Defamation of a Gallant Soldier, Selfless Patriot, and True Christian
January 19 will mark the 218th anniversary of the birth of Robert E. Lee in 1807, one of the most respected and revered military leaders in American history. That respect and reverence extends over most of the world, wherever military leadership is studied. Robert E. Lee’s birthday was once celebrated as an official holiday in most Southern states.
The number of holidays or commemorative days for Robert E. Lee has dropped considerably, however, in the last two decades. Only four states now commemorate Lee as an official holiday or observance: Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Alabama and Mississippi celebrate a combined Lee and Martin Luther King holiday, and Arkansas now has only a commemorative day, but these and others have become largely invisible in politics and the media.
The drive for political correctness against any Southern heritage holiday or symbol increased dramatically following the shooting massacre of nine African-Americans at a Charleston, South Carolina, church on June 17, 2015. This was the deadliest mass shooting in South Carolina history. The perpetrator, Dylan Root, 21, posted an anti-black manifesto and a photo of a Confederate Battle Flag and other Southern emblems on his website. On a list of 160 Confederate monuments removed or destroyed through 2023, only five occurred before 2015.
Among the most famous removals of Robert E. Lee monuments have been:
New Orleans, May 19, 2017; Richmond, Virginia, September 8, 2021; and Charlotteville, Virginia, on July 10, 2021, after a four-year political and legal battle.
The Charlottesville removal was the ultimate result of an anti-Lee/Confederate campaign beginning in February 2017 and resulting in a leftist inspired mob clashing against a rightest-led pro-Lee/statue rally to save the monument on August 12, 2017. Almost four years later, a Judge ordered the statue removed. It was removed on July 10, 2021, and melted down on October 27, 2023. The Charlottesville clash was a favorite campaign issue used by Joe Biden, invoking the shadow of Nazi Germany, in his “successful” 2020 presidential campaign against President Donald Trump.
Most recently, December 20, 2023, the Confederate Memorial Monument at Arlington National Cemetery, representing a sentiment of reconciliation beginning under President McKinley (1897-1901) was. removed. Sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and unveiled in June 2014 by President Woodrow Wilson, approximately 486 Confederate still rest at the site, which is on the former land of Robert E. Lee.
Anti-Confederate and anti-Lee rhetoric and monument removals also experienced a substantial increase following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 26, 2020. This resulted in approximately 2,000 protest rallies against “police brutality” across the United States, typically organized by Black Lives Matter and supplemented by “Antifa” radicals. Some of these rallies may have been peaceful, but property damage by arson and looting ran over $2 billion, and at least 19 people died as a result of the riots. The political atmosphere became highly accommodative to destroying historical monuments, especially Confederate or Southern-related monuments and demonizing Confederate leaders and soldiers.
The summer of 2020 George Floyd protests brought attention to U.S. Army installations named for Confederate soldiers. This resulted in the January 1, 2001, National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal year 2021, requiring removal of all names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America (CSA) or any person who served voluntarily with the CSA from all assets of the Defense Department within three years.
President Trump vetoed the 2021 NDAA Act, but his veto was overridden. A Naming Commission, headed by U.S. Navy Admiral Michelle Howard was formed in March 2021, and its recommendations were ordered to be implemented by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on October 6, 2021. These implementations were complete on October 1, 2022. For example, Fort Gordon in Georgia, which was originally named for Confederate Lt. General John Brown Gordon, who later became Governor and then U.S. Senator for Georgia. Gordon was highly praised for his character and leadership by President Teddy Roosevelt. Fort Gordon was renamed Fort Eisenhower. I doubt seriously if former President Dwight D. Eisenhower would have approved of removing Gordon’s name. Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty, etc. The eight-member Commission was overwhelmingly anti-Confederate and unappreciative of Southern culture.
On June 11, 2020, General Jack Keane, U.S. Army (ret.) appeared on Shannon Bream’s Fox News show. Although he weekly agreed with President Trump’s position not to rename Army bases named for Confederate generals, for some reason, he went out of his way to condemn Confederates, including Robert E. Lee as traitors. This was in the midst of wave after wave of wanton mob destruction of not only Confederate monuments but American monuments generally. Assuming a four-star general would be an informed military analyst, I was shocked that he apparently knew so little about what the Southern cause really was—independence for a number of strong economic, taxation, and Constitutional reasons—and that he would specifically slander Robert E. Lee as a traitor.
President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), a former President of Princeton University, who wrote the five-volume, scholarly, History of the American People, explained the Northern overemphasis on the vastly misunderstood slavery issue:
“It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery…”
Keane apparently knows nothing about the issues of secession—that followed the pattern and reasoning of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. It was taught as legal in West Point text books—such as William Rawle's A View of the Constitution of the United States of America, and others. In ratifying the Constitution, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia made a specific point to reserve their right of secession, and the other states agreed to it. Even Lincoln supported the right of secession in an 1848 statement. Several New England states threatened secession five times because they felt their power was threatened by the Louisiana Purchase (1802), the Embargo Act (1807), the admission of Louisiana (1812), the War of 1812 (in 1814), and the annexation of Texas (1845), leading to the Mexican War.
