Robert E. Lee: American hero, icon... and traitor.After the Civil War, the renown of Robert E. Lee spread far beyond the borders of the former Confederacy. He was respected and praised in the North for his virtues, his fighting prowess, and his conciliation in defeat. Historians such as Alan T. Nolan have noted that the North, whose people “had to acknowledge the honor of the South,” fully embraced the Lee tradition. “Revisionism,” especially in terms of Lost Cause interpretations of the war where Lee figured centrally, argues Nolan, “could not become part of the Civil War legend without northern acceptance, and the North did accept the South’s rewriting of the record.”
While some in the North may have been retrospectively kind to the former Rebel general, Nolan has made far too great a generalization. Union veterans, for example, were hardly generous in their assessment of Lee. To them, Lee was a traitor. In 1891, the Grand Army Record passionately objected to the “saintly slopping over Robert E. Lee,” and others agreed. In fact, GAR protests against Lee helped create a lasting thread in northern commemorative literature. In 1910, one Union veteran wrote, essentially expressing in the same breath how some might find Lee both virtuous and reprehensible: “Though in his Confederate uniform [Lee] may possess all the culture and personal worthiness he had before he thus clothed himself, this badge of disloyalty – of rebellion – so characterizes him that by it he must be judged.” As late as 1922, a variety of groups continued to honor the veterans’ legacy by protesting in “unmeasured terms” the organizations that celebrated the Rebel chief, arguing that treason should never be forgotten, much less rewarded. “No Grand Army man,” offered one Union veteran, “can honorably lend his name to any movement which shall dignify to posterity the name of the traitor Robert E. Lee, or shall make him the equal of the loyal, victorious Grant.”
Union veterans remained determined to praise only the Union heroes who saved the country, rather than a Rebel who had tried to destroy it. The praise allotted to the rebel chieftain wore Grand Army veterans particularly thin. One Collier’s Weekly article citing Lee as America’s most “noble citizen” especially drew fire from the GAR’s patriotic instructor, Robert Kissick of Iowa. “If Lee was all you claim, then the men I represent were wrong in fighting to preserve the nation he fought to destroy.” Further arguing that “Lee did not follow his state out of the Union,” but rather, “his state followed him,” Kissick lambasted the Confederate hero and heaped much of the blame for upper South secession on Lee’s shoulders. As decades passed, few Union veterans could stomach the praise of Robert E. Lee. In 1922, when the American Legion attempted to honor Lee’s birthday, veterans of the Pennsylvania GAR shuddered at the idea that anyone would “place a premium on Disloyalty to the Flag and our Country.”
Although adulation of the Rebel general found a place among northern civilians who perhaps sentimentalized or romanticized the gentile south and all that the Lee family embodied, Lee’s standing among Union veterans never reached the heights the general obtained in the South.
K
This viewpoint of General Robert E. Lee is nothing new, and every time I read it I am struck at how deceivingly inaccurate it is. To say General Lee was a traitor is patently untrue, unless you want to define a traitor as one who doesn’t go along with and/or works against your own goals and purposes. That simply is not the definition of traitor. According to the dictionary, a traitor is a person who commits treason, and again, General Lee does not fit that definition either. Treason is the offense of acting to overthrow one’s government. General Lee and The Confederacy were not trying to overthrow the United States. In fact, they just wanted to be left alone so they could retain their own freedom as an independent nation.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Washington and the signers of the Declaration of Independence were traitors, committing treason against the government then in power.
Just because the South lost the war doesn’t make General Lee a traitor. That’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? Winners get to write history, and to justify the deeds they did to gain that victory, the winners vilify the losers.
Let’s take a look at the integrity that Robert E. Lee exhibited by following his state into secession. If he would have accepted the offer to be supreme commander of the United States army, wealth, high-standing, and perhaps the Presidency awaited him. Though personally against secession, he nevertheless struggled long and hard at the crossroads of his life. But true to the high character that was an integral part of his being, he made the hard decision to remain true to his state. What was the result of his decision? He turned his back on his life-long service to his country when it asked him to compromise. A price was put on his head. He lost virtually everything materially. His estate was taken from him. He ultimately suffered the ignominy of defeat at the hands of his enemies. His life was cut short due to the harsh life he was forced to endure.
