![]() Who wrote battle cry of freedom code#Lee’s code of gentlemanly conduct did not seem to apply to blacks. (A more moderate Southerner, John Bell, carried Virginia that year.) Breckinridge, the extreme pro-slavery candidate. Meanwhile, the greatest danger to the “liberty” of white Southerners was the “evil course” pursued by the abolitionists, who stirred up sectional hatred. The end of slavery would come in God’s good time, but this might take quite a while, since to God a thousand years was just a moment. He felt that the “painful discipline” to which they were subjected benefited blacks by elevating them from barbarism to civilization and introducing them to Christianity. Here he described slavery as an evil, but one that had more deleterious effects on whites than blacks. His most extended comment, quoted by all biographers, came in a letter to his wife in 1856. Lee said almost nothing in public about the institution. He considered himself a paternalistic master but could also impose severe punishments, especially on those who attempted to run away. During his lifetime, Lee owned a small number of slaves. He died in 1870, at the height of Reconstruction, when biracial governments had come to power throughout the South.īut, of course, what interests people who debate Lee today is his connection with slavery and his views about race. At Appomattox he urged his soldiers to accept the war’s outcome and return to their homes, rejecting talk of carrying on the struggle in guerrilla fashion. Grant and was forced to surrender his army in April 1865. Eventually, he met his match in Ulysses S. He won military renown for defeating (until Gettysburg) a succession of larger Union forces. While opposed to disunion, when the Civil War broke out and Virginia seceded, Lee went with his state. He managed to graduate from West Point with no disciplinary demerits, an almost impossible feat considering the complex maze of rules that governed the conduct of cadets. Lee always prided himself on following the strict moral code of a gentleman. The ups and downs of his reputation reflect changes in key elements of Americans’ historical consciousness - how we understand race relations, the causes and consequences of the Civil War and the nature of the good society.īorn in 1807, Lee was a product of the Virginia gentry - his father a Revolutionary War hero and governor of the state, his wife the daughter of George Washington’s adopted son. But Lee has always occupied a unique place in the national imagination. Lee as “the very best.” It is difficult to think of another song that mentions a general by name. In the Band’s popular song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” an ex-Confederate soldier refers to Robert E. ![]()
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