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Speaker 1: Also media. What's inheriting wealth my southern landed gentry. I

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Speaker 1: don't know.

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Speaker 2: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: That's not a great not a great intro. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: Harry prop welcome back. How are we feeling.

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Speaker 2: Feeling good man? Third cup of coffee. We're back in

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Speaker 2: the game.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, ready to ride.

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Speaker 2: Got some banana chips?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, a little plantain that'll make everybody forget my dog

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Speaker 1: shit introduction for this. Speaking of dog shit, you know

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Speaker 1: what college is? Dog shit? Prop?

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Speaker 2: Well, college is dogshit.

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Speaker 1: West Point Man just a whole pile of better kaka.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, I don't know much about

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Speaker 1: the actual objective.

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Speaker 2: I'm sure. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: The only thing I know about West Point is like

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Speaker 3: what's in the movies? Yes, yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Army College. It's a you know, it's important to note

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Speaker 1: like the reputation it has today is largely formed by

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Speaker 1: they call it the class the Stars fell on. It

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Speaker 1: was the west Point graduating class that had like Patent

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Speaker 1: and Omar Bradley and I think Eisenhower, like all these

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Speaker 1: guys who are like real big world dub dub dose

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Speaker 1: fell us like we're in the same class.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those things where like West Point today

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Speaker 1: it's the place where the US military trains, it's most promising,

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Speaker 1: or if you talk to enlisted men, it's most frustrating officers.

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Speaker 1: Right in the early eighteen hundreds, when young Bobby Lee

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Speaker 1: became a cadet, West Point was a lot smaller, and like,

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Speaker 1: the country's not very old, so it doesn't have a

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Speaker 1: huge proud history, and it is extremely focused on one

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Speaker 1: narrow sort of education engineering. Right, it is probably the

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Speaker 1: best engineering school in the country. So when you think

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Speaker 1: about West Point of Robert E. Lee's day, it's closer

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Speaker 1: to Mit than the way we think about West Point now, right,

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Speaker 1: And this makes a lot of sense if you understand

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century warfare today, a huge amount of modern warfighting

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Speaker 1: is like small unit tactics, right, Infantry clears buildings and

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Speaker 1: like engages in firefights. Does all this stuff because with

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Speaker 1: modern equipment and weaponry all the different the wide variety,

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Speaker 1: everything from drones and rocket launchers to like standard small arms,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot for small units to do, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of shit revolves around that. So that's going to

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Speaker 1: be a significant amount of training for any army officer

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Speaker 1: back in this day, especially when Lee's in it, it's

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Speaker 1: pretty much all smooth bores, right, So it's these muskets

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Speaker 1: that they only really are very effective when you have

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Speaker 1: a bunch of people all like marching and firing in unison.

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Speaker 1: So there's not a lot for you to teach someone about,

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Speaker 1: like other than how to reload quickly, about like how

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Speaker 1: to be a trooper in a formation beyond like marching

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Speaker 1: and stuff.

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Speaker 2: So do you want to want to be that way?

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Speaker 2: Gone that way? Yeah, if you're.

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Speaker 1: Teaching people to be an officer, though, you want to

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Speaker 1: teach them a lot about engineering and mathematics, about like

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Speaker 1: the way in which things move, about physics. You want

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Speaker 1: to be so that they can both know how artillery

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Speaker 1: would work, where to position them, how to fire them,

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Speaker 1: how to how to wield these blocks of men and

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Speaker 1: have them like fire in ways that's going to be effective.

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Speaker 1: Like that's all engineering is kind of the US makes

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Speaker 1: this decision pretty early on that like engineering is what's

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Speaker 1: going to make our officers effective. And this is actually

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Speaker 1: historically a good bet. You know, people the Roman Empire,

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Speaker 1: people talk a lot about, you know, every aspect but

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Speaker 1: this but like the reason the Rome became an empire

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Speaker 1: was not because its soldiers were like great individual fighters.

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Speaker 1: It's because every soldier in the Roman legions was a

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Speaker 1: combat engineer, and like, that's fucking useful. You know, they

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Speaker 1: made roads and bridges. Like the scrubway to fight a

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Speaker 1: war is stabbing another dude. The smart way to fight

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Speaker 1: a war is building a wall around him and starving

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Speaker 1: him to death. Yeah, a dude.

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Speaker 3: That a dude that gets to like a lake or

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Speaker 3: river and thinks, man, how are we going to get

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Speaker 3: across that?

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Speaker 2: And then dude, it's like, we're gonna build a bridge,

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Speaker 2: all right.

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Speaker 1: And build a fucking bridge across.

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Speaker 3: So you just build a bridge, Like, yeah, not just

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Speaker 3: knocking down a tree and walking over the plane.

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Speaker 2: No, We're going to build a bridge.

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Speaker 1: And the US at this point is an infant empire

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Speaker 1: and it sees itself very much cut in the image

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Speaker 1: of the old Roman Republic, which is another reason why

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Speaker 1: all of these guys are engineers. Right, So yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: that's gonna be the shit that like Lee does. He's

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Speaker 1: going to Army Nerds school and he does really well there.

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Speaker 1: He's a great student. He's not the best in his class,

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Speaker 1: but he's very close to it. He's also the most

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Speaker 1: boring boy in the whole school. He didn't drink, he

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Speaker 1: didn't gamble, he didn't like have fun. He graduates second

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Speaker 1: from his class, and he's one of only six students

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Speaker 1: in his graduating class that never receives a demerit. He

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Speaker 1: gets the nickname the marble Model as a resistance perfe Zach.

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Speaker 1: He gets an attendance award and he gets called marble

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Speaker 1: model a lot. And what they're saying there is that

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Speaker 1: like this is both like, yeah, it's kind of he's

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Speaker 1: kind of like exhausting and boring, but also like he

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Speaker 1: is a good soldier. He's a reliable guy. So like

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Speaker 1: people find him like make fun of him a little bit,

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Speaker 1: but he also is generally liked because you can you

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Speaker 1: can trust Lee to do his job.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, he's he's he's a he's definitely a hall monitor.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, we were stuck outside. You want him with

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Speaker 3: him because Nigga can follow directions and.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and he's he's competent. He knows like how

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Speaker 1: to do shit right. Yeah. The mother of one of

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Speaker 1: his peers found herself surprised that after meeting him, he

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Speaker 1: was very human, is what she describes, So that should

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Speaker 1: give you some insight into how his classmates wrote home

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Speaker 1: about him to their family. Fun Yeah, that I don't

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Speaker 1: think he would breathe.

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Speaker 2: Oh gosh, how much shade is it when your the homies.

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Speaker 3: Mama like is like, oh no, I thought he's a

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Speaker 3: little Weirdough it turns out like you're regular kid.

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Speaker 1: Hey, he's a nice enough guy. I didn't expect that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, your mom.

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Speaker 1: Later in life, one friend of the Lee family would

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Speaker 1: state that she knew Robert's brother Smith Lee. Well, but

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Speaker 1: she writes quote and anybody say they know his brother,

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Speaker 1: I doubt it. He looks so cold and quiet and grand,

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Speaker 1: And that's very common from people talking about Bobby Lee.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: He is perfectly polite. He has impeccable manners. He is

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Speaker 1: the studious embodiment of Southern gentility, and he plays his

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Speaker 1: emotions so close to the chest that nobody people don't

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Speaker 1: really everyone's kind of confused, is like, is he just

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Speaker 1: hiding his true self for polar tests or is there

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Speaker 1: nothing inside of him? Really?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: Right, Like, I know I know some street dudes like that,

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Speaker 3: Like I have a friend who even his closest friends

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Speaker 3: like we've sat down, like at a bar or something

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Speaker 3: and been like, yeah, I don't actually know him, and

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Speaker 3: they're like we've we met in middle school and they're like,

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Speaker 3: I honestly are I'm like, I'm not sure I know him. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: like just they just keep Yeah, they play their cards close.

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Speaker 1: You know, this man twenty years and I can't say

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Speaker 1: anything but that he's always on time. Yes, Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: that's kind of how people talk about Robert E.

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Speaker 2: Lee now.

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Speaker 1: They also very frequently will call him hot. He is

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Speaker 1: repeatedly described as fine as looking. One family friend called

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Speaker 1: him on the whole, the handsomest young man I ever saw.

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Speaker 3: He probably like you know, he ain't he like like

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Speaker 3: road warn because he don't drink.

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Speaker 2: So he probably got that skin. You know what I'm saying.

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Speaker 2: He's not doing drugs or ain't got no wrinkles. You

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Speaker 2: feel me. He had all his stress when he was

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Speaker 2: a child. Yeah, like I'm done with his stress.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the only man in the eighteen hundreds who

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Speaker 1: ages like someone from the twenty first century. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: is noted that, like he doesn't go gray until the

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Speaker 1: Civil War.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, now he got some stress.

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Speaker 1: Now he's got some stress. Yeah. So when you read

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Speaker 1: through different bits of the multiple books about Lee. As

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Speaker 1: I have, you encounter repeatedly people talking about how hot

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Speaker 1: he wasn't it. It's sort of like how Kissinger's a

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Speaker 1: sex symbol, and that's well known at the time, but

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Speaker 1: then in modern days because he's like this old goblin

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Speaker 1: of a man, like you don't really real it's surprising

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Speaker 1: when you read it. And this paragraph from Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: summarizes the phenomenon of hot Lee well. His hair was

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Speaker 1: eban and abundant, as his doting biography Douglas Freeman puts it,

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Speaker 1: with a wave that a woman might have envied, a

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Speaker 1: robust black mustache, a strong full mouth and chin unobscured

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Speaker 1: by any beard, and dark mercurial brows. He was not

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Speaker 1: one to hide his looks under a bushel. His heart,

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Speaker 1: on the other hand, the heart he kept locked away,

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Speaker 1: as Stephen Vincent Binet proclaimed in John Brown's Body, from

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Speaker 1: all the picklocks of biographers, such a horny way to

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Speaker 1: describe this.

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Speaker 2: He was just so hot, mysterious. He was so mysterious,

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Speaker 2: you know, you don't know what's going.

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Speaker 1: On, putting it on a little straw.

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Speaker 3: And a boy, and a boy got a baby face

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Speaker 3: like zid wouldn't hidden by a beard, and that helps,

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Speaker 3: you know, I'm saying, why you're looking around. Everybody else

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Speaker 3: looked like a silver backed gorillas, you know. Yeah, here

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Speaker 3: yet here with a baby face, you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So when he he finally does Mary, and he

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Speaker 1: does like flirt or pursue anybody, at least not on record,

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Speaker 1: he is very chaste. He marries right after graduation, a

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Speaker 1: woman named Mary Custis. They had been sweetheart not even sweethearts,

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Speaker 1: but they had known each other basically their whole lives

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Speaker 1: since childhood. I don't know if he was really in

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Speaker 1: love with her the whole time, or if it was

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Speaker 1: more that he was in love with her family legacy,

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Speaker 1: because she is the great granddaughter of Martha Washington, so

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Speaker 1: she's descended from or related to, George Washington. Right and

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Speaker 1: Lee again, George Washington is like the guy he idealizes,

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Speaker 1: particularly compared to his shameful father. Right. His father is

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Speaker 1: like the warning sign. Washington is the model he wants

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Speaker 1: to follow, And so you get the feeling. Part of

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Speaker 1: why he marries Mary Custis is like he wants that

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Speaker 1: Washington legacy to be a part of him, right, maybe

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Speaker 1: to wipe away some of his father's shame. In the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine Lost Call history book Meet Robert E. Lee,

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Speaker 1: it rather humorously stated Robert E. Lee was the last

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Speaker 1: great man of Old Virginia. In many ways, he was

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Speaker 1: closer to his hero George Washington than he was to

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Speaker 1: the men of his own time in literal because he

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Speaker 1: basically wants to fuck George Washington, right, Like that's what's

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Speaker 1: going on here. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, like I'm gonna change my legacy, Like I don't

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Speaker 3: want the legacy to.

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Speaker 2: Be all, oh, no money. You know what I'm saying,

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Speaker 2: broke ass Lee exactly. I'm with Disney, Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: So they had known each other since they yeah, since

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Speaker 1: they were kids. The one thing I'll say for him,

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Speaker 1: they're like the same age. They're born the same year,

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Speaker 1: which is pretty good for high society marriages of this period.

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Speaker 1: So congratulations, Robert E.

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Speaker 2: Lee.

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Speaker 1: You get the coveted behind the bastards not a pedophile award. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a proud honor, very rarely handed out. Yeah, we

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Speaker 1: are mailing your last descendant a gold medallion with the

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Speaker 1: words I Don't diddle kids written on it, So go,

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Speaker 1: you know, congratulations that's a real honor for the family. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's big.

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Speaker 1: That's it's huge.

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Speaker 3: Ye, that's really big, man, because there's a lot of listen,

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Speaker 3: there's a lot of things we can say about you,

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Speaker 3: and we will, but you do like them, y'all.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, not a childsterious. That's so good for you, Robert. Yes,

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Speaker 1: So the Custis family were significantly wealthier than the Lee's,

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Speaker 1: and Mary's father is understandably he never really trusts Robert E.

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Speaker 1: Lee in his whole life, not because Lee does anything wrong,

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Speaker 1: but because of how bad his father was, which not

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Speaker 1: necessarily an irresponsible decision. Right yeah, no, I yeah, now

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Speaker 1: that said George Washington Park Custis, Mary's dad is also

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Speaker 1: a huge piece of shit. For one thing, he owns

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Speaker 1: some two hundred enslaved people, and he's like Thomas Jefferson,

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Speaker 1: he's one of these guys who's who is vocally anti

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Speaker 1: slavery while owning a bunch of people, And like Thomas Jefferson,

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Speaker 1: he has children with a lot of his slave people. Right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is rape, right, Like that's the only way to

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Speaker 1: look at this. Alan Guelzo writes, the elder Custis burdened

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Speaker 1: with his own private guilt over slavery, had been quote

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Speaker 1: an easy going master, requiring little of his slaves, especially

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Speaker 1: because it was rumored that over the years he had

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Speaker 1: fathered fifteen of them.

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Speaker 2: Good God, here's the thing, man, Look.

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Speaker 3: I don't know if there's anything I hate more besides

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Speaker 3: like just the institution of slavery, but the defense that like.

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Speaker 2: But he was like a nice one though. Yeah, he

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Speaker 2: was kind of.

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Speaker 3: Nice to his Like, I don't know if I don't

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Speaker 3: know if anything makes me want to like flip a

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Speaker 3: table more than that answer.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know, it's worth understanding the difference

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Speaker 1: between quote unquote nice and mean slave owners, for understanding

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Speaker 1: the lives of slaves, but not for making a moral

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Speaker 1: decision about those slave owners. It's under It's actually very

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Speaker 1: similar to like when you read Hullo cost memoirs from

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Speaker 1: survivors of Auschwitz, they will talk about like, well, these guys,

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Speaker 1: these remember, this particular member of the SS was polite

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Speaker 1: to us. He treated me relative, and I was able

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Speaker 1: to get stuff out of him to help. I was

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Speaker 1: able to get food or whatnot out of him. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that guy was he was still a

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Speaker 1: concentration understand, Like, yeah, okay.

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Speaker 3: You know, I appreciate you pulling the fly out of

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Speaker 3: the rat poison you're about to feed me.

