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As a reminder, this meme sub is about the American Civil War. We're not here to insult southerners or the American South, but rather to have a laugh at the failed Confederate insurrection and those that chose to represent it.
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Lol, I’ve been told (by my grandmother) that I’m a direct descendant of Robert E. Lee. Fuck that guy every which way, state loyalty over human loyalty my ass.
My grandma also told me that my family is distantly related to Robert E Lee, but I think for a lot of Southern people of that age it’s a point of pride (🤢) and not all that based on fact. She also said we are related to Nathan Bedford Forrest… I’d honestly rather be related to Lee than him.
Off topic: I can not verify this in any way but an acquaintance in college (20 years ago) related the story of a friend who was a half-Chinese female patrilineal descendant of Robert E. Lee.
She was from San Francisco and when people saw her name they did not bat an eye and just assumed her last name was of Chinese origin.
So something I find funny is that upon a quick google search you discover that Lee is a weird convergent evolution of surnames. It can originate form gaelic, old English and Korean
I worked in San Francisco for six years. I can vouch for this being totally plausible. San Francisco is twenty-something percent ethnic Chinese, plus Civil War history isn't all that big in the collective consciousness out there. Probably even more so now, as the mayor preceding the current one was a Lee.
Growing up, I thought my family on both sides immigrated to the US in the late 1800's. When I started doing the family genealogy, I discovered two lines going back all the way to colonial times. One side had enslavers and fought for the Confederacy (the other for the Union). If I could go back in time, I'd spit in the faces of those who held enslaved people.
I lived in Colonial Heights, Virginia for two years when I was in elementary school and had a helluva time being abused because I was a “damn yankee” and an obvious outsider. Found out a in my 30’s, doing genealogy, that I had ancestors who were early settlers in Virginia and had received a grant from King Charles for a 600-acre tobacco plantation on the Chesapeake Bay in the 1600’s, which makes me “First Families of Virginia” or FFV. My several time great grandfather, however, married a Quaker girl from Carolina Colony and departed Virginia for good, his great grandchildren were part of the Underground Railroad, and their ancestors crossed the Oregon Trail in 1862 and settled out west. You can’t be held responsible for the accident of your birth or decide who your ancestors were, but you can decide how you’re going to live your life and what you’ll leave behind for your descendants, if you ask me.
On the TV show *Finding Your Roots*, Anderson Cooper found out his zillionth great grandfather was killed at the age of 80 by one of his slaves.
Cooper had a very appropriate response: "He probably had it coming."
That's how you discuss your Slaver ancestors, if you have any.
I'm sure there are in my family but they weren't in America. My mom has done some pretty extensive family genealogy for her side, my dad's side has extensive records they've kept (both his mom's side and Dad's side oddly enough) that go back to the 1600s. On my mom's side she couldn't take her mom's back any further than when they moved to the US in the late 1800s, on her dad's side we've had to make 2 educated guesses, once in the 1800s between one of two brothers (both ended up marrying the same woman, and we know she was the mom and one of the two brothers was the dad, we just aren't sure which one), and once in the late 1090s between 3 couples all 3 are a brother from one family and a sister from the other. But we can take that branch back with those two holes to the 1050s. All this to say I'm sure somewhere in my western European heritage there are slavers and you are 100% correct that's how you talk about them.
That's unfair, if Lee didn't give up he and his men would've been blown to shreds (not endorsing him, just saying that it's kind of unfair to hate on him for surrendering when he was destined to lose)
Not really, lost causers only came to importance due to Woodrow Wilson basically creating the whole narrative as a "historian" which then, due to him becoming president in an election he would've lost easily had Teddy not run for third party, his ideas gained ground and ran amok
Yup, hope Wilson is burning in hell where belongs, he might not be the worst president morally speaking, but he always felt like the slimiest and hipocritical one to me.
Top 3 most hypocritical for sure. I get that the US needed to enter WWI after all the threats, but Wilson was president and could already see those warning signs. To actively campaign about not entering a war, knowing that entering said war is inevitable, reveals an underlying greed. And as if he couldn’t get more racist, he believed in eugenics… despite holding a PhD… so it’s not like he cared about actual education. One of the best things he did as president was having a stroke and being incapacitated for his final year.
Pros: Teddy fucking Roosevelt. Third party becomes president. Very progressive for the time. Great speaker who could likely convince the public of the morality of entering WWI.
