General Robert E. Lee

Paper Summary:

This paper states that more than any man in American history, General Robert E. Lee earned a simultaneous reputation as a hero and a traitor. The paper explains that Lee was a general who did not believe war was a solution to political problems, a hero of the secessionists and a born aristocrat who believed that the Union, despite its Jeffersonian ideals of democracy, should be kept intact. The author believes that, against his better practical instincts, Lee was forced to accept his state's (Virginia) decision to withdraw from the Union and the Confederacy's decision to pin its highest hopes on his skills as a military leader.

From the Paper:

"Lee was in Virginia and was not under active orders at the moment when Virginia finally decided to leave the Union. This also was the precise moment when Lincoln, via Francis P. Blair and Lee's military mentor General Winfield Scott, offered him command of the army that was being formed in response to the President's call to arms. It was agonizing for Lee to decide to leave the army he had served for thirty-two years, the tradition established by his father and other heroes of the Revolution, and follow his state on what he believed was an unwise course. Yet "he believed he had no other option". He resigned his commission with the army, and within a few days accepted command of the newly created "military and naval forces of Virginia".

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