Speaker 1: Media, what's losing my Civil War?
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to I've got I've got one
Speaker 1: for part four. I promise you got one for part four,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have one for part three. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is all behind the Bastards a podcast about Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee for the last week or so.
Speaker 2: Mister silver medal head ass, mister.
Speaker 1: Let's get I'll give me a bronze, right your bronze dude.
Speaker 3: My one of my favorite moments in history was the
Speaker 3: first time I got to go to Crow Nation, Montana,
Speaker 3: the like little big horn sitting bull monument, and that
Speaker 3: this whole thing for General Custard, like this whole statue
Speaker 3: for it, and I'm looking at him and I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is a second place trophy that man lost, Like.
Speaker 2: Participation, you get statues for losing like anyway.
Speaker 1: I also, on a separate note, I think it's funny
Speaker 1: that we ever give out bronze medals because like gold,
Speaker 1: obviously precious, never tarnishes, silver a lot harder to tarnish,
Speaker 1: also pretty precious, and then bronze, Like, come on, guys,
Speaker 1: we stopped using that ship for swords, like two thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. That's a team.
Speaker 2: It's named in age like it means a time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the bronze age which medal, Yeah, we'll give We'll
Speaker 3: give Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee a bronze medals, bronze Welcome, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Everybody say again, Jason Petty aka PROP. In our first
Speaker 1: two episodes, we established the background and life of Robert E.
Speaker 3: Lee.
Speaker 1: In part two we talked about some pretty fucking unpleasant stuff.
Speaker 1: And today we're we're answering the question. We're getting into
Speaker 1: kind of the critical moment of Bobby Lee's life, right,
Speaker 1: which is his decision to become a trader, to go
Speaker 1: back on his oath to the United States and his
Speaker 1: oath of loyalty in service to the military, uh, and
Speaker 1: become a fucking trader. So that's that's what I do.
Speaker 2: Think he's a Bobby. I think he's a Robbie. You
Speaker 2: think he's a Robbie instead, And Robbin said, because I
Speaker 2: like to call you Bobby.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to, but I hate being called that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's what's fun about it, and I don't
Speaker 3: want the association. So I think he's a Robbie because
Speaker 3: he's also he robs, he sucks, he does, he does suck,
Speaker 3: And it couldn't be it couldn't be a better time
Speaker 3: to talk about this, especially with what's going on in
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court about like, yes, what is what is reason?
Speaker 3: What is treason? What's a trader? Yeah, this law only
Speaker 3: applies to everyone except for the highest office.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, what.
Speaker 1: Well with Robert It's at least stay a clearer case
Speaker 1: of treatretty because there's really there's really no other way
Speaker 1: to look at this.
Speaker 3: But I don't nobody this article three is about you, bam. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the law exists because of y'all.
Speaker 1: It's not a hard question like as to whether or
Speaker 1: not this guy is guilty. And it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where within kind of the Lost Cause mythology and
Speaker 1: within all of like the coverage of Lee's life that's
Speaker 1: sort of influenced by Lost Cause shit, this always still
Speaker 1: gets softened. It's weird we have this like hatred in
Speaker 1: the United States of actually calling traders traders if they're
Speaker 1: like white conservatives. Yeah, and that does actually extend to
Speaker 1: Bobby Lee. Like I just said, it was very clear,
Speaker 1: but people still do this shit, and it kind of
Speaker 1: make that case, I'm going to start again by reading
Speaker 1: from our huge head on the cover children's book Who
Speaker 1: was Robert E.
Speaker 2: Lee?
Speaker 1: Which I'm giving these books some shit. They're actually not
Speaker 1: that bad. There's actually a decent amount of really good
Speaker 1: historic information, and they come across as like pretty negative
Speaker 1: towards the Confederacy. Why I keep bringing them up is
Speaker 1: because they still include these bits like this one where
Speaker 1: where they're taught they're introducing the concept of like the
Speaker 1: Civil War that we had killed about a million people
Speaker 1: and Robert's participation in it, and this is how they
Speaker 1: describe it. Robert grew up with a great love for
Speaker 1: his country, yet in eighteen sixty one, the country he's
Speaker 1: so admired was torn apart by the start of the
Speaker 1: Civil War. Robert was torn too. He wanted the country
Speaker 1: to remain united. He did not want the South to
Speaker 1: break away from the United States and form a separate country.
Speaker 1: But that is what happened. And what they're doing there,
Speaker 1: they're using that like special exonerative case of like English
Speaker 1: grammar that you normally use for police or the IDF
Speaker 1: where it's like the country was torn apart.
Speaker 2: Listen, who who torn it apart? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Who made that decision. Why wasn't torn apart?
Speaker 2: You know, it's like that's.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, a kid in Chicago walked into
Speaker 1: a police officer's bullet, Like how did that happen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly that, And.
Speaker 3: I'm like, dude, just hearing them say it, it's like
Speaker 3: I made the mistake because, again, the child of a
Speaker 3: rather militant man that I thought, your children need to
Speaker 3: know as quick as possible when they ready to know
Speaker 3: the world they about to step into.
Speaker 2: So I had.
Speaker 3: No problem, I feel terrible about it now showing my
Speaker 3: third grade daughter images of the Middle Passage and what
Speaker 3: the what slave ships and how it looked and how
Speaker 3: we was laid out. I had no problem showing her this.
Speaker 3: My wife was like, Jason, she's eight years old. Maybe
Speaker 3: there's a more sanitized way to reveal this truth to her.
Speaker 3: And I was like, it's not sanitized. You can't clean
Speaker 3: up even right. So I was like, no, you gotta
Speaker 3: tell them, you know. Now, second time around, having another child,
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, this's probably a probably an age
Speaker 3: appropriate way to like lay out this, you know. So
Speaker 3: I'm saying that to say in on one hand, the
Speaker 3: Big Head Books is like this is four children. There's
Speaker 3: got to be a more age There's got to be
Speaker 3: an age appropriate way to say what's going on. I'm
Speaker 3: my argument is, I don't know if that's what they're
Speaker 3: doing though, Like that's more lost cause z and sanitized
Speaker 3: way to do it, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it really is. And I'm frustrated by this,
Speaker 1: but it also it's so consistent among the way people
Speaker 1: talk about Lee and I go, you know, there is
Speaker 1: one thing I do kind of I think is appropriate
Speaker 1: about this, although I don't think it means to be,
Speaker 1: which is one of the ways you do have to
Speaker 1: look at from the perspective of people like Lee and
Speaker 1: Lee is he's going to be an active player obviously
Speaker 1: in the treason of the South, but he's not up
Speaker 1: until the point that secession crisis starts, right He's not
Speaker 1: a guy who's in politics. He's not a guy who's
Speaker 1: advocating for secession prior to that. And for people like him,
Speaker 1: which is most of the country, I think there is
Speaker 1: actually a little bit in the way in which all
Speaker 1: of this comes on like a storm, like a weather pattern,
Speaker 1: and I think that those of us sitting in the
Speaker 1: country right now watching shit escalate to who knows what
Speaker 1: the fuck's gonna happen later this year with the election,
Speaker 1: you can to some and empathize with, like, yeah, these
Speaker 1: massive civil conflicts that up to a certain point, it's
Speaker 1: a small chunk of the country that's actively ratcheting things
Speaker 1: towards calamity and for the rest of us trying to
Speaker 1: just trying to make rent, trying to like live your life.
Speaker 1: It does feel like a fucking storm hitting right. I
Speaker 1: don't say that to take any agency away from him,
Speaker 1: but I did. I found myself kind of torn between
Speaker 1: those two things right where I was just like, true,
Speaker 1: I do kind of feel like that sometimes, like it's
Speaker 1: a weather pattern that just moved in and you have
Speaker 1: to just kind of brace for it.
Speaker 2: Braw feel you.
Speaker 3: Man. There's even when we get into the Lost Cause episodes,
Speaker 3: the man, I keep going back to this. But the
Speaker 3: more that I say it, as much as I am
Speaker 3: a victim of that shit, it is it's so human,
Speaker 3: like the way that it's snowballed into being what it
Speaker 3: it's become, it's a human And then if you're not
Speaker 3: one of the creators of it, it's just you're just
Speaker 3: you just happen to live in Tuscaloosa.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: You're just like, I mean, yeah, this is the air
Speaker 3: we breathe, you know, it's so human.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, And that's kind of the only bits from Lee
Speaker 1: that are a little bit understandable, where he's writing back
Speaker 1: to his family as like stuff is escalating towards open
Speaker 1: violence and is like I can't believe this is happening,
Speaker 1: Like why is no one stopping this? Where it's like
Speaker 1: he's on the wrong side of it, But that basic
Speaker 1: emotion of like how the fuck is this happening? I
Speaker 1: do actually understand to a degree of thanks. Yeah, It's
Speaker 1: just it's one of those things I'm reading right now,
Speaker 1: the book Nixon Land Again, which which covers like this
Speaker 1: massive period, this very undercover period in US history where
Speaker 1: all there was this unbelievable wave of violence towards the
Speaker 1: anti war movement, people assassinated and murdered for handing out
Speaker 1: pamphlets against the Vietnam War in the streets. That happen
Speaker 1: over and over again. And there's almost a degree which
Speaker 1: it's comforting, not because that's good, because it's terrible that
Speaker 1: that happened, but because when I hear about the wave
Speaker 1: of violence that's hitting us now, particularly over like the
Speaker 1: anti war and Gaza movement, just to know that like,
Speaker 1: all right, well this isn't a historic novelty, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is not This is something that happens again and again,
Speaker 1: you know, And I guess just knowing people made it
Speaker 1: like went through that before. It's not good, but it
Speaker 1: is like, okay, we're not letting an unprecedented times exactly anyway.
Speaker 1: So in other words, while Lee is going to exercise
Speaker 1: a huge amount of agency from kind of the start
Speaker 1: of hostilities on afterwards, he is kind of carried along
Speaker 1: by the tide of history in the couple of years
Speaker 1: prior to things. And he's going to spend the lead
Speaker 1: up to the eighteen sixty election actually in San Antonio,
Speaker 1: watching the Democratic Party shatter in the face of Lincoln's
Speaker 1: campaign and this debate over what to do about slavery.
Speaker 1: And it's this very interesting moment where he is like
Speaker 1: put into conflict with secessionists.
Speaker 2: We don't live.
Speaker 1: This isn't really a period of Lee that I thought about,
Speaker 1: but like, he is a federal officer in a state
Speaker 1: that is actively preparing to secede, and he becomes the
Speaker 1: target of secessionist anger, right, because he's this representative of
Speaker 1: the federal government that he's going to wind up fighting against.
Speaker 1: But that hasn't happened yet, and so it puts him
Speaker 1: in this very conflicted position. The New York Times, kind
Speaker 1: of echoing Lee's own thoughts in this period, writes that
Speaker 1: extremists in the Democratic Party were delighted at the idea
Speaker 1: of a Lincoln victory quote which will give them an
Speaker 1: opportunity to rally the South in favor of dissillusion. In
Speaker 1: other words, secessionists are being written about and discussed by
Speaker 1: the centrists of the day as much as accelerationists are today,
Speaker 1: right where there's this like attitude that will A lot
Speaker 1: of secessionists want Lincoln to win because they think it's
Speaker 1: going to inevitably provoke him this conflict that we have
Speaker 1: to have, right, And Lee is diehard against Lincoln, obviously,
Speaker 1: but he's and he's against Lincoln in part because he
Speaker 1: wants He thinks that like he agrees with the accelerationists, Basically,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want Lincoln to win, like the acceleration it's stupid.
Speaker 1: He agrees that if Lincoln wins, the conflict is inevitable right.
Speaker 3: There's this thing like I'm thinking about I get this
Speaker 3: sometimes I get this like anti feeling, like it's it's
Speaker 3: very unique to my career. But like when you're backstage
Speaker 3: at like a big event or a festival concert and
Speaker 3: you see all the wires like all over there, like
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm antsy that I'm like, let's just get
Speaker 3: it over with, and someone pull a chord, like just
Speaker 3: rip it up, just get it over with, like just.
Speaker 2: Somebody do it.
Speaker 3: Somebody destroy it, like or like if you know, for
Speaker 3: like some more violent stuff, when you're just like let's
Speaker 3: just fight, let's just do it, Like waiting for it's worse.
Speaker 3: It's like, let's just let's just fight. When you've been
Speaker 3: in a lot of violent situations. Yeah, you understand this intimately,
Speaker 3: which is that bracing for impact is worse than impact.
Speaker 3: It's worse, yes, yes, it's more so worse. It's not
Speaker 3: necessarily worse because you can die from impact. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: it's more thinking about it. Yeah, your fear. You're just like,
Speaker 3: it's just let's just do it. Let's get it over with.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's the same reason most Americans are more scared of
Speaker 1: being on a plane than they are driving, even though
Speaker 1: you're a thousand times in more danger while driving, but
Speaker 1: you're in control of the car at least theoretically right now, realistically,
Speaker 1: are you in control of some drunk eye smashing and
Speaker 1: fucking miata. No, of course not, but in your head
Speaker 1: at least your behind the wheel as opposed to sitting
Speaker 1: in a jet where you're much safer, but you have
Speaker 1: no agency on what's going to happen, right, And that
Speaker 1: is that is like most of the country, including Roberty
Speaker 1: Lee at this point, and for him it's it is
Speaker 1: particularly I'm not trying to say like empathize with him,
Speaker 1: but you need to understand where his head is. Right
Speaker 1: after Lincoln wins, South Carolina authorizes a secession convention and
Speaker 1: this really sparks secession fever across the South, where Lee
Speaker 1: is a federal representative and he writes home to his family,
Speaker 1: the lone Star is floating all over this state as
Speaker 1: Texan independence becomes that people are like putting up lone
Speaker 1: star flags around the fort that he's at rights and
Speaker 1: that's a threat, right, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's pretty poetic to say it like that.
Speaker 3: The lone Star is floating all over the state, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, I hate I hate that. That's kind
Speaker 3: of poetic jerk.
Speaker 1: He's not a terrible writer. Most people were better writers
Speaker 1: back then because you kind of had to be you
Speaker 1: could write. Yeah, the discourse around all this was as
Speaker 1: detached from reality as it is today, with one text
Speaker 1: and paper shrieking the North has gone overwhelmingly for Negro
Speaker 1: equality and Southern vassalage. Southern men, will you submit to
Speaker 1: this degradation?
Speaker 3: So it is about oh whoa, oh so it is
Speaker 3: about the negro Oh yeah, you just say there was
Speaker 3: no debate about that at the time. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 3: it's about so it's about the okay, got it? Yeah,
Speaker 3: it really is some like white lives matter shit right,
Speaker 3: very much so.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so by December, Texas hasn't started its own secession
Speaker 1: convention and Lee when this happens. He writes home to
Speaker 1: his wife and he's basically like, yeah, if they succeed,
Speaker 1: I will head home, you know, I will, I will
Speaker 1: like return, I promise, And he's it's because she's worried
Speaker 1: he's going to get killed by some Texas you know.
Speaker 1: That's and that's not an unrealistic threat. It started in
Speaker 1: Fort Sumter, but it could have started in Texas. There's
Speaker 1: no reason for it not to have, you know. And
Speaker 1: so while Lee is in conflict with the secession is
Speaker 1: at this point, he's also it's also very clear from
Speaker 1: his letters that he was open, even at this early
Speaker 1: stage to the idea of fighting against the United States
Speaker 1: and breaking his oath. He expressed his wife a desire
Speaker 1: to fight under no other flag than the Star spangled banner.
Speaker 1: But he also said I would fight in defense of
Speaker 1: Virginia and and what else could that mean but successionally?
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And.
Speaker 1: It's this The fact that he always phrases it that
Speaker 1: way is evidence of a kind of wishy washiness that
Speaker 1: is belied by his claims to be anti secession because
Speaker 1: while secessionists are preaching nothing but revolution, and he says, like,
Speaker 1: I think that's irresponsible, but he also consistently says I
Speaker 1: would fight in defense of Virginia. He just doesn't have
Speaker 1: the courage to admit I am, in fact, willing to.
Speaker 3: Say say you came in Oh yeah, yeah, just say it,
Speaker 3: bro like it is what it is. And maybe it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like the not to give him any grace, but yeah,
Speaker 3: just the piece of him that's like still kind of
Speaker 3: think this is stupid, but I'm definitely down, so like
Speaker 3: this is the way I can make my brain get
Speaker 3: around it.
Speaker 1: I kind of have more respect for that, like random
Speaker 1: those like assholes in the Texas paper who are like,
Speaker 1: this is a wall for white equality and we'll fight it,
Speaker 1: because at least they're like, yeah, you're being honest about
Speaker 1: what you're willing to do. You know, this is what
Speaker 1: we're doing. Lee is just kind of pussy footing around it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this continues. This is like a Lee family tradition
Speaker 1: because fitz Hugh Lee's book, which I've quoted from several times,
Speaker 1: written in I think eighteen ninety six, makes it clear
Speaker 1: that Lee's decision to join the Confederacy wasn't just something
Speaker 1: he did because he felt there were no other options.
Speaker 1: It was based on his fundamental sympathy for the Southern cause,
Speaker 1: which is the cause of slavery. Lee wrote, quote the South,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, it's been aggrieved by the acts of
Speaker 1: the North. As you say, I feel the aggression, and
Speaker 1: I am willing to take every proper step for address.
Speaker 1: It is the principle I contend for not individual or
Speaker 1: private benefit. As an American citizen, I take great pride
Speaker 1: in my country, her prosperity, and her institutions, and would
Speaker 1: defend any state if her rights were invaded. And it's like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Enough because you could.
Speaker 1: You would not defend a state in which slavery was
Speaker 1: illegal or if the Fugitive Slave Acts were forced off right,
Speaker 1: which they were. You are not willing to actually defend
Speaker 1: any state. You're willing to defend states who want to
Speaker 1: have slaves. That's what you're willing to defend.
Speaker 3: The thought hasn't crossed my mind till literally right now
Speaker 3: that he could have fought for the Union.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was an option, and in fact, Lee is
Speaker 1: a full bird colonel. By the time the war starts.
Speaker 1: There were nine full bird colonels from Virginia at the
Speaker 1: start of the Civil War. Eight of them sided with
Speaker 1: the Union.
Speaker 3: Wow I could Yeah, yeah that like that just not
Speaker 3: the wind at all, Like alle o, nah fam you
Speaker 3: ai Yeah yeah, okay. I was like, so you're telling
Speaker 3: me all the homies, all of them you wouldn't like.
Speaker 3: So you you going against the grain, So you standing
Speaker 3: all your all going against the grain, and you.
Speaker 1: Try to tell me you was conflicted about this. It
Speaker 1: is as we'll get into. It's always portrayed. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: he just felt like he had no option, you know,
Speaker 1: once Virginia was involved, that's where his heart was, That's
Speaker 1: where he had to go. That's not true.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, he lived at Texas one, so
Speaker 2: we'll get to that. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Eleven states voted to secede from the Union. They did
Speaker 1: so under declarations that the heart of the issue they
Speaker 1: were succeeding over was slavery. Right. South Carolina cited in
Speaker 1: their secession and they're the first state to do its
Speaker 1: sites in their secession declaration and increasing hostility on the
Speaker 1: part of non slave holding states to the institution of slavery.
