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I feel like this is a "tell me you haven't actually read any contemporary accounts of the civil war" type moments. I know liberal the liberal tendency is to dismiss or at least deemphasize the role of personal virtue in favor of other factors, but in their memoirs both Sherman and Grant make a point to praise Lee for "leading from the front" and being unusually honest, considerate, and humble for a man in position of high command. Then there are all the (likely apocryphal) stories about his time as a college professor and post-war travels. Finally, there is the simple fact that in the closing weeks of the war and it's immediate aftermath he was one of the more vocal advocates for peace and not turning to insurgency amongst the Southern leadership.
Long story short, I find it notable that both while the war was being fought and for over a century after it's conclusion there doesn't seem to have been anyone on either side who had a negative word to say about the man. Meanwhile from where I am sitting, the demonization of Robert E Lee as the Arch-Traitor and Defender of Slavery (along with the wider confederate statue controversy) seems to have come out of nowhere in the early 00s. Does anything about the timing there strike you as just a tad convenient?
Let's lay our cards on the table.
Do you know how I can tell that you are lying when you claim that there's "Nothing personal about it"?
Because just a few sentences earlier you said " Lee is just too removed to merit personal hostility."
You and I both know that this is about is people like you wanting to express their antipathy for people like me. How can it be anything other than personal?
I was objecting to “Lee was such a perfect personification of the Southern patriarchal ideal of gentlemanliness that he invites leftist hostility like no other figure in US history.” That would require leftists to know enough about the man to form an opinion on his personal conduct. I think this is unlikely, and disdain for the man is driven more by his allegiance than the other way around.
You’re correct about my unfamiliarity with Civil War primary sources. I’m sure Lee was very articulate; elsewhere in tbis thread, his letters come across quite well. It’s not his gentlemanly credentials to which I object. No, I find it unlikely that “leftists” take offense at his personal charms more than his affiliation. If I—someone who grew up in the South, is actually interested in military history, and generally retains more Civil War trivia than was required for school—if I couldn’t think of a sage anecdote to show Lee’s personality, why should I expect the same from a random protestor?
Lee “inviting hostility” by being too cool and gentlemanly, or by “cutting too close to the bone,” is wishful thinking of the same sort which brings us “they hated us because of our freedom.” Cute, but not realistic.
Sometimes the simplest answer is the best. Slavery bad, therefore Confederacy bad, therefore dead Confederates bad, therefore statue must go. Or, as you suggest: outgroup bad, therefore people they admire bad, therefore statue must go. Yes, I would say that the latter approaches a personal enmity for you and yours, and I think that’s terrible. But I support protestors’ right to remove the statue on the former grounds. I will defend them against accusations that they are merely seething at men they couldn’t recognize on the street. There’s nothing personal about that.
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Imo he clearly meant “nothing personal” to mean nothing personal against Lee. It’s the ideology/Confederacy that he represents (and/or is claimed to represent) that attracts progressive’s ire.
Whether Stalin was an honorable gentleman isn’t too relevant when discussing his statues.
Yes, but Lee is "people like [us]", and as a stand-in, the one being retconned into an Arch-Traitor and Defender of Slavery.
The loogie in the face of southern identity is being hurled at a statue for plausible deniability - the desire is actually for the phlegm to land on anyone who doesn't lay down in front of a giant shit test about the civil war.
That's a Bingo
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