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Speaker 2: I appreciate.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's worth understanding because again, if you want to

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Speaker 1: understand the lives of these enslaved people, sure, if you're

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Speaker 1: if you're with a guy like this who is like

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Speaker 1: less like violent and shitty, then like you can maybe

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Speaker 1: work a better get more freedom, get more personal liberty.

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Speaker 1: But like that does not reflect still on.

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Speaker 2: The very much.

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Speaker 3: I might have got a little here, but I wasn't cheating,

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Speaker 3: you know, which is like in one of the upcoming

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Speaker 3: Hill Politics episodes, like we're talking about the International Court

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Speaker 3: for Justice and like that's like bb net and yah,

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Speaker 3: who's like argument to where it's like, well, I don't

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Speaker 3: know if it's like genocide genocide, you know, or it's

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Speaker 3: like maybe it's not like air quotes genocide, Like yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's a little bit of hit.

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Speaker 2: You know. I wasn't really cheating.

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Speaker 1: It's like Fama, it's only genocide if it comes from

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Speaker 1: the genocide region of France. Otherwise it's just a sparkling massacre,

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Speaker 1: right exactly, Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So yeah, I was like, well you know what though,

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Speaker 2: But we didn't really like.

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Speaker 3: Beat our slaves. Yeah, so it's a little different.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I'm good.

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Speaker 1: Yeah these people. So he is eventually kind of is

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Speaker 1: won over by Robert E. Lee, although never entirely. Lee

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Speaker 1: takes an absence, a brief absence from his time as

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Speaker 1: a lieutenant to have his honeymoon. And then he sent

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Speaker 1: to Hampton Roads, which is a port on the Virginia coast,

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Speaker 1: and they'd had a bunch of fortifications but they looked

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Speaker 1: like shit, and he's going to like renovate the fortifications

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Speaker 1: on his honeymoon. No right after right.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I was like, I was hoping that this train

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Speaker 3: of I thought wasn't going to lead to its sexual prowess.

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Speaker 1: No, no, nothing about that. I assume he was bad at.

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Speaker 2: Sex, Haley Louiah, Yeah, thank you, Gez.

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Speaker 1: He spends the first four years of his career like

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Speaker 1: reinforcing these fortifications at Hampton Roads, and the only interesting

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Speaker 1: thing that happens in that period is that there's an

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Speaker 1: insurrection by enslaved Americans in Southampton. This is the Nat

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Speaker 1: Turner Rebellion. Right, let's go. No, he's not involved in it,

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Speaker 1: but it happens near enough. And it's it's relevant because

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Speaker 1: he again doesn't do anything in this, but he writes

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Speaker 1: about it to his mother in law, and the single

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Speaker 1: paragraph we get of him writing about Nat Turner's rebellion

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Speaker 1: is one of the bleakest and most infuriating things I've

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Speaker 1: ever read. And I'm going to read this to you now.

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Speaker 1: Prop It is ascertained that they use their religious assemblies,

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Speaker 1: which ought to have been devoted to better purposes, for

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Speaker 1: forming and maturing their plans, and that their preachers were

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Speaker 1: the leading men. And first off, I'll say, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: just remembering the Old Testament, I feel like slaves using

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Speaker 1: their religious service to plan rebellion is actually very biblical.

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Speaker 2: I was like, I don't know, man, Like, if you're

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Speaker 2: actually reading the book, that's pretty all part.

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Speaker 1: Feel like that happens a couple tis yeah, he continues.

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Speaker 1: A man belonging to a Missus Whitehead, and one of

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Speaker 1: their preachers was the chief under the title of Major Nelson,

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Speaker 1: and his first act was to kill his mistress, five

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Speaker 1: children and one grandchild. However, there are many instances of

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Speaker 1: their defending their masters, and one poor fellow from the

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Speaker 1: inconsiderate and almost unwarrantable haste of the whites was sadly rewarded.

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Speaker 1: He belonged to a mister Blunt, and himself and two others,

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Speaker 1: assisted by his master and his son Nobody, fought with

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Speaker 1: them against twenty of the blacks. After beating them off

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Speaker 1: and running in great haste after horses for them to

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Speaker 1: escape on, a party of white suddenly came up and,

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Speaker 1: thinking the horses were for other purposes, shot him dead.

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Speaker 1: So he's talking about here that some of the enslaved

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Speaker 1: black people fought alongside their white masters against this slave uprising,

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Speaker 1: and he's like, and then they got killed by white

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Speaker 1: people who just like shot first and asked questions later

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Speaker 1: because they were spooked and killing every black person they saw,

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Speaker 1: which you would think might cause a man to consider

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Speaker 1: like the overall evil of the system that he looked made.

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Speaker 1: But lead does not lead is not.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's just because gravity works the way gravity works,

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Speaker 3: So like, yeah, I get it. I as a funny

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Speaker 3: side note, in junior high, I left La went to

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Speaker 3: a middle school in the suburbs and the Inland Empire,

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Speaker 3: and then my parents split and I went back to LA.

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Speaker 2: But anyway, but.

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Speaker 3: In middle school, I was in the Burbs, like and

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Speaker 3: it was probably the most like concentrated amount of white

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Speaker 3: people I've ever seen in my life, like you know,

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Speaker 3: And and I'm saying this like like strictly from a

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Speaker 3: like anthropological perspective, like not even a not even a

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Speaker 3: statement on its culture, because I just I just wasn't

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Speaker 3: familiar with white culture at the time, you know what

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Speaker 3: I'm saying, Like, I just didn't.

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Speaker 2: It just wasn't my world.

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Speaker 3: I just who I went to this to this middle school,

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Speaker 3: and we had to do a.

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Speaker 2: Historical person's report. I did it on that Turner.

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Speaker 1: Oh shit.

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Speaker 3: And at no point did it cross my mind that

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Speaker 3: this world of white people would have an issue of.

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Speaker 2: That, Like, I just I never thought about it.

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Speaker 3: Now as an adult, I'm like, dude, I can imagine,

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Speaker 3: like I'm putting myself in like poor old you know,

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Speaker 3: misdorsed my seventh grade history teacher. I walk in with

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Speaker 3: this with this book report on Nat Turner, and she

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Speaker 3: looking at me at like one of seven black people

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Speaker 3: in a fifty mile radius.

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Speaker 2: And I walk in with this report on a slave rebellion.

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Speaker 3: How she I just wonder what was going through her

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Speaker 3: head at the time that everybody else is doing book

378
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Speaker 3: reports on normal stuff, but I did it on that turner,

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Speaker 3: and now as an adult, I'm like, I would have

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Speaker 3: loved that if I would to this Bourbon school and

381
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Speaker 3: his little boy walking well report on Net's owner. Was

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Speaker 3: just no concept that anyone else would view this as

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Speaker 3: any different than I and my.

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Speaker 2: Family view it. I'm like, what are you talk about

385
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Speaker 2: this guy zero?

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Speaker 1: You know, yes, yeah, it's one of those things obviously,

387
00:19:18,080 --> 00:19:20,439
Speaker 1: like you know what Lee says, there is not wrong,

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Speaker 1: like the like children were killed during the uprising, and

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Speaker 1: my stance on this it's similar to how I feel

390
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Speaker 1: about the killing of the czar and his family. Children

391
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Speaker 1: never deserve to be murdered. That is not their fault.

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Speaker 1: The children of slave owners and tzars are not guilty.

393
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Speaker 1: But I put the blame for their deaths on the

394
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Speaker 1: adult slave owners and the adult czar and his wife,

395
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Speaker 1: not on the enslaved people who felt like they had

396
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Speaker 1: no other option.

397
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Speaker 3: Yes, right, yeah, you have institutionally put your children in

398
00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:55,360
Speaker 3: danger by allowing and upholding this institution that will, invariably,

399
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Speaker 3: like you said, cause a person to respond the way

400
00:19:58,480 --> 00:19:58,720
Speaker 3: they have.

401
00:19:58,880 --> 00:20:01,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know we can talk more

402
00:20:01,880 --> 00:20:04,560
Speaker 1: like the czar's situation is obviously more complicated. There is

403
00:20:04,600 --> 00:20:06,200
Speaker 1: some blame you can give to some of the other

404
00:20:06,240 --> 00:20:08,399
Speaker 1: people in that. But like in the case of Nat Turner,

405
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Speaker 1: what else? What else was he option?

406
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Speaker 2: Yeah?

407
00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:15,439
Speaker 1: And so after this, Lee is sent to work in

408
00:20:15,520 --> 00:20:17,840
Speaker 1: d C, which enables him to live in Arlington for

409
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Speaker 1: the first time. This is basically the first time in

410
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Speaker 1: his pre war adult life that he spends any time

411
00:20:24,040 --> 00:20:27,919
Speaker 1: at this Arlington. This like plantation that he gets, you know,

412
00:20:27,960 --> 00:20:32,080
Speaker 1: with his wife is like, this is a huge part

413
00:20:32,080 --> 00:20:34,000
Speaker 1: of the Lee myth that this was, This was what

414
00:20:34,280 --> 00:20:36,920
Speaker 1: in his bones, this was his home. Like this he

415
00:20:37,280 --> 00:20:40,240
Speaker 1: had such a deep connection. He barely spends any fucking

416
00:20:40,320 --> 00:20:44,119
Speaker 1: time there in ar Yeah, in Arlington. Like basically, this

417
00:20:44,200 --> 00:20:45,960
Speaker 1: period of time where he's working in d C is

418
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Speaker 1: one of the only times in his adult life where

419
00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:51,600
Speaker 1: he spends significant periods of time at Arlington. Now this

420
00:20:51,680 --> 00:20:54,680
Speaker 1: is handy. He spends some time like commuting to work

421
00:20:54,720 --> 00:20:57,919
Speaker 1: in d C by carriage. It's helpful because he's close.

422
00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:01,320
Speaker 1: While his mom is sick she probably has tuberculosis, because

423
00:21:01,320 --> 00:21:04,440
Speaker 1: that's what kills everybody in the olden days, Lee reverts

424
00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:07,760
Speaker 1: to being her caretaker. He mixes her medicine. He's a

425
00:21:07,800 --> 00:21:09,520
Speaker 1: dedicated good boy, right.

426
00:21:09,800 --> 00:21:10,480
Speaker 2: Yeah.

427
00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:13,399
Speaker 1: The story is somewhat less heartwarming when you learn that

428
00:21:13,440 --> 00:21:17,200
Speaker 1: Anne spends her last days revising her will, in which

429
00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:21,879
Speaker 1: she gives away several human beings, including children, her daughter

430
00:21:22,040 --> 00:21:25,800
Speaker 1: also named Anne inherited quote, my maid servant Charlotte and

431
00:21:25,840 --> 00:21:29,560
Speaker 1: her child, along with Keziah, William and Betsy, along with

432
00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:32,359
Speaker 1: my set of white tea china, my wardrobe, two of

433
00:21:32,359 --> 00:21:35,520
Speaker 1: my best tablecloths, and one half of my family napkins

434
00:21:35,560 --> 00:21:36,480
Speaker 1: and wearing apparel.

435
00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:38,199
Speaker 2: So again in the same sins.

436
00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:43,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, children, adults and a china set all the same.

437
00:21:42,920 --> 00:21:45,040
Speaker 2: Type of thing to them on the same level.

438
00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:45,600
Speaker 1: Yeah.

439
00:21:45,640 --> 00:21:49,320
Speaker 3: Also, I think Virginia as a West coaster, you know,

440
00:21:49,359 --> 00:21:54,160
Speaker 3: and my mom's from DC, so like as I viewed

441
00:21:54,280 --> 00:21:59,080
Speaker 3: like Virginia is like it honestly feels like two different states.

442
00:21:59,160 --> 00:22:01,080
Speaker 3: And I'm not meaning like Virginia and West Virginia. I

443
00:22:01,119 --> 00:22:05,320
Speaker 3: mean Virginia itself. Because there's the Virginia that's basically just

444
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:11,359
Speaker 3: southern Washington, DC, and then there's the Virginia that had plantations,

445
00:22:11,920 --> 00:22:14,879
Speaker 3: like and it's it's still like shakes my brain because

446
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:19,400
Speaker 3: I'm like, I still see Virginia as east coast rather

447
00:22:19,480 --> 00:22:24,480
Speaker 3: than southern because yeah, when you say, like Alexandria Richmond,

448
00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:28,680
Speaker 3: I'm like Ronald Reagan's airport is in Virginia.

449
00:22:28,720 --> 00:22:30,960
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting because like you get a lot of

450
00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:34,400
Speaker 1: there's people will argue very strenuously that like, yeah, Virginia

451
00:22:34,480 --> 00:22:36,959
Speaker 1: is part of the South, but Texas really isn't you know,

452
00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:39,200
Speaker 1: It's it's like the thing or it's part of the West,

453
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:43,639
Speaker 1: and like there's actually some validity behind that, like culturally historically,

454
00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:47,639
Speaker 1: but like I think they are both part of the South.

455
00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:53,240
Speaker 1: Virginia is now like certainly like has like elements of

456
00:22:53,320 --> 00:22:55,840
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's weird, like it's not worth

457
00:22:55,880 --> 00:22:56,760
Speaker 1: getting into right now.

458
00:22:56,760 --> 00:22:59,840
Speaker 3: But yeah, I guess I guess my question would be like, uh,

459
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:01,440
Speaker 3: because it was I was leading.

460
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:02,120
Speaker 2: To a question, I think.

461
00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:05,200
Speaker 3: But like, so obviously, if he works in d C,

462
00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 3: he's in the more and we're still talking about a

463
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:13,040
Speaker 3: slave state, but he's in one that's more closer to

464
00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:18,080
Speaker 3: city life rather than agricultural now yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

465
00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:22,200
Speaker 1: And he's kind of commuting from this semi this agricultural

466
00:23:22,960 --> 00:23:25,639
Speaker 1: plantation into d C because Arlington is kind of in

467
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:28,879
Speaker 1: the heights above DC. Like one of the reasons that

468
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:31,200
Speaker 1: like the Union will go after it early in the

469
00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 1: Civil War is you can shell DC from Marline. Yeah,

470
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 1: so he's not far away, No, it's pretty close. Yeah. Now,

471
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:40,439
Speaker 1: the Lee Boys aren't named as being given any enslaved people,

472
00:23:41,119 --> 00:23:43,679
Speaker 1: it's not in the will, but they actually seem to

473
00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:47,119
Speaker 1: have inherited some. It's just not I guess for whatever reason,

474
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 1: she didn't think it was worth writing. And the will

475
00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:53,320
Speaker 1: biographer Alan Guelzo has noted that the Lee Boys definitely

476
00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:57,600
Speaker 1: inherited who he describes as quote one unitemized slave family.

477
00:23:58,520 --> 00:24:00,560
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were like kind of cheating

478
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:03,120
Speaker 1: so that they didn't have to pay as much inheritance tax.

479
00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:05,000
Speaker 1: It's weird, Like, I don't know why they wouldn't have

480
00:24:05,040 --> 00:24:08,040
Speaker 1: been listed. But in eighteen thirty five, Robert E. Lee

481
00:24:08,119 --> 00:24:11,959
Speaker 1: wrote that he owned Missus Sally Diggs, Missus Nancy Ruffin,

482
00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:15,880
Speaker 1: and her three illegitimate pledges. No men are named, which

483
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:19,280
Speaker 1: is undoubtedly evidence that a family was forcibly broken up.

