- " I cannot consent to place in the control of others one who cannot control himself.”
Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a United States colonel and Confederate general. He commanded the most successful army of the Confederacy during The American Civil War.
Robert E. Lee was born on January 19th, 1807. His father, Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, served under Washington in the Revolution, later being the one who eulogized him as “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” He also helped suppress the Whiskey Rebellion, was elected Governor of Virginia and to Congress, and died massively in debt because he was crap at money. Getting dragged out of a jail and tortured for hours by an angry mob probably didn’t help him much note .
But what the remaining Lees lacked in money they had in connections, which got the son into West Point. Robert’s talent and self-discipline were apparent. Classmates nicknamed him "The Marble Model", perhaps not wholly a compliment. He graduated second in his class and without a single demerit. This ensured him a spot in the Corp of Engineers. He spent most of the next decade on various engineering projects, until the Mexican War put him on the map.
Lee was sent down as a staff officer and got promoted to General Winfield Scott’s staff in time for the march from Veracruz to Mexico City. He, personally, was critical in several victories, being both tireless and fearless in reconnaissance. On one occasion, Lee found a path through a lava field, at night. On another, he was almost caught by Mexican soldiers, and spent a day surrounded by them, hiding under a log.
The war, that grand historical trauma for Mexico, was also a starter war for the people who’d oversee the (much) larger bloodbath starting in 1861. Lee got a better education than most. He was in the room when Scott made command decisions. He saw Scott, one of the greatest soldiers alive note , constantly defeat superior numbers with audacity, flanking movements, and a hands-off approach to his subordinates, and most biographers draw a line from that to him in the Civil War. Scott, for his part, came back with an “almost idolatrous” opinion of Lee, saying he was the best soldier he ever saw.
Lee ended up as Superintendent of West Point, a job he didn’t want, but was good at. He eventually got the second-in-command spot in the 2nd Cavalry, in Texas. After several exciting years chasing Native Americans without catching them and traveling endlessly to serve on courts-martial, all in over 100-degree heat, Lee received word that his father-in-law had died. He took a leave of absence to sort out the estate: a convoluted will, a mismanaged plantation, and two-hundred slaves.
It’s often implied or even asserted that Lee wasn’t really pro-slavery, that he hated it but loved Virginia more, and that his keeping slaves was an aberration imposed on him by his father-in-law’s will. This is false. Lee owned slaves most of his life; he just didn’t manage large numbers of them until this time. There is some truth to the assertion that Lee regretted the slave system, but only vaguely. Slavery, he once wrote to his wife, was an obvious political and moral evil anywhere… but worse for the whites than for the blacks. He believed Africans were better off as slaves in America, where someday they’d be worthy of freedom and civilization, then in the Barbarous Darkness of Africa.
The will stipulated various huge bequests and the slaves freed in five years. To do all that without selling land, Lee acted like, well, a slave-driver. He worked people harder than before, and had no qualms splitting up families to better rent out workers. A lawsuit was filed to delay the emancipation. Eventually he’d bite the bullet and sell some of those vast acres to make all the payments note . One story told about this time was that Lee viciously whipped a woman who tried to run away. This is nonsense, a disgusting slander. He never whipped anybody. That’s what those vulgar overseers were for note .
That’s how it stood in 1859, getting the finances in order, putting in long days of watching slaves work, when Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart rode up. A major insurrection was happening at Harper’s Ferry and he was the highest ranked officer around. He, Stuart, and ninety Marines went there amid rumors that five-hundred insurrectionists were attacking the state. It was more like twenty. They arrived to find the raiders holed up in the armory, the poorly-regulated militia having more or less solved the problem in spite of themselves. Lee replaced the amateurs, set up a perimeter, ordered Stuart to demand unconditional surrender and for the Marines to go in if they refused. John Brown’s raid ended violently a few minutes later. Lee never changed out of his civilian clothes.
Virginia joined the Confederacy and Lee rode a desk. A letter to his wife reveals that he didn’t see much in his future. His first foray into the field did not inspire confidence. Parts of Virginia were having a case of recursive secession. Several generals were sent to fix it. They didn’t, so Lee was sent. He also didn’t. Lee went from that to overseeing defensive preparations, which didn’t go over well with an increasingly frustrated populace. Nicknames started popping up: “Granny Lee” and “The King of Spades.”
