The Myth of the Kindly General Lee

[marble falls]

The Myth of the Kindly General Lee

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee

The legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency is based in the fiction of a person who never existed.
The Atlantic

Adam Serwer

<snip>

"I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy."

<snip>

Lee’s cruelty as a slavemaster was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading the Man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that “Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families,” by hiring them off to other plantations, and that “by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days.” The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lee’s slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see.”

<snip>

Soldiers under Lee’s command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender. Then, in a spectacle hatched by Lee’s senior corps commander A.P. Hill, the Confederates paraded the Union survivors through the streets of Petersburg to the slurs and jeers of the southern crowd. Lee never discouraged such behavior. As the historian Richard Slotkin wrote in No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, “his silence was permissive.”

<snip>

Nor did Lee’s defeat lead to an embrace of racial egalitarianism. The war was not about slavery, Lee insisted later, but if it was about slavery, it was only out of Christian devotion that white southerners fought to keep blacks enslaved. Lee told a New York Herald reporter, in the midst of arguing in favor of somehow removing blacks from the South (“disposed of,” in his words), “that unless some humane course is adopted, based on wisdom and Christian principles you do a gross wrong and injustice to the whole negro race in setting them free. And it is only this consideration that has led the wisdom, intelligence and Christianity of the South to support and defend the institution up to this time.”

<snip>



This was truly an evil man. Tear down every statue, especially the ones put up after thw 1870's. They were not erected to 'honor' anyone. They were erected to intimidate.

[anamnua]

1. Well said

The 'saintly' General Lee was part of the whole Southern mythos. He also had slaves who attempted to escape whipped with brine poured into their wounds to exacerbate their agony.
A minor query: were the 'paraded' Union troops black, or white, or both?

[dhill926]

3. same shit...different century....

[marble falls]

5. Black. He also sanctioned gathering of freed blacks and returning them to South and slavery.

[Dem4Life1102]

2. Lee was not a good person

Every time in his life he was faced with a moral choice he made the wrong one.

[Boomerproud]

4. Oh come on, he was just misunderstood.

[marble falls]

6. "But his heart was in the right place." On the left side of his chest.

[klook]

17. He was just being sarcastic.

Can’t you liberal snowflakes take a joke?

[VladmireTrumpkins]

28. There were some very fine slaveholders...

real gentlemen who the slaves loved! (sarcasm)

[dalton99a]

7. He sure mentioned Christian and Christianity a lot

Not a fucking thing about human decency or compassion

[marble falls]

9. Band aids for the soul or burnt out husk of one.

[Dr. Strange]

13. Remember when the President said this about Lee:

All over the United States we recognize [Lee] as a great leader of men, as a great general. But, also, all over the United States I believe that we recognize him as something much more important than that. We recognize Robert E. Lee as one of our greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen.

It's not a story the Jedi would tell you.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

8. There was a racist asshole

Next door to a house I had with my ex. He had bumper stickers saying I ride with Forester and other racist claptrap. He was a gun humper stockpiled ammo and one day his shed blew to smithereens. A big fireball that caught his lawn on fire and he and two other guys ran out with flames and put themselves out.I was glad to be able to tell the cops about this degerates activities. Well he was gone after that.. but most I remember about him was his idiot white German Shepherd. He was a beautiful dog but stupid,he was named general Lee. And General Lee liked to bark.
Whenever he noticed us or other neighbors walking outside he'd bark his head off..and the racist pig who owned his white dog would yell loudly so all the neighbors heard him. ..General Lee, Shhuuut Ughpppp..lol. how fitting..

[marble falls]

10. Have you ever noticed - racists just have no sense of irony?

[I_UndergroundPanther]

11. That is true..

[oasis]

12. FREL and the horse he rode in on.

[Takket]

14. i seriously doubt anyone rises to the rank of general if they can be described as "kindly"

[Blue_true]

36. Wrong. George Henry Thomas was a southerner who fought for the Union.

He rose to General and was fatherly to all the men that fought under him, including his Black corpsmen. All of them fought valiantly for him, he was a great strategic mind that never lost a battle. His only statue sits on Thomas Circle in Washington DC, but he is a person who deserves a statue in every major town in the country.

As a older teen, he taught his family's slaves how to read, stopping only after the Nate Turner uprising. He was a training commander under Lee at West Point, when Lee chose to go fight for the South, Thomas was said to have been asked to join him, he deferred and enlisted in the Union effort. Thomas was a Cadet who roomed with William T Sherman and as a General, he covered Grant's eastern flank in all the battles that Grant won in the West, including Vicksburg, where Thomas' men were monumental in securing that victory. After Lincoln called Grant to lead all Union forces and take over the Army of the Potomac, Thomas stayed with Sherman, who was promoted over him to lead the Army of the Mississippi, where Sherman was impetuous and often brutal, Thomas was analytical, tactical in battle and fair to both his men and conquered southern soldiers and populations. General Thomas covered Sherman's flank during the most of the famous March to the Sea, splitting off from Sherman after Atlanta fell to chase down a much larger confederate army that was headed north to try to link with Lee's army after capturing Union depots at Nashville Tn and Louisville, Ky. Thomas' badly outgunned men would catch up to the much larger confederate contingent at Nashville. Instead of engaging the confederate as both Sherman and Grant demanded that he do, Thomas fortified Nashville while surveiling the confederate positions in the high ground surrounding the city. Thomas focused on training his corpsman to fight a tactical battle against a much larger force that had the high ground. He also waited for delivery of revolutionary repeater rifles coming from the Union depot at Louisville. Thomas resisted more demands from Grant and Sherman to engage the superior sized confederate army, instead training his men on use of the new rifles and battle tactics that would be used once he engaged the confederates. As snows that had blanketed the area began to subside, Thomas had a couple of calvery units ride away from but toward the condederates, get behind the southern army, dismount and dig in. Thomas had two Black corps units attack the confederates straight on from below, fighting forward and digging in. Then Thomas had other units attack the confederates from two flanks, flanking the Black corpsmen, the forward attacking Union troops drove forward and dislodged the rebels from the high ground, driving them right into the embedded calvery units, who further decimated the rebels. The Battle of Nashville is one of the more legendary battles of the Civil War, never before had one army decimated a second army the way Thomas' smaller Union army decimated the much larger rebel army. For his brilliant victory, Thomas would gain the mantle of the "Hammer of Nashville", to go with other names that he had gained in battle, the two most famous being "The Rock of Chicamauga" and "Ole Slow Trot".

By rights and accomplishments, Thomas should have led the Union army at some point, but him being a southerner made that not possible. He is said to have turned down an entreaty from an embattled Andrew Johnson to join him as a VP nominee on the ticket for the upcoming election of 1868 (I believe), chosing to remain in the Army and take a post in San Francisco, where he would die of a heart attack. Thomas' body was transported back to Washington, where a public funeral was held for him. His family disowned him for fighting for the Union and only near her death would one of his sisters accept his sword and scabbard. Thomas was also not a self promoter like Sherman was, before his death, he burned all of his critical papers and commendations, chosing to leave them lost to history.

Sorry, but there was a great General who was all of the person that one would want a leader to be.

[rpannier]

15. This is fairly educational

Number 10 covers the difference between Grant and Lee as Generals and how badly Lee sucked

[rurallib]

18. that was great - thanks!

[Blue_true]

38. Excellent post. nt

[Mr.Bill]

16. I often wonder how different things would be today if Lincoln had executed

the leadership of the Confederate states and army for Treason.

[Sneederbunk]

20. Lincoln died before the end of the Civil War.

[Mr.Bill]

22. Lee surrendered to Grant six days before Lincoln died

and he had made the decision not to charge any confederates with Treason or any other crimes.

[malchickiwick]

25. It was Johnson who pardoned some 15,000 traitors. It's unclear how Lincoln would have proceeded.

Although, you are correct in that Lincoln seemed willing to extend a hand a "charity to all and malice to none," which I think was a mistake.

[lonely bird]

29. Had I been in power

I would have deported every single Southerner.

[reACTIONary]

34. To Africa. nt

[thucythucy]

32. Lincoln wanted to seize the assets

of leading traitors, which was mostly land. The whole "40 acres and a mule" idea was to do what today would be called "land reform." Break up the huge plantations, distribute the land to newly emancipated slaves and landless whites. He thought including poor whites in the plan would give them incentive to support the reforms, and resist going back to the pre-war status quo.

As for the leaders themselves, he hoped they'd go into exile so as to take the question of what to do with them off his hands.

President Johnson, as his first executive order, took seized and abandoned lands out of the control of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, thereby killing land reform.

I maintain that the assassination of Lincoln by that white supremacist failed actor drunkard was the greatest single calamity in American history. How different this country might be if Lincoln had been able to finish a second term.

[CatWoman]

19. Arlington Cemetary was Lee's home

he pissed the Union off so bad they surrounded the house with graves.

The house, I believe, is stilll there (Arlington House).

[localroger]

23. Yes, they made sure it would never be anyone's home ever again.

Years after the war Lee's heirs prevailed in a legal action because the seizure of the estate had actually been illegal under the laws of the Union itself, but by that time the presence of the cemetery made it unusable for any other purpose and the family sold the estate back to the government. Lee himself was long dead by this time.

[marble falls]

30. It took almost a century to get anything.

[Mr.Bill]

35. An equivalent act would be to bury the Covid-19 casualties

at a Trump golf resort.

[c-rational]

21. Thank you for this post. It is good to remember.

[malchickiwick]

24. Lee, accepting his commission after being educated at West Point, SWORE never to take up arms ...

... against the Union. He should have been hung as a traitor after the war.
But you know what they say: The North won the war; the South won the narrative.

[safeinOhio]

26. If ya'll don't like Black folk,

should have picked your own cotton.

[Vinnie From Indy]

27. An excellent book on the subject of Lee and the myths surrounding him is...

...Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History by Alan Nolan. It is a good read.

[Cary]

31. I like what Grant said about Lee in Grant's memoir

If I recall correctly it was thar he could not say one way or another regarding Lee's character, outside of the fact that he fought for the most atrocious cause ever.

