Lee Lee and Reconstruction

Perhaps somebody can shed some light on Lee's attitude toward the KKK. I have a vague recollection that the KKK became active at Washington College during Lee's tenure as president there. If Grant's comment about Lee was from May 1866, that sounds like it would have been too early to have any reference to the KKK.

The students at Washington College appear to have formed a chapter of the KKK and there was at least one threat to lynch a black person. Freedmen's Bureau and US Army officials warned Lee to have the students stop that behavior, and Lee sent out official word to the students to forbid participating in such behavior. He seems to have treated racial harassment less stringently than he treated other transgressions.
 
The students at Washington College appear to have formed a chapter of the KKK and there was at least one threat to lynch a black person. Freedmen's Bureau and US Army officials warned Lee to have the students stop that behavior, and Lee sent out official word to the students to forbid participating in such behavior. He seems to have treated racial harassment less stringently than he treated other transgressions.

Of course, at CivilWarTalk, a request for a credible source supporting an assertion like this should be respected, even expected, from most members here.
 
Thank you for providing this context. Until recently -- through these letters/book -- I had been under a completely different impression of Lee's attitude regarding Reconstruction.

Likewise, this is completely the opposite of what I've read of Lee and his post-war feelings and actions. Wow! I purchased Pryor's book about 10 years ago and put it unread in one of my "to read" bookcases. I would glance at it sitting in the case once or twice a few years back but decided to choose other books that I haven't read instead. Cash's post prompted me to get her book off the shelf and put it on my desk where I will begin reading it by this weekend. Thanks @cash for your post!
 
Likewise, this is completely the opposite of what I've read of Lee and his post-war feelings and actions. Wow! I purchased Pryor's book about 10 years ago and put it unread in one of my "to read" bookcases. I would glance at it sitting in the case once or twice a few years back but decided to choose other books that I haven't read instead. Cash's post prompted me to get her book off the shelf and put it on my desk where I will begin reading it by this weekend. Thanks @cash for your post!

Good for you. We look forward to a review of her work.

However, I do not think it's going to pan out the way the Original Poster of this thread used it, to smear General Lee. She doesn't do that and isn't interested in that.

She gave a talk about her book that anyone can take the time to watch. It was done for the Library of Congress and is archived there: https://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4083

Note her words at about 48:00. Yes, he was bitter about battle memories, but she said, "He did conduct himself with tremendous dignity," after the war and "He was a very good role model in getting the South to rise...to move beyond the war, not to harbor hostility..."

I'm sorry Elizabeth Brown Pryor is being used to advance an internet agenda she would likely not support.
 
Good for you. We look forward to a review of her work.

However, I do not think it's going to pan out the way the Original Poster of this thread used it, to smear General Lee. She doesn't do that and isn't interested in that.

She gave a talk about her book that anyone can take the time to watch. It was done for the Library of Congress and is archived there: https://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4083

Note her words at about 48:00. Yes, he was bitter about battle memories, but she said, "He did conduct himself with tremendous dignity," after the war and "He was a very good role model in getting the South to rise...to move beyond the war, not to harbor hostility..."

I'm sorry Elizabeth Brown Pryor is being used to advance an internet agenda she would likely not support.


I take it that you read the book?
 
Since Grant didn't plan to ship anyone anywhere, Lee couldn't have commented on it; however, had Grant actually planned to ship black people to Santo Domingo, Lee would probably have applauded and may even have donated money to help it along. Lee commented that he would have liked to have seen all black folks shipped out of Virginia and replaced by workers from Europe.
The only black person that Grant planned to ship to Santo Domingo was Frederick Douglass. Douglass was part of an observation mission and returned, as planned to the US. I believe he then had dinner with Grant at the White House, which dinner apparently was private, so that Grant might learn Douglass unfiltered opinion.
On the other hand if the US had acquired Santo Domingo some black people might have gone there and then come back, just like some German immigrants stayed in the US temporarily. All of which has nothing to do with General Lee, an old guy who took tremendous risks and was unsuccessful.
 
Part of this the Reconstruction issue. The other part is how an old guy looks at social change. It poses the question why some guys can roll with the young people and others get trapped in nostalgia?
 
The only black person that Grant planned to ship to Santo Domingo was Frederick Douglass. Douglass was part of an observation mission and returned, as planned to the US. I believe he then had dinner with Grant at the White House, which dinner apparently was private, so that Grant might learn Douglass unfiltered opinion.
On the other hand if the US had acquired Santo Domingo some black people might have gone there and then come back, just like some German immigrants stayed in the US temporarily. All of which has nothing to do with General Lee, an old guy who took tremendous risks and was unsuccessful.
Others have different opinions:

“It must have been disheartening for the freedmen that President Grant’s solution to the killings and other outrages they suffered at the hands of the Klan was not an all-out effort to enforce the law, but rather a scheme to encourage the victims to leave the country — as though the upheaval in he former Confederacy was all their fault, or nothing could be done about it. The debate over the annexation of Santo Domingo brought out a rash of nasty, hareful, elitist rhetoric, even from reformers in the North who had once sympathized with the plight of the slaves. It marked the beginning of the end of the egalitarian ideal of Reconstruction.”

