Posted on 04/30/2019 4:06:09 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
President Trump sent certain segments of population into outraged spasms on Friday when he described Robert E. Lee as a "great general." Trying to lend context to his infamous "very fine people" remark about the 2017 Charlottesville protests, Trump said this:
“I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general. Whether you like it or not, he was one of the great generals. I have spoken to many generals here, right at the White House, and many people thought — of the generals, they think that he was maybe their favorite general.”
Trump is, of course, completely correct. Robert E. Lee has always been regarded as a military genius, and for good reason. This is not controversial to anyone with a sixth grade education in American history. But surveys show that many Americans don't even know when the Civil War took place, and a sizable number think Lincoln led the Allied Forces rather than the Union Army, so it's no surprise that basic statements of historical fact have become contentious in our age of aggressive stupidity.
I found myself in the crossfire of the controversy when I posted on Twitter in support of Trump's statement and provided my personal list of the best Civil War generals. I give Lee the top spot, followed by Jackson, Grant, Sherman, and then Nathan Bedford Forrest. You could certainly make an argument for Longstreet, Sheridan, Thomas, or Cleburne in any one of those spots. But you cannot make an argument for a list of top Civil War generals that completely excludes all Confederates. There aren't five Union generals better than Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson. There isn't even one, in my view. In his Valley Campaign, Jackson marched his brigade of shoeless farm boys 600 miles through the mountains over the course of a month and a half, winning five pivotal battles against a combined force that outnumbered his 2:1. Grant never did anything quite like that, though he was impressive in his own right — and the victor, after all.
But I was informed by hundreds of people that I am a racist, just like Trump, for daring to give the Rebels any credit at all. We have reached a point where we cannot acknowledge any of the achievements of morally flawed historical figures. We must pretend they never existed. Driving this point home, a number of people insisted that ranking Confederates as great generals is like ranking Nazis as great generals. That's ridiculous, because of course some Nazi generals were great generals. Erwin Rommel was a great general, as anyone who has studied WW2 knows. The fact that he was fighting on the side of abject evil does not erase his military genius.
If we cannot acknowledge the greatness of morally compromised military commanders, then we cannot acknowledge the greatness of any military commander. Not a single one of them would pass muster by the standards of today's anachronizing blowhards. Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great — all must be removed from the history books. Even the Union commanders in the Civil War get thrown out with this bath water. Grant was an anti-Semite who tried to evict all the Jews from his military district. Sherman was a war criminal. Lincoln was a racist who publicly professed his bigotry during a debate with Stephen Douglas:
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
If we are not willing to see things in their historical context, and to accept that people in the past weren't as racially enlightened as we are today, then we will be left with no heroes, no great men at all. But if we are willing to forgive Lincoln his virulent racism, and Grant his predilection for ethnic cleansing, then we must extend a similar generosity to men like Robert E. Lee.
Nothing will make slavery anything less than a moral abomination. And it is true that slavery was a very significant motivating factor behind secession, as Texas, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina all made abundantly clear in their Declaration of Causes of Seceding States. But it is equally true that many men who did the fighting on both sides did not perceive themselves to be fighting over slavery. There's a reason Lincoln waited two years to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He said early on that if he could keep the country together by keeping slavery, he would do it. To him, and to the Union soldiers on the ground, it was a fight to preserve the Union. The sad fact of the matter is that most Northerners were racist themselves and would not have charged into gunfire for the sake of liberating the slaves, no matter how distasteful they found the institution.
For their part, many southern soldiers thought they were fighting a war of defense against hostile invaders. There's a reason Jefferson Davis did not send his army to capture Washington, even though perhaps they could have done so after the stunning Confederate victory at Bull Run to start the war. This is the reality Robert E. Lee confronted. He was offered command of Union forces but declined because, as a loyal Virginian, he could not march against his home state. He saw it as a choice between defending his home or the Union. He chose his home.
Perhaps you would have chosen differently. Perhaps you would have taken up arms against your own family. Perhaps you would have been more enlightened than almost everyone else and seen the struggle in the same light that spectators in the future would see it. I congratulate this hypothetical version of yourself, in that case. It's true that Robert E. Lee lacked this sort of enlightenment. It's also true that when he was faced with a difficult dilemma, he made the choice he thought was right, and then proceeded to win battle after battle against a foe with superior numbers, superior weaponry, and superior resources. That's why he's a great general.
You have a good point about states’ rights versus an ever-expanding federal tyranny, but the odds of a Confederate sympathizer decapitating you because you drew a cartoon of him are really low.