484
00:24:19,320 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 1: I guess possible the men died early, right, that's not

485
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:24,840
Speaker 1: given the time, not impossible, but it seems likely that

486
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:27,240
Speaker 1: families were broken up As a result of this inheritance,

487
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:30,560
Speaker 1: which happens a lot. In eighteen thirty five, Lee is

488
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:33,879
Speaker 1: sent to Saint Louis on a mission to literally defy God.

489
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:36,720
Speaker 1: For years it had been clear that the Mississippi River

490
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 1: was shifting, and so there's all this like port infrastructure

491
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis that will be useless if the river

492
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:45,919
Speaker 1: shifts to be over in Illinois. So Lee has to

493
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:49,199
Speaker 1: do basically the equivalent of spritzing the Mississippi's nose with

494
00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:51,960
Speaker 1: water until it learns not to like risk the future

495
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:56,760
Speaker 1: economic viability of Missouri. Yeah, that's funny, really thumbing your

496
00:24:56,800 --> 00:24:58,160
Speaker 1: nose in God's.

497
00:24:57,720 --> 00:25:01,160
Speaker 2: Eye, mister Southern gent Yeah, Okista.

498
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 1: So I have mentioned that one of my sources for

499
00:25:06,119 --> 00:25:09,880
Speaker 1: these episodes is General Lee, a biography by Fitzhugh Lee.

500
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:12,399
Speaker 1: Now this is not a good source, and that it

501
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:15,720
Speaker 1: is not a reputable, unbiased historic account of Lee, but

502
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 1: it is a good source, and that it was written

503
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 1: in like eighteen ninety six by his family and because

504
00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:23,280
Speaker 1: of the area it's and it includes some fucked up

505
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:25,640
Speaker 1: shit that I think would have been edited out by

506
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:28,879
Speaker 1: like a lost cause pop historian today, but that you

507
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: do get when you read through this draft, and while

508
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:35,160
Speaker 1: churning through much of this otherwise interminable book, I found

509
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:37,640
Speaker 1: another letter Lee sent back to one of his cousins,

510
00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:40,199
Speaker 1: where he comments on a local rumor by using a

511
00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:44,080
Speaker 1: casual racial slur. We live in a credulous country where

512
00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:46,960
Speaker 1: people stick at nothing, from a sea word story to

513
00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:50,960
Speaker 1: a sea serpent. And you know the sea word is

514
00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:53,359
Speaker 1: like it's a it's a slang term for black people

515
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: using like talking about like raccoons. Right, that's the yeah, Yeah,

516
00:25:57,560 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 1: I'm bringing this up because this is like the use

517
00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:02,680
Speaker 1: of a slur in a letter considering Robert E. Lee's

518
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:06,440
Speaker 1: actual crimes on the lower list of the horrible things

519
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 1: he did.

520
00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 2: But sure, I'm.

521
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 1: Bringing this up because casual and lost cause histories of

522
00:26:11,119 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 1: the man love to emphasize how much he hated slavery,

523
00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:16,720
Speaker 1: called it a moral evil, and would have been willing

524
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:19,359
Speaker 1: to free his own slaves to keep the union together.

525
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: He did express variance of those sentiments, but he also

526
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:28,399
Speaker 1: regularly expressed very casual hateful racism like this, right, it

527
00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: is all over his letters. It is undeniable, and I

528
00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:33,919
Speaker 1: think that ugliness is important to get out. It's not

529
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 1: just that he was willing to fight for slavery. He

530
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:42,120
Speaker 1: fully bought into the racial hierarchy and the casual distaste

531
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:43,879
Speaker 1: and hatred even for black people.

532
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:48,760
Speaker 3: That was the reality of like it to put yourself

533
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:51,960
Speaker 3: in the time to understand that. They saw this as like,

534
00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:55,399
Speaker 3: this is settled science in the same way that we

535
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:59,000
Speaker 3: understand that the Earth revolves around the sun. That is

536
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:03,399
Speaker 3: settled science. That is how it works. So race science

537
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 3: for them is like, no, this is it's settled. This

538
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:11,399
Speaker 3: is the science. We are biologically superior. So like, what

539
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:14,399
Speaker 3: do you it's settled, Like what are we arguing about?

540
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:15,160
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.

541
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 3: I think that that that element when you're talking about

542
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:21,119
Speaker 3: this Like okay, so I remember in like some of

543
00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:25,679
Speaker 3: my formal like theological training, they talked about like this

544
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 3: this dude Jonathan Edwards, like Jonathan Edwards, the guy Jonathan Edwards,

545
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:32,640
Speaker 3: like the sinners in the hands of angry God like.

546
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:36,119
Speaker 1: This, yeah, yeah, you know, big, hugely influential America.

547
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:40,680
Speaker 3: Hugely influential, like you know, Protestant preacher. And during this

548
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 3: time of the institution of slavery, like he was quoted

549
00:27:44,800 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 3: to saying like if the savages and the.

550
00:27:48,760 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 2: Africans knowing exactly what I mean by that.

551
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:55,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, are in fact made in the image of God

552
00:27:55,800 --> 00:27:58,480
Speaker 3: like image bearers, as in that's what we what we

553
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 3: believe humans are You made in the image of God.

554
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 2: Then we should be giving them the gospel.

555
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 1: Yeah.

556
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 2: And then but then he says, I'm just not.

557
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:13,159
Speaker 3: Sure they're humans, Like, and you don't say like this,

558
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:14,679
Speaker 3: this is all preacher, this is y'all.

559
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 2: This is y'all, dude, That's what I'm trying to say,

560
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 2: like a person who is and that Yeah, pat like

561
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:23,639
Speaker 2: a leader, a pillar of the faith. It is like

562
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 2: it is he's because his brain he's challenging science. I

563
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 2: think they're humans.

564
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:30,640
Speaker 1: And I think this is where we get into when

565
00:28:30,640 --> 00:28:33,360
Speaker 1: we talk about the morality of like, well, you can't

566
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:36,880
Speaker 1: judge people from the past by modern standards. You can't

567
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 1: judge people from the past for being raised with racist beliefs.

568
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: You can judge them for how they act on them.

569
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 1: I think that's useful because like, you cannot blame a

570
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: man for like being raised in a bigoted society and

571
00:28:48,760 --> 00:28:51,080
Speaker 1: keeping a hold of some degree of those beliefs, but

572
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 1: you can judge him on the degree to which he

573
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: changes and overcomes some of it, Right, like it's you know,

574
00:28:56,360 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 1: I have older relatives who like will never be comfortable

575
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 1: with homosexuality because of the time they were raised in,

576
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 1: but came rounder the belief that like, yes, they should

577
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,160
Speaker 1: be allowed to marry. There shouldn't be legal prescriptions against them.

578
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 1: That's wrong, and like, yes, yeah, you were born in

579
00:29:10,800 --> 00:29:13,280
Speaker 1: like the thirties, right, Like that's about as much as

580
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: I can hope for, right, And I think that that's

581
00:29:16,600 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: kind of how you have to judge people, right, Like, yes,

582
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 1: you inherit some bad stuff, but like, what do you

583
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:24,560
Speaker 1: actually do when you have the ability to make decisions?

584
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:26,960
Speaker 1: And where do you go in your life? And like

585
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: Lee never questions any of this, and he never changes,

586
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:33,720
Speaker 1: you know, he is a marble man and marble does

587
00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 1: not grow, you know, good one. Yeah yeah, speaking of growing,

588
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 1: you know who does grow and change over time? The

589
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: sponsors of the show.

590
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 4: Bazam, we're back building, Bazam.

591
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 1: You've never my new catchphrase, Sam Bazam is like really

592
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: like it fits you very suite. Thank you. So Lee

593
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:12,280
Speaker 1: is going to complain constantly about money throughout his life.

594
00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: You don't make good money as an officer. He's always like,

595
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: should I retire my commission and try to make a

596
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 1: living some other way. I don't think he would have

597
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: been good at that, but he thinks about it a lot.

598
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: He's not ever really happy, right, and in any of

599
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 1: his situations, his ambitions kind of outweigh most of what

600
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 1: he's able to accomplish. And you know, he's away from

601
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:33,880
Speaker 1: home all the time. He does not seem to have

602
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: a strong desire to be around his family or to

603
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:39,520
Speaker 1: help him, like his wife, raise their children. So he

604
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 1: is like an absent dad.

605
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:41,160
Speaker 2: You know.

606
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: Most of his letters are him like giving merry advice

607
00:30:44,280 --> 00:30:47,840
Speaker 1: on raising children based on probably not much actual knowledge

608
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 1: about how to raise kids, or you weren't raised not

609
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 1: very yeah yeah.

610
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:54,880
Speaker 3: And the one you weren't raised, and then number two

611
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 3: you're not raising your own kids yeah.

612
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And this is not you know, military families

613
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 1: today you're going to deal with, like your parent who's

614
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:04,680
Speaker 1: in the military, potentially being away for long periods of

615
00:31:04,680 --> 00:31:08,160
Speaker 1: time undeployment. That is a reality still, but usually if

616
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 1: they're not in a combat posting families move around with

617
00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 1: their family members. That's less of a thing here in

618
00:31:14,320 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 1: part because of like it's just not practical, you know,

619
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:19,479
Speaker 1: with travel and the dangers of it being what they

620
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: are at this time. In eighteen forty six, the Mexican

621
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 1: American War breaks out, and this is gonna be Lee's

622
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 1: big defining moment as a man. This is the conflict

623
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:32,720
Speaker 1: where most of the major military leaders in the US

624
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: Civil War will get their first combat experience. Lee at

625
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:39,520
Speaker 1: this point is an artillery officer and he becomes a

626
00:31:39,560 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 1: part of General Winfield Scott's inner circle. Winfield Scott is

627
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: the commander of US forces in this war. Lee is

628
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 1: really good at this job. And it's important to note

629
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 1: he is really good at being an officer in charge

630
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 1: of artillery. He is not commanding armies. That is not

631
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:57,720
Speaker 1: ever a thing he's going to be great at. He

632
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: is managing sections of guns in the man who fire them.

633
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: And a big part of his job is the armies marching.

634
00:32:03,280 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: They're like, okay, we're going to try to bring them

635
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:08,200
Speaker 1: into battle here. And his job is analyzing the maps,

636
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 1: scouting on horseback and whatnot, figuring out where is the

637
00:32:11,680 --> 00:32:13,880
Speaker 1: best place to put our cannon so that they'll have

638
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:16,560
Speaker 1: good fields of fire to hit the enemy, you know,

639
00:32:17,040 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 1: And he's really good at this job. One of his

640
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: first moments in the sun comes during the Battle of

641
00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:24,960
Speaker 1: Saro Gordo, where he leads a detachment of cannons through

642
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 1: thick brush bushwhacking their way into a position where they

643
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: can fire down on the Mexican left flank and surprise

644
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 1: the enemy. This gets him promoted to major, and his

645
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:36,920
Speaker 1: further exploits in the war earn him significant press attention.

646
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:39,680
Speaker 1: He becomes a war hero back home, not the biggest

647
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: of the war, but one of the larger US war

648
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: heroes to like the US population. The most spectacular moment

649
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: of his career comes when he crosses with just a

650
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:51,440
Speaker 1: handful of men a lava field at night to get

651
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:56,120
Speaker 1: reinforcements for an upcoming action. General Scott describes this as

652
00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 1: the greatest feat of physical and moral courage performed by

653
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 1: any individual in my knowledge penning the campaign. A lava field, Yeah,

654
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 1: like dried lava. I think, like, oh, I was like where, no,

655
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: not lava. Yeah. Also, I don't see where there's moral

656
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:14,480
Speaker 1: courage involved in that, but there's physical courage. He's it's

657
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:18,760
Speaker 1: it's yeah, this less lava. Yeah, yeah, unless it's lava.

658
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:22,360
Speaker 1: I will say this earns lee are slightly less coveted

659
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:25,800
Speaker 1: pretty good at the Mexican American War Medal, which due

660
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:28,360
Speaker 1: to a printing error, is also a gold medal that

661
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 1: reads I don't diddle kids. Sorry, sorry about that, guys.

662
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:33,840
Speaker 1: Both of them wound up being the same medal.

663
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 3: But yeah, but you know what though, like he's in

664
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 3: rarefied air here for a bastards man.

665
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Two medals, two medals. So Lee ends

666
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: the war as a brevet colonel and is one of

667
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: the most widely praised officers in the US Army. After

668
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 1: this point, there's buzz around the man, which does him

669
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: less good than you might guess, because he's gonna spend

670
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:56,200
Speaker 1: the next stage of his career furious that he's not

671
00:33:56,360 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: moving up faster to new ranks and better commands. Part

672
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:00,880
Speaker 1: of the reason for this is that the US we

673
00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 1: don't really have a military in the modern sense. We

674
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: have a tiny regular military. We have a lot of

675
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:09,319
Speaker 1: state militias which are pretty useless, and we have a

676
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,040
Speaker 1: very small regular military. So there's not a lot of

677
00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:15,600
Speaker 1: spots for officers, and you can't move up until someone

678
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:20,040
Speaker 1: above you, like quits or dies. Right, So he's kind

679
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 1: of frustrated that he's not really like getting He feels

680
00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: like he's stuck in place, right, He's constantly wondering about quitting.

681
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty two, he gets a promotion. He's made

682
00:34:31,120 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: commandant of west Point, which he's not really excited about.

683
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:37,319
Speaker 1: He describes it as a snake pit, I think due

684
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:41,560
Speaker 1: to its internal politics. His son Custus attends while he

685
00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:44,239
Speaker 1: runs west Point and graduates first in his class. I'm

686
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:44,839
Speaker 1: sure there's no.

687
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:47,439
Speaker 2: Oh he ran west Point for a while.

688
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, he runs it. He's a commandant a west Point.

689
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:52,360
Speaker 2: For three that's what kammandant means. Sorry, he's the boss.

690
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:53,040
Speaker 1: He's the boss.

691
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 2: You know what that means.

692
00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:57,280
Speaker 1: It's like being the dean. I think, yeah, yeah, yeah,

693
00:34:57,320 --> 00:34:59,800
Speaker 1: there's a fun maybe you could do like an a

694
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 1: animal House style movie about like whatever the bad Fraternity

695
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:07,640
Speaker 1: is an old dean Robert E. Lee getting angry at

696
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: him for drinking. Yeah, we could make that work. So

697
00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:13,919
Speaker 1: on the whole, his tenure there is as boring as

698
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:17,280
Speaker 1: most of the man's life, and is primarily of interest

699
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: because his long association with the Academy is going to

700
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 1: cause a lot of shit today, right, Like, there's a

701
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:26,400
Speaker 1: bunch of debate over and actually this is interesting. One

702
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:28,120
Speaker 1: of the books that is a source for this is

703
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:30,080
Speaker 1: me and Robert E. Lee and it's written by a

704
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 1: former US Army officer who taught at west Point and

705
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 1: who they were trying to decide should we have a

706
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 1: memorial for Confederate troops, and specifically they wanted to put

707
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: it in a building that's named after a Union officer

708
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:47,120
Speaker 1: whose personal stance was like, these people should never be

709
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:50,439
Speaker 1: part of the country again. Fuck them, they're traders, right.

710
00:35:50,719 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: So this guy, the guy who writes the book is

711
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:57,360
Speaker 1: like arguing, basically to his colleagues, we should not honor

712
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: Confederate veterans at west Point. They were they kill US soldiers.