“The scheme to ship the former slaves to Santo Domingo was in essence a public statement by the president of the United States that blacks and whites could not live peaceably in the same communities, that the acts of violence committed by the Klan and other vigilante groups like them were regrettable but understandable, and that he, Ulysses S. Grant, would not defend the rights of black Americans nor ensure that they enjoyed the full protection of the law.”


http://blogs.britannica.com/2009/01...ingo-the-10-worst-decisions-by-us-presidents/
 
This thread is about Lee during Reconstruction, not anything else. Attempts to derail the thread have been reported. Thank you.
 
I take it that you read the book?

I take it that you watched the author's lecture? I posted the link for all to see.

Again, we look forward to your review of her work. Should you cherry pick it in an attempt to misrepresent her, I will be back.

I do wish you and yours a very Happy 4th of July, Sir.
 
This thead is about Lee during Reconstruction, not a video.
Thank you in advance.]
Edited.
 
This thead is about Lee during Reconstruction, not a video.
Thank you in advance.]
Edited.

Yes and I will of course defer to CivilWarTalk's moderators. I don't believe any of them will think I've posted anything beyond your wishes, "a thread about Lee during Reconstruction."

You quoted, extensively, from Elizabeth Brown Pryor's work and I posted her lecture on the same. She speaks directly to your intended topic and does not appear to support your premise, that Robert Lee was badly behaved during Reconstruction (even though you got it from U.S. Grant).

Today is America's Birthday, Mr. Cash. I will take this opportunity to thank you for your service to our country.
 
Chapters 24 and 25 of Elizabeth Brown Pryor's book, Reading the Man, looks at Lee in the postwar/Reconstruction years.

Soon after the war, Thomas Cook, a reporter with the New York Herald, secured an interview with Lee. “Lee took care to present himself as confident, robust, and anxious for reconciliation. He was quick to point out, however, that ‘should arbitrary, or vindictive, or revengeful policies be adopted, the end was not yet.’ He stated that the issue of states’ rights had been decided by military power, not philosophical justice, then trivialized the entire conflict as a difference of political opinion–hardly grounds for accusations of treason. He excused Jefferson Davis’s actions and proposed that Davis should be shown leniency because he had been a late and reluctant convert to secession. He explained his own actions in the same way. Lee further stated that the ‘best men of the South’ were pleased to see the end of slavery, and they had only continued the institution because of their Christian concern for black people. According to the reporter, Lee then showed his hand a bit more and said: ‘The negroes must be disposed of, and if their disposition can be marked out, the matter of freeing them is at once settled,’ suggesting that without such a ‘disposal’ the former Confederate states would work to undermine emancipation. Lee’s main message, however, was that the South had waged a ‘half earnest’ rebellion, that every Southerner had overcome his moment of passion, and that no one should ‘be judged harshly for contending for that which he honestly believed to be right.’ Above all, Lee argued that the former Confederate states be treated with moderation so that the sons who were the country’s ‘bone and sinew, its intelligence and enterprise’ might stay and work for its future.” [p. 431] As we can see, Lee was not above prevarication and outright fabrication if it served his purposes. Lee also was not afraid to issue demands to the victors. Lee’s words were met with scathing criticism in the loyal states. Lee would eventually accept an offer to be president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, where he took a hands-on approach, making a number of changes, such as using Sylvanus Thayer’s running of West Point as a model for his own direction of Washington College. While he made a number of improvements, it wasn’t easy on those at the college. “Lee was known for his ‘fierce and violent temper, prone to intense expression,’ and his administrative staff, as well as the students and faculty, learned to be wary, especially as the explosion often carried over to those not responsible for annoying the president. Some were concerned that nothing seemed to impress him; that he never apologized when clearly in error; that he had a way of testing the youths and their teachers to prove his superiority.” [p. 439]

