Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 105 - Robert E Lee Was a Monster

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

Robert E Lee was a traitor, a slave owner, and a war criminal. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources for this episode: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/ https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-lee-slaveholder/ http://fair-use.org/national-anti-slavery-standard/1866/04/14/robert-e-lee-his-brutality-to-his-slaves https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/arlington-bobby-lee-and-the-peculiar-institution/61428/ https://www.post-gazette.com/news/state/2013/06/30/Confederates-slave-hunt-in-North-a-military-disgrace/stories/201306300221

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. A way down south in the land of traitors, rattled snakes and alligators, right away, right away, come away, right away, right away, right away. Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me as always is Nick. Yeah. Not so always, but always. Not so always, but most of the time. Mostly always. 60% of the time, Nick is here all the time.

Every time. Nick, if you had to pick in the history of this podcast, what episodes do we catch the most heat on? What do you think it would be? Ooh. I imagine the Rhodesia one probably got some. That one got a fair amount of heat That one's fairly recent

But there was a guy In Zimbabwe who did not know There was an American Neo-Nazi Buried in Harare Hariri And when I showed him Where the grave was He went and he peed on it

You pissed excellence that day, sir. I believe our podcast has officially peaked. We actually have to cancel it now. Yeah, we're actually done. Thanks for this is our farewell. Episode 107. Yeah, it's 107 more. I would have to say it's Confederate episodes.

We actually can't show us you done. We've got negative reviews on a few things. iTunes being one, I assume uh definitely one of the platforms uh but i would say all of the negative um uh uh reviews that follow us across all things is confederates and nick i have to tell you the working title of the script i wrote is is Robert E. Lee is a monster. I thought it'd be worse. So, well, it did originally say Robert E. Lee is a fucking bastard. But then I remembered that SoundCloud really does, especially iTunes, isn't like when you put swear words in the titles of your episodes.

Not even if you put like explanation points. We don't believe in censorship around here, sir. Yes, sir. So when I ask you about Robert E. Lee, what exactly comes to mind? I see the History Channel movie that everybody watched on Gettysburg. That wasn't a History Channel movie. It just looked like it. No, just from the fake beards.

Oh, my God. No. Okay. Yeah. It's just that they definitely won the Oscar in best to worst facial hair. Yes. I do see scumbag as well. Yeah.

That is in there. Yeah. I mean, like, for me. Oh, can I also point out that every high school teacher, history teacher I had definitely jizzed their pants over him. Don't know why. Especially in California, that's really strange. It really is. Actually, we're going to talk a little bit why that happened.

For me, I know it comes to mind and everybody's like, you know, he's the birthplace of the lost cause, pretty much. He was a southern gentleman and the best general of the war. He hated slavery. Gotta tell you all those things are fake. The man, the myth, and the entirety of the Confederacy

lost to Ka's wing of historical revisionism. That's right. His face is on a mountain. He has a car named after him. His face is on a mountain? Oh, yeah. How do I not know? What?

It's a very not well-known thing. I mean, I guess it's good that I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I believe it's in... I can't remember what state it's in now, actually. But it's definitely there. And the funding for it was fueled through the KKK. Shocker.

Yeah. Anybody ever thought about defacing this? Turning it into a tank range. Speaking of tanks, the U.S. Army has a base named after him. And you probably went there. Fort Lee, Virginia. Yes, I have. He has countless streets named after him

around the country, as well as schools and statues. And of course, an entire barracks at the West Point Military Academy. Thank God you didn't say Bruce Lee. God damn it. And I double checked with a semi-recent West Point graduate that barracks is still named after Robert E. Lee.

It's a very good reason for all of this other than the fact that America is really bad at its own collective history. But Robert E. Lee is a centerpiece of a 150 year long propaganda campaign that has infiltrated layers of historical research, academia and public education shouldn't be

so much so that there's a really good chance that many of the people listening if they are in the south didn't learn about slavery at all when it came to Robert E. Lee or they were taught that it's not the cause of the civil war you don't say. Now, we have a history, I would say,

on this show of shitting on the South. That's our favorite pastime here. So this episode, I'm willing to extend an olive branch to people that don't know any better. You can't hate someone who believes something they are taught up growing, or what their favorite history teacher taught them. Like, why would your history teacher

lie to you because there's a good chance he didn't know he was lying because that's what he was taught too for sure uh the propaganda campaign that led to the canonization of robert e lee is the same one that erected countless confederate statues brought confederate flags back to state buildings and edited textbooks this is a propaganda campaign that has been waged in the ashes of the failure of the Southern Reconstruction. As some people who broke off from America and eventually led us to war, retook state power due to a Northern unwillingness to commit to the long haul of reforming Southern society.

