16. Robert E. Lee
America’s foremost soldier at the beginning of the Civil War and an engineer of great reputation and achievement, Robert E. Lee made possible the development of the city of St. Louis as a port by his work. That alone would qualify him as an influential American, but his activities and leadership during the war, and the development of the Lost Cause movement in its wake, make Lee still influential in politics in the United States, particularly in those states which made up the Confederacy. Some consider him the South’s greatest hero, others a traitor guilty of the highest treason, but the fact of the debate alone makes him an influential leader in American history.