Robert E. Lee

1807 – 1870

Robert Edward Lee was a Confederate general who served as the senior commander of the Army of Northern Virginia from 1862 until its surrender at Appomattox in April 1865, and was named overall commander of the Confederate States Army in the war's final months. A career U.S. Army officer who had taken an oath to defend the Constitution, he resigned that commission in 1861 to take up arms against the United States in defense of slavery in his home state of Virginia. As an enslaver and as commander of an army defending the institution, he ordered the brutal recapture of escaped enslaved workers and the kidnapping of free Black civilians during the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM