who wrote the southern battle cry of freedom

Lee’s cruelty as a slave master was not confined to physical punishment. That black people might not want to be slaves does not enter into the equation their opinion on the subject of their own bondage is not even an afterthought to Lee. The argument here is that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most important, better than abolitionism emancipation must wait for divine intervention. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. In the letter, he describes slavery as “a moral & political evil,” but goes on to explain that: Lee was a slave owner-his own views on slavery were explicated in an 1856 letter that is often misquoted to give the impression that Lee was some kind of abolitionist. White supremacy does not “violate” Lee’s “most fundamental convictions.” White supremacy was one of Lee’s most fundamental convictions. This is too divorced from Lee’s actual life to even be classed as fan fiction it is simply historical illiteracy. David Cox wrote that “for white supremacist protesters to invoke his name violates Lee’s most fundamental convictions.” In the conservative publication Townhall, Jack Kerwick concluded that Lee was “among the finest human beings that has ever walked the Earth.” John Daniel Davidson, in an essay for The Federalist, opposed the removal of the Lee statute in part on the grounds that Lee “arguably did more than anyone to unite the country after the war and bind up its wounds.” Praise for Lee of this sort has flowed forth from past historians and presidents alike. Then there are those whose reverence for Lee relies on replacing the actual Lee with a mythical figure who never truly existed. There are unwitting victims of this campaign-those who lack the knowledge to separate history from sentiment. That ideology is known as the Lost Cause, and as the historian David Blight writes, it provided a “foundation on which Southerners built the Jim Crow system.” Lee’s elevation is a key part of a 150-year-old propaganda campaign designed to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate cause as a noble one. But despite his ability to win individual battles, his decision to fight a conventional war against the more densely populated and industrialized North is considered by many historians to have been a fatal strategic error.īut even if one conceded Lee’s military prowess, he would still be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in defense of the South’s authority to own millions of human beings as property because they are black. Lee was a devout Christian, and historians regard him as an accomplished tactician.

The myth of Lee goes something like this: He was a brilliant strategist and devoted Christian man who abhorred slavery and labored tirelessly after the war to bring the country back together. This year, the removal of Lee’s statue in New Orleans has inspired a new round of commentary about Lee, not to mention protests on his behalf by white supremacists. That’s understandable it was created to mourn the dead of a war in which the Union was nearly destroyed, when half the country rose up in rebellion in defense of slavery. Memorial Day has the tendency to conjure up old arguments about the Civil War. Lee is how few of the qualities his admirers profess to see in him he actually possessed. The strangest part about the continued personality cult of Robert E.

Who wrote the southern battle cry of freedom