General Robert E. Lee`s military ideas and abilities

Running Head : General Robert E . Lee 's Military Ideas Abilities

General Robert E . Lee

Essay Writer

We may , at last , be able to carry out these obligations in regard to the Civil War . One of the central figures of the war was General Robert E Lee . Indeed , in our collective consciousness he looms almost as the figure of the war , rivaled only by Abraham Lincoln . There is little need to belabor the fact of Lee 's heroic , almost superhuman , national stature , which has steadily enlarged since the war years . Robert E

Lee was one of history 's most distinguished generals and commander of the Army of Northern Virginia . His qualities of intellect and character made him a legend even during his lifetime . Florida has honored him by naming one of its counties in his memory (peeples 2002

Writing in 1868 , Fanny Dowling described Lee as bathed in the white light which falls directly upon him from the smile of an approving and sustaining God (Nolan 25 : 1991 . The image is , of course , that of a saint . William Garrett Piston remarks accurately that during the 1870s Southern publicists set Robert E . Lee on the road to sainthood

The apotheosis of Lee is not confined to the generation that immediately followed the war . Speaking in 1909 , Woodrow Wilson said , Lee was unapproachable in the history of our country (Nolan 22 : 1991 . In 1914 Douglas Southall Freeman told that noble he was nobler he became (Nolan 22 : 1991 . In 1964 Clifford Dowdey titled a chapter in his study of the Seven Days The Early Work of a Master . Writing in 1965 about the same campaign , Dowdey told of Lee 's emergence as a people 's god According to Piston , for Dowdey the Civil War was a passion play , with Lee as Christ (Nolan 23 : 1991 . Thomas L . Connelly summed up the situation when in 1977 he wrote that Lee became a God figure for Virginians , a saint for the white Protestant South , and a hero for the nation who represented all that was good and noble . Many books have dealt with the development of the Lee tradition : Connelly 's The Marble Man , Piston 's Lee 's Tarnished Lieutenant , and Gaines M . Foster 's 1987 study Ghosts of the Confederacy all trace its evolution

Born in 1807 , a Virginia aristocrat of the plantation society , Lee graduated with great distinction from the United States Military Academy in 1829 . He married Mary Custis , the daughter of Martha Washington 's grandson , George Washington Parke Custis , who was also George Washington 's adopted son . The marriage produced four daughters named Agnes , Annie , Mary , Mildred and three sons , George Washington Custis Lee , Robert Edward Lee , Jr , and William Henry Fitzhugh ( Rooney Lee , all of whom were to serve in the Confederate army . General Lee 's continuous and distinguished service in the United States Army included action in the Mexican War and the superintendency at West Point from September 1 , 1852 , to March 31 , 1855 . He was considered the...