Jefferson Davis never doubted him. In mid-1862, the Union army under McClellan was closing in on Richmond. His southern opposite, Johnston, had retreated constantly, not fighting a battle, until Union forces were within a few miles of the capital. Johnston finally had no choice, and ordered the indecisive Battle of Seven Pines, in which he was wounded. His replacement was himself quickly replaced with Lee. This exasperated many, who thought Granny Lee was so defense-happy that he’d cede every last bit of initiative to the Union Army. Granny Lee spent three weeks laying plans, then chased McClellan off Richmond.
The Seven note Days Battles were the closest the Army of Northern Virginia would ever get to fighting with even numbers note . The first battle, Mechanicsville, made McClellan retreat. McClellan won but retreated anyway note . His hope was to get to Harrison’s Landing, where he’d be protected by the Union Navy. Lee wanted to capture or destroy the entire army note before he could do that. The next day’s Battle of Gaines’ Mill— Lee’s only clear victory in the Seven Days—was less damaging than it could have been, and he couldn’t take advantage of it. The following Battles of Savage Station and Glendale were indecisive. In every battle, Lee either couldn’t get coordination from his units, or they didn’t move quickly enough. 20/20 hindsight reveals that Lee’s planning was too intricate, and he was commanding too many divisions with too little staff. The last chance to stop the Union’s escape was Malvern Hill. Lee, in desperation/frustration, ordered major frontal assaults on an entrenched Union position, with the predictable result of bloody failure note . The Confederate people were ecstatic; Lee was deeply dissatisfied the McClellan got away. He transferred out commanders who had failed, then rearranged his command, putting his cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart, and splitting his infantry between James Longstreet and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson note . Those three made up his team.
To understand the devotion that (white) Southerners had for Lee, one thing needs to be kept in mind from this point on: everything outside Lee’s army is crap. Everything had gone downhill after First Bull Run. At the moment Lee took over, McClellan was within sight of Richmond. Look South, New Orleans, the largest port, had been captured. Look West, a (then) ludicrous number of men went down at Shiloh. Until the end of the war, all the western army did was defend, fight indecisive battles or lose, save Chickamauga. Zoom out to the extreme, way out to the Wild West, the Confederacy was getting defeated at Glorietta Pass.
Then the Seven Days happen, and it’s like a lightning bolt. The question shifts from when the capital will fall to what Lee is going to do next. Even better, Lee is very much a well-mannered Christian gentleman, in line with the Southern ideal. Nor did it hurt that he has two larger-than-life figures on his team: Jackson, a Presbyterian fanatic who lived to kill Yankees and nom hardtack; and Stuart, a pimped-out showman who liked riding circles around the Union Army. As the Confederacy slowly went under, its citizens invested itself more and more in Lee, the only white spot in an undifferentiated gray blob of fail.
Lee turned against the Union forces in Northern Virginia. They were led by John Pope, a swaggering jackass who was one of the few opponents Lee personally hated note . Jackson’s forces were sent against him, who in turn rushed out to corner him. In the Battle of Second Bull Run, Pope launched heavy assaults on Jackson’s position, apparently so fixated that he didn’t notice twenty thousand soldiers lining up for a massive assault on his flank. After crushing Pope, Lee tried to keep up momentum by invading Maryland. This would take pressure off the South, put it on the North, politically damage the Lincoln Administration, and liberate a kindred slave state from Yankee Oppression.
Nothing went right in Maryland. There was no influx of brave freedom fighters. Lee had invaded a part of the state light on slavery, which mysteriously correlated with a love of state’s rights. The army was now at breaking point from all the marching and fighting note . He’d gambled that McClellan would keep marching slowly, and split his troops to capture the Harpers Ferry arsenal. McClellan promptly started marching faster note . Lee sent out orders to concentrate the army, but not all of them arrived when Union forces appeared.
The Battle of Antietam was, tactically, one of the greatest battles Lee ever commanded. His troops fended off over twice their number note over the course of a day. It was one of the rare times he personally controlled units on the battlefield, and he did very well at it. He repeatedly sent units in at just the right spot and moment to repel assaults from the north, then shifted attention to do the same from the east. A crisis occurred late in the day when Union troops at the south end started pushing in towards Lee’s escape route. They were very close to cutting it off when, at the very last minute, troops from Harper’s Ferry arrived and held the line until sundown.
The controversy over Antietam isn’t so much if the battle was fought well, but whether it should have been fought at all. Lee had very little to gain from standing and fighting, and the only reason he wasn’t annihilated was due to McClellan's even more controversial performance, along with the fortunate arrival of the soldiers from Harper’s Ferry. Then, after barely surviving the one day, Lee stayed put for a second. McClellan didn’t resume his attacks, and Lee returned to Virginia note .