I am sure the chivalry is largely myth and in that Lee is not alone. I do not defend Lee. I agree with Grant that having taken arms against our nation in defense of slavery is damning in and of itself. I also oppose all sanitizing of the great evil. I fault Lincoln for some evil words, although I find Lincoln's actions almost impeccable given what he was up against.

All of those historical characters are long dead. My own people have suffered too. The Holocaust was a cruel chapter in history and sadly not the last.

I do not defend Lee. I do see great evil in those who do. I suppose toppling the myth of Lee's chivalry is necessary? I don't know. I am greatly disturbed that our nation of late has gone so far back down the road of evil. I confess that I naively did not think it was possible. If busting the myth of Lee somehow brings us back, I am all for it.

Maybe if we win in November and if our leaders can repair the Orange Hitler damage, maybe our path forward will be more clear?

[marble falls]

33. Those who forget history ... yadda yadda yadda, right ...

how much longer do we have till we should reduce the German guy with a Charlie Chaplin mustache to a thumb sketch of "patriot" and "very kind to dogs" and "a passable water-colorist"?

[Cary]

37. Stalin murdered more people

I think the problem is more pervasive.

[marble falls]

39. OK, when do we reduce the history of Joe to a guy who "knew how to throw a surprise story"? ...

We don't do ourselves any favors ignoring painful pasts. Or by white-washing historical figures just because they sit well on bronze horsies or are photogenically gray and bearded. He was racist before the war, during the war and after it, too. He had no road to Damascus moment and never stopped being a racist, never publicly backed off his racist cant but freely offered it publicly, and to the press until the day he died.

The worst we can say about Lincoln was he acted nobly in a national interest that may not have matched his personal or private thoughts, that his attitudes about race 'evolved'. We can't say that about that unreconstructed cur, Bobby Lee.

My three times great grandfather was Charles Slaughter Morehead, the Whig/Know-Nothing Governor of Kentucky who was imprisoned by Lincoln when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus rights in the US. Grampa Charlie was pro-slavery (owned slaves), anti-secession.

Yeah, Lincoln had some problems, but he was not evil. Gen Lee was. And we need to remember ALL of the story.

[Blue_true]

40. You are right that Stalin killed more people.

But as history is, to the victor goes the spoils. Stalin fought with our side after being double-crossed by Hitler. Our side won the war, so our side set the narrative of Hitler versus Stalin. My take on them is both were evil psychopaths that used murder and brutality as tools to subjugate the weaker or outright defenseless. Both set upon minority populations of their country, took away their humanity and brutally murdered them. But, one key difference is that Stalin was obstensively on our side, thereby, even being as cruel and full of psychopathology, racism and murderous intent toward Jewish people as Hitler, Stalin got a different historical narrative.

[modrepub]

41. Gettysburg Monuments

The original battlefield around Gettysburg was maintained by a group of Union soldiers who fought and survived the battle. During the time they managed the field they allowed no confederate monuments to be built or large groupings of confederate soldiers to visit when the yearly meetings were held.

Eventually the ravages of time took away the Union soldiers ability to hold meetings and keep up the monuments troops had erected over the years. In 1895 the battlefield was turned over to the federal government to run. Confederate monuments only then began to appear. Most of them well after most Union veterans had passed away.

If one walks the field one can see that the Confederate side of the battlefield markers were put in place well after the federal government took over and the “lost cause” narrative had been written mainly be the descendants of the south.

[Progressive dog]

42. Lee was evil. There should be no monuments

to the defenders of slavery.

[anamnua]

43. The story of Lee's army

rounding up free blacks like cattle in Pennsylvania and sending them Southwards is particularly chilling — reminiscent of Nazi einzgruppen herding jews in conquered Russian territory (stuff Godwin’s law).

[marble falls]

44. Lee was no angel. Treatment of freed black civilians and POWs make that clear.

[Aristus]

45. If you grow up in the South, this is the myth you are fed in school.

Even if you grow up in a liberal household, as I did, it's impossible to get away from the 'Lee, gracious, kind general who hated slavery but loved Virginia; Grant, callous butcher who won because he had more men" mythologizing.

I outgrew that idiocy long ago, but nothing cemented for me the evil of Lee and the remarkability of Grant more than Grant, Ron Chernow's biography. Grant has become a much-admired American hero in my mind since reading it.

[marble falls]

46. You get fed the Robert E, Lee man of honor and values crap up north, too. Did you watch the ...

big epic series from the eighties about Gettysburg with Martin Sheen playing Lee? All honor, and all photogenic, to boot?

We get fed that heart full of sorrow crap as Lee put on the gray booshwa because it makes for a simpler story that keeps us from questioning the personalities that led to the butchery of the Civil War, that left 1/4 of military men after the war addicted to opium, which just doesn't ever get mentioned.

All romance and photos of GAR camp meetings with veterans sitting around smoking pipes, romanticizing mayhem and battlefield anarchy.

Its like calling the Great Depression a marvelous opportunity simplify lifestyles and spend a lot of time with family.