Civil War
Lee served in the Virginia state forces, until July 1861. At that time he was given a commission as a Captain in the Confederate Army. During the next few months, Lee worked in the Confederate engineers corps. He spent his time constructing fortifications for the new capital city, Richmond. At the end of August 1861, Lee was offered and accepted the position of aide-de-camp to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He was then promoted to the rank of Colonel. Lee served in his position for the next three years of the war. He was often sent on missions to assess the military, and would then return to report to Davis. When Robert E. Lee became the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, Custis Lee had constant contact with his father. In 1862, during the Peninsula Campaign, Lee was put in charge of supervising the engineers at Drewry's Bluff. In June 1863, he was promoted to Brigadier General. Lee was discouraged from taking a field command by Davis, but encouraged by his father. Lee asked his father for a field command, but his father replied that his highest duty was obedience to his superiors. For the most part, he obeyed Davis, but during the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee was given the command of the troops in Richmond. In 1864, Lee was placed in command of Richmond's local defenses against General Grant and General Benjamin Butler. He did so well that he was given command of Richmond's eastern defenses at Chaffin's Bluff. Lee remained at Chaffin's Bluff throughout the next months, and in 1864, he was promoted to Major General. Shortly before the end of the war, he commanded troops in the field and was captured at Sayler's Creek, three days before his father surrendered on Palm Sunday April 9, 1865 to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia (see: Appomattox Court House National Historical Park).
Read more about this topic: George Washington Custis Lee
Famous quotes related to civil war:
“To the cry of ‘follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,’ Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
Of the expropriated mycologist.”
—Derek Mahon (b. 1941)