian statue of Lee by French sculptor Jean Antonin Mercié is the centerpiece of Richmond, Virginia's famous Monument Avenue, which boasts four other statues to famous Confederates. This monument to Lee was unveiled on May 29, 1890. Over 100,000 people attended this dedication.

*Robert E. Lee is also featured in the carving on Stone Mountain.

The birthday of Robert E. Lee is celebrated or commemorated in: *The state of Virginia as part of Lee-Jackson Day, which was separated from the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday there in 2001. The King holiday falls on the third Monday in January while the Lee-Jackson Day holiday is celebrated on the Friday preceding it. *The state of Texas, as part of Confederate Heroes Day on January 19, Lee's actual birthday. *The states of Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi on the third Monday in January, along with Martin Luther King, Jr. *The state of Georgia on the day after Thanksgiving. *The state of Florida, as a legal holiday and public holiday, on January 19. http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=Ch0683/SEC01.HTM&Title=-%3E2006-%3ECh0683-%3ESection%2001#0683.01

*Robert Lee, Texas *The Leesville half of Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina. *Fort Lee in Prince George County, Virginia. *Lee County, Alabama; Lee County, Arkansas; Lee County, Florida; Lee County, Kentucky; Lee County, Mississippi; Lee County, North Carolina; Lee County, South Carolina; and Lee County, Texas. *Lee Drive, Baton Rouge, Louisiana—one of the city's major streets, it is located near the Louisiana State University. Robert E. Lee High School is located on the street. *Lee Highway, a National Auto Trail in the United States connecting New York City and San Francisco, California via the South and Southwest. *Lee Avenue, in Manassas, Virginia, was named after Robert E. Lee and intersects with Grant Avenue in front of the old Prince William County Courthouse. Grant Avenue was named after General Ulysses S. Grant. *Robert E. Lee Memorial Park, Baltimore, MD *Robert E. Lee is on the carving on Stone Mountain in Georgia *Robert E. Lee Blvd in New Orleans

*Robert E. Lee Academy, Bishopville, South Carolina *Robert E. Lee Middle School, Orlando, Florida *Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia *Lee-Davis High School, Mechanicsville, Virginia *Southern Lee High School, Sanford, North Carolina *Lee County High School, Sanford, North Carolina * Several high schools. See Robert E. Lee High School. *Washington-Lee High School, Arlington, Virginia *Robert E. Lee Junior High School, Monroe, Louisiana *Robert E. Lee Junior High School, San Angelo, Texas * Several elementary schools. See Robert E. Lee Elementary School.

*Arlington House, also known as the Custis-Lee Mansion and located in present-day Arlington National Cemetery, is maintained by the National Park Service as a memorial to Lee. *The Virginia State Memorial at Gettysburg Battlefield is topped by an equestrian statue of Lee by Frederick William Sievers, facing roughly in the direction of Pickett's Charge. *Lee is one of the figures depicted in bas-relief carved into Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Georgia. Accompanying him on horseback in the relief are Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis. *A statue of Lee on horseback, located in Robert E. Lee Park, in Dallas, Texas. *Despite his presidential pardon by Gerald Ford and his continuing to being held in high regard by many Americans, Lee's portrayal on a mural on Richmond's Flood Wall on the James River was considered offensive by some, was removed in the late 1990s, but currently is back on the flood wall. *The USS Robert E. Lee (SSBN-601) was a submarine named for Lee, built in 1958 *A Mississippi River steamboat was named for Lee after the Civil War. It was the participant in an 1870 St. Louis - New Orleans race with the Natchez VI, which was featured in a Currier and Ives lithograph. The Robert E. Lee won the said race. The steamboat also inspired a song Waiting for the Robert E. Lee (Lewis Muir-L. Wolfe Gilbert). *In 1900, Lee was one of the first 29 individuals selected for the Hall of Fame for Great Americans (the first Hall of Fame in the United States), designed by Stanford White, on the Bronx, New York, campus of New York University, now a part of Bronx Community College.

<gallery> Image:Robert-E-Lee-by-Leo-Lentill.jpg|Robert E Lee Monument, Charlottesville, Virginia, Leo Lentilli, sculptor, 1924 Image:Robert-E-Lee-by-Sievers.jpg|Robert E Lee, Virginia Monument, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, William Sievers, sculptor, 1917 Image:Lee-Mercie-Richmond.jpg|Lee by Mercié, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia, 1890 Image:Robert E Lee Univ of Texas.jpg|Statue of Lee on the grounds of the University of Texas at Austin Image:RobertELeeStatuteDallas.jpg|Statue of Lee in Dallas, Texas </gallery>

* Connelly, Thomas Lawrence, The Marble Man : Robert E. Lee and His Image in American society, New York: Knopf, 1977, ISBN 0-394-47179-2. * Davis, William C., Pohanka, Brian C., Troiani, Don, eds., Civil War Journal, The Leaders, Rutledge Hill Press, 1997, ISBN 0-517-22193-4. * Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3. * Fellman, Michael, The Making of Robert E. Lee, Random House, 2000, ISBN 0-679-45650-3. * Freeman, Douglas S., R. E. Lee, A Biography (4 volumes), Scribners, 1934. * Fuller, Maj. Gen. J. F. C., Grant and Lee, A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, 1957, ISBN 0-253-13400-5. * Hughes Jr., Nathaniel C., and Lidell, St. John R., Liddell's Record, Louisiana State University Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-8071-2218-1. * Lee, Edmund Jennings, Lee of Virginia 1642-1892, Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1983, ISBN 0-8063-0604-1. * Lee, Robert Edward, General, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee. * Nolan, Alan T., Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History, University of North Carolina Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8078-4587-6. * Testimony of Wesley Norris, National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 14, 1866. Reprinted in John W. Blassingame, (ed.) (1977), Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, and Interviews, and Autobiographies, ISBN 0-8071-0273-3. * Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders, Louisiana State University Press, 1959, ISBN 0-8071-0823-5.

