Do these sound like the statements a quiet and bitter man would make? There are numerous more from Lee along these same lines. How anyone can try to paint Lee as basically nursing a grudge after the war is baffling.
Public statements? I assume not based on the title.
Did Lee ever try to use his influence in a larger way, to the newspapers and state governments?
Did he ever in his life? It would have been totally out of character for him to take the public stage. He didn't even take the stage and respond to the newspaper article about his supposed whipping of two slaves, although denying it privately. Besides that, he was war weary, had heart disease, had lost everything he had in a, I'll say it again, a war he never wanted to occur to begin with. Now, that he somehow didn't do what you, a 155 years later, think he should have done, he's some kind of vindictive, bitter, old man, nursing a grudge.
I haven't read the book and a few out of context quotes don't mean much.
Yes, he had written the newspapers before the war.
As his citizenship had failed to be restored, he behaved as a non citizen should by not getting involved in postwar politics frankly.
In other words, first he was defeated on the battlefield, and then he sulked.
No, he applied for a pardon and the US dropped the ball, it was the US behaving badly.
Okay. I'll just disagree. Treason is not akin to jaywalking.
Perhaps, but then Edited
I'd say he should have gone above and beyond to earn his citizenship back. Don't start with the insults.
No inconsistency on my part. Edited
No, as I understand a non citizen has no reason to be involved in someone elses politics perfectly........
Maybe non-citizens who betrayed their country should make an extra effort to rejoin and heal their country.
I'd bet he used that same type of conditional loyalty when he was sulking.
Bringing the