Lincoln finally had enough, and fired McClellan note . New Commander Ambrose Burnside decided/was prodded to not wait for spring: he’d deceive Lee, cross the Rappahannock river, and charge Richmond. This derailed when the river-crossing equipment didn’t arrive on schedule. When it showed up, so had Lee. Things further went wrong for Burnside, and the Battle of Fredericksburg devolved into uncoordinated Union troops marching, one by one, into an impregnable defensive position, where Longstreet’s forces slaughtered them note . It was such a brutal Curb-Stomp Battle, Lincoln said “If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it.”
And if there is a worse place than that, he’d get there, courtesy of Burnside’s replacement Joseph Hooker. In Spring 1863, Hooker attacked Lee’s army from two directions. Outnumbered a full two-to-one note and in a very bad position, Lee did the unexpected: he divided his force before a larger enemy. Hooker immediately stopped his advance, an act often presented as him being so over-awed by Lee that any surprise spooked him note Jackson took his entire command down a hidden trail and landed a massive attack on the Union flank. He was shot soon after, but enough of a wedge was driven in for Lee to create what would later be called his masterpiece. After several days of fighting, Lee splitting his forces again, and Hooker being concussed by an artillery shell, the latter’s confidence would collapse enough to order the army’s retreat note .
Lee had been in command less than a year. In that time, he saved the capital with The Seven Days, dealt a curb stomp at Fredericksburg, won decisively at Second Bull Run and Chancellorsville, and didn’t lose at Antietam note . The morale in his army, and the army’s love for him, was sky-high by this point note . There were calls for Lee to go off and rescue the besieged Vicksburg, but he successfully pushed for a different idea: invade Pennsylvania. Lee could lessen his supply problems with Union goods, get the war out of Virginia, and get the Union to come to him.
The invasion didn’t start well. J.E.B. Stuart, tasked with screening-reconnaissance, also indulged in another circle around the Yankees. Unlike the other times, as soon as he got to the far side of the Union Army, it started moving north, cutting him off. Lee marched blindly until some of his troops stumbled into the enemy at Gettysburg. The first day was a grand success—his prior orders conveniently had the troops arrive in such a way as to wreck the Union forces. The snag occurred late in the day when Lee ordered Jackson’s successor Ewell, in his usual suggestion-y way, to take a critical hill “if practicable.” Historians generally agree that Stonewall Jackson would have found it practicable. Richard Ewell didn’t, and by the next morning the Union had dug in under its new commander George Meade.
On the second day Lee ordered attacks from all directions to take the hill. It didn’t work, in part due to a controversial performance from James Longstreet. On the third day, Lee decided on a risky drive aimed at the Union center. The result was Pickett’s Charge. It barely succeeded in getting there, and was crushed in the Union counterattack note . Famously, Lee went among his men and personally apologized for the assault. The Battle of Gettysburg was decided; the army retreated. Vicksburg surrendered the next day, July 4th.
Gettysburg would later be magnified into the turning point of the war. This is based on facts known in hindsight: it was the largest and bloodiest battle of the war note , it was the last time Lee would invade the North, and most importantly, it was the end of Lee’s spree of glorious victories. Obviously, none of this was apparent in July 1863. Many viewed Gettysburg as just another major battle, almost a draw like Antietam. Lee himself didn’t see Gettysburg as an unmitigated failure. He believed that he would have lost that many men anyway in fighting around Richmond. Taking the war into the North gave the South some breathing space, secured massive supplies, and damaged the Army of the Potomac so badly that for six months it would “be as quiet as a sucking dove”. note Spring 1864 would see a much more effective Union attack, led by the exact opposite of a sucking dove.
The Overland Campaign took the unprecedented note bloodshed of the Civil War and managed to crank it into higher gear. Grant started with the Battle of the Wilderness. It was inconclusive and bloody, the fifth bloodiest battle of the war, but where his predecessors would have retreated, Grant kept going. He disengaged and went at Richmond from a different way. The result was Spotsylvania Court House, the third bloodiest battle of the war. When it clicked that this wasn’t going anywhere, Grant disengaged, maneuvered again, leading to the Battle of Yellow Tavern. Rinse (in blood) and repeat, to the Battle of North Anna. Repeat again, for Cold Harbor. None of these were the victories Grant hoped for—Cold Harbor was an unqualified defeat—but they caused massive casualties, which only his side could absorb. Every battle kept the South on the defensive and every battle made it less able to defend, a situation that would end in the army being unable to protect Richmond.
