{"id":86121,"date":"2026-02-04T02:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/?p=86121"},"modified":"2026-02-04T02:35:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T08:35:49","slug":"on-this-day-in-history-1861-general-robert-e-lee-is-named-general-in-chief-of-confederate-forces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/04\/on-this-day-in-history-1861-general-robert-e-lee-is-named-general-in-chief-of-confederate-forces\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in History 1861: General Robert E. Lee is named General-in-Chief of Confederate Forces"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Portrait<\/h2>\n

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Born to Revolutionary War hero\u00a0Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee\u00a0<\/a>in Stratford Hall, Virginia,\u00a0Robert Edward Lee seemed destined for military greatness.\u00a0 Despite financial hardship that caused his father to depart to the West Indies, young Robert secured an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he\u00a0graduated second in\u00a0the class of\u00a01829.\u00a0 Two years later, he married Mary Anna Randolph Custis, a descendant\u00a0of\u00a0George Washington<\/a>‘s adopted son,\u00a0John Parke Custis<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Yet with\u00a0all\u00a0his military pedigree, Lee had not\u00a0set\u00a0foot on a battlefield.\u00a0 Instead, he served seventeen years as an officer in the Corps of Engineers, supervising and inspecting the construction of the nation’s coastal defenses.\u00a0 Service during the 1846 war with Mexico, however, changed that.\u00a0\u00a0As a member of General\u00a0Winfield Scott<\/a>‘s staff,\u00a0Lee distinguished himself, earning three brevets for gallantry, and emerging from the conflict with the rank of colonel.<\/h2>\n

From 1852 to 1855, Lee served as superintendent of West Point, and\u00a0was therefore responsible for educating many of the men who would later\u00a0serve under him – and those who would oppose him – on the battlefields of the Civil War.\u00a0\u00a0In 1855 he\u00a0left the\u00a0academy\u00a0to take a position in the cavalry and in 1859 was\u00a0called upon to put down abolitionist\u00a0John Brown<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0raid at Harpers Ferry.<\/h2>\n
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Because of his reputation as one of the finest officers in the United States Army,\u00a0Abraham Lincoln<\/a>\u00a0offered Lee the command of the Federal forces in April 1861. Lee declined and tendered his resignation from the army when the state of Virginia seceded on April 17, arguing that he could not fight against his own people.\u00a0 Instead,\u00a0he accepted a general\u2019s commission in the newly formed Confederate Army. His first military engagement of the Civil War occurred at Cheat Mountain, Virginia (now West Virginia) on September 11, 1861. It was a Union victory but Lee\u2019s reputation withstood the public criticism that followed. He served as military advisor to President\u00a0Jefferson Davis<\/a>\u00a0until June 1862 when he\u00a0was given command of the wounded General\u00a0Joseph E. Johnston<\/a>‘s embattled\u00a0army\u00a0on the Virginia\u00a0peninsula.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lee renamed his command the Army of Northern Virginia, and under his direction it would\u00a0become the most famous and successful of the Confederate\u00a0armies.\u00a0\u00a0This same organization also boasted some of the Confederacy’s most inspiring military figures, including\u00a0James Longstreet<\/a>,\u00a0Stonewall Jackson<\/a>\u00a0and the flamboyant cavalier\u00a0J.E.B. Stuart<\/a>.\u00a0 With these trusted subordinates, Lee commanded\u00a0troops that continually manhandled their blue-clad adversaries and embarrassed their generals no matter what the odds.<\/h2>\n

RTWT @ Battlefields<\/a><\/h2>\n

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  Born to Revolutionary War hero\u00a0Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee\u00a0in Stratford Hall, Virginia,\u00a0Robert Edward Lee seemed destined for military greatness.\u00a0 Despite financial hardship that caused his father to depart to the West Indies, young Robert secured an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he\u00a0graduated second in\u00a0the class of\u00a01829.\u00a0 Two years later,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5773,5523,15696,8448,478,479,1286,9995,1898],"tags":[1880,19169,15031,9606,15524],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86121"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86123,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86121\/revisions\/86123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}