Speaker 1: Also media. What's inheriting wealth my southern landed gentry. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's not a great not a great intro. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Harry prop welcome back. How are we feeling.
Speaker 2: Feeling good man? Third cup of coffee. We're back in
Speaker 2: the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ready to ride.
Speaker 2: Got some banana chips?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little plantain that'll make everybody forget my dog
Speaker 1: shit introduction for this. Speaking of dog shit, you know
Speaker 1: what college is? Dog shit? Prop?
Speaker 2: Well, college is dogshit.
Speaker 1: West Point Man just a whole pile of better kaka.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, I don't know much about
Speaker 1: the actual objective.
Speaker 2: I'm sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The only thing I know about West Point is like
Speaker 3: what's in the movies? Yes, yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Army College. It's a you know, it's important to note
Speaker 1: like the reputation it has today is largely formed by
Speaker 1: they call it the class the Stars fell on. It
Speaker 1: was the west Point graduating class that had like Patent
Speaker 1: and Omar Bradley and I think Eisenhower, like all these
Speaker 1: guys who are like real big world dub dub dose
Speaker 1: fell us like we're in the same class.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where like West Point today
Speaker 1: it's the place where the US military trains, it's most promising,
Speaker 1: or if you talk to enlisted men, it's most frustrating officers.
Speaker 1: Right in the early eighteen hundreds, when young Bobby Lee
Speaker 1: became a cadet, West Point was a lot smaller, and like,
Speaker 1: the country's not very old, so it doesn't have a
Speaker 1: huge proud history, and it is extremely focused on one
Speaker 1: narrow sort of education engineering. Right, it is probably the
Speaker 1: best engineering school in the country. So when you think
Speaker 1: about West Point of Robert E. Lee's day, it's closer
Speaker 1: to Mit than the way we think about West Point now, right,
Speaker 1: And this makes a lot of sense if you understand
Speaker 1: nineteenth century warfare today, a huge amount of modern warfighting
Speaker 1: is like small unit tactics, right, Infantry clears buildings and
Speaker 1: like engages in firefights. Does all this stuff because with
Speaker 1: modern equipment and weaponry all the different the wide variety,
Speaker 1: everything from drones and rocket launchers to like standard small arms,
Speaker 1: there's a lot for small units to do, and a
Speaker 1: lot of shit revolves around that. So that's going to
Speaker 1: be a significant amount of training for any army officer
Speaker 1: back in this day, especially when Lee's in it, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much all smooth bores, right, So it's these muskets
Speaker 1: that they only really are very effective when you have
Speaker 1: a bunch of people all like marching and firing in unison.
Speaker 1: So there's not a lot for you to teach someone about,
Speaker 1: like other than how to reload quickly, about like how
Speaker 1: to be a trooper in a formation beyond like marching
Speaker 1: and stuff.
Speaker 2: So do you want to want to be that way?
Speaker 2: Gone that way? Yeah, if you're.
Speaker 1: Teaching people to be an officer, though, you want to
Speaker 1: teach them a lot about engineering and mathematics, about like
Speaker 1: the way in which things move, about physics. You want
Speaker 1: to be so that they can both know how artillery
Speaker 1: would work, where to position them, how to fire them,
Speaker 1: how to how to wield these blocks of men and
Speaker 1: have them like fire in ways that's going to be effective.
Speaker 1: Like that's all engineering is kind of the US makes
Speaker 1: this decision pretty early on that like engineering is what's
Speaker 1: going to make our officers effective. And this is actually
Speaker 1: historically a good bet. You know, people the Roman Empire,
Speaker 1: people talk a lot about, you know, every aspect but
Speaker 1: this but like the reason the Rome became an empire
Speaker 1: was not because its soldiers were like great individual fighters.
Speaker 1: It's because every soldier in the Roman legions was a
Speaker 1: combat engineer, and like, that's fucking useful. You know, they
Speaker 1: made roads and bridges. Like the scrubway to fight a
Speaker 1: war is stabbing another dude. The smart way to fight
Speaker 1: a war is building a wall around him and starving
Speaker 1: him to death. Yeah, a dude.
Speaker 3: That a dude that gets to like a lake or
Speaker 3: river and thinks, man, how are we going to get
Speaker 3: across that?
Speaker 2: And then dude, it's like, we're gonna build a bridge,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: And build a fucking bridge across.
Speaker 3: So you just build a bridge, Like, yeah, not just
Speaker 3: knocking down a tree and walking over the plane.
Speaker 2: No, We're going to build a bridge.
Speaker 1: And the US at this point is an infant empire
Speaker 1: and it sees itself very much cut in the image
Speaker 1: of the old Roman Republic, which is another reason why
Speaker 1: all of these guys are engineers. Right, So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's gonna be the shit that like Lee does. He's
Speaker 1: going to Army Nerds school and he does really well there.
Speaker 1: He's a great student. He's not the best in his class,
Speaker 1: but he's very close to it. He's also the most
Speaker 1: boring boy in the whole school. He didn't drink, he
Speaker 1: didn't gamble, he didn't like have fun. He graduates second
Speaker 1: from his class, and he's one of only six students
Speaker 1: in his graduating class that never receives a demerit. He
Speaker 1: gets the nickname the marble Model as a resistance perfe Zach.
Speaker 1: He gets an attendance award and he gets called marble
Speaker 1: model a lot. And what they're saying there is that
Speaker 1: like this is both like, yeah, it's kind of he's
Speaker 1: kind of like exhausting and boring, but also like he
Speaker 1: is a good soldier. He's a reliable guy. So like
Speaker 1: people find him like make fun of him a little bit,
Speaker 1: but he also is generally liked because you can you
Speaker 1: can trust Lee to do his job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's he's he's a he's definitely a hall monitor.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we were stuck outside. You want him with
Speaker 3: him because Nigga can follow directions and.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and he's he's competent. He knows like how
Speaker 1: to do shit right. Yeah. The mother of one of
Speaker 1: his peers found herself surprised that after meeting him, he
Speaker 1: was very human, is what she describes, So that should
Speaker 1: give you some insight into how his classmates wrote home
Speaker 1: about him to their family. Fun Yeah, that I don't
Speaker 1: think he would breathe.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, how much shade is it when your the homies.
Speaker 3: Mama like is like, oh no, I thought he's a
Speaker 3: little Weirdough it turns out like you're regular kid.
Speaker 1: Hey, he's a nice enough guy. I didn't expect that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, your mom.
Speaker 1: Later in life, one friend of the Lee family would
Speaker 1: state that she knew Robert's brother Smith Lee. Well, but
Speaker 1: she writes quote and anybody say they know his brother,
Speaker 1: I doubt it. He looks so cold and quiet and grand,
Speaker 1: And that's very common from people talking about Bobby Lee.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He is perfectly polite. He has impeccable manners. He is
Speaker 1: the studious embodiment of Southern gentility, and he plays his
Speaker 1: emotions so close to the chest that nobody people don't
Speaker 1: really everyone's kind of confused, is like, is he just
Speaker 1: hiding his true self for polar tests or is there
Speaker 1: nothing inside of him? Really?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Right, Like, I know I know some street dudes like that,
Speaker 3: Like I have a friend who even his closest friends
Speaker 3: like we've sat down, like at a bar or something
Speaker 3: and been like, yeah, I don't actually know him, and
Speaker 3: they're like we've we met in middle school and they're like,
Speaker 3: I honestly are I'm like, I'm not sure I know him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like just they just keep Yeah, they play their cards close.
Speaker 1: You know, this man twenty years and I can't say
Speaker 1: anything but that he's always on time. Yes, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of how people talk about Robert E.
Speaker 2: Lee now.
Speaker 1: They also very frequently will call him hot. He is
Speaker 1: repeatedly described as fine as looking. One family friend called
Speaker 1: him on the whole, the handsomest young man I ever saw.
Speaker 3: He probably like you know, he ain't he like like
Speaker 3: road warn because he don't drink.
Speaker 2: So he probably got that skin. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: He's not doing drugs or ain't got no wrinkles. You
Speaker 2: feel me. He had all his stress when he was
Speaker 2: a child. Yeah, like I'm done with his stress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the only man in the eighteen hundreds who
Speaker 1: ages like someone from the twenty first century. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is noted that, like he doesn't go gray until the
Speaker 1: Civil War.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now he got some stress.
Speaker 1: Now he's got some stress. Yeah. So when you read
Speaker 1: through different bits of the multiple books about Lee. As
Speaker 1: I have, you encounter repeatedly people talking about how hot
Speaker 1: he wasn't it. It's sort of like how Kissinger's a
Speaker 1: sex symbol, and that's well known at the time, but
Speaker 1: then in modern days because he's like this old goblin
Speaker 1: of a man, like you don't really real it's surprising
Speaker 1: when you read it. And this paragraph from Smithsonian Magazine
Speaker 1: summarizes the phenomenon of hot Lee well. His hair was
Speaker 1: eban and abundant, as his doting biography Douglas Freeman puts it,
Speaker 1: with a wave that a woman might have envied, a
Speaker 1: robust black mustache, a strong full mouth and chin unobscured
Speaker 1: by any beard, and dark mercurial brows. He was not
Speaker 1: one to hide his looks under a bushel. His heart,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, the heart he kept locked away,
Speaker 1: as Stephen Vincent Binet proclaimed in John Brown's Body, from
Speaker 1: all the picklocks of biographers, such a horny way to
Speaker 1: describe this.
Speaker 2: He was just so hot, mysterious. He was so mysterious,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't know what's going.
Speaker 1: On, putting it on a little straw.
Speaker 3: And a boy, and a boy got a baby face
Speaker 3: like zid wouldn't hidden by a beard, and that helps,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm saying, why you're looking around. Everybody else
Speaker 3: looked like a silver backed gorillas, you know. Yeah, here
Speaker 3: yet here with a baby face, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So when he he finally does Mary, and he
Speaker 1: does like flirt or pursue anybody, at least not on record,
Speaker 1: he is very chaste. He marries right after graduation, a
Speaker 1: woman named Mary Custis. They had been sweetheart not even sweethearts,
Speaker 1: but they had known each other basically their whole lives
Speaker 1: since childhood. I don't know if he was really in
Speaker 1: love with her the whole time, or if it was
Speaker 1: more that he was in love with her family legacy,
Speaker 1: because she is the great granddaughter of Martha Washington, so
Speaker 1: she's descended from or related to, George Washington. Right and
Speaker 1: Lee again, George Washington is like the guy he idealizes,
Speaker 1: particularly compared to his shameful father. Right. His father is
Speaker 1: like the warning sign. Washington is the model he wants
Speaker 1: to follow, And so you get the feeling. Part of
Speaker 1: why he marries Mary Custis is like he wants that
Speaker 1: Washington legacy to be a part of him, right, maybe
Speaker 1: to wipe away some of his father's shame. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine Lost Call history book Meet Robert E. Lee,
Speaker 1: it rather humorously stated Robert E. Lee was the last
Speaker 1: great man of Old Virginia. In many ways, he was
Speaker 1: closer to his hero George Washington than he was to
Speaker 1: the men of his own time in literal because he
Speaker 1: basically wants to fuck George Washington, right, Like that's what's
Speaker 1: going on here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I'm gonna change my legacy, Like I don't
Speaker 3: want the legacy to.
