Charlottesville: Robert E. Lee Was a Traitor to the United States

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News

14 August 17

Unite the Right is about defending treason

nite the Right is the organizing name for the group that brought a torchlight march (chanting “white lives matter”) and violent demonstrations to Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11 and 12.

Unite the Right organized those demonstrations to honor the memory of a traitor, Gen. Robert E. Lee.

That’s what their Charlottesville march was about, objecting to the removal of a statue of a traitor to the US. Unite the Right organized these demonstrations in defense of the core value of treason. In a video after the event, Jason Kessler of Unite the Right said he had worked for two months to have a peaceful, free speech rally “in support of white advocacy” working closely with Charlottesville police. In the chaotic aftermath, Kessler accused the Charlottesville police of sabotaging the rally by not providing the pre-arranged security and shutting it down half an hour before it was scheduled to start. He said: “They didn’t give a damn about public safety…. The only thing they cared about was stopping the alt-right…. This is an act of war against the American people, in my mind.” He also accused the police of failing to show up as promised on Friday night when fights broke out.

In April, the Charlottesville City Council voted (3-2) to remove and sell a bronze statue of General Lee on horseback from Lee Park in downtown Charlottesville. The Council also voted unanimously to rename the park as Emancipation Park. Those votes triggered a series of protests by right wing groups including the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

In May, in a lawsuit brought by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups, a federal judge delayed the removal of the 1924 Lee statue for six months. This order remains in force while the lawsuit is pending. The judge allowed the renaming of Lee Park to stand, as well as changing the name of a park named after Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson to Justice Park.

At its dedication in Lee Park on May 21, 1924, Edwin Alderman, president of the University of Virginia, said of the General Lee statue:

Here it shall stand during the ages at the center of our lives, teaching, through the medium of beauty, the everlasting lesson of dignity and character, of valor and unselfish service … And now, in this hour of reunion and reconciliation, we know how … he symbolized the future for us as it has come to pass, and bade us to live in it, in liberal and lofty fashion, with hearts unspoiled by hate and eyes clear to see the deeds of a new and mightier day.

In 1924, “this hour of reunion and reconciliation” was at the peak of Jim Crow, the peak of segregation, the peak of separate and decidedly unequal, and the peak of racial lynching across the South. 1924 was also a peak time for racist white supremacy, the year the KKK marched in hooded regalia in Montpelier, Barre, and Northfield, Vermont.

1924 was not a time when polite society thought of Gen. Robert E. Lee as a traitor to his country, the United States. More likely he was thought of as a heroic leader against “the War of Northern Aggression.” But the Civil War was a sectional rebellion, a rebellion every bit as much as the American Revolution, where the rebels ran the risk of being hanged.

The liberal magnanimity of Abraham Lincoln spared Robert E. Lee from the noose he so clearly earned. As a graduate of the United States Military Academy and a military officer, Lee acted consistently with his oath of loyalty to his country. In April 1861, Lee knowingly and deliberately committed treason by joining and fighting for the Confederacy. The Constitution that Lee swore to uphold is clear on the point in Article III, section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Some traitors treated more courteously than others

When Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, he was taken into custody and promptly released, paroled as a prisoner of war.

On May 29, 1865, President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon “to persons who had participated in the rebellion against the United States.” There were exceptions to this blanket pardon, and Lee was among them. On June 13, 1865, Lee wrote the President seeking his full pardon:

Being excluded from the provisions of amnesty & pardon contained in the proclamation of the 29th Ulto; I hereby apply for the benefits, & full restoration of all rights & privileges extended to those included in its terms. I graduated at the Mil. Academy at West Point in June 1829. Resigned from the U.S. Army April '61. Was a General in the Confederate Army, & included in the surrender of the Army of N. Va. 9 April '65.

On October 2, 1865, Lee signed the Amnesty Oath required to restore his citizenship. Once again, Lee swore to “faithfully support, protect, the Constitution of the United States, and the Union of the States thereunder….” But Lee’s oath was diverted, he was not pardoned, and his citizenship not restored. In 1970, Lee’s Amnesty Oath was found among State Department records. In 1975, Congress restored his citizenship, effective June 13, 1865 (more than three months before Lee signed the Amnesty Oath) and President Gerald Ford signed the fiction into law, saying:

General Lee's character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride.

Not everyone is mystified by the imaginary image of Robert E. Lee. The staunchly conservative National Review magazine published this clear-eyed assessment of Lee in June:

Lee was no hero; he fought for an unjust cause, and he lost. Unlike the Founding Fathers (even the slaveholders among them), he failed the basic test of history: leaving the world better and freer than he found it.

Whatever saintly qualities or myths are attributed to Robert E. Lee, he was plain and simple a traitor to his country. In 1865 he would likely have received his pardon as a traitor, but by 1975 his hagiography was in place and the South had long since risen again. Gerald Ford was hardly unique in whitewashing a traitor who might well have been justly hanged. And he foreshadowed our present host of alt-right super-patriots so intent on making America great again by defending its greatest traitors.

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William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.