713
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:07,120
Speaker 1: Why are we honoring them at These men are fucking traders? Yeah,

714
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:11,480
Speaker 1: and he he loses the fight. They decide to move

715
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:14,480
Speaker 1: ahead with the memorial until a I'm not sure who

716
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:17,760
Speaker 1: it is, but it is a high ranking black officer

717
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:19,880
Speaker 1: who's a graduate of west Point. I don't actually know

718
00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 1: it might have been Powell, I don't know, but someone

719
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:26,799
Speaker 1: leaks it to this this high ranking black officer who's

720
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 1: an alumni of west Point, that like, they're about to

721
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:31,839
Speaker 1: put in a Confederate memorial and he is like, the

722
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 1: fuck you are? You are absolutely not and they have

723
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:38,840
Speaker 1: to like scrap the idea, which is good.

724
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:41,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's absolutely no.

725
00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? Yeah, So, by the late

726
00:36:46,080 --> 00:36:49,919
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, Lee is stationed in Texas, but he's back

727
00:36:49,920 --> 00:36:52,759
Speaker 1: in Arlington with some regularity. He gets to see his

728
00:36:52,800 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 1: family from time to time, and this accelerates after his

729
00:36:56,520 --> 00:37:00,680
Speaker 1: father in law dies in eighteen fifty seven. Now, the

730
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:03,800
Speaker 1: Custis family at this point somewhere between I've heard forty

731
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,840
Speaker 1: two adults I think, is what Gwelzo's biography says. Most

732
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:08,839
Speaker 1: sources will say there were almost two hundred of them.

733
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:11,080
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot. He's got a lot of

734
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:14,000
Speaker 1: people that he's holding on Arlington right when he dies.

735
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: Most of them are doing some amount of farming. Right.

736
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: But according to white people who were friends and relatives

737
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: of the Custis family at the time, the enslaved people

738
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:28,399
Speaker 1: there didn't work hard enough. Right. They're all bitching about that. Yeah. Now,

739
00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:33,080
Speaker 1: Old George Washington Park, who is Robert E. Lee's wife's father,

740
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:36,359
Speaker 1: allegedly tells one friend in eighteen fifty three of his

741
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:40,319
Speaker 1: enslaved people, they have that comfortable homes, that families around them,

742
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:43,759
Speaker 1: and nothing to do. But consult their own pleasure. Run

743
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 1: of Robert's cousins complained to him that the enslaved people

744
00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:50,120
Speaker 1: on Arlington were quote fonder of play than work, which, like,

745
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: you people are landed gentry. You don't do shit but

746
00:37:52,600 --> 00:37:55,000
Speaker 1: play you give you that? What are you talking about?

747
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:59,600
Speaker 2: You can't say anything about my work ethic.

748
00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, he over pulled something out of the ground. Man,

749
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess not.

750
00:38:03,640 --> 00:38:03,879
Speaker 2: Yeah.

751
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:08,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now we shouldn't obviously, as we've said, we shouldn't

752
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: take that seriously that these guys were not working hard.

753
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: But it is true that the Custus properties are not profitable.

754
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:16,719
Speaker 1: Right by the time he dies and Mary inherits them,

755
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 1: they are not making money. And this is a problem

756
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 1: because like Mary's dad somewhat hilariously decides that the last

757
00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 1: thing he's going to do in life is going to

758
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:28,879
Speaker 1: be to fuck Roberty Lee over and I this kind

759
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: he's a bad person, but I like this. He really

760
00:38:33,040 --> 00:38:36,320
Speaker 1: hates Lee's dad for like being so irresponsible. Yeah, and

761
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:38,160
Speaker 1: then when he dies they found out he's been just

762
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:40,799
Speaker 1: as bad. They're in horrible death. The property is not

763
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: making any money. He like completely shot the bed on

764
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 1: his finances and in his will, he gives he gives

765
00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:51,640
Speaker 1: Arlington the property to his oldest grandson, right, which is

766
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:55,400
Speaker 1: Mary's Mary and Roberts one of their kids. Yeah, Mary

767
00:38:55,520 --> 00:38:58,799
Speaker 1: gets rights to reside at Arlington until she dies, but

768
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:02,400
Speaker 1: it is no longer their property. His other valuable properties

769
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: go to their other kids, and Roberty league gets basically

770
00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:08,640
Speaker 1: nothing like he gets cut out of the will, but

771
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:12,000
Speaker 1: old Custis still makes him the executor of the will,

772
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 1: so his job is to hand out money to Custis's grandkids.

773
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 1: That's like, hedy, he's such a bitch.

774
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:23,480
Speaker 3: Heymen, hey man, I just want to say, man, look,

775
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 3: thank you for taking care of my daughter. You've given

776
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 3: me the most beautiful grandchildren. So here's what I'm gonna

777
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:32,759
Speaker 3: do for you. I want you to be the one,

778
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:35,040
Speaker 3: because this is how much you mean to me. I

779
00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:38,400
Speaker 3: want you to be the one to tell everybody what

780
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:42,640
Speaker 3: they're getting. Here's the paper, and it's it's more fucked

781
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 3: up than that, Like, uh, where where my name at?

782
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:55,719
Speaker 1: Each of the grandkids is supposed to get ten thousand dollars, right,

783
00:39:56,160 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 1: but he doesn't have any money, and so in his

784
00:39:59,239 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 1: in his in his his will, he's like, here's some

785
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:04,440
Speaker 1: properties sell the I'm not willing these properties to anyone,

786
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:07,520
Speaker 1: Robert sell them and use that to pay my grandkids

787
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:10,920
Speaker 1: ten grand each. But Custis is bad at everything, so

788
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:14,840
Speaker 1: he doesn't actually know. He like wildly overvalues these properties.

789
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:18,640
Speaker 1: He doesn't get nearly enough money. So Robert E. Lee,

790
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: because he's this like big honor guy, is like, well,

791
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:25,360
Speaker 1: I can't just tell his grandkids that their grandfather was

792
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:29,040
Speaker 1: dog shit with money and is fucking them. I have

793
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: to find a way to get them each ten thousand dollars.

794
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 1: And the only way to do that is to force

795
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: enslaved people to work for money, right, Yeah, because obviously

796
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:41,000
Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee doesn't know how to make money. You know,

797
00:40:41,239 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 1: he doesn't have any skills other an army shit. Yeah,

798
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:47,520
Speaker 1: so Lee had spent his whole life. Part of why

799
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 1: he is so obsessed with like paying, you know, executing

800
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:54,799
Speaker 1: this will that should not be his responsibility is that

801
00:40:55,120 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 1: he is still smarting about his deadbeat dad and the

802
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: fact that his father in law is proven in death

803
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: to have been another richocratic fails son doesn't diminish Lee's

804
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:07,880
Speaker 1: personal obsession with executing the will and returning the Custis

805
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 1: family plantation to profitability. This becomes his obsession. And the

806
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 1: problem comes in that we just noted Custis. You know,

807
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 1: his father in law is kind of soft hearted. That's

808
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 1: what people say at the time towards the slaves. So

809
00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:23,960
Speaker 1: he tells them all, when I die, you're free, right.

810
00:41:24,040 --> 00:41:28,880
Speaker 1: M So that's a problem because Lee has no ability

811
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:32,160
Speaker 1: to make up this money without the family slaves, right.

812
00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:35,399
Speaker 1: And this is again goes back to Custis being such

813
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:37,400
Speaker 1: a piece of shit. He is a deadbeat. So he

814
00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 1: promises I think in part because like a lot of

815
00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:43,799
Speaker 1: these are his kids or his people that he's he

816
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:47,680
Speaker 1: considers his lovers. Obviously that's not what's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

817
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 1: and he just feels bad. So we have to tell him, like,

818
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:51,400
Speaker 1: when I die, you'll be free. You'll keep living this

819
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:53,160
Speaker 1: sweet life and then you'll be free when I did.

820
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:55,640
Speaker 1: It's fine, don't worry about it. I'm really a good guy.

821
00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:58,359
Speaker 1: You can trust me. But he is a liar, right.

822
00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:00,879
Speaker 1: He does not say you are all free as soon

823
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:03,520
Speaker 1: as I die. He directs that they be freed within

824
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 1: five years of his death. Right. But he tells them

825
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 1: you're free when I die, yeah, which is so true.

826
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:13,799
Speaker 1: Kinda but what this means is that Lee is going

827
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:15,880
Speaker 1: to be like, all right, well, I've got five years

828
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:17,879
Speaker 1: to make as much money out of these people as

829
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:21,359
Speaker 1: I can before they're before they're free. Right yeah. Now

830
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:25,560
Speaker 1: this causes a conflict because they were expecting to be

831
00:42:25,600 --> 00:42:30,359
Speaker 1: free right away, and they considered themselves free. Moreover, part

832
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:33,360
Speaker 1: of the issue here is, again, their life at Arlington

833
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:36,320
Speaker 1: is more comfortable than most enslaved people's lives.

834
00:42:36,440 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 2: Right.

835
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:40,000
Speaker 1: They are not being like worked as hard or as

836
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:42,520
Speaker 1: brutally as is common in the area.

837
00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:42,719
Speaker 4: Right.

838
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:45,120
Speaker 1: Again, I don't I don't give any sort of credit

839
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 1: to Custus for this, but this is going to be

840
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: relevant because Lee decides we don't need all of these

841
00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:54,399
Speaker 1: people at Arlington to get it profitable. So I'm going

842
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: to hire them out to other owners, right, contract them

843
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:02,239
Speaker 1: out to make money to pay Custus's grandkids. I'm going

844
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 1: to force them to labor. I'm going to break up

845
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:08,280
Speaker 1: their families, force them to live away from their children

846
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: and wives for five years so that I can give

847
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:16,960
Speaker 1: our shiftless grandkids some money. Right, that is fucked up?

848
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's yeah, you sell the brand for parts, yeah,

849
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:24,719
Speaker 3: and it's like it's it's it's you can make more

850
00:43:24,719 --> 00:43:26,399
Speaker 3: money if I'll sell you for parts rather than try

851
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:26,680
Speaker 3: to work.

852
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 1: It's still yeah, and this is how he writes about them.

853
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: Among them is Reuben, a great rogue and rascal who

854
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:35,839
Speaker 1: I must get rid of some way, right, Like, these

855
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:38,520
Speaker 1: guys are just such a problem. They don't want to work.

856
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna have to sell them to somebody who

857
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: beat the hell out of them, you know, for for

858
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 1: five years, so that I can, you know, make up

859
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:47,840
Speaker 1: the cash. So one of the things that's really horrible

860
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:52,759
Speaker 1: about this is Custis had let families stay together in Arlington, right,

861
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:55,799
Speaker 1: So after years of being used to well, at least

862
00:43:55,880 --> 00:43:58,800
Speaker 1: we have our families, right, Lee just break. He doesn't

863
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:02,359
Speaker 1: give a fuck. Right now, several of these people, when

864
00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:04,840
Speaker 1: he hires them off, flee their new positions and return

865
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:07,480
Speaker 1: to Alexandria. It causes this like whole because he's got

866
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 1: to like discipline them now. It's this whole thing, and

867
00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:15,440
Speaker 1: it causes a stir even within Virginia because within the gentry,

868
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: their understanding too is that like, yeah, Custus wanted these

869
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,520
Speaker 1: people freed on his deathbed, and Lee is still working them.

870
00:44:21,560 --> 00:44:23,560
Speaker 1: So even a lot of white people are kind of

871
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:26,880
Speaker 1: disapproving of this right like this is kind of a

872
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: violation of a promise that had been made. And the

873
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 1: soft disapproval of his fellow citizens was met with a

874
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:36,399
Speaker 1: burning rage by the enslaved workers at Arlington. And I'm

875
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 1: going to quote from an article on the website American

876
00:44:38,680 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 1: Heritage here, believing they were entitled to their freedom and

877
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: alarmed at the way Lee was breaking up their families

878
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 1: by hiring the able bodied. Far from Arlington, the slaves

879
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:50,640
Speaker 1: banded together and tried to overpower him, physically shouting that

880
00:44:50,680 --> 00:44:53,000
Speaker 1: they were as free as he was. Angered by the

881
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 1: slaves defiance, Lee resorted to increasingly harsh measures to maintain control.

882
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:01,360
Speaker 1: And the first harsh measure he resorts to is forcing

883
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 1: the men who'd attacked him into what are described as

884
00:45:04,000 --> 00:45:06,879
Speaker 1: slave pins in the city of Arlington. He locks them

885
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:09,920
Speaker 1: up in the city, away from their families, and then

886
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:13,080
Speaker 1: he leases them off again. And this takes us to

887
00:45:13,120 --> 00:45:15,799
Speaker 1: the reality of the marble man. Beneath his layers of

888
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:19,719
Speaker 1: politess and this genteel Southern social obligation, he is as

889
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: brutal a slave master as any as soon as his

890
00:45:22,080 --> 00:45:26,000
Speaker 1: financial goals are threatened, right, That's what it is to him,

891
00:45:26,400 --> 00:45:27,360
Speaker 1: it's as simple as.

892
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 3: That you started fucking with my money. Yeah, exactly now,

893
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:32,359
Speaker 3: and now you really know what I think of you.

894
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:34,000
Speaker 1: Now the nice guy's gone.

895
00:45:34,080 --> 00:45:35,359
Speaker 2: Yeah now.

896
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:39,560
Speaker 1: Alan Guelzo, who knows Lee better than me, describes Lee's reaction,

897
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:42,879
Speaker 1: based on years of letters to family and friends, as

898
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:46,360
Speaker 1: one of confusion as to why these people are angry

899
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:48,880
Speaker 1: that he's forcing them to work and be away from

900
00:45:48,920 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 1: their families.

901
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:50,360
Speaker 2: Quote.

902
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:53,400
Speaker 1: Lee could not comprehend why the demands he was making

903
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:56,000
Speaker 1: did not earn the understanding even the cooperation, of the

904
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: Arlington slaves. But they didn't, and his frustration at their

905
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:02,359
Speaker 1: obstinacy over in the spring of eighteen fifty nine, when

906
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:05,760
Speaker 1: three of the Arlington slaves, Wesley Norris, his sister Mary Norris,

907
00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:08,799
Speaker 1: and their cousin George Parks, determined to run away. They

908
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:11,200
Speaker 1: made it as far as Westminster, Maryland, only a few

909
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 1: miles from the free state border of Pennsylvania, when they

910
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:16,240
Speaker 1: were stopped and imprisoned. Two weeks later, they were shipped

911
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 1: back to Arlington, where Lee had to pay the costs

912
00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:22,440
Speaker 1: for their rendition. His fabled self control teedling unsteadily. Lee

913
00:46:22,520 --> 00:46:26,280
Speaker 1: demanded of the three why they ran away because they replied, frankly,

914
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 1: we considered ourselves free. Now that's a baller response, yeah.

915
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 2: Because it's like that there's such.

916
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:43,719
Speaker 3: An insidiousness in the sense that like, like, fam this,

917
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:47,880
Speaker 3: ain't you plantation number one and number two? Oh you

918
00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:48,560
Speaker 3: married it?

919
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 2: That's not even your father, Like yeah, and the dude

920
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:55,399
Speaker 2: that we who actually owned us, which we gonna set

921
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:56,360
Speaker 2: aside for a second.

922
00:46:56,440 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 3: That that's a sentence that just came out of my mouth. Yeah,

923
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:03,120
Speaker 3: has already freedoms. What is you talk like? You're not

924
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:04,240
Speaker 3: You're not in charge?

