Lee Can Gen. Robert E. Lee still be considered "A great general and honorable man"?

I think it has been well established that he was a great general; a very arguable point. But was he an honorable man? I don't think there is a right or wrong answer, I think that has to do with historical perspective.
 
...To remove Lee from America's pantheon of hero's over modern politically charged views on the side he chose, is a slippery slope, and one that could result in great Americans like George Washington being removed on similar grounds, and I don't like the course of action that could follow in its wake.

Just as Washington's reputation was de-mystified a few years back, so Lee's reputation can well stand to be further de-mystified (shall we say un-deified). They are both heroes for what they achieved on behalf of humankind* and that's enough. Lincoln same thing.


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*for their damage to humankind not so much.
 
To us Lee's arriving in impeccable uniform to the surrender is an indication to us of just how important Lee's personal image was to him, in contrast to Grant that day.
This is just an observation. I think this assumes a lot. Lee's choice to arrive in impeccable uniform might have been an indication of his respect for Grant. In other words, it might or might not have been an indication of vanity. How can we really know, unless Lee recorded his thoughts or mentioned them to another officer who recorded them. Perhaps he did that.
 
This is just an observation. I think this assumes a lot. Lee's choice to arrive in impeccable uniform might have been an indication of his respect for Grant. In other words, it might or might not have been an indication of vanity. How can we really know, unless Lee recorded his thoughts or mentioned them to another officer who recorded them. Perhaps he did that.

His respect for the general of "those people" (his term), someone he barely recalled from their shared officerships in the Mexican War?
 
To answer the original question, I say yes.

There was a time in our nation's history when Lee was almost as honored and revered as was George Washington. When Lee died, he was admired by almost every person in the nation, regardless of race, creed, color or what side he/she sympathized with in the then-recent national conflict. Many men who'd fought against Lee with fury just five years prior now looked at him as a man worthy of honor & reverence; men who'd fought just as furiously under his command looked at him as having no rival in the history of our nation.

The current attitudes regarding great historical persons are so far beneath the example set by the best of those who lived before us. Today, in our modern culture, society has shifted away from honoring honorable men such as these, but a remnant of folks around our nation still recognize the valuable lessons the memory of these men can teach us... lessons in honor, duty, devotion, courage, patriotism, military service, sacrifice, living moral lives, and committed service to God.

I can only pray that I'll live to see the day when Robert E. Lee and others like him are held in high esteem once again and are sought after as examples of how we should live.
 
This is just an observation. I think this assumes a lot. Lee's choice to arrive in impeccable uniform might have been an indication of his respect for Grant. In other words, it might or might not have been an indication of vanity. How can we really know, unless Lee recorded his thoughts or mentioned them to another officer who recorded them. Perhaps he did that.

There was excellent reason for Lee to put on his best uniform - in fact, it was new. He was representing a lot more than Robert E Lee.

It wasn't the first time he'd decked out in his best. When the Union overran his headquarters just after he'd broken out of Petersburg, he did the same thing - he didn't want to be found dead on the porch of his headquarters in his long johns since he represented the ANV!
 
I can only pray that I'll live to see the day when Robert E. Lee and others like him are held in high esteem once again and are sought after as examples of how we should live.
I agree, but probably not the way you mean. Lee is an example of an otherwise fine man who a lot of people in his own time thought had made some really bad decisions. He should be held in esteem from a purely military standpoint and his campaigns should be studied by soldiers. But what he shouldn't be is sanctified or honored or esteemed as a man. His farewell address to his soldiers and admonitions to southerners to return to national loyalty are what lawyers would call mitigating factors in sentencing. They do not redeem him from his guilt for his significant role in the four years of misery that was the Civil War.
 
I'm betting a lot of men fighting and dying in battle cursed Lee, and didn't think of him as great and honorable man, that too,would be "through the lens" of the 1860's.

Kevin Dally

I suppose there's truth to that, but lets not forget he started out as "Old Granny" with his troops, and ended as "Marse Robert". He was a General officer in the Antebellum/Victorian eras, an age with great emphasis on great leaders, he was gonna have as many detractors as admirers.

Same as with Lincoln.
 
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...nfederate-general_us_5bc2a93de4b040bb4e82d9b6
What do you guys think? Can General Lee be considered a great general and honorable man? Or is it more correct to consider him a less than stellar general because he lost and dishonorable to the Union because he turned traitor against the nation he spent most of his life fighting for.





I think Lee can and, probably, should be honored for his life before and after the CW, and for his generalship during the war. But, he should not be honored for his actions against the United States and its Constitution.

Certainly Lee was one of the best generals to come out of the American Civil War, but, In the record of Great Military Captains of history, Lee does not rate very high, simply his area of operations were too small and restricted to full estimation of the full range of his abilities a 'great' Gneral based upon his stature on the world stage.
 
His respect for the general of "those people" (his term), someone he barely recalled from their shared officerships in the Mexican War?
As I said, it was just an observation. My observation was really based on the generalized nature of your assumption--not on your personal opinion of Lee (whatever that might be.) I offered an alternate explanation in speculation only. I was careful about that. As for my own opinion of Lee, I know he was flawed. I don't know why he made some of the decisions he made. I can't ask him. I realize he was a traitor to his country. So were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Nevertheless I believe Lee could be considered honorable, so long as he remained true to his own code of honor.
 