General Robert E. Lee was a man of great integrity, which is why his reputation remains intact 150 years after the Civil War.
I do not think that Lee was a man without virtues, but the truth is, he lad an army against a nation that he had taken an oath to protect. Whether or not this fits a dictionary definition of treason from a modern perspective is hardly the point. We can argue in circles about that all day long and never get anywhere.
ReplyDeleteThe point is, some historians have claimed that Lee was respected throughout the country in the decades following the war. He most certainly was not. United States soldiers (the ones Lee had tried really hard to kill) thought he was a traitor. That is what this piece is about.
I am used to this sort of Lee apologist reaction (one of the most worn-out arguments concerning Civil War history) when I present evidence that runs contrary to the Lee tradition.
Virtues or not, the man had a couple of big strikes against him when it came to a contemporary national assessment of his deeds and intentions. We need to take that into consideration as well.
"George Washington and the signers of the Declaration of Independence were traitors, committing treason against the government then in power."
ReplyDeleteBy your own definition of a traitor given in your previous paragraph, Washington et al. were not traitors. They weren't seeking to overthrow the British government.
"If he would have accepted the offer to be supreme commander of the United States army, wealth, high-standing, and perhaps the Presidency awaited him."
Lincoln's offer to Lee was not to be supreme commander; Winfield Scott already was. Lincoln asked Lee to lead a field army against the rebellion.
Wealth does not necessarily follow when one assumes command of an army. After all, Grant had to struggle to finish his memoirs before his death to ensure his family's financial security. A major general in the U.S. Army received $220 a month in 1861. Lee was already wealthy, anyway.
"General Robert E. Lee was a man of great integrity, which is why his reputation remains intact 150 years after the Civil War."
Lee had a reputation as a flirt with women who were not his wife, and he was also unusually harsh to his slaves by the standards of his society.
"Winners get to write history, and to justify the deeds they did to gain that victory, the winners vilify the losers."
Except in the case of the American Civil War.
Richard stated that "General Lee and The Confederacy were not trying to overthrow the United States. In fact, they just wanted to be left alone so they could retain their own freedom as an independent nation."
ReplyDeleteThe notion that the Confederacy merely wanted to be "left alone" is wholly inaccurate. If the Confederacy truly intended to maintain their own "borders" (whatever those may have been), then there would have been no need for the Confederacy to fight for control of Western Virginia, Eastern Tennessee, several other regions within the Appalachian Mountains, claim Arizona as their own territory, eye the country of Cuba as a possible expansion point to create another slaveholding state, or have Jubal Early attempt to take over the U.S. Capitol. In each of these aforementioned areas, many of the people wanted to be "left alone", free from Confederate influence, yet the Confederacy fought for control of those areas. As Keith mentioned, it doesn't really matter whether or not Lee fits a modern description of someone committing treason; his argument is that many Union veterans believed he did.
Will - To be sure, Grant's struggle to provide financial security for his family before his death (in the form of his personal memoirs) had little to do with his wealth or lack thereof from the military. He got involved in a bad business deal (an investment banking firm) with Ferdinand Ward in New York City which caused him to go penniless. A new book from Ward's Great-Grandson, Geoffry C. Ward, entitled "A Disposition to be Rich" offers more info on this story. I agree that military men in the 19th Century didn't necessarily join for the riches involved, but for Grant specifically his earnings from the military and his Presidency should have kept him stable for a long time. The bigger problem for career military men was that there was no pension system, and thus a limited opportunity to move up through the ranks. Legislation was passed upon the news of Grant's looming poverty to give him a lifetime pension, but as you know that was a rare exception to the rule on pensions at the time.