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Robert E. Lee wasn’t who many believe he was

To the editor: Lately Robert E. Lee has been in the news as statues of him are being taken down, and I’ve heard some people say what a shame that is because they see Robert E. Lee as a kind, religious man and a great leader. They see him as the Robert E. Lee that Martin Sheen played in the movie “Gettysburg.”

Now, I loved the movie “Gettysburg.” I saw it at the movie theater when I was a kid, and I actually own two copies of it on DVD. Robert E. Lee in that movie really was someone you might think was worthy of a monument or statue.

The problem is that the movie doesn’t show you the whole person. It shows you a wise grandpa-like figure, someone who seems kind and takes responsibility for his actions. Someone who seems religious and good, just maybe fighting on the wrong side.

While the real Robert E. Lee certainly had some good qualities, there was a lot more to him than the wise grandfather-figure. For one, he owned slaves, and he wasn’t kind to the people who were his slaves (if that is even possible). He broke up slave families and believed in beating his slaves. As Adam Serwer wrote in a recent article about General Lee, when two of his slaves escaped and were recaptured, Lee either beat them himself or ordered the overseer to “lay it on well.” Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that “not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.”

Further, while his army was in Pennsylvania for the Battle of Gettysburg, Lee’s units abducted free black Americans and enslaved them, taking them along as they went South. Then, soldiers under Lee’s command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender.

And certainly, Lee was a man of his time and they were plenty of others behaving the same way. But not everyone. Abraham Lincoln, who was born in the slave state of Kentucky, and Sarah and Angelina Grimke, who were born in a slave-owning family in South Carolina and later became abolitionists, were also of that time.

In addition, Lee committed treason. “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason” starts the U.S. Treason Code. Lee, as a Confederate general, certainly fits that description. Just because he was never actually tried for treason does not mean he didn’t commit it.

Of course, lots of Southern men committed treason during the Civil War. Not every Southern man chose to do that, however. Forty percent of Virginia’s officers in the United States military when the war started stayed and fought for the Union, including Union General George Thomas, who was a Virginian from a slave-owning family.

Taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee isn’t erasing history. The Civil War is still taught in history class, and there are plenty of Civil War museums and battlefields across the country.

Instead, it makes room for statues of more deserving Americans, Americans who better represent American ideals of patriotism, equality and heroism. While he might have had some good qualities, Lee made a lot of bad decisions, and there are plenty of Americans who are more deserving of a statue than Robert E. Lee.

Elizabeth S. Book

Port Royal

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