Lee knew precisely what Grant was doing, but couldn’t stop it. Part of his problem was that his high command was disintegrating. Longstreet had been shot. Stuart had been shot. Ewell had to be replaced note . This led to a situation where Grant left himself open at North Anna and Lee couldn’t take advantage of it: he’d gotten too sick to move and the replacement generals were too new to be entrusted with the assault. Between attrition and a clever maneuver on Grant’s part, Lee was forced into the strategically-vital city of Petersburg. A siege was Lee’s worst case scenario, as he knew it would probably end with him surrendering his army.
The Siege of Petersburg lasted nine months, giving the Victorian world a glimpse of the trench warfare Europe would see in fifty years. Grant kept up the pressure throughout the summer of 1864, lengthening his trenches and forcing the Confederacy to stretch itself even thinner. Lee sent a force under Jubal Early to threaten Washington, in the hope Grant would weaken his own forces to go after him. He was right on that account—Early’s forces tied up twice their number—but when those very outnumbered forces were defeated, the victory gave a boost to Lincoln’s reelection campaign. Combined with the major Confederate losses of Atlanta and Mobile Bay, Lincoln won reelection, signaling war to the bitter end. Lee’s problems began to snowball from this point. Morale plummeted and desertions increased, and the harsh winter of 1865 forced cuts in rations, which caused morale to plummet and desertions to increase. Even with all this, public feeling for Lee was such that Davis was forced into promoting him to General-in-Chief, the equal and opposite rank of Grant. This was in February 1865, a bit late.
The Union breakthrough at Five Forks forced Lee to abandon Richmond to its fate. His idea was to take his bedraggled army, outrun Grant’s fresh and well-supplied army somehow, link up with the western Confederate army, defeat the western Union army somehow, and turn on Grant. It was soon obvious that this wasn’t happening. He was being attacked at every turn, hemorrhaging soldiers all the while. The Battle of Sailor’s Creek stands out, where a quarter the army was lost and the rest routed so bad that an aghast Lee said, “My God, has the army dissolved?” The army was cornered before the retreat was a week old. With everything crashing down, it was suggested that the army be actually dissolved: the soldiers could take to the hills for guerrilla warfare, or to rally in their own state. Lee refused: it would bring untold, pointless suffering to the civilian population. Also, as he said to one general, he thought Grant would go easy on them.
He was right. Grant was very much not in an Unconditional Surrender mood when Lee arrived, offering generous terms. Lee gratefully accepted them, sent the army home, and rode back to Richmond.
Lee lived another five years after the war ended. The presidency of Washington (now “and Lee”) University was offered to him. He accepted, partially because he felt his duty was to help rebuild the South. The University was revitalized and modernized under his leadership, though contrary to popular belief the famous honor code predated his tenure. Lee knew what he was to the White South, and tried to set an example of reconciliation. He encouraged Southerners to see themselves as Americans again, for mothers to raise patriotic children, and to let the past be the past. Lee opposed raising flags, statues, and monuments. They simply kept old wounds open. He also said that he was glad slavery was over, and it’s quite possible he meant it.
Private letters and conversations reveal that Lee disliked a lot of what he saw, but he counseled forbearance because there was no changing it. He certainly never saw the light on racial equality. Although he generally stayed out of politics, when asked by Congress he was candid that black people shouldn’t vote. He believed they lacked the intelligence to do so, and that everyone would be better off if the pre-war system was followed as closely as possible. When he died in 1870, collapsing as he sat down to dinner at age 63, he couldn’t know that Jim Crow or the Redeemers were coming. The Reconstruction Era didn’t end until 1877.
The (white) South’s crusade to justify itself started with Appomattox, if not earlier. The experts had promised to slap around Yankees for a bit and then Home by Christmas, and delivered an absolute, soul-crushing, all-encompassing defeat: hundreds of thousands dead, infrastructure destroyed, property destroyed (or emancipated), and an army of occupation. Beyond all of that, their way of life was destroyed: loss of identity is as painful for unsympathetic societies as it is for sympathetic ones. As the Lost Cause warrior Jubal Early put it, all was lost but honor, and that must be guarded religiously.note
People wouldn’t see how right and good they were if it was just about slavery, so the war was never really about slavery. The massive material disparity was hit on again and again: you’re not the lesser man if you lose at impossible odds. Gallant soldiers are always in fashion, and that just makes them even more gallant. Lee himself agreed with that one note . Another way to make gallant soldiers more gallant was to highlight how religious they were, how honorable they were. Alongside this, a rose-tinted view sprang up for those Good Old Days, now gone with the wind, full of honor-bound gentlemen and contented slaves, which served to contrast with the Bad New Days while affirming that they really were qualitatively superior, even if quantity brought them down in the end.
