general Robert Edward Lee 1807 1870 United States Army officer engineer Major Governor of Virginia
Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870), was a career United States Army officer, an engineer, and among the most celebrated generals in American history. Lee was the son of Major General Henry Lee III "Light Horse Harry" (1756–1818), Governor of Virginia, and his second wife, Anne Hill Carter (1773–1829). He was also related to Meriwether Lewis (1774 - 1809). A top graduate of West Point, Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the Army for thirty-two years. He is best known for commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War. 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 u
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