925
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:05,719
Speaker 2: Who are you? Bro?

926
00:47:05,800 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 1: Who is this like that?

927
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:11,400
Speaker 3: Like that would be even more insidious of like you

928
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:12,879
Speaker 3: you have no authority here?

929
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are you talking about?

930
00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: Yes, you are? You are ruining our lives. Yes, so

931
00:47:19,640 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 1: an old man who was a piece of ship will

932
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:25,760
Speaker 1: seem better to his grandkids who are also shiftless, lazy

933
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: pieces of ship. It's such an unfair situ.

934
00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:33,239
Speaker 2: I like, I can't. I have I understand so much

935
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:34,920
Speaker 2: more now that.

936
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:40,279
Speaker 3: Like like privilege just makes you brittle, Like I feel

937
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:42,120
Speaker 3: like that's just the best because I'm like, what a

938
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 3: brittle soul that?

939
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 2: Like, why is this inferior? They're not yours like these

940
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 2: they're not yours.

941
00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:54,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it gets worse because and this is really

942
00:47:54,800 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 1: what reveals the actual man behind the marble. Right, one

943
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 1: of these fugitive enslaved people later recalled quote. He then

944
00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 1: told us he would teach us a lesson we would

945
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,279
Speaker 1: never forget. And he has all both men stripped to

946
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 1: the waist and he orders his overseer to lash them

947
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:14,719
Speaker 1: each fifty times. Mary Norris, the only woman of the group,

948
00:48:14,760 --> 00:48:18,200
Speaker 1: he orders to be lashed twenty times. Now that's horrible

949
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: without context, right, yes, but I want to lend some

950
00:48:22,160 --> 00:48:26,240
Speaker 1: Whipping is a obviously very common punishment on many plantations.

951
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 1: Somewhere between thirty and forty was normal for an infraction, right,

952
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:33,839
Speaker 1: So fifty is a big punishment. And you can tell

953
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:36,080
Speaker 1: how big it is by so Lee. There's a white

954
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:39,520
Speaker 1: overseer whose job is to manage the enslaved people at Arlington, Right,

955
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:41,600
Speaker 1: and Lee says, I want you to whip these men

956
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:43,640
Speaker 1: fifty times each. I want you to whip Mary twenty times.

957
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:46,799
Speaker 1: And the overseer says no, He's like, I can't do it,

958
00:48:47,040 --> 00:48:48,399
Speaker 1: Like that's fucked up, man, I'm not going.

959
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:48,719
Speaker 2: To do it.

960
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:53,279
Speaker 1: So again, and this guy's part of his job is

961
00:48:53,320 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: whipping enslaved people, and he's like, no, this is fucked up, Like, wow,

962
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: that's bad. When yeah, that I do it right, that's bad.

963
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:07,440
Speaker 1: So Lee has to hire find a local cop, the

964
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 1: guy who had captured the escapees, and is like, will

965
00:49:09,640 --> 00:49:13,239
Speaker 1: you beat them for me? Right? That is how Lee

966
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 1: claims this goes. Now, that may not have been exactly

967
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:18,360
Speaker 1: how it goes, and maybe a lot worse than that.

968
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:22,840
Speaker 1: More recent Lost Cause books love to emphasize Lee's distaste

969
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:24,839
Speaker 1: for slavery, and he says a lot of stuff about

970
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:28,239
Speaker 1: how he doesn't like slavery, but older texts from the

971
00:49:28,239 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 1: middle of last century, including stuff written by his family,

972
00:49:31,200 --> 00:49:33,799
Speaker 1: makes it clear that his dislike of slavery was what

973
00:49:33,920 --> 00:49:37,719
Speaker 1: it revealed about his own inherent cruelty and more cowardice.

974
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:41,240
Speaker 1: The nineteen sixty nine book Meet Robert E. Lee stated

975
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:44,160
Speaker 1: Lee knew slavery was wrong. He said it was bad

976
00:49:44,200 --> 00:49:46,640
Speaker 1: for the slave and worse for the man who owned him.

977
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:51,040
Speaker 1: And that's not true. But also, I don't want to

978
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:54,239
Speaker 1: disregard one of the meanings of that, right, I disregard like,

979
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:56,600
Speaker 1: obviously it's worse for the slave. Yeah, but what he's

980
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 1: saying there. When he says it's worse for the man

981
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:01,960
Speaker 1: who owns him, he is thinking about the evil in

982
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:05,799
Speaker 1: himself that he had to see because of what he

983
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:10,120
Speaker 1: does to these people. Right, the New York Tribune publishes

984
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:13,920
Speaker 1: an article about Lee's battery of his enslaved people. Right,

985
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:16,800
Speaker 1: it is so bad that it makes the fucking news.

986
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:21,400
Speaker 1: And that article claims that Lee himself stripped Mary Norris

987
00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:24,760
Speaker 1: and lashed her thirty nine times in a fit of rage.

988
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: And crucially, Lee writes about this news article, he is

989
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 1: aware of it. He never denies the allegation or lodges

990
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:36,960
Speaker 1: any protest against the paper. Never, So it does kind

991
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:38,879
Speaker 1: of seem like what happens and why he's like it's

992
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:42,360
Speaker 1: so bad for the slave owner, is he loses his control,

993
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: like this granite reserve that he is so proud of,

994
00:50:46,040 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: and he strips and beats a woman bloody, and he

995
00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 1: lives with that. That's the only thing really inside of him,

996
00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:57,319
Speaker 1: This man who is such a mystery everybody. That venal cruelty,

997
00:50:57,360 --> 00:50:59,600
Speaker 1: the same kind of cruelty that exists in his father.

998
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:01,960
Speaker 1: That's the core of property. Yeah, and you get to

999
00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:02,600
Speaker 1: see it here.

1000
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're tittling on something that I feel like obviously doing.

1001
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 3: You know, post mortem psychology is never good. However, that

1002
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 3: point of like that type of hate and prejudice, how

1003
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:22,160
Speaker 3: it destroys the person inside of them is one of

1004
00:51:22,200 --> 00:51:26,680
Speaker 3: those grotesque things that like is not talked about enough

1005
00:51:27,520 --> 00:51:34,719
Speaker 3: in discussing the pretzel that these people had to put

1006
00:51:34,760 --> 00:51:38,440
Speaker 3: themselves in to know that if you are calling yourself

1007
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 3: the civilized one, to know what you're doing to Yeah,

1008
00:51:43,200 --> 00:51:45,759
Speaker 3: I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stoop down to say

1009
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 3: in your brain you still don't. You're still saying these

1010
00:51:48,160 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 3: people are subhuman. But still, even if they're subhuman, the

1011
00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:55,840
Speaker 3: things you are doing to this creature that's alive, you know,

1012
00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:02,120
Speaker 3: is there's no way like the again, the mental gymnastics

1013
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 3: you have to do to be able to look yourself

1014
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:09,000
Speaker 3: in the face and justify that has got to be haunting. Yeah,

1015
00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:11,560
Speaker 3: because newsflast you just as human as I am.

1016
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.

1017
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:18,040
Speaker 3: And so I think that that statement is not acknowledged enough.

1018
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 3: And rather than face what you think is unthinkable and

1019
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:26,200
Speaker 3: preposterous and accept the fact that I am participating in

1020
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 3: a deep evil and do the work to change you

1021
00:52:30,160 --> 00:52:30,759
Speaker 3: double down.

1022
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:34,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, I also wonder if part of what's happening here

1023
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:37,799
Speaker 1: is that you know, there's this always these claims that like, well,

1024
00:52:37,800 --> 00:52:41,239
Speaker 1: this is a divine racial hierarchy, and really black people

1025
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 1: don't even want to be free, They're happier this way,

1026
00:52:44,160 --> 00:52:49,000
Speaker 1: and you can't keep telling yourself that lie when you

1027
00:52:49,080 --> 00:52:51,839
Speaker 1: see someone in a very intelligent and dignified way say

1028
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:56,240
Speaker 1: I am a free man, and as a result, you

1029
00:52:56,320 --> 00:52:59,520
Speaker 1: like when that kind of shatters that myth in your head,

1030
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:03,439
Speaker 1: all that's left is violence, right, which puts a lie

1031
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:05,920
Speaker 1: to the fact that this is a divinely ordained system.

1032
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:08,560
Speaker 1: I do think that's like part of why there's this

1033
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:10,680
Speaker 1: rage and shame over it for him.

1034
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:14,000
Speaker 3: I do want to Yeah, sorry, one more thing. I

1035
00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:16,160
Speaker 3: do think, like you said, like that lie that you're

1036
00:53:16,200 --> 00:53:21,440
Speaker 3: telling yourself, part of me is like why I again

1037
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:26,279
Speaker 3: rarely give like I give historical context. I understand that

1038
00:53:26,400 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 3: like humans in a time, but like I rarely give

1039
00:53:29,040 --> 00:53:33,239
Speaker 3: any quarters to a to the argument that like, well,

1040
00:53:33,320 --> 00:53:35,439
Speaker 3: this is just what we did at the time. I'm like, nah,

1041
00:53:35,440 --> 00:53:37,719
Speaker 3: you knew, y'all know what y'all doing.

1042
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is that moment for me. Yes, and

1043
00:53:41,640 --> 00:53:45,000
Speaker 1: the moment that it is for all of us is ADS.

1044
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:53,759
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So I want to stay with

1045
00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:57,560
Speaker 1: this moment, this beating a little longer, because this is

1046
00:53:57,600 --> 00:53:59,480
Speaker 1: a moment that the people who want to paint a

1047
00:53:59,560 --> 00:54:03,200
Speaker 1: picture of Lee as a moral paragon have to grapple

1048
00:54:03,239 --> 00:54:05,759
Speaker 1: with and they usually have to find some way to

1049
00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 1: like minimize it. Right, yeah, and this this goes on

1050
00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:10,720
Speaker 1: to this day. I want to read you a quote

1051
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:15,399
Speaker 1: from an absolutely shameful Dallas Morning News article. And part

1052
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:17,680
Speaker 1: of why this is fucking shameful, by the way, the

1053
00:54:17,760 --> 00:54:20,920
Speaker 1: Dallas Morning News has a proud pedigree. One of the

1054
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:24,239
Speaker 1: things they did during the Second ku Klux Klan was

1055
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:28,479
Speaker 1: like have journalists basically tail people to clan members, take

1056
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:31,680
Speaker 1: down like license plates and shit like that, and publish

1057
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:34,200
Speaker 1: lists of the members of town who were in the KKK.

1058
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:38,759
Speaker 1: Like that was some based shit, yes in the day.

1059
00:54:39,239 --> 00:54:41,360
Speaker 1: And this is the crap they're doing now. This is

1060
00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:44,640
Speaker 1: from a twenty seventeen article entitled Robert E. Lee is

1061
00:54:44,680 --> 00:54:47,360
Speaker 1: the uniter America has been looking for.

1062
00:54:47,800 --> 00:54:49,320
Speaker 2: Okay, wait wait wait wait wait.

1063
00:54:49,280 --> 00:54:55,000
Speaker 1: Yeah THO seventy two zero one seven.

1064
00:54:55,239 --> 00:54:58,400
Speaker 3: Okay, this makes me wish this was like a visual podcast.

1065
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 3: Oh it's we could have seen my face just then.

1066
00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:04,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll refer back to this article a couple of

1067
00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:08,080
Speaker 1: times later. But it is shameful shit, and I want

1068
00:55:08,080 --> 00:55:10,040
Speaker 1: to read a quote from it now. This is published

1069
00:55:10,040 --> 00:55:12,080
Speaker 1: in the wake of Charlottesville, right, so they're like, how

1070
00:55:12,120 --> 00:55:14,240
Speaker 1: do we get Americans back together?

1071
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:18,080
Speaker 2: Okay, in the wake of Charlotte's Okay, Dallas.

1072
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, in Dallas City of hate. Yeah. Yes, Lee himself,

1073
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:25,680
Speaker 1: Virginia aristocrat as he was, was no slave task master.

1074
00:55:25,960 --> 00:55:29,000
Speaker 1: He was a soldier of the United States. Just before

1075
00:55:29,040 --> 00:55:31,480
Speaker 1: the war. He received in trust from his late father

1076
00:55:31,520 --> 00:55:33,760
Speaker 1: in laws of state one hundred and ninety six slaves

1077
00:55:33,800 --> 00:55:37,719
Speaker 1: designated under terms of the Will for emancipation, which objective

1078
00:55:37,800 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: despite the distractions of command, Lee faithfully achieved at the

1079
00:55:41,160 --> 00:55:44,240
Speaker 1: end of eighteen sixty two. A New York newspaper report

1080
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:46,799
Speaker 1: from the same time period accusing Lee of stripping and

1081
00:55:46,840 --> 00:55:50,440
Speaker 1: personally beating a woman runaway slave, deserves the same credence

1082
00:55:50,480 --> 00:55:54,160
Speaker 1: as might a tale of Barack Obama's endowing the Richard B. Spencer,

1083
00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:59,040
Speaker 1: Chair of Confederate History at Yale fake news, Like, what

1084
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:01,160
Speaker 1: why are you calling it fake news? Is there any

1085
00:56:01,200 --> 00:56:03,480
Speaker 1: evidence that it's fake. Oh no, there's not. He was

1086
00:56:03,520 --> 00:56:05,799
Speaker 1: aware of it and didn't argue against it, didn't say

1087
00:56:05,800 --> 00:56:09,080
Speaker 1: shit against it, and in fact ordered those slaves objectively.

1088
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:12,440
Speaker 1: We know this, no doubt about it. Ordered them beaten

1089
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 1: brutally in order to make money for his grandkids. Not

1090
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:20,640
Speaker 1: a slave task master, my fucking ass.

1091
00:56:20,719 --> 00:56:24,479
Speaker 3: Like the amount of things that were within the first

1092
00:56:24,480 --> 00:56:31,319
Speaker 3: two sentences that were factually, verifiably false, the first two

1093
00:56:31,360 --> 00:56:32,239
Speaker 3: things out your mouth.

1094
00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:37,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a vile thing to say. Again, maybe we

1095
00:56:37,200 --> 00:56:39,960
Speaker 1: should consider bringing back stoning for certain things.

1096
00:56:40,200 --> 00:56:41,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, thank you?

1097
00:56:41,520 --> 00:56:44,200
Speaker 3: What's the basis? Like this desires? It's all like, what's

1098
00:56:44,239 --> 00:56:45,520
Speaker 3: the why I bring this up?

1099
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:49,359
Speaker 2: Yeah? How was his helping Charlottesville? Tell me you're Matt

1100
00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:50,280
Speaker 2: what's the capulus?

1101
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:53,319
Speaker 1: His thing as well, is that in the wake of

1102
00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:56,360
Speaker 1: the Civil War, Lee was a really big uniter. He

1103
00:56:56,400 --> 00:56:59,600
Speaker 1: wanted everyone to move on, to get past this ugly

1104
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:02,480
Speaker 1: chap and that we shouldn't tear down his statue. We

1105
00:57:02,480 --> 00:57:06,000
Speaker 1: should celebrate him as a guy you preached unity. What

1106
00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:07,000
Speaker 1: else did he fucking do?

1107
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1108
00:57:08,160 --> 00:57:11,920
Speaker 3: And like where you're editored at when your first sentences.

1109
00:57:12,440 --> 00:57:15,759
Speaker 3: He was a soldier of the United States, He was.

