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*** The Manufactured Myth of General Robert E Lee ***
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DECEMBER 30, 2022
NY Times: West Point to Remove Confederate Monuments From Its Campus
Bronze plaques that depict Gen. Robert E. Lee and other Confederate figures at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point will be placed in storage.
NY Times: West Point to Remove Confederate Monuments From Its Campus
Bronze plaques that depict Gen. Robert E. Lee and other Confederate figures at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point will be placed in storage.
REBUTTAL BY
The US Military Academy at West Point in New York State has announced that it will begin removing Confederate symbols from its campus, including taking down a portrait of General Robert E. Lee from the library and removing a bust of him as well. This is being done for the wrong reason, of course -- specifically, the Marxist obsession with denigrating the White Man through the never-ending remembrance whine about southern slavery and modern "racism ™." Nonetheless, due to "The Editorial Board's" recent epiphany regarding General Lee, perhaps he should cease to be exalted as some sort of von Clausewitz-like military tactician for the ages.
*Editor's Note: After the war, Lee was opposed to the building of Confederate war monuments because he felt that such structures would "retard" the nation's healing and coming together.
This may be as much of surprise for "youse guys" to hear for the first time as it was for us -- but it turns out that, at the end of the US Civil War, many Southerners (including military men) actually blamed Lee for losing the war. During the final post-war years of his life and even for several years after his death in 1870, Lee's record was subject to harsh criticism in both North, South and abroad. It was only the "Lost Cause Ideology" of 1870s - 1880s Southern revisionists --- a dubious recounting of the war which erased the ambition of certain southern politicians, European intrigue (Rothschild), and the westward expansion of slavery as fundamental factors behind the unprovoked and unnecessary secession declarations of 1860-61 --- that rehabilitated Lee's reputation. The revisionists needed a saint, and who better than a "war hero" to posthumously fill that role. By the turn of the 19th century, Lee had been canonized.
According to this school of artificial scholarship, the South valiantly outfought the Union but inevitably lost "The War of Northern Aggression" only because of the North's superior industrial wealth and manpower numbers -- not because of General Lee or Confederate President Jefferson Davis -- the latter being one of the founders of Lost Cause doctrine. In reality, many of Lee's failures were epic. So much so that a "conspiracy theorist" might even be inclined to speculate if Lee -- the former superintendent of West Point who had opposed secession before declaring allegiance to the Confederacy -- was secretly working to preserve the Union. Let's put the legend and propaganda (and passion) aside and consider the poor performance.
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1. Robert E. Lee's portrait is coming down at West Point. // 2 & 3. Virginia: After the pedestal was defaced by Black Lives Matter Communists, the statue was removed.
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1. Jefferson Davis lived until 1889. He actively promoted "Lost Cause" ideology which absolved himself politically, and General Lee militarily. // 2. Stone Mountain Monument in Georgia -- a project begun in 1915 and completed in 1972 -- depicts Davis in front and Lee right behind him. The figure lagging behind them is General Stonewall Jackson -- whose reputation as a skilled commander is truly deserved. Jackson died before Gettysburg after having been shot in the arm by friendly fire, dropped twice from a stretcher, and then contracting pneumonia after his arm was amputated. // 3. St. Robert's statue was once revered -- even though Lee himself would never have wanted it.
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WAS LEE A CLOSET UNION MAN?
Lee's father, Henry Lee, was an early American Patriot, revolutionary war hero and, later on, a Federalist Party (strong Union) politician. He was very close to George Washington (who had once courted Lee's mother before she married). It was Henry Lee who famously eulogized George Washington at the latter's 1799 funeral as "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
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WAS LEE A CLOSET UNION MAN?
Lee's father, Henry Lee, was an early American Patriot, revolutionary war hero and, later on, a Federalist Party (strong Union) politician. He was very close to George Washington (who had once courted Lee's mother before she married). It was Henry Lee who famously eulogized George Washington at the latter's 1799 funeral as "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
Robert E Lee
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George Washington Custis Lee
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President George Washington & First Lady Martha Custis Washington
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- Robert E Lee // pre-war 1861 letter to his son, George Washington Custis Lee (Step Great Grandson of George Washington)
"As an American citizen, I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and institutions, and would defend any State if her rights were invaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for "perpetual union," so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled."
*Editor's Note: 100,000 southern men volunteered and fought for the Union.
"As an American citizen, I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and institutions, and would defend any State if her rights were invaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for "perpetual union," so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled."
*Editor's Note: 100,000 southern men volunteered and fought for the Union.
In the June 1969 issue of Civil War History (Volume 5) University of South Carolina professor, proud southerner and renowned historian Thomas L. Connelly -- attacked Lee's legacy thusly:
“No single war figure stands in greater need of reevaluation than Lee. One ponders whether the South may not have fared better had it possessed no Robert E. Lee."
Connelly’s 1969 essay was immediately scorned and ridiculed. But the argument that Lee -- being out-manned -- should have taken a more defensive posture and thus drawn the North into difficult southern terrain makes perfect sense. Instead, he was too often on the offensive and in full frontal assault manner. This resulted in unnecessary heavy casualties and demoralization. All that the Confederacy needed to confirm itself as a separate country was a stalemate. The burden was on the North to defeat and physically occupy the South -- an achievement which came after too many losses were suffered by unnecessarily offensive southern forces.
Civil War Historian James McPherson put it this way:
“The South could ‘win’ the war by not losing. However, the North could win only by winning.”
Under Lee's command, the Army of Northern Virginia racked up a total of 209,000 casualties. That's 55,000 more than Ulysses S. Grant, who’s been criticized for “butchering” his men. Lee's unnecessarily offensive strategy, and various other lost opportunities and blunders (here) and (here) -- doomed the Confederacy to defeat. Lee burned through men faster than recruitment and the unpopular Confederate draft could replace them.
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1 & 2. Thomas Connelly (1938-1991, no photo available) authored many scholarly books on the US Civil War of 1861-1865 -- including "The Marble Man" (a title mocking the immortalizing of Lee by statues). Connelly maintains that it was not until the 1880's that certain southern cliques transformed Lee into the invincible general and, later still, a southern and even a national hero. // 3. Criticism of Lee is still frowned upon in academic circles both North & South -- liberal and conservative; but the case of the Correctionist Historians is indeed compelling.
Of all Lee's blunders, the most damaging and decisive occurred at The Battle of Gettysburg in the opening days of July of 1863. On the third day of battle, in what shamefully became known as "Pickett’s Charge" -- (we say "shamefully" because General George Pickett was not responsible for ordering the reckless charge and never forgave Lee (nor spoke to him again) for having ordered it) -- Confederate troops were ordered to advance across an open 3/4 mile long field, into the teeth of heavy Union artillery and gunfire.
Lee issued the charge order against the advice of several subordinates. The repulse of "Pickett's Charge" resulted in more than 6,000 casualties on the rebels -- turning the tide of both the battle and the war itself. Lee was severely and properly criticized by military contemporaries and the southern press. What the heck was Lee doing -- again, against the advice of subordinates -- invading the northern state of Pennsylvania anyway? Even if Lee had won at Gettysburg, the depleted rebel force would eventually have had to retreat southward anyway.
The 1880s propagandists not only continued to unjustly tag the demoralizing fiasco as "Pickett's Charge," but also scapegoated General James Longstreet’s execution of the attack for its failures -- another underhanded deflection which Connelly and many modern military strategists find laughable. In a 2006 paper, a Department of Defense research center described Lee’s effort at Gettysburg as a “blunder” that “doomed the hopes of the Confederate States of America.”
The late military historian Edward Bonekemper III -- author of “How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War” -- spoke about Lee’s faults for many years. Early on, he faced much resistance, but before his death in 2017 remarked:
“Now people don’t get nearly as emotional as they used to. They are more open to hearing that there is another side to the story.”
Monuments may fall. But mythologies take a bit more time to undo.
LEE'S CHARGE!
Lee's name has been scrubbed clean from responsibility for the demoralizing disaster of "Pickett's Charge" at Gettysburg -- leaving Pickett & Longstreet to take the blame for a charge -- and a battle -- which should never have taken place.
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A Confederate soldier of Gettysburg in a letter to his sister:
(misspellings his)
“We got a bad whiping . . . they are awhiping us . . . at every point. . . . I hope they would make peace so that we that is alive yet would get home agane . . . but I supose Jef Davis and Lee don’t care if all is killed.”
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A Confederate soldier of Gettysburg in a letter to his sister:
(misspellings his)
“We got a bad whiping . . . they are awhiping us . . . at every point. . . . I hope they would make peace so that we that is alive yet would get home agane . . . but I supose Jef Davis and Lee don’t care if all is killed.”
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1 & 2. Edward Bonekemper III -- a military historian who caught flak for daring to critique Lee's decisions. // 3. General George Pickett of "Pickett's Charge" infamy. His name was eternally dirtied for a disastrous bloodbath which he opposed -- yet still bears his name, not that of the exalted "Marble Man" who ordered it.
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Boobus Americanus 1: I read in The New York Times that West Point will be taking down a portrait of Robert E. Lee.
Boobus Americanus 2: Slavery --- bad. But Robert E Lee was a tactical genius.
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St. Sugar: Sayss who, Boobuss?
Editor: Go easy on Boobuss on this one, St. Sugar. Up until completing my crash course just a few weeks ago, I still had General Lee's abilities ranked right up there with Napoleon, von Manstein and Patton.
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