Speaker 2: Be all, oh, no money. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: broke ass Lee exactly. I'm with Disney, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So they had known each other since they yeah, since
Speaker 1: they were kids. The one thing I'll say for him,
Speaker 1: they're like the same age. They're born the same year,
Speaker 1: which is pretty good for high society marriages of this period.
Speaker 1: So congratulations, Robert E.
Speaker 2: Lee.
Speaker 1: You get the coveted behind the bastards not a pedophile award. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a proud honor, very rarely handed out. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: are mailing your last descendant a gold medallion with the
Speaker 1: words I Don't diddle kids written on it, So go,
Speaker 1: you know, congratulations that's a real honor for the family. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's big.
Speaker 1: That's it's huge.
Speaker 3: Ye, that's really big, man, because there's a lot of listen,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of things we can say about you,
Speaker 3: and we will, but you do like them, y'all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not a childsterious. That's so good for you, Robert. Yes,
Speaker 1: So the Custis family were significantly wealthier than the Lee's,
Speaker 1: and Mary's father is understandably he never really trusts Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee in his whole life, not because Lee does anything wrong,
Speaker 1: but because of how bad his father was, which not
Speaker 1: necessarily an irresponsible decision. Right yeah, no, I yeah, now
Speaker 1: that said George Washington Park Custis, Mary's dad is also
Speaker 1: a huge piece of shit. For one thing, he owns
Speaker 1: some two hundred enslaved people, and he's like Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: he's one of these guys who's who is vocally anti
Speaker 1: slavery while owning a bunch of people, And like Thomas Jefferson,
Speaker 1: he has children with a lot of his slave people. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is rape, right, Like that's the only way to
Speaker 1: look at this. Alan Guelzo writes, the elder Custis burdened
Speaker 1: with his own private guilt over slavery, had been quote
Speaker 1: an easy going master, requiring little of his slaves, especially
Speaker 1: because it was rumored that over the years he had
Speaker 1: fathered fifteen of them.
Speaker 2: Good God, here's the thing, man, Look.
Speaker 3: I don't know if there's anything I hate more besides
Speaker 3: like just the institution of slavery, but the defense that like.
Speaker 2: But he was like a nice one though. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: was kind of.
Speaker 3: Nice to his Like, I don't know if I don't
Speaker 3: know if anything makes me want to like flip a
Speaker 3: table more than that answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know, it's worth understanding the difference
Speaker 1: between quote unquote nice and mean slave owners, for understanding
Speaker 1: the lives of slaves, but not for making a moral
Speaker 1: decision about those slave owners. It's under It's actually very
Speaker 1: similar to like when you read Hullo cost memoirs from
Speaker 1: survivors of Auschwitz, they will talk about like, well, these guys,
Speaker 1: these remember, this particular member of the SS was polite
Speaker 1: to us. He treated me relative, and I was able
Speaker 1: to get stuff out of him to help. I was
Speaker 1: able to get food or whatnot out of him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that guy was he was still a
Speaker 1: concentration understand, Like, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: You know, I appreciate you pulling the fly out of
Speaker 3: the rat poison you're about to feed me.
Speaker 2: I appreciate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's worth understanding because again, if you want to
Speaker 1: understand the lives of these enslaved people, sure, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're with a guy like this who is like
Speaker 1: less like violent and shitty, then like you can maybe
Speaker 1: work a better get more freedom, get more personal liberty.
Speaker 1: But like that does not reflect still on.
Speaker 2: The very much.
Speaker 3: I might have got a little here, but I wasn't cheating,
Speaker 3: you know, which is like in one of the upcoming
Speaker 3: Hill Politics episodes, like we're talking about the International Court
Speaker 3: for Justice and like that's like bb net and yah,
Speaker 3: who's like argument to where it's like, well, I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's like genocide genocide, you know, or it's
Speaker 3: like maybe it's not like air quotes genocide, Like yeah.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of hit.
Speaker 2: You know. I wasn't really cheating.
Speaker 1: It's like Fama, it's only genocide if it comes from
Speaker 1: the genocide region of France. Otherwise it's just a sparkling massacre,
Speaker 1: right exactly, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So yeah, I was like, well you know what though,
Speaker 2: But we didn't really like.
Speaker 3: Beat our slaves. Yeah, so it's a little different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I'm good.
Speaker 1: Yeah these people. So he is eventually kind of is
Speaker 1: won over by Robert E. Lee, although never entirely. Lee
Speaker 1: takes an absence, a brief absence from his time as
Speaker 1: a lieutenant to have his honeymoon. And then he sent
Speaker 1: to Hampton Roads, which is a port on the Virginia coast,
Speaker 1: and they'd had a bunch of fortifications but they looked
Speaker 1: like shit, and he's going to like renovate the fortifications
Speaker 1: on his honeymoon. No right after right.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was like, I was hoping that this train
Speaker 3: of I thought wasn't going to lead to its sexual prowess.
Speaker 1: No, no, nothing about that. I assume he was bad at.
Speaker 2: Sex, Haley Louiah, Yeah, thank you, Gez.
Speaker 1: He spends the first four years of his career like
Speaker 1: reinforcing these fortifications at Hampton Roads, and the only interesting
Speaker 1: thing that happens in that period is that there's an
Speaker 1: insurrection by enslaved Americans in Southampton. This is the Nat
Speaker 1: Turner Rebellion. Right, let's go. No, he's not involved in it,
Speaker 1: but it happens near enough. And it's it's relevant because
Speaker 1: he again doesn't do anything in this, but he writes
Speaker 1: about it to his mother in law, and the single
Speaker 1: paragraph we get of him writing about Nat Turner's rebellion
Speaker 1: is one of the bleakest and most infuriating things I've
Speaker 1: ever read. And I'm going to read this to you now.
Speaker 1: Prop It is ascertained that they use their religious assemblies,
Speaker 1: which ought to have been devoted to better purposes, for
Speaker 1: forming and maturing their plans, and that their preachers were
Speaker 1: the leading men. And first off, I'll say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: just remembering the Old Testament, I feel like slaves using
Speaker 1: their religious service to plan rebellion is actually very biblical.
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't know, man, Like, if you're
Speaker 2: actually reading the book, that's pretty all part.
Speaker 1: Feel like that happens a couple tis yeah, he continues.
Speaker 1: A man belonging to a Missus Whitehead, and one of
Speaker 1: their preachers was the chief under the title of Major Nelson,
Speaker 1: and his first act was to kill his mistress, five
Speaker 1: children and one grandchild. However, there are many instances of
Speaker 1: their defending their masters, and one poor fellow from the
Speaker 1: inconsiderate and almost unwarrantable haste of the whites was sadly rewarded.
Speaker 1: He belonged to a mister Blunt, and himself and two others,
Speaker 1: assisted by his master and his son Nobody, fought with
Speaker 1: them against twenty of the blacks. After beating them off
Speaker 1: and running in great haste after horses for them to
Speaker 1: escape on, a party of white suddenly came up and,
Speaker 1: thinking the horses were for other purposes, shot him dead.
Speaker 1: So he's talking about here that some of the enslaved
Speaker 1: black people fought alongside their white masters against this slave uprising,
Speaker 1: and he's like, and then they got killed by white
Speaker 1: people who just like shot first and asked questions later
Speaker 1: because they were spooked and killing every black person they saw,
Speaker 1: which you would think might cause a man to consider
Speaker 1: like the overall evil of the system that he looked made.
Speaker 1: But lead does not lead is not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's just because gravity works the way gravity works,
Speaker 3: So like, yeah, I get it. I as a funny
Speaker 3: side note, in junior high, I left La went to
Speaker 3: a middle school in the suburbs and the Inland Empire,
Speaker 3: and then my parents split and I went back to LA.
Speaker 2: But anyway, but.
Speaker 3: In middle school, I was in the Burbs, like and
Speaker 3: it was probably the most like concentrated amount of white
Speaker 3: people I've ever seen in my life, like you know,
Speaker 3: And and I'm saying this like like strictly from a
Speaker 3: like anthropological perspective, like not even a not even a
Speaker 3: statement on its culture, because I just I just wasn't
Speaker 3: familiar with white culture at the time, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying, Like, I just didn't.
Speaker 2: It just wasn't my world.
Speaker 3: I just who I went to this to this middle school,
Speaker 3: and we had to do a.
Speaker 2: Historical person's report. I did it on that Turner.
Speaker 1: Oh shit.
Speaker 3: And at no point did it cross my mind that
Speaker 3: this world of white people would have an issue of.
Speaker 2: That, Like, I just I never thought about it.
Speaker 3: Now as an adult, I'm like, dude, I can imagine,
Speaker 3: like I'm putting myself in like poor old you know,
Speaker 3: misdorsed my seventh grade history teacher. I walk in with
Speaker 3: this with this book report on Nat Turner, and she
Speaker 3: looking at me at like one of seven black people
Speaker 3: in a fifty mile radius.
Speaker 2: And I walk in with this report on a slave rebellion.
Speaker 3: How she I just wonder what was going through her
Speaker 3: head at the time that everybody else is doing book
Speaker 3: reports on normal stuff, but I did it on that turner,
Speaker 3: and now as an adult, I'm like, I would have
Speaker 3: loved that if I would to this Bourbon school and
Speaker 3: his little boy walking well report on Net's owner. Was
Speaker 3: just no concept that anyone else would view this as
Speaker 3: any different than I and my.
Speaker 2: Family view it. I'm like, what are you talk about
Speaker 2: this guy zero?
Speaker 1: You know, yes, yeah, it's one of those things obviously,
Speaker 1: like you know what Lee says, there is not wrong,
Speaker 1: like the like children were killed during the uprising, and
Speaker 1: my stance on this it's similar to how I feel
Speaker 1: about the killing of the czar and his family. Children
Speaker 1: never deserve to be murdered. That is not their fault.
Speaker 1: The children of slave owners and tzars are not guilty.
Speaker 1: But I put the blame for their deaths on the
Speaker 1: adult slave owners and the adult czar and his wife,
Speaker 1: not on the enslaved people who felt like they had
Speaker 1: no other option.
Speaker 3: Yes, right, yeah, you have institutionally put your children in
Speaker 3: danger by allowing and upholding this institution that will, invariably,
Speaker 3: like you said, cause a person to respond the way
Speaker 3: they have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you know we can talk more
Speaker 1: like the czar's situation is obviously more complicated. There is
Speaker 1: some blame you can give to some of the other
Speaker 1: people in that. But like in the case of Nat Turner,
Speaker 1: what else? What else was he option?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And so after this, Lee is sent to work in
Speaker 1: d C, which enables him to live in Arlington for
Speaker 1: the first time. This is basically the first time in
Speaker 1: his pre war adult life that he spends any time
Speaker 1: at this Arlington. This like plantation that he gets, you know,
Speaker 1: with his wife is like, this is a huge part
Speaker 1: of the Lee myth that this was, This was what
Speaker 1: in his bones, this was his home. Like this he
Speaker 1: had such a deep connection. He barely spends any fucking
Speaker 1: time there in ar Yeah, in Arlington. Like basically, this
Speaker 1: period of time where he's working in d C is
Speaker 1: one of the only times in his adult life where
Speaker 1: he spends significant periods of time at Arlington. Now this
Speaker 1: is handy. He spends some time like commuting to work
Speaker 1: in d C by carriage. It's helpful because he's close.
Speaker 1: While his mom is sick she probably has tuberculosis, because
Speaker 1: that's what kills everybody in the olden days, Lee reverts
Speaker 1: to being her caretaker. He mixes her medicine. He's a
Speaker 1: dedicated good boy, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The story is somewhat less heartwarming when you learn that
Speaker 1: Anne spends her last days revising her will, in which
Speaker 1: she gives away several human beings, including children, her daughter
Speaker 1: also named Anne inherited quote, my maid servant Charlotte and
Speaker 1: her child, along with Keziah, William and Betsy, along with
Speaker 1: my set of white tea china, my wardrobe, two of
Speaker 1: my best tablecloths, and one half of my family napkins
Speaker 1: and wearing apparel.
Speaker 2: So again in the same sins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, children, adults and a china set all the same.
Speaker 2: Type of thing to them on the same level.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, I think Virginia as a West coaster, you know,
Speaker 3: and my mom's from DC, so like as I viewed
Speaker 3: like Virginia is like it honestly feels like two different states.
Speaker 3: And I'm not meaning like Virginia and West Virginia. I
Speaker 3: mean Virginia itself. Because there's the Virginia that's basically just
Speaker 3: southern Washington, DC, and then there's the Virginia that had plantations,
Speaker 3: like and it's it's still like shakes my brain because
Speaker 3: I'm like, I still see Virginia as east coast rather
Speaker 3: than southern because yeah, when you say, like Alexandria Richmond,
Speaker 3: I'm like Ronald Reagan's airport is in Virginia.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting because like you get a lot of
Speaker 1: there's people will argue very strenuously that like, yeah, Virginia
Speaker 1: is part of the South, but Texas really isn't you know,
Speaker 1: It's it's like the thing or it's part of the West,
Speaker 1: and like there's actually some validity behind that, like culturally historically,
Speaker 1: but like I think they are both part of the South.
Speaker 1: Virginia is now like certainly like has like elements of
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's weird, like it's not worth
Speaker 1: getting into right now.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I guess I guess my question would be like, uh,
Speaker 3: because it was I was leading.
Speaker 2: To a question, I think.
Speaker 3: But like, so obviously, if he works in d C,
Speaker 3: he's in the more and we're still talking about a
Speaker 3: slave state, but he's in one that's more closer to
Speaker 3: city life rather than agricultural now yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And he's kind of commuting from this semi this agricultural
Speaker 1: plantation into d C because Arlington is kind of in
Speaker 1: the heights above DC. Like one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: like the Union will go after it early in the
Speaker 1: Civil War is you can shell DC from Marline. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's not far away, No, it's pretty close. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the Lee Boys aren't named as being given any enslaved people,
Speaker 1: it's not in the will, but they actually seem to
Speaker 1: have inherited some. It's just not I guess for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: she didn't think it was worth writing. And the will
Speaker 1: biographer Alan Guelzo has noted that the Lee Boys definitely
Speaker 1: inherited who he describes as quote one unitemized slave family.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were like kind of cheating
Speaker 1: so that they didn't have to pay as much inheritance tax.
Speaker 1: It's weird, Like, I don't know why they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been listed. But in eighteen thirty five, Robert E. Lee
Speaker 1: wrote that he owned Missus Sally Diggs, Missus Nancy Ruffin,
Speaker 1: and her three illegitimate pledges. No men are named, which
Speaker 1: is undoubtedly evidence that a family was forcibly broken up.
Speaker 1: I guess possible the men died early, right, that's not
Speaker 1: given the time, not impossible, but it seems likely that
Speaker 1: families were broken up As a result of this inheritance,
Speaker 1: which happens a lot. In eighteen thirty five, Lee is
Speaker 1: sent to Saint Louis on a mission to literally defy God.
Speaker 1: For years it had been clear that the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: was shifting, and so there's all this like port infrastructure
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis that will be useless if the river
Speaker 1: shifts to be over in Illinois. So Lee has to
Speaker 1: do basically the equivalent of spritzing the Mississippi's nose with
Speaker 1: water until it learns not to like risk the future
Speaker 1: economic viability of Missouri. Yeah, that's funny, really thumbing your
Speaker 1: nose in God's.
Speaker 2: Eye, mister Southern gent Yeah, Okista.
Speaker 1: So I have mentioned that one of my sources for
Speaker 1: these episodes is General Lee, a biography by Fitzhugh Lee.
Speaker 1: Now this is not a good source, and that it
Speaker 1: is not a reputable, unbiased historic account of Lee, but
Speaker 1: it is a good source, and that it was written
Speaker 1: in like eighteen ninety six by his family and because
Speaker 1: of the area it's and it includes some fucked up
Speaker 1: shit that I think would have been edited out by
Speaker 1: like a lost cause pop historian today, but that you
Speaker 1: do get when you read through this draft, and while
Speaker 1: churning through much of this otherwise interminable book, I found
Speaker 1: another letter Lee sent back to one of his cousins,
Speaker 1: where he comments on a local rumor by using a
Speaker 1: casual racial slur. We live in a credulous country where
Speaker 1: people stick at nothing, from a sea word story to
Speaker 1: a sea serpent. And you know the sea word is
Speaker 1: like it's a it's a slang term for black people
Speaker 1: using like talking about like raccoons. Right, that's the yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing this up because this is like the use
Speaker 1: of a slur in a letter considering Robert E. Lee's
Speaker 1: actual crimes on the lower list of the horrible things
Speaker 1: he did.
Speaker 2: But sure, I'm.
Speaker 1: Bringing this up because casual and lost cause histories of
Speaker 1: the man love to emphasize how much he hated slavery,
Speaker 1: called it a moral evil, and would have been willing
Speaker 1: to free his own slaves to keep the union together.
Speaker 1: He did express variance of those sentiments, but he also
Speaker 1: regularly expressed very casual hateful racism like this, right, it
Speaker 1: is all over his letters. It is undeniable, and I
Speaker 1: think that ugliness is important to get out. It's not
Speaker 1: just that he was willing to fight for slavery. He
Speaker 1: fully bought into the racial hierarchy and the casual distaste
Speaker 1: and hatred even for black people.
Speaker 3: That was the reality of like it to put yourself
Speaker 3: in the time to understand that. They saw this as like,
Speaker 3: this is settled science in the same way that we
Speaker 3: understand that the Earth revolves around the sun. That is
Speaker 3: settled science. That is how it works. So race science
Speaker 3: for them is like, no, this is it's settled. This
Speaker 3: is the science. We are biologically superior. So like, what
Speaker 3: do you it's settled, Like what are we arguing about?
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I think that that that element when you're talking about
Speaker 3: this Like okay, so I remember in like some of
Speaker 3: my formal like theological training, they talked about like this
Speaker 3: this dude Jonathan Edwards, like Jonathan Edwards, the guy Jonathan Edwards,
Speaker 3: like the sinners in the hands of angry God like.
Speaker 1: This, yeah, yeah, you know, big, hugely influential America.
Speaker 3: Hugely influential, like you know, Protestant preacher. And during this
Speaker 3: time of the institution of slavery, like he was quoted
Speaker 3: to saying like if the savages and the.
Speaker 2: Africans knowing exactly what I mean by that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, are in fact made in the image of God
Speaker 3: like image bearers, as in that's what we what we
Speaker 3: believe humans are You made in the image of God.
Speaker 2: Then we should be giving them the gospel.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then but then he says, I'm just not.
Speaker 3: Sure they're humans, Like, and you don't say like this,
Speaker 3: this is all preacher, this is y'all.
Speaker 2: This is y'all, dude, That's what I'm trying to say,
Speaker 2: like a person who is and that Yeah, pat like
Speaker 2: a leader, a pillar of the faith. It is like
Speaker 2: it is he's because his brain he's challenging science. I
Speaker 2: think they're humans.
Speaker 1: And I think this is where we get into when
Speaker 1: we talk about the morality of like, well, you can't
Speaker 1: judge people from the past by modern standards. You can't
Speaker 1: judge people from the past for being raised with racist beliefs.
Speaker 1: You can judge them for how they act on them.
Speaker 1: I think that's useful because like, you cannot blame a
Speaker 1: man for like being raised in a bigoted society and
Speaker 1: keeping a hold of some degree of those beliefs, but
Speaker 1: you can judge him on the degree to which he
Speaker 1: changes and overcomes some of it, Right, like it's you know,
Speaker 1: I have older relatives who like will never be comfortable
Speaker 1: with homosexuality because of the time they were raised in,
Speaker 1: but came rounder the belief that like, yes, they should
Speaker 1: be allowed to marry. There shouldn't be legal prescriptions against them.
Speaker 1: That's wrong, and like, yes, yeah, you were born in
Speaker 1: like the thirties, right, Like that's about as much as
Speaker 1: I can hope for, right, And I think that that's
Speaker 1: kind of how you have to judge people, right, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: you inherit some bad stuff, but like, what do you
Speaker 1: actually do when you have the ability to make decisions?
