On the Confederate side of the American Civil War, Robert E. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia. Prior to the conflict, Robert E. Lee and his family were among Virginia's most renowned citizens. Major General "Light-Horse Harry," his father, During the Valley Forge siege, Lee served in the Revolutionary War and saved George Washington's men from famine. However, early in the American Civil War, Lee would join the Confederacy's doomed cause and fight against the Union war effort, surrendering his US Army service. Lee's support for the Confederacy was not unconditional. "If Virginia stands by the old Union, so will I," Lee said in a letter to a friend. But if she secedes (though I do not believe in secession as a constitutional right, nor do I feel there is adequate cause for revolution), I will follow her with my sword, and if necessary, with my life."

Robert E. Lee allied himself with the Confederate war effort and with his home state of Virginia. When Virginia declared secession, Lee told his wife, "Well, Mary, the subject is settled," and took command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Lee was not excellent at directing men serving under him what to do, preferring to keep an inspirational position of power away from other Confederate soldiers. The defeat of General Lee at Gettysburg was a watershed moment in the war effort. Lee attempted a direct assault on the Union forces at Gettysburg and failed horribly. General Lee launched an attack on the battlefield without adequate intelligence on the size and complexity of the Union war effort, resulting in 28,063 Confederate losses.

The Confederate capital of Virginia fell to Union forces on April 2, 1865, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled. On April 7, 1865, Union General Grant wrote to Confederate General Lee, requesting his surrender. Lee later wrote to General Grant, demanding a "suspend of hostilities" until the details of the capitulation were worked out. General Lee signed the terms of his surrender at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865, and retired to his residence in Lexington, VA, where he died on October 12, 1870, after suffering a stroke.

Stonewall, Thomas Jonathan While fighting for the American war effort in the Mexican-American War, Jackson encountered General Robert E. Lee. Jackson earned the nickname "Stonewall" during the first Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 and was promoted to major general of the Confederate forces in Virginia. During the American Civil War, Jackson's defense of the Shenandoah Valley during the Confederate campaign there cemented his place as a key military thinker and leader for the Confederacy. During the Peninsula Campaign in 1862, Jackson and General Robert E. Lee were reunited on the battlefield. Despite early blunders in the defense of Virginia's capital city of Richmond, Jackson's foot cavalry movements at the Battle of Cedar Mountain cemented his reputation as a successful Confederate military leader. Jackson was killed by friendly fire from the 18th North Carolina Infantry Regiment on May 2, 1863. Jackson's arm was amputated at a Confederate field hospital in an attempt to preserve his life after the accidental shooting, but he died on May 10, 1863, just before the Civil War ended.

During the Civil War, Nathan Bedford Forrest served as a Confederate army commander as well as a cavalry and guerrilla leader. Forrest was born in Tennessee and served in the Confederacy's doomed cause until the surrender of Confederate soldiers in 1865. Forrest was a former slave trader who failed in later economic efforts after slavery was abolished. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded in Tennessee as a social organization for former Confederate troops and sympathizers. Forrest was immediately drawn to the KKK's aims. In 1867, the group founded in his home state elected Forrest as its first leader. Although the KKK's founding organization was a secret club, Forrest despised carpetbaggers and scalawags who sought Republican changes of Southern culture. Increasing violence by KKK members through attacks and lynchings did not impress Forrest. Despite being one of the group's founding members and the first grand wizard, Forrest ordered the KKK's disbandment in 1869, declaring that the organization had become "perverted from its original respectable and patriotic intentions, becoming destructive instead of obedient to the public peace." Nathan Bedford Forrest died in his house in October 1877 from diabetic problems.