Speaker 1: In Mississippi's declaration of secession, they stated, quote, there was
Speaker 1: no choice less to us, but submission to the mandates
Speaker 1: of abolition or a dissolution of the Union, which is
Speaker 1: both untrue and what the whole crisis is about, because
Speaker 1: like Lincoln, by the way, had absolutely no intention of
Speaker 1: ending slavery. There was a desire to stop the expansion
Speaker 1: of it to new states, right, like he was not
Speaker 1: going like it's very clear. Yeah, yeah, he was not
Speaker 1: willing to do that, you know, he was not that based. Now,
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that Lee's sympathy for the Southern
Speaker 1: cause still did not entirely at this point rule out
Speaker 1: the chance that he might fight for the Union, and
Speaker 1: in fact, if the war had started in Texas rather
Speaker 1: than at Fort Sumter, I think he probably would have
Speaker 1: sided with the Union purely because Lee is this kind
Speaker 1: of guy. Again, he is willing to eventually resign his
Speaker 1: commission and take up one in Virginia to fight for
Speaker 1: the Confederacy. But if secessionists had marched on the fort
Speaker 1: where he was stationed in Texas to try to take
Speaker 1: their shit, he probably would have fought them purely because
Speaker 1: that was personal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was his job, man, Like, Yeah, how
Speaker 3: DAREI fuck y'all doing?
Speaker 2: How dare y'all run up on me? You know? Well,
Speaker 2: you know what? Because you running up on me? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: That is kind of an interesting counterfactual. If he would
Speaker 1: have like wound up against his will fighting against who
Speaker 1: would have been the new maybe Jackson or somebody. It
Speaker 1: would have been the new Lee of the Confederacy, Yeah, Stonewall.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting, Like, again, I don't give him like
Speaker 1: much moral credit for that, but I think it is
Speaker 1: a possibility for a while. However, fairly quickly it becomes
Speaker 1: not possible, because, like, not long after he writes, you know,
Speaker 1: some of these letters back to his wife, he's relieved
Speaker 1: of duty at Fort Mason in San Antonio and sent
Speaker 1: to Washington to report to the head of the US Army.
Speaker 1: His journey north was awkward, to say the least. The
Speaker 1: Texas Rangers were out in force and federal officials who
Speaker 1: were leaving Texas because this is he's part of kind
Speaker 1: of a flight where the government's like, well, we should
Speaker 1: probably get our people out of here, like this is,
Speaker 1: this is there's a good chance this is gonna go back.
Speaker 2: It's all bad, like feeling this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not quite escorted underguard the entire way, but
Speaker 1: he and the others who are kind of like bouncing
Speaker 1: are are watched pretty carefully, and he's concerned enough for
Speaker 1: his safety that in short order when he starts his journey,
Speaker 1: he changes into civilian clothes. One colleague at the time
Speaker 1: claims that he quote declared that the position he held
Speaker 1: was a neutral one and that he intended to go home,
Speaker 1: resign from the army and plant corn. The website American
Speaker 1: Heritage Rights quote. When he drove away from Texas, a
Speaker 1: fellow officer called after him, Colonel, do you intend to
Speaker 1: go south or remain north? Lee stuck his head out
Speaker 1: of the covered wagon and replied, I shall never bear
Speaker 1: arms against the United States, but it may be necessary
Speaker 1: for me to carry a musket in defense of my
Speaker 1: native state, Virginia, in which case I will not prove
Speaker 1: recreant to my duty. In another moment of surprise confliction,
Speaker 1: Lee confusedly declared, while I wish to do what is right,
Speaker 1: I am unwilling to do what is not, either at
Speaker 1: the bidding of the South or the North. So he
Speaker 1: just he can't. He's just kind of a kind of gormless.
Speaker 1: He can't make take us. He's always saying I will
Speaker 1: fight for the Confederacy if it comes to that, But
Speaker 1: he's also never willing to say, yeah, I'm willing to
Speaker 1: turn trader right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is such a weazly thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's when snitches for his courage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's when snitches and rats keep going. But I'm
Speaker 2: not a rat.
Speaker 3: I'm not a snitch, And I'm like, you're currently snitching
Speaker 3: at this very moment, you are snitching to make tween.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these January sixth insurrectionists who are like, h it
Speaker 1: was Antifa. I got tricked. It was just we were
Speaker 1: just sight seeing. And the ones who were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was an insurrection and like, I'll go to prison.
Speaker 1: I respect that, you know that's the plan. They're not
Speaker 1: good people, and I want I want them to stop.
Speaker 1: But like, of course that is at least someone who's
Speaker 1: taking a stand and yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Got honest about the stand there take Yeah, you got
Speaker 3: a code, man, I would say as as a side
Speaker 3: note for everybody's life, kid, I think one of those
Speaker 3: things is, yes, you should have a code. There should
Speaker 3: be there's you should all and I don't I can't
Speaker 3: tell you what that code is, but you should all
Speaker 3: live by a code. To me, one of one of
Speaker 3: my core values is I say what I mean.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So that's like a code for me that like, and
Speaker 3: you stand on business. If I said something and it
Speaker 3: was wrong, look I said it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Now it's time for me to be you feel me,
Speaker 3: And I'm gonna take creacts correction because I don't like
Speaker 3: being wrong. But another thing I've learned, and going back
Speaker 3: to something that Robert E. Lee did, which was like
Speaker 3: realizing when it was time to bounce. I think that
Speaker 3: that's also a skill every person should develop, is being
Speaker 3: able to know when it's it's probably time to slide.
Speaker 3: We should probably leave right now. I say this in jest,
Speaker 3: but I'm dead serious. You should know when it's time
Speaker 3: to leave. Yeah, there's a good song about that and
Speaker 3: about poker. You know you gotta gottaay.
Speaker 2: Now to run. Hey, I think it's time for us
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: I don't get if you was in the middle of
Speaker 3: giving your best game to that qube pot, like, look,
Speaker 3: it's time to go. Fam you halfway through the greatest
Speaker 3: cocktail you have add in your life.
Speaker 2: Sent that drink down.
Speaker 1: There's a bit in heat about that too, right, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be a fucking criminal, right, yes, you have
Speaker 1: to have a line it which like no, I just bounce,
Speaker 1: I pick up my bag, and I'm it's time to just.
Speaker 2: Leave everything, leave it all.
Speaker 1: Time to get Yeah, and Lee has now leaved it all.
Speaker 1: I was trying to make that work, but it just
Speaker 1: it simply did not. But you know what does work
Speaker 1: prop the sponsors of this podcast. They're always working hard
Speaker 1: to give you incredible value. We're back. You know, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about what my line is, you know where
Speaker 1: am I? And And honestly, I only have one moral
Speaker 1: line in my entire life, and it's that I will
Speaker 1: not sell baldness cures, you know, powers, won't do it,
Speaker 1: simply won't do it. Just be honest, you know.
Speaker 3: And the truth is, like, dude, you you you can
Speaker 3: look good bald like I can google so many men
Speaker 3: who trick Stewart. They're good looking men. Yes, come on,
Speaker 3: just commit, just commit, bro, like you look better. You
Speaker 3: can own it. Like listen, it's it's almost seventy confidence
Speaker 3: if you're just just rocket whatever you have rocket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's that's the message of this podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all confidence.
Speaker 1: Lee comes back, returns to DC and he reports immediately
Speaker 1: to the commander of the US Army at this point,
Speaker 1: General Winfield Scott, who had been his commander during the
Speaker 1: Mexican American War. Scott is the guy who's like, Lee
Speaker 1: is the best soldier I've ever seen. Right, and by
Speaker 1: the way, Lee is pretty famous at this point, and
Speaker 1: there is huge buzz as it becomes clear that something
Speaker 1: is going to happen that's probably going to require military
Speaker 1: intervention as a result of the secession.
Speaker 2: Like James, like where you're going? Are you going to
Speaker 2: take your talents to Miami?
Speaker 1: Because Field Scott is too old. Everyone knows like and
Speaker 1: Scott knows this too unlike today. Old people back then
Speaker 1: were like Scott's like, yeah, I can't fight a war
Speaker 1: like not the other one, like an ancient oh no,
Speaker 1: guy what they used to be. And so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of talk that like, well, wh who should command
Speaker 1: whatever we wind up needing to do, and like Lee
Speaker 1: is kind of the front runner because he's like, he's famous,
Speaker 1: he did really well in the Mexican American War. He's
Speaker 1: a full bird colonel, so he's like right at the
Speaker 1: point where he could be promoted to general. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of talk in the papers that like, well,
Speaker 1: this guy could be kind of the savior of the union.
Speaker 1: You know, he really has talked about that way for
Speaker 1: a while. And so he gets invited to Winfield Scott's
Speaker 1: office in Scott and then there's a couple of different meetings.
Speaker 1: But the gist of these meetings is that Lee has
Speaker 1: offered the command of a US Field Army. So that
Speaker 1: means a promotion to general. And this is what he's
Speaker 1: been waiting his whole career. For years. He's been writing
Speaker 1: his wife letters being like, I don't think I'll ever
Speaker 1: get promoted. This is so annoying. And he's offered the
Speaker 1: promotion of a lifetime and this is kind of seen
Speaker 1: as a fast track to well, yeah, there's a pretty
Speaker 1: good chance this in not too much longer leads with
Speaker 1: him just in command of the US Army. Right, he
Speaker 1: could have had Grant's job. Maybe he wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: good at it. I actually think he would have been
Speaker 1: bad at it. Yeah, that in part four.
Speaker 2: But he could have had it.
