Who was the commanding general of the Confederate Army at Gettysburg?

The commanding general of the Confederate Army at Gettysburg was Robert E. Lee. He commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, the principal Confederate force operating in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War.

Lee led the army into Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign, hoping to carry the war into the North and potentially influence Northern public opinion and politics. At Gettysburg, his opponent was Major General George G. Meade, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. The battle ended Lee’s invasion and forced his army to retreat toward Virginia.

A common mix-up is James Longstreet, who was one of Lee’s senior corps commanders and directed major Confederate attacks on July 2 and July 3. Jefferson Davis was the Confederate president, not the battlefield commander. Stonewall Jackson had been a celebrated Confederate general, but he died in May 1863, before Gettysburg began.