Lee’s decision to fight for Virginia, and effectively the Confederacy, WAS a moral decision. Whether the south should have the right to secede by itself has moral elements, but so does why the south would risk war to secede. The south seceded primarily to protect the institution of slavery. We know this because they told us at the time that was why they were seceding. That’s extremely anti-freedom and anti-human dignity to think slavery was okay in the first place, so those are negative moral marks right there. U.S. slavery was justified on the belief that blacks were inferior, so based on racism. The south seceded because they lost a presidential election and were afraid the new president would take away their slaves. That’s not how democracy works; you don’t just get to leave when you lose an election, so that is anti-democratic. Finally, by seceding they were in open rebellion against the United States of America, meaning, they were traitors. This isn’t just an ahistorical lookback, they knew they were rebelling. They accepted certain authority of the U.S. and then rejected it, rejected it with the threat of force to defend their new authority. They took over federal facilities. Lee agrees with me on this point. A few months before the Civil War he said, “Secession is nothing but revolution” and implied that it would be “treason”. The way he used revolution seems like how we would normally say rebellion. Lee also seems to be implying that secession itself is resorting to force: “I hope therefore that all Constitutional means will be exhausted, before there is a resort to force.”
A larger quote: “The South in my opinion has been aggrieved by the acts of the North as you say. I feel the aggression, & am willing to take every proper step for redress. It is the principle I contend for, not individual or private benefit. As an American citizen I take great pride in my country, her prosperity & institutions & would defend any State if her rights were invaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, & I am willing to sacrifice every thing but honour for its preservation. I hope therefore that all Constitutional means will be exhausted, before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labour, wisdom & forbearance in its formation & surrounded it with so many guards & securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the confederacy at will. It was intended for pepetual [sic] union, so expressed in the preamble,4 & for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established & not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison & the other patriots of the Revolution. In 1808 when the New England States resisted Mr Jeffersons Imbargo law & the Hartford Convention assembled secession was termed treason by Virga statesmen. What can it be now?” ~ Lee
https://leefamilyarchive.org/reference/essays/rachal/index.html
The south didn’t simply secede on the principle of states rights. They weren’t thinking that we must stand up for states rights for the principle of states rights in and of itself. They weren’t inspired by the value of states rights. They wanted to maintain the institution of slavery. That is why the south risked war. That is why they seceded. Lee knew that. Lee knew that the south didn’t like the outcome of a presidential election, didn’t want Lincoln to take their slaves away, justified slavery based on racism, and were rebelling against the United States by non-Constitutional means. Despite knowing this, he chose loyalty to his beloved Virginia above all else. That is not simply a civics question, but a deeply moral choice.
I don’t condemn Lee for his choice. I think we can clearly say that it was the morally wrong choice, but also understand him in his time and his culture and have sympathy with why he made that decision. And understand that he was in many ways a good man despite certain mistakes and blind spots.
“Mississippians have voted in favor of the ballot initiative Measure 3 and will replace their controversial state flag with a new one, according to the New York Times and the Associated Press.
The new flag, named the “In God We Trust” flag, will put to rest a decades-long debate over the flag that the state used for 126 years, which features a Confederate emblem.
The new design was commissioned and approved by the Commission to Redesign the Mississippi State Flag, set up by the state legislature after the body voted to do away with the old flag. It prominently features a magnolia flower — the state flower — encircled by 20 white stars, a nod to Mississippi’s status as the 20th state to join the US. A larger yellow star sits directly above the flower to represent the Choctaw origins of the state, and all the icons sit on a dark blue and red striped background. The design was selected from just under 3,000 other submissions.”
“the South. Mike Jason, a retired Army colonel who commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, told me the region had lots of cheap land, which is why the Army in the early 1900s built bases and other facilities there. As a way to appease racist white political leaders and locals who didn’t want a more integrated military nearby, the Army named bases after Confederate “heroes” who were popular among these leaders and locals.
That’s why all 10 facilities named after those men are in the South: three in Virginia, two in Louisiana, two in Georgia, and one each in Alabama, North Carolina, and Texas.
