Lee Robert E. Lee PBS Special American Experience

Barrycdog

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Jan 6, 2013
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Buford, Georgia
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lee/


He is celebrated by handsome equestrian statues in countless cities and towns across the American South, and by two postage stamps issued by the government he fought against during the four bloodiest years in American history. Nearly a century and a half after his death, Robert E. Lee, the leading Confederate general of the American Civil War, remains a source of fascination and, for some, veneration. This two-hour film examines the life and reputation of the Confederacy's pre-eminent general, whose military successes made him the scourge of the Union and the hero of the Confederacy during the Civil War, and who was elevated to almost god-like status by his admirers after his death

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lee/player/
 
I have, and thought it was very good. It relies heavily on recent scholarship on Lee, particularly Elizabeth Brown Pryor's biography, Reading the Man. It is admiring of Lee in some respects, but critical in others and includes material on Lee and slavery (especially in his management of the Custis estate) that is sometimes elided in other, more admiring profiles of the man.

There are probably several other threads here that discuss both the Custis business and this documentary, in particular.
 
It was reviewed here when it first aired:

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/robert-e-lee-tonight.21136/

I personally thought it was poorly done, partly because it did rely so much on Elizabeth Brown Pryor, who has been shown on numerous occasions to exaggerate, sensationalize, and engage in just plain sloppy, biased, disingenuous history.
 
Lee seems to me to be the most critical of Lee! If you want to pick him apart the way that program seemed to want to they may have gone with more of his own writings.
 
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