Speaker 1: For a while, right, damn. So, the most commonly depicted
Speaker 1: view at the heart of the Lost Cause is that
Speaker 1: he turns down this job because he simply couldn't bear
Speaker 1: to go to war with his home and his relatives,
Speaker 1: and like that is not a good reason to support
Speaker 1: the Confederacy. But I actually will say, I get how
Speaker 1: a decent person could say I cannot participate in this
Speaker 1: war because I simply can't shoot at my brother or cousins, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's that's understanding to see that and then be like
Speaker 1: and also I find the cause of the South to
Speaker 1: be untenable.
Speaker 3: Sure, and but like, man, really, like history really turns
Speaker 3: on these like seemingly small decisions sometimes because like that's
Speaker 3: a like you said, that's a very logical and understandable thing.
Speaker 3: And then but then if you're like you're like seventh
Speaker 3: generation war general going all the way back to like
Speaker 3: the freaking norms, like the founding of England, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, and now probably the biggest war in
Speaker 3: the history of your country. They've giving you a chance
Speaker 3: to lead, and you're just gonna sit out. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: like you can't. You can't sit out it, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, because then you just broke tradition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's he's not going to And I think
Speaker 1: that the key point is that like this is portrayed
Speaker 1: as Lee had to go with the South because he
Speaker 1: couldn't fight against Virginia and he couldn't fight against his family,
Speaker 1: and that is not true. There were men who were
Speaker 1: in that position, and there were some officers in the
Speaker 1: US Army prior to the war who didn't fight at
Speaker 1: all because of.
Speaker 2: That, right, Yeah, they were like I can't do it.
Speaker 1: And I don't have an issue with that actually, Like
Speaker 1: I get it's like, this is just an impossible choice
Speaker 1: for me. I can't shoot my brother.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying, Like it should have been if
Speaker 3: he's like if that was the case, that's what should
Speaker 3: have been. But I'm saying, yeah, the wrinkle in his
Speaker 3: brain is like, well, I'm not going to be the
Speaker 3: first grandson. He'd not, you know what. I'm saying, like,
Speaker 3: I ain't going to break this tradition, you know.
Speaker 2: And he doesn't.
Speaker 1: And here I want to to give you kind of
Speaker 1: how these sympathetic sources tend to portray this decision. I
Speaker 1: want to quote from again who who was Robert El
Speaker 1: describing his decision not to take this position commanding a
Speaker 1: US field army that would mean fighting against the South.
Speaker 1: Robert was a conflicted man. Clearly he had a lot
Speaker 1: to think about. He spent time with his family at Arlington,
Speaker 1: he prayed, He stayed up late at night pacing the floors.
Speaker 1: In the end, Robert reached an answer. He would resign
Speaker 1: from the US Army that he had served for thirty years.
Speaker 1: Although he said he would never bear arms against the Union,
Speaker 1: his heart was with Virginia. He had to defend his
Speaker 1: homeland by bearing arms against the Union.
Speaker 3: Right, it doesn't sound Yeah, that's that sentence. Don't even
Speaker 3: sound right?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also side note, I feel like at some point
Speaker 3: you should be able to like slap the shit out
Speaker 3: of a cousin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Point this scenario is like, all right, I'm listen, let's
Speaker 3: go to Granny's house and let's hash this out.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Like, I'm gonna say all my uncles, all my cousins
Speaker 3: down and be like, fellas, y'all, like, listen, you're tripping,
Speaker 3: and if you can't cross this line, listen, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: sign up with the Union cause, like I'm telling you
Speaker 3: right now, you're tripping, and righty.
Speaker 1: Say, this is again kind of what I'm building towards.
Speaker 1: He's going to make that decision one way or the other.
Speaker 1: The idea that he wasn't willing to fight his family
Speaker 1: is untrue because he does choose to fight members of
Speaker 1: his family. But the summary of events from that who
Speaker 1: was Robert E. Lee book jives with one of the
Speaker 1: on the ground accounts from somebody who was present at
Speaker 1: some of these meetings with Lee and Scott and Lincoln. Right,
Speaker 1: Montgomery Blair, who's Lincoln's postmaster general, the guy who has
Speaker 1: been asked by Lincoln to like offer Lee command of
Speaker 1: the army, and his son would later recall quote generally
Speaker 1: said to my father, mister Blair, I look upon secession
Speaker 1: as anarchy. If I own the four million of slaves
Speaker 1: in the South, I would sacrifice them all to the Union.
Speaker 1: But how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my
Speaker 1: native state. Now this is you know, from a secondhand source.
Speaker 1: But Blair will make some statements that back up this
Speaker 1: account of events and Lee's account of events. However, that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the truth, because we get a very different
Speaker 1: description of both the nature of the offer made to
Speaker 1: Lee and his response to it from Simon Cameron, who
Speaker 1: was the Secretary of War under Lincoln and absolutely would
Speaker 1: have been a part of the discussions with Lee. From
Speaker 1: the jump quote, General Lee called upon a gentleman who
Speaker 1: had my entire confidence, and intimated that he would like
Speaker 1: to have the command of the army. He assured that gentleman,
Speaker 1: who was a man in the confidence of the administration
Speaker 1: of his entire loyalty and his devotion to the interests
Speaker 1: of the administration and of the country. I consulted with
Speaker 1: General Scott, and General Scott approved of placing him at
Speaker 1: the head of the army. The place was offered to
Speaker 1: him unofficially with my approbation and with the approbation of
Speaker 1: General Scott. It was accepted by him verbally, with the
Speaker 1: promise that he would go into Virginia and settle his
Speaker 1: business and then come back to take command. He never
Speaker 1: gave us an opportunity to arrest him. He deserted under
Speaker 1: false pretenses. I should have arrested him in a moment
Speaker 1: if I had the chance at him, and I have
Speaker 1: always regretted that I never did get that chance. I
Speaker 1: think he behaved worse than any of the men who
Speaker 1: have acted so treacherously to the government. And what so
Speaker 1: Blair's account is that like, yeah, I offered him the
Speaker 1: job and he said I just can't do it. I
Speaker 1: can't fight against Virginia, which is like common narrative, it's
Speaker 1: what you get for everything. What Cameron says is like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Lee said I want this job, give it to me.
Speaker 1: We said the job is yours. He said, I'll take it.
Speaker 1: And then he said, I just got to go back
Speaker 1: home and settle some bitch and he bitched out and
Speaker 1: turned trader, and he did this, he lied to them
Speaker 1: to avoid getting arrested for treason. That's a really fucking
Speaker 1: different story, right.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, that's that is some whole ass shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of these shows a man torn by this just
Speaker 1: the impossible choice to fight against your family and your state.
Speaker 1: The other shows a betrayer of his oath making a
Speaker 1: calculated decision, you know. And I will say, we simply
Speaker 1: don't know which of these stories comports more with reality, right,
Speaker 1: we never will, you know, you get there's actually these
Speaker 1: are not even the only two accounts of that meeting.
Speaker 1: I think these are kind of the two. One of
Speaker 1: these two is probably more right than the other. I
Speaker 1: will say, I tend to believe what fucking Simon Cameron
Speaker 1: says because it comports with how weasily Lee is about
Speaker 1: his description of all this and.
Speaker 3: The path of least resistance, Like you don't, like, no
Speaker 3: one wants that type of confrontation to have to like,
Speaker 3: you know, grow some ovaries and be like, yo, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna stand on business. This is what I'm gonna do,
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. I got a ride with Virginia,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying, Or to be like, you know, dude,
Speaker 3: you're right, I'm gonna do this. Let me at least
Speaker 3: look my family in the face and tell them what's
Speaker 3: going on, because both of them requires a certain type
Speaker 3: of courage, again, a code.
Speaker 2: It requires you to have a code.
Speaker 3: To be able to be like, I'm just gonna do it,
Speaker 3: and I'm gonna take whatever consequences come with it. No,
Speaker 3: the path of least resistance is to lie. You know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying, is to make y'all cool, get out
Speaker 3: of this moment right now, and then which one of
Speaker 3: y'all I feel like, are gonna hurt me the worse?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So, because if my family actually heard me say yes
Speaker 3: to them, right, they would have been like stop back no,
Speaker 3: what he means yes? And you can't be like no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm just lying to him, because then they're gonna look
Speaker 3: at you and being like, why are you being a
Speaker 3: coward about it?
Speaker 2: Like, stand up? You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So he did the path of Lee's resistance, which to
Speaker 3: me is the most normal thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And in terms of backing up Simon Cameron's account.
Speaker 1: In his biography of Lee, Alan Guelzo notes that Lee
Speaker 1: has to have known secession was coming and have already
Speaker 1: made his choice to fight against the union, Otherwise his
Speaker 1: actions here simply don't make any sense. Quote. If Lee
Speaker 1: believed there would be no conflict, that some way would
Speaker 1: have been found to save the country from the calamities
Speaker 1: of war, then there would have been no risk in
Speaker 1: his mind that he would have to conduct any kind
Speaker 1: of hostile campaign, and certainly not against Virginia, and the
Speaker 1: golden prize of his professional life would fall neatly into
Speaker 1: his lap. So again, if he even from this point,
Speaker 1: if he has not already made the decision to turn trader,
Speaker 1: why would he turn down the proportion he'd already wanted, Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that actually makes so much sense, like you said,
Speaker 3: because it's like, if you already know we're not going
Speaker 3: to really go to war, then dude, take the job.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, It's take your dream. Yeah,
Speaker 2: take it.
Speaker 3: That's what you always wanted. And it's like, oh cool,
Speaker 3: we figured it out. And then it's like, yeah, problem solved.
Speaker 3: I didn't have to fight against my I didn't have
Speaker 3: to fight against my family. I didn't have to pretend
Speaker 3: like I, you know, am loyal to anything.