That's why when a lot of people say that Reconstruction failed, you're right, but also it was sabotaged from a group of people that didn't have the balls to put up with the discomfort of living through the scars of the civil war a good example this is jubile early a confederate general and uh would end up becoming head of the southern historical research society shortly after the war. Surprisingly, he's always late, though. More like Jubilate, am I right? He used his position to warp historical memory, eventually joined by Confederate veterans organizations, which we have talked about,

like the Sons and the Daughters of the Confederacy. They're the ones that erected a memorial to the Camp Commandant of Andersonville, the only person to be executed for war crimes from the civil war amazing amazing stuff um this eventually all worked northern weakness allowed the south to lean into a part-time type society that we now know as jim crow or the black codes while actual schools of thought, like the Dunning School, backed by and with legitimacy, openly said that the post-war reconstruction and their enfranchisement of African Americans

was bad for America, and the newly freed slaves clearly cannot govern themselves, making these Jim Crow laws necessary. Is that sounding familiar? Yep. This post-war Jim Crow society is necessary. Is that sounding familiar? Yep. Yep. This post-war Jim Crow society had been accurately described

by historian Douglas Blackman on his book, Slavery by Another Name, as, quote, this historical interpretation provided the moral underpinnings of Jim Crow and the brutal neo-slavery

of the convict leasing system. And even today, shapes our understanding of persistent racial inequality as a result of black Americans' personal failings rather than decades of government policy designed to exclude us, him being a black man, from the benefits of American citizenship. Sounds like some Rodiza shit, right? Man. Like we just talked about this.

All these people obviously reshaped American historical memory. They also rehabilitated images of men who led the Confederacy into war. The chief among those is one Robert E. Lee, though other Confederate generals would also be given the same treatment. Nobody really wanted to rehab Jefferson Davis because even neo-Confederates think he was kind of an idiot. So have you ever heard any of these things about old Bobby Lee, that he was a southern gentleman, whatever that means? All the time. He was a brilliant general.

He was the best general of the war. He actually hated the institution of slavery. In fact, he was an abolitionist, and he helped unite America after the Civil War. Heard every bit of that. I fact, he was an abolitionist. And he helped unite America after the Civil War. Heard every bit of that. I bet you have. I have as well. Now, actually googled Robert E. Lee,

abolitionist, just to see what would come up. The results were grim. The only, like the top articles that refute this idea, where wines are like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Are only a couple years old, like 2015 ish. Oh, wow.

Outside of that bubble, they're mostly dance around the subject of Lee and the idea that he owns slaves. So have you ever heard of that Robert E. Lee owned slaves other than someone named Joseph Kasabian? No. He absolutely owned slaves uh you know who didn't actually you uh i have not no uh union general and future president of the united states ulysses s grant who is drugged through history books as a drunk and a man who owned slaves i thought he was great uh one of those things is partially true uh and we'll get to that point i just thought i

should throw that out there his portrait's definitely he looked like he was in a serious hangover he did uh and he did battle with alcoholism for a portion of his life but yeah uh grant's father had been a hardcore abolitionist and grant himself hated slavery grant like lee married into a slave-owning family but when he was ordered to beat slaves or otherwise actually make them work he simply refused to do so and worked himself his refusal to make slaves work ended up causing a falling out between him and his father-in-law like to the point that like his father-in-law thought he was a weak pussy because he's like now i'll just farm on my own fuck that guy grant was dirt poor and a failure for very large portions of his life.

He got out of the military, attempted to go into business for himself, doing several things, failed every single time, and then eventually ended up rejoining the army for the Civil War. What did he try doing? Everything. He tried farming. He tried running a store. Carbohype. He tried the Sensi yeah he failed

every single time and like his the one of the reasons why was like uh he wanted to like his dad wasn't very rich either but his father-in-law was rich as hell i think he owned about 30 slaves and worked on a farm and he so his and his wife had slaves not officially like her dad was like these five slaves are yours and happy birthday yeah uh like they never officially transferred paperwork so she don't officially own the slaves but she didn't want to leave the house so grant stayed with them because he didn't have anywhere else to go and he asked his dad for a loan to like start a small business and his dad said i'm not going to give you shit as long as you live with slave owners that's a good dad yeah

good 1800s dad for real um now his father-in-law a guy named frederick dent gifted him a slave by the name of william jones in 1859 you want to know what grant did immediately signed over his freedom grant's the shit i fucking love grant i knew i loved him and i didn't know that it should be pointed out that he did not sell jones or make jones purchase his freedom both things which were very very common he simply wrote a letter to the local courthouse saying yep he's free fuck yourself it was within a couple months and uh i'm sure his father-in-law was real happy about that um now i grant was not um he was not like the most progressive dude on earth i mean he was no john brown uh but he hated slavery but he was about as progressive as abraham lincoln and what i mean by that is, he was no John Brown, but he hated slavery, but he was about as progressive as Abraham Lincoln.

