First they tore down Confederate monuments. Next they’ll come for the Founders.

by Matt Walsh,

The city of New Orleans completed its purge of its own history last week when a statue of Robert E. Lee was torn down.

Throngs of historically illiterate people stood by and cheered as a monument to one of this country’s greatest generals was destroyed. On social media, many more applauded the move, demonstrating a level of disrespect and contempt for General Lee that his enemies on the battlefield did not even have. When General Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, the victors treated Lee and his men with dignity and honor. It took 150 years for Lee to become nothing but a cowardly, racist traitor, as he’s been described by the noted historians on Twitter.

I have long been of the opinion that one must refrain from forming concrete opinions of historical events and historical figures if one has never read a history book. And if the pitchfork mob would stop for a moment to read a book about Robert E. Lee, they would learn that he was far from the slobbering, slave-owning, treasonous bigot they make him out to be. Indeed, Lee never purchased a single slave. The slaves he inherited from his wife’s family, he freed long before the end of the war. Lee considered slavery to be a “moral and political evil,” which means he condemned it in harsher terms than even many of his northern counterparts ever did.

No, he did not consider the black race to be completely equal to the white race, but — contrary to the cartoonish portrayal of the Northern warriors for racial equality that you get from public schools — hardly anybody on either side believed in true racial equality. Lincoln thought the black race to be in every way inferior (“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races”), but, rather than enslaving them, he preferred shipping them all back to Africa. Lincoln also did not favor fighting a war to end slavery (“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it”), and in that way his opinion of the peculiar institution was practically identical to Robert E. Lee’s.

But, I’m told, that is all irrelevant. As the argument goes, anyone who fought for the South was complicit in slavery, and therefore must not be honored. Their personal valor and heroism does not matter. That they were fighting to protect their families from the army that was marching through their towns and burning their homes and fields does not matter. That General Lee was a man of great dignity does not matter.

Yes, Robert E. Lee was a reluctant secessionist and, though he opposed it, he fought for a side that supported slavery. If that is enough to condemn him, then he and his confederates will not be the only ones tossed on the bonfire of history. Next, they’ll come for the Founders. Once every Confederate memorial and statue has been demolished, the mob will fully set its eyes on those racist, slaveholding rebels who fought a treasonous battle of secession only 90 years prior. You can count on it.

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