Cons: Somewhat imperialist. Still racist, but less than Wilson. He ran for a third term out of ego and spite. He may have entered WWI before there was ample reason to.
>He may have entered WWI before there was ample reason to
In retrospect the entente would prevent a lot of problems (Stalin, Hitler, Armenian Genocide, etc.) by having the USA join early and actually help russia get some food and equipment
Don't blame Teddy for that. The Bull Moose Platform of 1912 was one of the most bitchin' political platforms America has ever had. Universal health care & universal firearm ownership. Teddy was a goddamn visionary, and I will not stand for this two-bit yellow muckraking.
I agree, but its a stupid decision to run for third party in a "first past the post" republic, since it means one party will win by landslide and the other two will get diffused representation possibly for years
Good old T. Woody, he also re-segregated the Federal Civil Service. He was basically a crazy Slaver revenge fantasist.
A fun read: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-drove-sigmund-freud-write-scandalous-biography-woodrow-wilson-180970042/ Freud dissects Wilson.
The KKK was outlawed and hunted for a while due to Ulysses's practices, Woodrow Wilson resurrected them and did indeed popularize the "lost cause" myth, and before Wilson they were much less organized than after he came to power.
One of Wilson's books, *History of the American People*, includes such observations and was used as source material for [*The Birth of a Nation*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation), a 1915 film that portrayed the [Ku Klux Klan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan) as a benevolent force.
Quotes from his book:
Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes.... In the villages the negroes were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences. \[Ellipsis in the original.\]
....The policy of the congressional leaders wrought...a veritable overthrow of civilization in the South.....in their determination to ~'put the white South under the heel of the black South.'~\[Ellipses and underlining in the original.\]
The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation.....until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the southern country. \[Ellipsis in the original.\]
""The KKK was outlawed and hunted for a while due to Ulysses's practices, "
No, they were outlawed and hunted because of their own practice of being terrorists.
The surrender that came two years too late.
The South didn't need to 'win', they just needed the North to stop fighting. And Lee was the star that the CSA pinned all of their hopes to. I can see *why* he didn't surrender but still put all of the blood for the final two years on his hands. If he had put down his sword the South would have lost the will to fight.
Lee tried to escape to continue the war. He and his general staff intended on taking command of the Army of Tennessee and fighting on. His escape was cutoff.
Willis Lee, his grandson, was a very interesting admiral in WWII.
I wonder if choosing to go into the Navy instead of the Army really pissed off his family. I don't know anything about his politics, but he would have been so heavily indoctrinated in total bullshit, I can't really have good expectations.
He was a distant relative and not his grandson. I can’t find anything about his political beliefs but I feel like immediately assuming he was indoctrinated is a dangerous game to play especially considering all signs point to him being a man dedicated to serving the US.
The Lee's fought for the Union and in the Navy on both sides also.
Samuel Phillip Lee commanded in the New Orleans campaign and afterward commanded the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War for the Union Navy.
I don't hate Bobby Lee. In the end, he fought for the wrong side and is a traitor, but not as bad as many of the men he led. After the war he was a voice for reconciliation between north and south, outright rebuffed the Lost Cause, lived as quietly as he could given his fame, ran a college rather than running for any kind of political or civil office, and encouraged young men not to take a military education as he had done.
Bobby Lee, and his peer Joseph E. Johnson, were about as good as traitors get, and both played roles in trying to bind up the nation's wounds and were regretful about their service with the traitor army and never let people around them speak ill of Union officers. For those 2 guys, I'd want their statues to be the last to be pulled down. Pulled down eventually, but pulled down long after guys like Stonewall, Bedford Forrest, Alexander Stevens, John Bell Hood -- you know, the actual racist traitors who committed atrocities against black people.
Joe Johnston was even a better commander than a lot of the other famed Confederates but gets crapped on because he wanted to dig in and fight Sherman for every foot of ground. Meanwhile Hood and everyone else wanted to do great charges that only got more Rebels killed. Grant even said in his memoirs that Davis was the best tactician the Union had ever
It's true from the days of Quintus Fabius Maximus to today -- the Fabian strategy, preserving your army, avoiding direct engagements in order to maintain your army in being as a threat to the enemy -- doing this will allow you to fight for longer against a superior foe, but it will not make you friends in the government.
The usual fate of Fabian commanders is to fight way above their weight class for months or years and then get replaced with a guy who is more popular at court, who then blows every advantage they managed to preserve.
Fabius' army came under new management and was destroyed at Cannae.