Jack Keane is currently Chairman of the Institute for the Study of War, which has advocated Ukraine War policies that have nearly destroyed Ukraine and the Ukrainian Army in order to weaken Russia so that the U.S. has clear and uncontested full spectrum dominance over the world. Keane is a neocon who apparently believes America has a moral right to dominate the world by whatever means, which includes fighting to the last Ukrainian.
There is no question that the celebration of Lee’s birthday has suffered because of changing political agendas, although these political agendas are based on questionable political expediency, false historical narratives, and increasing ignorance of history.
Lee did not favor slavery before, during, or after the “Civil War” that took the lives of over 850,000 military personnel and civilians from 1861 to 1865. He believed the institution of slavery was a corrupting scourge to both slaves and slave owners. He freed the slaves he inherited from the estate of his wife’s father, George Washington Custis, probated in 1858, but not before making sure the legacies of the will could be accomplished, and the emancipated families had sufficient circumstances, training, and experience to earn a living on their own in late December 1862. But facts and sound reason do not count for much in today’s hysterical legislative environment. Political correctness has created a coercive and unjust civil rights environment comparable to the Reconstruction era of 1865 to 1877 and the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
During Eisenhower’s eight years in office, he kept a picture of Robert E. Lee on his wall in the White House the whole time. On August 1, 1960, a New York dentist, Dr. Leon W. Scott, wrote an angry letter to Eisenhower excoriating him for having that picture of Lee in his White House office. Here was Eisenhower’s answer written on August 9:
Dear Dr. Scott:
Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War between the States the issue of secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.
General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.
From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee's caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation's wounds once the bitter struggle was over, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.
Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.
Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is no doubt that African Americans have suffered much and gained much in the course of their American history. But they should not allow themselves to be exploited by ambitious and devious scoundrels, who care only for their votes and little for truth and their prosperity and general advancement. In the last decades, Neo-Marxist agitators and cowardly politicians have managed to magnify not only real tragedies affecting African Americans but also create fake ones to justify cultural genocide of anything Southern. Thus all Americans are suffering from a hate and vengeance driven agenda that only the shallowest politicians can believe will result in racial understanding and healing. Besides cultural destruction and increased tension, it will only result in more bad government.
America’s crisis does not demand more vote-buying and exploitive cash-raising schemes and certainly not more ignorant demagoguery. It does not demand sacrificing our freedom, our culture, and true history to coercive government, anti-Christian multiculturalism, and cowardly political correctness—among the worst of which is nation-destroying Marxist Critical Race Theory and its malicious and distorted use of “diversity” “equity,” and “inclusion” (DEI) indoctrination. What we need are leaders with courage, character, common sense, and wisdom. That is why we need to remember Robert E. Lee and many others like him as examples to ourselves and our posterity.
Following Lee’s death at his home in Lexington, Virginia, on October 12, 1870, former Confederate President Jefferson Davis gave a eulogy of Robert E. Lee at a Memorial meeting in Richmond on November 3. This was probably the largest gathering of Confederate generals and officers since the end of the war. In the course of his speech, he gave this praise of Lee:
“This good citizen, this gallant soldier, this great general, this true patriot, had yet a higher praise than this or these; he was a true Christian.”
Lee himself might have counseled us by the words of 2 Timothy 2:3, quoted by Jefferson Davis at Lee’s funeral:
“Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”
Responding to public praise for his stunning military victories, Lee said:
“I tremble for my country when I hear of confidence expressed in me. I know too well my weakness, that our only hope is in God.”
When told that his chaplains were praying for him daily Lee responded:
“I can only say that I am nothing but a poor sinner, trusting in Christ alone for salvation.”
John Brown Gordon, Confederate Lieutenant General and later Governor of Georgia and U.S. Senator had this to say about Lee:
“Intellectually, he was cast in a giant mold. Naturally he was possessed of strong passions. He loved the excitement of war. He loved grandeur. But all these appetites and powers were brought under the control of his judgment and made subservient to his Christian faith. This made him habitually unselfish and ever willing to sacrifice on the altar of duty and in the service of his fellows…He is an epistle, written of God and designed by God to teach the people of this country that earthly success is not the criterion of merit, not the measure of true greatness.”
In 1866, Henry Timrod (1829-1867) closed his Ode at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston with these lines:
“Stoop, angels, thither from the skies! There is no holier ground
Than where defeated valor lies, by mourning beauty crowned.”
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East. 
