Click 👉 TODAY IN HISTORY (general history) Jan. 19.
ON THIS DAY IN CONFEDERATE HISTORY, Jan.19.
1807: Robert Edward Lee was born on this day at Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, Virginia to Revolutionary War hero Henry Lee III and Anne Hill Carter Lee in 1807. He graduated from West Point in 1829 second in his class and with no demerits. He started his long military career in the U.S. Army with engineering assignments across the nation. Lee became a hero himself in the Mexican American War serving on Gen. Winfield Scott's staff as an engineer. He went on many dangerous assignments behind enemy lines finding the best routes to Mexico City. Married to the granddaughter of Martha Washington, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, Lee began a long residence in Arlington House. The couple would have seven children, three boys, and four girls. He became a Confederate general in 1861 and two of his sons also became Confederate generals and the third a Confederate captain. Lee is considered widely as one of the greatest military geniuses in world history and the embodiment of honor, duty, and integrity. After the war, he was the president of Washington College in Lexington, Va., and saved the college and put it on the road to being one of the great universities, now Washington and Lee University, in the nation. A devout Christian gentleman, he died on Oct. 12, 1870, at home at age 63. He is entombed in his family crypt under Lee Chapel, which he had built, on the university campus. Robert E. Lee is greatly revered by many people around the world and his birthday is an official holiday in a number of Southern states.
1862: There is minor skirmishing near Williamsburg and the Burnt Ordinary in Virginia.
1865: General Robert E. Lee is made General-In-Chief of all Confederate armies.
CONFEDERATE GENERAL BIRTHDAYS, Jan. 19.
General Robert Edward Lee was born on this day in 1807 at Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, Virginia. See the above biography.
Brigadier General George Blake Cosby was born on this day in 1830 in Louisville, Kentucky. He graduated from West Point in the class of 1852 17th in a class of 42 cadets. Cosby was a 2nd Lt. in the U.S. Mounted Riflemen and was wounded fighting Indians at Lake Trinidad, Texas on May 9, 1852. He also served 2nd U.S. Cav., taught at West Point, and has risen to captain by the time he resigned in 1861 and joined the Confederate Army. He served in various staff positions as a captain, major, and colonel and was captured in the surrender of Fort Donelson, Tenn. in Feb. 1862. He was then promoted to brigadier general. After being exchanged, he was promoted to brigadier general on Jan. 20, 1863, and was given command of a cavalry brigade in the Dept. of Miss. & E. La. He served in the Vicksburg Campaign under Gen. J.E. Johnston at Jackson, Miss., and later was in the Battle of Thompson Station, Tenn., and in 1864 in the Dept. of S.W. Va., and the Dept. of W. Va. He disbanded his brigade when he got news of the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Va. After the war, he moves out west and lived in California and Oregon working as a sutler and in the California state government. He died June 29, 1909, at Oakland, Calif., and was buried in the City Cemetery in Sacramento, Calif.
Brigadier General Henry Gray was born on this day in 1816 in Laurens District, South Carolina. He was a graduate of South Carolina College in 1834 and had an outstanding career in law and politics in the states of Mississippi and Louisiana. He began the War for Southern Independence as a private in a Mississippi infantry company when his old friend President Jefferson Davis asked to go back to Louisiana to raise a regiment that became the 28th Louisiana Infantry Regiment. His regiment fought in the Bayou Teche Campaign of 1863 and the Red River Campaign of 1864 in Louisiana. He personally led Mouton's Brigade, still a colonel, in the Battle of Mansfield, La. April 8, 1864, and again the next day in the Battle of Pleasant Hill, La. Gray was then elected to the Confederate Congress when in the closing days of the was promoted to brigadier general and commanded a cavalry brigade in Louisiana. After the war, he resumed his distinguished law career and was a popular orator around the state of Louisiana. He died at his daughter's house in Coushatta, La. on Dec. 11, 1892, and was buried in the Springville Cemetery near Coushatta.
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