Robert Edward Lee (1807–70)

United States Army soldier, later Confederate Army general. Commissioned as brevet second lieutenant of engineers, 1829. First lieutenant of engineers, 1836; captain, 1838; brevet colonel, 1848. Superintendent at United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, 1852–5. Lieutenant-colonel of Second Cavalry, 1855; colonel of First Cavalry, 1861; resigned in April 1861. Appointed commander of Virginia’s armed forces, 1861. Unofficial military advisor to Confederate President Davis with rank of general. In command of the Army of Northern Virginia, 1862. General-in-chief of all Confederate armies, 1865. Applied for a pardon on 13 June 1865. Indicted for treason but never brought to trial. President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University), Virginia, from 1865.