50 Fun Facts About Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee bought which gray warhorse in 1862 and rode him for the rest of the Civil War?

Traveller cost Lee $200 and had first been called Jeff Davis. Admirers pulled so many souvenir hairs from his tail that Lee said he looked like a plucked chicken.

After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee opposed building which things, saying they would keep the war's wounds open?

Confederate monuments, Lee argued, would only stop the wounds of the war from healing, so he declined to back them. Statues of him went up across the South after his death all the same.

Although a full Confederate general, Robert E. Lee wore only the three stars of which lower rank?

Colonel was his last rank in the United States Army, and Lee kept its three stars all through the war. He meant to put on a general's insignia only once the Confederacy had won.

The only coffin saved from an 1870 flood was too short for Robert E. Lee, so he was buried without what?

His shoes had to be left off because the one coffin recovered from the river was a little too short for him. Two local boys had found it washed ashore, undamaged.

Which US president signed the resolution restoring Robert E. Lee's citizenship more than a century after his death?

Gerald Ford signed it in 1975, after an archivist found Lee's long-lost oath of allegiance among State Department records. Lee had sworn the oath in 1865, but it was filed away and forgotten.

In which Virginia village did Robert E. Lee surrender his army to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865?

Appomattox Court House was where Lee's retreat ended, and Grant's terms let the Confederates go home on parole. Grant also let them keep their horses for the spring planting and sent food to the hungry army.

Which Virginia estate, Robert E. Lee's home before the Civil War, did the Union turn into a national cemetery?

Arlington was chosen as a burial ground partly to make sure that Lee could never come home again. It was his wife's family house, where the couple had married.

Which of Robert E. Lee's corps commanders was mortally wounded by his own troops' fire in May 1863?

Stonewall Jackson was hit by his own men while scouting ahead of his line after dark. His left arm was amputated, and Lee lost the general he counted his finest.

The stunt car named the General Lee in the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard was which muscle car?

A Dodge Charger from 1969 played the General Lee, whose horn sounded the opening notes of Dixie. The idea came from a real bootlegger's car named after the general's favorite horse.

Robert E. Lee's father, a Revolutionary War hero and governor of Virginia, was known by which nickname?

Light-Horse Harry Lee also gave the eulogy that called the first president first in war and first in peace. Ruined by debt, he sailed for the West Indies when Robert was a small boy.

Which three-day battle in July 1863 ended Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North in defeat?

Gettysburg produced more casualties than any other battle of the war. A month later Lee offered to give up his command, and Jefferson Davis refused to let him go.

Which Union commanding general told Robert E. Lee in 1861 that resigning was the greatest mistake of his life?

Winfield Scott, a fellow Virginian, had wanted Lee for a top Union command. A cousin on his staff said the old general collapsed on a sofa at the news and mourned as if he had lost a son.

Which 1862 battle in Maryland, the bloodiest single day of the Civil War, ended Robert E. Lee's first invasion?

Antietam left about 23,000 men dead, wounded or missing in a single day. Lee's battered army barely held off the Union assaults, then pulled back into Virginia.

Union soldiers found a lost copy of Robert E. Lee's 1862 invasion orders wrapped around what?

Three cigars lay inside the paper, Special Order 191, which showed that Lee had split his army. The Union commander moved so slowly on the windfall that Lee had time to pull his forces together.

Which cautious Union general did Robert E. Lee drive away from Richmond in the Seven Days Battles of 1862?

George B. McClellan had pushed to the edge of the Confederate capital before Lee's attacks unnerved him. He fell back 25 miles to the James River and gave up the Peninsula in August.

Robert E. Lee took over the army defending Richmond in June 1862 after which general was wounded at Seven Pines?

Joseph E. Johnston was hit at Seven Pines, and Lee renamed the force he inherited the Army of Northern Virginia. In 1865 Lee tried in vain to break away and join Johnston's army in North Carolina.

After which lopsided December 1862 victory did Robert E. Lee reportedly say it is well that war is so terrible?

Fredericksburg saw Ambrose Burnside throw his army at Lee's strong defenses and lose about 12,600 men to the Confederates' 5,000. Lee added that otherwise we should grow too fond of it.

Which Union general took command of the Army of the Potomac just days before defeating Robert E. Lee in July 1863?

George Meade replaced Joseph Hooker on June 28 and was fighting Lee within the week. His pursuit afterwards was too slow to stop the beaten army slipping back into Virginia.

In which May 1863 battle did Robert E. Lee divide his outnumbered army and rout Joseph Hooker's far larger force?

Chancellorsville is often called Lee's perfect battle, won against a force more than twice the size of his own. He split his army in front of the enemy and sent one corps around to strike Hooker's exposed flank.

Which Confederate general's name is attached to the doomed frontal assault Robert E. Lee ordered on 3 July 1863?

George Pickett led only one of the divisions in the charge, which was beaten back with severe losses. Lee rode out to meet the survivors and told them that it had all been his fault.

Robert E. Lee's wife, Mary Anna Custis, was a great-granddaughter of which famous First Lady?

Martha Washington's grandson was Mary's father, and Mary was his only surviving child. She and Lee married at her parents' house in 1831 and had seven children.

Robert E. Lee graduated second in his West Point class of 1829 without ever receiving a single what?

Demerit-free records were rare: only five of Lee's 45 classmates managed one too. The cadet who beat him to first place, Charles Mason, left the Army two years after graduating.

In 1859 Robert E. Lee led the Marines who captured which abolitionist at Harpers Ferry?

John Brown had seized the federal arsenal hoping to start an uprising, then refused to give himself up. Lee's Marines attacked at dawn and captured him after three minutes of fighting.

Robert E. Lee was born at which Virginia plantation, boyhood home of two signers of the Declaration of Independence?

Stratford Hall had housed four generations of Lees, among them the signers Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee. Robert left at three, when his father came out of debtors' prison.

In which war did Captain Robert E. Lee win three brevet promotions for scouting routes the enemy thought impassable?

The Mexican–American War made Lee's name: his scouting found undefended paths that helped win several battles. It was also where he first met and worked with Ulysses S. Grant.

Which army branch, which then ran West Point itself, did Robert E. Lee join on graduating in 1829?

Engineers supervised the academy, and its course centred on their craft. Lee stayed with them for 26 years, leaving only in 1855 for the combat command he had long wanted.

As a young army officer in 1837, Robert E. Lee supervised work on the harbor of which Mississippi River city?

St. Louis was his base for river works that opened a large stretch of the upper Mississippi to trade. The job won Lee his promotion to captain.

Robert E. Lee left staff duty in 1855 to be second-in-command of a cavalry regiment in which frontier state?

Texas was where the 2nd Cavalry guarded settlers against Apache and Comanche attacks. Lee was serving there again in 1861 when the state seceded and its Union garrison was surrendered.

Robert E. Lee grew up in which Potomac river town, which was then still part of the District of Columbia?

Alexandria offered good schools and his mother's relatives nearby, and its free academy is where Lee showed a gift for mathematics. The town was handed back to Virginia in 1847.

Robert E. Lee was confirmed at the age of 46 in which church, whose service was read at his funeral?

Episcopal confirmation came late for a man brought up as a practicing Christian. Lee took the step in 1853, while he was running West Point as its superintendent.

Robert E. Lee signed the 1865 surrender in the parlor of which man, who had moved away from the Bull Run battlefield?

Wilmer McLean had seen the war's first great battle open on his farm in 1861. Four years later Union officers carried off the furniture of his parlor as souvenirs, pressing money on him as they went.

Which Seneca officer on Ulysses S. Grant's staff wrote out the surrender terms that Robert E. Lee accepted in 1865?

Ely S. Parker drew a remark from Lee that it was good to have one real American present. Parker replied that they were all Americans.

In which Virginia town did Robert E. Lee spend his last five years as president of a small college?

Lexington is where Lee turned a small school into a leading Southern college, recruiting students from the North as well. He and his family are buried in the town.

As a college president, Robert E. Lee said his school had only one rule: that every student be a what?