Speaker 1: And where do you go in your life? And like
Speaker 1: Lee never questions any of this, and he never changes,
Speaker 1: you know, he is a marble man and marble does
Speaker 1: not grow, you know, good one. Yeah yeah, speaking of growing,
Speaker 1: you know who does grow and change over time? The
Speaker 1: sponsors of the show.
Speaker 4: Bazam, we're back building, Bazam.
Speaker 1: You've never my new catchphrase, Sam Bazam is like really
Speaker 1: like it fits you very suite. Thank you. So Lee
Speaker 1: is going to complain constantly about money throughout his life.
Speaker 1: You don't make good money as an officer. He's always like,
Speaker 1: should I retire my commission and try to make a
Speaker 1: living some other way. I don't think he would have
Speaker 1: been good at that, but he thinks about it a lot.
Speaker 1: He's not ever really happy, right, and in any of
Speaker 1: his situations, his ambitions kind of outweigh most of what
Speaker 1: he's able to accomplish. And you know, he's away from
Speaker 1: home all the time. He does not seem to have
Speaker 1: a strong desire to be around his family or to
Speaker 1: help him, like his wife, raise their children. So he
Speaker 1: is like an absent dad.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Most of his letters are him like giving merry advice
Speaker 1: on raising children based on probably not much actual knowledge
Speaker 1: about how to raise kids, or you weren't raised not
Speaker 1: very yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And the one you weren't raised, and then number two
Speaker 3: you're not raising your own kids yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And this is not you know, military families
Speaker 1: today you're going to deal with, like your parent who's
Speaker 1: in the military, potentially being away for long periods of
Speaker 1: time undeployment. That is a reality still, but usually if
Speaker 1: they're not in a combat posting families move around with
Speaker 1: their family members. That's less of a thing here in
Speaker 1: part because of like it's just not practical, you know,
Speaker 1: with travel and the dangers of it being what they
Speaker 1: are at this time. In eighteen forty six, the Mexican
Speaker 1: American War breaks out, and this is gonna be Lee's
Speaker 1: big defining moment as a man. This is the conflict
Speaker 1: where most of the major military leaders in the US
Speaker 1: Civil War will get their first combat experience. Lee at
Speaker 1: this point is an artillery officer and he becomes a
Speaker 1: part of General Winfield Scott's inner circle. Winfield Scott is
Speaker 1: the commander of US forces in this war. Lee is
Speaker 1: really good at this job. And it's important to note
Speaker 1: he is really good at being an officer in charge
Speaker 1: of artillery. He is not commanding armies. That is not
Speaker 1: ever a thing he's going to be great at. He
Speaker 1: is managing sections of guns in the man who fire them.
Speaker 1: And a big part of his job is the armies marching.
Speaker 1: They're like, okay, we're going to try to bring them
Speaker 1: into battle here. And his job is analyzing the maps,
Speaker 1: scouting on horseback and whatnot, figuring out where is the
Speaker 1: best place to put our cannon so that they'll have
Speaker 1: good fields of fire to hit the enemy, you know,
Speaker 1: And he's really good at this job. One of his
Speaker 1: first moments in the sun comes during the Battle of
Speaker 1: Saro Gordo, where he leads a detachment of cannons through
Speaker 1: thick brush bushwhacking their way into a position where they
Speaker 1: can fire down on the Mexican left flank and surprise
Speaker 1: the enemy. This gets him promoted to major, and his
Speaker 1: further exploits in the war earn him significant press attention.
Speaker 1: He becomes a war hero back home, not the biggest
Speaker 1: of the war, but one of the larger US war
Speaker 1: heroes to like the US population. The most spectacular moment
Speaker 1: of his career comes when he crosses with just a
Speaker 1: handful of men a lava field at night to get
Speaker 1: reinforcements for an upcoming action. General Scott describes this as
Speaker 1: the greatest feat of physical and moral courage performed by
Speaker 1: any individual in my knowledge penning the campaign. A lava field, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like dried lava. I think, like, oh, I was like where, no,
Speaker 1: not lava. Yeah. Also, I don't see where there's moral
Speaker 1: courage involved in that, but there's physical courage. He's it's
Speaker 1: it's yeah, this less lava. Yeah, yeah, unless it's lava.
Speaker 1: I will say this earns lee are slightly less coveted
Speaker 1: pretty good at the Mexican American War Medal, which due
Speaker 1: to a printing error, is also a gold medal that
Speaker 1: reads I don't diddle kids. Sorry, sorry about that, guys.
Speaker 1: Both of them wound up being the same medal.
Speaker 3: But yeah, but you know what though, like he's in
Speaker 3: rarefied air here for a bastards man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Two medals, two medals. So Lee ends
Speaker 1: the war as a brevet colonel and is one of
Speaker 1: the most widely praised officers in the US Army. After
Speaker 1: this point, there's buzz around the man, which does him
Speaker 1: less good than you might guess, because he's gonna spend
Speaker 1: the next stage of his career furious that he's not
Speaker 1: moving up faster to new ranks and better commands. Part
Speaker 1: of the reason for this is that the US we
Speaker 1: don't really have a military in the modern sense. We
Speaker 1: have a tiny regular military. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: state militias which are pretty useless, and we have a
Speaker 1: very small regular military. So there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: spots for officers, and you can't move up until someone
Speaker 1: above you, like quits or dies. Right, So he's kind
Speaker 1: of frustrated that he's not really like getting He feels
Speaker 1: like he's stuck in place, right, He's constantly wondering about quitting.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty two, he gets a promotion. He's made
Speaker 1: commandant of west Point, which he's not really excited about.
Speaker 1: He describes it as a snake pit, I think due
Speaker 1: to its internal politics. His son Custus attends while he
Speaker 1: runs west Point and graduates first in his class. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's no.
Speaker 2: Oh he ran west Point for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he runs it. He's a commandant a west Point.
Speaker 2: For three that's what kammandant means. Sorry, he's the boss.
Speaker 1: He's the boss.
Speaker 2: You know what that means.
Speaker 1: It's like being the dean. I think, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a fun maybe you could do like an a
Speaker 1: animal House style movie about like whatever the bad Fraternity
Speaker 1: is an old dean Robert E. Lee getting angry at
Speaker 1: him for drinking. Yeah, we could make that work. So
Speaker 1: on the whole, his tenure there is as boring as
Speaker 1: most of the man's life, and is primarily of interest
Speaker 1: because his long association with the Academy is going to
Speaker 1: cause a lot of shit today, right, Like, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of debate over and actually this is interesting. One
Speaker 1: of the books that is a source for this is
Speaker 1: me and Robert E. Lee and it's written by a
Speaker 1: former US Army officer who taught at west Point and
Speaker 1: who they were trying to decide should we have a
Speaker 1: memorial for Confederate troops, and specifically they wanted to put
Speaker 1: it in a building that's named after a Union officer
Speaker 1: whose personal stance was like, these people should never be
Speaker 1: part of the country again. Fuck them, they're traders, right.
Speaker 1: So this guy, the guy who writes the book is
Speaker 1: like arguing, basically to his colleagues, we should not honor
Speaker 1: Confederate veterans at west Point. They were they kill US soldiers.
Speaker 1: Why are we honoring them at These men are fucking traders? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he he loses the fight. They decide to move
Speaker 1: ahead with the memorial until a I'm not sure who
Speaker 1: it is, but it is a high ranking black officer
Speaker 1: who's a graduate of west Point. I don't actually know
Speaker 1: it might have been Powell, I don't know, but someone
Speaker 1: leaks it to this this high ranking black officer who's
Speaker 1: an alumni of west Point, that like, they're about to
Speaker 1: put in a Confederate memorial and he is like, the
Speaker 1: fuck you are? You are absolutely not and they have
Speaker 1: to like scrap the idea, which is good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's absolutely no.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? Yeah, So, by the late
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties, Lee is stationed in Texas, but he's back
Speaker 1: in Arlington with some regularity. He gets to see his
Speaker 1: family from time to time, and this accelerates after his
Speaker 1: father in law dies in eighteen fifty seven. Now, the
Speaker 1: Custis family at this point somewhere between I've heard forty
Speaker 1: two adults I think, is what Gwelzo's biography says. Most
Speaker 1: sources will say there were almost two hundred of them.
Speaker 1: I don't know a lot. He's got a lot of
Speaker 1: people that he's holding on Arlington right when he dies.
Speaker 1: Most of them are doing some amount of farming. Right.
Speaker 1: But according to white people who were friends and relatives
Speaker 1: of the Custis family at the time, the enslaved people
Speaker 1: there didn't work hard enough. Right. They're all bitching about that. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Old George Washington Park, who is Robert E. Lee's wife's father,
Speaker 1: allegedly tells one friend in eighteen fifty three of his
Speaker 1: enslaved people, they have that comfortable homes, that families around them,
Speaker 1: and nothing to do. But consult their own pleasure. Run
Speaker 1: of Robert's cousins complained to him that the enslaved people
Speaker 1: on Arlington were quote fonder of play than work, which, like,
Speaker 1: you people are landed gentry. You don't do shit but
Speaker 1: play you give you that? What are you talking about?
Speaker 2: You can't say anything about my work ethic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he over pulled something out of the ground. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess not.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now we shouldn't obviously, as we've said, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: take that seriously that these guys were not working hard.
Speaker 1: But it is true that the Custus properties are not profitable.
Speaker 1: Right by the time he dies and Mary inherits them,
Speaker 1: they are not making money. And this is a problem
Speaker 1: because like Mary's dad somewhat hilariously decides that the last
Speaker 1: thing he's going to do in life is going to
Speaker 1: be to fuck Roberty Lee over and I this kind
Speaker 1: he's a bad person, but I like this. He really
Speaker 1: hates Lee's dad for like being so irresponsible. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then when he dies they found out he's been just
Speaker 1: as bad. They're in horrible death. The property is not
Speaker 1: making any money. He like completely shot the bed on
Speaker 1: his finances and in his will, he gives he gives
Speaker 1: Arlington the property to his oldest grandson, right, which is
Speaker 1: Mary's Mary and Roberts one of their kids. Yeah, Mary
Speaker 1: gets rights to reside at Arlington until she dies, but
Speaker 1: it is no longer their property. His other valuable properties
Speaker 1: go to their other kids, and Roberty league gets basically
Speaker 1: nothing like he gets cut out of the will, but
Speaker 1: old Custis still makes him the executor of the will,
Speaker 1: so his job is to hand out money to Custis's grandkids.
Speaker 1: That's like, hedy, he's such a bitch.
Speaker 3: Heymen, hey man, I just want to say, man, look,
Speaker 3: thank you for taking care of my daughter. You've given
Speaker 3: me the most beautiful grandchildren. So here's what I'm gonna
Speaker 3: do for you. I want you to be the one,
Speaker 3: because this is how much you mean to me. I
Speaker 3: want you to be the one to tell everybody what
Speaker 3: they're getting. Here's the paper, and it's it's more fucked
Speaker 3: up than that, Like, uh, where where my name at?
Speaker 1: Each of the grandkids is supposed to get ten thousand dollars, right,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't have any money, and so in his
Speaker 1: in his in his his will, he's like, here's some
Speaker 1: properties sell the I'm not willing these properties to anyone,
Speaker 1: Robert sell them and use that to pay my grandkids
Speaker 1: ten grand each. But Custis is bad at everything, so
Speaker 1: he doesn't actually know. He like wildly overvalues these properties.
Speaker 1: He doesn't get nearly enough money. So Robert E. Lee,
Speaker 1: because he's this like big honor guy, is like, well,
Speaker 1: I can't just tell his grandkids that their grandfather was
Speaker 1: dog shit with money and is fucking them. I have
Speaker 1: to find a way to get them each ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: And the only way to do that is to force
Speaker 1: enslaved people to work for money, right, Yeah, because obviously
Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee doesn't know how to make money. You know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have any skills other an army shit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Lee had spent his whole life. Part of why
Speaker 1: he is so obsessed with like paying, you know, executing
Speaker 1: this will that should not be his responsibility is that
Speaker 1: he is still smarting about his deadbeat dad and the
Speaker 1: fact that his father in law is proven in death
Speaker 1: to have been another richocratic fails son doesn't diminish Lee's
Speaker 1: personal obsession with executing the will and returning the Custis
Speaker 1: family plantation to profitability. This becomes his obsession. And the
Speaker 1: problem comes in that we just noted Custis. You know,
Speaker 1: his father in law is kind of soft hearted. That's
Speaker 1: what people say at the time towards the slaves. So
Speaker 1: he tells them all, when I die, you're free, right.
Speaker 1: M So that's a problem because Lee has no ability
Speaker 1: to make up this money without the family slaves, right.
Speaker 1: And this is again goes back to Custis being such
Speaker 1: a piece of shit. He is a deadbeat. So he
Speaker 1: promises I think in part because like a lot of
Speaker 1: these are his kids or his people that he's he
Speaker 1: considers his lovers. Obviously that's not what's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he just feels bad. So we have to tell him, like,
Speaker 1: when I die, you'll be free. You'll keep living this
Speaker 1: sweet life and then you'll be free when I did.
Speaker 1: It's fine, don't worry about it. I'm really a good guy.
Speaker 1: You can trust me. But he is a liar, right.
Speaker 1: He does not say you are all free as soon
Speaker 1: as I die. He directs that they be freed within
Speaker 1: five years of his death. Right. But he tells them
Speaker 1: you're free when I die, yeah, which is so true.
Speaker 1: Kinda but what this means is that Lee is going
Speaker 1: to be like, all right, well, I've got five years
Speaker 1: to make as much money out of these people as
Speaker 1: I can before they're before they're free. Right yeah. Now
Speaker 1: this causes a conflict because they were expecting to be
Speaker 1: free right away, and they considered themselves free. Moreover, part
Speaker 1: of the issue here is, again, their life at Arlington
Speaker 1: is more comfortable than most enslaved people's lives.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: They are not being like worked as hard or as
Speaker 1: brutally as is common in the area.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Again, I don't I don't give any sort of credit
Speaker 1: to Custus for this, but this is going to be
Speaker 1: relevant because Lee decides we don't need all of these
Speaker 1: people at Arlington to get it profitable. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to hire them out to other owners, right, contract them
Speaker 1: out to make money to pay Custus's grandkids. I'm going
Speaker 1: to force them to labor. I'm going to break up
Speaker 1: their families, force them to live away from their children
Speaker 1: and wives for five years so that I can give
Speaker 1: our shiftless grandkids some money. Right, that is fucked up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's yeah, you sell the brand for parts, yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's like it's it's it's you can make more
Speaker 3: money if I'll sell you for parts rather than try
Speaker 3: to work.
Speaker 1: It's still yeah, and this is how he writes about them.
Speaker 1: Among them is Reuben, a great rogue and rascal who
Speaker 1: I must get rid of some way, right, Like, these
Speaker 1: guys are just such a problem. They don't want to work.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna have to sell them to somebody who
Speaker 1: beat the hell out of them, you know, for for
Speaker 1: five years, so that I can, you know, make up
Speaker 1: the cash. So one of the things that's really horrible
Speaker 1: about this is Custis had let families stay together in Arlington, right,
Speaker 1: So after years of being used to well, at least
Speaker 1: we have our families, right, Lee just break. He doesn't
Speaker 1: give a fuck. Right now, several of these people, when
Speaker 1: he hires them off, flee their new positions and return
Speaker 1: to Alexandria. It causes this like whole because he's got
Speaker 1: to like discipline them now. It's this whole thing, and
Speaker 1: it causes a stir even within Virginia because within the gentry,
Speaker 1: their understanding too is that like, yeah, Custus wanted these
Speaker 1: people freed on his deathbed, and Lee is still working them.
Speaker 1: So even a lot of white people are kind of
Speaker 1: disapproving of this right like this is kind of a
Speaker 1: violation of a promise that had been made. And the
Speaker 1: soft disapproval of his fellow citizens was met with a
Speaker 1: burning rage by the enslaved workers at Arlington. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote from an article on the website American
Speaker 1: Heritage here, believing they were entitled to their freedom and
Speaker 1: alarmed at the way Lee was breaking up their families
Speaker 1: by hiring the able bodied. Far from Arlington, the slaves
Speaker 1: banded together and tried to overpower him, physically shouting that
Speaker 1: they were as free as he was. Angered by the
Speaker 1: slaves defiance, Lee resorted to increasingly harsh measures to maintain control.
Speaker 1: And the first harsh measure he resorts to is forcing
Speaker 1: the men who'd attacked him into what are described as
Speaker 1: slave pins in the city of Arlington. He locks them
Speaker 1: up in the city, away from their families, and then
Speaker 1: he leases them off again. And this takes us to
Speaker 1: the reality of the marble man. Beneath his layers of
Speaker 1: politess and this genteel Southern social obligation, he is as
Speaker 1: brutal a slave master as any as soon as his
Speaker 1: financial goals are threatened, right, That's what it is to him,
Speaker 1: it's as simple as.
Speaker 3: That you started fucking with my money. Yeah, exactly now,
Speaker 3: and now you really know what I think of you.
Speaker 1: Now the nice guy's gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah now.
Speaker 1: Alan Guelzo, who knows Lee better than me, describes Lee's reaction,
Speaker 1: based on years of letters to family and friends, as
Speaker 1: one of confusion as to why these people are angry
Speaker 1: that he's forcing them to work and be away from
Speaker 1: their families.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: Lee could not comprehend why the demands he was making
Speaker 1: did not earn the understanding even the cooperation, of the
Speaker 1: Arlington slaves. But they didn't, and his frustration at their
Speaker 1: obstinacy over in the spring of eighteen fifty nine, when
Speaker 1: three of the Arlington slaves, Wesley Norris, his sister Mary Norris,
Speaker 1: and their cousin George Parks, determined to run away. They
Speaker 1: made it as far as Westminster, Maryland, only a few
Speaker 1: miles from the free state border of Pennsylvania, when they
Speaker 1: were stopped and imprisoned. Two weeks later, they were shipped
Speaker 1: back to Arlington, where Lee had to pay the costs
Speaker 1: for their rendition. His fabled self control teedling unsteadily. Lee
Speaker 1: demanded of the three why they ran away because they replied, frankly,
Speaker 1: we considered ourselves free. Now that's a baller response, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because it's like that there's such.
Speaker 3: An insidiousness in the sense that like, like, fam this,
Speaker 3: ain't you plantation number one and number two? Oh you
Speaker 3: married it?
Speaker 2: That's not even your father, Like yeah, and the dude
Speaker 2: that we who actually owned us, which we gonna set
Speaker 2: aside for a second.
Speaker 3: That that's a sentence that just came out of my mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 3: has already freedoms. What is you talk like? You're not
Speaker 3: You're not in charge?
Speaker 2: Who are you? Bro?
Speaker 1: Who is this like that?
Speaker 3: Like that would be even more insidious of like you
Speaker 3: you have no authority here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Yes, you are? You are ruining our lives. Yes, so
Speaker 1: an old man who was a piece of ship will
Speaker 1: seem better to his grandkids who are also shiftless, lazy
Speaker 1: pieces of ship. It's such an unfair situ.
Speaker 2: I like, I can't. I have I understand so much
Speaker 2: more now that.
Speaker 3: Like like privilege just makes you brittle, Like I feel
Speaker 3: like that's just the best because I'm like, what a
Speaker 3: brittle soul that?
Speaker 2: Like, why is this inferior? They're not yours like these
Speaker 2: they're not yours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it gets worse because and this is really
Speaker 1: what reveals the actual man behind the marble. Right, one
Speaker 1: of these fugitive enslaved people later recalled quote. He then
Speaker 1: told us he would teach us a lesson we would
Speaker 1: never forget. And he has all both men stripped to
Speaker 1: the waist and he orders his overseer to lash them
Speaker 1: each fifty times. Mary Norris, the only woman of the group,
Speaker 1: he orders to be lashed twenty times. Now that's horrible
Speaker 1: without context, right, yes, but I want to lend some
Speaker 1: Whipping is a obviously very common punishment on many plantations.
Speaker 1: Somewhere between thirty and forty was normal for an infraction, right,
Speaker 1: So fifty is a big punishment. And you can tell
Speaker 1: how big it is by so Lee. There's a white
Speaker 1: overseer whose job is to manage the enslaved people at Arlington, Right,
Speaker 1: and Lee says, I want you to whip these men
Speaker 1: fifty times each. I want you to whip Mary twenty times.
Speaker 1: And the overseer says no, He's like, I can't do it,
Speaker 1: Like that's fucked up, man, I'm not going.
Speaker 2: To do it.
Speaker 1: So again, and this guy's part of his job is
Speaker 1: whipping enslaved people, and he's like, no, this is fucked up, Like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's bad. When yeah, that I do it right, that's bad.
Speaker 1: So Lee has to hire find a local cop, the
Speaker 1: guy who had captured the escapees, and is like, will
Speaker 1: you beat them for me? Right? That is how Lee
Speaker 1: claims this goes. Now, that may not have been exactly
Speaker 1: how it goes, and maybe a lot worse than that.
