|
?:reviewBody
|
-
A 2015 Tumblr post arguing that after the Civil War, Confederate Army Gen. Robert E. Lee disassociated himself from his cause received renewed attention amid a national controversy about the preservation of Confederate statues and monuments in August 2017: The original post read: On 5 August 2017, a second Tumblr user, girly-friday, expanded the claim to include Confederate President Jefferson Davis and added citations: However, Judith Giesberg -- a history professor at Villanova University and the editor of the Journal of the Civil War Era -- questioned the citations made in the post, telling us, I would not read those documents that way at all. Giesberg and two other experts we contacted took issue with several of revelation19 and girly-friday's claims, which we have broken down below: Robert E. Lee refused to wear his Confederate uniform after the war and was not buried in it: TRUE One of the citations girly-friday linked to was the statement Lee reportedly made when declining an invitation from the Gettysburg Identification Meeting committee, which was quoted in The South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 10, published in 1911: Barton A. Myers, an associate professor of history at Washington & Lee College -- the university where Lee served as president from 1865 until his death in 1870 -- agreed that Lee definitely discouraged the commemoration of Civil War battle sites such as Gettysburg. He really did believe that those were public events and public commemorations that might cause additional animosity between the North and the South, Myers said, adding that Lee was also facing federal treason charges after being indicted by a grand jury. He was never formally tried by a jury, but U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at one point threatened to resign his commission if Lee was ever arrested. Not only did Lee not wear his uniform in public, Myers said, but the post is correct in stating that he was not buried in it. His U.S. citizenship was not restored until 22 July 1975 by then-President Gerald Ford. Mourners at Lee's funeral were barred from wearing their own Confederate uniforms: UNPROVEN A photograph credited to the American Civil War Museum reportedly shows mourners attending Lee's funeral on 15 October 1870 in their Confederate uniforms. But Historian and author Kevin Levin told us in a phone interview that he would be shocked if that were the case: Giesberg said: We contacted the museum seeking more information about the photograph, but have yet to receive a response. Lee called the Confederate battle flag a flag of treason: FALSE Levin refuted this claim from the post, while saying that -- despite urging both sides to move on in public -- Lee hid many of his own feelings following the war: Lee's testimony before the Joint Committeee on Reconstruction on 17 February 1866, also left it unclear whether he disavowed his Confederate service, since he was never asked that directly. Jefferson Davis felt the same way as Lee and disavowed his Confederate service: FALSE In arguing that Davis had renounced his ties to the Confederacy, girly-friday cited a quote from his 1881 book The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 1: That statement, Giesberg said, gave her pause: Similarly, Levin said that Davis was likely speaking metaphorically, since the Confederate battle flag had not gained acceptance as a public symbol at the time he published the book: Davis's book gave a revisionist history of the Confederate states' rational for seceding from the Union, said Levin: Levin added that Davis had rebranded himself as a symbol of what was lost. Besides repositioning its cause as a states' rights issue Davis mounted a popular tour of the South after the war alongside his daughter Varina Anne Davis, who became known as the daughter of the Confederacy -- a much more visible position than Lee. Levin said: Giesberg noted that Davis' book was one of the earliest so-called 'official histories of the Confederacy' to attempt to redefine Southern grievances, and pointed to a similar shift in rhetoric from his vice-president Alexander Stephens, who went from calling slavery a cornerstone in 1861 to saying seven years later that the Confederate states had fought against the Demon of Centralism, Absolutism, and Despotism. Myers also drew a link between Lee's public reputation and Davis' ability to recast himself after the war:
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}