January 19, 1807 - Robert E. Lee

His military record before 1861 was exemplary — decades of service, the Mexican-American War, West Point's superintendency — which made his decision to resign his U.S. Army commission and take command of Confederate forces in Virginia all the more consequential. As commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, he prolonged a war fought in defense of a slaveholding republic, inflicting and absorbing enormous casualties across four years of major engagements. His tactical effectiveness is what makes him a figure of lasting historical weight: a more capable general might have shortened the war, a less capable one might never have extended it so far.

From Wikipedia

Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a Confederate general whose early actions in the American Civil War led to his appointment as the overall commander of the Confederate States Army near the end of the war. He led the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most powerful army, from 1862 until its surrender in 1865, earning a reputation as one of the war's most skilled tacticians.

A son of Revolutionary War officer Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, of the Lee family of Virginia, Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy and an exceptional officer and military engineer in the United States Army for 32 years. He served across the United States, distinguished himself during the Mexican–American War, and was Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He married Mary Anna Custis, great-granddaughter of George Washington's wife Martha. While he opposed slavery from a philosophical perspective, he supported its legality and held hundreds of slaves. When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. During the first year of the Civil War, he served in minor combat operations and as a senior military adviser to Confederate president Jefferson Davis.

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