Historiography on General Robert Lee - Essay Example

If you fix the places I made blue s and add your page numbers in it should be just fine. April 2009 Historian's treatment ofLee There is a vast amount of information regarding historian's treatment of Robert E. Lee. The interpretations of him as a man and a general evolved and changed over time. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, historians dealt with Lee as with most other participants in the war. Although Lee generally was treated positively, his faults also were discussed. This treatment was consistent with newspapers treatment of Lee during the war itself - when Lee was rivaled or surpassed by Stonewall Jackson as the most heroic Confederate general. Both men became idols after their deaths made them martyrs for the Confederacy. Books published in those first years after the war treated Lee favorably but found fault with his actions at Gettysburg and Malvern Hill - and sometimes Antietam, Fredericksburg and the Severn Day's battle. While Jackson, Longstreet, Joseph E. Johnston, Albert Sidney Johnston and others received generally favorable treatment, Richard Ewell and Jubal Early were universally criticized for their timidity on the first day at Gettysburg. These early books included James Dabney McCabe Jr.'s Life and campaigns of Gen. Robert E. Lee (1866), William Swinton's The Twelve Decisive Battle of the War (1867), and Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac (1882), John Esten Cooke's A Life of Gen. Robert E Lee (1871), and Edward A. Pollard's Lee and His Lieutenants (1867). In an 1866 book, The Lost Cause, