McClellan then resisted the President's demand that he pursue Lee's retreating and exposed army, while his counterpart General Don Carlos Buell likewise refused orders to move the Army of the Ohio against rebel forces in eastern Tennessee.

He was replaced by George Meade, who followed Lee into Pennsylvania for the Gettysburg Campaign, which was a victory for the Union, though Lee's army avoided capture.

Meade's failure to capture Lee's army as it retreated from Gettysburg, and the continued passivity of the Army of the Potomac, persuaded Lincoln that a change in command was needed.

The Confederacy lacked reinforcements, so Lee's army shrank with every battle, forcing it back to trenches outside Petersburg, Virginia, where Grant began a siege.

He fought several battles of attrition against Lee through the Overland Campaign to seize Richmond, though in the face of fierce resistance he altered his plans and led the Siege of Petersburg which nearly finished off the rest of Lee's army.

When the Confederate attempt to defend Petersburg failed, the Confederate army retreated but was pursued and defeated, which resulted in Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting to preserve slavery, most of the officers and over a third of the rank and file in Lee's army had close family ties to slavery.

Although Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered four days earlier, Booth believed the war was not yet over because Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's army was still fighting the Union Army.

While he cultivated a cavalier image ( red-lined gray cape, yellow sash, hat cocked to the side with an ostrich plume, red flower in his lapel, often sporting cologne ), his serious work made him the trusted eyes and ears of Robert E. Lee's army and inspired Southern morale.

Arguably Stuart's most famous campaign, Gettysburg, was marred when he was surprised by a Union cavalry attack at the Battle of Brandy Station and by his separation from Lee's army for an extended period, leaving Lee unaware of Union troop movements and arguably contributing to the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg.

As the Union Army drew near to Lee's divided army, Stuart's men skirmished at various points on the approach to Frederick and Stuart was not able to keep his brigades concentrated enough to resist the oncoming tide.

After Lee's army had withdrawn back to Virginia, Stuart performed another of his audacious circumnavigations of the Army of the Potomac — 120 miles in under 60 hours, from Leesburg, Virginia, to as far north as Chambersburg and Mercersburg, Pennsylvania — once again embarrassing his Union opponents and seizing horses and supplies, but at the expense of exhausted men and animals, without gaining much military advantage.

In the South, on the other hand, the Civil War stimulated revivals, especially in Lee's army.

* 1862 – American Civil War: George B. McClellan halts the northward drive of Robert E. Lee's Confederate army in the single-day Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American history.

Under Grant, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and effectively ended the war with the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army at Appomattox.

Lee's army got to Spotsylvania first and a costly and lengthy battle began that lasted 13 days.

With the Federal army having rebuilt the City Point Railroad, Grant was able to use mortars to attack Lee's entrenchments ; the most famous and largest mortar used during the Civil War, over 17, 000 pounds, was called the Dictator.

The campaign pitted Union Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac against an army less than half its size, Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

Chancellorsville is known as Lee's " perfect battle " because his risky decision to divide his army in the presence of a much larger enemy force resulted in a significant Confederate victory.

Burnside's former command, the IX Corps, was transferred to the Virginia Peninsula, a movement that prompted the Confederates to detach troops from Lee's army under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, a decision that would be consequential in the upcoming campaign.

Abraham Lincoln had become convinced that the appropriate objective for his Eastern army was the army of Robert E. Lee's, not any geographic features such as a capital city, but he and his generals knew that the most reliable way to bring Lee to a decisive battle was to threaten his capital.

Burnside's plan was to cross the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg in mid-November and race to the Confederate capital of Richmond before Lee's army could stop him.

McClellan had stopped Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, but had not been able to destroy Lee's army, nor did he pursue Lee back into Virginia aggressively enough for Lincoln.

) While Burnside began assembling a supply base at Falmouth, near Fredericksburg, the Lincoln administration entertained a lengthy debate about the wisdom of his plan, which differed from the president's preference of a movement south on the O & A and a direct confrontation with Lee's army instead of the movement focused on the city of Richmond.

