Fitzhugh Lee (19 November 1835 – 28 April 1905) was a US Army and Confederate States Army Major-General during the American Civil War and the Spanish-American War and Governor of Virginia from 1 January 1886 to 1 January 1890 (succeeding William E. Cameron and preceding Philip W. McKinney).
Biography[]
Fitzhugh Lee was born in Clermont, Fairfax County, Virginia in 1835, the son of Sydney Smith Lee, the nephew of Robert E. Lee, and the cousin of George Washington Custis Lee, William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, and Robert E. Lee Jr.. He graduated from West Point in 1856 and served in the US Army during the wars with the Comanche in Texas, and, when the American Civil War broke out in 1861, he became a cavalry lieutenant in the Confederate States Army. He became a Brigadier-General on 24 July 1862 and captured the tent and dress uniform of the Union general John Pope during a raid on Catlett's Station. He performed well during the withdrawals from the Battle of South Mountain and the Battle of Antietam later that year, and he fought at the Battle of Kelly's Ford in March 1863. In May 1863, he scouted out weakpoints in the Union Army of the Potomac before the Battle of Chancellorsville, allowing for Stonewall Jackson to launch a scucessful flank attack. After fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg, he was promoted to Major-General, and he frequently served as a divisional commander under J.E.B. Stuart during the Overland Campaign of 1864. On 29 March 1865, he took command of all of the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry after Wade Hampton III was sent to assist Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina, but he was forced to surrender at Appomattox on 6 April 1865. After the war, he served as Governor of Virginia from 1886 to 1890 and served as consul-general at Havana in Spanish Cuba from 1896 to 1898. He and fellow former Confederate generals Joseph Wheeler, Thomas L. Rosser, and Matthew Butler returned to the army to fight in the ensuing Spanish-American War, and he served as military governor of Havana in 1899. He retired in 1901 and died in Washington DC in 1905.
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