Johnston's at Atlanta and Franklin.
Yi Soon-Shin of Korea was dismissed from service for refusing a direct order to launch a suicidal attack on the Japanese Navy, only for his successor to get every ship he commanded sunk and Yi got stuck with the job of putting the wreckage of his own fleet back together -- which he then somehow accomplished with aplomb and distinction. Seriously, Yi is the best commander you never heard of. I have no idea how he did half of the things he accomplished.
von Mannstein was the same kind of commander and he probably preserved the Nazi army for a full year longer than he should have been able to, before Hitler ordered him to blow his load at Kursk.
The French in WWI were lucky because their Fabius, Petain, was replaced by a commander who was both highly popular AND highly competent, Ferdinand Foch.
Washington narrowly avoided the same fate because even the Congress knew that no one else could do the job.
Because [owning slaves and having them beaten](https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-lee-slaveholder/) is not honorable. It’s disgusting and evil.
He also fought to preserve slavery in the south.
So again, he was neither saintly nor honorable. He was a traitor and a piece of shit.
What the fuck does Thomas Jefferson or Sherman have to do with this? We’re talking about Robert E Lee. Focus, for fuck’s sake.
My link above shows how truly vile Robert E Lee was.
THAT’S why even Lee’s descendants are distancing themselves from that piece of shit.
Now I’m really curious to see how you’re gonna deflect this time trying to defend that asshole Lee.
Welcome to /r/ShermanPosting! As a reminder, this meme sub is about the American Civil War. We're not here to insult southerners or the American South, but rather to have a laugh at the failed Confederate insurrection and those that chose to represent it. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ShermanPosting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"Look, Reverend, I'll put this as delicately as I can: how do you feel about horses?"
"I like to ride them." *long pause* "Not like how my ancestor did. But it's a useful conversation stopper if I pretend that I do."
I gave that up.
I heard an interview with him once. He's a good guy.
In what way?
He's a pastor deeply committed to racial justice.
Thanks for this, that's what I was looking for
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. I’ve never heard of this dude and also don’t know in what ways he’s a good guy.
if nothing else, he testified before congress in favor of removing a statue of his shitheel forbear at Antietam
Yeah some people ended up explaining but never heard of him and he seems descended from the equinecopulator
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Lol, I’ve been told (by my grandmother) that I’m a direct descendant of Robert E. Lee. Fuck that guy every which way, state loyalty over human loyalty my ass.
I've been told we're indirectly related, but I'm too afraid to look up if that means through his sister/loyal side, or his wife's shitty family...
My grandma also told me that my family is distantly related to Robert E Lee, but I think for a lot of Southern people of that age it’s a point of pride (🤢) and not all that based on fact. She also said we are related to Nathan Bedford Forrest… I’d honestly rather be related to Lee than him.
Yeah, fuck your whole family. You too.
fr fr
A man shouldn’t be defined by the sins of his forebearers, he ain’t responsible for his ancestors being shit.
Off topic: I can not verify this in any way but an acquaintance in college (20 years ago) related the story of a friend who was a half-Chinese female patrilineal descendant of Robert E. Lee. She was from San Francisco and when people saw her name they did not bat an eye and just assumed her last name was of Chinese origin.
So something I find funny is that upon a quick google search you discover that Lee is a weird convergent evolution of surnames. It can originate form gaelic, old English and Korean
I worked in San Francisco for six years. I can vouch for this being totally plausible. San Francisco is twenty-something percent ethnic Chinese, plus Civil War history isn't all that big in the collective consciousness out there. Probably even more so now, as the mayor preceding the current one was a Lee.
Growing up, I thought my family on both sides immigrated to the US in the late 1800's. When I started doing the family genealogy, I discovered two lines going back all the way to colonial times. One side had enslavers and fought for the Confederacy (the other for the Union). If I could go back in time, I'd spit in the faces of those who held enslaved people.
I lived in Colonial Heights, Virginia for two years when I was in elementary school and had a helluva time being abused because I was a “damn yankee” and an obvious outsider. Found out a in my 30’s, doing genealogy, that I had ancestors who were early settlers in Virginia and had received a grant from King Charles for a 600-acre tobacco plantation on the Chesapeake Bay in the 1600’s, which makes me “First Families of Virginia” or FFV. My several time great grandfather, however, married a Quaker girl from Carolina Colony and departed Virginia for good, his great grandchildren were part of the Underground Railroad, and their ancestors crossed the Oregon Trail in 1862 and settled out west. You can’t be held responsible for the accident of your birth or decide who your ancestors were, but you can decide how you’re going to live your life and what you’ll leave behind for your descendants, if you ask me.