Speaker 2: I just got the job and it's all good now.
Speaker 1: The idea that Lee just loved Virginia so much she
Speaker 1: had no choice. This is how it was depicted to
Speaker 1: me as a kid in Texas public schools.
Speaker 2: Right, and it was fright.
Speaker 1: The way this was framed to me is that like,
Speaker 1: this is how everybody felt. Right, nationalism was not what
Speaker 1: it is now, and it would become people just weren't
Speaker 1: that loyal first to the US, that were loyal to
Speaker 1: their state. And that's how everybody felt. And so it
Speaker 1: was inevitable that a guy like Lee would side with Virginia.
Speaker 1: And this is not fucking true. This is simply not
Speaker 1: accurate to the way people were at the time. Welso
Speaker 1: Puts paid to this very inaccurate view in a succinct
Speaker 1: passage from Roberty Leo Life. The LEAs, however prominent they
Speaker 1: had been in Virginia life, were mostly nationalists, Federalists, and Whigs. Moreover,
Speaker 1: Virgini Hi he had not, strictly speaking, been Lee's native
Speaker 1: state for most of his life his youth, from the
Speaker 1: time the family moved to Alexandria, had been spent within
Speaker 1: what werein the boundaries of the District of Columbia, and
Speaker 1: his professional responsibilities had scattered him for thirty years from
Speaker 1: Texas to New York. Arlington was his home, but not
Speaker 1: his property, and it's facing across the Potomac River towards
Speaker 1: the capital was a constant reminder of where the Custuses
Speaker 1: always saw their loyalties residing. In other words, his family
Speaker 1: politics were nationalists, his personal politics were nationalists, and he
Speaker 1: barely fucking spent any time in goddamn Virginia.
Speaker 2: Now so funny.
Speaker 1: An account by Edward Townsend, who is the assistant adjutant
Speaker 1: to Winfield Scott and a witness to Lee's visit with
Speaker 1: the General, gives a quote by Lee that reinforces his
Speaker 1: decision was made by the financial realities of his family
Speaker 1: more than some kind of loyalty. And this is Lee
Speaker 1: talking to Scott General. The property belonging to my children,
Speaker 1: all they possess lies in Virginia. They will be ruined
Speaker 1: if they do not go with their state. I cannot
Speaker 1: raise a hand against my children. Now. First off, as
Speaker 1: we'll cover that's still not true. But also if that
Speaker 1: is an accurate quote that puts Lee's primary concern being
Speaker 1: the wealth of his kids and how it's threatened by.
Speaker 2: War, which makes the most sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which makes the most sense, right, and is the
Speaker 1: least defensible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially if you was willing to keep them slaves
Speaker 3: on air after your own father or your own father
Speaker 3: in law was like, yo, you gotta let them go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, he's like, nah, man, I'm look, We're gonna
Speaker 3: make sure, we gonna make sure the legacy stays on yeaheah.
Speaker 1: And it's again that said properties still can't explain all
Speaker 1: of this because Arlington is not just a valuable piece
Speaker 1: of land, it is strategically critical from Arlington. You can
Speaker 1: shell DC. That means the Union cannot allow Arlington to
Speaker 1: wind up in control of the Confederacy. And given just
Speaker 1: the way that things are laid out, it's also Arlington
Speaker 1: happens to be an area the Union can very easily
Speaker 1: get a lot of soldiers too faster. Lee is not
Speaker 1: an idiot on military matters.
Speaker 2: He knows the.
Speaker 1: Confederacy simply is not going to be able to protect
Speaker 1: Arlington at the early stage of the war, and Lee
Speaker 1: is also aware of the North's superiority and manpower and
Speaker 1: manufacturing capacity. When the war breaks out, his first thing
Speaker 1: he does is he orders his wife to flee the property.
Speaker 1: So he can't just be concerned about what's going to
Speaker 1: happen to Arlington and be making his decisions based on that.
Speaker 1: Otherwise he would have stayed with the Union, because that's
Speaker 1: you know, unless the property he's most concerned about is slaves, right, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: You know now.
Speaker 1: Lee also tells one of his classmates from West Point,
Speaker 1: I would give it Arlington in a moment and all
Speaker 1: I have on earth if the Union could be preserved
Speaker 1: in peace, which again means that either way, whichever of
Speaker 1: these is true, he's lying to somebody. Right, If he's
Speaker 1: willing to give up Arlington to preserve the Union, fear
Speaker 1: that secessionists would take it can't be the driving force
Speaker 1: behind his decision. And if he's willing to give up
Speaker 1: Arlington to preserve the Union, then why doesn't he right Like,
Speaker 1: why does that influence his decision at all? As I
Speaker 1: noted earlier, the most understandable conflict that Lee expressed was
Speaker 1: an unwillingness to fight against his family. But that's also
Speaker 1: not something he could have avoided. Because a lot of
Speaker 1: his family stay loyal. Now, John Fitzgerald Lee remains in
Speaker 1: service to the Union Army as a judge advocate general
Speaker 1: throughout the war. Samuel Phillips Lee, a Navy man, also
Speaker 1: stays loyal, as does Robert E. Lee's cousin Robert Jones.
Speaker 1: His cousin John Upsher, stays loyal despite what he referred
Speaker 1: to as tremendous pressure from the Lee family, possibly also
Speaker 1: including Robert. So again, when you're talking about like this
Speaker 1: impossible decision not to fight your family, a bunch of
Speaker 1: his families stay loyal, and they talk about how the
Speaker 1: traders in their family, Like, I have a lot of
Speaker 1: respect for John Upsher. Your whole family is saying, no,
Speaker 1: we are going to fight against the Union, we have
Speaker 1: to defend Virginia sovereignty. And you say, no, I'm going
Speaker 1: to stay loyal to my oath. That's a fucking honorable decision.
Speaker 2: That's tough, dude. So he's the actual that's crazy in the.
Speaker 3: Hero the hero of storys like, yeah, that is moral courage, right,
Speaker 3: wow wow.
Speaker 1: And I haven't even gotten to the end of the
Speaker 1: Lee's who stay loyal? Right? Durrence Williams, one of his
Speaker 1: wife's cousins is aide de camp to George McClellan, who's
Speaker 1: gonna wind up running the whole fucking show for a while.
Speaker 3: It is that little imaginary story of like that I
Speaker 3: made up, where it's like, Okay, I'm gonna go talk
Speaker 3: to my family and be like, look, guys, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: do this. They're all going, yeah, it's too a bunch
Speaker 3: of them. Yeah, they're like, yeah, we're staying at what
Speaker 3: are you talking about? Of course we're staying at the Union.
Speaker 1: This is not just one or two. This is a
Speaker 1: significant chunk of the Lee family stays loyal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, we surprised you. Eve mapp asked, like, yeah. Now.
Speaker 1: It is often noted that a lot of Lee's loyalty
Speaker 1: to his family, his unwillingness to fight them, is because
Speaker 1: he has all these cousins who support his family after
Speaker 1: his father dies, they support his mom. He's like, these
Speaker 1: people they kept us, you know, afloat and fed and sheltered,
Speaker 1: you know, in the most diff part. I simply can't
Speaker 1: fight them. I can't betray them. My loyalty is to them, right.
Speaker 1: This is something that Lee expresses, and it is a
Speaker 1: lie because one of the cousins who supports his family,
Speaker 1: who keeps it like the cousin who gives a huge
Speaker 1: amount of money to his mother to keep her afloat,
Speaker 1: is Philip Findall. Right, Philip Findall not only stays loyal,
Speaker 1: but both of his two sons fight in the Union
Speaker 1: Army against Robert E.
Speaker 2: Lee.
Speaker 1: American Heritage continues quote with great reluctance, Smith Lee became
Speaker 1: a Confederate naval officer, where he served without enthusiasm and
Speaker 1: is late in September eighteen sixty three still pitched into
Speaker 1: those responsible for getting us into this snarl, saying that
Speaker 1: both the Lees and his in laws had pressured him
Speaker 1: with ideas that Virginia came first. He grumbled, South Carolina
Speaker 1: be hanged. How what did I want to stay in
Speaker 1: the old Navy? So there's even Lees that turned trader
Speaker 1: and are like, I can't believe I let you guys
Speaker 1: pressure me into this. This was the worst decision of
Speaker 1: my fucking life. Fuck all of you now. It is
Speaker 1: true that Robert Eli's three sons decided to fight for
Speaker 1: the Confederacy. However, none of them stated a position on
Speaker 1: secession until after Robert E. Lee made his decision, and
Speaker 1: based on what we know of them and just what
Speaker 1: we know about his family, I don't think any of
Speaker 1: them would have chosen to fight for the Confederacy. If
Speaker 1: Lee had stayed loyal, that simply wouldn't have happened. There's
Speaker 1: no way his sons do that right. They were waiting
Speaker 1: for their dad to make a call. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any validity in the claim that he had to
Speaker 1: fight for the Confederacy because he couldn't fight his own
Speaker 1: sons like he has a bunch of This is the
Speaker 1: most fucked up part. It's not just a bunch of cousins.
Speaker 1: His sister, Ann Lee Marshall lives in Baltimore and strenuously
Speaker 1: supports the Union cause. Her husband, William Marshall, is a
Speaker 1: Republican delegate who nominates Lincoln to the presidency during that
Speaker 1: year's RNC Lee Robert E. Lee writes one of his
Speaker 1: last letters before the war to his sister Anne, and
Speaker 1: he again, this is such a fucking cowardly passage. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read this last letter to his sister where
Speaker 1: he's basically saying, yeah, you know, this thing that you
Speaker 1: know is horrible and wrong. I'm going to do it. Quote,
Speaker 1: I am grieved at my inability to see you, and
Speaker 1: abhor myself more than ever for not having visited you. Now,
Speaker 1: this had been well within his power to do. He
Speaker 1: was too busy playing foot set with Scott and Lincoln
Speaker 1: as the nation lange towards disaster. He admits to his
Speaker 1: sister there's no necessity for Virginia to secede, but then claims,
Speaker 1: I have not been able to make up my mind
Speaker 1: to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.
