This Day In History

On this day in 1807, the future Confederate general Robert E Lee was born. He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia; Lee’s father was a general and Governor of Virginia. He later attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he excelled as an officer and engineer.

The tensions between the North and the South over the issue of slavery had been brewing for years, and in late 1860, South Carolina became the first state to declare its secession from the Union. Lee’s home state of Virginia followed in 1861. Despite Lee’s desire to preserve the Union and the offer of command of the Union Army by President Abraham Lincoln, Lee chose to fight for his home state, and the Confederacy. Lee has been praised for his leadership of the Confederate army as an excellent tactician and commander. However, his two invasions of the North exposed some strategic weaknesses, and caused the Battle of Gettysburg, which contributed to the Confederacy’s failure. The campaigns of Union general Ulysses S Grant inflicted heavy casualties on Lee’s army, but he was able to fight him back for a long time. However on April 9th 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.

After the war, Lee supported the Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson, but opposed giving the vote to freed slaves and taking the vote from ex-Confederates. Lee died on October 12th 1870, and remains an iconic figure both in the South and the North. In 1975, President Gerald Ford posthumously restored Lee’s US citizenship, which was automatically revoked when he joined the Confederacy.