Robert E. Lee Archives

Robert E. Lee

Prisons of the Civil War: An Enduring Controversy

By Michael E. Haskew

The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more

Robert E. Lee

The 5th U.S. Cavalry: “A Hard Duty” at Gaines Mill

The celebrated 2nd U.S. Cavalry, like its brother regiment the 1st U.S. Cavalry, was formally created by an act of Congress in March 1855. Read more

Robert E. Lee

Mowed Down by the Fifties

By William E. Welsh

As Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his I Corps commander, Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, rode together on horseback along the dust-choked Quaker Road from Glendale to Malvern Hill on the morning of July 1, 1862, they stopped to confer with Maj. Read more

Robert E. Lee

The Main Civil War Generals Who Helped Define the War

By Roy Morris, Jr.

Mr. Morris is the author of seven well-received books on 19th Century American history and literature. He has served as a consultant for A&E, the History Channel, and edited a three-book series for Purdue University Press on American Civil War and post-Civil War history, journalism and literature. Read more

Robert E. Lee

Pickett’s Charge: “We Gained Nothing But Glory”

By Eric Niderost

July 3, 1863, dawned clear and bright, the warm sun promising even greater heat to come. By noon, temperatures were already in the low 90s, a typically hot and humid summer day in southern Pennsylvania. Read more

Robert E. Lee

Sharp Clash at North Anna

By David A. Norris

Dripping wet Union soldiers stepped out of the North Anna River’s Jericho Ford on May 22, 1864, setting foot in Hanover County, Virginia. Read more

Robert E. Lee

Longstreet’s Hammer Blow at Manassas

By Joshua Shepherd

In the rolling fields on the south side of the Warrenton Turnpike, the men of the 5th New York of Colonel Gouverneur K. Read more

The ferocity of that single day of fighting and the haphazard means by which graves were arranged has made the Antietam death toll hard to truly measure.

Robert E. Lee

The 1862 Battle of Antietam: Casualties and Death Toll

By Mike Haskew

During the September 17, 1862 Battle of Antietam, casualties piled almost too high to count. The culmination of the first invasion of the North during the American Civil War by General Robert E. Read more

Few photographers were able to capture as big a cross-section of people, places and events during the Civil War as Mathew Brady.

Robert E. Lee

American Civil War Timeline: Piecemeal Operations

by William E. Welsh

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had no military experience and discarded most of Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott’s so-called Anaconda Plan, which critics deemed too conservative. Read more

Looking back at the Battle of Gettysburg

Robert E. Lee

The American Civil War: Forging a National Identity

by Mike Haskew

The American Civil War was the tragic culmination of divergent perspectives on the proper conduct of the government of the United States and socio-economic issues that had been frequently at the forefront of American political life for decades. Read more

Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee: Confederate Icon

by Mike Haskew

When the Civil War broke out, Robert E. Lee of Virginia was offered command of the Union army. Read more

Ulysses S. Grant led Union forces to victory over the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War and became President of the United States.

Robert E. Lee

Ulysses S. Grant: Union War Hero

by Mike Haskew

Born in Ohio in 1822, Ulysses S. Grant graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1843. Read more

In their first major battles of World War I, American Expeditionary Force troops helped blunt multiple offensives launched by the German Army in the spring of 1918.

Robert E. Lee

World War I Doughboys’ Bloody Baptism

As the fateful day drew to a close, the exhausted World War I soldiers of the German 25th and 82nd Reserve Divisions huddled in their trenches. Read more

Robert E. Lee

John Bell Hood at the Battle of Gettysburg

By Don Williams

Ward’s Union Brigade faced some of the most formidable troops in General Robert E. Lee’s army on the afternoon of July 2. Read more

Lincoln's moral leadership and political legacy, as well as Lee and Jackson's expert command have never left our popular imagination.

Robert E. Lee

Looking Back on the Vicksburg Campaign

Brooke C. Stoddard

When the sun set on the Confederacy, the stars began to rise and shine, none more brightly for Northerners than that of Abraham Lincoln, and for Southerners than those of Robert E. Read more