Speaker 1: And again this is bullshit, and he's saying I couldn't
Speaker 1: raise my hand against my relatives to his sister, to
Speaker 1: my sisters, going to raise his hand against ye, He
Speaker 1: concludes this scumfuck passage. I know you will blame me,
Speaker 1: but you must think as kindly of me as you
Speaker 1: can and believe that I have endeavored to do what
Speaker 1: I thought right, to show you the feeling and struggle
Speaker 1: it has cost me. I send a copy of my
Speaker 1: letters General Scott, which accompanied my letter of resignation. I
Speaker 1: have no time for more, and like, man, don't.
Speaker 3: Even like I don't send that letter, like just look man,
Speaker 3: like whatever you're trying to do to scrub your little
Speaker 3: conscious clean like keep it, bro turns out his suckcess.
Speaker 3: Sorry yeah yeah, and like yeah who, Like it's totally like, man,
Speaker 3: you ever had somebody apologize to you and you're thinking, man,
Speaker 3: who is this for? Like you're you're not doing this
Speaker 3: for me, you know what I'm saying this, You are
Speaker 3: doing that for yourself. And all of us can hear it.
Speaker 3: That's some bullshit. We can all hear as bullshit. I
Speaker 3: hope you have brain. Your brain has twisted into a
Speaker 3: pretzel enough to make you feel like you justified in
Speaker 3: what you're doing because you show ain't do nothing to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And for her credit, and by the way, pretty based,
Speaker 1: she never forgives her brother. She just was like onto
Speaker 1: this letter and she never talks to him again. She
Speaker 1: dies in eighteen sixty four without attempting to resume contact.
Speaker 1: Part of this is because her son Lewis, serves in
Speaker 1: the Union Army fighting against Robert E.
Speaker 2: Lee.
Speaker 3: Yeah fucking nephew, you know, yeah, yeah, you finea murder
Speaker 3: your own nephew, my son. We're done. We're done.
Speaker 2: Of course, we're done. We're done. And you had a choice.
Speaker 3: Like that's the part that's like I'm like really newly
Speaker 3: getting angry about where I was like, you had a choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is. It is fucking vile. And I
Speaker 1: think in the end, again, it's not purely his property
Speaker 1: that he's doing this for because he knows he's likely
Speaker 1: to lose Arlington. It's certainly not because he's unwilling to
Speaker 1: fight against his family, because he definitely does that now.
Speaker 1: I think to an extent, the idea that he can't
Speaker 1: bear fighting against Virginia is true, but not in the
Speaker 1: way the Lost Cause for biographies make it seem, because
Speaker 1: despite never expressing particular loyalty to Virginia over the Union before,
Speaker 1: once a conflict breaks out over slavery, he is willing
Speaker 1: to stand in defense of that institution and of white supremacy,
Speaker 1: even though it meant drawing arms against his own blood relatives.
Speaker 1: And this passage from American heritage makes it clear how
Speaker 1: central the conflict over slavery is to his reasoning. He
Speaker 1: resented the North's badgering and feared Southern impotence at the
Speaker 1: hands of its majority population. He spoke out for the
Speaker 1: Crittenden Compromise, which would have guaranteed the permanent existence of slavery,
Speaker 1: declaring it deserved the support of every patriot, even though
Speaker 1: the nation had been designed around perpetual union. He told
Speaker 1: daughter Agnes, if the bond could only be maintained by
Speaker 1: the sword and bayonet, its existence will lose all interest
Speaker 1: to me. And the fact that secession can only be
Speaker 1: carried out by the sword in the bayonet does not
Speaker 1: seem to have occurred to him. Likewise, he's not troubled
Speaker 1: by the fact that slavery can only be kept in
Speaker 1: place by violence, which he knows because he's done that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it is so fucked up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a piece of me, like if I'm
Speaker 3: being so reflective that is having to continue to remind
Speaker 3: myself that to keep zooming out and saying, we're still
Speaker 3: talking about my family here, Yeah, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 3: Like we're still talking about the institution of slay. I'm
Speaker 3: getting into the story and stuff like that, and then
Speaker 3: I'm almost even more resentful to this guy that you're
Speaker 3: even making me forget that sometimes like that I'm forgetting,
Speaker 3: like like forgetting to couch this in the reality of
Speaker 3: we're still talking about chattel slavery here. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: and it makes me even more pissed at him. On
Speaker 3: April twentieth, a delegation of secessions showed up at his
Speaker 3: home to ask Lee to travel to Richmond, where they're
Speaker 3: having their big secessionist conference. Virginia is like late in
Speaker 3: deciding this and actually they have a one vote to
Speaker 3: secede that fails, Like it actually was kind of possible
Speaker 3: that like Virginia might not have have gone with the
Speaker 3: Confederacy almost or might have tried kind of a new
Speaker 3: that's not what happens, but like almost Prince George, yeah
Speaker 3: he was almost PGC. Yeah, you could have stayed that.
Speaker 3: You could have had go go music. It could have
Speaker 3: been great, but no, you want it smothered. Friedsess. Sorry
Speaker 3: he is.
Speaker 1: He has offered a commission commanding Virginia State Forces, and
Speaker 1: again Virginia has not decided to join the Confederacy yet,
Speaker 1: but it's now that Lee is going to have to
Speaker 1: make his final call. His wife basically claims that he
Speaker 1: weeps tears of blood in this night of agony making
Speaker 1: the decision. Yet his family recall him on the day
Speaker 1: that he announces his decision to them as being calm
Speaker 1: and collected, not exhausted and distraught.
Speaker 3: They're trying to the tears of You're trying to harken
Speaker 3: back to Jesus, like you're trying to make him Jesus,
Speaker 3: you know, in the garden of Guessemity here like yeah, praying,
Speaker 3: you know, tears sweating, tears of blood, like come on, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, we get one note from like an enslaved member
Speaker 1: of the family, Jim Parks, who describes Lee as pacing
Speaker 1: backward and forward on the porch, steadying himself. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he spends some time agonizing over this. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's for moral reasons. I think it's like
Speaker 1: what's gonna wind up better for us?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you get some stuff like that here. So
Speaker 1: Lee is never able to work up the courage to
Speaker 1: admit to his old boss and mentor, Winfield Scott, that
Speaker 1: he has decided to turn trader. The last that reasons
Speaker 1: to Scott comes after Virginia votes to secede near the
Speaker 1: end of April, and all he says in it is
Speaker 1: He's like, thanks for twenty five years of kindness and consideration.
Speaker 1: You were always had my back, you know, great times
Speaker 1: working with you. Buddy, and then he concludes they have
Speaker 1: a great summer. Yeah, he concludes it with the same
Speaker 1: old lie, save in defense of my native state, I
Speaker 1: never again desire to draw my sword. And again it
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, so you're saying you're willing to draw
Speaker 1: your sword, You're going to fight as a trader. You
Speaker 1: just can't even admit it to your old boss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're about to do it though. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is why I buy Simon Cameron's claim, because
Speaker 1: he's so weasily about this every time. Yes, and it's
Speaker 1: also again for the whole Oh, he couldn't have betrayed
Speaker 1: Virginia his boss Winfield Scott of Virginia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's so initiatively betraying Virginia.
Speaker 1: Yes, so is George Thomas, Lee's colleague in the army
Speaker 1: back in Texas, like this guy who he's potentially about
Speaker 1: to fight alongside when they're worried they might get attacked
Speaker 1: by secessionists, and both Winfield Scott and George Thomas suffer
Speaker 1: because of their decision to stay loyal. Scott is accused
Speaker 1: of being a Free State pimp, and Lee does not
Speaker 1: defend him, does not defend the honor of his boss
Speaker 1: that he says has done so much to him, and
Speaker 1: George Thomas's relatives who turned trader asked him to change
Speaker 1: his name. Like these men make real sacrifices for the Union.
Speaker 1: Fits you. Lee's biography, like most laws caused biographies likes
Speaker 1: to depict what happens with like Lee, is basically guaranteed
Speaker 1: just because everyone does this right. Everyone signs their state
Speaker 1: quote almost acknowledged that no selfish or unpatriotic motive influenced
Speaker 1: him in refusing to draw his sword against his native state,
Speaker 1: to which from early boyhood he had been taught by
Speaker 1: the wisest and the purest in the land. He owed
Speaker 1: his first allegiance here. It is also just to remark
Speaker 1: that all who resigned their commissions in service of the
Speaker 1: United States to cast their lot with their native states
Speaker 1: were influenced by the same pure and unselfish motives. You
Speaker 1: want to hear the truth, forty percent of Virginia officers
Speaker 1: stayed loyal forty forty And that doesn't mean sixty percent
Speaker 1: turn trader because a bunch of them just chose not
Speaker 1: to fight. Like Lee's old instructor Dennis Mann at West Point,
Speaker 1: We're just like I can't be a part of it. So,
Speaker 1: like it is not true that this was just how
Speaker 1: everyone moved. A huge number of people knew this was
Speaker 1: wrong and did the right thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Ye Lee chose the coward's way out, and that is
Speaker 1: a huge and critical part of his story.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, yeah, there's nothing valuant about his choices,
Speaker 3: nothing diabolical. It's coward yeah, yeah, fucking coward.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know what, credit to the memory of the
Speaker 1: men who stayed loyal. That's a tough call. That's an
Speaker 1: honorable fucking move.