Neither have any Sons Of The South ever flown a plane into skyscrapers.
I cannot emphasize enough, that we now face a greater, looming, *current* threat.
I lose no sleep at all over insurgent Rebels gaining elected office.
When I’m out shopping, somebody wearing a gray kepi on their head is not the headwear that makes my blood run cold.
Savvy?
:)
In 1980, I dated a direct descendant of McClellan, on his mother’s side.
McClellan, was in fact, his middle name, due to the naming practices of southerners.
He was a Democrat, as was his entire family, and he had a black ‘mammy’ as a kid.
*edit: Father’s side.
Son was LMP II.
Merritt is one of my favorite Generals that I’ve followed through the years. I’ve got his now out-of-print Biography written by Don Alberts (circa 1980’s).
He never got any attention because of Custer, but his career was about 1000% more successful.
Farnsworth only got to wear his star for 4 days. He was killed in a suicidal assault ordered by Judson Kilpatrick after Pickett’s failed charge.
John Buford is a 2nd Dragoons vet - but was not at Bull Run.
“...John Buford is a 2nd Dragoons vet - but was not at Bull Run. ...”
I should say he wasn’t killed at Bull Run. Buford was a hero of the 1st day at Gettysburg.
It’d probably help everybody to go back & re-read what started the stupid conversation to begin with.
The question was about Lee being a Good vs. Great General.
I said he was good, but not great and that he’d have been great if he’d conquered the North and absorbed them into the CSA. As it has been said (over & over) - not likely a scenario and impossible to accomplish.
That said, the South did have offensive tendencies and the lie said about the South trying to fight a so-called defensive war can easily be debunked by multiple campaigns in Arkansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri - the border states. The western territories like Arizona and New Mexico. Not to mention the entire Gettysburg campaign.
A little reading comprehension goes a long way.
He was a top notch cavalry commander. Probably was the first to come up with the “mounted infantry” concept, where the troops would dismount to fire their repeating Spencer rifles to create chaos for Rebel infantry.
yep yep !
Slavery might not have been THE reason for the war, but the war, as its outcome, and the assassination of Lincoln, brought the end of slavery.
Yup...shoulda fought taking that flag down.
Excellent article. Thanks!
At least you have finally conceded the concrete historical fact that the Slave States seceded so that they could keep all the profits produced by slaves. That’s a good first step, man.
Have you gotten around to the Cornerstone Speech yet?
You are right, of course. But for my part, I am waging a battle for historical accuracy. My agenda is to never see one scrap of American History go by the wayside. As far as passing on our shared heritage in the USA, I see a distortion of the truth as being equally as bad as tampering with any historic monument. I am a proponent of Michael Savage’s definition of a nation as being “Borders, language and culture”. And I see history as being in the “culture” category. As a Northerner, when I returned from the Centennial celebration at Gettysburg in 1963 (I saw Eisenhower), I wore a grey kepi. Recently I gave a young nephew a birthday gift of two kepi’s: one blue, one grey. I understand that just another tired old Civil War thread would seem to you that we are just fiddling while Rome burns, but to me it is an opportunity to reinforce our common heritage,and to correct inaccuracies where I see falsehoods being promoted. We are under attack on all fronts.
No, it doesn’t seem like that at all, to me.
I’ve had 20 years of arguing the point on FR but currently, I’m up to my pink ass in illegals and scary people wearing NOI hats in the stores.
There’s a funny little plaque that says “Though she be small, she is fierce”.
However, as fierce as I may be, I am yet, still very small.
:)
I wish for the days of history classes as I knew them.
Facts were stated, dates were given, no editorials allowed.
I live near Antietam, where all the “historical plaques” were removed and replaced with ones that consistently refer to the Southerners as “enemies”, “invaders” and such.
They used to simply say “Confederates” with the appropriate historical info but now, it’s all rewritten to make it sound like bloodthirsty, pillaging Huns were here, instead.
I don’t go there anymore.
Bad for my blood pressure.
Soon there will be nothing left on walls but MLK Jr and Mo.
Thanks for the reminder. These WBTS threads have a tendency to drift from OP to people’s favorite “stalking points”. I do occasionally find gems hidden in the dirt.
Do you suppose that this means that the Washington Post will be required to confess their sins and change their name? LoL
My heart has to go out to Lee when I know that on his deathbed he was back in battle and calling out to JEB Stuart. And Stonewall Jackson’s last words, “let us cross this river and rest in the shade of yonder trees”. Heart wrenching stuff, even for this yankee.
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