Lee v. Washington (v. Lee)

One of the recent arguments in defense of the preservation of Confederate war monuments is the laughable claim that there is no difference between Robert E. Lee and George Washington.  One of the people doing this is Donald Trump’s lawyer, who has taken time away from defending his client against unrelated allegations to make this argument.  It is an act that is indicative of the fact that Donald Trump is not merely accidentally defending white nationalism, and also the lengths to which Trump and his team will go to distract from his Russian problem.

But why is the comparison so pathetically misguided?  The argument amounts to saying that both men were slave owners who led rebellions against their former nations of allegiance.  This is true so far as it goes, but its omissions render it disingenuous at best.

First, Washington is and was not a traitor to this nation.  He did not betray the United States.  He helped found it.  Britain can rightfully consider him a traitor to them, but he is no traitor to the United States of America.  Additionally, he remains the only sitting president to lead the army into battle when he led troops to put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

Lee did betray the United States.  He led an armed rebellion against the United States.  Even if the Union had lost, Lee would still have been a traitor to the United States even as he would have been a Confederate Washington.  So, this isn’t merely a case of history being written by the victors.

Second, while the causes for the American Revolution and the American Civil War are complicated, their motivations are less so.  The American Revolution was largely motivated by the colonies / states not being represented in the government that presided over them.  This was an active and ongoing problem that resulted in acts, taxes and legislation aimed at enriching the British Empire at the expense of the colonies that drove it.

On the other hand, the American Civil War was motivated by the desire to protect the rights of white men to own black men.  This is the “state’s right” that the war was fought over.  The war was started because southern traitors did not like the result of a presidential election, even though the racist ⅗ compromise gave them a disproportionate vote, and even though the winner of the election indicated he did not intend to end the barbaric practice of slavery.  This means that their issue was almost entirely speculative.

They revolted because a system that was rigged in their favor was not rigged enough in their favor and did not play out exactly as they wanted.  This revolt of spoiled racists and sore losers is the rebellion that Robert E. Lee led.

Washington led a revolt of people not represented in their government.  He did not lead a rebellion of people already overrepresented in their government and were just mad because they did not get their way.

By all means, remember Gen. Lee. Remember all the men and women who fought and died for the Confederacy.  Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but we cannot learn from something that we do not remember.  There is a difference between remembering and idealizing though, and these monuments and memorials idealize people who were traitors to the United States in the name of white supremacy.  I sincerely doubt that many of these monuments, if any, provide any meaningful context for the events and people they memorialize.  Those interested in commemorating the Confederacy during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement, when a large number of these memorials were put up, were more interested in holding back the tide of racial equality.

We must learn from our remembrance and study of the American Civil War and the people who fought on both sides, and that is not what these memorials are for.  I am not aware of any memorials portray Confederate leaders as well-meaning, but flawed and tragic figures simply on the wrong side of justice and history.  While I personally find most of the leadership of the Confederacy to be motivated by more sinister intent than that, it is at least an acceptable view in that it acknowledges that they were absolutely wrong, regardless of intent.

Tempting as it may be to take the view, “Washington, good; Lee, bad,” things are rarely that simple.  I was looking for the best way to illustrate that point when I learned this week that the opposition to Confederate war memorials had a very early and surprising member: Robert E. Lee.

When approached about monuments to the Confederate war effort, Lee wrote on at least two occasions that such symbols would hold the South back and would “keep open the sores of war.”  He thought it “wiser” to “obliterate the symbols of civil strife.”

So, there we have it.  Even the man who led the military rebellion against the United States recognized that monuments to his own efforts, the efforts he risked his life and the lives of his brothers in arms, were harmful to the United States and to the South specifically.  It’s unfortunate that the people who want to defend the veneration of Gen. Lee and his fellow Confederate traitors cannot actually learn the hard lessons he specifically wanted us to learn.