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To: PeaRidge
Read Freeman's biography, or read what other scholars have written about it over the last fifty years. Like many a hagiographer, Freeman went to great lengths about the "simplicity" of his hero, all the while building him up to superhuman dimensions.

Freeman recycled many anecdotes about Lee that have no factual basis. He not only built up Lee to idolatrous dimensions, he also cut down other Confederate leaders whenever it would help enhance or defend Lee's reputation. He did estimate that Lee owned about a half-dozen slaves or so in his own right after his mother's death, and this is something we hear little about from neoconfederates.

Freeman faced some criticism and much praise for showing his era a more "human" Lee than his precursors in "Lost Cause" historical writing. But what may have struck Freeman himself and other Southerners in the 1930s as a "real" and "human" picture, has been found by most scholars since his day have mythical and unreliable.

We do learn things in history. False assumptions are discarded as time goes on, though they may come back in another guise. So just as Freeman may have corrected his elders errors and mistakes, we needn't be bound to his.

I see you are throwing an incendiary in order to "bolster your weak arguments".

Nothing of the kind, just a suggestion that if people put up with charges of "Anti-Southern bigotry" whenever they say that you don't like, you should be ready to be called on "Anti-Northern bigotry" the next time you make objectionable statements about the other side.

248 posted on 01/19/2005 3:33:22 PM PST by x
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To: x
"Nothing of the kind, just a suggestion that if people put up with charges of "Anti-Southern bigotry" whenever they say that you don't like, you should be ready to be called on "Anti-Northern bigotry" the next time you make objectionable statements about the other side."

If you read back, I did not criticize your side. You will see that I took objection to your misdirections, sophistry, use of logical fallacies, and peter powder puffing of historical accounts that you use to purposefully misrepresent history, while maintaining the "airs" of a pensive intellectual. Yes, I am allergic to BS. (achew)
366 posted on 01/20/2005 12:12:57 PM PST by PeaRidge ("Walt got the boot? I didn't know. When/why did it happen?" Ditto 7-22-04 And now they got #3fan.)
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