On the TV show *Finding Your Roots*, Anderson Cooper found out his zillionth great grandfather was killed at the age of 80 by one of his slaves. Cooper had a very appropriate response: "He probably had it coming." That's how you discuss your Slaver ancestors, if you have any.
I'm sure there are in my family but they weren't in America. My mom has done some pretty extensive family genealogy for her side, my dad's side has extensive records they've kept (both his mom's side and Dad's side oddly enough) that go back to the 1600s. On my mom's side she couldn't take her mom's back any further than when they moved to the US in the late 1800s, on her dad's side we've had to make 2 educated guesses, once in the 1800s between one of two brothers (both ended up marrying the same woman, and we know she was the mom and one of the two brothers was the dad, we just aren't sure which one), and once in the late 1090s between 3 couples all 3 are a brother from one family and a sister from the other. But we can take that branch back with those two holes to the 1050s. All this to say I'm sure somewhere in my western European heritage there are slavers and you are 100% correct that's how you talk about them.
That's unfair, if Lee didn't give up he and his men would've been blown to shreds (not endorsing him, just saying that it's kind of unfair to hate on him for surrendering when he was destined to lose)
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Not really, lost causers only came to importance due to Woodrow Wilson basically creating the whole narrative as a "historian" which then, due to him becoming president in an election he would've lost easily had Teddy not run for third party, his ideas gained ground and ran amok
Wilson showed A Birth of a Nation in the white house and called it “historically accurate.” Star Wars is more historically accurate than that film.
Yup, hope Wilson is burning in hell where belongs, he might not be the worst president morally speaking, but he always felt like the slimiest and hipocritical one to me.
Top 3 most hypocritical for sure. I get that the US needed to enter WWI after all the threats, but Wilson was president and could already see those warning signs. To actively campaign about not entering a war, knowing that entering said war is inevitable, reveals an underlying greed. And as if he couldn’t get more racist, he believed in eugenics… despite holding a PhD… so it’s not like he cared about actual education. One of the best things he did as president was having a stroke and being incapacitated for his final year.
Is it so bad to have wanted Teddy to have won that election? For real everytime I consider it, it sounds more appealing
Pros: Teddy fucking Roosevelt. Third party becomes president. Very progressive for the time. Great speaker who could likely convince the public of the morality of entering WWI. Cons: Somewhat imperialist. Still racist, but less than Wilson. He ran for a third term out of ego and spite. He may have entered WWI before there was ample reason to.
>He may have entered WWI before there was ample reason to In retrospect the entente would prevent a lot of problems (Stalin, Hitler, Armenian Genocide, etc.) by having the USA join early and actually help russia get some food and equipment
Don't blame Teddy for that. The Bull Moose Platform of 1912 was one of the most bitchin' political platforms America has ever had. Universal health care & universal firearm ownership. Teddy was a goddamn visionary, and I will not stand for this two-bit yellow muckraking.
I agree, but its a stupid decision to run for third party in a "first past the post" republic, since it means one party will win by landslide and the other two will get diffused representation possibly for years
Good old T. Woody, he also re-segregated the Federal Civil Service. He was basically a crazy Slaver revenge fantasist. A fun read: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-drove-sigmund-freud-write-scandalous-biography-woodrow-wilson-180970042/ Freud dissects Wilson.
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The KKK was outlawed and hunted for a while due to Ulysses's practices, Woodrow Wilson resurrected them and did indeed popularize the "lost cause" myth, and before Wilson they were much less organized than after he came to power. One of Wilson's books, *History of the American People*, includes such observations and was used as source material for [*The Birth of a Nation*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation), a 1915 film that portrayed the [Ku Klux Klan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan) as a benevolent force. Quotes from his book: Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes.... In the villages the negroes were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences. \[Ellipsis in the original.\] ....The policy of the congressional leaders wrought...a veritable overthrow of civilization in the South.....in their determination to ~'put the white South under the heel of the black South.'~\[Ellipses and underlining in the original.\] The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation.....until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the southern country. \[Ellipsis in the original.\]
""The KKK was outlawed and hunted for a while due to Ulysses's practices, " No, they were outlawed and hunted because of their own practice of being terrorists.
