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Robert E. Lee

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    2/5/2021

    A Southerner who abandoned the Lost Cause (Review)

    West Point historian Ty Seidule's book traces his own personal path from venerating the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy to rejecting it, including questioning the number of monuments to Robert E. Lee at the US Military Academy. 

  • SOURCE: Civil War Memory
    1/3/2021

    Do We Really Need Another Biography of Robert E. Lee?

    by Kevin M. Levin

    Recent discussion of the forthcoming biography of Robert E. Lee by Allen Guelzo shouldn't foreclose the possibility that the book will offer insight because many historians object to Guelzo's participation in Donald Trump's conference on teaching history. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    10/19/2020

    Fraternity that Reveres Robert E. Lee Faces Revolt over Racism

    A Texas chapter of Kappa Alpha called for the national fraternity to repudiate its veneration of the Confederacy, sparking a firestorm among active members and alumni about the place of the Lost Cause and Robert E. Lee in the organization's culture. 

  • SOURCE: National Review
    9/17/2020

    The Mystery of Robert E. Lee

    by Allen C. Guelzo

    The supernatural composure attributed to Robert E. Lee was belied by his many anxieties and obsessions, writes the author of a coming biography of the Confederate general. 

  • SOURCE: The Progressive
    7/7/2020

    The Story Behind the Lee Statue in Richmond, Virginia

    by Peter Rachleff

    Now the time has come for the story of the Workingmen’s Reform Party, the building of Richmond’s City Hall, and the solidarity-based politics of the Black and white members of the Knights of Labor, to come out into the light.

  • 4/26/2020

    Historic Houses Turn to Technology Amid COVID-19 Closures

    by Hana Hancock

    Historic home sites have responded to the COVID crisis by developing online exhibits. More work remains to be done, and many cultural and historical institutions are in financial peril from the crisis, reports HNN's Social Media Editor. 

  • 11/17/19

    Robert E. Lee Wasn't a Hero, He Was a Traitor

    by Michael McLean

    Lee was no hero. He was neither noble nor wise. Lee was a traitor who killed United States soldiers, fought for human enslavement, vastly increased the bloodshed of the Civil War, and made embarrassing tactical mistakes. 

  • 3-15-15

    The Nonsense Myth About Grant and Lee

    by William C. Davis

    Confederate Lee is remembered as the last of the old America and Yankee Grant as the first of the new one. But in fact they were little different from each other.

  • SOURCE: Slate
    1-19-15

    Happy Robert E. Lee Day!

    Why some states can’t celebrate MLK without remembering the Confederate general, too.

  • SOURCE: Yahoo News
    6-29-13

    Debunking the Myths of Gettysburg, 150 Years Later: Historian Allen Guelzo

    For something that happened 150 years ago, the Battle of Gettysburg still generates its share of controversy. And myth, according to historian Allen Guelzo, “grows like weed out of controversy.”Guelzo, a professor of history at - appropriately enough - Gettysburg College, is the author of the recently published “Gettysburg: The Last Invasion.” He spoke with ABC News Political Director Rick Klein about the battle and his book – an exhaustively researched and detailed dive into the pivotal fight of the Civil War.Among the myths of Gettysburg that Guelzo debunks is that the battle was an accident – that Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and George Gordon Meade’s Army of the Potomac merely happened upon each other in the hills of South Central Pennsylvania. “No, it was not really an accident,” said Guelzo. “At least not more of an accident than any battle in the Civil War was.”

  • SOURCE: AP
    6-28-13

    New map may explain Lee's decisions at Gettysburg

    GETTYSBURG, Pa.—On the second day of fighting at Gettysburg, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee listened to scouting reports, scanned the battlefield and ordered his second-in-command, James Longstreet, to attack the Union Army's left flank.It was a fateful decision, one that led to one of the most desperate clashes of the entire Civil War—the fight for a piece of ground called Little Round Top. The Union's defense of the boulder-strewn promontory helped send Lee to defeat at Gettysburg, and he never again ventured into Northern territory.Why did the shrewd and canny Lee choose to attack, especially in the face of the Union's superior numbers?While historians have long wrestled with that question, geographers and cartographers have come up with an explanation, by way of sophisticated mapping software that shows the rolling terrain exactly as it would have appeared to Lee: From his vantage point, he simply couldn't see throngs of Union soldiers amid the hills and valleys....

  • What If Robert E. Lee Accepted Command of the Union Army?

    by Thomas Fleming

    Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.The United States of America trembled on the brink of her greatest tragedy -- a civil war that would kill a million young men. Seven Southern states had seceded after Abraham Lincoln was elected president as an anti-slavery Republican, with scarcely a single Southern vote. They had been unmoved by his inaugural address, in which he warned them that he had taken a solemn oath to preserve the Union -- and reminded them of their shared heritage, witnessed by the numberless patriot graves in every state.

  • A New Way to Look at America's Wars

    by Thomas Fleming

    Via Tumblr.From my early days as an historian, I have always looked for insights that explain the past on a deeper level than a series of merely exciting or disturbing events. I still vividly remember my first experience. I was working on a book about the year 1776 and had file drawers crammed with research. But I felt the need for something fundamental, a pattern of thought that drew the narrative together in a new, more meaningful way.Suddenly the words swarmed into my mind: 1776: Year of Illusions. It was my first encounter with what I now call a disease in the public mind.