Robert Edward Lee
1807–70
United States Army soldier, later Confederate Army general. Commissioned as brevet second lieutenant of engineers, 1829. First lieutenant of engineers, 1836; captain, 1838; brevet colonel, 1848. Superintendent at United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, 1852–5. Lieutenant-colonel of Second Cavalry, 1855; colonel of First Cavalry, 1861; resigned in April 1861. Appointed commander of Virginia’s armed forces, 1861. Unofficial military advisor to Confederate President Davis with rank of general. In command of the Army of Northern Virginia, 1862. General-in-chief of all Confederate armies, 1865. Applied for a pardon on 13 June 1865. Indicted for treason but never brought to trial. President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University), Virginia, from 1865.
Sources
ANB
DAB.
Bibliography
ANB: American national biography. Edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. 24 vols. and supplement. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999–2002.
DAB: Dictionary of American biography. Under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies. 20 vols., index, and 10 supplements. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Simon & Schuster Macmillan. London: Oxford University Press; Humphrey Milford. 1928–95.