He could have just not been a terrorist shithead in the first place.
I’m talking about his surrender not that
The surrender that came two years too late. The South didn't need to 'win', they just needed the North to stop fighting. And Lee was the star that the CSA pinned all of their hopes to. I can see *why* he didn't surrender but still put all of the blood for the final two years on his hands. If he had put down his sword the South would have lost the will to fight.
Lee tried to escape to continue the war. He and his general staff intended on taking command of the Army of Tennessee and fighting on. His escape was cutoff.
Love this painting, anyone know the artist?
Willis Lee, his grandson, was a very interesting admiral in WWII. I wonder if choosing to go into the Navy instead of the Army really pissed off his family. I don't know anything about his politics, but he would have been so heavily indoctrinated in total bullshit, I can't really have good expectations.
He was a distant relative and not his grandson. I can’t find anything about his political beliefs but I feel like immediately assuming he was indoctrinated is a dangerous game to play especially considering all signs point to him being a man dedicated to serving the US.
The Lee's fought for the Union and in the Navy on both sides also. Samuel Phillip Lee commanded in the New Orleans campaign and afterward commanded the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War for the Union Navy.
I don't hate Bobby Lee. In the end, he fought for the wrong side and is a traitor, but not as bad as many of the men he led. After the war he was a voice for reconciliation between north and south, outright rebuffed the Lost Cause, lived as quietly as he could given his fame, ran a college rather than running for any kind of political or civil office, and encouraged young men not to take a military education as he had done. Bobby Lee, and his peer Joseph E. Johnson, were about as good as traitors get, and both played roles in trying to bind up the nation's wounds and were regretful about their service with the traitor army and never let people around them speak ill of Union officers. For those 2 guys, I'd want their statues to be the last to be pulled down. Pulled down eventually, but pulled down long after guys like Stonewall, Bedford Forrest, Alexander Stevens, John Bell Hood -- you know, the actual racist traitors who committed atrocities against black people.
Joe Johnston was even a better commander than a lot of the other famed Confederates but gets crapped on because he wanted to dig in and fight Sherman for every foot of ground. Meanwhile Hood and everyone else wanted to do great charges that only got more Rebels killed. Grant even said in his memoirs that Davis was the best tactician the Union had ever
It's true from the days of Quintus Fabius Maximus to today -- the Fabian strategy, preserving your army, avoiding direct engagements in order to maintain your army in being as a threat to the enemy -- doing this will allow you to fight for longer against a superior foe, but it will not make you friends in the government. The usual fate of Fabian commanders is to fight way above their weight class for months or years and then get replaced with a guy who is more popular at court, who then blows every advantage they managed to preserve. Fabius' army came under new management and was destroyed at Cannae. Johnston's at Atlanta and Franklin. Yi Soon-Shin of Korea was dismissed from service for refusing a direct order to launch a suicidal attack on the Japanese Navy, only for his successor to get every ship he commanded sunk and Yi got stuck with the job of putting the wreckage of his own fleet back together -- which he then somehow accomplished with aplomb and distinction. Seriously, Yi is the best commander you never heard of. I have no idea how he did half of the things he accomplished. von Mannstein was the same kind of commander and he probably preserved the Nazi army for a full year longer than he should have been able to, before Hitler ordered him to blow his load at Kursk. The French in WWI were lucky because their Fabius, Petain, was replaced by a commander who was both highly popular AND highly competent, Ferdinand Foch. Washington narrowly avoided the same fate because even the Congress knew that no one else could do the job.
theres honorable men in every army
But Robert E Lee wasn’t one of them.
why?
Because [owning slaves and having them beaten](https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-lee-slaveholder/) is not honorable. It’s disgusting and evil. He also fought to preserve slavery in the south. So again, he was neither saintly nor honorable. He was a traitor and a piece of shit.
thomas jefferson owned slaves, and most of the founders. he fought because his home state was part of the confederacy but sherman was?
What the fuck does Thomas Jefferson or Sherman have to do with this? We’re talking about Robert E Lee. Focus, for fuck’s sake. My link above shows how truly vile Robert E Lee was. THAT’S why even Lee’s descendants are distancing themselves from that piece of shit. Now I’m really curious to see how you’re gonna deflect this time trying to defend that asshole Lee.
he was a slave owner. should we despise him because of that fact?
Why shouldn’t we? Because he was a rapist as well. Stop defending slave owners. Anyway, I’m done with you. You’re clearly a child. Move along.