专八人文知识需知的美国名人--罗伯特.爱德华.李

专八人文知识需知的美国名人--罗伯特.爱德华.李

　　英语专八人文知识涵盖的知识面较广，考生们需要平时多积累小常识，这样在专八考试中才能游刃有余，新东方在线整理了专八人文知识需知的美国名人系列知识点供考生们参考。

　　罗伯特•爱德华•李(Robert Edward Lee，1807年1月19日—1870年10月12日)，美国军事家，出生于弗吉尼亚。他在美墨战争中表现卓越，并在1859年镇压了约翰•布朗的武装起义。在美国南北战争中，他是美国南方邦联的总司令。内战中，他在公牛溪战役、腓特烈斯堡战役及钱瑟勒斯维尔战役中大获全胜。1865年，他在邦联军弹尽粮绝的情况下向尤里西斯•辛普森•格兰特将军投降，从而结束了内战。战后，他积极从事教育事业，任华盛顿大学(现名华盛顿与李大学)的校长。1870年病逝，葬在弗吉尼亚列克敦。

　　Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a career United States Armyofficer, a combat engineer, and among the most celebrated generals in American history. He is alsoone of the very few generals in modern military history to ever be offered the highest command oftwo opposing armies. Lee was the son of Major General Henry Lee III "Light Horse Harry" (1756–1818), Governor of Virginia, and his second wife, Anne Hill Carter (1773–1829). He was also relatedto Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809).

　　A top graduate of West Point, Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the U.S. Armyfor thirty-two years. He is best known for commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginiain the American Civil War. In early 1861, President Abraham Lincoln invited Lee to take commandof the entire Union Army. Lee declined because his home state of Virginia was seceding from theUnion, despite Lee's wishes. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose tofollow his home state. Lee's eventual role in the newly established Confederacy was to serve as asenior military adviser to President Jefferson Davis. Lee's first field command for the ConfederateStates came in June 1862 when he took command of the Confederate forces in the East (whichLee himself renamed the "Army of Northern Virginia").Lee's greatest victories were the Seven DaysBattles, the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville,and the Battle of Cold Harbor but both of his campaigns to invade the North ended in failure.Barely escaping defeat at the Battle of Antietam in 1862, Lee was forced to return to the South. Inearly July 1863, Lee was decisively defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. However,due to ineffectual pursuit by the commander of Union forces, Major General George Meade, Leeescaped again to Virginia.In the spring of 1864, the new Union commander, Lieutenant GeneralUlysses S. Grant, began a series of campaigns to wear down Lee's army. In the Overland Campaignof 1864 and the Siege of Petersburg in 1864–1865, Lee inflicted heavy casualties on Grant's largerarmy, but was unable to replace his own losses. In early April 1865, Lee's depleted forces wereturned from their entrenchments near the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and he begana strategic retreat. Lee's subsequent surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865represented the loss of only one of the remaining Confederate field armies, but it was apsychological blow from which the South could not recover. By June 1865, all of the remainingConfederate armies had capitulated. Lee's victories against superior forces won him enduring fameas a crafty and daring battlefield tactician, but some of his strategic decisions, such as invading theNorth in 1862 and 1863, have been criticized by many military historians. In the final months ofthe Civil War, as manpower reserves drained away, Lee adopted a plan to arm slaves to fight onbehalf of the Confederacy, but this came too late to change the outcome of the war. AfterAppomattox, Lee discouraged Southern dissenters from starting a guerrilla campaign to continuethe war, and encouraged reconciliation between the North and the South. After the war, as acollege President, Lee supported President Andrew Johnson's program of Reconstruction andinter-sectional friendship, while opposing the Radical Republican proposals to give freed slaves thevote and take the vote away from ex-Confederates. He urged them to re-think their positionbetween the North and the South, and the reintegration of former Confederates into the nation'spolitical life. Lee became the great Southern hero of the war, and his popularity grew in the Northas well after his death in 1870. He remains an iconic figure of American military leadership.

　　Combat engineer career

　　Lee served for just over 17 months at Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island, Georgia. In 1831 he wastransferred to Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula and played a major role in the finalconstruction of Fort Monroe and its opposite, Fort Calhoun. Fort Monroe was completelysurrounded by a moat. Fort Calhoun, later renamed Fort Wool, was built on a man-made islandacross the navigational channel from Old Point Comfort in the middle of the mouth of HamptonRoads. When construction was completed in 1834, Fort Monroe was referred to as the "Gibraltarof Chesapeake Bay." While he was stationed at Fort Monroe, he married. Lee served as an assistantin the chief engineer's office in Washington, D.C. from 1834 to 1837, but spent the summer of1835 helping to lay out the state line between Ohio and Michigan. As a first lieutenant of engineersin 1837, he supervised the engineering work for St. Louis harbor and for the upper Mississippi andMissouri rivers. Among his projects was blasting a channel through the Des Moines Rapids on theMississippi by Keokuk, Iowa, where the Mississippi's mean depth of 2.4 feet (0.7 m) was the upperlimit of steamboat traffic on the river. His work there earned him a promotion to captain. Circa1842, Captain Robert E. Lee arrived as Fort Hamilton's post engineer.