Speaker 1: More recent Lost Cause books love to emphasize Lee's distaste
Speaker 1: for slavery, and he says a lot of stuff about
Speaker 1: how he doesn't like slavery, but older texts from the
Speaker 1: middle of last century, including stuff written by his family,
Speaker 1: makes it clear that his dislike of slavery was what
Speaker 1: it revealed about his own inherent cruelty and more cowardice.
Speaker 1: The nineteen sixty nine book Meet Robert E. Lee stated
Speaker 1: Lee knew slavery was wrong. He said it was bad
Speaker 1: for the slave and worse for the man who owned him.
Speaker 1: And that's not true. But also, I don't want to
Speaker 1: disregard one of the meanings of that, right, I disregard like,
Speaker 1: obviously it's worse for the slave. Yeah, but what he's
Speaker 1: saying there. When he says it's worse for the man
Speaker 1: who owns him, he is thinking about the evil in
Speaker 1: himself that he had to see because of what he
Speaker 1: does to these people. Right, the New York Tribune publishes
Speaker 1: an article about Lee's battery of his enslaved people. Right,
Speaker 1: it is so bad that it makes the fucking news.
Speaker 1: And that article claims that Lee himself stripped Mary Norris
Speaker 1: and lashed her thirty nine times in a fit of rage.
Speaker 1: And crucially, Lee writes about this news article, he is
Speaker 1: aware of it. He never denies the allegation or lodges
Speaker 1: any protest against the paper. Never, So it does kind
Speaker 1: of seem like what happens and why he's like it's
Speaker 1: so bad for the slave owner, is he loses his control,
Speaker 1: like this granite reserve that he is so proud of,
Speaker 1: and he strips and beats a woman bloody, and he
Speaker 1: lives with that. That's the only thing really inside of him,
Speaker 1: This man who is such a mystery everybody. That venal cruelty,
Speaker 1: the same kind of cruelty that exists in his father.
Speaker 1: That's the core of property. Yeah, and you get to
Speaker 1: see it here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're tittling on something that I feel like obviously doing.
Speaker 3: You know, post mortem psychology is never good. However, that
Speaker 3: point of like that type of hate and prejudice, how
Speaker 3: it destroys the person inside of them is one of
Speaker 3: those grotesque things that like is not talked about enough
Speaker 3: in discussing the pretzel that these people had to put
Speaker 3: themselves in to know that if you are calling yourself
Speaker 3: the civilized one, to know what you're doing to Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stoop down to say
Speaker 3: in your brain you still don't. You're still saying these
Speaker 3: people are subhuman. But still, even if they're subhuman, the
Speaker 3: things you are doing to this creature that's alive, you know,
Speaker 3: is there's no way like the again, the mental gymnastics
Speaker 3: you have to do to be able to look yourself
Speaker 3: in the face and justify that has got to be haunting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because newsflast you just as human as I am.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And so I think that that statement is not acknowledged enough.
Speaker 3: And rather than face what you think is unthinkable and
Speaker 3: preposterous and accept the fact that I am participating in
Speaker 3: a deep evil and do the work to change you
Speaker 3: double down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I also wonder if part of what's happening here
Speaker 1: is that you know, there's this always these claims that like, well,
Speaker 1: this is a divine racial hierarchy, and really black people
Speaker 1: don't even want to be free, They're happier this way,
Speaker 1: and you can't keep telling yourself that lie when you
Speaker 1: see someone in a very intelligent and dignified way say
Speaker 1: I am a free man, and as a result, you
Speaker 1: like when that kind of shatters that myth in your head,
Speaker 1: all that's left is violence, right, which puts a lie
Speaker 1: to the fact that this is a divinely ordained system.
Speaker 1: I do think that's like part of why there's this
Speaker 1: rage and shame over it for him.
Speaker 3: I do want to Yeah, sorry, one more thing. I
Speaker 3: do think, like you said, like that lie that you're
Speaker 3: telling yourself, part of me is like why I again
Speaker 3: rarely give like I give historical context. I understand that
Speaker 3: like humans in a time, but like I rarely give
Speaker 3: any quarters to a to the argument that like, well,
Speaker 3: this is just what we did at the time. I'm like, nah,
Speaker 3: you knew, y'all know what y'all doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is that moment for me. Yes, and
Speaker 1: the moment that it is for all of us is ADS.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So I want to stay with
Speaker 1: this moment, this beating a little longer, because this is
Speaker 1: a moment that the people who want to paint a
Speaker 1: picture of Lee as a moral paragon have to grapple
Speaker 1: with and they usually have to find some way to
Speaker 1: like minimize it. Right, yeah, and this this goes on
Speaker 1: to this day. I want to read you a quote
Speaker 1: from an absolutely shameful Dallas Morning News article. And part
Speaker 1: of why this is fucking shameful, by the way, the
Speaker 1: Dallas Morning News has a proud pedigree. One of the
Speaker 1: things they did during the Second ku Klux Klan was
Speaker 1: like have journalists basically tail people to clan members, take
Speaker 1: down like license plates and shit like that, and publish
Speaker 1: lists of the members of town who were in the KKK.
Speaker 1: Like that was some based shit, yes in the day.
Speaker 1: And this is the crap they're doing now. This is
Speaker 1: from a twenty seventeen article entitled Robert E. Lee is
Speaker 1: the uniter America has been looking for.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait wait wait wait wait.
Speaker 1: Yeah THO seventy two zero one seven.
Speaker 3: Okay, this makes me wish this was like a visual podcast.
Speaker 3: Oh it's we could have seen my face just then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll refer back to this article a couple of
Speaker 1: times later. But it is shameful shit, and I want
Speaker 1: to read a quote from it now. This is published
Speaker 1: in the wake of Charlottesville, right, so they're like, how
Speaker 1: do we get Americans back together?
Speaker 2: Okay, in the wake of Charlotte's Okay, Dallas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in Dallas City of hate. Yeah. Yes, Lee himself,
Speaker 1: Virginia aristocrat as he was, was no slave task master.
Speaker 1: He was a soldier of the United States. Just before
Speaker 1: the war. He received in trust from his late father
Speaker 1: in laws of state one hundred and ninety six slaves
Speaker 1: designated under terms of the Will for emancipation, which objective
Speaker 1: despite the distractions of command, Lee faithfully achieved at the
Speaker 1: end of eighteen sixty two. A New York newspaper report
Speaker 1: from the same time period accusing Lee of stripping and
Speaker 1: personally beating a woman runaway slave, deserves the same credence
Speaker 1: as might a tale of Barack Obama's endowing the Richard B. Spencer,
Speaker 1: Chair of Confederate History at Yale fake news, Like, what
Speaker 1: why are you calling it fake news? Is there any
Speaker 1: evidence that it's fake. Oh no, there's not. He was
Speaker 1: aware of it and didn't argue against it, didn't say
Speaker 1: shit against it, and in fact ordered those slaves objectively.
Speaker 1: We know this, no doubt about it. Ordered them beaten
Speaker 1: brutally in order to make money for his grandkids. Not
Speaker 1: a slave task master, my fucking ass.
Speaker 3: Like the amount of things that were within the first
Speaker 3: two sentences that were factually, verifiably false, the first two
Speaker 3: things out your mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a vile thing to say. Again, maybe we
Speaker 1: should consider bringing back stoning for certain things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, thank you?
Speaker 3: What's the basis? Like this desires? It's all like, what's
Speaker 3: the why I bring this up?
Speaker 2: Yeah? How was his helping Charlottesville? Tell me you're Matt
Speaker 2: what's the capulus?
Speaker 1: His thing as well, is that in the wake of
Speaker 1: the Civil War, Lee was a really big uniter. He
Speaker 1: wanted everyone to move on, to get past this ugly
Speaker 1: chap and that we shouldn't tear down his statue. We
Speaker 1: should celebrate him as a guy you preached unity. What
Speaker 1: else did he fucking do?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And like where you're editored at when your first sentences.
Speaker 3: He was a soldier of the United States, He was.
Speaker 1: Not No, No, he was a waiter. He was on
Speaker 1: the other side.
Speaker 2: I don't understand what like what what?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this meme that goes around and it's like
Speaker 1: anarchists in every other period of American history and they're
Speaker 1: like burning an American flag and it's anarchists from eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty one to sixty five. You're like, you've got like
Speaker 1: the Union flag. You're doing in a blue uniform saluting
Speaker 1: like that is. I do not consider Lee's fucking like
Speaker 1: like he is not a uniter of the America. I
Speaker 1: want to be a part of I want to be
Speaker 1: a part of the America that fucking lit the South
Speaker 1: on fire to end of that system, right, yes, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's that's where I want to be.
Speaker 3: That was like, all right, this is some bullshit. We're done, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're done.
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the next chapter of Lee's career and life was
Speaker 1: to involve a man who was his opposite in every
Speaker 1: way and whose very existence was dedicated towards dissolving the
Speaker 1: foundations of Robert E. Lee's existence. His name was John Brown,
Speaker 1: and I think we are all broadly aware of what
Speaker 1: he did. Yeah. Yeah. To provide a quick summary, John
Speaker 1: Brown was a professional militant abolitionist. He had fought bloody
Speaker 1: battles in Kansas to free enslaved people, and he was
Speaker 1: basically a living boogeyman to pro slavery types. From October
Speaker 1: sixteenth to eighteenth, eighteen fifty nine, he and a band
Speaker 1: of hand picked gorillas launched a raid on Harper's ferry
Speaker 1: to try and secure weapons from the garrison there that
Speaker 1: they could use to arm enslaved people and launch a
Speaker 1: rebellion that would carve out an independent fortress of freedom
Speaker 1: lodged right in the heart of the Old South. It
Speaker 1: did not work. Not a successful operation, unfortunately, but a
Speaker 1: noble attempt. I mean, in the long run, it helps
Speaker 1: start the war that ends slavery. So I will call
Speaker 1: it a failure. It's just like not immediately tactically successful, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Robert E. Lee is the man who commands the
Speaker 1: US military forces sent in to quell the uprising and
Speaker 1: kill or capture John Brown. This they did. And while
Speaker 1: the job is odious, Lee is like, he handles this
Speaker 1: in like a competent way, right, He's not particularly brutal.
