County Named for Beloved Confederate General Robert E. Lee
Giddings, Lee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Led army of Northern Virginia which included famed Hood's Texas Brigade. He said about them "I never ordered that brigade to hold a position that they did not hold it." "The enemy never sees the backs of my Texans." In the Battle of the Wilderness the Texans, seeing Lee set to lead the charge and fearing for his safety, halted, shouting, "General Lee to the rear," until he complied. Lee once declined furloughs for the Texans for he needed their services. He considered them his best shock troops. About Lee's surrender a Texan said, "I'd rather have died than surrendered; but if Marse Bob thinks that is best...Marse Bob is bound to be right as usual." COLONEL ROBERT E LEE IN TEXAS 1857-1861 Robert E. Lee spent 25 months on the Texas frontier, proving and seasoning grounds for great army leaders in the impending Civil War. With the 2nd U. S. Cavalry at Camp Cooper, he led a 1,600-mile scouting expedition into Indian country. He commanded the 2nd, first at San Antonio - leading the attempt to capture Mexican bandit Juan Cortina - next at Fort Mason. Lee learned how to adapt himself and his men to outdoor life and adverse conditions he later faced on battlefields. Knowledge of the ways of his fellow officers who later held high ranks in both armies...
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This marker recalls how Lee County, Texas, took the name of Robert E. Lee, and gathers the affectionate lore that bound the Confederate commander to the state's soldiers. Before the war, then-Colonel Lee spent some two years on the Texas frontier with the 2nd U.S. Cavalry, leading long scouting expeditions and border patrols out of posts like Camp Cooper and Fort Mason. During the Civil War he commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, whose ranks included the celebrated Hood's Texas Brigade—shock troops whose devotion produced the famous cry of 'General Lee to the rear.'
Why it matters
The marker shows how communities across the postwar South wove their identities around Confederate memory, naming counties and monuments for figures like Lee generations after the guns fell silent.
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Related people
- · Robert E. Lee
- · John Bell Hood
Related events
- · Battle of the Wilderness
- · American Civil War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lee County
Giddings, TX
Straddling the Old San Antonio Road on land first surveyed for Moses and Stephen F. Austin's colony, Lee County became in 1854 the heart of Wendish settlement in America, when Pastor Johann Kilian led his Sorbian-speaking congregation from Central Europe to a new home here. Their school was the only one in the United States to teach in Wendish, a Slavic language that survives in the modern world chiefly here and in Australia. The county was organized in 1874 and named for Confederate general Robert E. Lee, with Giddings as its seat.
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Milton Garrett York, born in East Texas in 1843 and orphaned young, returned from Arkansas to teach school and, after Confederate service through the Civil War, put down roots along the Brenham-Austin Trace. He helped organize newly created Lee County in 1874, served as county commissioner, and won election to the Texas House of Representatives in 1890. A Mason and champion of local schooling, he embodied the civic builders who knit frontier counties into functioning communities.
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