Lee Deification of Robert E Lee

[Martini-Henry]

Apologies if I have placed this in the wrong sub-heading.

Below is an article recently published in my local newspaper. I am open-minded about this, & I would appreciate hearing the views of other Forum members.

IN THE case of Robert E Lee, historians have often lamented the

blurring of the real man due to his deification by some of his more

zealous admirers.

He was a soldier almost without peer and he was a decent man. Some

found him modest and humane, some cold and distant. He had a vicious

temper which he fought constantly to subdue.

The choices he made in his life were unequivocal and made with full

knowledge of the political and moral dilemmas of his time.

The independence the South was fighting to protect was a system that


held one-third of its population to be mere property, and the agrarian

society they clung to was maintained by human bondage.

To suggest that Lee and ''all other Confederate soliders'', fought

only for ''independence'', is silly and disingenuous.

Lee was offered field command of the Union Army. Though he was

certainly no slavery or secession fanatic, he declined the offer and

chose to draw his sword for his country, Virginia, and the Confederacy.

He fought with the general officers of the Confederacy -- Nathan

Forrest, slave trading millionaire, afterwards first Imperial Wizard of

the Ku Klux Klan and John Hood, ''better to die a thousand deaths than

submit to you and your negro allies''.

He fought for the civilian population of the South. Above all he

fought for the Government of the Confederate States of America.

He was not a stupid man. He knew the nature of the people he was

serving with and the policy of the regime he was fighting for.

After the war a prominent Northerner wrote: ''Lee should have been

hanged. No matter that he was a good man. The good man always causes the

most harm.''

I don't believe he should have been hanged. But the conscious

decisions he made at that time of heart-rending conflict surely

disqualify him from the accolade from which his modesty would certainly

have recoiled, of ''the epitome of Christianity''.

 

[Reb]

After the war a prominent Northerner wrote: ''Lee should have been hanged. No matter that he was a good man. The good man always causes the most harm.''

One could certainly make the same type of arguments about the deification of Lincoln.

 

[brass napoleon]

Apologies if I have placed this in the wrong sub-heading.

Below is an article recently published in my local newspaper. I am open-minded about this, & I would appreciate hearing the views of other Forum members.

IN THE case of Robert E Lee, historians have often lamented the

blurring of the real man due to his deification by some of his more

zealous admirers.

He was a soldier almost without peer and he was a decent man. Some

found him modest and humane, some cold and distant. He had a vicious

temper which he fought constantly to subdue.

The choices he made in his life were unequivocal and made with full

knowledge of the political and moral dilemmas of his time.

The independence the South was fighting to protect was a system that


held one-third of its population to be mere property, and the agrarian

society they clung to was maintained by human bondage.

To suggest that Lee and ''all other Confederate soliders'', fought

only for ''independence'', is silly and disingenuous.

Lee was offered field command of the Union Army. Though he was

certainly no slavery or secession fanatic, he declined the offer and

chose to draw his sword for his country, Virginia, and the Confederacy.

He fought with the general officers of the Confederacy -- Nathan

Forrest, slave trading millionaire, afterwards first Imperial Wizard of

the Ku Klux Klan and John Hood, ''better to die a thousand deaths than

submit to you and your negro allies''.

He fought for the civilian population of the South. Above all he

fought for the Government of the Confederate States of America.

He was not a stupid man. He knew the nature of the people he was

serving with and the policy of the regime he was fighting for.

After the war a prominent Northerner wrote: ''Lee should have been

hanged. No matter that he was a good man. The good man always causes the

most harm.''

I don't believe he should have been hanged. But the conscious

decisions he made at that time of heart-rending conflict surely

disqualify him from the accolade from which his modesty would certainly

have recoiled, of ''the epitome of Christianity''.

Yes, Lee knew what he was doing. No, Lee was not "the epitome of Christianity". But he was a good man, who fought hard for what he believed in (whether we believe in it or not), and who after having lost that fight avoided the pitfalls of vicitimization and revenge and hatred and did what he could to reunite this country. The fact that we are reunited today I think we owe in large part to Robert E. Lee.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I get the sense the author is itching to villify Lee, which is just as erroneous as deifying him. He says Lee had a "vicious temper", which from everything I've seen is a gross exaggeration. And he makes the absurd argument of castigating Lee for things that Nathan B. Forrest did and John B. Hood said. We could trash every Confederate AND Union soldier if we held them all responsible for the words and actions of people who wore the same colored uniform.

