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Originally Posted by JonInKC
And here's my problem with this whole deal...who decides where the line is drawn? As someone pointed out, you can't erase history. It sure seems that some people want to white wash (no pun intended) history though.
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Well in this country, we elect officials who preside either as executive actors or in some legislative body. Those people vote on things as a group and it's usually majority rule, but not always. In some cases, you have leaders of educational institutions who can make those decisions on their own or with an appointed board of some sort. Generally speaking, that's who draws these lines.
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I have a hard time labeling Lee as a traitor. He was American as they came, but there was no way in hell he was going to take up arms against his home state of Virginia.
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There has been considerable effort to sanitize the record where it comes to Lee. At the end of the day, actions speak louder than words. He took up arms against the United States in a war regarding slavery and Lee himself owned slaves and there is considerable debate as to whether he interceded against his father in law who wished to release his own slaves upon his death to prevent that release.
Fredrick Douglas upon Lee's death wrote: "“We can scarcely take up a newspaper . . . that is not filled with nauseating flatteries” of Lee, from which “it would seem . . . that the soldier who kills the most men in battle, even in a bad cause, is the greatest Christian, and entitled to the highest place in heaven.”
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...In 1866, one former slave at Arlington House, Wesley Norris, gave his testimony to the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Mr. Norris said that he and others at Arlington were indeed told by Mr. Custis they would be freed upon his death, but that Lee had told them to stay for five more years.
So Mr. Norris said he, a sister and a cousin tried to escape in 1859, but were caught. “We were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty,” he said.
And when the overseer declined to wield the lash, a constable stepped up, Mr. Norris said. He added that Lee had told the constable to “lay it on well.”
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No. I don't think he's that complicated at all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/u...s.html?mcubz=0
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