This text was initially printed by The Epoch Instances: The Two Reputations of Robert E. Lee
Within the preface to “Robert E. Lee: A Biography,” printed in 1995, professor and Civil Warfare historian Emory Thomas takes observe of his topic’s ever-changing standing within the eyes of others. When battle between the North and South erupted in April 1861, Gen. Winfield Scott revealed his deep admiration for his former employees officer by providing Col. Lee command of the military being fashioned by Lincoln. Refusing to lift his sword in opposition to his beloved state of Virginia, Lee rejected this honor and the chance for fame. He resigned his fee.
For the remainder of his life, and right down to our current time, Lee’s deeds introduced each garlands and brickbats. As Mr. Thomas says, “Lee has been the patron saint of the American South,” but historic figures outdoors of that area—Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, his cousin Franklin, and others—additionally lavished reward on Lee for his management abilities and character.
Others condemned Lee. Northerners in the course of the Warfare thought of him a traitor to the USA. Extra not too long ago, as Mr. Emerson briefly mentions, late Twentieth-century revisionists assailed Lee’s stellar popularity. Right here Mr. Emerson particularly mentions Tom Connelly’s “The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society,” writing that “Connelly argued that Lee’s image was contrived and that Lee himself endured a life replete with frustration, self doubt, and a feeling of failure. … He was actually a troubled man, convinced that he had failed as a prewar career officer, parent, and moral individual.’”
Present-day radicals haven’t solely castigated Lee as a slaveholder and a traitor, however have additionally demanded that statues of him be faraway from public locations. In Charlottesville, Virginia, after rioting broke out over the destiny of Lee’s monument, the statue was faraway from a public park, after which secretly minimize to items and melted into “a sludge of glowing bronze.”
A Quest for Steadiness
“I am well aware,” wrote Mr. Thomas in his Lee biography, “that the portrait of Lee in these pages may offend equally those who revere and those who revile the man. I can plead only effort and honesty in defense of my understanding.”
To color that portrait, Mr. Thomas focuses extra on Lee himself than on his navy exploits in the course of the Warfare. We meet him as a boy scuffling with the failures of his father, Gentle-Horse Harry Lee, a Revolutionary Warfare hero who turned a debtor and an outcast who hardly ever noticed his son.
Mr. Thomas then describes Lee as a cadet at West Level—he would later function superintendent of the Academy—adopted by his 17 years as an officer and gifted builder within the Corps of Engineers. Whereas serving on Gen. Winfield Scott’s employees in the course of the Mexican-American Warfare, he demonstrated his bravery and devotion to obligation. At Harper’s Ferry in 1859, he aptly commanded the forces that freed John Brown’s hostages and captured Brown alive. After his give up of Accomplice troops at Appomattox in 1865, Lee turned recognized for his work of reconciliation between South and North, and for his temporary however influential time period as president of Washington Faculty in Lexington, Virginia, now Washington and Lee College.
Mr. Thomas explains why Lee so usually seems as a historic enigma. He was an Evangelical Christian and a stoic, with a fervent lifelong perception within the efficacy of obligation and the observe of self-control. Not like Ulysses Grant, he left no memoirs. He was a really non-public man, circumspect in his dealings with others and cautious about sharing his innermost ideas and feelings outdoors of his household circle.
But he was additionally an attentive father who discovered pleasure within the play and dialog of his youngsters. All the time devoted to his spouse, he delighted within the firm of and correspondence with engaging younger ladies. Maybe greater than some other commander in American navy historical past, his troops got here to adore him nearly to the purpose of idolatry. Briefly, he was a person a lot admired by practically all who had contact with him.
The Conflicting Views of Others
In Washington in 1866, Lee wrote to a pal, “I am considered now such a monster that I hesitate to darken with my shadow the doors of those I love lest I should bring upon them misfortune.”
But in October of 1865, Lee had signed his identify to an Amnesty Oath, renewing his loyalty to the Structure, and dispatched it to Washington. Secretary of State William Seward gave the signed oath to a pal as a memento, and the oath solely reappeared within the nationwide archives in 1970. Consequently, in contrast to so many different Confederates who had acquired amnesty, Lee died with out ever having been pardoned or regaining his rights as a citizen.
In 1975, a joint declaration of the U.S. Congress restored Lee’s full rights of citizenship. On the official ceremony, President Gerald Ford famous, “General Lee’s character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride.”
Mr. Thomas additionally makes clear that Lee held typical Nineteenth-century views on freed slaves. On that 1866 trek to Washington, he appeared earlier than a Congressional committee to testify about enslaved individuals’s circumstances in Virginia. When requested what he considered the brand new freedmen, Lee answered, “I do not think that he is as capable of acquiring knowledge as the white man is.”
Nevertheless, as Mr. Thomas tells us, quickly after returning to Richmond, Virginia from Appomattox, Lee was at a Sunday service at St. Paul’s Episcopalian Church when the pastor, Charles Minnegerode, invited parishioners to come back ahead and obtain communion. “A tall, well-dressed black man” rose, went to the entrance of the church, and knelt on the rail, stunning the congregation. The congregation sat motionless and surprised till one other man walked down the aisle and knelt on the rail close to the black man.
This was Robert E. Lee.
Uncommon Qualitie
Of all of the figures within the American story, Robert E. Lee greatest embodies what occurs after we are too ignorant or blind to acknowledge the nuances of historical past wherein women and men in their very own time have their very own peculiar prejudices. Too many people take a chainsaw to the previous somewhat than a scalpel. After we learn Mr. Thomas’s biography, we understand that Lee was neither a saint nor a sinner. He was a person of utmost self-discipline who was truthful and merciful in his relationships and who judged himself way more harshly than he did others.
In a 1960 speech, Dwight Eisenhower talked about that he saved an image of Robert E. Lee in his workplace. A New York dentist, Leon Scott, wrote to ask the president why he emulated a person who devoted “his best efforts to the destruction of the United States Government.”
Eisenhower took time from his busy schedule to reply with a private letter. He identified to Dr. Scott that the query of succession was very a lot in play within the first half of the Nineteenth century, that Lee believed within the “Constitutional validity” of his trigger, and that he was a powerful chief who “remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God.” Eisenhower concluded, “Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.”
Or as Mr. Thomas writes, “Lee was a great person, not so much because of what he did (although his accomplishments were extraordinary); he was great because of the way he lived, because of what he was.”
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