 

[Carronade]

After the war a prominent Northerner wrote: ''Lee should have been

hanged. No matter that he was a good man. The good man always causes the

most harm.''

That's one.....there were also a lot of northerners who respected Lee, Grant for one.

Lee was fairly quiet after the war, but everything he said and did was in support of reconciliation.

 

[Martini-Henry]

Yes, Lee knew what he was doing. No, Lee was not "the epitome of Christianity". But he was a good man, who fought hard for what he believed in (whether we believe in it or not), and who after having lost that fight avoided the pitfalls of vicitimization and revenge and hatred and did what he could to reunite this country. The fact that we are reunited today I think we owe in large part to Robert E. Lee.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I get the sense the author is itching to villify Lee, which is just as erroneous as deifying him. He says Lee had a "vicious temper", which from everything I've seen is a gross exaggeration. And he makes the absurd argument of castigating Lee for things that Nathan B. Forrest did and John B. Hood said. We could trash every Confederate AND Union soldier if we held them all responsible for the words and actions of people who wore the same colored uniform.

That is a well thought & considered response...NB I was not the Author of this article.

 

[Waterloo50]

In his book ' R E Lee', the author, Roy Blount Jr made a statement that for me sums up the problem that many people have when trying to form an opinion on his character.

Lee resigned his U.S. Army commission to defend Virginia and fight for the Confederacy, on the side of slavery. "The decision was honorable by his standards of honor—which, whatever we may think of them, were neither self-serving nor complicated," Blount says. Lee "thought it was a bad idea for Virginia to secede, and God knows he was right, but secession had been more or less democratically decided upon." Lee's family held slaves, and he himself was at best ambiguous on the subject, leading some of his defenders over the years to discount slavery's significance in assessments of his character. Blount argues that the issue does matter: "To me it's slavery, much more than secession as such, that casts a shadow over Lee's honourableness."

 

[unicornforge]

May I suggest reading the book, "General Lee: A Biography of Robert E. Lee" by his nephew Fitzhugh Lee. It contains R.E. Lee's letters to his family and describes in his letters his feelings, motivations, and reasons for resigning his commission and joining the Confederate side. His letters also describe his feelings on slavery. Fitzhugh Lee accompanies the letters with additional family insider information. … Whenever possible, I prefer original sources, and to come to my own conclusions.

 

[diane]

There is another little alleyway to this subject and that's Grant. It's been observed that Grant has been vilified and put down considerably and Lee has been deified - Grant won the war, Lee lost it! And, since then, the generals have been riding a seesaw - when one is up, the other must be down. It's not too surprising, considering the excessive baggage both have to carry for others.

Lee's bad temper... He had one! That's why he worked so hard to control it. What general worth his salt doesn't have a temper anyway?

 

[Billy Yank]

"I never trust a fighting man who doesn't smoke or drink." ...William Halsey

 

[Martini-Henry]

May I suggest reading the book, "General Lee: A Biography of Robert E. Lee" by his nephew Fitzhugh Lee. It contains R.E. Lee's letters to his family and describes in his letters his feelings, motivations, and reasons for resigning his commission and joining the Confederate side. His letters also describe his feelings on slavery. Fitzhugh Lee accompanies the letters with additional family insider information. … Whenever possible, I prefer original sources, and to come to my own conclusions.

Many thanks I shall.

 

[rpkennedy]

Lee was fairly quiet after the war, but everything he said and did was in support of reconciliation.

Everything he said and did publicly. Some of his personal thoughts portray a man who isn't quite so ready to forgive and forget, an issue with which most veterans of the war struggled.

R

 

[Martini-Henry]

I personally find much to admire in the man, in the way he accepted the blame for the disaster on the third day of Gettysburg. Though, I have weigh against that his support,in essence, of slavery.

 

[MajGenl.Meade]

My fictitious friend Snooks (see avatar) served under both Grant and Lee off and on. He was at Appomattox and decided not to stay to watch the surrender of the AoNV because....