1110
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:19,520
Speaker 1: Not No, No, he was a waiter. He was on

1111
00:57:19,600 --> 00:57:20,440
Speaker 1: the other side.

1112
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:24,479
Speaker 2: I don't understand what like what what?

1113
00:57:25,120 --> 00:57:27,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this meme that goes around and it's like

1114
00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:30,520
Speaker 1: anarchists in every other period of American history and they're

1115
00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:33,360
Speaker 1: like burning an American flag and it's anarchists from eighteen

1116
00:57:33,440 --> 00:57:36,000
Speaker 1: sixty one to sixty five. You're like, you've got like

1117
00:57:36,040 --> 00:57:39,000
Speaker 1: the Union flag. You're doing in a blue uniform saluting

1118
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:44,840
Speaker 1: like that is. I do not consider Lee's fucking like

1119
00:57:44,840 --> 00:57:47,800
Speaker 1: like he is not a uniter of the America. I

1120
00:57:47,840 --> 00:57:49,360
Speaker 1: want to be a part of I want to be

1121
00:57:49,400 --> 00:57:51,920
Speaker 1: a part of the America that fucking lit the South

1122
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:54,880
Speaker 1: on fire to end of that system, right, yes, Like

1123
00:57:55,560 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 1: that's that's that's where I want to be.

1124
00:57:57,320 --> 00:58:00,680
Speaker 3: That was like, all right, this is some bullshit. We're done, Yeah,

1125
00:58:00,680 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 3: we're done.

1126
00:58:01,680 --> 00:58:03,600
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah.

1127
00:58:04,160 --> 00:58:07,560
Speaker 1: So the next chapter of Lee's career and life was

1128
00:58:07,600 --> 00:58:10,080
Speaker 1: to involve a man who was his opposite in every

1129
00:58:10,120 --> 00:58:13,600
Speaker 1: way and whose very existence was dedicated towards dissolving the

1130
00:58:13,640 --> 00:58:17,480
Speaker 1: foundations of Robert E. Lee's existence. His name was John Brown,

1131
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:19,680
Speaker 1: and I think we are all broadly aware of what

1132
00:58:19,720 --> 00:58:24,400
Speaker 1: he did. Yeah. Yeah. To provide a quick summary, John

1133
00:58:24,440 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 1: Brown was a professional militant abolitionist. He had fought bloody

1134
00:58:28,680 --> 00:58:31,840
Speaker 1: battles in Kansas to free enslaved people, and he was

1135
00:58:31,880 --> 00:58:35,960
Speaker 1: basically a living boogeyman to pro slavery types. From October

1136
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:39,040
Speaker 1: sixteenth to eighteenth, eighteen fifty nine, he and a band

1137
00:58:39,040 --> 00:58:42,160
Speaker 1: of hand picked gorillas launched a raid on Harper's ferry

1138
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:44,720
Speaker 1: to try and secure weapons from the garrison there that

1139
00:58:44,760 --> 00:58:47,280
Speaker 1: they could use to arm enslaved people and launch a

1140
00:58:47,320 --> 00:58:50,200
Speaker 1: rebellion that would carve out an independent fortress of freedom

1141
00:58:50,280 --> 00:58:53,080
Speaker 1: lodged right in the heart of the Old South. It

1142
00:58:53,160 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 1: did not work. Not a successful operation, unfortunately, but a

1143
00:58:57,600 --> 00:59:00,480
Speaker 1: noble attempt. I mean, in the long run, it helps

1144
00:59:00,520 --> 00:59:03,480
Speaker 1: start the war that ends slavery. So I will call

1145
00:59:03,520 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 1: it a failure. It's just like not immediately tactically successful, right, Yeah.

1146
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:10,560
Speaker 1: And Robert E. Lee is the man who commands the

1147
00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 1: US military forces sent in to quell the uprising and

1148
00:59:13,880 --> 00:59:17,720
Speaker 1: kill or capture John Brown. This they did. And while

1149
00:59:17,760 --> 00:59:20,680
Speaker 1: the job is odious, Lee is like, he handles this

1150
00:59:20,720 --> 00:59:23,400
Speaker 1: in like a competent way, right, He's not particularly brutal.

1151
00:59:23,440 --> 00:59:25,760
Speaker 1: He does the job, you know, that's the kind of

1152
00:59:25,760 --> 00:59:29,240
Speaker 1: guy he is Brown is wounded when the army storms

1153
00:59:29,240 --> 00:59:31,840
Speaker 1: his position, and this excerpt from the book Clouds of

1154
00:59:31,840 --> 00:59:35,680
Speaker 1: Glory by Michael Korda describes the first interaction between Lee

1155
00:59:35,680 --> 00:59:38,800
Speaker 1: and Brown. Lee had him carried to the office of

1156
00:59:38,840 --> 00:59:41,480
Speaker 1: the paymaster of the armory, where Brown soon recovered enough

1157
00:59:41,520 --> 00:59:43,880
Speaker 1: strength to hold what would now be called a celebrity

1158
00:59:43,880 --> 00:59:46,520
Speaker 1: press conference combined with some of the attributes of a

1159
00:59:46,600 --> 00:59:49,600
Speaker 1: royal audience. Lee courteously offered to clear the room of

1160
00:59:49,680 --> 00:59:52,760
Speaker 1: visitors if their presence annoyed or pained Brown, who, though

1161
00:59:52,760 --> 00:59:55,600
Speaker 1: in considerable pain, replied that he was glad to make

1162
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:57,920
Speaker 1: himself and his motives clearly understood.

1163
00:59:58,920 --> 00:59:59,280
Speaker 2: Now.

1164
00:59:59,520 --> 01:00:02,560
Speaker 1: One of the fun asides of the John Brown story

1165
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:05,320
Speaker 1: is that all of the men involved in capturing him

1166
01:00:05,640 --> 01:00:08,280
Speaker 1: are like, can't help how impressed they are.

1167
01:00:08,600 --> 01:00:11,520
Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, they're like Disney is hard.

1168
01:00:11,320 --> 01:00:14,320
Speaker 1: But yeah, They're like they all think he's insane, but

1169
01:00:14,320 --> 01:00:17,800
Speaker 1: they're like, this man is incredibly physically courageous, He is

1170
01:00:17,880 --> 01:00:22,000
Speaker 1: well spoken, he knows exactly what he's doing right. He

1171
01:00:22,040 --> 01:00:25,720
Speaker 1: gives a three hour press conference after being stabbed through

1172
01:00:25,760 --> 01:00:30,320
Speaker 1: the kidney. The governor, the governor of Virginia, who's there

1173
01:00:30,360 --> 01:00:33,240
Speaker 1: in the aftermath, calls John Brown the gamest man I

1174
01:00:33,280 --> 01:00:37,640
Speaker 1: ever saw, Like, motherfucker's down credit.

1175
01:00:37,920 --> 01:00:41,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's staying all bidness over there.

1176
01:00:41,800 --> 01:00:44,360
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, I think you have to because like he is,

1177
01:00:44,560 --> 01:00:47,040
Speaker 1: he doesn't even break composure when his son is killed

1178
01:00:47,040 --> 01:00:49,760
Speaker 1: in the fight. I think it's because Brown there is

1179
01:00:49,800 --> 01:00:51,800
Speaker 1: not a doubt in his mind that God is real,

1180
01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:53,520
Speaker 1: there is not a doubt in his mind that Heaven

1181
01:00:53,600 --> 01:00:55,040
Speaker 1: is real, and there's not a doubt in his mind

1182
01:00:55,040 --> 01:00:58,400
Speaker 1: that the only thing that matters is fighting to end slavery.

1183
01:00:58,600 --> 01:01:01,760
Speaker 1: And if his son died, that my kid's gonna be fine.

1184
01:01:01,800 --> 01:01:04,160
Speaker 1: And so I'm on exactly right. Yeah, like we're going,

1185
01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:06,720
Speaker 1: we're going to paradise. We did what we were supposed

1186
01:01:06,760 --> 01:01:09,720
Speaker 1: to do, you know, your right? Yeah, like that, like

1187
01:01:09,840 --> 01:01:11,120
Speaker 1: and and and.

1188
01:01:10,840 --> 01:01:14,560
Speaker 3: It's very rare in the world, in the in time memorium,

1189
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:20,040
Speaker 3: can someone definitively be like, yeah, no, we're right, Yeah, absolutely,

1190
01:01:20,440 --> 01:01:21,800
Speaker 3: we are absolutely right.

1191
01:01:22,200 --> 01:01:23,120
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.

1192
01:01:23,200 --> 01:01:26,560
Speaker 1: Now, Lee is present for the whole conversation that ensued

1193
01:01:26,560 --> 01:01:31,920
Speaker 1: between Brown, Senator Mason, Lee's man Stewart, and the governor Quote.

1194
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:35,000
Speaker 1: When Senator Mason asked him how he could justify his acts,

1195
01:01:35,040 --> 01:01:37,280
Speaker 1: Brown replied, I think, my friend, you are guilty of

1196
01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:40,120
Speaker 1: a great wrong against God and humanity. I say it

1197
01:01:40,160 --> 01:01:42,640
Speaker 1: without wishing to be offensive, and it would be perfectly

1198
01:01:42,720 --> 01:01:45,040
Speaker 1: right in anyone to interfere with you so far as

1199
01:01:45,040 --> 01:01:48,840
Speaker 1: to free those you willfully and wickedly hold this in bondage.

1200
01:01:49,000 --> 01:01:52,360
Speaker 1: I do not say this insultingly like no offense, but

1201
01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:56,200
Speaker 1: like you are. You are willingly participating in the greatest

1202
01:01:56,200 --> 01:02:00,440
Speaker 1: evil of our time. Respectfully, anything anyone do stop you

1203
01:02:00,560 --> 01:02:01,360
Speaker 1: is justified.

1204
01:02:01,720 --> 01:02:06,600
Speaker 3: Yes, look respectfully, like respectfully, no shade like respectfully.

1205
01:02:06,800 --> 01:02:09,720
Speaker 2: You're the fucking devil. Yeah, and you're doing the work

1206
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:10,280
Speaker 2: of Satan.

1207
01:02:10,680 --> 01:02:15,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, respectfully Yeah, yeah, I mean, nothing impolite here, but no,

1208
01:02:15,600 --> 01:02:17,960
Speaker 1: God's damn you for your actions.

1209
01:02:18,000 --> 01:02:22,800
Speaker 2: No disrespect, but you work for some Yeah.

1210
01:02:22,120 --> 01:02:25,240
Speaker 1: It's cool. When when Mason, because Mason's like, did you

1211
01:02:25,280 --> 01:02:27,240
Speaker 1: pay these men who fought with you? Did you have to?

1212
01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:27,360
Speaker 4: Like?

1213
01:02:27,400 --> 01:02:31,080
Speaker 1: Are they mercenaries? Brown replies no, like fuck that, and

1214
01:02:31,320 --> 01:02:34,800
Speaker 1: Jeb Stewart remarks on this, uh, the wages of sin

1215
01:02:35,040 --> 01:02:37,520
Speaker 1: is death, and Brown turns to him and says, I

1216
01:02:37,560 --> 01:02:39,880
Speaker 1: would not have made such a remark to you if.

1217
01:02:39,760 --> 01:02:42,360
Speaker 2: You had been a prisoner and wounded in my hands.

1218
01:02:43,080 --> 01:02:47,720
Speaker 1: Like such a such a g for his part. Lee. Again,

1219
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:51,240
Speaker 1: he has this kind of basic respect for Brown's personal courage,

1220
01:02:51,240 --> 01:02:54,760
Speaker 1: but he thinks he's insane. Yeah, he thinks because the

1221
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:57,880
Speaker 1: plot was so doomed to failure, it means the abolitionist

1222
01:02:58,040 --> 01:03:00,760
Speaker 1: was either a fanatic or a madman. And you know,

1223
01:03:01,320 --> 01:03:04,600
Speaker 1: Brown is both a fanatic and if if being a

1224
01:03:04,640 --> 01:03:08,520
Speaker 1: madman means acting in ways that are completely inconsistent with

1225
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:12,520
Speaker 1: logic of your culture, he is crazy. But I think

1226
01:03:12,560 --> 01:03:15,680
Speaker 1: he's a kind of crazy that it was necessary. Right,

1227
01:03:16,800 --> 01:03:20,320
Speaker 1: The abolitionists who weren't mad men lived comfortably in the

1228
01:03:20,360 --> 01:03:22,400
Speaker 1: North and would like tut tut to their friends when

1229
01:03:22,440 --> 01:03:26,120
Speaker 1: they read articles about Lee stripping and whipping young enslaved women. Right,

1230
01:03:26,440 --> 01:03:27,960
Speaker 1: John Brown picked up a rifle.

1231
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:31,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, they shake your head, just like gos so what

1232
01:03:31,440 --> 01:03:32,280
Speaker 3: they're doing over there?

1233
01:03:32,560 --> 01:03:35,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, like is it? Yeah? Well we on our way

1234
01:03:36,000 --> 01:03:38,680
Speaker 1: and that that's why you get from Harriet Tubman and

1235
01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:40,720
Speaker 1: like being like yeah, he was the fucking best, Like yeah,

1236
01:03:40,760 --> 01:03:42,160
Speaker 1: he was the coolest dude.

1237
01:03:42,080 --> 01:03:46,240
Speaker 2: Yeah. Everybody sign. Everybody sign like no, no, he's a writer.

1238
01:03:46,600 --> 01:03:48,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorites. I think it was

1239
01:03:49,040 --> 01:03:51,600
Speaker 1: Hue P. Newton, who was like the only white man

1240
01:03:51,640 --> 01:03:55,120
Speaker 1: we might have led into the Black Panthers was Jean Brown. Yeah.

1241
01:03:56,200 --> 01:04:01,760
Speaker 2: Him, He's like, nah, but fu all y'all that I

1242
01:04:01,840 --> 01:04:04,120
Speaker 2: kind of like that, dude. Yeah yeah.

1243
01:04:04,200 --> 01:04:06,680
Speaker 3: Obviously adult part of the history is just like these

1244
01:04:06,720 --> 01:04:09,880
Speaker 3: like rays of light in the middle of just chaos.

1245
01:04:10,280 --> 01:04:14,200
Speaker 3: But like I think, you know, situated culturally, it's like

1246
01:04:14,560 --> 01:04:16,920
Speaker 3: anytime I'm ever talking about this time in the world,

1247
01:04:17,040 --> 01:04:19,680
Speaker 3: like obviously because it's so personal to me, but like

1248
01:04:19,880 --> 01:04:23,280
Speaker 3: I always want to like remind people that we are

1249
01:04:23,320 --> 01:04:27,440
Speaker 3: still talking about the enslavement, a chattel, a type of

1250
01:04:27,520 --> 01:04:30,360
Speaker 3: skurgs that hadn't been we hadn't seen before on the planet,

1251
01:04:30,400 --> 01:04:35,040
Speaker 3: Like how remarkably evil this is, and at the same

1252
01:04:35,080 --> 01:04:40,840
Speaker 3: time that those that were disgusted by it are just

1253
01:04:40,960 --> 01:04:45,160
Speaker 3: as normal as we are now about the things that

1254
01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:48,720
Speaker 3: we're disgusted by that Well, if there was a social

1255
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:51,080
Speaker 3: media they would tweet about it, they would follow hashtags,

1256
01:04:51,080 --> 01:04:54,400
Speaker 3: they would do all those things too, But and then

1257
01:04:54,560 --> 01:04:56,560
Speaker 3: and then be looking to the government to be like,

1258
01:04:56,600 --> 01:04:58,120
Speaker 3: why aren't y'all doing something about it?