“Lee’s progressive stance toward education, and his belief that Southerners should stay with their homes as they faced uncertain prospects, was an exceptional moment of foresight–justly admired and still resonant after fifteen decades. This long-range outlook, however, seems to have been relegated to one compartment of his mind. Lee’s political precepts, as well as his efforts to accept the tragic events of the war (and his part in them), would be far more myopic. … [H]e planted himself in his favorite aggressively defensive position, denying any positive outcome to the conflict and balking at social change. [In the letter that opened the chapter] His struggle is quickly visible in this draft, for Lee stumbles over nearly every word, trying to reformulate his thoughts in a gently defiant fashion. He is anxious to state his opinion on the war’s outcome, and do a little revisionist history on the reasons for his participation in it.” [p. 445] Although he denied in public that he read the newspapers, he assiduously followed the press in both the North and the South. “Most of his opinions sought to justify the preeminence of states’ rights, and he expressed an overt dislike–even fear–of majority politics and strong federal government.” [p. 450] Lee portrayed himself outwardly as accepting the results of the war, yet inside he seethed with anger. “In private he penned political treatises that throb with controlled rage, containing harsh words about ‘a national civilization which rots the life of a people to the core’; ‘the gaol [sic] to which our progress in civilization is guiding us’; or ‘unprincipled men who look for nothing but the retention of place & power in their hands.’ This and several other draft essays he wrote were never published, but their cross-hatched and unfinished pages are like the smoke from a roiling volcano.” [p. 450] The biggest political issue of Reconstruction was the status of African-Americans. “Lee had never been comfortable with the idea of intermingling with blacks, and the issue of race and power was one that seemed to jar his most fundamental assumptions. … Like others of his region, he persisted in truly believing that blacks were incapable of functioning on their own, that they had no inclination to work, and aspired to nothing beyond daily comfort and amusement. Such attitudes not only justified the adherence to slavery in the first place, they calmed the unspeakable worry that the freed blacks might succeed, thereby becoming a threat to status, economy, and pride. Lee’s worldview was still strongly hierarchical–even within his enlightened vision of widespread education, he could not see beyond offering only as much ‘knowledge & high mental culture as the limited means of the humble can command.’ From the end of the war he took care to distance himself from the ex-slaves as much as possible, maintaining his control by aloofness. He tried to employ white rather than black servants in his household, though in the end the family acquiesced to hiring three or four ‘tolerable … respectable, but not energetic’ freedmen. As before the war, his expectations fulfilled long-honed stereotypes. He told Congress he thought the ex-slaves less able than whites to acquire knowledge and inclined only to work sporadically on ‘very short jobs … they like their ease and comfort, and I think, look more to their present than to their future condition.’ He advised his planter friends to shun black labor, for he felt the freedmen would work against their former owners and destroy property values. ‘I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him,’ he told one cousin, ‘and wherever you find the white man, you see everything around him improving.’ Although he did not always state it so starkly, he continued to think, as he had told the Herald, that the blacks had best be ‘disposed of’ and endorsed the idea of importing European workers to replace them. Lee particularly hoped that English immigration could be increased so that the South would benefit from ‘good citizens whose interests & feelings would be in unison with our own.’ … Lee’s vision did not include granting African-Americans the same option of productive citizenship that he wished to offer to immigrants. He explained to the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that ‘at this time,t hey cannot vote intelligently’ and that he opposed black enfranchisement on the grounds that it would ‘excite unfriendly feelings between the two races.’ He was also concerned about the educational opportunities being provided to the blacks by the Freedmen’s Bureau and private northern charities, preferring they be taught by white Southerners, who were ‘acquainted with their characters and wants.’ Most of all he feared that blacks might procure enough political leverage to offset white control.” [pp. 452-453]

Very good piece, well argued.
 
The only black person that Grant planned to ship to Santo Domingo was Frederick Douglass. Douglass was part of an observation mission and returned, as planned to the US. I believe he then had dinner with Grant at the White House, which dinner apparently was private, so that Grant might learn Douglass unfiltered opinion.
On the other hand if the US had acquired Santo Domingo some black people might have gone there and then come back, just like some German immigrants stayed in the US temporarily. All of which has nothing to do with General Lee, an old guy who took tremendous risks and was unsuccessful.
I didn't know that Grant had dined at the White House with Douglass, although I knew he had received him there. The American Experience documentary about Teddy Roosevelt claimed he was the first when he dined with Booker T. Washington.
 
I was looking for something that Elizabeth Varon said about Lee after the Civil War. Browsing on my phone I was just able to access a review of her paper.

According to Varon, Grant and Lee had very different interpretations of the meaning of the Union Victory and Confederate surrender.

" To Grant, Union victory symbolized the triumph of good and a vindication of the free North’s ideals; he offered Lee generous terms because his eyes were on the future, where chastened and repentant southerners would work toward justice. To Lee, Union victory was not the triumph of right but that of might over right: honorable southerners had simply been outnumbered, and for that—along with secession and slavery—they had nothing to apologize. All southerners could hope for was restoration, a reversion to what Lee and many Confederates envisioned as the antebellum glory days—albeit without slavery, but with **** intact. Each man was convinced he held the only morally righteous position, and their competing visions did much to shape postwar politics, Reconstruction policy, and justice for African Americans."
 
Cash
You certainly know how to disturb the hive!
Interesting the responses to when Grant dared criticize Lee for "behaving badly" after the War. Looking forward to more information regarding Lee's actions compared to "Johnston and Dick Taylor" who Grant approved.
Regards
David
 
All southerners could hope for was restoration, a reversion to what Lee and many Confederates envisioned as the antebellum glory days—albeit without slavery, but with **** intact.
Thanks for posting this excerpt. I don't recall ever reading any of Ms, Varon's work, but I do recall reading a similar summary about Lee's perspective, as mentioned in this line. Sorry I can't recall the source.
 
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