And what I mean by that is when he was writing Home, he openly talked about how gross the practice of slavery was, but that was not the reason he was fighting in the Civil War. He fought to save the Union. But just like Lincoln, he said, if we're going to free the slaves to do that, okay. But if we can save the union without freeing slaves i guess i'm okay with that too which is like gross sure but like he's a white guy in the 1800s he's kind of uh on his own yeah like a lot like abraham lincoln was a good example of that like i said is like he always said that he thought slavery was gross but if he could save the union without freeing slaves he would have done it so it's like that sucks it does

but grant was also one of the first generals in the union army to openly free black soldiers like like yep come on in like i think his exact words were like you know i'm not gonna say the n-word uh but like he was like i believe black people will be a great ally to us in their cause of arms. And like, he argued to give them equal pay. And also, and more than that is like, he thought afterwards, he's like, you know, I can't wait for them to show that they can be steadfast citizens once the states are reunited. Most people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, they can vote now? Grant wasn't like that. you mean they could walk on our sidewalk yeah i mean he but he definitely grew with the times like you know president grant

would his his opinions which still not super progressive were leaps and bounds above like right ahead of his time farmer grant right because like yeah um it shows that a historical figure which is still obviously problematic in the year 2020 as every man in the 1800s would have been they can change they can change at the times but you know who did not robert e lee that's the guy we're talking about right this episode i do have to point out that lee from what i could find never bought any slaves but he inherited them all did he yeah uh though there is evidence to suggest that he did plan on buying more before the war was up but then shit kind of got out of hand the emancipation proclamation happened and then he was too busy running away from the union to buy slaves um he's too busy losing yeah

uh but just because he inherited them yeah i gotta say it gets it's ends up sounding worse than that and it's because it is this will come as a surprise absolutely nobody because you know slaves uh but they were treated as property to be left behind like a house or a car should their owner die or even be freed. That was possible, too. But it all depended on the owner's will. I know when I die, I want my truck to run free. But like it all depend on the owner's will. Like I leave everything like if I die, I'm leaving all my slaves to Nick.

Let's not throw my name in there. I don't think it was around back then. I'll let you assume, because they could make a choice like, I'm assigning all my slaves to my oldest son, or all slaves are free upon my death. I'm going to let you assume which one of those things happened the least.

Oh. Now, Robert E. Lee first inherited the slaves of his mother, Ann Lee, in 1829. It was about four families worth of slaves. Not a huge number, but it was a lot. It was certainly- Are we talking Mexican family or are we talking- I'm going to assume, I don't know.

What would you- I'm going to assume a solid mom, dad, three kids. Okay. Yeah. That's a pretty good number. Yeah. Now, that was according to. Okay. That's a pretty good number. Now, that was according to Robert Ely's son, Robert Ely Jr. We don't exactly

know how many individuals he inherited. I should point out this is about a month after he graduated from West Point and was still in the U.S. Army. He owned slaves while crushing John Brown's slave revolt. Really?

In case you wanted to be more mad about that. Wow. He also fought in the Spanish-American War. Or, sorry, the Mexican-American War. Did he? Owning a slave. Yeah, owning several slaves. Now, I do have to point out that in his will, when he deployed to Mexico, or invaded Mexico, rather.

There was no deployments then. That was stupid, Joe. In his will, he said, if he died in combat, all of his slaves should be free. Guess what he never did again? Sign that will. Yeah, so in the entirety of his time in the U.S. Army, and most of his time in the Confederacy,

Robert Ely was officially a slave owner. That is unarguable. No ifs, ands, or buts. It was a paper trail. He talks about it. He literally wrote letters to the New York Times talking about the slaves that he owned. Now I can just see the reviews

dropping. That's why I said this smile. I'm not insulting anybody for believing otherwise because i know a lot of people that were taught this in school these are i'll put the sources in in the show notes i always do you can peruse them i'll even include robert e lee's own letters i don't think people will no they will not now robert e lee eventually married a woman named mary custis who was actually a distant relative of George Washington. Really?

Huh. And owned the same group of slaves, like the same descendants of slaves. Like they had been all the way on like George Washington's personal like home. That's a long time. Yeah. Now her father was a slave owner

and he died, which is Robert E. Lee's father-in-law, leaving those slaves become Lee's property. These are where things actually get really bad. Lee's father-in-law was a guy named G.W. Park Custis. Now, I'm not going to argue in favor of this guy because he owned around 100 slaves. You, in fact, do not have to hand it to him. But he was, I don't know a good way of saying this the best case scenario as a slave

owner really yeah uh because they're best well like his slaves had nothing but nice things to say about him now some of that is like yeah that's like stockholm syndrome or whatever but like he never abused he like there's no uh firsthand accounts of him abusing his slaves. He did not split up families. Again, he was a slave owner, so fuck him. I'm not trying to say nice things about him. I can see what you're saying. I'm just trying to show what a giant monster could be and what Robert E. Lee will become.

I got you. But one thing that G.W. Park Custis believed in was freeing his slaves upon his death. And this was in writing. At the time, there was some... Now, I do have to temper this a bit. There was a thing at the time called the American Colonialization Society. They believed in freeing the slaves and then kicking their asses straight over to Liberia, which is how Liberia was founded.

