"Remembering Robert E. Lee's birthday" Topic

Debates on the ACW are heavily influenced by events that happened afterwards. One of the better recent ACW historians has admitted his views on the war were heavily influenced by the Civil Rights movement. Others today view it through the lense of the Reagan Revolution, the culture war and current race relations. While this analysis is helpful in assigning the ACW's place in the development of America, it can hinder understanding how people at the time viewed things.

Robert E. Lee was a traitor to the nation that he served from West Point to April 1861, the same nation that his father had fought to create. Lee was also the loyal son of Virginia and of the south. The opposite can be said of those Virginians and other southerners who chose to support the cause of the Union. The idea that a person could have dual loyalties was not unusual in the mid-19th century south.

You run into similar problems with other issues of the time. People today don't look differentiate between being pro-slavery and being anti-abolitionist, or on the other side being pro-abolition and simply wanting to put the high and mighty slaveowning southern aristocracy in its place. Secession wasn't an unusual concept. Plus we didn't have the whole industrial north v. agricultural south mythology yet.