Speaker 1: He does the job, you know, that's the kind of
Speaker 1: guy he is Brown is wounded when the army storms
Speaker 1: his position, and this excerpt from the book Clouds of
Speaker 1: Glory by Michael Korda describes the first interaction between Lee
Speaker 1: and Brown. Lee had him carried to the office of
Speaker 1: the paymaster of the armory, where Brown soon recovered enough
Speaker 1: strength to hold what would now be called a celebrity
Speaker 1: press conference combined with some of the attributes of a
Speaker 1: royal audience. Lee courteously offered to clear the room of
Speaker 1: visitors if their presence annoyed or pained Brown, who, though
Speaker 1: in considerable pain, replied that he was glad to make
Speaker 1: himself and his motives clearly understood.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: One of the fun asides of the John Brown story
Speaker 1: is that all of the men involved in capturing him
Speaker 1: are like, can't help how impressed they are.
Speaker 2: They're like, yeah, they're like Disney is hard.
Speaker 1: But yeah, They're like they all think he's insane, but
Speaker 1: they're like, this man is incredibly physically courageous, He is
Speaker 1: well spoken, he knows exactly what he's doing right. He
Speaker 1: gives a three hour press conference after being stabbed through
Speaker 1: the kidney. The governor, the governor of Virginia, who's there
Speaker 1: in the aftermath, calls John Brown the gamest man I
Speaker 1: ever saw, Like, motherfucker's down credit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's staying all bidness over there.
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, I think you have to because like he is,
Speaker 1: he doesn't even break composure when his son is killed
Speaker 1: in the fight. I think it's because Brown there is
Speaker 1: not a doubt in his mind that God is real,
Speaker 1: there is not a doubt in his mind that Heaven
Speaker 1: is real, and there's not a doubt in his mind
Speaker 1: that the only thing that matters is fighting to end slavery.
Speaker 1: And if his son died, that my kid's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: And so I'm on exactly right. Yeah, like we're going,
Speaker 1: we're going to paradise. We did what we were supposed
Speaker 1: to do, you know, your right? Yeah, like that, like
Speaker 1: and and and.
Speaker 3: It's very rare in the world, in the in time memorium,
Speaker 3: can someone definitively be like, yeah, no, we're right, Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: we are absolutely right.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Lee is present for the whole conversation that ensued
Speaker 1: between Brown, Senator Mason, Lee's man Stewart, and the governor Quote.
Speaker 1: When Senator Mason asked him how he could justify his acts,
Speaker 1: Brown replied, I think, my friend, you are guilty of
Speaker 1: a great wrong against God and humanity. I say it
Speaker 1: without wishing to be offensive, and it would be perfectly
Speaker 1: right in anyone to interfere with you so far as
Speaker 1: to free those you willfully and wickedly hold this in bondage.
Speaker 1: I do not say this insultingly like no offense, but
Speaker 1: like you are. You are willingly participating in the greatest
Speaker 1: evil of our time. Respectfully, anything anyone do stop you
Speaker 1: is justified.
Speaker 3: Yes, look respectfully, like respectfully, no shade like respectfully.
Speaker 2: You're the fucking devil. Yeah, and you're doing the work
Speaker 2: of Satan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, respectfully Yeah, yeah, I mean, nothing impolite here, but no,
Speaker 1: God's damn you for your actions.
Speaker 2: No disrespect, but you work for some Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's cool. When when Mason, because Mason's like, did you
Speaker 1: pay these men who fought with you? Did you have to?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Are they mercenaries? Brown replies no, like fuck that, and
Speaker 1: Jeb Stewart remarks on this, uh, the wages of sin
Speaker 1: is death, and Brown turns to him and says, I
Speaker 1: would not have made such a remark to you if.
Speaker 2: You had been a prisoner and wounded in my hands.
Speaker 1: Like such a such a g for his part. Lee. Again,
Speaker 1: he has this kind of basic respect for Brown's personal courage,
Speaker 1: but he thinks he's insane. Yeah, he thinks because the
Speaker 1: plot was so doomed to failure, it means the abolitionist
Speaker 1: was either a fanatic or a madman. And you know,
Speaker 1: Brown is both a fanatic and if if being a
Speaker 1: madman means acting in ways that are completely inconsistent with
Speaker 1: logic of your culture, he is crazy. But I think
Speaker 1: he's a kind of crazy that it was necessary. Right,
Speaker 1: The abolitionists who weren't mad men lived comfortably in the
Speaker 1: North and would like tut tut to their friends when
Speaker 1: they read articles about Lee stripping and whipping young enslaved women. Right,
Speaker 1: John Brown picked up a rifle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they shake your head, just like gos so what
Speaker 3: they're doing over there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like is it? Yeah? Well we on our way
Speaker 1: and that that's why you get from Harriet Tubman and
Speaker 1: like being like yeah, he was the fucking best, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the coolest dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Everybody sign. Everybody sign like no, no, he's a writer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorites. I think it was
Speaker 1: Hue P. Newton, who was like the only white man
Speaker 1: we might have led into the Black Panthers was Jean Brown. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Him, He's like, nah, but fu all y'all that I
Speaker 2: kind of like that, dude. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Obviously adult part of the history is just like these
Speaker 3: like rays of light in the middle of just chaos.
Speaker 3: But like I think, you know, situated culturally, it's like
Speaker 3: anytime I'm ever talking about this time in the world,
Speaker 3: like obviously because it's so personal to me, but like
Speaker 3: I always want to like remind people that we are
Speaker 3: still talking about the enslavement, a chattel, a type of
Speaker 3: skurgs that hadn't been we hadn't seen before on the planet,
Speaker 3: Like how remarkably evil this is, and at the same
Speaker 3: time that those that were disgusted by it are just
Speaker 3: as normal as we are now about the things that
Speaker 3: we're disgusted by that Well, if there was a social
Speaker 3: media they would tweet about it, they would follow hashtags,
Speaker 3: they would do all those things too, But and then
Speaker 3: and then be looking to the government to be like,
Speaker 3: why aren't y'all doing something about it?
Speaker 2: So it reminds me I think of like my brain.
Speaker 3: Goes to like the dread Scott case, where like I
Speaker 3: don't need to teach you of this, but like the
Speaker 3: for the listener, who clearly is the other eighty thousand
Speaker 3: people that are we're talking to right now, is this
Speaker 3: idea of like you have the Missouri Compromise, which was
Speaker 3: like for every free state there's a slave state. If
Speaker 3: you're gonna get a new one in the Union, you
Speaker 3: got to get a new one on this side too,
Speaker 3: Like this was their way of trying to like play
Speaker 3: cap before we actually went to war. So a dude,
Speaker 3: So a dude gets free. He like escapes his plantation,
Speaker 3: goes north, you know, signs up to be a citizen
Speaker 3: in a northern state and is living his life right.
Speaker 3: And now he's like, I'm in a free state. This
Speaker 3: is that's what y'all said, This is what y'all said,
Speaker 3: y'all was gonna do.
Speaker 2: I'm a free man. I got up here. I'm good.
Speaker 3: And then the slave hunter goes and finds him bring
Speaker 3: and attempts to bring him back to his plantation to
Speaker 3: enslave him again. And he's like wait, wait wait, wait
Speaker 3: wait wait hold up, Like looking at this all, y'all
Speaker 3: states writes people looking at the state, like, fam you're
Speaker 3: why are you letting this other state, the other state
Speaker 3: is usurping your authority. You're saying that I'm a free man,
Speaker 3: like I'm a citizen here. Why are you letting them
Speaker 3: do that? Goes all the way to Supreme Court. Supreme
Speaker 3: courts like ah, yeah, you're right, like you still kind
Speaker 3: of belong to your plantation, and it's like yeah, So
Speaker 3: at this point you're like, well, I can't trust the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court to do anything about this shit, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, because clearly when it was a choice
Speaker 3: between two states, right, you chose the rights of.
Speaker 1: The slave state.
Speaker 2: So to me, I'm like, you could be nice, like
Speaker 2: you said, you could be nice and like tiss tisk,
Speaker 2: like you know what's going on, or you could be
Speaker 2: like John Brown.
Speaker 3: Is like fuck this. I can't trust y'all to do
Speaker 3: any of this shit. So we just it's getting down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and it's I want to you know, when
Speaker 1: we talk about like the particular evil of slavery in
Speaker 1: the Americas, I think a really good point to look
Speaker 1: back on as slavery in the Roman Empire. Rome was
Speaker 1: a slave heavily and they worked generations to death and minds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yet if you get freed. There was no lingering shame.
Speaker 1: There was no caste system. Your kid you got most
Speaker 1: of the rights of a citizen, and your kids were
Speaker 1: just normal citizens. And that is why despite you might
Speaker 1: have generations of specific people get enslaved, once they got free,
Speaker 1: there was no lingering stigma. There was no lingering apart like,
Speaker 1: yeah you were like the Romans were just like, no,
Speaker 1: slavery is a political condition. We beat you in a war,
Speaker 1: we get to enslave a bunch of you, right, but
Speaker 1: once you're still people, We don't think you're less human.
Speaker 1: We just won, you know, like I don't own your kids, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you often did own their kids. But like what
Speaker 1: your kids, if your kids get free, they're not lower
Speaker 1: quality people. Yeah, we don't think there's a racial hierarchy.
Speaker 1: We just won a war, and so we're going to
Speaker 1: be shipped to you, right, which is like that's still
Speaker 1: a bad thing, but it is so different from how
Speaker 1: it worked here. Yeah. So Lee had been sent on
Speaker 1: special duty to crush John Brown's uprising, and after it
Speaker 1: gets done, he goes back home to keep unfucking his
Speaker 1: father in law's finances, but he gets sent back to
Speaker 1: Harper's Ferry a few days later to defend it from
Speaker 1: there's this like it's kind of like these fears you
Speaker 1: had in twenty twenty, that like Antifa's starting fires, Like
Speaker 1: he's got hundreds of allies. They're hiding in the woods.
Speaker 1: They're gonna come free him. Lee is like, not a dummy.
Speaker 1: He knows that no, that's probably not gonna happen. But
Speaker 1: he does his job. He manages a defense. They execute
Speaker 1: John Brown, and Lee soon returns to his command down
Speaker 1: in Texas. He does not seem to have considered the
Speaker 1: incident to have been hugely significant at the time, but
Speaker 1: of course it would have an enormous impact on the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. In the days and weeks after
Speaker 1: the execution, Brown became a hero to abolitionists across the
Speaker 1: North and a demon the physical embodiment with growing Southern
Speaker 1: unease at the political fight over slavery. Guelzo's book contains
Speaker 1: a good summary of headlines in the wake of the raid.
