See Letters of William Lee, edited by W. C. Ford (Brooklyn, 1891).
Another brother, Francis Lightfoot Lee (1734-1797), was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1770-1775. In 1775-1779 he was a delegate to the Continental Congress, and as such signed the Declaration of Independence. He served on the committee which drafted the Articles of Confederation, and contended that there should be no treaty of peace with Great Britain which did not grant to the United States both the right to the Newfoundland fisheries and the free navigation of the Mississippi. After retiring from Congress he served in 1780-1782 in the Virginia Senate.
LEE, ROBERT EDWARD (1807-1870), American soldier, general in the Confederate States army, was the youngest son of major-general Henry Lee, called “Light Horse Harry.” He was born at Stratford, Westmoreland county, Virginia, on the 19th of January 1807, and entered West Point in 1825. Graduating four years later second in his class, he was given a commission in the U.S. Engineer Corps. In 1831 he married Mary, daughter of G. W. P. Custis, the adopted son of Washington and the grandson of Mrs Washington. In 1836 he became first lieutenant, and in 1838 captain. In this rank he took part in the Mexican War, repeatedly winning distinction for conduct and bravery. He received the brevets of major for Cerro Gordo, lieut.-colonel for Contreras-Churubusco and colonel for Chapultepec. After the war he was employed in engineer work at Washington and Baltimore, during which time, as before the war, he resided on the great Arlington estate, near Washington, which had come to him through his wife. In 1852 he was appointed superintendent of West Point, and during his three years here he carried out many important changes in the academy. Under him as cadets were his son G. W. Custis Lee, his nephew, Fitzhugh Lee and J. E. B. Stuart, all of whom became general officers in the Civil War. In 1855 he was appointed as lieut.-colonel to the 2nd Cavalry, commanded by Colonel Sidney Johnston, with whom he served against the Indians of the Texas border. In 1859, while at Arlington on leave, he was summoned to command the United States troops sent to deal with the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry. In March 1861 he was made colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry; but his career in the old army ended with the secession of Virginia in the following month. Lee was strongly averse to secession, but felt obliged to conform to the action of his own state. The Federal authorities offered Lee the command of the field army about to invade the South, which he refused. Resigning his commission, he made his way to Richmond and was at once made a major-general in the Virginian forces. A few weeks later he became a brigadier-general (then the highest rank) in the Confederate service.
The military operations with which the great Civil War opened in 1861 were directed by President Davis and General Lee. Lee was personally in charge of the unsuccessful West Virginian operations in the autumn, and, having been made a full general on the 31st of August, during the winter he devoted his experience as an engineer to the fortification and general defence of the Atlantic coast. Thence, when the well-drilled Army of the Potomac was about to descend upon Richmond, he was hurriedly recalled to Richmond. General Johnston was wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) on the 31st of May 1862, and General Robert E. Lee was assigned to the command of the famous Army of Northern Virginia which for the next three years “carried the rebellion on its bayonets.” Little can be said of Lee’s career as a commander-in-chief that is not an integral part of the history of the Civil War. His first success was the “Seven Days’ Battle” (q.v.) in which he stopped McClellan’s advance; this was quickly followed up by the crushing defeat of the Federal army under Pope, the invasion of Maryland and the sanguinary and indecisive battle of the Antietam (q.v.). The year ended with another great victory at Fredericksburg (q.v.). Chancellorsville (see [Wilderness]), won against odds of two to one, and the great three days’ battle of Gettysburg (q.v.), where for the first time fortune turned decisively against the Confederates, were the chief events of 1863. In the autumn Lee fought a war of manœuvre against General Meade. The tremendous struggle of 1864 between Lee and Grant included the battles of the Wilderness (q.v.), Spottsylvania, North Anna, Cold Harbor and the long siege of Petersburg (q.v.), in which, almost invariably, Lee was locally successful. But the steady pressure of his unrelenting opponent slowly wore down his strength. At last with not more than one man to oppose to Grant’s three he was compelled to break out of his Petersburg lines (April 1865). A series of heavy combats revealed his purpose, and Grant pursued the dwindling remnants of Lee’s army to the westward. Headed off by the Federal cavalry, and pressed closely in rear by Grant’s main body, General Lee had no alternative but to surrender. At Appomattox Court House, on the 9th of April, the career of the Army of Northern Virginia came to an end. Lee’s farewell order was issued on the following day, and within a few weeks the Confederacy was at an end. For a few months Lee lived quietly in Powhatan county, making his formal submission to the Federal authorities and urging on his own people acceptance of the new conditions. In August he was offered, and accepted, the presidency of Washington College, Lexington (now Washington and Lee University), a post which he occupied until his death on the 12th of October 1870. He was buried in the college grounds.