1259
01:04:58,160 --> 01:05:01,600
Speaker 2: So it reminds me I think of like my brain.

1260
01:05:01,400 --> 01:05:04,640
Speaker 3: Goes to like the dread Scott case, where like I

1261
01:05:04,680 --> 01:05:07,760
Speaker 3: don't need to teach you of this, but like the

1262
01:05:07,440 --> 01:05:11,720
Speaker 3: for the listener, who clearly is the other eighty thousand

1263
01:05:11,760 --> 01:05:14,800
Speaker 3: people that are we're talking to right now, is this

1264
01:05:14,920 --> 01:05:18,200
Speaker 3: idea of like you have the Missouri Compromise, which was

1265
01:05:18,240 --> 01:05:20,360
Speaker 3: like for every free state there's a slave state. If

1266
01:05:20,400 --> 01:05:21,680
Speaker 3: you're gonna get a new one in the Union, you

1267
01:05:21,760 --> 01:05:23,080
Speaker 3: got to get a new one on this side too,

1268
01:05:23,120 --> 01:05:25,560
Speaker 3: Like this was their way of trying to like play

1269
01:05:25,600 --> 01:05:28,160
Speaker 3: cap before we actually went to war. So a dude,

1270
01:05:28,440 --> 01:05:31,240
Speaker 3: So a dude gets free. He like escapes his plantation,

1271
01:05:31,440 --> 01:05:34,640
Speaker 3: goes north, you know, signs up to be a citizen

1272
01:05:34,640 --> 01:05:36,919
Speaker 3: in a northern state and is living his life right.

1273
01:05:36,960 --> 01:05:38,920
Speaker 3: And now he's like, I'm in a free state. This

1274
01:05:39,000 --> 01:05:41,200
Speaker 3: is that's what y'all said, This is what y'all said,

1275
01:05:41,280 --> 01:05:41,880
Speaker 3: y'all was gonna do.

1276
01:05:41,920 --> 01:05:43,640
Speaker 2: I'm a free man. I got up here. I'm good.

1277
01:05:44,040 --> 01:05:47,600
Speaker 3: And then the slave hunter goes and finds him bring

1278
01:05:47,760 --> 01:05:50,160
Speaker 3: and attempts to bring him back to his plantation to

1279
01:05:50,240 --> 01:05:52,080
Speaker 3: enslave him again. And he's like wait, wait wait, wait

1280
01:05:52,080 --> 01:05:54,840
Speaker 3: wait wait hold up, Like looking at this all, y'all

1281
01:05:54,840 --> 01:05:58,000
Speaker 3: states writes people looking at the state, like, fam you're

1282
01:05:58,800 --> 01:06:03,479
Speaker 3: why are you letting this other state, the other state

1283
01:06:03,560 --> 01:06:07,520
Speaker 3: is usurping your authority. You're saying that I'm a free man,

1284
01:06:07,560 --> 01:06:10,080
Speaker 3: like I'm a citizen here. Why are you letting them

1285
01:06:10,080 --> 01:06:12,320
Speaker 3: do that? Goes all the way to Supreme Court. Supreme

1286
01:06:12,320 --> 01:06:15,960
Speaker 3: courts like ah, yeah, you're right, like you still kind

1287
01:06:15,960 --> 01:06:19,400
Speaker 3: of belong to your plantation, and it's like yeah, So

1288
01:06:19,520 --> 01:06:21,440
Speaker 3: at this point you're like, well, I can't trust the

1289
01:06:21,440 --> 01:06:23,920
Speaker 3: Supreme Court to do anything about this shit, you know

1290
01:06:23,960 --> 01:06:27,520
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, because clearly when it was a choice

1291
01:06:27,520 --> 01:06:32,200
Speaker 3: between two states, right, you chose the rights of.

1292
01:06:32,240 --> 01:06:33,000
Speaker 1: The slave state.

1293
01:06:34,200 --> 01:06:36,840
Speaker 2: So to me, I'm like, you could be nice, like

1294
01:06:36,880 --> 01:06:38,800
Speaker 2: you said, you could be nice and like tiss tisk,

1295
01:06:39,360 --> 01:06:41,360
Speaker 2: like you know what's going on, or you could be

1296
01:06:41,440 --> 01:06:42,400
Speaker 2: like John Brown.

1297
01:06:42,200 --> 01:06:43,640
Speaker 3: Is like fuck this. I can't trust y'all to do

1298
01:06:43,640 --> 01:06:45,760
Speaker 3: any of this shit. So we just it's getting down.

1299
01:06:45,840 --> 01:06:48,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it's I want to you know, when

1300
01:06:48,960 --> 01:06:52,360
Speaker 1: we talk about like the particular evil of slavery in

1301
01:06:52,400 --> 01:06:56,840
Speaker 1: the Americas, I think a really good point to look

1302
01:06:56,880 --> 01:06:59,440
Speaker 1: back on as slavery in the Roman Empire. Rome was

1303
01:06:59,440 --> 01:07:06,160
Speaker 1: a slave heavily and they worked generations to death and minds. Yeah,

1304
01:07:06,200 --> 01:07:10,840
Speaker 1: and yet if you get freed. There was no lingering shame.

1305
01:07:11,040 --> 01:07:14,840
Speaker 1: There was no caste system. Your kid you got most

1306
01:07:14,880 --> 01:07:16,600
Speaker 1: of the rights of a citizen, and your kids were

1307
01:07:16,640 --> 01:07:19,240
Speaker 1: just normal citizens. And that is why despite you might

1308
01:07:19,280 --> 01:07:23,080
Speaker 1: have generations of specific people get enslaved, once they got free,

1309
01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:26,200
Speaker 1: there was no lingering stigma. There was no lingering apart like,

1310
01:07:26,360 --> 01:07:28,880
Speaker 1: yeah you were like the Romans were just like, no,

1311
01:07:28,920 --> 01:07:31,520
Speaker 1: slavery is a political condition. We beat you in a war,

1312
01:07:31,720 --> 01:07:33,840
Speaker 1: we get to enslave a bunch of you, right, but

1313
01:07:33,880 --> 01:07:36,400
Speaker 1: once you're still people, We don't think you're less human.

1314
01:07:36,720 --> 01:07:40,640
Speaker 1: We just won, you know, like I don't own your kids, Yeah,

1315
01:07:40,680 --> 01:07:42,800
Speaker 1: but you often did own their kids. But like what

1316
01:07:42,920 --> 01:07:46,640
Speaker 1: your kids, if your kids get free, they're not lower

1317
01:07:46,720 --> 01:07:50,200
Speaker 1: quality people. Yeah, we don't think there's a racial hierarchy.

1318
01:07:50,520 --> 01:07:52,600
Speaker 1: We just won a war, and so we're going to

1319
01:07:52,640 --> 01:07:55,680
Speaker 1: be shipped to you, right, which is like that's still

1320
01:07:55,720 --> 01:07:59,000
Speaker 1: a bad thing, but it is so different from how

1321
01:07:59,000 --> 01:08:04,120
Speaker 1: it worked here. Yeah. So Lee had been sent on

1322
01:08:04,160 --> 01:08:07,240
Speaker 1: special duty to crush John Brown's uprising, and after it

1323
01:08:07,560 --> 01:08:09,880
Speaker 1: gets done, he goes back home to keep unfucking his

1324
01:08:09,960 --> 01:08:12,280
Speaker 1: father in law's finances, but he gets sent back to

1325
01:08:12,280 --> 01:08:14,600
Speaker 1: Harper's Ferry a few days later to defend it from

1326
01:08:14,840 --> 01:08:17,200
Speaker 1: there's this like it's kind of like these fears you

1327
01:08:17,240 --> 01:08:19,840
Speaker 1: had in twenty twenty, that like Antifa's starting fires, Like

1328
01:08:19,880 --> 01:08:22,400
Speaker 1: he's got hundreds of allies. They're hiding in the woods.

1329
01:08:22,520 --> 01:08:25,559
Speaker 1: They're gonna come free him. Lee is like, not a dummy.

1330
01:08:25,600 --> 01:08:27,559
Speaker 1: He knows that no, that's probably not gonna happen. But

1331
01:08:27,800 --> 01:08:31,280
Speaker 1: he does his job. He manages a defense. They execute

1332
01:08:31,400 --> 01:08:34,920
Speaker 1: John Brown, and Lee soon returns to his command down

1333
01:08:35,000 --> 01:08:38,160
Speaker 1: in Texas. He does not seem to have considered the

1334
01:08:38,160 --> 01:08:41,439
Speaker 1: incident to have been hugely significant at the time, but

1335
01:08:41,520 --> 01:08:43,439
Speaker 1: of course it would have an enormous impact on the

1336
01:08:43,479 --> 01:08:45,840
Speaker 1: rest of his life. In the days and weeks after

1337
01:08:45,880 --> 01:08:49,240
Speaker 1: the execution, Brown became a hero to abolitionists across the

1338
01:08:49,280 --> 01:08:53,080
Speaker 1: North and a demon the physical embodiment with growing Southern

1339
01:08:53,160 --> 01:08:57,160
Speaker 1: unease at the political fight over slavery. Guelzo's book contains

1340
01:08:57,200 --> 01:08:59,960
Speaker 1: a good summary of headlines in the wake of the raid.

1341
01:09:00,280 --> 01:09:03,200
Speaker 1: The Southern people of Huge four disregarded the ravings of

1342
01:09:03,240 --> 01:09:06,200
Speaker 1: Northern fanatics because they believed that such madness to be

1343
01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:10,759
Speaker 1: merely of pecuniary speculation, wailed the Richmond Inquirer, but Harper's

1344
01:09:10,840 --> 01:09:13,759
Speaker 1: Ferry shows that the northern people mean more than words.

1345
01:09:14,040 --> 01:09:17,200
Speaker 1: How long will it be? The Inquirer asked before the abolition.

1346
01:09:17,520 --> 01:09:21,680
Speaker 1: Abolition fanatics of Cincinnati may seize Newport in Kentucky. For

1347
01:09:21,720 --> 01:09:23,800
Speaker 1: the moment the aid of the federal government was near

1348
01:09:23,880 --> 01:09:26,520
Speaker 1: Harper's Ferry and was in hands faithful to the Constitution.

1349
01:09:26,840 --> 01:09:28,680
Speaker 1: But another year may place that in the hands of

1350
01:09:28,680 --> 01:09:31,840
Speaker 1: our assailants and urge on and strengthen the hands that

1351
01:09:31,960 --> 01:09:36,599
Speaker 1: murder our families and pillage our property. So they start

1352
01:09:36,640 --> 01:09:39,679
Speaker 1: freaking out about this, but at least for a while,

1353
01:09:39,960 --> 01:09:42,920
Speaker 1: life goes on. One of the last duties Lee is

1354
01:09:42,960 --> 01:09:45,679
Speaker 1: going to execute for the US Army before the Civil

1355
01:09:45,720 --> 01:09:49,280
Speaker 1: War starts is a very mild insurgency against a Mexican

1356
01:09:49,320 --> 01:09:53,200
Speaker 1: man named Juan Courtina. One was a former Mexican Army

1357
01:09:53,200 --> 01:09:56,799
Speaker 1: officer who owned a ranch near Brownsville. He had properties

1358
01:09:56,840 --> 01:09:59,879
Speaker 1: on both sides of the Rio Grande, and as settlers

1359
01:10:00,120 --> 01:10:04,160
Speaker 1: coming in and displacing Mexicans would live there, often for generations.

1360
01:10:05,200 --> 01:10:07,599
Speaker 1: A lot of these settlers are like Conman right, They're

1361
01:10:07,600 --> 01:10:10,479
Speaker 1: basically cooking up fake legal documents to claim they own

1362
01:10:10,560 --> 01:10:13,880
Speaker 1: this property, and like forcing families off it's really fucked up.

1363
01:10:14,160 --> 01:10:17,240
Speaker 1: Cortina calls these guys flocks of vampires, and he is

1364
01:10:17,479 --> 01:10:22,200
Speaker 1: entirely accurate in that. In July eighteen fifty nine, Cortina

1365
01:10:22,280 --> 01:10:25,280
Speaker 1: acts to stop an American police officer from arresting a

1366
01:10:25,320 --> 01:10:29,360
Speaker 1: Mexican man. He winds up shooting the sheriff, evading a posse,

1367
01:10:29,680 --> 01:10:32,559
Speaker 1: and then forming his own band of insurgents and returning

1368
01:10:32,560 --> 01:10:35,360
Speaker 1: to Brownsville with a list of white lawyers to kill

1369
01:10:35,400 --> 01:10:38,040
Speaker 1: and he gets five of them. He's fucking cool. This

1370
01:10:38,080 --> 01:10:41,680
Speaker 1: guy's dope. He then flees back to Mexico and this

1371
01:10:41,720 --> 01:10:44,200
Speaker 1: blows up into a series of raids right and Lee

1372
01:10:44,280 --> 01:10:46,640
Speaker 1: is sent to stop him, and they kind of have

1373
01:10:46,680 --> 01:10:48,600
Speaker 1: a back and forth because every time he'll cross the

1374
01:10:48,680 --> 01:10:51,240
Speaker 1: Rio Grand Lee is not allowed to follow across the

1375
01:10:51,360 --> 01:10:55,000
Speaker 1: Rio Grand in a Mexican territory, and Cortina winds up

1376
01:10:55,040 --> 01:10:58,040
Speaker 1: like eventually, Lee never catches him. Cortina winds up like

1377
01:10:58,120 --> 01:11:00,400
Speaker 1: France tries to take over Mexico and they install a

1378
01:11:00,439 --> 01:11:03,000
Speaker 1: Habsburg emperor, so he has to deal with that. Right,

1379
01:11:04,280 --> 01:11:06,799
Speaker 1: It doesn't end well, but it ends the Courtina problem

1380
01:11:06,840 --> 01:11:09,400
Speaker 1: for the US and for his part. Lee writes to

1381
01:11:09,439 --> 01:11:12,240
Speaker 1: his family about Courtina and says, you know, I am

1382
01:11:12,280 --> 01:11:15,040
Speaker 1: a great advocate of people staying at home and minding

1383
01:11:15,120 --> 01:11:20,000
Speaker 1: their own affairs. Were you were you Liberty? Lee?

1384
01:11:22,040 --> 01:11:22,400
Speaker 2: Really?

1385
01:11:25,000 --> 01:11:26,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think that's true.

1386
01:11:26,920 --> 01:11:28,880
Speaker 4: I don't think so true. I think the dead Man

1387
01:11:29,080 --> 01:11:35,840
Speaker 4: just how's marg Yeah, absolutely, it's hilarious. Yeah, that dude

1388
01:11:35,920 --> 01:11:40,320
Speaker 4: was like running up. Look, yeah he ran up in America.

1389
01:11:40,360 --> 01:11:41,840
Speaker 4: Who was like, okay, catch.

1390
01:11:41,600 --> 01:11:46,800
Speaker 1: Me, fun guy. So back in Texas, Lee encountered a

1391
01:11:46,880 --> 01:11:50,000
Speaker 1: rising tide of secessionist sentiment from the Texans around him.