And the Confederate officers the Army chose to name the bases after weren’t just selected at random or because of their military prowess during the Civil War. Most were specifically chosen because of their local ties. For example, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Maj. Gen. George Pickett, both Virginians, have bases named after them in the state.”
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“Experts have offered three main explanations — some more convincing than others — for why those 10 facilities haven’t had their names changed: 1) the pervasiveness of the Lost Cause myth in Army culture, 2) bureaucratic inertia and competing problems, and 3) courting controversy.”
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“Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, one of the service’s most celebrated leaders before an ignominious fall, wrote an op-ed in the Atlantic on Tuesday describing how Confederate culture has persisted in the Army.
“When I was a cadet at West Point in the early 1970s, enthusiasm for Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson was widespread,” Petraeus wrote. “We were not encouraged to think deeply about the cause for which they had fought, at least not in our military history classes. And throughout my Army career, I likewise encountered enthusiastic adherents of various Confederate commanders, and a special veneration for Lee.””
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“Perhaps that inaction had to do with the final explanation, which is one the Army has repeatedly used: that changing the names would stir up immense controversy within the ranks. Take, for instance, the response to a request from Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) in 2017. She asked the Army to rename two streets at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn: General Lee Avenue and Stonewall Jackson Drive.
When the Army wrote back, Diana Randon, who was at the time the service’s top official on these issues, said the two men were “an inextricable part of our military history.” Such a move would be “controversial and divisive,” she continued, and “contrary to the Nation’s original intent in naming these streets, which was the spirit of reconciliation.”
Of course, as discussed above, that is a blatant misrepresentation of why these individuals’ names were chosen. They were deliberately chosen to appease racist people, particularly in the South — not to achieve some kind of national “reconciliation.””
“It would be “wiser…not to keep open the sores of war,” said the former Confederate general Robert E. Lee in 1869, “but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.” Lee wrote those remarks as he rejected an invitation to enshrine Confederate memorials for fallen soldiers.”
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“the erstwhile general may finally be getting his wish. In the wake of protests across the country, set in motion after a Minneapolis cop killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man, numerous communities have seen a reinvigorated push to remove local homages to Confederate soldiers—the likes of which amount to little more than grand participation trophies that celebrate the most racially fraught time in U.S. history
There’s a rich irony to the fact that Lee, who recognized the ill-conceived nature of the idea, would become the unwitting mascot for those who support those memorials.”
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“Supporters of Confederate monuments often argue that the stone exaltations preserve heritage. Memorials inherently celebrate a particular time and place—it’s right there in the name. But what good does it do if the heritage preserved and celebrated is an inherently racist one?
The bulk of these Confederate memorials were erected between 1900-1930 during the era of Jim Crow, long after the Civil War’s conclusion. Behind their enshrinement was the very same racial animus that the country is currently attempting to grapple with. The 1924 reception for Lee’s statue provides an adequate anecdote. As I’ve written previously:
Over in Charlottesville, the Ku Klux Klan commemorated the May 21 unveiling of Lee’s statue with a public cross burning on May 16 and a two-hour parade on May 18 attended by “thousands,” according to archives from The Daily Progress, the Charlottesville newspaper that’s been publishing since 1892. The throngs of people “equaled those usually seen here to witness the parade of the large circuses,” the paper wrote. “The march of the white-robed figures was impressive, and directed attention to the presence of the organization in the community.”
That wasn’t the exception but rather the rule. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the industrialist Julian Carr introduced the now-toppled Silent Sam statue in 1913 with a speech on the merits of preserving white supremacy. “One hundred yards from where we stand,” he noted, “less than 90 days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench, until her skirts hung in shreds.” New Orleans’ 1911 celebration of the monument of Confederate President Jefferson Davis—a fierce defender of slavery—had a Stars and Bars formation singing “Dixie” at a ‘Whites Only’ ceremony. The list goes on.”
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“that heritage incontrovertibly hinges on a legacy of slavery and racial terrorism, whether some like to admit it or not. Those who fought for the Confederacy should never be forgotten—but put them in a museum, keep them in the history books, and so on. Don’t give them a reception fit only for history’s best heroes.”