Lee hits the big 2-0-0

January 19, 2007 7:52 AM

Some like him, some don't. Regardless, today marks the 200th birthday of Robert E. Lee. Check out his first home, his most famous home, and not so famous home. Read his letters, including his thoughts on surrender, as well his first major biography, and last, naturally, his obituary from the New York Times. Oh, you can also get married by his entombed remains.
posted by Atreides (53 comments total)

The post we've been waiting on.
posted by klangklangston at 7:57 AM on January 19, 2007

From what I know of him, he was a man of upstanding personal integrity and honor - a true southern gentleman. He was neither a sadist like Stonewall Jackson (it seems he truly abhorred war, rather than gloried in it) nor a militant racist like Nathan Bedford Forrest (although he did oppose Black suffrage). His personal appeal to southern troops to lay down their arms after Appomattox spared the country years of guerilla warfare (and earned the emnity of quite a few Confederates). After the war, he turned Washington College into one of America's elite schools.

He was also the greatest traitor against the United States of America that has ever lived. No man has ever come as close to destroying our country as he did.
posted by thewittyname at 8:08 AM on January 19, 2007 [3 favorites]

These articles about a situation eight years ago regarding a mural of Robert E. Lee.
posted by armage at 8:11 AM on January 19, 2007

Let's try that again:

These articles discuss a situation eight years ago regarding a mural of Robert E. Lee. At the time, the councilman's actions sparked a very bitter debate among Richmonders.

People used to joke that in Richmond, we were still fighting the Civil War...
posted by armage at 8:14 AM on January 19, 2007

I went to a wedding at his first home, linked above. It was lovely.
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:17 AM on January 19, 2007

He was a singular figure of tragic greatness.

If you are not a native Southerner, I'm not sure you can grasp the depth of affection and esteem in which many of us still hold him. Lee is right up there with Jesus.
posted by MasonDixon at 8:24 AM on January 19, 2007

I had a girlfriend from North Cackalackee who told me that MLK Jr. day was dubbed Robert E. Lee day by the people in the school. Now that's classy. He's an admirable figure. His cause sucked donkey balls, but he was dancing with those that brought him, so...
posted by Busithoth at 8:25 AM on January 19, 2007

nice post Atreides.
posted by nola at 8:26 AM on January 19, 2007

Traitor. Took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, broke it spectacularly. That's the textbook definition. All to support a cause that was defined by human chattel slavery. I'm not saying it wasn't a tough decision, I just think that the guy isn't the hero people make him out to be.

That's not personal integrity or honor. Oathbreaker.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:38 AM on January 19, 2007

Nonsense, that's like calling Jefferson a traitor for rebelling from Britain. He felt the Constitution was being subverted and exploited by the Federal government, and rebellion was his duty.

Dislike Lee for the cause he chose to fight for, not for breaking the loyalty you think he should have had to something he didn't support.
posted by spaltavian at 8:42 AM on January 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Not to defend him, or the south, or slavery, but it was at least an arguable point about which side was defending the Constitution. The Constitution was clearly written with an eye toward defending the institution of slavery, and was not quite clear on whether states had a right to secede.

So, I'm not sure that "Oathbreaker" is a fair charge.

He was still fighting to preserve one of the great evils of human history, though, and should be damned on that basis alone.
posted by empath at 8:44 AM on January 19, 2007

And so I'm not misunderstood, I'm not putting Jefferson and Lee on equal footing, or trying to make any deeper comparison than the analogy I offered.
posted by spaltavian at 8:45 AM on January 19, 2007

empath: He was still fighting to preserve one of the great evils of human history, though, and should be damned on that basis alone.

Yeah, but the North wasn't fighting to end that great evil, certainly not at first. The Emancipation Proclamation was a victory in the cause of freedom and redeemed the Republic, but it was also the ultimate case of mission creep.

Lincoln had said early on his goal was preservation of the Union, not abolition, and if slavery had to survive for that to happen, so be it. So, at least for a while, you could argue Lincoln shared some of the damnation you put on Lee.
posted by spaltavian at 8:51 AM on January 19, 2007

Read if you can these documents of which you speak, these oaths to which you refer. Then try Sherman’s correspondence on the march to the sea regarding his abandonment of slaves on an opposite shoreline or Lincoln’s insistence in writing that the war had nothing to do with emancipation, prior to its proclamation. In unfortunate honest truth Lincoln subverted and nearly destroyed the constitution in order to preserve what to that point had been a voluntary mutually beneficial symbiotic alliance of individual states with sovereign rights. Lee took neither the choice to side with his state over country lightly anymore than he took his oaths and the words of those documents lightly. Slavery sucked, so do carbon emissions and energy gluttony, the first was and the second is an unfortunate and disgusting reality of a part of our economy and time. C’et la vie et que sera, sera. Esse quam Verdi.
posted by MapGuy at 9:06 AM on January 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Abraham Lincoln:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

Ulysses S. Grant on Lee's surrender:

I I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.

