A top graduate of West Point,
Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the U.S.
Army for thirty-two years. He is best known for fighting on behalf
of the Confederate Army in the American Civil War.
In early 1861, President Abraham Lincoln invited Lee to take
command of the entire Union Army. Lee declined because his home
state of Virginia was seceding from the Union, despite Lee's
wishes. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, Lee
chose to follow his home state. Lee's eventual role in the
newly-established Confederacy was to serve as a senior military
adviser to President Jefferson Davis. Lee's first field command for
the Confederate States came in June 1862 when he took command of
the Confederate forces in the East (which Lee himself renamed the
"Army of Northern Virginia").
Lee's greatest victories
were the Seven Days Battles, the Second Battle of Bull Run, the
Battle of Fredericksburg, and the Battle of Chancellorsville, 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. In early 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, Lee escaped again to Virginia.
In the spring of 1864, the new Union commander, Lieutenant General
Ulysses S. Grant, began a series of campaigns to wear down Lee's
army. In the Overland Campaign of 1864 and the Siege of Petersburg
in 1864–1865, Lee inflicted heavy casualties on Grant's larger
army, but was unable to replace his own losses. In early April
1865, Lee's depleted forces were turned from their entrenchments
near the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and he began a
strategic retreat. Lee's subsequent surrender at Appomattox
Courthouse on April 9, 1865 represented the loss of only one of the
remaining Confederate field armies, but it was a psychological blow
from which the South could not recover. By June 1865, all of the
remaining Confederate armies had capitulated.
Here in the Samarie Cemetery
lies another person named Robert E. Lee. To find the final stage of
this cache, go the listed coordinates and answer this
question:
On what day was this Robert E. Lee born? (the one at the posted
coordinates...not the General)
A. Christmas Eve...... N32° 07.698 W96°
09.862
B. New Year's Eve.... N32° 07.695 W96°
09.855
C. Easter Eve........... N32° 07.777 W96°
09.999
The cache container is a decon box.