1392
01:11:50,160 --> 01:11:52,719
Speaker 1: Their hostility to the federal government and even to US

1393
01:11:52,840 --> 01:11:56,559
Speaker 1: army troops was palpable. The situation grew worse by the day,

1394
01:11:56,640 --> 01:11:59,760
Speaker 1: and Lee found himself is sort of in a peculiar

1395
01:11:59,800 --> 01:12:03,479
Speaker 1: and alienated mindset. If you want to imagine what the

1396
01:12:03,560 --> 01:12:06,200
Speaker 1: kind of man Lee was would be doing today in

1397
01:12:06,240 --> 01:12:09,000
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, it's helpful to note that he was

1398
01:12:09,080 --> 01:12:12,160
Speaker 1: his era's equivalent of a centrist, at least in terms

1399
01:12:12,200 --> 01:12:14,680
Speaker 1: of how he expressed his beliefs. I don't think it

1400
01:12:14,720 --> 01:12:17,160
Speaker 1: was in his heart really as centrist. He was much more.

1401
01:12:17,920 --> 01:12:19,920
Speaker 1: He was a dedicated slave owner, But in terms of

1402
01:12:19,920 --> 01:12:23,120
Speaker 1: how he talked about things, that is how he liked

1403
01:12:23,120 --> 01:12:27,559
Speaker 1: to portray himself. Michael Korda describes this well, he was

1404
01:12:27,560 --> 01:12:30,479
Speaker 1: appalled at Southerner's talk about the renewal of the slave trade,

1405
01:12:30,479 --> 01:12:33,200
Speaker 1: to which he was opposed on every ground, and his

1406
01:12:33,320 --> 01:12:35,840
Speaker 1: experience of dealing with his father in law slaves had

1407
01:12:35,880 --> 01:12:38,760
Speaker 1: further soured his view of slavery as an institution. He

1408
01:12:38,840 --> 01:12:42,439
Speaker 1: regarded secession as revolution, dismissed it as silly, and could

1409
01:12:42,439 --> 01:12:45,720
Speaker 1: anticipate no greater calamity for our country than a dissolution

1410
01:12:45,840 --> 01:12:49,160
Speaker 1: of our union. Now, it's tempting to look at the

1411
01:12:49,160 --> 01:12:51,320
Speaker 1: decisions he makes later and just say, well, he was

1412
01:12:51,400 --> 01:12:53,760
Speaker 1: lying about that. He was pretending he didn't care about

1413
01:12:53,760 --> 01:12:56,040
Speaker 1: secession and slavery, but we know that he really did

1414
01:12:56,040 --> 01:12:58,920
Speaker 1: care about slavery enough to fight for it. I think

1415
01:12:58,960 --> 01:13:02,800
Speaker 1: that that's not entirely the right way to look at it. Right,

1416
01:13:03,360 --> 01:13:06,519
Speaker 1: You have to understand, counter to a lot of casual history.

1417
01:13:06,560 --> 01:13:10,520
Speaker 1: You hear that Robert E. Lee did not particularly identify

1418
01:13:10,680 --> 01:13:11,479
Speaker 1: as a Southerner.

1419
01:13:12,000 --> 01:13:12,200
Speaker 4: Right.

1420
01:13:12,840 --> 01:13:15,040
Speaker 1: Part of why he doesn't want a civil war is

1421
01:13:15,040 --> 01:13:17,720
Speaker 1: that he doesn't really consider himself. He considers himself he's

1422
01:13:17,760 --> 01:13:21,360
Speaker 1: a cosmopolitan guy. He's an American in general, and This

1423
01:13:21,439 --> 01:13:24,400
Speaker 1: goes totally against the lost cause stuff, right. The popular

1424
01:13:24,479 --> 01:13:27,000
Speaker 1: narrative is he hates the idea of secession, but he

1425
01:13:27,120 --> 01:13:30,040
Speaker 1: loves Virginia's too much. He just can't. He just can't

1426
01:13:30,040 --> 01:13:32,880
Speaker 1: fight against it. It's his heart, It's the entirety of

1427
01:13:32,920 --> 01:13:37,120
Speaker 1: his being. It's not Lee spends very little of his

1428
01:13:37,160 --> 01:13:40,200
Speaker 1: adult life in Virginia, let alone Arlington. He lives in

1429
01:13:40,280 --> 01:13:43,479
Speaker 1: the North for considerable periods of time, and then out

1430
01:13:43,479 --> 01:13:46,080
Speaker 1: in the West, in Mexico and in Texas. He is

1431
01:13:46,120 --> 01:13:48,840
Speaker 1: a citizen of the United States, and throughout most of

1432
01:13:48,840 --> 01:13:50,840
Speaker 1: his life his letters give very little sign of a

1433
01:13:50,840 --> 01:13:54,160
Speaker 1: man who holds specific affection for Virginia. In fact, he

1434
01:13:54,240 --> 01:13:57,120
Speaker 1: puts a lot of time and effort into avoiding being

1435
01:13:57,200 --> 01:13:59,519
Speaker 1: at home. This is in spite of the fact that

1436
01:13:59,560 --> 01:14:02,519
Speaker 1: his army career seems to have petered out right. He's like,

1437
01:14:02,560 --> 01:14:04,719
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get promoted as much as I want.

1438
01:14:05,000 --> 01:14:08,040
Speaker 1: I should quit. I'm old enough to retire. I should

1439
01:14:08,080 --> 01:14:11,000
Speaker 1: do something else with my life. And he refuses to

1440
01:14:11,040 --> 01:14:14,040
Speaker 1: do so, despite complaining about it. He refuses to go

1441
01:14:14,080 --> 01:14:17,040
Speaker 1: and enjoy life back at his supposedly beloved at Arlington.

1442
01:14:17,280 --> 01:14:19,240
Speaker 1: And I'm going to read a really telling quote from

1443
01:14:19,320 --> 01:14:22,160
Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee A life here. He could have taken

1444
01:14:22,200 --> 01:14:24,559
Speaker 1: the course of resignation from the army, but that would

1445
01:14:24,560 --> 01:14:27,000
Speaker 1: only land him back at Arlington, and even as he

1446
01:14:27,040 --> 01:14:30,639
Speaker 1: received letters from Annie extolling the trees and hills at Arlington,

1447
01:14:31,000 --> 01:14:33,840
Speaker 1: he gently pushed away at any suggestion that he might

1448
01:14:33,920 --> 01:14:36,839
Speaker 1: return there for good. I do not think my presence

1449
01:14:36,840 --> 01:14:39,760
Speaker 1: would add anything to their appearance, he replied, in a

1450
01:14:39,760 --> 01:14:43,040
Speaker 1: peculiar mix of pity and self regret. It is better

1451
01:14:43,040 --> 01:14:45,920
Speaker 1: that I am away. When Annie pressed the suggestion again

1452
01:14:46,000 --> 01:14:48,080
Speaker 1: in August, he calmly but firmly told her that it

1453
01:14:48,120 --> 01:14:50,760
Speaker 1: would be far easier if you will come out here.

1454
01:14:51,080 --> 01:14:53,719
Speaker 1: I will endeavor to make you as comfortable as possible.

1455
01:14:53,960 --> 01:14:55,720
Speaker 1: I have a nice little pony on which you can

1456
01:14:55,720 --> 01:14:58,839
Speaker 1: accompany me in my evening rides, and a commodious traveling

1457
01:14:58,840 --> 01:15:01,080
Speaker 1: wagon that can carry you wherever I go. I have

1458
01:15:01,200 --> 01:15:03,280
Speaker 1: a nice little pony.

1459
01:15:03,400 --> 01:15:05,559
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1460
01:15:05,720 --> 01:15:06,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

1461
01:15:06,320 --> 01:15:08,320
Speaker 2: He sounds like a dude that like he just wants

1462
01:15:08,320 --> 01:15:11,200
Speaker 2: to go back to brunch. Yeah, it's just like, can

1463
01:15:11,240 --> 01:15:13,560
Speaker 2: we just brunch it not to Arlington?

1464
01:15:13,760 --> 01:15:17,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, he like in Virginia. Get on my nerves. I'll

1465
01:15:17,280 --> 01:15:19,040
Speaker 3: just get on my nerves like.

1466
01:15:19,320 --> 01:15:23,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's literally, I'll send you an uber comfort. Yeah, yeah,

1467
01:15:23,360 --> 01:15:25,439
Speaker 1: I'll send you a new just out.

1468
01:15:25,880 --> 01:15:27,200
Speaker 2: I'll send you an uber I think.

1469
01:15:27,560 --> 01:15:30,240
Speaker 3: But I want to use that bad line because that

1470
01:15:30,320 --> 01:15:32,760
Speaker 3: was some that was some high level shade. She's talking

1471
01:15:32,760 --> 01:15:35,160
Speaker 3: about how beautiful the trees are, and he's like, well,

1472
01:15:35,160 --> 01:15:36,639
Speaker 3: I ain't gonna make them many more beautiful.

1473
01:15:39,439 --> 01:15:41,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to continue the last bit of that quote.

1474
01:15:42,360 --> 01:15:44,720
Speaker 1: There was no point in his returning to Arlington. He

1475
01:15:44,840 --> 01:15:47,640
Speaker 1: wasn't always would be a stranger there. You know, I

1476
01:15:47,680 --> 01:15:49,759
Speaker 1: am much in the way of everybody, and my taste

1477
01:15:49,760 --> 01:15:52,880
Speaker 1: in pursuits did not coincide with the rest of the household,

1478
01:15:53,160 --> 01:15:56,320
Speaker 1: and certainly not with the Arlington slaves. Now, I hope

1479
01:15:56,400 --> 01:16:00,720
Speaker 1: everybody is happier now. That doesn't strike me as a

1480
01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:02,600
Speaker 1: man who loves his home so much he'd break his

1481
01:16:02,640 --> 01:16:04,920
Speaker 1: oath and turn traded to defend it in a cause

1482
01:16:04,960 --> 01:16:06,080
Speaker 1: he otherwise abhorred.

1483
01:16:06,439 --> 01:16:09,360
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, no exactly, He's like, really, y'all get on

1484
01:16:09,360 --> 01:16:12,080
Speaker 3: my nerves. That's the yeah, like that is a that

1485
01:16:12,240 --> 01:16:18,800
Speaker 3: is people truly contain multitudes, and but the idea that

1486
01:16:18,840 --> 01:16:21,120
Speaker 3: he was just like, really, I don't even I'm not

1487
01:16:21,160 --> 01:16:25,559
Speaker 3: even from Virginia. Oh, like, y'all, I just got station here,

1488
01:16:25,880 --> 01:16:27,080
Speaker 3: Texas got better weather.

1489
01:16:27,720 --> 01:16:29,320
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. I can get a taco

1490
01:16:29,439 --> 01:16:31,960
Speaker 2: down here. Wy, don't you just come down here? Yeah?

1491
01:16:32,120 --> 01:16:35,519
Speaker 3: Like we chill him, man, Like, that's hilarious to me.

1492
01:16:35,640 --> 01:16:37,479
Speaker 3: I ain't gonna make the trees no more beautiful if

1493
01:16:37,479 --> 01:16:39,360
Speaker 3: they already. You don't need me to make a beautiful

1494
01:16:39,400 --> 01:16:40,720
Speaker 3: you just did. That's hilarious.

1495
01:16:41,040 --> 01:16:45,919
Speaker 1: Arlington's not really my place, Yeah, yeah, that is. Anyway,

1496
01:16:45,960 --> 01:16:49,960
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk more about why Lee decides to fight

1497
01:16:50,000 --> 01:16:53,439
Speaker 1: for the Confederacy and how he makes that decision. That's

1498
01:16:53,439 --> 01:16:55,479
Speaker 1: gonna be a big part of part three, and then

1499
01:16:55,520 --> 01:16:58,120
Speaker 1: we will deal with the myth and the fact of

1500
01:16:58,240 --> 01:17:02,000
Speaker 1: Bobby Lee as a great general. But PROP for right now,

1501
01:17:02,240 --> 01:17:04,760
Speaker 1: we're gonna deal with the myths and the fact of

1502
01:17:04,840 --> 01:17:09,400
Speaker 1: you as a podcast or musician. Where can people find you?

1503
01:17:10,000 --> 01:17:12,719
Speaker 2: Man? Prop? Hip hop dot com is my everything.

1504
01:17:12,840 --> 01:17:14,720
Speaker 3: It's music. I got some new music out. We got

1505
01:17:14,800 --> 01:17:17,559
Speaker 3: music going along with the podcast. Last song was called

1506
01:17:17,640 --> 01:17:22,280
Speaker 3: Lemme Highland Player and yeah hood politics will PROP season

1507
01:17:22,280 --> 01:17:25,679
Speaker 3: three up and running. There's so much going down. We've

1508
01:17:25,760 --> 01:17:29,160
Speaker 3: like really, like, like I said last time, kicked it

1509
01:17:29,160 --> 01:17:32,080
Speaker 3: in the like fourth gear, you know, putting together like

1510
01:17:32,120 --> 01:17:34,519
Speaker 3: a bunch of different series. There's the you Wasn't Outside

1511
01:17:34,600 --> 01:17:38,559
Speaker 3: series as that's following the Israel and Gaza situation. Then

1512
01:17:38,600 --> 01:17:42,120
Speaker 3: we got series following the election. It's a good time, man,

1513
01:17:42,360 --> 01:17:45,280
Speaker 3: and as good as it can be. But yeah, hood

1514
01:17:45,320 --> 01:17:48,880
Speaker 3: politics will prop uh every every Wednesday. Get ready for

1515
01:17:48,920 --> 01:17:50,400
Speaker 3: the Wednesday drop, you know what I'm saying.

1516
01:17:50,840 --> 01:17:55,519
Speaker 2: And I got a book called Terrorform. It's poetry book.

1517
01:17:56,840 --> 01:17:59,640
Speaker 3: There's music to go along with that too, and uh,

1518
01:18:00,080 --> 01:18:01,599
Speaker 3: I'm Betty happy to be here.

1519
01:18:02,080 --> 01:18:05,320
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also have a book it's called After the Revolution.

1520
01:18:05,800 --> 01:18:08,719
Speaker 1: Check it out. You can order it wherever books are sold,

1521
01:18:09,120 --> 01:18:11,439
Speaker 1: or you can just google ak Press After the Revolution

1522
01:18:11,600 --> 01:18:15,640
Speaker 1: and buy it directly from zippublisher. That is the episode.

1523
01:18:15,880 --> 01:18:19,240
Speaker 1: Come back next week when we will conclude the exciting

1524
01:18:19,479 --> 01:18:22,760
Speaker 1: story of Bobby Lee.

1525
01:18:22,800 --> 01:18:24,160
Speaker 2: I like that you're calling him Bobby.

1526
01:18:24,880 --> 01:18:29,640
Speaker 1: Yeah. The rough draft title the working title for this

1527
01:18:29,680 --> 01:18:34,400
Speaker 1: episode was Bobby Lee the Guarantee and then parentheses of Failure.

1528
01:18:35,560 --> 01:18:40,320
Speaker 2: The greatest second place trophy of all time? Yeah, all right.

1529
01:18:40,400 --> 01:18:47,360
Speaker 1: Everybody behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1530
01:18:47,720 --> 01:18:50,320
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1531
01:18:50,400 --> 01:18:54,360
Speaker 1: zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1532
01:18:54,439 --> 01:18:56,759
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast