The Myth of the Kindly General Lee
ADAM SERWER
JUN 4, 2017
... The myth of Lee goes something like this: He was a brilliant strategist and devoted Christian man who abhorred slavery and labored tirelessly after the war to bring the country back together.
There is little truth in this ...
Lees cruelty as a slavemaster was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading the Man, the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryors portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families, by hiring them off to other plantations, and that by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days. The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lees slaves regarded him as the worst man I ever see ...
During his invasion of Pennsylvania, Lees Army of Northern Virginia enslaved free blacks and brought them back to the South as property. Pryor writes that evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lees army with the abduction of free black Americans, with the activity under the supervision of senior officers ...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/
dhill926
(16,391 posts)I had no idea...
underpants
(183,043 posts)I'd seen this before but wanted to read it
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,930 posts)but there was an earlier discussion on this topic here.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029157581
This does need to be brought up more than once. I, for one, have gotten heartily sick of the glossing over of the truth about slavery, the Civil War, and Robert E. Lee. As I said in the other thread, he was a traitor, and romanticizing his choosing his state over his country is wrong.
modrepub
(3,505 posts)I don't particularly think Lee was a great general; maybe against some rather incompetent generals who lead the early eastern armies he matched up well. He was aggressive, which worked well if one followed the "seize the high ground and fight defensively" strategy that won most civil war engagements. He was probably also helped with competent corps commanders such as Jackson and Longstreet but if you judge him by his to invasions of the north he failed miserably.
Lee's best chance to turn the war around came during the Gettysburg Campaign. Interestingly, Longstreet favored sending troops from the Army of Northern Virginia to relieve Vicksburg after Lee's brilliant victory at Chancellorsville but he was overruled by Davis and Lee. Keep in mind Lincoln replaced the commander of the Army of the Potomac the night before the Battle of Gettysburg began, with someone not well known or even senior in command. Lee had no objective for his invasion of Pennsylvania and that explains why he lost his cavalry (Stuart) leaving him with no means of reconnoitering where the Army of the Potomac was. A chance engagement near Gettysburg set in motion a gathering of forces that Lee seemed to have little control over. Instead of driving towards Harrisburg and cutting off the east-west railroads that crossed there Lee's army turned south and threw themselves against a well defended position. It's fitting in my mind that Lee's gamble was lost on his inability to fight logically. His counterpart, Maj Gen Meade knew from Fredericksburg seizing the high ground and fighting from a position of strength would carry the day. To that end he assembled all his units in strong positions (well before his southern counterparts showed up on the field) and parried Lee's attacks from a position of strength. Afterwards Lee would offer his resignation, recognizing he had bumbled the South's last and best chance to win their independence.
Wraith20878
(181 posts)And despise Grant. As an adult, the more I read about them, the more I dislike Lee, and the more I like Grant. Excellent article!