Robert E. Lee:

So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South.

I had a girlfriend from North Cackalackee who told me that MLK Jr. day was dubbed Robert E. Lee day by the people in the school.

Virginia used to have Lee-Jackson-King Day. ("I'll see your civil rights leader, and I'll raise you two Confederate generals.")
posted by kirkaracha at 9:08 AM on January 19, 2007

Oh and If you really want to enjoy some irony go read why one of my relatives died, Nathaniel Greene. Then who visited the family farm afterwards, Eli Whitney and why his visit sparked a surge in the slave trade and an economic boon that lead to a war. No really it is a hoot.
posted by MapGuy at 9:16 AM on January 19, 2007

"Stonewall Jackson" and "sadist" in the same sentence. Hmpf. "Results-oriented to a fault," maybe, but I'd like to see some evidence that he got off on anybody's suffering so I can see where you're coming from with that one.
posted by pax digita at 9:16 AM on January 19, 2007

The fun never stops when someone pulls out the truth at a party and starts firing off rounds.
posted by MapGuy at 9:18 AM on January 19, 2007

pax: What kind of sick bastard has a kegger at the white house and just opens the doors. That is as bad as keeping a ton of cheese in the closet oh wait same sick bastard. Clinton, Bush, Jackson, it all runs together.
posted by MapGuy at 9:26 AM on January 19, 2007

I was just at Grant's Tomb last week, I loved the little side exhibit about Soldier's Sickness.
posted by The Straightener at 9:27 AM on January 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

"Stonewall" Jackson isn't the same person as President Andrew Jackson.
posted by spaltavian at 9:28 AM on January 19, 2007

I thought his First Home was Stratford Hall.
posted by MtDewd at 9:29 AM on January 19, 2007

It was a "Stonewall" segway. Kegstand! It's ok everyone confuses Bill Gates with Dr. Evil, and Oprah with God.... or was it.... Shhhhhh ... Jon Stewart is about to speak.
posted by MapGuy at 9:34 AM on January 19, 2007

Oh, you can also get married by his entombed remains.

That seems a bit much. I mean, even a ship's captain is at least a living organism. We need to draw the line somewhere.
posted by soyjoy at 9:48 AM on January 19, 2007

You're right, MtDewd. I did opt for a fun sentence over historical accuracy. But hey, the links do make things clear. :)

I've abstained from any commentary in the thread purely because as someone born in Richmond and raised in a town with a statue of Lee and Jackson, in addition to the regular Confederate veteran monument, my thoughts and feelings on the general are completely and indescribably mixed, confused, and frustrating.
posted by Atreides at 10:02 AM on January 19, 2007

Lets just call the whole country thing to this point a bug ridden Beta and go ahead and release A-Merkin 1.0.
posted by MapGuy at 10:06 AM on January 19, 2007

Lee felt more loyalty to his home state of Virginia than the United States, which at the time, remember, was less than a century old.
posted by gottabefunky at 10:14 AM on January 19, 2007

I was best man in a wedding at the Lee Chapel about 25 years ago. The groom and I drank shots of Virginia Gentleman before the ceremony, downstairs by a sculpture of the recumbent Lee at the family crypt. It was all very suth'un.
posted by sixpack at 10:20 AM on January 19, 2007

I grew up in Richmond, I went to Stonewall Jackson Junior High which was next to Lee-Davis High Scool (Robert, and Jefferson that is). I hated all that stuff, but from what I've learned about Lee, he was a shintyelligent character and a far superior general to Grant, but he was outnumbered and outfinanced.
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:23 AM on January 19, 2007

A strange wrinkle in the saga of Monument Avenue was the addition in 1996 of the Arthur Ashe statue. It was fiercely opposed by many, even though the first elected black governor was Virginia's Douglas Wilder. Others opposed the Ashe statue's aesthetics (at night, lit from below, it kind of looks like he's beating the children), but (off topic) at least it's better than this thing which hangs outside of Richmond's downtown train station.
posted by taliaferro at 10:26 AM on January 19, 2007

Atreides - my thoughts and feelings on the general are completely and indescribably mixed, confused, and frustrating

as a Richmond native I second that. To add to the confusion, this guy is my great-great-(great?)-grandfather.
posted by taliaferro at 10:32 AM on January 19, 2007

"There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy." - Robert E. Lee

Lee's motivations were not as bad as many of his brothers in arms.

What if he had been successful? Would you prefer that version of American history? Then why celebrate him?

I'm from the land of highschool's named after confederate generals.
posted by phrontist at 10:41 AM on January 19, 2007

I hated all that stuff, but from what I've learned about Lee, he was a shintyelligent character and a far superior general to Grant, but he was outnumbered and outfinanced.

What could have been...
posted by phrontist at 10:44 AM on January 19, 2007

I'm a michigander who moved to virginia last year -- not only do virginians love Lee, they name every damn road after him. The world only needs so many Lee Highways, people.
posted by selfmedicating at 11:00 AM on January 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Then why celebrate him?

*reluctance overcome* Because the cultural divide that separated the industrial North from the agrarian South still exists, though presumably in a lesser form, today, and because Lee embodied many of the positive characteristics of that culture as well as the negative - for example, he started the honor system at Washington & Lee. Moreover, the people who lose a war are more likely to cling to their culture than those who win: defeat binds people together more than victory. Lee is a home-grown hero who embodied the best of his time and place. Like that time and place, he is deeply flawed, but culture is inborn, in that you are born into it. I feel that pull despite the fact that I live in New York, love the pace of life up here, have no desire to return to Richmond, and don't want to see a Confederate flag returned to statehouses across the South (that is a symbol that I do not defend).

(double ps to phrontist - not saying that everyone feels this way or that you are turning your back on your "native culture" or anything)
posted by taliaferro at 11:20 AM on January 19, 2007

Buy the album. Many of these songs are outstanding, especially "Woodman Spare that Tree," "The Vacant Chair," and "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming" (Or as Groucho Marx once re-titled it: "'Come Where My Love Lies Sleeping' -- with a full male chorus."
posted by Faze at 1:55 PM on January 19, 2007

Native of El Cackalack Del Norte, who has never really felt much Southern Pride (though I love my home state), here.

I never got the argument that the Southern states seceded because they thought the North was violating the Constitution. The immediate cause of secession was Lincoln's election. Lincoln had run on a platform that included ending the expansion of slavery. The fear had long been that if free states were allowed into the Union then the anti-slavery side would eventually muster enough voting power to ban slavery through amendments to the Constitution and/or legislative action. This was what the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 were all about, of course, and that the Kansas-Nebraska Act sort of screwed up.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, the argument for secession is that in the future the North might ban slavery through means that might be unconstitutional. But probably wouldn't be. Where is the legal justification for secession? The only moral argument I can see is that the North takes a narrow majority and creates from it the tyranny of the majority, which is of course the great danger in any democracy, but not one that I can feel terribly sympathetic for.

The way around this is imagining that God has decreed slavery exist, which is Lee's opinion as the quote here shows. So constitutionality is secondary.

I'm no scholar of the Civil War so my question is: what am I missing?

My other feeling is that slavery is so fucking evil that I really can't feel sympathy for someone who fights to defend it, no matter how noble he is. And yes I understand the fallacy of treating the past as like the present.
posted by rogue haggis landing at 1:59 PM on January 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

One of my favorite alternative-history Civil War moments would have Lee, who was trained as a military engineer in the Mexican American War, hoisting artillery pieces to the top of Big Round Top and raking the Union lines with fire. Might have changed Gettysburg.

A fascinating, sympathetic figure in America history. Also, a complete traitor.
posted by bardic at 2:01 PM on January 19, 2007

After the ceremony, can you urinate on the remains? Heck, I'd do it during.

Fucker.
posted by Eideteker at 2:06 PM on January 19, 2007

Robert E. Lee is as good an example as Heidegger of how a fine, decent, thoughtful, human being can be horribly, tragically wrong. This is true despite the fact that (my fellow) Northerners have carried on the tradition of being silly and base when speaking about the south, and even made it worse over the generations.

spaltavian: "Yeah, but the North wasn't fighting to end that great evil, certainly not at first. The Emancipation Proclamation was a victory in the cause of freedom and redeemed the Republic, but it was also the ultimate case of mission creep.

Lincoln had said early on his goal was preservation of the Union, not abolition, and if slavery had to survive for that to happen, so be it. So, at least for a while, you could argue Lincoln shared some of the damnation you put on Lee."