* Blount, Roy, Jr. Robert E. Lee Penguin Putnam, 2003. 210 pp., short popular biography * Carmichael, Peter S., ed. Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee Louisiana State U. Pr., 2004. * Connelly, Thomas L., "The Image and the General: Robert E. Lee in American Historiography." Civil War History 19 (March 1973): 50-64. * Connelly, Thomas L., The Marble Man. Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977. * Connelly, Thomas L., "Robert E. Lee and the Western Confederacy: A Criticism of Lee's Strategic Ability." Civil War History 15 (June 1969): 116-32 * Cooke, John E., "A Life of General Robert E. Lee" Kessinger Publishing, 2004. * Dowdey, Clifford. Lee 1965. * Fellman, Michael (2000), The Making of Robert E. Lee. New York: Random House (ISBN 0-679-45650-3). * Fishwick, Marshall W. Lee after the War 1963. * Flood, Charles Bracelen. Lee — The Last Years 1981. * Freeman, Douglas S., R. E. Lee, A Biography (4 volumes), Scribners, 1934 (online in its entirety). The longest and most influential biography, by Pulitzer prize winner * Gary W. Gallagher; Lee the Soldier. University of Nebraska Press, 1996 * Gary W. Gallagher; Lee & His Army in Confederate History. University of North Carolina Press, 2001 * McCaslin, Richard B. Lee in the Shadow of Washington. Louisiana State University Press, 2001. * Pryor, Elizabeth Brown; Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters. New York: Viking, 2007. * Reid, Brian Holden. Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005. * Thomas, Emory Robert E. Lee W.W. Norton & Co., 1995 (ISBN 0-393-03730-4) full-scale biography

* Brown, Kent Masterson. Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign. U. of North Carolina Press, 2005. * Cavanaugh, Michael A., and William Marvel, The Petersburg Campaign: The Battle of the Crater: "The Horrid Pit," June 25-August 6, 1864 (1989) * Davis, William C. Death in the Trenches: Grant at Petersburg (1986). * Dowdey, Clifford. The Seven Days 1964. * Freeman, Douglas S., Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command (3 volumes), Scribners, 1946, ISBN 0-684-85979-3. * Fuller, Maj. Gen. J. F. C., Grant and Lee, A Study in Personality and Generalship, Indiana University Press, 1957, ISBN 0-253-13400-5. * Gott, Kendall D., Where the South Lost the War: An Analysis of the Fort Henry-Fort Donelson Campaign, February 1862, Stackpole Books, 2003, ISBN 0-8117-0049-6. * Grimsley, Mark, And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864 University of Nebraska Press, 2002. * Harsh, Joseph L. Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862 Kent State University Press, 1999 * Johnson, R. U., and Buel, C. C., eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. 4 vols. New York, 1887-88; essays by leading generals of both sides; online edition * McWhiney, Grady, Battle in the Wilderness: Grant Meets Lee (1995) * Maney, R. Wayne, Marching to Cold Harbor. Victory and Failure, 1864 (1994). * Marvel, William. Lee's Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox. University of North Carolina Press, 2002. * Matter, William D., If It Takes All Summer: The Battle of Spotsylvania (1988) * Rhea, Gordon C., The Battle of the Wilderness May 5–6, 1864, Louisiana State University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8071-1873-7. * Rhea, Gordon C., The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern May 7–12, 1864, Louisiana State University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8071-2136-3. * Rhea, Gordon C., To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13–25, 1864, Louisiana State University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8071-2535-0. * Rhea, Gordon C., Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26 – June 3, 1864, Louisiana State University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8071-2803-1. * Miller, J. Michael, The North Anna Campaign: "Even to Hell Itself," May 21-26, 1864 (1989). * Steere, Edward, The Wilderness Campaign (1960)

* Blassingame, John W (ed.) (1977), Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, and Interviews, and Autobiographies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press (ISBN 0-8071-0273-3). * Dowdey, Clifford. and Louis H. Manarin, eds. The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee. Boston: Little, Brown, 1961. * Freeman, Douglas Southall. ed. Unpublished Letters of General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A., to Jefferson Davis and the War Department of the Confederate States of America, 1862-65. Rev. ed., with foreword by Grady McWhiney. 1957. * Johnson, R. U., and Buel, C. C., eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. 4 vols. New York, 1887-88; essays by leading generals of both sides; online edition * Taylor, Walter H. Four Years with General Lee Reprint. 1962. * Taylor, Walter H. General Lee — His Campaigns in Virginia, 1861-1865. Reprint. 1975

* Complete text of Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee - by Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son *Freeman's biography of Lee *Biography by Appleton's and Stanley L. Klos *Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University where Robert E. Lee is buried *Notice of Robert E. Lee's Assignment to Command of Confederate Forces on the Coast of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, 1861 From the State Library & Archives of Florida. * *Washington & Lee Mock Convention *Robert E Lee / Virginia Monument at Gettysburg *Obituary of Robert E. Lee, with a retrospective from a Northern point of view. The New York Times; October 13, 1870