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...nfederate-general_us_5bc2a93de4b040bb4e82d9b6

What do you guys think? Can General Lee be considered a great general and honorable man? Or is it more correct to consider him a less than stellar general because he lost and dishonorable to the Union because he turned traitor against the nation he spent most of his life fighting for.

***edit by Lnwlf: modern politics.***

Only if one views secession as treason can one say that Lee "turned traitor against the nation." The Constitution does not prohibit secession; it does not even state the union it was created was to be perpetual. As we have seen in this forum, those who argue that secession is treason must rely on inference and interpretation and must ignore a waft of founding-era statements that make it clear that the framers intended the Union to be voluntary and never to be maintained by force.

President Eisenhower honored Robert E. Lee and defended his patriotism.

http://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/
 
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At the tactical level of managing a battle General Lee was at his best.
However there was another guy in the war who combined resources at the operational level that made the difficult look easy. At the political level, the same guy showed the ability to execute the orders of his superior in a way that still allowed him to get to his intended plan.
Lee was very good, but Grant was modern.
 
Except for his sons, didn't Lee's decision to go with Virginia break his ties with the rest of his family? I know @diane touched on that with Lee knew his sons would go with Virginia. And didn't he have a cousin in the Navy that stayed with the Union? How did all this affect Lee in his few years left after the war?
 
How can we, with our modern sensibilities, make a judgement on the decisions someone made 150+ years ago. He was a product of his time and place...and did his best in the circumstances...

While there's some merit in the "I'm Ok - You're Ok" approach, it is in fact more honest to engage with the realities of those men on the ground. If a product of their time and place, then for the most part in the U.S. it was a time of Christian principle and a place founded on "all men are created equal," not an unclear phrase. So that was the circumstance and no Euro-American was unaware of it.

So it is fair to judge Lee and other men of the times given their circumstance. A second priority might be to avoid contention at all cost.
 
Except for his sons, didn't Lee's decision to go with Virginia break his ties with the rest of his family? I know @diane touched on that with Lee knew his sons would go with Virginia. And didn't he have a cousin in the Navy that stayed with the Union? How did all this affect Lee in his few years left after the war?

The estates that Lee's sons inherited were in Virginia, so he knew they would certainly be defending them if nothing else. He had a number of cousins and relations in Maryland, Boston, Ohio and other northern states. The only really significant loss was his sister Anne, who remained in the Union with her husband - she never spoke to him again. She didn't live out the war, however, so it may have been different if she'd lived longer.
 
Very capable general. Obviously he was a traitor to the United States and fought to uphold the interests of slavers. Whether those acts are dishonorable is a question one must answer for himself.

I’m tired of treating the man’s memory with soft soap. And honor is a concept I don’t hold with anyway given the vile acts that have been committed for “honor”.
 
While there's some merit in the "I'm Ok - You're Ok" approach, it is in fact more honest to engage with the realities of those men on the ground. If a product of their time and place, then for the most part in the U.S. it was a time of Christian principle and a place founded on "all men are created equal," not an unclear phrase. So that was the circumstance and no Euro-American was unaware of it.

So it is fair to judge Lee and other men of the times given their circumstance. A second priority might be to avoid contention at all cost.
I disagree. We cannot possibly put ourselves in Lee's place and judge him, any more than we can judge anyone but ourselves. That is my opinion. If you disagree, then that is yours.
 
What some are missing here is that before the War broke out, Regular Army officers had every right to resign. As opposed to enlisted men who would be punished for desertion if they broke their contract of enlistment.

An oath is a solemn promise, but it's also a contract between two parties. If an officer felt he could no longer perform his obligations - or if the United States was no longer performing theirs - it was not only his right, but his moral duty to resign. Something like 1/3 of the Regular Army officer corps made this decision, and I don't think there's any record of anyone being punished for it.

Was it moral for them to take up arms against their former nation? Lee's reasoning was that he had made himself available for service in his home state (Virginia). The U.S. then made war on Virginia, not the other way around.

The same reasoning sometimes applied in reverse. William Tecumseh Sherman was Superintendent of the Louisiana Military Academy when the secession crisis began. He was invited by the Governor to take a commission in that state's forces, but explained that if hostilities began he considered himself still bound by his oath to the Constitution. When the time came he was permitted to resign and go north.

It seems that at least in the beginning, neither side wanted to employ officers against their will. Why should we try to second-guess these decisions using modern standards?

I agree with a previous poster that the most honorable thing Lee did was accept defeat at Appomattox and send his men home, rather than break up the ANV and commence guerilla operations.
 
Lee's generalship, I think, is not seriously in question. No one, of course, could live up to the adulation bestowed upon Lee for a century after his death, but his greatness as a general rests secure.

Honor, on the other hand, is a very subjective thing. What seems a profound matter of honor to one man, might seem no more than petty vanity to me (I'm thinking the "Southern Code of Chivalry" and Preston Brooks here). But, one is an honorable man if he believes he has lived up to his own sense of honor, not to mine ... if Lee, within his own conscience, had no qualms about his decisions, I will allow him honorable, whether I agree with those decisions or not. But, I see no reason we should feel obliged to pass judgement.
 
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