Why was Lee so well loved and respected by both sides in the American Civil War?
He betrayed the Union and failed the Confederacy. I'm not diminishing the military accomplishments he did have, but I don't get why the generals fighting against him thought so well of him while the men fighting for him loved him like a grandfather.
Brit here, so please be gentle if my analysis of the ACW is off.
I saw this blurb and it inspired me to make this thread:
> After President Dwight D. Eisenhower revealed on national television that one of the four “great Americans” whose pictures hung in his office was none other than Robert E. Lee, a thoroughly perplexed New York dentist reminded him that Lee had devoted “his best efforts to the destruction of the United States government” and confessed that since he could not see “how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be emulated, why the President of the United States of America should do so is certainly beyond me.” Eisenhower replied personally and without hesitation, explaining that Lee was, “in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. . . . selfless almost to a fault . . . noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history. From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities . . . we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.”
>>939485
My understanding is that he served the Confederacy purely out of loyalty to Virginia rather than ideological affinity to the CSA, so he's seen as more of a tragic hero than a villain.
>No one put greater stock in American manhood than Theodore Roosevelt, who, with characteristic restraint, pronounced Lee “the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth” and declared that his dignified acceptance of defeat helped “build the wonderful and mighty triumph of our national life, in which all his countrymen, north and south, share.” A generation later, as readers devoured Douglas Southall Freeman’s adoring four-volume biography of Lee, another President Roosevelt would simply laud him “as one of our greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen.”
He really sounds like he was an amazing man of his era.
Can anyone recommend a book on him?
>>939485
>He betrayed the Union and failed the Confederacy
Please tell me which side invaded the other side again?
Also, the Confederacy was pretty much a lost cause to begin with. The sheer manpower and industrial power of the North almost ensured a Union win even before the war started. It's amazing that Lee not only beat the North regularly, most of the times with vastly inferior numbers and resources, but was actually at one point in a position to take Washington and possibly secure victory for the South.
Apart from this, he was a man of great integrity and magnanimity.
My favorite Lee story is pretty amazing. Basically the first Sunday after he surrendered, he went to Church. The preacher gave a huge depressing speech about the death of the South and what not Anyways, at the end of the service, as communion was about to be dispensed, a black man approached the altar. Of course everyone in the church was appalled. So Robert R. Lee went up and knelt next to the black man.
>>939485
He was the very archetype of the chivalrous Southerner. A man of high birth and well-connected in social circles, he conducted himself as a gentleman on all occasions. He extended courtesy even to his slaves, who considered him a fair master and several of whom had the privilege of being his trusted companions during a time when nouveau-riche cotton planters were coming up with every justification imaginable to deny the essential humanity of black people. He sided with the Confederacy out of loyalty to Virginia in an era when state governments actually possessed agency rather than being little more than subdivisions of an overarching entity; a time when "The United States" was referred to in the plural rather than the singular.
Lee is celebrated because of his cunning, heroism, and good conduct which set him apart from the rest of the leaders of the Confederacy who tended to be proud but incompetent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAJFzKEjojk
>>939485
he was a great military leader and was very kind and respectable to union POWs. Think of how some allies viewed Rommel, but multiply that by 10
and you have to understand that at that time in America, people were from their state before their america. He was actually asked by Lincoln to lead the union army but refused because he wouldnt go to war against his country (Virginia). Also, he was against slavery so I guess that helped his legacy to
Like Shelby Foote said
>It used to be "the united states are" but then it become "the united states is" Thats what the war did, it made us an "is"
Heres a stain glass window about his life at Westpoint. Theres also a statue of him in our congress, along with a statue of Jefferson Davis, which they placed opposite of a statue of Rosa Parks
>>940308
>Heres a stain glass window about his life at Westpoint
They should remove that and replace it with an African-American war hero.
Lost Cause mythology.
>muh proud southern noble
>muh respetable gentleman
>>940489
>mythology
>at the very time of its occurrence
lol ok
>>939521
If Virginia hadn't seceded, which it was sort of forced to via federal troops marshalling to possibly garrison it, then Lee would've stayed with the Union. His primary motivation was Virginia, not the cause of slavery itself, not even the notion of state rights.
