HAPPY 204TH BIRTHDAY TO GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE

     It was on a Monday, on the nineteenth day of the month of January, in the year of our Lord 1807, at Stranford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, that Robert Edward Lee was born. His father was the famous Revolutionary War hero, Major General Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee III.  Was was a descendant of Colonel Richard "the Immigrant" Lee I (1617-1664), who arrived at Jamestown in 1639 at the age of twenty-two, and was appointed Attorney General of the Colony of Virginia on the recommendation of Sir Francis Wyatt, the first Governor of the Colony of Virginia. The Lees were one of the first families to settle in the Colony of Virginia.

     Lee entered the West Point Academy in 1825, and did not incur any demerits during his four-year course. Upon graduation in June 1829, he was commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. Lee would go on to distinguish himself during the Mexican-American War. Lee then would be appointed as Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point in 1852. In October 1859, Lee was given command of detachments of militia, soldiers, and United States Marines, to suppress and arrest the abolitionist, John Brown, and his twenty-one followers in their atempted rebellion and seizure of a federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. In 1861, during the first days of the Civil War, Lee was Abraham Lincoln call Lee to the White House with a request that he would be the Commander of the Union Army.  Lee would respectfully decline the offer. He could not see himself fighting against his home state of Virginia.

     Even though Lee did not agree with the secession of the Southern states from the Union, he would go on to serve as the Commander of the Confederate Army out of a sense of duty to his home state of Virginia.

     It was on a Thursday, on the thirtieth day of the month of June, in the year of our Lord 1831, in Arlington House, the home of the bride's father, that Robert Edward Lee would marry Mary Ann Randolph Curtis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, and step-great-granddaughter of George Washington. They would go on to have seven children together:  George "Boo" Washington Curtis (September 16, 1832), Mary "Daughter" Curtis (1835), William "Rooney" Henry Fitzhugh (May 31, 1837), Eleanor "Agnes" (1841), Robert "Rob" Edward, Jr. (October 27, 1843), Mildred "Milly" "Precious Life" Childe (1846). After her father died in 1857, Mary would inherit Arlington House. During the height of the Civil War, the mansion and the surrounding lands would be illegally confiscated by the United States government, and would later be made into Arlington National Cemetary.

     Lee had opposed the institution of slavery, and would free the slaves that came to his wife with her inhertance of Arlinton House at the passing of her father.

     After the Civil War,on October 2, 1865, Lee would become the President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia.

     Robert E. Lee was a devout Christian who had a chararter that was beyond reproach.  He has come to be admired and beloved by both Northerners and Southerners.

     On August 5, 1975, at 2:12 p.m, President Gerald R. Ford, at a signing cermony of Senate Joint Rsolution 23, that posthumously (and "long overdue" in the President's words) restored the full rights of citizenship to to Lee.

     In was after 9 a.m., on a Wednesday, on the twelfth day of the month of October, in Lexington, Virginia, that Obert Edward Lee went to be with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

    

SELAH

Psalm 95:12

     The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon

Psalm 95:12