Robert E. Lee Never Deserved Your Respect

I recently posted about the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, and I found that I still had more to say that directly related to current events. The very reason I started this blog was in response to the growing calls for the removal of Confederate monuments in the South, and the frankly amazing fact that many were indeed taken down. None mattered more symbolically than the statue of General Robert E. Lee in New Orleans. His monument was one of the most hotly contested, and was subsequently the most satisfying of the removals when he was finally lowered from his pedestal, literally and figuratively. It really was a remarkable occasion, made more so by Mayor Mitch Landrieu's moving speech about the historical significance of the event; it's a major step forward to right the wrongs of the past.

I wish I could have been there, because years before the widespread calls for Confederate monument removals, Robert E. Lee was on my $#%& list. Unlike many other Civil War historians, even out of the ones that have no qualms labeling the Confederacy for what it was— an Empire of Slavery— there still remains a professional and personal admiration for Lee. They cite the integrity and pride of his Christian character and his brilliant tactics on the battlefield as justifications for their respect. Even as a kid, I never bought it. In fact, I remember on my tour of the Capitol Building shouting in offense at seeing a statue of Lee (in his rebel uniform no less!) sitting at a prominent spot in one of the halls. True, he was no John C. Calhoun or Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, but despite setting the bar so low, I never believed that somehow Lee was some sort of good guy in a terrible system.

I didn't know how right I was.

Credit to the author for this one (FYI Lee is on the left, Ulysses S. Grant is on the right)

In an outstanding and personally vindictive piece for the Atlantic, Adam Serwer exposes Lee for the man he really was, what he stood for, and how much damage he did. His popular image is mostly fiction, generally maximizing his good traits and minimizing his bad ones, but also, in Mitch Landieu's words, propels "lies by omission" by his defenders for over 150 years. Here are a few highlights:

• Before anything else should come the evaluation of Lee through a military perspective. While he is rightly considered to be a master tactician, his strategic decision to wage a conventional war against the industrial-powered North was a disastrous move that escalated the war and brought death and destruction to the South. Even tactically, he was still capable of colossal mistakes. His stubbornness at Gettysburg, namely Pickett's Charge lost him the battle and set the stage for the collapse of the Confederacy.

• Though not a rabid slave-owner, Lee was anything but benevolent. He was still by all means a white supremacist who paternalistically saw slavery as good for black people, and only Christ could free them. He split slave families and oversaw or personally beat slaves who tried to escape. 

• His army enslaved free blacks and executed captured black Union soldiers. He refused to conduct a prisoner exchange with Union General Ulysses S. Grant if black soldiers were on the table, despite his dire shortage of troops. 

• The one aspect of Lee I previously respected was the dignified surrender of his army to General Grant. This in effect prevented a Southern insurgency from spawning and contributed to the reunification of nation. Now I have none. After Appomattox Court House, Grant felt his former rival fell short in trying to sow seeds of peace, and saw Lee's conduct as a "forced acquiescence." This helped give way to the Lost Cause myth which was the foundation of Jim Crow. 

• Even as president of Washington College, Lee oversaw a chapter of the KKK formed at the university and turned the other way when white students committed crimes against blacks in the area, including several lynchings. Though he never formally endorsed the KKK, he never spoke against it either, and there's good evidence to suggest he tacitly approved of it by suggesting the South could give way to violence if it did not name the peace terms. 

As Serwer notes, the only fitting monument to Lee is the Arlington national military cemetery that's on his former land, which the federal government had seized. White supremacists are the only ones that have reason to admire him. That makes him nothing more than a disgrace to America and its history. Hopefully now his myth will finally start to die and the truth will come to stand in his place. 

Down and Dirty at Gettysburg

Today, July 3rd, is the anniversary of the Union victory at Gettysburg in 1863. While I'm basking in our victory against the rebels (both then and now), I thought I'd share with all of you my favorite film depiction of not just Gettysburg but of the entire Civil War. It's from a History Channel special from several years ago, and with great respect to the 1990s movie of the same title, I think it embraces realities of the war that the movie chose to sanitize. Yes, it's also dramatized, but to me it's effectively the Saving Private Ryan of the Civil War, in that it tells the stories of those on all sides of the battle while getting down and dirty in the trenches. If you're only going to watch one part of it, watch this one.

Go on, try to tell me you don't have your hair standing on the back of your neck. Tell me that seeing the Iron Brigade completely own the rebels doesn't make you wish you could jump in and help them. Tell me that as you watch it you're not both in awe of the courage and commitment of the soldiers while also repelled that so many would fight for something so terrible. Finally, tell me that you never realized that we could have lost it all, if not at Gettysburg than somewhere else. Sometimes it's incredibly difficult to comprehend. But if you can get close, then you can see that the Civil War was unlike any other war in American history before or since. 

So happy Victory Day, on July 3rd and July 4th!

My Top Four Favorite Historical Subjects

In my first post on this site, I explained that when it comes to studying history and learning from it, it's often the particular era's connection to the present that interests me the most. However, that's not to say I don't find history in of itself fascinating. If it wasn't for that, this blog wouldn't exist. So I thought today I would share my four favorite historical subjects/periods to study.

These particular histories strike a chord with me. They're so rich in content and so magnificently detailed that anyone could spend several lifetimes studying each period alone. Some of these capture my imagination so vividly that I can almost imagine I'm there. Some are so distant and seemingly so alien that it's almost hard to believe it took place on the same planet. However, in both cases, I feel the drive to discover and make connections between the past and the present more than ever.

1. The Victorian Era (UK) and The Gilded Age (US)                                                      
   These are fairly recent interests of mine, and despite taking place in different countries the overlap is so apparent  that I decided to include it as one. Though this usually isn't the case for me, what entices me most about these periods are the social histories. In fact, especially in the United States, the political history at this time is one of my least-favorites to study, largely due to a long string of mediocre presidents. However, with industrialization and the scientific revolution in full swing, the massive changes to life at that time in nearly every way is nothing short of remarkable. Soaring skyscrapers were matched by skyrocketing economic inequality, producing social movements that have until very recently been all but forgotten. Though I'm fairly new to the game, one of the best books to capture this new life of wondrous and horrifying possibilities is the Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. It's a vivid snapshot of life at that time, with the Chicago World's Fair taking off at the same time as the first serial killer in American history claims his first victims. The same can be said for the Victorian era and its ubiquitous duality, prudishness in the front and madness in the back. Jekyll & Hyde and the Picture of Dorian Gray are two of my favorite books, and give me insight into an era that fascinates me but I would never want to live in!                                                        
2. Classical Civilizations
   
   This one casts a wide net, and I could never hope to get a firm grasp on it all. However, nearly every time I learn something, it changes my view of that civilization. This is the period from about 500 BCE to 500CE. Now, that does cover from the early days of the Roman Republic through to its fall, but I include the Chinese Han Dynasty there too. When I was in high school, my teacher made an extra effort to talk about the Han as much, maybe even more so than he did of Rome, to emphasize how important yet overlooked it was to history. My friend has extensive knowledge of this period, and he often tells me facts of Roman traffic jams and Han attempts at domesticating horses and I'm just astounded. These eras are almost an ocean of knowledge unto themselves.                                                  
3. The American Civil War
   
   How could I not be into this era? It's one of the few aspects of American history that even the most ignorant citizen knows is important. This is because the Second American Revolution is still right at our side. Just turn on the news and for any issue that pertains to citizenship, economic and social divides, war powers, or anything related to the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, each has echoes of the Civil War. It's not just its-more-than-usual relevance that captures me though. Whether it's the speeches and proclamations for or against slavery and the war, the incredibly idiotic or brilliant decisions on the battlefield, the political cage matches between politicians, or the fact that so many men-- and a few women-- gave their lives for a better country or a worse one still affects me very deeply. We owe an incredible debt to Abraham Lincoln. Had it not been for him and his incredible skill, courage, love, and humor, we could have lost it all.                                                   
4.  The Second World War
   
   I imagine this one is also hardly a surprise, given it's the biggest and by-far deadliest conflict in human history. You can thank Call of Duty for capturing my imagination and later my zeal for wholehearted study of WWII. The scope and depth of the war, in almost every facet imaginable, from military to political to technological to human stories is so vast that you could very well make new books, movies, shows, plays and video games from it over and over and never lose interest.
   
   I believe, however, that there's another reason that the war continues live in so much of the world's consciousness. Though it's hardly as clear-cut as most people make it out, there's really no denying it: It was a "Good War." Great evil was stopped. Great good came from it. It was a war worth fighting unlike few others. Humanity both then and now has been measured by this conflict, and proved capable both of horrifying evil and magnificent good. And the good won.
   
   Though I would never, ever wish for another war even close to its magnitude, at a time when it seems like there's so much senseless and unnecessary fighting, sometimes it's difficult to not be nostalgic for that clear choice between good and evil. Then I remember what led to that choice even being possible, and how much suffering resulted from it. That war was fought so that no other of its kind could ever happen again. We must continue to make sure of that.