So I'll mention today why Robert E. Lee is particularly important in the neo-Confederate pseudohistory. It's because he became the favorite symbol of the Confederacy for unreconstructed white Southerners after the war, more so than Jefferson Davis, who was kind of a stiff and was never all that terribly popular anyway. Lee's image was invested with a myth of Southern benevolence, extending even to the false claim that he had been a prewar opponent of slavery.
Alan Nolan in "The Anatomy of the Myth" in The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (2000), writes of Lee:
The [Lost Cause] legend's image of Lee is at odds with the facts. He was not anti-slavery as the image claims; he was a strong believer in the institution. His secession, following Virginia, was not inevitable, but a calculated act of will in highly ambiguous circumstances. His aggressive, offensive generalship cost his army disporportionate, irreplaceable, and excessive casualties, which led to his being caught in a fatal siege. Contrary to the legend of his magnanimity, he was hateful and bitter toward the North during and after the war. His persistence in continuing the war after he realized the South was defeated was costly in the lives of his men as well as the Yankees and not necessarily a creditable act. In the postwar, peiod, he was less of a healer than he was a conventional advocate of Southern positions.I'll also emphasize here that I'm posting this stuff because I actually am interested in the history of the Civil War and what it means for American democracy. The neo-Confederate crowd isn't. They're pushing a pseudohistorical version of the past to promote a racist and anti-democratic program in the present. The only past they're interested in "honoring" is that of Southern segregation still in living memory of so many of us.
Tags: american civil war, confederate heritage month 2004, lost cause, robert e lee
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