Lincoln was perfectly justified in seeking to "save the union" before seeking to abolish slavery. Keeping the nation together was more important than freeing those many slaves, as painful as that slavery was, because a split union would have meant more death and more destruction than slavery ever had. But Lincoln was also right-- and don't miss his point here, as so many do nowadays-- when he asserted that slavery and the United States cannot coexist.

In short, Lincoln shares none of the fault with Robert E. Lee. As I said, Robert E. Lee might have been even a great man, but he was clearly a wrong man. He can't be blamed too much, however; hardly anyone, besides Lincoln, knew what the North was fighting for, anyhow. Lincoln saw far ahead of anyone else in his time and acted accordingly, and for that we still should thank him.
posted by koeselitz at 2:48 PM on January 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

Also, I should say that rogue haggis landing's comment up there sums up the motivations and justifications of the civil war better than I ever could.
posted by koeselitz at 2:50 PM on January 19, 2007

Rogue haggis landing,

I believe the defense that the Union was being unconstitutional comes from Lincoln's call of arms for 75,000 men to march to suppress the rebellion in the Deep South. I'm extremely fuzzy, but I believe for many southerners, they felt that he didn't have the power to do such, which lead to the secession of most of the Upper South in response. Thus, if its used as a "just" reason, then it applies only to the states which seceded in the second round or sorts. States such as South Carolina don't get to wave this pass around.
posted by Atreides at 2:55 PM on January 19, 2007

Thanks, Atreides.
posted by rogue haggis landing at 2:58 PM on January 19, 2007

For the interested, I want to point out the relatively new online content for the Richmond Daily Dispatch from 1860 to 1865. Read about the discussion of secession in Virginia up through the end of confederation in Virginia.

Naturally, I read one of the opening statements at the convention on secession and noted nothing of what I just put forward above. So if anyone could definitely support or dismiss that, I'd appreciate it until I can dig out one of my history of Virginia books.
posted by Atreides at 3:13 PM on January 19, 2007

Line by line comparison of the United States Constitution and the Confederate Constitution

Executive Summary: To protect states' rights? Not so much. To protect slavery? Well, yeah.
posted by Flunkie at 4:59 PM on January 19, 2007

This place looks cool; Robert E. Lee Motel.
posted by PHINC at 6:26 PM on January 19, 2007

I went to Washington & Lee, and it is one of the most beautiful places I've been. Great school, beautiful campus, wonderful faculty, rich traditions such as the Honor System and the speaking tradition. We were lectured about Lee and his ideals for the school, which seemed quite admirable.

But I could have done without most of the students. And I'm sure they could have done without me.
posted by Poagao at 9:29 PM on January 19, 2007

Robert E. Lee was vile. But I'm glad that he wasn't executed to become a martyr for (largely illegitimate) generations of southerners.
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:57 AM on January 20, 2007

To me Lee and Grant are bookends to the nineteenth century. Lee, looking back to an imagined past of knightly deeds and doing battle accordingly. Dashing blows here and there, but no discipline.

Grant, meanwhile, is the first twentieth-century general. Steadily pounding away, mastering the simple basics, always flanking.
posted by atchafalaya at 4:21 PM on January 20, 2007

When I was a child, Lee was one of my great heroes. I thought he was honourable, tragic and all of that.

As an adult, I pity him for having picked a silly abstract concept (loyalty to a piece of land) over thinking. I'll buy that it was questionable which side was defending the Constitution (neither of them cared about it in anything but the most abstract terms, I think), but Lee chose based on emotion, not on logic and fact.

And, that is what makes him no longer worthy of worship.
posted by QIbHom at 1:24 PM on January 22, 2007

The secession question wasn't so much constitutional or unconstitutional as it was aconstitutional. There wasn't anything in the Constitution or Supreme Court decisions that said you couldn't secede, and there had been several attempts at secession before the Civil War. People (like Lee) thought of their state as their country. The states were essentially nation-states, and since they had joined the Union, they could leave. The Civil War resolved that question.

Grant's Vicksburg campaign was brilliant. Until he took command against Lee, the pattern had been for the Union to appoint a commander who'd get beaten by Lee and retreat and get fired, to be replaced by another commander who did the same thing. (Even commanders like McLellan and Meade, who beat Lee but let him get away, got fired and replaced.) Grant also got beat by Lee the first time, but he got hold of Lee and never let go. (He also lost fewer soldiers against Lee than his predecessors did.)
posted by kirkaracha at 6:32 AM on January 25, 2007

Secession wasn't declared unconstitutional until Texas v. White in 1869.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:44 AM on January 25, 2007

link
posted by kirkaracha at 6:45 AM on January 25, 2007