General Robert E. Lee

Known for his Duty in the Civil War, He is known in the United States as "Old Briliance" he joined at Military Academy at 1825 and Graduated Second at his class in 1829.

Lee first saw battle in the Mexican War, fought in 1846-48. He served as captain under General Winfield Scott. In Scott's book he would write about Lee's remarkable performance in that war calling him "the very best soldier I ever saw in the field."

in October he went to Harper's Ferry, Virginia at the infamous Slave uprising in 1860.

Such early successes made Lee a leading candidate to command Union forces against the South once it decided to secede. Reluctant to engage in a war against the South, Lee turned down an offer of command of the Union forces. On April 18, 1861, the Virginia Secession Convention, made up of the state's ruling elite, voted to join the Southern states in secession. As practical issues, Lee did not oppose either slavery or secession.

After an initially unsuccessful foray as a field commander in western Virginia in 1861, Lee supervised the preparation of coastal defenses along the South Atlantic seaboard before being called to Richmond to serve as military advisor to President Jefferson Davis. He assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia in May 1862, replacing the seriously wounded Joseph E. Johnston, and immediately embarked on a series of skillful offensive operations that repelled the Union forces outside Richmond in the Seven Days Battles in June and July 1862. Lee followed this with an offensive drive northward that culminated in victory at Second Manassas in August 1862.

Lee followed up this triumph with another invasion of the North, this time suffering a major defeat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, from July 1 through July 3, 1863. Skilled as he was in repelling Union offensives and outfoxing his Northern counterparts, Lee's preference for battle cost his army dearly. By the time he confronted Ulysses S. Grant in 1864, the drain upon his manpower was noticeable. Despite waging an adroit defensive campaign, he was unable to halt Grant's drive southward or to prevent him from laying siege to Richmond and Petersburg by the summer of 1864. Efforts to divert Union forces with operations in the Shenandoah Valley, including several strikes northward across the Potomac, forced Lee to contemplate how best to continue the war by abandoning the Confederate capital.

By the beginning of April 1865, Grant's armies broke through what remained of the Confederate defenses, and Lee evacuated Richmond and Petersburg on the evening of April 2. A week later, he surrendered what remained of his army to Grant at Appomattox Court House in 1865 and he died at October 12, 1870. At the age of 63 Years Old

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