Shortly after Lee's surrender, a general had asked Lincoln how the defeated Confederates should be treated, and Lincoln replied, " Let ' em up easy.

In 1863, Confederate general Robert E. Lee's northward advance ended in defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, is a military cemetery in the United States of America, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna ( Custis ) Lee, a great grand-daughter of Martha Washington.

Following Jackson's death in May 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Hill was promoted to lieutenant general and commanded the Third Corps of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which he led in the Gettysburg Campaign and the fall campaigns of 1863.

After Jackson's death of pneumonia, Hill was promoted on May 24, 1863, to lieutenant general and placed in command of the newly created Third Corps of Lee's army, which he led in the Gettysburg Campaign of 1863.

Although the first day of the battle was a resounding Confederate success, Hill received much postbellum criticism from proponents of the Lost Cause movement, suggesting that he had unwisely brought on a general engagement against orders before Lee's army was fully concentrated.

Col. Lee's Legion and 60 Virginia Riflemen making in their whole 700 men which will be ordered with the Militia to harass the enemy in their advance, check their progress and if possible give us opportunity to retire without general action.

Stuart's Confederate cavalry set off on a screening movement on the flank of Robert E. Lee's army in order to give Lee time to prepare his army to meet the Union Army after Northern general George B. McClellan had gained information on Lee's location and plans.

Hartranft was brevetted major general by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant for defeating Confederate General Robert E. Lee's last offensive at the Battle of Fort Stedman, bringing his untested division from its reserve position and counterattacking to recover the captured fort.

Fellow-immigrant major general Carl Schurz, his corps commander, described him during the battle: " He was the only soldier at Gettysburg who did not dodge when Lee's guns thundered ; he stood up, smoked his cigar and faced the cannon balls with the sang froid of a Saladin ..."

When Sumner left for California, his son-in-law Armistead Lindsay Long resigned his commission and enlisted with the Confederate Army eventually becoming Robert E. Lee's military secretary and an artillery brigadier general.

On March 13, 1865, he was breveted brigadier general in the regular army for " gallant and meritorious service at the battle of Gettysburg ", and then to major general for the Battle of Sayler's Creek during Lee's retreat.

On November 29 Hood sent Cheatham's and Stewart's corps on a flanking march north, crossing the Duck River at Davis's Ford east of Columbia while two divisions of Lee's corps and most of the army's artillery remained on the southern bank to deceive Schofield into thinking a general assault was planned against Columbia.

At the Battle of Five Forks on April 1, Union forces under Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant cut the final railroad line supplying Lee's army in Petersburg, and ordered a general assault along the Petersburg fortification line.

As Grant continued his attempts to maneuver around Lee's right flank and lure him into a general battle in the open, Lee saw an opportunity to attack the advancing V Corps, under Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren with the Second Corps of Lt. Gen. Jubal Early.

He was commissioned brigadier general on February 13, 1862, and commanded a brigade in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during the Peninsula Campaign, at the close of which he continued with Lee and took part in the Northern Virginia Campaign and Maryland Campaign.

Birney received the brevet rank of major general of volunteers in March 1865, then led his troops in pursuit of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia during the Appomattox Campaign.

After Robert E. Lee's army surrendered in Virginia, General Edmund Kirby Smith appointed Shelby a major general on May 10, 1865.

Rooney Lee's adjutant general, Maj. J. D. Ferguson, also was captured.

Wickham was commissioned brigadier general on September 9, 1863, and put in command of Wickham's brigade of Fitzhugh Lee's division.

Stonewall Jackson, now a major general, returned in September 1862 under orders from Robert E. Lee to retake the arsenal and then to join Lee's army north in Maryland.

He served as a Confederate general during the American Civil War, noted for his position as Gen. Robert E. Lee's chief of artillery for most of the conflict.