Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) was a Confederate general during the War of Secession.

In 1861, his small army was defeated in West Virginia, allowing the United States to admit that state, and he was recalled to Richmond. In the spring of 1862, he became the Army of Northern Virginia's commander when his predecessor, Joseph E. Johnston, was wounded outside Richmond during the Peninsula Campaign. Lee repulsed the Union Army of the Potomac under General George McClellan. The following summer, he defeated an overland invasion of Virginia led by General John Pope at Manassas Junction.

In the fall of 1862, he launched an ambitious invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Aided by failures of US Intelligence to find his columns and by McClellan's timidity and incompetence, he defeated the Army of the Potomac at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, and advanced on the city of Philadelphia unopposed. (Twenty years later, this campaign would inspire German officer Alfred von Schleiffen to plan the campaign which Germany eventually used to open the Western Front during the Great War in 1914.) This campaign obtained for the Confederacy British and French recognition and forced US President Abraham Lincoln to extend US recognition as well--in other words, it won the war for the Confederates.

Lee's nephew, Fitzugh Lee, would eventually become President of the Confederate States.

In future generations, Lee would be honored when his name and likeness were used for the Order of Lee medal, the second-highest honor bestowed by the Confederate Arm after the Confederate Cross.