My past understanding of Grant and Lee was shaped through some passing bits where Grant was portrayed as an alcoholic and one of the worst US presidents, while Lee was some dignified general. My history teachers did not go particularly deep into the characters in the history, so it wasn't like there was much taught. It wasn't until more recently when listening to WaPo's Presidential podcast series that a story from Grant's memoirs (considered to be one of the best presidential memoirs) was related in the podcast that showed from Grant's perspective what a dick Lee actually was.
At the Battle of Cold Harbor, there came a point in their fight where Grant wanted to let both sides go out and collect their wounded or dead, so he wrote a letter to Lee basically saying it might be a good idea during the times we're not shooting at each other to send some dudes out to pick up the wounded soldiers, and make sure these guys aren't shot at. Lee writes back a letter saying he's suspicious, so it would be better that when this thing happens that people hold the flag of truce. Grant says sure, he'll even throw in a specific time period to do it, and the specific area range in which his people would be picking up the wounded, so there would be minimal confusion among soldiers.
Lee sends back a letter saying that's not the way he wants it done. Grant just agrees to do it the way Lee wants. With the fussing from Lee about how he wanted it done, these letters wasted 48 hours and almost all of the wounded on the field died. These were not only Union soldiers; there were also Confederate soldiers that died because their general was picky.
In my opinion, that sort of general is really just garbage.
The Atlantic posted an article today detailing Lee's other failings as a human being. I knew very little about Lee and this was an enlightening brief historical lesson.
At the Battle of Cold Harbor, there came a point in their fight where Grant wanted to let both sides go out and collect their wounded or dead, so he wrote a letter to Lee basically saying it might be a good idea during the times we're not shooting at each other to send some dudes out to pick up the wounded soldiers, and make sure these guys aren't shot at. Lee writes back a letter saying he's suspicious, so it would be better that when this thing happens that people hold the flag of truce. Grant says sure, he'll even throw in a specific time period to do it, and the specific area range in which his people would be picking up the wounded, so there would be minimal confusion among soldiers.
Lee sends back a letter saying that's not the way he wants it done. Grant just agrees to do it the way Lee wants. With the fussing from Lee about how he wanted it done, these letters wasted 48 hours and almost all of the wounded on the field died. These were not only Union soldiers; there were also Confederate soldiers that died because their general was picky.
In my opinion, that sort of general is really just garbage.
The Atlantic posted an article today detailing Lee's other failings as a human being. I knew very little about Lee and this was an enlightening brief historical lesson.
Lee was a slaveownerhis own views on slavery were explicated in an 1856 letter that it often misquoted to give the impression that Lee was some kind of an abolitionist. In the letter, he describes slavery as a moral & political evil, but goes on to explain that:
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. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.The argument here is that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most importantly, it is better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention. 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.
Lees cruelty as a slavemaster was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading The Man, historian Elizabeth Brown Pryors portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families, by hiring them off to other plantations, and that by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days. The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lees slaves regarded him as the worst man I ever see.
As the historian James McPherson recounts in Battle Cry of Freedom, in October of that same year, Lee proposed an exchange of prisoners with Union general Ulysses S. Grant. Grant agreed, on condition that blacks be exchanged the same as white soldiers. Lees response was that negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition. Because slavery was the cause for which Lee fought, he could hardly be expected to easily concede, even at the cost of the freedom of his own men, that blacks could be treated as soldiers and not things. Grant refused the offer, telling Lee that Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers. Despite its desperate need for soldiers, the Confederacy did not relent from this position until a few months before Lees surrender.
More at the link.There are former Confederates who sought redeem themselvesone thinks of James Longstreet, wrongly blamed by Lost Causers for Lees disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, who went from fighting the Union army to leading New Orleans integrated police force in battle against white supremacist paramilitaries. But there are no statues of Longstreet in New Orleans; there are no statues of Longstreet anywhere in the American South. Lee was devoted to defending the principle of white supremacy; Longstreet was not. This, perhaps, is why Lee was placed atop the largest Confederate monument at Gettysburg in 1917, but the 62 Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue hidden in the woods that makes him look like a hobbit riding a donkey. Its why Lee is remembered as a hero, and Longstreet is remembered as a disgrace.