Speaker 3: Yes, you are definitely going against the current. And and
Speaker 3: you know, like part of me is like okay, bare minimum,
Speaker 3: like all right, freaking Mike pints head ass, you finally
Speaker 3: decided to do something right. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: it's like, no, for real, Like that was like when
Speaker 3: it finally came down to it, you was like no,
Speaker 3: I can't, yeah, I can't.
Speaker 2: Fam you just a moment for the mic head pace.
Speaker 3: At Mike pens Ass, like, oh, nigga, the last day
Speaker 3: of the job, You're gonna finally do something that's yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say the minimum is that minority of
Speaker 1: guys who just decided not to fight, right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the minimum. Choosing to fight and stay loyal, I think
Speaker 1: is a step beyond that. Okay, well I'll I'll give
Speaker 1: him that. I'll give him. That's hard. And you see,
Speaker 1: you see who people are in moments of crisis, and
Speaker 1: Lee has made it very clear who he is. He's
Speaker 1: a coward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he saved his own ass, Like you're saving your
Speaker 3: own ass, you're saving your reputation. You're afraid to fess up,
Speaker 3: You're afraid to man up, You're afraid to stand on
Speaker 3: your own square.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, buck and coward. Now you know who's not
Speaker 1: a coward? Prop Sophie Lickterman, that's true and the other
Speaker 1: sponsors of our podcast Facts We are back. So Lee
Speaker 1: resigns his commission and he travels to Richmond, and as
Speaker 1: was a pattern he for him, he never quite has
Speaker 1: the courage to admit that he's doing this to take
Speaker 1: command of the Virginia State military. He would later claim
Speaker 1: he was just visiting Richmond to look over family property,
Speaker 1: but by the time he arrived, the State Commission had
Speaker 1: voted him commander in chief of Virginia's military f forces,
Speaker 1: and he has given George Washington's sword. Now, again, this
Speaker 1: I think gets into one of the real reasons why
Speaker 1: he does this. Remember, he's ashamed of his father and
Speaker 1: he's obsessed with George Washington. Washington is the father he
Speaker 1: wished he'd had, and Washington's is the legacy that he
Speaker 1: wants to have for himself. I think being offered the
Speaker 1: sword symbolizes to him finally taking on that heritage over
Speaker 1: the legacy of his father. And this is also if
Speaker 1: he leads secessionist forces to victory in a war of independence,
Speaker 1: then he's the George Washington of the Confederacy. And I
Speaker 1: think that, which is crude personal pride and benefit is
Speaker 1: the primary motivating factor beyond everything else. White supremacy plays
Speaker 1: into it. Obviously a desire to maintain his property, sure.
Speaker 2: But end of the day, I want to be the
Speaker 2: man he.
Speaker 1: Wants to be fucking George Washington.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to be the man.
Speaker 1: This is not a uni Obviously this is not a
Speaker 1: universal belief among historians, but this is very much Alan
Speaker 1: Gwelso really kind of lands on this, and I like
Speaker 1: his book a lot, and also Gwells is interesting. He
Speaker 1: got some shit when it got anounced that he was
Speaker 1: writing this book because he is like a conservative man.
Speaker 1: Like politically he is a modern conservative today, he's taken
Speaker 1: part in some like conservative like historical conferences. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I think his book is valuable is
Speaker 1: because writing as a conservative, he is unsparingly pro union
Speaker 1: and unsparingly anti like like he is. He's very open
Speaker 1: about like Lee was a fucking trader, right, love it,
Speaker 1: And I think that's actually it's useful because you can
Speaker 1: kind of get some of this shit across to people
Speaker 1: who are not like politically liberal or on the left.
Speaker 1: With Gwelso's biography, it's hard to argue.
Speaker 2: You can't.
Speaker 1: You simply can't argue with a lot of what the
Speaker 1: man says.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: Obviously, it is debatable. Does he do this because he
Speaker 1: just wants to be his own? That is an arguable point.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that's absolute, but I buy Gwells's argument there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like that that The case you've laid
Speaker 3: out to me is like, I mean, I still am
Speaker 3: a firm believer that history is just us back then.
Speaker 3: So if you're just thinking, like whoever, like what would
Speaker 3: regular asks do do? And this is this is what
Speaker 3: regular ass do would do, and it's like, so that's
Speaker 3: probably what he did, you know, and all the different
Speaker 3: layers that informed his decision. Nobody in I don't think
Speaker 3: anybody is ever single minded and has and makes a decision,
Speaker 3: you know, turning off one thing. There's multiple things at
Speaker 3: various levels of importance or whatever. Right, But like when
Speaker 3: you put it all together, at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: you're making a particular call, and you understand that this call,
Speaker 3: no matter how much you agonized it, you get that
Speaker 3: once you make this call, all the implications come with it,
Speaker 3: you know, and this is just what it is, and
Speaker 3: you're willing to accept it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There were people who saw this who are close to
Speaker 1: Lee and saw how self serving his decision was at
Speaker 1: the time, including family who stayed loyal. I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote again from American Heritage here. Upon learning that Lee
Speaker 1: had spent two days prayerfully searching for a decision, a
Speaker 1: cousin remarked acidly, I wish she had read over his
Speaker 1: commission as well as his prayers. At West Point, someone
Speaker 1: drew a picture of Lee with his head attached to
Speaker 1: the body of a louse. I feel no exalt of
Speaker 1: respect for a man who takes part in a movement
Speaker 1: in which he can see nothing but anarchy and ruin.
Speaker 1: And yet that very utteran scarce past Robert Lee's lips
Speaker 1: when he starts off with delegates to treat with traitors
Speaker 1: was the response of Francis Blair's daughter, who had married
Speaker 1: into the Lee family right where he's like, he says
Speaker 1: that this is he doesn't support seceession. It's a bad call,
Speaker 1: it's disastrous. So why in the fuck is he doing
Speaker 1: this right? And the only answer I see is personal benefit,
Speaker 1: his own ego right.
Speaker 3: Another antidote from my grandma. She would always say you
Speaker 3: already know what you want to do. No matter what
Speaker 3: it was, you would always be like, you already know
Speaker 3: what you want to do. Yeah, it's like, oh, you're
Speaker 3: gonna pray about it. You're going to pray about it.
Speaker 3: You know what you want to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you just want you just want to be all
Speaker 4: able to argue that God told you to Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: She was like, you know what you want to do.
Speaker 4: She used to always say that he know what he
Speaker 4: want to do, you know, And I'm like damn. Now,
Speaker 4: I'm like, wow, damn you right, mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Lee takes this job offered to him, commanding Virginia,
Speaker 1: and again he's not yet a Confederate officer, right. The
Speaker 1: Confederacy is starting to get like pulled together here, but
Speaker 1: Virginia's has not committed to be a part of it yet.
Speaker 1: So he is the He is at this point the
Speaker 1: supreme commander of all of Virginia's military forces, which are
Speaker 1: dog shit at this state. Right, these are just a
Speaker 1: bunch of state militias, and like Lee had had to
Speaker 1: deal with state militias while he was in the US Army,
Speaker 1: they always suck ass, like they are incompetent, they're poor,
Speaker 1: they're actually not all that different from a lot of
Speaker 1: the malicious we have today. And he writes about them
Speaker 1: that way, where like they're not willing to fucking do shit.
Speaker 1: So this is a really stressful job, right, He's his
Speaker 1: early gig is like he has to turn this into
Speaker 1: a functional military and he's pretty good at this. Again,
Speaker 1: this is Lee's period of competence. He knows how an
Speaker 1: army is supposed to work, so he is able. He
Speaker 1: promotes men to some of the jobs that they don't
Speaker 1: exist in the militia that need to exist, and he
Speaker 1: starts organizing this into something that's kind of functional. Now
Speaker 1: he is in conflict regularly with the fact that the
Speaker 1: militias are all like there's this fever to join the
Speaker 1: Virginia military. When this all starts, like every man who
Speaker 1: can hold a gun basically declares themselves part of Virginia's army.
Speaker 1: But they don't actually like want to be real soldiers.
Speaker 1: They just they're hoping this is going to be over
Speaker 1: quickly and they can claim a little bit of glory.
Speaker 1: So one of the first things that happens is Lee
Speaker 1: is desperately trying to turn these militias into a functional army.
Speaker 1: Is stonewall. Jackson takes a bunch of dudes with rifles
Speaker 1: and occupies Maryland Heights without orders, and when Kay, here's this,
Speaker 1: Lee is like, fucking retreat. Don't do Like they could
Speaker 1: attack us, and they have an actual army. We don't yet,
Speaker 1: Like we can't don't provoke them yet. We're not ready
Speaker 1: to fight any kind of a battle. This is reasonable, right,
Speaker 1: This is Lee is not bad at this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: He's absolutely right, Like Jackson has put them all in
Speaker 1: a terribly dangerous position. But the fact that he is
Speaker 1: consistently like, stop rattling your saber, stop trying to provoke
Speaker 1: the North. We have to actually have an army before
Speaker 1: we do any of this. This gets him in trouble
Speaker 1: with his new found countrymen. As Alan Guelzo writes, complaints
Speaker 1: about Lee soon blossomed in Virginia. No one admires General
Speaker 1: Lee more than I do, wrote Albert Taylor BLEDSDA Jefferson
Speaker 1: Davis on May tenth. But I fear he is too despondent.