For such a perspective, Robert E. Lee is a godsend. It doesn’t take much editing to turn him into the archetypical Southern Gentleman. He was that already. During the war it was noted by all sides. After the war he consciously played the part. Certainly, the victories speak for themselves— it doesn’t get much more gallant than being vastly outnumbered, and overcoming the odds again and again. No one is making anything up when they point out the near-mystic bond he had with his soldiers. A true believer can gush about him and Jackson calmly discussing a desperate flank attack at Chancellorsville, or about the times his soldiers refused to fight until Lee went to safety, without ever having to use the word “slavery.” The Army of Northern Virginia allows one to spotlight all the true parts of the Lost Cause, without having to address the untrue part at the center note note .
This rapidly became a secular near-worship that removed all of Lee’s flaws as a general or human being. He stopped being a normal person, with the usual interplay of drives and limitations, and was replaced by a serene blob of duty and fatherliness. Improved!Lee is a Christian paragon who cheerfully chose duty over ambition in 1861 note despite hating slavery note , who lived above anger note , fought without hate note , who never smoked or drank note or had a vice of any kind note , while also a War God unbeatable at anything resembling even odds. Grant was cast as a crude butcher, with an IQ of “potato”, whose only qualification was the callousness necessary to throw bodies into the woodchipper until it clogged note . Such victory requires no skill; delaying it for so long shows how amazing Lee is.
This led to Lee’s admirers arguing both that defeat was simply inevitable, and that Lee was so good that the South almost won anyways. Where it went wrong was Gettysburg. Before that it was all victories and afterwards came Grant. The shape of it makes for an intuitive turning point. Intense debate focused on Who Lost Gettysburg? Partially it was thought to be Ewell, or more precisely, the lack of Jackson. Jackson was high in the Lost Cause pantheon— the fascinating, devout eccentric with the aggressive streak. Surely the great Stonewall would have just marched gloriously up that hill. As for the main villain, the Lost Cause consensus was James Longstreet.
There is some merit to this note , but it was mostly political. Longstreet, who improbably survived taking a sixty-caliber bullet to the throat, collaborated with the damyankees, especially the damnedest Yankee of them all, his old friend Ulysses S. Grant. He took federal jobs from Republicans. He commanded black militias. He criticized Lee in print. He stated that if the war wasn’t about slavery, he had no idea what it was about. Then, as if this wasn’t enough, Longstreet surpassed himself in evil… and became a Catholic note . This made him both a lightning rod of criticism, and useful. The anti-Longstreet camp leveraged their (often-extensive) military credentials to assure the public that Lee was about to win, about to simply destroy the Union army and march on Washington for final victory, but failed due to Longstreet’s sullen insubordination on the second day note . Lee’s only mistake is that he didn’t push Longstreet harder. It was an inverted Stealth Insult: he was simply too pure a gentleman to crassly bully people into doing the basic functions of their extremely coveted jobs. The man was a complete exemplar of the Good South, right down to his flaws note .
The North also started to uber Lee. The Worthy Opponent trope is ancient, after all. They were also getting sick of Reconstruction. After twelve years, three amendments, and impeaching Andrew Johnson, all over people that they barely cared about, there was a drive to just be one country again. Surely, there was no need to see things in black-and-white: everyone bravely did their duty. Honorable men, tragically at odds, became the order of the day. The image of a flawless paragon, resigning out of duty to his people, added to this. It became part of a wider tableau of American greatness, duty, and sacrifice. The cause might have been garbage, but Robert E. Lee Is Way Cool. note .
A very positive view of Lee persisted for a generation. In the South, criticizing Lee on the moral level was social suicide. Up North, it was a debate. Brothers Henry and Charles Adams, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of two anti-slavery presidents, and sons of the ambassador who fought to keep Britain neutral, came down on both sides. Charles said in a speech that he’d have done the exact same thing had he been in Lee’s position. Henry wrote that Lee should have been hanged and that Lee was a good person only made it worse. Popular culture usually followed the Good Man, Tragic Cause template. Black writers were unenthusiastic. Eisenhower kept Lee’s portrait in the Oval Office, but also caught flak for it note . As a soldier, he was both praised and criticized for being a throwback to an obsolete model of warfare: knightly, unpragmatic, and doomed like the South he fought for.