Really? Yes. It was horrible. But in the 1800ss this is about as not racist as white people get they're like yeah yeah they should be free but in africa i'm not here i'm like okay that's terrible but you could still be worse i guess yeah like that's that's the kind of guy custis was like i will send you back to your homeland well that family has been descended from slaves for literally hundreds of years now yeah they're american but yeah that's the kind of guy he was so it's like he's terrible you should be free just not here yeah i mean that's like the same

kind of shit that you hear in youtube comments oh dude but lee inherited his father-in-law's slaves he bought them a ticket to Africa, right? Nope! There is a provision in the will as the executive state that he could change the outright declaration of freedom to freedom in five years. Why is that on the will? He kind of committed fraud.

Did he? Yes. What did he do, smear? Just fucking smear, smudge it out? So there was a legal loophole at the time where he could argue in a court that, well, my father-in-law had debt. I need to pay this debt off. I'm going to use the slaves to pay off the debt.

It's not good. No. Especially when, like, this is important. The Custa slaves have been told by their dead master for years that when I'm gone, you're free to go, which still sucks. Like, but can't you just free me now? Yeah. Like, you're already thinking about it.

Imagine that's like when you first got him. Like, you still got some years under yourself. You don't got to tell us this right now. Yeah. Like, you know, this would really make me feel better if you told me on your deathbed. Yeah. So like every day I'm working for you. like, why doesn't this motherfucker just free me? Yeah, yeah.

And now I'm thinking about your death. Yeah, now I might just murder you. This is not something he kept to himself. So when this new guy showed up, like, just kidding, you're mine now. The slaves got fucking pissed. Rightfully so, yeah. Yeah, like, I really wish this is where I get to tell you that Robert E. Lee gets brained by a pickaxe while he's asleep.

But does he? I wit. Damn it. The whole civil war never happened. Fuck. That's like just another alternate timeline. One of the better timelines. Yeah.

It's the more just timeline. It's the scene from dave chappelle it is just repeating yeah crackers uh derogatory what i got here is a revolver the problem was uh that that didn't happen uh sleep uh leave that be something we just open up your fucking closet and we can look at different timelines through time yeah so like you just be like oh look let's look at the the dope ass justice timeline not a new patreon goal yeah we will build a time machine and go back and kill only slave masters unfortunately that means we have to wipe out the founding fathers guys but worth it i'll do it yes i i'll shoot that mother that we're getting paid for this one. That one tooth-ass bitch, George Washington, that dude can't sit five rounds with me.

No, he can't. He's got no cardio. We may get splinters, but we can do it. He doesn't got the guts or the grit. No. Round and pound that old white motherfucker. You can do that. We'll judo him.

We'll do everything. I'll break that bitch's leg. Yeah. Oh, fuck. We'll judo him. We'll do everything. I'll break that bitch's leg. Yeah. Oh, fuck.

So, unfortunately for the Custis slaves, Lee was about to do all sorts of horrible stuff. There was a problem. Like I said, he inherited quite a bit of debt from his father-in-law, and he was desperate to pay it off. One of the ways he could pay that off was by working his slaves harder and harder

and by selling them. I thought he was going to suck them off. Really got to work on the two fucking things. You know what? I feel like union members together could be like, not him. He's not getting membership. He doesn't do it good.

Our questionnaire upon entry, just one question. Have you ever owned slaves? Circle yes or no. Fuck. God damn it. This might sound horrible, but working your slaves Oh, fuck. God damn it. This might sound horrible,

but working your slaves, like, as hard, I don't know how to say this, but as a slave owner, I assume that they're just assholes all the time and work their slaves. That's just what I assume. I'm not trying to draw rainbows here, but that part didn't shock me.

But what did was when lee started selling his slaves off to other plantations now uh it is it was incredibly uncommon for this to happen in the washington and custis family of slaves which he had inherited like families had been together since mount vernon like they've never been yeah uh so they were able to i mean it's the families at least got to stay together um that was like one bright side like well at least i won't be separated from my kids separating families in some circles of slave owners was considered so terrible that it was even looked down upon the washington and custis families had been together for generations

it's and it's really hard to pin down the happiness of slaves and that isn't something I'm even going to scratch the surface of. But it's important to point out that no slave revolt had been or like rebellion or work refusal was on record

in these families from what I could see. And their paperwork exists to this day. But in a very short time of Lee's ownership, they came so close to an open rebellion that he had to hire more overseers, causing him to go more into debt. And it should be noted that he kept

a lot of the old overseers, the people that worked for his father-in-law. They're like, yeah, whatever. Someone's gotta do the work. Whatever. The 401 yeah, whatever. The 401k carried over. I don't know. One of Lee's slaves called him, quote,

the worst man I ever did see. Cracker. And she was a slave. She saw plenty of terrible, terrible people. Like, no, that one, that guy sucks. Saw his terrible facial hair in that movie as well. I jumped into the future and realized your beard sucks. Saw his terrible facial hair in that movie as well. I jumped into the future and realized your beard sucks.

Slaves have been started also trying to escape. That's something that was so foreign to Lee that there's a good chance that he never had to do with it before. Meaning he had driven them

to want to escape under his ownership. Like that's important. Like they didn't escape under his father-in-law. They're like, I'm out of here under Lee. From my understanding, that could be death. Within seven months.

Like, these people have been there for sometimes decades, but like, nope, can't do another. I can't do eight months under this guy. Unfortunately, it's the south in the 1800s, so the slaves who ran were captured in short order. And because those slaves lived to see the end of the Civil War and became freed people, we actually have a full account

of what happened to them. A slave by the name of Wesley Norris had escaped along with his sister and cousin. They had been under the ownership of the Custis family and born under the Custis family. And all of them vividly remember being told by Part park kestis

that they'd be freed upon their death due to this and lee's brutal ownership they escaped after just 17 months uh under lee's ownership when wesley was recaptured they had him brought back to lee's farm and tied up and also with the other two lee demanded to know why they had tried to escape like the idea completely baffled him because he was apparently a goddamn idiot. Did he think he was a great guy? He took it as a personal slight. Wesley told him that was because their master had freed them

and they considered themselves free. Lee told them that he would teach them a lesson that they would never forget. He stripped them and tied them to posts and ordered an overseer a guy named mr gwynn to whip them wesley was to get 50 lashes and his sister's uh sister and cousin 25 the overseer refused deeming this to be too much the slave owner overseer said sir you've gone too far the slave the slave overseerers like sir this is too much. Yeah.

Holy shit. Not taking this as a hint. Lee called for a local constable named Dick Williams to do it in his place. The cop to the shock of I'm sure everybody listening had no problem with whipping a black person. Ooh. Yeah. Shots fired. Lee commended

Williams to quote lay it on well and stood by as, and watch the entire ordeal to make sure is done to his liking. Deciding that being whipped so many times that, and this is true, could have been very well fatal. Slaves died while being whipped all the time. Sometimes like as few as 10 lashes would kill slaves,

depending on who is whipping them. He decided this wasn't enough. So he ordered Williams to pour brine all over their torn flesh, which he did, causing pain so horrible that his cousin blocked out. Now, after all of this, Lee's monstrous rule was not complete. Remember when I said that he postponed the freedom of the slaves for five years? Well, at the end of that five years, Lee went to a Virginian state court to postpone the freeing of the slaves indefinitely. He did this twice, once in 1858 and again in 1862. Both times, the courts refused doing this, forcing him to free his slaves.

Three days after that, Lincoln gave his Emancipation Proclamation. So he's going to lose his slaves anyway. Right. Now, I have to point this out out if those dates sound weird to you in 1862 virginia was officially part of the confederate states of america meeting a court in a state that left one country to join a different country that was had been set up specifically to desperately hold on to the institution of slavery still thought lee was being too much of a dick to his slaves that That's something. This is a year after the war started. Yeah.

Now, Lee's history on slavery and popular narrative is very, very clearly wrong. So how the hell did we end up here? And how did we end up saying that he actually hated slavery? Well, it comes from one quote that's so butchered,

it might as well be fabricated or be published by Breitbart. It comes from a letter penned in 1856, where Lee calls slavery, quote, a moral and political evil. That's how the quote is always presented, though that line specifically. So that's cut and dry, right?

That stuck throughout all the years. Oh, yeah, yeah. Assuming you're dumb enough to ignore the fact that the man who owned slaves had wrote those words, but it's true, he did write those words, but he also wrote many others. And words matter. So we should probably read the rest of the letter. Right?

Right. Quote, I think it's a greater evil for the white man rather than the black race. And while feelings are strongly enlisted on behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are measureably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially, and physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race, and I hope to prepare and lead to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known and ordered by the wise and merciful providence. Their emancipation will sooner result in mild and melting influence of Christianity rather than the wise and merciful providence. Their emancipation will sooner result in mild

and melting influence of Christianity rather than the storms and tempests of fiery controversy. Now, let's parse those words a bit. According to Robert E. Lee, the true victim of slavery was the white man, and slavery was good for black people. Furthermoremore he thinks that the only thing that can free slaves is an act of god i'm assuming that means robert e lee shared the same god as isis whatever god that is i don't know yeah it's a cop-out is what it is he's like sure we could free slaves but nobody's like there hasn't been a a Virgin Mary and a piece of burnt toast that has told me to free my slaves. I can't do it. It's not up to me.

