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West Point memorialized Lee in reaction to the integration of African Americans and the move toward equal rights.
The military has trumpeted its role in bringing racial equality to America, but the history is far more complex and less flattering.
Should we judge West Point graduates only on their ability to lead soldiers to victory?47 Then Robert E. Lee would join William Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams, commanders in Vietnam, as the only West Point graduates to lead their soldiers to unqualified defeat.
In 1970, why would the United States Military Academy name a barrack after either a U.S. Army colonel or an enemy general who resigned his commission to fight against his country?
The naming of Lee Barracks occurred less than a year after the largest class of African American cadets entered the academy.
I keep finding Confederate memorialization whenever West Point increases integration.
The cadets provided a strong argument that breaking the oath, treason, was the Confederates’ worst sin.
Going into Maryland for the Antietam campaign, Lee thought the people would rise up to meet him as liberators.
Lee’s strategy failed primarily because U.S. strategy and leadership were even better. The U.S. cause was also better.
No other enemy officer in American history was responsible for the deaths of more U.S. Army soldiers than Robert E. Lee.
As a long-serving army officer and as a historian, can I hold Lee to task for resigning his commission and fighting to destroy the United States? Yes!
Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the army, gave Lee more than two years of administrative leave at full pay to sort out his father-in-law’s estate. Lee’s paid leave was more than twice as long as that of any other officer during the entire antebellum period.
Lee believed abolitionists created problems by enticing slaves to rebel, forcing action by slaveholders.
The more I read about Confederate policy toward emancipated African Americans, the more the true nature of the southern states’ war becomes apparent.
Lately, I’ve been reading one of the best chroniclers of the Civil War and its meaning, Frederick Douglass.
By 1865, the U.S. Army was the best-led, hardest-fighting, best-provisioned, and most strategically and tactically proficient combat force on the globe. The United States won because they were better.
Lee’s decision to fight against the United States was not just wrong; it was treasonous. Even worse, he committed treason to perpetuate slavery.
the history of Confederate monuments represents a racist legacy all people should abhor.
To create a more just society, we must start by studying our past. If we want to know where to go, we must know where we’ve been.
I have a convert’s zeal. I know it. Sometimes my passion can verge on righteousness, but the facts don’t care about feelings.
I grew up with a series of lies that helped further white supremacy. That’s uncomfortable.
We are finally taking into account the millions of African Americans who lived enslaved, realizing that their lives were every bit as important as the white planter class.
Virginia passed a bill in 2020 changing the state law that prevented local communities from modifying Confederate monuments.
As David Blight has written, “As long as America has a politics of race, it will have a politics of civil war memory.”
The Confederate States of America and those who fought for it refused to accept the results of a democratic election in 1860.
In so many ways, I’m proud of my country, even though we still have far to go. I believe we will do better in the future, but we must never, ever forget the past.
The reaction of the overwhelmingly white audience to my speech criticizing Lee? For calling Lee a traitor for slavery in the Shrine of the South? For telling my school to do more, now? A standing ovation.
The only way to prevent a racist future is to first understand our racist past.
