Keep the portraits up and either drape them over with black cloth or turn them to face the wall.
Now everyone’s happy.
Hey, you won’t catch me arguing that we should be celebrating that black mark in our history either.
How about if they put up memorials to the Confederate Generals, but don’t actually name them? Sort of memorials to people we don’t want to actually remember?
They did this with Benedict Arnold. Although he’s remembered chiefly as a traitor*, he was an able commander, popular with his troops and with Washington. If he’d been killed at the battle of Saratoga, he might be revered today. But bitter, and thinking himself ill-used (and also having a penchant for high living, and a high maintenance wife), he contrived to betray West Point. He escaped just ahead of arrest, then joined the other side and lead raids against Virginia and Connecticut, burning New London.
Nevertheless, there’s a monument to his injured foot at Saratoga battlefield, which manages to not actually name him:
*As a Footnote (Ha!), I’ll add that Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna lost a leg in battle defending Mexico against France at the Battle of Vera Cruz. He had his own leg buried with honors. Later on, when the Mexicans got fed up with him, they disinterred the leg and got rid of it. So even a leg lost honorably in battle might get thrown out if a general’s subsequent actions bring him out of favor.
Robert E. Lee was a man of great character, and maybe the best general this country has ever had. It is unfortunate that he fought for the south, he was viewed with great respect by most everyone on both sides of the conflict.
It’s easy to have a myopic view when looking at history, obviously he chose the wrong side, but for those who have studied his role in history, his portrait certainly belongs. The only argument that makes sense to me to take it down is that we are as a country pretty ignorant of history and it may make more sense to take down a symbol that has negative connotations for many as that is much easier than fighting ignorance.
If an American Nazi sympathizer had switched sides during WWII and become the most decorated German commander, would you call for his portrait to be hung in the war college?
Anytime you use modern paradigms rather than trying to understand history from the point of view of the people who lived it you risk misunderstanding what actually happened.
Very few people know the second half of the Custis Arlington Estate story. It’s often noted as being “Robert E. Lee’s home” or his estate, it was in fact where he lived prior to the war so in that sense it was his home. He did not, in fact, own it. Under common property inheritance laws at the time and as stipulated in George Washington Custis’s will, Mary Custis Lee owned the property. Robert E. Lee of course as her husband had obvious use of and could derive benefit from the property, but he couldn’t have sold it without the consent of his wife. Further, if it had never been confiscated and Mary Lee had predeceased Robert, the lands would have passed to his children–not to Lee as the widower (as a matter of fact it was confiscated and Lee died before Mary, so moot point.) Most likely as would have been typical of such arrangements, Mary Lee would have had a will that stipulated Robert could maintain use/residence of the property for his natural life but if he later married and had children neither his new spouse or children of that union would have any legal claim to the property.
So technically, while it was his home, Lee never really “owned” that land, his wife did. Anyway, Lee’s son sued the Federal government arguing the seizure was illegal. Ultimately the SCOTUS agreed and required title be given back to him. At that point it was the 1880s and it was Arlington National Cemetery, and G.W. Lee had no intention of actually physically reoccupying his land. He sold it back to the Federal government, essentially immediately, for $150,000. (A massive sum at the time, and probably far better than owning the actual land was having that much capital in that era.)
Robert himself never wanted to contest the land seizure because he didn’t want to stir up problems in the newly unified country and was concerned as to how it would look.
Probably not, but that was a different war and a different situation in a few ways:
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Loyalty to State over country was not seen as a pernicious wrong in the mid-19th century. Most of the people who founded the United States felt greater loyalty to their own State than their country. The thirteen colonies were thirteen colonies subordinate to the crown. They were not a unified body until the AoC was signed and then only barely. It’s not like the year 1940 when the Civil War had already happened. Lee had genuine dual responsibilities. In the modern era I could never defend someone who would favor his loyalty to his State over his country as the States should be viewed as sovereign parts of the country and not their own separate polities.
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“During” WWII is key too. Lee did not switch sides after having fought for the Union at the beginning of the conflict. Lee remained neutral until Virginia seceded, then he decided to enter on that side of the conflict. To me that would be a lot different from a Benedict Arnold situation where you had actually lead troops on one side of the conflict and then you sell out to join the other side.
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Nazi-sympathy is loyalty to an unequivocally evil ideology. Slavery and slaveocracy were true evils, but as I said upthread while the Civil War was started by the slave power to defend slavery, you cannot imprint on every participant of the war motives based on that. As in all wars individual participants have a wide range of motives. On the Union side you certainly had soldiers fighting for emancipation/abolition, national unity, in revenge for perceived Southern wrongs, loyalty to State and country, and certainly some just interested in the potential economic prospects of warring. Likewise on the Confederate side there were many reasons individuals signed up. Since Lee is the most famous Confederate military officer and we know much of his personal opinions as part of the historical record we know he was not motivated by a desire to defend slavery. That puts him a different category than someone wanting to work to spread Nazism out of ideological loyalty to the Nazi cause.
A more apt comparison to Lee than your hypothetical, would be a man who say, was born and raised for a time in America but born to German parents. But then he later moves to Germany and lives, and when war breaks out he decides that while he is both a German and an American citizen he feels greater loyalty to Germany and goes on to be a great general. I can get behind some portrait hanging of that guy, sure.
It’s not a realistic scenario given the mechanics of becoming a General in that era, though.
Your post highlights a split in this issue - that between understanding history and honoring historical figures.
In this case, nobody is arguing for erasing Lee from the history books. We should definitely learn about him. But we don’t have to honor him in the process.
And imagine what he would have to do to reoccupy the land - either live with a huge cemetery full of war dead in his yard to remind him of his father’s role in the war (put there precisely for that purpose), or somehow dig them up and relocate them.
My forbears are Southern on both sides. Mom’s ancestors are kin to Lee’s family. What does that make me? “It is well that war is so terrible–we should grow too fond of it.” --Lee
Well I am going to let President Ford weigh in
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Capt
Well the thing is that just seems to be the straw man version of the Confederacy created by the victors. From the point of view of the rebels, I don’t think the American Civil War was fought over slavery any more than the American War of Independence was fought over tea.
And that point of view would be wrong, just as it was then.
Traitors and losers, the lot of them.
So the guy who only declines an offer to lead the Union Armies only when he knows that he has to invade his home State,
Goes through the process, during the war, of Manumission and frees all of his recently inherited slaves,
Educates those same slaves, which is against Virginia law,
Refuses to conduct guerrilla warfare when ordered to by Jeff Davis,
Repeatedly reminds his fellow combatants that they are back in the Union and urges them to act as such after the War,
Brings Northern students to Washington College(Washington and Lee University) to foster harmony,
Vocally advocates for the education of Black Americans(though sadly not the right to vote, yet),
That Man is worth of our praise and adoration, he helped heal a Nation broken by Civil War, was a brilliant tactician and an honest a forthright Gentleman.
Bless you Robert E. Lee, may you rest in peace, your Nation thanks you (not the cause you fought for)
We have a statue in the Capitol of you BTW
Capt
Well said. I tried to make that point earlier, but you said it better.
I gotta go with this, 'cept I’m in Colorado and grew up in Nebraska.
Wow, that’s an extraoridniary claim and one I’m sure you can support with cites. Someone needs to go back in time and tell the Confederacy that they didn’t secede over slavery, because they totally said that was the reason:
Going to original sources, there’s CSA VP Alexander Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech”:
The notion that the war was *not *about preserving slavery is one of the several rationalizations embraced by those who wish to admire those who fought for it, for whatever reason they may have. But it was.
Except, of course, that Lincoln said it was not.
Was he lying?