Yes, I understand that I own them legally on the plane of humans, not deities, as property. But I don't have the power to do that. Because God cares about my property now. I can see the kids we have in the future arguing with history teachers and like it it point like we should very well point out that like a lot of his biographers most of whom suck have come out like he was a deeply devout christian i'm like huh weird okay just because they say so so Are you thinking that do you believe that Robert Ely was gifted

slaves from the divine providence? That must be what you believe, right? Because if only divine providence can free the slaves, then truly slaves were a gift from God. Okay, if that is your God,

you need to find a new one. Many, many other ones are better because that shit is fucked. Yeah. That's my historical opinion. That is what is known as being the most wrong. You could possibly believe in all of human history. It's imagine Lee forcing his slaves to work harder,

beating them, splitting up families and pouring brines on their wound while saying,'re welcome for my service because that's pretty much what he believed he's like no no no no i'm the victim hit them harder this hurts me this is this hurts me more than it hurts you yeah it's absolutely blows the fucking mind yeah now if that wasn't racist enough it gets worse after the war lee would tell everybody who would listen that black people should not be able to run for office or vote as they were not civil enough to run their own affairs again said some rhodesia shit now you're probably rightfully curious just how the hell we got to this point in history where we were literally arguing about what

is public record lee had written letters he had in regarding his owning of slaves to mainstream publications that have those letters saved. His ledgers from his farm exist that show him selling human beings as property. So what happened? Well, we can think a guy named Douglas Southall Friedman, who wrote a multiple volume biography on Lee's life, which quickly became the historical document regarding Lee's legacy. It also won a Pulitzer. Freeman, I should point out, is absolutely not a non-biased historical researcher. Every day on his way to work, Freeman walked by a statue of Lee and he rendered it a salute. He also did this on the way home.

So yes, he saluted a statue of a dead slave owner twice a day. That's not something you want to put into your regiment. Nope. He wrote a four-volume series on Lee's life. And he brings up, in those four, he brings up slavery four times. If you're thinking that's one per book, it's not even that. Four sentences? Yeah.

He wrote more extensively about Lee's horse, Traveler, mentioning it 25 times. Huh? Yep. Yep. Now, Freeman survived long enough to get a little bit of pushback about this. People were like, whoa, whoa, but he owned slaves. Yeah. So, Freeman argues that Lee did not fight the war over slavery because he had little knowledge of the institution of slavery outside of Virginia where he lived.

Now that's complete and utter bullshit because remember, he fought in Texas to preserve slavery. He also fought John Brown to preserve slavery. He saw slavery in multiple different states. Like he, this is a guy who traveled all over the, what was then United States. Right. Like on the reg.

Complete another false, falsehoods. Now you're probably also wondering, how he knew so little about slavery or the institution of slavery when he was a slave owner for over 30 years so freeman is either lying a terrible historian or the dumbest man who's ever won a poll at sir can we use all three uh all three okay no i mean he's not that stupid he's lying i fully believe he's lying uh there's a reason for that he contends that there's zero evidence suggests that any slaves were ever flogged on the order of Lee. Remember the Wesley Norris story published? So that was first published in 1866 and verified by seven different eyewitnesses.

This is before Freeman was even born. So researchers found Lee's receipt book, which showed he made a payment to one Constable Dick Williams on the same day that Wesley Norris notes that he was flogged. Yeah. Dick Williams on the same day that Wesley Norris notes that he was flogged. Yeah. So this means a well-known and well-regarded historical piece of primary resource. Like that would be a primary source in a historical document or a research paper. He chose to either ignore it and then deny it.

But you know who never publicly denied it? One Robert E. Lee. Yeah. So Robert E. Lee, at the time of the letters publishing, was alive, in good health, and serving as president of Washington College. Now, he did reportedly deny it in private.

That's it. Really? Yep. He never felt strong enough to go publicly with it. I'm willing to bet because he knew there was paperwork that proved him wrong. Cause remember the government took over Lee's house and turned into Arlington cemetery.

So like they had all of his shit. Everything. Yeah. Also noted that, uh, you know, where, the slave that,

uh, uh, that he, he flogged Wesley Norris. You don't want to know where he worked. He worked in Arlington Cemetery after the war. Really? Got him!

Wow. That's just like an everyday I go and trim the, like mow the lawn of the veteran's cemetery. I'm owning Robert E. Lee. Because the government took his fucking house. That was like amazing. Now these grounds. Okay, so what about the idea that Lee was a Southern gentleman,

an officer of high regard and moral standards? Nope. Also, no, absolutely not. Didn't hold the door open. Now I do need to point out that Robert Lee never faced a court marshal or any kind of treason trial,

uh, officially because they fucked it up. He was originally meant to be brought up on charges just like Jefferson Davis and countless others. Eventually, the North kind of lost the taste for revenge. They realized that this is going to be really hard, and they just kind of let him get

away with it. He's almost certainly going to face the news. Same with Jefferson Davis. There was a book written about it recently. I haven't got a chance to read it, but effectively it was bureaucracy out of existence. He walked. There's a reason he was facing more than just treason. Robert E. Lee was a war criminal.

Something to point out first, as a military leader, you're responsible for the actions of your soldiers. Fear to control your men is absolutely your fault. And as war crimes trials of the modern age have showed you, you are also legally responsible for things that your soldiers do, assuming that you do not order them not to do so, and then they disregard your orders.