Speaker 1: The Southern people of Huge four disregarded the ravings of
Speaker 1: Northern fanatics because they believed that such madness to be
Speaker 1: merely of pecuniary speculation, wailed the Richmond Inquirer, but Harper's
Speaker 1: Ferry shows that the northern people mean more than words.
Speaker 1: How long will it be? The Inquirer asked before the abolition.
Speaker 1: Abolition fanatics of Cincinnati may seize Newport in Kentucky. For
Speaker 1: the moment the aid of the federal government was near
Speaker 1: Harper's Ferry and was in hands faithful to the Constitution.
Speaker 1: But another year may place that in the hands of
Speaker 1: our assailants and urge on and strengthen the hands that
Speaker 1: murder our families and pillage our property. So they start
Speaker 1: freaking out about this, but at least for a while,
Speaker 1: life goes on. One of the last duties Lee is
Speaker 1: going to execute for the US Army before the Civil
Speaker 1: War starts is a very mild insurgency against a Mexican
Speaker 1: man named Juan Courtina. One was a former Mexican Army
Speaker 1: officer who owned a ranch near Brownsville. He had properties
Speaker 1: on both sides of the Rio Grande, and as settlers
Speaker 1: coming in and displacing Mexicans would live there, often for generations.
Speaker 1: A lot of these settlers are like Conman right, They're
Speaker 1: basically cooking up fake legal documents to claim they own
Speaker 1: this property, and like forcing families off it's really fucked up.
Speaker 1: Cortina calls these guys flocks of vampires, and he is
Speaker 1: entirely accurate in that. In July eighteen fifty nine, Cortina
Speaker 1: acts to stop an American police officer from arresting a
Speaker 1: Mexican man. He winds up shooting the sheriff, evading a posse,
Speaker 1: and then forming his own band of insurgents and returning
Speaker 1: to Brownsville with a list of white lawyers to kill
Speaker 1: and he gets five of them. He's fucking cool. This
Speaker 1: guy's dope. He then flees back to Mexico and this
Speaker 1: blows up into a series of raids right and Lee
Speaker 1: is sent to stop him, and they kind of have
Speaker 1: a back and forth because every time he'll cross the
Speaker 1: Rio Grand Lee is not allowed to follow across the
Speaker 1: Rio Grand in a Mexican territory, and Cortina winds up
Speaker 1: like eventually, Lee never catches him. Cortina winds up like
Speaker 1: France tries to take over Mexico and they install a
Speaker 1: Habsburg emperor, so he has to deal with that. Right,
Speaker 1: It doesn't end well, but it ends the Courtina problem
Speaker 1: for the US and for his part. Lee writes to
Speaker 1: his family about Courtina and says, you know, I am
Speaker 1: a great advocate of people staying at home and minding
Speaker 1: their own affairs. Were you were you Liberty? Lee?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think that's true.
Speaker 4: I don't think so true. I think the dead Man
Speaker 4: just how's marg Yeah, absolutely, it's hilarious. Yeah, that dude
Speaker 4: was like running up. Look, yeah he ran up in America.
Speaker 4: Who was like, okay, catch.
Speaker 1: Me, fun guy. So back in Texas, Lee encountered a
Speaker 1: rising tide of secessionist sentiment from the Texans around him.
Speaker 1: Their hostility to the federal government and even to US
Speaker 1: army troops was palpable. The situation grew worse by the day,
Speaker 1: and Lee found himself is sort of in a peculiar
Speaker 1: and alienated mindset. If you want to imagine what the
Speaker 1: kind of man Lee was would be doing today in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, it's helpful to note that he was
Speaker 1: his era's equivalent of a centrist, at least in terms
Speaker 1: of how he expressed his beliefs. I don't think it
Speaker 1: was in his heart really as centrist. He was much more.
Speaker 1: He was a dedicated slave owner, But in terms of
Speaker 1: how he talked about things, that is how he liked
Speaker 1: to portray himself. Michael Korda describes this well, he was
Speaker 1: appalled at Southerner's talk about the renewal of the slave trade,
Speaker 1: to which he was opposed on every ground, and his
Speaker 1: experience of dealing with his father in law slaves had
Speaker 1: further soured his view of slavery as an institution. He
Speaker 1: regarded secession as revolution, dismissed it as silly, and could
Speaker 1: anticipate no greater calamity for our country than a dissolution
Speaker 1: of our union. Now, it's tempting to look at the
Speaker 1: decisions he makes later and just say, well, he was
Speaker 1: lying about that. He was pretending he didn't care about
Speaker 1: secession and slavery, but we know that he really did
Speaker 1: care about slavery enough to fight for it. I think
Speaker 1: that that's not entirely the right way to look at it. Right,
Speaker 1: You have to understand, counter to a lot of casual history.
Speaker 1: You hear that Robert E. Lee did not particularly identify
Speaker 1: as a Southerner.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Part of why he doesn't want a civil war is
Speaker 1: that he doesn't really consider himself. He considers himself he's
Speaker 1: a cosmopolitan guy. He's an American in general, and This
Speaker 1: goes totally against the lost cause stuff, right. The popular
Speaker 1: narrative is he hates the idea of secession, but he
Speaker 1: loves Virginia's too much. He just can't. He just can't
Speaker 1: fight against it. It's his heart, It's the entirety of
Speaker 1: his being. It's not Lee spends very little of his
Speaker 1: adult life in Virginia, let alone Arlington. He lives in
Speaker 1: the North for considerable periods of time, and then out
Speaker 1: in the West, in Mexico and in Texas. He is
Speaker 1: a citizen of the United States, and throughout most of
Speaker 1: his life his letters give very little sign of a
Speaker 1: man who holds specific affection for Virginia. In fact, he
Speaker 1: puts a lot of time and effort into avoiding being
Speaker 1: at home. This is in spite of the fact that
Speaker 1: his army career seems to have petered out right. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get promoted as much as I want.
Speaker 1: I should quit. I'm old enough to retire. I should
Speaker 1: do something else with my life. And he refuses to
Speaker 1: do so, despite complaining about it. He refuses to go
Speaker 1: and enjoy life back at his supposedly beloved at Arlington.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to read a really telling quote from
Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee A life here. He could have taken
Speaker 1: the course of resignation from the army, but that would
Speaker 1: only land him back at Arlington, and even as he
Speaker 1: received letters from Annie extolling the trees and hills at Arlington,
Speaker 1: he gently pushed away at any suggestion that he might
Speaker 1: return there for good. I do not think my presence
Speaker 1: would add anything to their appearance, he replied, in a
Speaker 1: peculiar mix of pity and self regret. It is better
Speaker 1: that I am away. When Annie pressed the suggestion again
Speaker 1: in August, he calmly but firmly told her that it
Speaker 1: would be far easier if you will come out here.
Speaker 1: I will endeavor to make you as comfortable as possible.
Speaker 1: I have a nice little pony on which you can
Speaker 1: accompany me in my evening rides, and a commodious traveling
Speaker 1: wagon that can carry you wherever I go. I have
Speaker 1: a nice little pony.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: He sounds like a dude that like he just wants
Speaker 2: to go back to brunch. Yeah, it's just like, can
Speaker 2: we just brunch it not to Arlington?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he like in Virginia. Get on my nerves. I'll
Speaker 3: just get on my nerves like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's literally, I'll send you an uber comfort. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll send you a new just out.
Speaker 2: I'll send you an uber I think.
Speaker 3: But I want to use that bad line because that
Speaker 3: was some that was some high level shade. She's talking
Speaker 3: about how beautiful the trees are, and he's like, well,
Speaker 3: I ain't gonna make them many more beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to continue the last bit of that quote.
Speaker 1: There was no point in his returning to Arlington. He
Speaker 1: wasn't always would be a stranger there. You know, I
Speaker 1: am much in the way of everybody, and my taste
Speaker 1: in pursuits did not coincide with the rest of the household,
Speaker 1: and certainly not with the Arlington slaves. Now, I hope
Speaker 1: everybody is happier now. That doesn't strike me as a
Speaker 1: man who loves his home so much he'd break his
Speaker 1: oath and turn traded to defend it in a cause
Speaker 1: he otherwise abhorred.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, no exactly, He's like, really, y'all get on
Speaker 3: my nerves. That's the yeah, like that is a that
Speaker 3: is people truly contain multitudes, and but the idea that
Speaker 3: he was just like, really, I don't even I'm not
Speaker 3: even from Virginia. Oh, like, y'all, I just got station here,
Speaker 3: Texas got better weather.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. I can get a taco
Speaker 2: down here. Wy, don't you just come down here? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Like we chill him, man, Like, that's hilarious to me.
Speaker 3: I ain't gonna make the trees no more beautiful if
Speaker 3: they already. You don't need me to make a beautiful
Speaker 3: you just did. That's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Arlington's not really my place, Yeah, yeah, that is. Anyway,
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk more about why Lee decides to fight
Speaker 1: for the Confederacy and how he makes that decision. That's
Speaker 1: gonna be a big part of part three, and then
Speaker 1: we will deal with the myth and the fact of
Speaker 1: Bobby Lee as a great general. But PROP for right now,
Speaker 1: we're gonna deal with the myths and the fact of
Speaker 1: you as a podcast or musician. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2: Man? Prop? Hip hop dot com is my everything.
Speaker 3: It's music. I got some new music out. We got
Speaker 3: music going along with the podcast. Last song was called
Speaker 3: Lemme Highland Player and yeah hood politics will PROP season
Speaker 3: three up and running. There's so much going down. We've
Speaker 3: like really, like, like I said last time, kicked it
Speaker 3: in the like fourth gear, you know, putting together like
Speaker 3: a bunch of different series. There's the you Wasn't Outside
Speaker 3: series as that's following the Israel and Gaza situation. Then
Speaker 3: we got series following the election. It's a good time, man,
Speaker 3: and as good as it can be. But yeah, hood
Speaker 3: politics will prop uh every every Wednesday. Get ready for
Speaker 3: the Wednesday drop, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: And I got a book called Terrorform. It's poetry book.
Speaker 3: There's music to go along with that too, and uh,
Speaker 3: I'm Betty happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also have a book it's called After the Revolution.
Speaker 1: Check it out. You can order it wherever books are sold,
Speaker 1: or you can just google ak Press After the Revolution
Speaker 1: and buy it directly from zippublisher. That is the episode.
Speaker 1: Come back next week when we will conclude the exciting
Speaker 1: story of Bobby Lee.
Speaker 2: I like that you're calling him Bobby.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The rough draft title the working title for this
Speaker 1: episode was Bobby Lee the Guarantee and then parentheses of Failure.
Speaker 2: The greatest second place trophy of all time? Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: Everybody behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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