Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee

Because of all that has transpired in Charlottesville over a monument to Robert E. Lee, it might behoove us to know a little bit about the man who was so much more than a Confederate general during the Civil War.

Robert E. Lee by Martin Liolle

“There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil,” Lee wrote back in 1856, in a letter written in response to a speech given by then-President Franklin Pierce.

Lee’s views on race may not be ones we entertain today, but few if any Americans — even those that we rightly hail as heroes of the emancipation — held opinions we consider appropriate on the matter.

As for why he fought for the South, Lee simply believed the United States was, as Rasley says, “an association of sovereign states that could, if they chose, leave it or dissolve it.” After all, as the Declaration of Independence notes, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Lee believed his state — and the rest of the South — was simply following the tenets of one of our founding documents.

However, Rasley argues that “it isn’t what Lee did before and during the Civil War that makes him such an important figure in American history — and one that should be honored — it is what he did after the Civil War that earned him the memorials erected to his memory and a place in history that should be honored by all.”

“When Lee surrendered at Appomattox he also signed a parole document swearing upon his honor not to bear arms against the United States or to ‘tender aid to its enemies.’ Lee’s surrender and his immediate parole were essential in preventing the Civil War from continuing as a destructive guerrilla war that would have continued to rend the country indefinitely.”

Lee spent his retirement as the president of Washington College in Virginia (which would be renamed as Washington & Lee) and would urge reconciliation between the North and the South. In his public letters, he urged “all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace.”

Does this sound like the kind of man who would urge belligerent white nationalists to violence over a statue of him? Does this sound like the kind of man who would tolerate those who would give succor to the enemies of the United States in the reprehensible, intimidatory way that the vomitous cretins who held aloft the flag of Nazi Germany in Charlottesville this past Saturday did? Does this sound like a man who would support domestic terrorism?

No. You may not agree with the decisions that Robert E. Lee made or the views that he held, but let us remember that he spent the rest of his life atoning for the war and his views weren’t just his own but those of his era. He was a man who was opposed to slavery and wanted to bind the wounds that the war caused.

The liberal media wants to make Lee the avatar of the abominable rabble that descended upon Charlottesville and left three people dead in its wake. What they hope America never hears is who he really was.

Yes, some racists and bigots are in favor of keeping Confederate monuments. Nobody is denying that. We believe they are in the minority. The vast majority of people who want to want to keep these statues wish to honor our history and the men who played a part in it. Let us all turn away from the despicable ideologies we saw on display in Virginia this weekend — but let us also not let the media pretend that those ideologies are what the debate over Confederate monuments is about.