The reason for this is soldiers will do exactly as much as they're willing to get away with. Rarely will a body of soldiers simply disregard standing orders and freelance. We've talked about those on the show as well. That generally isn't outside of a squad-sized element. So a while back, we covered the Battle of the Crater. If you have not listened to it, I encourage

you to go back and do it. Don't watch the movie. Don't watch the movie. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was the ones at the receiving end of that big ol' crater bomb, which did not go the way the Union Army thought it would go, and the aftermath of the Battle of the Crater Confederate soldiers defeated the union. They also executed black union soldiers and the immediate aftermath in cold

blood, openly chaining, kill the N words. Yeah. Uh, afterwards, some, no,

some, uh, black soldiers survived. And, uh, do they also captured a lot of white soldiers? Black soldiers were forced into slavery. Um,

but before that happened, white and black soldiers were forced into slavery. But before that happened, white and black soldiers were forced to parade through a nearby town and get beaten by soldiers and civilians alike. That's a crime. Yeah. Now, he is probably most well-known for his invasion of the Union

leading to the Battle of Gettysburg, which he lost and then turned the tide of the war. Right? Well, during the invasion of Pennsylvania, Confederate troops under his command went on slave hunts, forcefully kidnapping freed black men, lost and then turned the tide of the war right well during the evasion of pennsylvania confederate troops under his command went on slave hunts forcefully kidnapping freed black men women and children and forcing them back into slavery this is not one or two units this isn't small bands of cavalry this isn't dudes freelancing it was every single infantry and cavalry unit formation of the

army of northern virginia which wasn't much of a problem for the rank and file Confederate Army soldiers, I need to point out, because working in the slave patrol was a pretty common former job for most of them. the war wasn't about slavery or white supremacy rank and file Confederate soldiers forced free black people into slavery. Thousands of them. Yeah. They invaded a country. They kidnap people and then they force them into slavery, which again, that's something that ISIS did.

I knew the show topic would suck, but yeah, God damn it. This is, this is the effectively the clean Wehrmacht. He was like, well, the SS and the Wehrmacht were different because the Wehrmacht were just soldiers, even though they committed tons and tons of war crimes.

That's a lot of what you hear. Sure, maybe if it was a war for slavery, Jefferson Davis and the governors of these states, they're all trying to defend slavery, but the regular Confederate Army conscript, he didn't own any. My great-great-grandpappy didn't do nothing wrong. He didn't own slaves.

Maybe he didn't. He probably did this. Yeah. Sorry. Still a scumbag. Yeah. Every once in a while, you have to realize that your descendants

are kind of bastards. Yeah. My grandpa's a huge bastard. I can point that out. Yeah. It's fine. It's not a of bastards. Yeah. My grandpa's a huge bastard. I can point that out. Yeah. It's fine. It's not a personal slight. Yeah.

Unless you're like directly related to a Nazi, then you probably suck. But like, maybe not. I don't know. It's not on you. You don't have to own those sins. Yeah. You should be able to tell people those shortcomings in your family. I do it all the time.

Now, you're probably wondering, well, how did Robert E. Lee know about this? Like how, like he's the general of this whole invasion. Well, not that. So Confederates called these free people contraband. And I do have to point out that these were all free people. The slaves in the area were free. And most of them were not slaves they were just free black people um some of these letters uh so in letters they wrote about contraband some of these letters regarding these contraband people were written by a guy named james longstreet might be kind of familiar for people familiar with the us of war he was robert e lee's direct subordinate so so you say right hand man. Oh definitely. So you either believe that Robert E. Lee

is a talented general, the best general of the war even, but did not know what his direct subordinate and literally thousands of his soldiers were doing. So then you have to admit that he sucked as a general. Or he's a war criminal who pressed people into slavery.

I know what one of those Occam's Razor says. He's a war criminal who pressed people into slavery. Like, I know what one of those, like, Occam's Razor says, he's a war criminal who pressed people into slavery because look at who he was fighting for. And at least a thousand people were captured like this. Nobody's really sure. So I guess in closing, we have to say a few things. There's absolutely no doubt that Rara E. Lee

was a slave owner and a brutal one at that. He owned slaves for decades and attempted to get a court to throw out the will of a dead man so he could own them for even longer. Robert E. Lee was a racist who did not think black people could govern themselves and thought slavery was good for them. Robert E. Lee is a war criminal who either turned a blind eye or directly ordered his men to murder black citizens of the union or kidnap free citizens of the union attempt to press them into slavery we were all taught lies in history class but it's your choice with the wealth of information of the internet at your fingertips to continue to believe them and to defend them i did not do any research that is not freely available to anybody on the internet i'll post the notes in the i'll post the sources in the show notes. So yeah, I mean, and another

thing that people will say is, Robert E. Lee did not hate black people or he wasn't... Maybe he didn't hate black people, but he thought little enough of them to own them as property. Not to mention, you have to think about who, and he voluntarily chose to serve the Confederacy. If he did not change sides, he would have had command of the entire Union Army, almost guaranteed. But he didn't do that.

