Before the Civil War, Robert E. Lee opened the upper Mississippi to steamboats
Robert E. Lee finished West Point without a single demerit and spent decades as an army engineer, mapping the Mississippi's Des Moines Rapids and opening the upper river to commerce. In 1861 he turned down a senior Union command to follow Virginia out of the Union, and his legacy remains fiercely debated.
Lee was born on January 19, 1807, at Stratford Hall Plantation in Virginia, son of the Revolutionary War officer Henry Lee III, known as Light Horse Harry. His father's failed investments landed him twice in debtors' prison, and in 1812 he left for the West Indies for good. The young Robert cared for his ailing mother, showed a gift for mathematics and, with a family friend's letter to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, entered West Point in 1825. He graduated second in his class in 1829, one of only five of 45 cadets with no demerits.
Commissioned into the Corps of Engineers, he worked on the fort that became Fort Pulaski in Georgia, served at Fort Monroe and helped survey the Ohio–Michigan line. From 1837 he directed works on St. Louis harbour and the upper Mississippi and Missouri. The historian Michael Korda argued those two years alone deserved lasting gratitude, because they opened much of the river to trade. He married Mary Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, in 1831 after her father first judged him unsuitable, and later served in the Mexican–American War and as superintendent of West Point.
Lee said he opposed slavery in principle yet defended its legality and enslaved hundreds of people. Taking over the Army of Northern Virginia in June 1862, he pushed George McClellan back from Richmond and won at Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville with subordinates such as Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet. His two invasions of the North failed, most decisively at Gettysburg in 1863, and his aggressive tactics cost men the Confederacy could not replace. Worn down by Ulysses S. Grant, he surrendered at Appomattox Court House in April 1865.
As president of Washington College in Lexington from 1865, he backed reconciliation and accepted the end of slavery, while opposing racial equality for African Americans. After his death on October 12, 1870, he became a cultural icon in the South. Historians continue to argue over his generalship, his views on race and what he should represent.
Source: Robert E. Lee