A major change in the historiography happened around the The '60s. By that point, the generation that fought the war was dead, the Civil Rights Movement was rising, and the intelligentsia was on its side. There was consequently little desire to maintain polite fictions. A series of iconoclastic biographies appeared, some going so far to argue that Lee was average and his mystique entirely a product of pro-South writers. Later historians brought the pendulum back to the center arguing, no, he really was the most important Southern general, and a good one, but not a flawless one nor was he a person divorced from the prejudices of his time, class, ethnicity and place.
Fictional appearances:
- Lee helps provide a Death by Irony in the horror film Antebellum where one villainess, having enslaved African-Americans on a modern-day plantation/Civil-War-cosplay-gone-horribly-wrong, meets her end by getting slammed into one of his statues.
- In Army of Frankensteins, Lee orders that Lincoln be murdered with zombies.
- Lee gets a bizarre Historical Hero Upgrade in the satire C.S.A: The Confederate States of America. In a film that portrays the Confederacy and slavery lasting to the current day in the most caricatured form possible, Lee is portrayed as someone who fought for abolition after independence.
- Emperor (2020) has Lee as a racist but Affably Evil antagonist, doing his job by putting down John Brown’s Raid.
- Martin Sheen gives a wooden performance for Lee in the otherwise-watchable Gettysburg, probably because he agreed to the role at the last minute. The scene of Lee being cheered by his men was actually the re-enactors thanking Sheen for coming in.
- Robert Duvall, on the other hand, gives a good performance for Lee in the otherwise unwatchable Gods and Generals.
- Lee has a Voiceless One-Scene Wonder role in Lincoln, of him at Appomattox.
- Seven Angry Men is about John Brown’s Raid.
- If it’s an alternate history where the Confederacy wins, expect Lee to show up. The pre-eminent example is perhaps Harry Turtledove’s The Guns of the South.
- Turtledove’s Lee At The Alamo
has Lee stuck in Texas defending federal property as the war breaks out. He doesn’t get back until after West Virginia secedes, and takes Lincoln’s offer to go out west.
- Turtledove’s Lee At The Alamo
- The Killer Angels, and its adaptation, Film/Gettysburg, feature Lee as a viewpoint character, portraying him as honorable, and tired. He’s also a main character in the prequel and sequel novels, Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure.
- In The Last Full Measure 2013 by Jack Campbell, in an alternate world where the United States became a military dictatorship controlled by slave owners after the first few presidencies, Lee remains loyal to the federal government and battles abolitionist rebels. While capable of Pet the Dog moments, he is portrayed as an arrogant bigot and Suit with Vested Interests who has little problem with serving an Obviously Evil tyrant.
- The main characters of Lincoln's Dreams set out to know why one of them keeps dreaming of Lee. The supernatural is involved.
- MacKinlay Kantor’s Lee and Grant at Appomattox features Lee and Grant, at Appomattox, in all their Lost Cause “glory”.
- To Kill a Mockingbird gives Lee and his subordinate Richard Ewell the dubious honor of naming the white-trash villain named after them.
- Lee’s horse is the viewpoint character of Richard Adam’s Traveller.
- Until Every Drop of Blood Is Paid
- He is portrayed as a Worthy Opponent in Grant (2020).
- Ken Burns’ The Civil War, of course.
- Even if you know nothing else about The Dukes of Hazzard, you know what they named their car.
- The Wild Wild West episode The Night Of Fire and Brimstone has Gordon disguise himself as Lee to get an insane Civil War holdout to stand down.
- Robert Symonds portrays him in an episode of the miniseries The Blue and the Gray.
- The infamously-cringe "Accidental Racist", by Brad Paisley and featuring LL Cool J, gives him a Shout-Out.
- "The Day They Drove Old Dixie Down", by The Band, has the main character catch a glimpse of Lee and mention it in his list of Civil War experiences/traumas.
- Johnny Cash’s "God Bless Robert E. Lee".
- The narrator of the Reconstruction-Era "Good Old Rebel" served under Lee. He mentions Lee once, and spends the rest of the song ranting about how much he hates the Union. Here is a catchy rendition by Hoyt Axton.
- A manatee joke from Family Guy. Peter’s ancestor Ulysses S. Griffin won the Civil War by defeating Lee in a drinking contest.
“All right, no more slaves. But we still don’t have to read books!”
