Robert E Lee biography

Stratford, the estate where he was born, had a great brick mansion with two huge chimneys that were the largest in America, and a promenade on the roof from which one could watch great sailing boats drifting down the Potomac River. Each of its seventeen rooms was painted a different color and each one had an enormous fireplace. Besides the house itself were kitchens, a schoolroom, stables, vast acres of land - and in the distance, the cottages where the slaves lived.

Robert Edward, who was named after two of his mother's brothers, was the third boy in the Lee family. His mother's family, the Carters, were almost as prominent as the Lees and had their own elegant plantation nearby, called Shirley. Everywhere you went in Virginia you ran into either a Carter or a Lee - Robert Edward was the descendent of two great American dynasties. His father was Henry Lee, the famous "Light Horse Harry" who had been a hero in the Revolution, a Governor of Virginia, and a close friend of George Washington's. It was Harry who wrote the famous eulogy to Washington: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

When Robert was four, his father lost most of the family fortune speculating, and they had to move from beautiful Stratford to an elegant, but much smaller, brick house in nearby Alexandria. It was the start of many years of so-called "genteel poverty" in which the Lees struggled to maintain their dignity while going deeper and deeper into debt. But the adversity helped form Lee's character - his modesty, his ability to adapt and make the best of any situation, and his determination to excel, had some of their roots in these early years of struggle.

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