　　Mexican-American War, West Point, and Texas

　　Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). He was one of WinfieldScott's chief aides in the march from Veracruz to Mexico City. He was instrumental in severalAmerican victories through his personal reconnaissance as a staff officer; he found routes of attackthat the Mexicans had not defended because they thought the terrain was impassable. He waspromoted to brevet major after the Battle of Cerro Gordo on April 18, 1847.He also fought atContreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec, and was wounded at the last. By the end of the war, hehad received additional brevet promotions to Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel, but his permanentrank was still Captain of Engineers and he would remain a Captain until his transfer to the cavalry in1855.

　　For the first time Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant met and worked with each other during theMexican-American War. Both Lee and Grant participated in the Scott's march from the coastaltown of Vera Cruz to Mexico City. Grant gained wartime experience as a quartermaster, Lee as anengineer who positioned troops and artillery. Both did their share of actual fighting. At Vera Cruz,Lee earned a commendation for "greatly distinguished" service. Grant was among the leaders atthe bloody assault at Molino del Rey, and both soldiers were among the forces that entered MexicoCity. Close observations of their commanders constituted a learning process for both Lee andGrant. The Mexican-American War concluded on February 2, 1848.After the Mexican War, hespent three years at Fort Carroll in Baltimore harbor. During this time his service was interrupted byother duties, among them surveying/updating maps in Florida, an offer from Secretary of WarJefferson Davis to lead an attack on Cuba (Lee declined), and a brief military assignment out west.In September 1852, Lee became the superintendent of West Point. During his three years at WestPoint, Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee improved the buildings and courses, and spent a lot of timewith the cadets. Lee's oldest son, George Washington Custis Lee, attended West Point during histenure. Custis Lee graduated in 1854, first in his class.In 1855, Lee's tour of duty at West Pointended and he was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the newly formed 2nd U.S. Cavalry regiment. Itwas Lee's first substantive promotion in the Army since his promotion to Captain in 1838, despitehaving been brevetted a Colonel, which was an honorary promotion. By accepting promotion, Leeleft the Corps of Engineers where he had served for over 25 years. The Colonelcy of the regimentwas given to Albert Sidney Johnston, who had previously served as a Major in the PaymasterDepartment, and the regiment was assigned to Camp Cooper, Texas. There he helped protectsettlers from attacks by the Apache and the Comanche. These were not happy years for Lee, ashe did not like to be away from his family for long periods of time, especially as his wife wasbecoming increasingly ill. Lee came home to see her as often as he could. Robert's wife was treatedby homeopath Alfred Hughes.

　　Lee's views on slavery

　　Since the end of the Civil War, it has often been suggested that Lee was in some sense opposed toslavery. In the period following the Civil War and Reconstruction, and after his death, Lee becamea central figure in the Lost Cause interpretation of the war, and as succeeding generations came tolook on slavery as a terrible immorality, the idea that Lee had always somehow opposed it helpedmaintain his stature as a symbol of Southern honor and national reconciliation. Some of theevidence cited in favor of the claim that Lee opposed slavery, are the manumission of Custis'slaves, as discussed above, and his support, towards the end of the war, for enrolling slaves in theConfederate States Army, with manumission offered as an eventual reward for good service. Leegave his public support to this idea two weeks before Appomattox, too late for it to do any goodfor the Confederacy. In December 1864, Lee was shown a letter by Louisiana Senator EdwardSparrow, written by General St. John R. Liddell, which noted that Lee would be hard-pressed in theinterior of Virginia by spring, and the need to consider Patrick Cleburne's plan to emancipate theslaves and put all men in the army that were willing to join. Lee was said to have agreed on allpoints and desired to get black soldiers, saying that "he could make soldiers out of any humanbeing that had arms and legs." Another source is Lee's 1856 letter to his wife, which can beinterpreted in multiple ways:

　　“ ... In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as aninstitution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. Ithink it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings arestrongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacksare immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful disciplinethey are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead themto better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wiseMerciful Providence. ”

　　Freeman's analysis puts Lee's attitude toward slavery and abolition in historical context:“ This[letter] was the prevailing view among most religious people of Lee's class in the border states.They believed that slavery existed because God willed it and they thought it would end when Godso ruled. The time and the means were not theirs to decide, conscious though they were of the ill-effects of Negro slavery on both races. Lee shared these convictions of his neighbors withouthaving come in contact with the worst evils of African bondage. He spent no considerable time inany state south of Virginia from the day he left Fort Pulaski in 1831 until he went to Texas in 1856.All his reflective years had been passed in the North or in the border states. He had never beenamong the blacks on a cotton or rice plantation. At Arlington the servants had been notoriouslyindolent, their master's master. Lee, in short, was only acquainted with slavery at its best and hejudged it accordingly. At the same time, he was under no illusion regarding the aims of theAbolitionist or the effect of their agitation. ”

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