this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Growing up: “Robert E. Lee was a good man who fought on the losing side.”
As an adult: “Robert E. Lee was a Confederate and supported slavery.”
Reading a PugJesus post about Robert E. Lee: 🤮
It's really sad how lionized Lee is despite being worse than average even by slaver standards.
Like, history is my center of interest. I am acutely aware that morals and norms are deeply contextual things, and that most people will grow up absorbing the morals and norms of the time and place.
But how can someone be such a piece of shit that their own slave overseer refuses to carry out their orders? The man's job is literally to brutalize slaves, and HE thinks you've gone too far?
I mean, shit, at least lionize some blinkered fanatic like Stonewall Jackson. He was a slaver, but at least he was willing to break the law for the sake of treating slaves more humanely, rather than less humanely. It doesn't absolve him from being a slaver at a time when it was increasingly clear that slavery was not some fundamental piece of existence, but it at least absolves him of being worse than his fucking peers.
Jackson was a 19th century Christian jihadist.
On the other hand... instead of Lee or Jackson, James Longstreet is right there.
I mean, to be fair, Jackson was a 19th century Christian fanatic. He wasn't an advocate for some radically changed theocracy to take charge of the pre-war USA or the Civil War CSA. His fanaticism affected his personal behavior more than his political positions.
Longstreet 'betrayed the cause' by daring to make peace with the fact that they lost the war and Black folk were citizens, that's basically treason to a Lost Causer. Jackson died before any such thing could theoretically happen, so he remains pure.