Leaders for their time, place
Lee was no George Washington, but the men had a bit in common
“Is it George Washington next week?”
President Trump was railing against the removal of Confederate monuments, including one of Gen. Robert E. Lee at the center of the protest last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., that led to deadly violence.
His suggestion that the two men were similar figures in history — and that if memorials to one had to go, so might memorials to the other — is not new.
To examine this argument, we turned to Barton Myers, an associate professor of history at — wait for it — Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.
Founded in 1749 as Augusta Academy, the school went through two name changes before 1796, when Washington endowed it with $20,000 and the trustees renamed it Washington Academy. It later became Washington College. Lee became president of the school in 1865. After his death in 1870, the trustees settled on its current name.
What is that family connection?
Lee ends up marrying into the Custis family [Martha Dandridge Custis, widow of a wealthy Virginian named Daniel Parke Custis, married Washington in 1759] and ultimately ends up administering the Arlington estate [now the site of Arlington Cemetery]. He ends up inheriting dueling pistols that belonged to George Washington.
How were they different?
I think Lee really admired Washington as an example, as a military figure in particular, but ultimately departing from Washington’s example. Washington worked during his presidency to put down a tax rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion. But Lee joined the rebellion, ultimately choosing the state of Virginia after
Virginia seceded from the Union.
Both men did capable jobs.
It took Washington a little bit of time to develop as a military commander at the level of general and army command, but ultimately he chose a Fabian strategy of battle avoidance that saved the American cause during the Revolution, kept that army together as a symbol and ultimately was able to win that conflict.
Lee chose a very different path of large-scale engagements that bled the Confederate Army, although winning many major victories along the way ... but subsequently finding defeat during the overland campaign and against Ulysses S. Grant, an equally gifted American commander.
What were other differences in terms of the paths they took?
Lee agonized over the decision to secede from the Union in 1861. Initially, he was offered command of all Union forces in the field by Gen. Winfield Scott, and he chose at first to ask Scott if he could sit the war out. And Scott, the greatest soldier in the republic at that point, said, “There is no room for equivocal men in my army.”
Lee went home, thought about it, and I think he knew the position of Virginia. Virginia, at that point, was headed out of the Union. Within days, Lee made the decision to resign his officer’s position, and was offered command of all Virginia state forces in the field, and ultimately Virginia joined the Confederacy.
It was a very difficult decision for Lee, but he made a calculated loyalty decision, a loyalty decision that tiered Virginia and his family over the United States, an institution that he observed for decades as a dedicated, loyal U.S. Army officer. And what about Washington?
In some ways, Washington would be easily seen by the British government as committing treason early on — his part of instigating a rebellion and supporting that rebellion, though Virginia was a latecomer to the rebellion.
But ultimately, Washington rises to be a central figure of unity in America. He was a figure of unity that brought together the Colonies, Virginia being a leading one because of the command power and prestige. He was one of the wealthiest individuals in the country. He was a man of stature and respect because of his service during the French and Indian War and in the militia in Virginia during the [Revolutionary] War.
I think Lee has a similar purpose by 1864 for the Confederate armies.
What about the argument that since both men owned slaves they were morally corrupt and should not be honored?
Washington was one of the largest slave owners in the country. When Washington dies, he takes the tack of freeing his slaves, directly in his will. Therein lies the partial separation.
Washington, I think, saw the writing on the wall and saw the future of America, and in his farewell address as president worked very hard to tamp down ideas like sectionalism and division within America, and party politics.
And he was in line with what was the Federalist Party at that point, which was a party of national institutions and supported things like road and bridge building. He was very much turning toward becoming a nationalist at a time when America’s Colonies were very weak and needed unity.
Lee administered the Arlington estate in the 1850s — was involved in punishing slaves. Some newspaper accounts that are reporting through hearsay do account for Lee being involved in personally whipping a slave. They are not direct eyewitness accounts, but he was definitely involved in administering the day-to-day operations of a plantation. He clearly was involved in the recapture of slaves that had run away and the administration of the estate.
I think Lee found slavery quite annoying as a day-today institution to run. His public comments on this are out there in a letter from 1856 to his wife, where he talks about slavery being a great evil, but a great evil primarily to white people, because of what it was doing to the lower classes within the South and that it was a moral drag on those people.
Is it reasonable in any way to say that Washington and Lee were equivalent figures?
There was a time in the American South, especially immediately after the Civil War, when they were looking for heroes who were going to help bind up very open wounds. And as a result, people who participated in the veneration of Lee after his death, the “lost cause” mythology and its erection, after the war, would have made that equivalent comparison.
When the Confederacy was established in 1861, they put Washington on the Great Seal of the Confederacy. He was directly linked in symbolic fashion to what the Confederate cause was doing, by Confederates. I think there was an effort to make Lee an equivalent figure, by white Southerners in particular. After the war, people who had fought with Lee in his army wanted him to be that figure.
So yes, there was a time in this country where there were a lot of people, millions of people perhaps, who felt that way.
Edited for length and clarity.