Robert E. Lee
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50 free Robert E. Lee trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Robert E. Lee is one of the most studied and most argued-over figures in American history. A career United States Army officer from an old Virginia family, he turned down a senior Union command in 1861, led the Confederacy's main army for three years, and has been debated ever since. This quiz follows the whole life: his boyhood and his years as a cadet, his long service before the Civil War, the campaigns he won and lost, the generals who fought beside and against him, the surrender, and his last years as a college president. It also looks squarely at his record on race and at how his memory has been honored and contested. It is written for general readers, students and Civil War enthusiasts alike. Most questions give you something to reason from, a handful are little-known details for the experts, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Robert E. Lee bought which gray warhorse in 1862 and rode him for the rest of the Civil War?
Traveller
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.
Q 02After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee opposed building which things, saying they would keep the war's wounds open?
Confederate monuments
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.
Q 03Although a full Confederate general, Robert E. Lee wore only the three stars of which lower rank?
Colonel
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.
Q 04The only coffin saved from an 1870 flood was too short for Robert E. Lee, so he was buried without what?
His shoes
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.
Q 05Which US president signed the resolution restoring Robert E. Lee's citizenship more than a century after his death?
Gerald Ford
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.
Q 06In which Virginia village did Robert E. Lee surrender his army to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865?
Appomattox Court House
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.
Q 07Which Virginia estate, Robert E. Lee's home before the Civil War, did the Union turn into a national cemetery?
Arlington
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.
Q 08Which of Robert E. Lee's corps commanders was mortally wounded by his own troops' fire in May 1863?
Stonewall Jackson
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.
Q 09The stunt car named the General Lee in the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard was which muscle car?
Dodge Charger
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.
Q 10Robert E. Lee's father, a Revolutionary War hero and governor of Virginia, was known by which nickname?
Light-Horse Harry
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.
Q 11Which three-day battle in July 1863 ended Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North in defeat?
Gettysburg
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.
Q 12Which Union commanding general told Robert E. Lee in 1861 that resigning was the greatest mistake of his life?
Winfield Scott
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.
Q 13Which 1862 battle in Maryland, the bloodiest single day of the Civil War, ended Robert E. Lee's first invasion?
Antietam
Q 21Robert E. Lee's wife, Mary Anna Custis, was a great-granddaughter of which famous First Lady?
Martha Washington
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.
Q 22Robert E. Lee graduated second in his West Point class of 1829 without ever receiving a single what?
Demerit
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.
Q 23In 1859 Robert E. Lee led the Marines who captured which abolitionist at Harpers Ferry?
John Brown
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.
Q 14Union soldiers found a lost copy of Robert E. Lee's 1862 invasion orders wrapped around what?
Three cigars
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.
Q 15Which cautious Union general did Robert E. Lee drive away from Richmond in the Seven Days Battles of 1862?
George B. McClellan
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.
Q 16Robert E. Lee took over the army defending Richmond in June 1862 after which general was wounded at Seven Pines?
Joseph E. Johnston
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.
Q 17After which lopsided December 1862 victory did Robert E. Lee reportedly say it is well that war is so terrible?
Fredericksburg
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.
Q 18Which Union general took command of the Army of the Potomac just days before defeating Robert E. Lee in July 1863?
George Meade
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.
Q 19In which May 1863 battle did Robert E. Lee divide his outnumbered army and rout Joseph Hooker's far larger force?
Chancellorsville
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.
Q 20Which Confederate general's name is attached to the doomed frontal assault Robert E. Lee ordered on 3 July 1863?
George Pickett
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.
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.
Q 24Robert E. Lee was born at which Virginia plantation, boyhood home of two signers of the Declaration of Independence?
Stratford Hall
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.
Q 25In which war did Captain Robert E. Lee win three brevet promotions for scouting routes the enemy thought impassable?
Mexican–American War
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.
Q 26Which army branch, which then ran West Point itself, did Robert E. Lee join on graduating in 1829?
Engineers
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.
Q 27As a young army officer in 1837, Robert E. Lee supervised work on the harbor of which Mississippi River city?
St. Louis
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.
Q 28Robert E. Lee left staff duty in 1855 to be second-in-command of a cavalry regiment in which frontier state?
Texas
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.
Q 29Robert E. Lee grew up in which Potomac river town, which was then still part of the District of Columbia?
Alexandria
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.
Q 30Robert E. Lee was confirmed at the age of 46 in which church, whose service was read at his funeral?
Episcopal
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.