Gentleman was the whole of the code, and Lee used it to bring in an honor system like the one at West Point. He also had most students board in town instead of in the dormitories.

Under Robert E. Lee's presidency after the Civil War, his college began offering early courses in which profession?

Journalism was a radical thing to teach in the 1860s, when it was thought a craft and not a subject for study. Lee's courses lasted only a few years, but he also added business and law.

Robert E. Lee was indicted for which crime in 1865, though he was never arrested or punished for it?

Treason could have meant prison or execution, yet Lee was never arrested. He did lose his right to vote, and he applied for a presidential pardon within weeks of the surrender.

Robert E. Lee's retreat from Maryland in September 1862 gave Abraham Lincoln the opening to issue which document?

The Emancipation Proclamation needed a Union success behind it, and Lincoln had been waiting for one since the summer. It put the Confederacy on the diplomatic and moral defensive.

In an 1856 letter to his wife, Robert E. Lee called which institution a moral and political evil?

Slavery, he went on, was a greater evil to white people than to Black people, whom he thought better off in America. Lee held people in bondage himself and opposed any quick end to the system.

What became of the Robert E. Lee statue at the centre of the 2017 Charlottesville rally after its removal?

Melted down in 2023, the bronze became ingots meant for a new public artwork. The city council had voted to remove the statue in 2017, and the rally that summer left three people dead.

Robert E. Lee rides beside Jefferson Davis in a vast relief carved into the side of which Georgia landmark?

Stone Mountain's carving, finished in 1972, is the largest high-relief sculpture in the world. Lee had already appeared on a 1925 half dollar sold to raise money for the project.

Which general, later scorned in the South for turning Republican, did Robert E. Lee call his Old War Horse?

James Longstreet earned the name for his reliability, and he argued against the fatal assault on the third day in Pennsylvania. Lee, who wanted reconciliation, stayed pleased with how he had fought.

Which cavalry commander's poor reconnaissance left Robert E. Lee guessing before the great battle of July 1863?

J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry failed to scout effectively, so Lee marched into Pennsylvania half blind. Stuart had earlier given him a mare, Lucy Long, who became the general's second mount.

Which Virginia rail hub did Robert E. Lee's army defend in a siege from June 1864 to the spring of 1865?

Petersburg carried the railroads that fed Richmond, so when it fell on April 2, 1865, Lee had to abandon the capital too. A week later his shrunken army was surrounded.

Robert E. Lee was mocked as the King of Spades early in the Civil War for making his men do what?

Dig trenches they did, all around Richmond, to the scorn of critics who also called him Granny Lee. The same earthworks proved their worth in the battles near the end of the war.

The famous gray horse that outlived Robert E. Lee by a few months was put down in 1871 with which disease?

Tetanus set in after he stepped on a nail, and there was no cure. His skeleton later stood on display for decades, and students carved their initials into the bones for luck.

The Mississippi steamboat Robert E. Lee won a celebrated 1870 race upriver from New Orleans against which rival?

The Natchez held the speed record before the race but lost six hours to fog on the way. The winner covered 1,154 miles in under four days.

Which adviser to Abraham Lincoln offered Robert E. Lee command of the Union army defending the capital in April 1861?

Francis P. Blair made the offer the day after Virginia's convention voted to secede. Lee answered that he saw secession as anarchy but could not draw his sword on his native state.

Robert E. Lee's first posting after West Point was helping to build which fort guarding the Savannah River?

Fort Pulaski rose on marshy Cockspur Island, which the young Lee helped to drain. He inspected it again as a Confederate general in 1861, months before Union rifled guns forced the fort to surrender.

Which World War II general prayed as a child to a portrait of Robert E. Lee, believing it showed God?

George S. Patton said he took the picture of Lee for God and a companion portrait of another Confederate general for Jesus. He prayed to both as a young child.

Which Union general did Robert E. Lee rout at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862?

John Pope was beaten before reinforcements could reach him. In under 90 days Lee had moved the front from the edge of Richmond to within 20 miles of the Union capital.