He volunteered to defend the Confederacy. So there's a few things that you have to recognize when that happens. In the Cornerstone speech, the vice president of the Confederacy. So there's a few things that you have to recognize when that happens. In the cornerstone speech, the vice president of the Confederacy said that the cornerstone of the entire formation of the Confederacy is slavery and the domination of white man over black man.

So if you're going to argue that slavery and cruelty and all these other things are below or not in line with Robert E. Lee's personal beliefs, his personal beliefs were literally defending white supremacy. White supremacy was a cornerstone of his being. Yeah. And if you were from a Southern state, like I know I talked,

we, one of our, our part-time hosts in the show, Rich is from Texas. She took history class in Texas. Um, very talk about the Civil War. Very,

very, very limitedly. Uh, good stuff pretty much and like so if you aren't a history major like you know i am uh and you didn't expand your historical knowledge outside of what you learned in public school there's a very good chance you a lot of what you just heard was pretty shocking to you uh that's not your fault but if you know all these things and you're confronted with all of this and you still choose to believe that his name should be on your school or on your barracks building or on your army base no you've crossed the line to being willfully the defender of a white supremacist and a slave owner and that's not something i can deal with this is you're out take it i'll say nothing nice about you ever again it's true i mean we all knew we all at one point believed lies about history because it's what we were taught exactly like were you taught about the Native American genocide in school?

I know I wasn't. But, you know, then you get people that will say, well, you know, just because they're born here doesn't mean it was their country or whatever. Oh, all the time. Yeah. It's like that's willful disregard of historical fact for no reason. What do you gain other than like feeling a little bit bad about nationalism? I don't know.

I don't get it. But the Robert E. Lee people are even weirder because you can't have nationalism for a country that doesn't fucking exist. More people accepted the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan than accepted the Confederacy of the United States, which was fucking zero. So it's dead. Anyway. As it should be rest in piss now in this show we have a little something called questions from the legion so we got one now nick there's a there's a lot of people on this show that uh know what my uh my problematic fave in history is napoleon bonaparte we did a

whole series about him whenever we worked out his flag was hanging proudly that's right that's right i wrote my capstone report on him i wrote literally 21 pages on the logistic system of the grand army i like napoleon uh yes i'm aware that's a problem horrible racist uh plunged haiti into civil war and revolution um get it i know i'm not stupid what's yours mine's not as big as yours but adolf hitler you're oh wait mine would be bigger than yours no mine's more of a i know a lot of people probably don't know about this guy probably hap arnold is his name what is his real first name? His name isn't really Hap. No. That's not a name. It's not. It's like Chesty Puller.

It's Hap, goddammit. So, Hap Arnold. He was the Army Air Force General. What'd he do that was problematic? Well, other than lying to the president about the failure of the air war during the start of World War II. Oh, that was definitely a big thing. He definitely...

Just lied constantly about it. All the time. We're doing great. And the president knew it was a lie, but he said, you know what? Okay, that's worse. You're the guy. I think that's...

I think your bigger problematic fave in this situation is FDR. No. It's still half-bottled. Because, like, half of it came out with the fucking sweet patch. Yeah, he changed the patch

and the army air because, like, this should fix everything. This looks sweet. Which, in all honesty, I have both patches and I honestly thought the pinwheel was pretty sweet. Did he change it to the pinwheel? No, no, no. It was the pinwheel and then it turned into the... So he made it worse.

Yeah, it turned into that blue with the white star and the fucking wings. So your real problem is... That was the half Arnold. Your problem is theap Arnold's aesthetics. If I was a military general... What better? You're changing. It's going to be a helicopter, dicks. And you're lying.

All soldiers lie. It's what you do. I think it's worse... If you're the president, this general's lying to my face about killing airmen constantly. Keep up the good work. He lied about the air war, and the president was like,

all right, whatever, dude. Keep up the good work, Cap. Yeah. I feel like FDR's the bigger asshole in this situation. Yeah. So that is, I guess that we can go at the end,

the name of Robert E. Lee is a monster. Yeah, I heard he grew up without a knee. You can't blame him on that. Now, thank you everybody

for tuning in this week. Nick, thank you for joining me down this wonderful, wonderful time portal into Americana. I don't know why I fucking record with you.

It's depressing. That's why your computer committed suicide. I don't blame it. First my dad, then my computer. What's next? God damn it. So thank you everybody for tuning in. Please like and

review us through Offset. All the agridio confettis we're going to get. We're going to get a lot of those. We're going to need a few people to teeter-totter that back on our side. Yeah. You can follow us on Twitter at lions underscore buy. You can follow us on Instagram. Hey, I saw that up and

running recently. I was like, oh! Two years, baby! So until next time, take it easy and don't buy slaves. Yeah, please don't.