Lee won two major victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville before launching a second invasion of the North in the summer of 1863, where he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg by the Army of the Potomac under George Meade.

[8] Lee attended Eastern View, a school for young gentlemen, in Fauquier County, Virginia, and then at the Alexandria Academy, free for local boys, where he showed an aptitude for mathematics.

[38] He was instrumental in several American victories through his personal reconnaissance as a staff officer; he found routes of attack that the Mexicans had not defended because they thought the terrain was impassable.

[41][42] The 1850s were a difficult time for Lee, with his long absences from home, the increasing disability of his wife, troubles in taking over the management of a large slave plantation, and his often morbid concern with his personal failures.

[47] Lee tried to hire an overseer to handle the plantation in his absence, writing to his cousin, "I wish to get an energetic honest farmer, who while he will be considerate & kind to the negroes, will be firm & make them do their duty.

Lee's more strict expectations and harsher punishments of the slaves on Arlington plantation nearly led to a revolt, since many of the enslaved people had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died, and protested angrily at the delay.

[61][62] In 2014, Michael Korda wrote that "Although these letters are dismissed by most of Lee's biographers as exaggerated, or simply as unfounded abolitionist propaganda, it is hard to ignore them [...] It seems incongruously out of character for Lee to have whipped a slave woman himself, particularly one stripped to the waist, and that charge may have been a flourish added by the two correspondents; it was not repeated by Wesley Norris when his account of the incident was published in 1866 [...] [A]lthough it seems unlikely that he would have done any of the whipping himself, he may not have flinched from observing it to make sure his orders were carried out exactly.

[72]Before leaving to serve in Mexico, Lee had written a will providing for the manumission of the slaves he owned, "a woman and her children inherited from his mother and apparently leased to his father-in-law and later sold to him".

[90] While not politically active, Lee defended Lincoln's successor Andrew Johnson's approach to Reconstruction, which according to Foner, "abandoned the former slaves to the mercy of governments controlled by their former owners".

President James Buchanan gave Lee command of detachments of militia, soldiers, and United States Marines, to suppress the uprising and arrest its leaders.

[99] In 1860, Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee relieved Major Heintzelman at Fort Brown, and the Mexican authorities offered to restrain "their citizens from making predatory descents upon the territory and people of Texas ... this was the last active operation of the Cortina War".

Three weeks after his promotion, Colonel Lee was offered a senior command (with the rank of Major General) in the expanding Army to fight the Southern States that had left the Union.

He agreed with secessionists in most areas, rejecting the Northern abolitionists' criticisms and their prevention of the expansion of slavery to the new western territories, and fear of the North's larger population.

[104] Lee's objection to secession was ultimately outweighed by a sense of personal honor, reservations about the legitimacy of a strife-ridden "Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets", and his duty to defend his native Virginia if attacked.

Confederate casualties were heavy, but an unnerved McClellan, famed for his caution, retreated 25 miles (40 km) to the lower James River, and abandoned the Peninsula completely in August.

Wheeling to the north, Lee marched rapidly towards Washington, D.C. and defeated another Union army under Gen. John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August.

The narrow Confederate defeat gave President Abraham Lincoln the opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation,[117] which put the Confederacy on the diplomatic and moral defensive.

Delays in bridging the river allowed Lee's army ample time to organize strong defenses, and the Union frontal assault on December 13, 1862, was a disaster.

Things were going poorly for the Confederacy in the West, and Lee started to grow restless; he devised a plan to once again invade the North, for similar reasons to before: relieve Virginia and its citizens of the weariness of battle, and potentially march on the Federal Capital and force terms of peace.

Hooker mobilized his men and pursued, but was replaced by Gen. George G. Meade on June 28, a few days before the two armies clashed at the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in early July; the battle produced the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War.

The first day was a surprise affair for both sides, and the Confederates managed to rally their forces first, pushing the panicked Union troops away from town, and towards key terrain that should have been taken by General Ewell, but was not.

Lee's decision on the third day, going against the advice of his best corps commander, Gen. James Longstreet, to launch a massive frontal assault on the center of the Union line, was disastrous.

Lee quickly reversed this rule, requiring most students to board off-campus, and allowing only the most mature to live in the dorms as a mark of privilege; the results of this policy were considered a success.

Lee sent an application to Grant and wrote to President Johnson on June 13, 1865: Being excluded from the provisions of amnesty & pardon contained in the proclamation of the 29th Ulto; I hereby apply for the benefits, & full restoration of all rights & privileges extended to those included in its terms.

[146] Lee, who had opposed secession and remained mostly indifferent to politics before the Civil War, supported President Andrew Johnson's plan of Presidential Reconstruction that took effect in 1865–66.

"[153] In his public statements and private correspondence, Lee argued that a tone of reconciliation and patience would further the interests of white Southerners better than hotheaded antagonism to federal authority or the use of violence.

Lee repeatedly expelled white students from Washington College for violent attacks on local black men, and publicly urged obedience to the authorities and respect for law and order.

By doing this and encouraging our citizens to engage in the duties of life with all their heart and mind, with a determination not to be turned aside by thoughts of the past and fears of the future, our country will not only be restored in material prosperity, but will be advanced in science, in virtue and in religion.

In an 1874 address before the Southern Historical Society in Atlanta, Georgia, Benjamin Harvey Hill described Lee in this way: He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring.

[198] The prospect of the statues being removed and the parks being renamed brought many out-of-towners, described as white supremacist and alt-right, to Charlottesville in the Unite the Right rally of August 2017, in which 3 people died.