Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s birthday is on January 19, but it is celebrated by the State of Alabama today. Robert E. Lee Day has been an official state holiday in Alabama since sometime in the late 1800s. Lee was the most renowned general of the Confederacy in the Civil War.
Today is an official state holiday. State offices and most schools will be closed in observance of the holiday. Federal offices, post offices, and many businesses will also be closed, but that is because today is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Alabama and Mississippi merged its Lee celebration with MLK Day after President Ronald Reagan signed legislation, making it a national holiday. Some state legislators have advocated for dropping Robert E. Lee Day from the list of official holidays and making the holiday observance for Dr. King alone. That legislation has not advanced in past legislative sessions.
Robert Edward Lee was the son of Revolutionary War hero General Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee. Lee was born in Stratford Hall, Virginia, in 1807. His father was a hero, a governor of Virginia, and the dignitary was chosen to write the eulogy for President George Washington. By young Robert’s birth, the Lee’s fortunes had turned sour, and Light Horse Harry served time in debtor’s prison. The older Lee’s health declined, and he passed away in the West Indies without ever getting to know his young son.
Robert received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated second in the class of 1829. Lee married Mary Anna Randolph Custis. Lee spent most of his early military career as an engineer, where he supervised and inspected the construction of the nation’s coastal defenses. During the Mexico-American War, Lee served on the staff of General Winfield Scott. Lee distinguished himself in that war and became a colonel. He was the Superintendent of West Point from 1852 to 1855. He then took command of the cavalry. In 1859 he crushed abolitionist John Brown’s attempted insurrection at Harpers Ferry.
President Abraham Lincoln offered Lee the command of the Union Army being assembled to invade the South. Lee declined and resigned from the army when Virginia seceded. The Confederacy made Lee a general. His first military engagement in the Civil War was at Cheat Mountain (now West Virginia) on September 11, 1861. On June 1862, he was given command of what he would rename the Army of Northern Virginia when General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded.
Lee would become a legend in that command. He won several victories against vastly superior Union forces. Ultimately though, his two attempts to invade the North at Antietam and Gettysburg were failures – costly failures that the outmanned Confederates could not sustain.
After the simultaneous Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Mississippi, Ulysses S. Grant assumed command of Union forces. Rather than making Richmond the aim of his campaign as previous generals had done – with no success – Grant attacked Lee’s Army. By the summer of 1864, the Confederates were forced into waging trench warfare outside of Petersburg. On April 9, 1865, Lee was forced to surrender his depleted army to Grant at Appomattox Court House.
Lee returned home from the war and eventually became the president of Washington College in Virginia (now known as Washington and Lee University). He died on October 12, 1870, in Lexington, Virginia.
His life and military exploits have been revered by generations of southerners.
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