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Robert E. Lee was born on January 19, 1807, on the plantation of Stratford Hall, Virginia, just south of the Potomac River. Lee’s father died in disgrace and disrepute when his son was eleven years old, a victim of bad business decisions and poor health, leaving Lee to be brought up by his mother in Alexandria, Virginia. In 1825 he secured an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he achieved exceptional marks, graduating second in the class of 1829. Assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers, Lee spent much of the next sixteen years shifting from post to post, performing noteworthy work on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers as well as the harbor facilities at St. Louis between 1837 and 1840.