For the events of Lee’s military career briefly indicated in this notice the reader is referred to the articles [American Civil War], &c. By his achievements he won a high place amongst the great generals of history. Though hampered by lack of materials and by political necessities, his strategy was daring always, and he never hesitated to take the gravest risks. On the field of battle he was as energetic in attack as he was constant in defence, and his personal influence over the men whom he led was extraordinary. No student of the American Civil War can fail to notice how the influence of Lee dominated the course of the struggle, and his surpassing ability was never more conspicuously shown than in the last hopeless stages of the contest. The personal history of Lee is lost in the history of the great crisis of America’s national life; friends and foes alike acknowledged the purity of his motives, the virtues of his private life, his earnest Christianity and the unrepining loyalty with which he accepted the ruin of his party.
See A. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (New York, 1886); Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee (New York, 1894, “Great Commanders” series); R. A. Brock, General Robert E. Lee (Washington, 1904); R. E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of General R. E. Lee (London, 1904); H. A. White, Lee (“Heroes of the Nations”) (1897); P. A. Bruce, Robert E. Lee (1907); T. N. Page, Lee (1909); W. H. Taylor, Four Years with General Lee; J. W. Jones, Personal Reminiscences of Robert E. Lee (1874).
LEE (or Legh) ROWLAND (d. 1543), English bishop, belonged to a Northumberland family and was educated at Cambridge. Having entered the Church he obtained several livings owing to the favour of Cardinal Wolsey; after Wolsey’s fall he rose high in the esteem of Henry VIII. and of Thomas Cromwell, serving both king and minister in the business of suppressing the monasteries, and he is said to have celebrated Henry’s secret marriage with Anne Boleyn in January 1533. Whether this be so or not, Lee took part in preparing for the divorce proceedings against Catherine of Aragon, and in January 1534 he was elected bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, or Chester as the see was often called, taking at his consecration the new oath to the king as head of the English Church and not seeking confirmation from the pope. As bishop he remained in Henry’s personal service, endeavouring to establish the legality of his marriage with Anne, until May 1534, when he was appointed lord president of the council in the marches of Wales. At this time the Welsh marches were in a very disorderly condition. Lee acted in a stern and energetic fashion, holding courts, sentencing many offenders to death and overcoming the hostility of the English border lords. After some years of hard and successful work in this capacity, “the last survivor of the old martial prelates, fitter for harness than for bishops’ robes, for a court of justice than a court of theology,” died at Shrewsbury in June 1543. Many letters from Lee to Cromwell are preserved in the Record Office, London; these throw much light on the bishop’s career and on the lawless condition of the Welsh marches in his time.
One of his contemporaries was Edward Lee (c. 1482-1544) archbishop of York, famous for his attack on Erasmus, who replied to him in his Epistolae aliquot eruditorum virorum. Like Rowland, Edward was useful to Henry VIII. in the matter of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon, and was sent by the king on embassies to the emperor Charles V. and to Pope Clement VII. In 1531 he became archbishop of York, but he came under suspicion as one who disliked the king’s new position as head of the English Church. At Pontefract in 1536, during the Pilgrimage of Grace, the archbishop was compelled to join the rebels, but he did not sympathize with the rising and in 1539 he spoke in parliament in favour of the six articles of religion. Lee, who was the last archbishop of York to coin money, died on the 13th of September 1544.