Destined to Revolutionary War legend Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee in Stratford Hall, Virginia, Robert Edward Lee appeared to be bound for military enormity. In spite of money related hardship that made his dad withdraw toward the West Indies, youthful Robert secured an arrangement to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated second in the class of 1829. After two years, he wedded Mary Anna Randolph Custis, a relative of George Washington's embraced child, John Parke Custis. However with for all his military family, Lee still couldn't seem to set foot on a front line. Rather, he served seventeen years as an officer in the Corps of Engineers, administering and reviewing the development of the country's seaside safeguards. Administration amid the 1846 war with Mexico, in any case, changed that. As an individual from General Winfield Scott's staff, Lee separated himself, winning three brevets for bravery, and rising up out of the contention with the rank of colonel.
From 1852 to 1855, Lee filled in as director of West Point, and was in this manner in charge of instructing large portions of the men who might later serve under him - and the individuals who might restrict him - on the war zones of the Civil War. In 1855 he cleared out the foundation to take a position in the mounted force and in 1859 was called upon to put down abolitionist John Brown's strike at Harpers Ferry.
In view of his notoriety for being one of the finest officers in the United States Army, Abraham Lincoln offered Lee the charge of the Federal powers in April 1861. Lee declined and offered his renunciation from the armed force when the territory of Virginia withdrew on April 17, contending that he couldn't battle against his own particular individuals. Rather, he acknowledged a general's bonus in the recently shaped Confederate Army. His first military engagement of the Civil War happened at Cheat Mountain, Virginia (now West Virginia) on September 11, 1861. It was a Union triumph however Lee's notoriety withstood the general population feedback that took after. He filled in as military guide to President Jefferson Davis until June 1862 when he was given summon of the injured General Joseph E. Johnston's beset armed force on the Virginia promontory.
Lee renamed his summon the Army of Northern Virginia, and under his bearing it would turn into the most celebrated and fruitful of the Confederate armed forces. This same association additionally bragged a portion of the Confederacy's most rousing military figures, including James Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson and the ostentatious high handed J.E.B. Stuart. With these confided in subordinates, Lee instructed troops that consistently mistreated their blue-clad foes and humiliated their commanders regardless of what the chances.
However regardless of thwarting a few endeavors to grab the Confederate capital, Lee perceived that the way to extreme achievement was a triumph on Northern soil. In September 1862, he propelled an intrusion into Maryland with the expectation of moving the war's concentration far from Virginia. Yet, when a lost dispatch laying out the intrusion design was found by Union leader George McClellan the component of shock was lost, and the two armed forces went head to head at the skirmish of Antietam. In spite of the fact that his designs were not any more a mystery, Lee by the by figured out how to battle McClellan to a stalemate on September 17, 1862. Following the bloodiest one-day clash of the war, overwhelming setbacks constrained Lee to pull back under the front of dimness. The rest of 1862 was spent on edge, repelling Union pushes at Fredericksburg and, in May of the next year, Chancellorsville.
The awesome triumph at Chancellorsville gave Lee incredible trust in his armed force, and the Rebel boss was propelled by and by to take the battle to adversary soil. In late June of 1863, he started another intrusion of the North, meeting the Union host at the intersection town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. For three days Lee assaulted the Federal armed force under George G. Meade in what might turn into the most popular skirmish of the whole war. Acclimated to seeing the Yankees keep running notwithstanding his forceful troops, Lee assaulted solid Union positions on high ground. This time, be that as it may, the Federals wouldn't move. The Confederate war exertion achieved its high water check on July 3, 1863 when Lee requested a monstrous frontal attack against Meade's inside, skewer headed by Virginians under Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett. The assault known as Pickett's charge was a disappointment and Lee, perceiving that the fight was lost, requested his armed force to withdraw. Assuming full liability for the annihilation, he composed Jefferson Davis offering his acquiescence, which Davis declined to acknowledge.
After the concurrent Union triumphs at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Mississippi, Ulysses S. Give accepted order of the Federal armed forces. Instead of making Richmond the point of his crusade, Grant centered the heap assets available to him on wrecking Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. In a persevering and ridiculous crusade, the Federal juggernaut cudgeled the under-provided Rebel band. Regardless of his capacity to make Grant pay in blood for his forceful strategies, Lee had been compelled to yield the activity to his enemy, and he perceived that the finish of the Confederacy was just a short time. By the late spring of 1864, the Confederates had been constrained into pursuing trench fighting outside of Petersburg. In spite of the fact that President Davis named the Virginian General-in-Chief of every Confederate constrain in February 1865, just two months after the fact, on April 9, 1865, Lee was compelled to surrender his fatigued and drained armed force to Grant at Appomattox Court House, successfully finishing the Civil War.
Lee returned home on parole and in the end turned into the leader of Washington College in Virginia (now known as Washington and Lee University). He stayed in this position until his demise on October 12, 1870 in Lexington, Virginia.