I'd have been crying along with the Confederates as they bade their final farewell to Massa Robert. He was a great man and kind enough to me—just not great enough in the end. Or perhaps not great enough at the beginning to defer his own peculiar sense of honour and choose duty to country above duty to his state. In his place, given the choice between leading the National armies as he was offered or resigning to defend Virginia against them, I'd have taken a long holiday abroad—about four years would have sufficed.

As an author (ha!) of fiction (double ha!) one sometimes writes something that would never have emerged if not from the 'mouth' of a fictitious character. After writing the above para, I had to really consider those words "peculiar sense of honour". Yes, it's English spelling.

Lee clearly was not ready to accept modernity and the modern state. Neither were thousands of others. His honour would only be peculiar to someone who was racing toward a less ancient set of mores. Lee in many ways was a throwback; surveying his private correspondence, it's easy to see that he understood very well that the times they were a-changing, but he really did not want (IMO) to be a part of that change. Perhaps he thought that the world was like his subordinates - needing a general idea of what to do and then going off and putting all the details into place and changing the situation that needed changing.

His peculiar sense of honour often involved not changing things, keeping status quo. Things had to be preserved as they were and it was his duty to do that. Good family name? Then preserve it - especially against the perceived unreliable, free-wheeling, dishonesty of his father, not to mention abandonment. He always had to BE a Virginian because those (of the upper class) were the people he wanted so much to impress, to maintain his position among, and to serve.

Honour demanded blotting out one past and maintaining another past, against the tides of change. Perhaps not so peculiar - but that is, IMO where it starts, that 'peculiarity' of the man.

 

[Martini-Henry]

My fictitious friend Snooks (see avatar) served under both Grant and Lee off and on. He was at Appomattox and decided not to stay to watch the surrender of the AoNV because

As an author (ha!) of fiction (double ha!) one sometimes writes something that would never have emerged if not from the 'mouth' of a fictitious character. After writing the above para, I had to really consider those words "peculiar sense of honour". Yes, it's English spelling.

Lee clearly was not ready to accept modernity and the modern state. Neither were thousands of others. His honour would only be peculiar to someone who was racing toward a less ancient set of mores. Lee in many ways was a throwback; surveying his private correspondence, it's easy to see that he understood very well that the times they were a-changing, but he really did not want (IMO) to be a part of that change. Perhaps he thought that the world was like his subordinates - needing a general idea of what to do and then going off and putting all the details into place and changing the situation that needed changing.

His peculiar sense of honour often involved not changing things, keeping status quo. Things had to be preserved as they were and it was his duty to do that. Good family name? Then preserve it - especially against the perceived unreliable, free-wheeling, dishonesty of his father, not to mention abandonment. He always had to BE a Virginian because those (of the upper class) were the people he wanted so much to impress, to maintain his position among, and to serve.

Honour demanded blotting out one past and maintaining another past, against the tides of change. Perhaps not so peculiar - but that is, IMO where it starts, that 'peculiarity' of the man.

I think you summed up the conundrum that was Robert E Lee.

 

[DBF]

I think I have more books on General Lee than any other figure (other than Grant perhaps) and also have books on his wife, his sons and the Lee Girls. I enjoyed reading "Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee" by Robert E. Lee, Jr. I find his letters to his family interesting and show an insight into how he related to his family, but also shows at times, how his son related to his father. There is no doubt Lee's character was formed at a young age and mostly by the actions of his father and his devoted relationship that he had to his mother.

 

[unionblue]

The biggest problem I have with Robert E. Lee is that he fought against the future.

 

[Waterloo50]

The biggest problem I have with Robert E. Lee is that he fought against the future.

You write that as if the future was a forgone conclusion. I prefer to think that he tried to shape the future.

 

[Tin cup]

One could certainly make the same type of arguments about the deification of Lincoln.

Lincoln stayed true to the United States, Lee didn't.

Kevin Dally

 

[Tin cup]

You write that as if the future was a forgone conclusion. I prefer to think that he tried to shape the future.

Shaping the future for preserving slavery, is not going to look very good.

Kevin Dally

 

[Reb]

The biggest problem I have with Robert E. Lee is that he fought against the future.

Why is that a problem? Do you have a problem with the past, that you had nothing to do with? It's history.