Answer:
Robert Edward Lee was the most prominent Confederate general in the Civil War.
Lee was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He attended the West Point military school, where he was one of the most ardent students. By the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, he was considered one of the ablest in the United States, and in early 1861 President Abraham Lincoln proposed making him commander of the Union army. Lee refused, as the state of Virginia was among the states that had left the Union, and felt he had to follow his hometown.
He became chief adviser to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederation, then in June 1862 he became commander of the Southern forces in the east, an army which Lee renamed the Northern Virginia Army. He won several important victories over the Union armies, notably the Seven Days Battle, the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville. When he tried to invade the North, he was less successful; he had to return south after the Battle of Antietam in 1862, and was defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 by George Meade.
In the spring of 1864, the new commander of the Union armies, Ulysses S. Grant, began a series of campaigns against Lee's army. Although Grant's losses were far greater than those of Lee in the ensuing battles, the Union could replace them with new troops, while the resources of the south were almost at an end. Lee had to surrender to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865.
