Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation

One of the most impressive monuments to an American military hero is found in Richmond, Virginia. Weighing twelve tons and standing almost sixty-two feet high, this great marble statue depicts Gen. Robert E. Lee on horseback. It projects an air of defiance as well as celebration, implying that, despite the tragic outcome of the Civil War for the South, this general was not defeated. By the time this monumental icon was unveiled in 1890, twenty years after Lee's death, the apotheosis of the ...