Speaker 1: His remarks are calculated to dispirit our people. I have
Speaker 1: heard such remarks myself and energetically dissented from them. I
Speaker 1: fear he does not know how good and how righteous
Speaker 1: our cause is. Over exuberant Southerners began glancing over their
Speaker 1: shoulders at Lee. One of Mary Chestnut's South Carolina notables
Speaker 1: whispered that Robert E. Lee is against us that I know,
Speaker 1: and another predicted that General Lee will surely be tried
Speaker 1: for a trader. So because he's like, I don't care
Speaker 1: how enthusiastic you are. If we don't have like supply
Speaker 1: lines set up, and like, actually, if we're not organized
Speaker 1: like a functional military, we're going to lose, and they're like,
Speaker 1: but our cause is righteous.
Speaker 2: What are you what? Coward?
Speaker 1: Like he's being called a trader for being like, don't
Speaker 1: start a war when we don't have an army.
Speaker 2: You get shits, you know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you sound like I don't know, guys. Yeah, he
Speaker 3: kind of sounds like a bitch. It's like, no, fellas
Speaker 3: like you. No, I'm just saying.
Speaker 1: And this is he has found himself in a hell
Speaker 1: utterly of his own making.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you did not have to do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe this is a sign you made the wrong
Speaker 1: fighting choice, Robert.
Speaker 2: What have I got myself in?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: What the fuck am I doing? Yes?
Speaker 1: So, Virginia votes to join the newly formed Confederate States
Speaker 1: pretty shortly after this point, and Lee goes When this happens,
Speaker 1: he goes from the supreme commander of an independent Virginia
Speaker 1: to one more general under Jefferson Davis. Right, And this
Speaker 1: is also the moment where he loses his house. Lincoln
Speaker 1: is not stupid, and the Union waits to actually move
Speaker 1: on Virginia until they commit to the Confederate States because
Speaker 1: Ligan he's not going to like start a fight until
Speaker 1: he knows he has to. He's not a reckless man
Speaker 1: about this sort of shit. But as soon as Virginia's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're the Confederacy now, the Union moves to occupy and
Speaker 1: seizes Arlington. Right now. Lee is not at Arlington. He
Speaker 1: has gone down to Richmond to take this job commanding
Speaker 1: Virginia's army, and he never returns. He never will see
Speaker 1: Arlington again. In letters, he's warning his wife as all
Speaker 1: of this is building up, He's repeatedly like, you got
Speaker 1: to get our shit and bounce take the silverware, Like
Speaker 1: he knows what's going to happen, and he knows that
Speaker 1: the Confederate military, the Virginian military, none of it's going
Speaker 1: to be able to stop the Union from taking Arlington.
Speaker 1: His wife holds out until the last minute and departs
Speaker 1: right before the property could be occupied by Union forces.
Speaker 1: And it's basically it's initially turned into like a forward
Speaker 1: operating base. Fitz Hugh Lee frames this as an act
Speaker 1: of courageous sacrifice by Lee rather than the inevitable result
Speaker 1: of the Confederacy being a bunch of arrogant pricks who
Speaker 1: launched a war they weren't ready to fight.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: In addition to the high position offered him, in the
Speaker 1: United States Army. He yielded his private fortune with his
Speaker 1: beautiful home Arlington, a home endeared by historic associations and
Speaker 1: many years of happy married life, a home of unsurpassed beauty,
Speaker 1: of situation, and adorned with all that midmost value, now
Speaker 1: destined to be the sport of rude soldiers. It's priceless
Speaker 1: relics scattered, it's beautiful surroundings desecrated, its choicest attractions destroyed.
Speaker 1: And I think it's funny that fits you. Thirty years
Speaker 1: after the war, is still sore enough to call Union
Speaker 1: soldiers rude, Like, oh, they're putting their feet upon the tables,
Speaker 1: this is matters. Yeah, it's not really true. And actually
Speaker 1: the officers who occupy Arlington are like, if Mary Lee
Speaker 1: had stayed, we'd have let her kept living at her house. Right,
Speaker 1: We're not going to kick an old she's an invalid, Right,
Speaker 1: she's sick, she can't really move very well. Like, these
Speaker 1: guys are not going to kick a sick old woman
Speaker 1: out of the house, right.
Speaker 3: So mama family, Yeah, it's fine, Yeah, Mama's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but you know she bounces anyway. And I
Speaker 1: will say, as the war goes on, these guys who
Speaker 1: are initially like, yeah, we'd have let her stay, they
Speaker 1: get angrier because all of their friends start getting killed, right,
Speaker 1: and this gets us to one of the funnier side
Speaker 1: stories of the Bobby Lee saga. So we're jumping ahead
Speaker 1: a bit here, but by the summer of eighteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: this is like a year or so into the act
Speaker 1: actual fighting in the Civil War, Congress passes a law
Speaker 1: to let them collect taxes on real estate and Confederate areas. Basically,
Speaker 1: I know you're traders, but we don't recognize the Confederacy
Speaker 1: as a separate state, so you still have to pay
Speaker 1: your fusing property taxes. And the intention here is to
Speaker 1: twist the screws in traders like Lee. Writing in Smithsonian Magazine,
Speaker 1: Robert Pool states appropriating the homestead was perfectly in keeping
Speaker 1: with the views of Lincoln, Secretary of War Edward M. Stanton,
Speaker 1: General William T. Sher and Montgomery Meegs, all of them
Speaker 1: believed in waging total war to bring the rebellion to
Speaker 1: his speedy conclusion, make them so sick of war that
Speaker 1: generations would pass away before they would then appeal to it.
Speaker 1: Sherman wrote, and Mary tries to pay their tax bill.
Speaker 1: She sends like a cousin who stays in the north
Speaker 1: to like pay the bill on her behalf. But county
Speaker 1: commissioners and Alexandria are like, now you got to pay
Speaker 1: in person. Yeah, you can't do that, So they seize Arlington.
Speaker 1: The government does and puts it up for auction. And
Speaker 1: if you want to know how the process of auctioning
Speaker 1: a property works, you can refer to the documentary Happy Gilmore.
Speaker 1: But sadly, Roberty Lee is dog shit at golf, so
Speaker 1: he's not able to get his property back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, rest in peace. It all comes back to comes
Speaker 2: back to.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk more about what becomes of Arlington
Speaker 1: in part four, and we're also going to take a
Speaker 1: look at Lee's actual performance in the war and whether
Speaker 1: or not he deserves to be remembered as the greatest
Speaker 1: general of the war. Furthermore, we'll talk about the rumors
Speaker 1: that he had an unhealthy love affair with his horse Traveler.
Speaker 1: But yes, today I really wanted to you have to
Speaker 1: kind of spend an hour talking about Whitedly turned trader
Speaker 1: because there's so much disinfo about it and what we
Speaker 1: do know, what we can verify is so fucking clear.
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, I hope anyone who had any
Speaker 1: lingering doubts about that has had them assuaged.
Speaker 3: At this point, you had some color to like a
Speaker 3: narrative I understood, which I really appreciate. I do want
Speaker 3: to go back to this, like the reality on the
Speaker 3: ground of like the Confederate States, we're still paying taxes. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's it reminds me of like you know, your kid
Speaker 3: being like.
Speaker 2: Get out of my room.
Speaker 3: It's my room, stay out of my life, and then
Speaker 3: they slam the door and then you're like, okay, cool,
Speaker 3: I was just going to walk over to the router
Speaker 3: and turn off the internet because I'm out of your life.
Speaker 3: Apparently you know what I'm saying, Like you understand your
Speaker 3: room is attached to my house, right, and then when
Speaker 3: you come out of that room to try to go
Speaker 3: to my refrigerator. Oh, I'm sorry, sweetheart, I'm out of
Speaker 3: your life. This refrigerator full of food is for people.
Speaker 3: That's part of my life. Yeah right, Oh you're gonna
Speaker 3: eat it. Okay, cool, You're right, I'll get out of
Speaker 3: your life now. I still expect the trash to be
Speaker 3: emptied in the next, so you out of your fighting
Speaker 3: as you empty in the trash. Maybe you still got
Speaker 3: chores here cuz like I like you. Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: give you some space. Go ahead and give you some space.
Speaker 3: It's still my house, right, So I think it's so funny.
Speaker 3: It's like we're succeeding. Also, what's tax rate? Eight percent?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you still gotta pay your taxes. Gotta pay your taxes.
Speaker 1: Fab now that that's definitely one of the more baller
Speaker 1: moves of the Lincoln administration. Yeah, yeah, like all right,
Speaker 1: well we simply don't care fifteen guys. Yeah, coming up,
Speaker 1: you still gotta pay, still gotta pay fam uh huh,
Speaker 1: all right, prop, where can the people find you? Should
Speaker 1: then want to do this?
Speaker 3: Find me in the hood. I'm posted, I'm just playing.
Speaker 3: You can find me prop hip Hop Talk Politics Pod.
Speaker 3: You know, we really turned it up this year to
Speaker 3: make sure that, like we're really giving y'all our a game.
Speaker 3: Who Politics Pod is the Instagram prop hip Hop is
Speaker 3: my everything?
Speaker 1: Excellent? Well, everybody, this has been behind the bastards. If
Speaker 1: you want to get more from us, you can check
Speaker 1: out Better Offline, our new tech Focus podcast covering the
Speaker 1: disaster that is the tech industry and how it's fucking
Speaker 1: up all of our lives with the great ed Zitron.
Speaker 1: If you want to find my novel After the Revolution,
Speaker 1: just type that into Google with ak press, or just
Speaker 1: go to whatever bookseller and type it into their thing
Speaker 1: and you can buy my book. This has been a
Speaker 1: podcast I have been Robert Evans come back for part four.
Speaker 1: We will answer the question on everybody's mind, did Bobby
Speaker 1: Lee fuck that horse?
Speaker 2: The answer will surprise us all. Behind the Bastards is
Speaker 2: a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check
Speaker 2: us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 2: you get your podcasts.