Black-Boy
...on January 19, 1807. He grew up with a great love of all
country life and his state. This stayed with him for the rest of his
life. He was a very serious boy and spent many hours in his father''s
library. He loved to play with some his friends, swim, and he loved
to hunt. Lee looked up to his father and always wanted to know what
he was doing. George Washington and his father, "Light-Horse Harry
Lee," were his heroes. He wanted to be just like his father when he
grew up.
In the 1820''s, the entrance requirements for West Point were
not close to as strict as they are now. It still was not that easy to
become a cadet. Robert Lee entered the United States Military Academy
at West Point where his classmates admired him for his brilliance,
leadership, and his love for his work. He graduated from the academy
with high honors in 1829, and he was ranked as a second lieutenant in
the Corps of Engineers at the age of 21.
Lee served for seventeen months at Fort Pulaski on Cockspur
Island, Georgia. In 1831, the army transferred him to Fort Monroe,
Virginia, as assistant engineer. While he was stationed there, he
married Mary Anna Randolph Custis who was Martha Washington''s
great-granddaughter. They lived in her family home in Arlington on a
hill overlooking Washington D.C. They had seven children which were
three sons and four daughters. Lee served as an assistant in the
chief engineer''s office in Washington from 1834 to 1837, but then he
spent the summer of 1835 helping to lay out the boundary line between
Ohio and Michigan. In 1837, he got his first independent important
job. As a first lieutenant of engineers, he supervised the
engineering work for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi
and Missouri rivers. His work there earned him a promotion to
captain. In 1841, he was...
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