Who said he was ?
I think I’ll get me some sweet tea and popcorn and watch this thread re-enact the War Between The States (aka “The War of Northern Aggression” aka “The Civil War”).
Don’t mind me, I’ll try not to get underfoot...
Technically, yes, of course he was. But part of the price of binding this country’s wounds was the necessity of treating this as a lover’s quarrel, an awful and tragic quarrel among brothers.
It is not often that traitors are admired and respected as deeply as he was by his enemies. That respect and admiration again is in part what allowed the country to bind itself back together as one country.
To have chosen to try Lee for treason might have been satisfying to some and might even have been justified at a certain level but the price would have been a permanent wound. The better answer is the answer they chose which was to work toward forgiveness and reconciliation. Just as he led his men in rebellion he led them back into reconciliation. It wasn’t perfect and it took a long time but the alternative would have been yet another war a few years down the road.
Your blogger doesn't know what he's talking about, though. "Presentism" indeed.
If you'd asked around in the 1860s, you'd find a lot of people telling you Lee was a traitor, a renegade, or a seditionist, more people than would argue that today.
The revisionism wasn't in attacking Lee but in turning him into a national saint years after the war.
Fortunately, all this happened so long ago that we really don't need to hash it out over and over again every day.
At the risk of reigniting the War of Yankee Agression, the real traitors were those who trampled the Constitution underfoot in order to “preserve, protect and defend”. The ends never justify the means.
That said, is there really much difference between Lee’s stand and the patriots of today? States rights, government intrusion in our lives and the social issues. Would we not stand with a state that seceeded over abortion? I could not, in good conscience, take arms against such a state.
The issue of secession is as valid today as it washas been throughout our history, SCOTUS notwithstanding. The Constitution means nothing if it is a “contract with the devil” - once in, there is no out. There must be options for a redress of grievances. When all else fails, secession must be left open. Else, we are mere slaves to the bureaucrats.
We could ask the same about George Washington and the other US presidents that fought the Red Coats.
Lee was not a traitor. He was a General for a Confederation apart from the Union.
Though they were wrong about slavery, the Southern states were within their rights to resist the overreaching of the Federal Govt.
Funny. Am reading Grants memoirs during the civil war. Grant never considered Lee a traitor but an enemy of the “nationals” as he called the union army. Grant admired Lee greatly.
Lee, admired Grant and said that up to that time (just after the Civil War) he found no equal to Grant as a general in history.
Grants problem was his estimation of character of the people under him-as was his problem in his terms as president. Grant would have shortened that war if left alone to do what he wanted just after Shilo.
Halleck/Lincoln were the culprits in making that war long and bloody.
Yet Lee was an honorable man of impeccable character. In Lee's perspective, after secession, he was loyal to his home state of Virginia -- even though disloyal to the continuing government of the United States. This conflict of loyalties was inherent in the American system of government of that era.
Moreover, when the war was lost, instead of transitioning to guerrilla warfare, Lee surrendered at Appomattox and spared the country a continued and even more bitter conflict. Similarly, in civilian life after the war, Lee's good conduct and support for reconciliation with the North did much to ease sectional and racial tensions and helped knit the country together.
Lee disapproved of violence against Blacks and was a leader of a successful effort to establish a system of schools in Virginia for Blacks. Lee also applied for a federal pardon and restoration of his citizenship.
Wisely, to promote reconciliation, the victorious North chose not to prosecute Lee and recognized him as the honorable adversary that he had been. Over the next generation, Lee was gradually embraced as a national hero.
This longstanding consensus is now rejected by many Black opinion makers on the basis that because of slavery, all things Confederate are evil -- and elite opinion has sided with this view. Hence, Lee sometimes gets condemned now as a "traitor," often by people whose concept of loyalty to the United States is unusually loose.
I just hope the South doesn’t change more than it already has.
And that’s from a Yankee y’all.
Gerald Ford signed the document that made R. E. Lee a citizen again. Since Lee fought for the south he lost his rights as a citizen of the USA. He did sign an oath after the war but it was lost and he never regained it until Ford signed it by an act of congress.
You forgot Stonewall Jackson.
ping
He was one of the greatest generals in the history of this country.
He revered the General, General Washington, our country and our Constitution. He loved his state and his family.
Modern American could use a man like that.
I guess the "writer" hasn't heard of the USS Murtha?
I admire your fortitude and self discipline in continuing to take this emotion based mythology on thread after thread.
If Lee was a traitor then Jefferson Davis would certainly be one as well. He is in Statuary Hall as well, as one of the two allowed submission by the great State of Mississippi.
>he would be the only traitor for which a ship in the United States Navy was ever named.
Not true; there’s the John Murtha...