Book Review: 'Robert E. Lee,' by Allen C. Guelzo - The New York Times - 0 views
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Guelzo finds Lee’s character problematic. He argues that the key to understanding the trajectory of Lee’s life is the troubled relationship he had with his father, the Revolutionary War hero Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee. Light Horse Harry squandered the family patrimony and eventually abandoned his wife and children.
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This early trauma, Guelzo argues, caused young Robert to value stability, security and self-control. The fear of what might happen if his private demons were unleashed compelled Lee to hold ever tighter to a life of probity.
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Guelzo’s analysis of Lee’s leadership during the Civil War is crisp and sound. The early Confederate successes owed as much to Union incompetence as to Lee’s strategic brilliance. Lee’s military setbacks resulted from occasional overconfidence, poor coordination among corps commanders and his reliance on field officers to execute his strategy — a plan that worked well when Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was alive and Gen. James Longstreet present, but not so much when he relied on less competent subordinates, as at Gettysburg, Pa.
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Confederacy. The best strategy, he believed, was to invade the North and demoralize the population to the point of demanding that President Abraham Lincoln seek a peaceful resolution. He almost succeeded at Antietam in Maryland in September 1862, and at Gettysburg in early July 1863.
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Robert E. Lee opposed erecting statues to himself and his brothers-in-arms. His wish is now being fulfilled. As Guelzo reports, since the violent confrontations in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017, the removal of the representations of Confederate heroes, and of Lee in particular, has accelerated. Their names are also vanishing from schools, public parks and thoroughfares.
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It is belated recognition that between 1890 (the year Lee’s equestrian statue was dedicated on Richmond’s Monument Avenue) and the present, these memorials represented less historical tributes to the Lost Cause than contemporary exclamation points to Jim Crow and white supremacy
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Their presence distorted the past and, therefore, poisoned the present. Allen C. Guelzo’s fine biography is an important contribution to reconciling the myths with the facts.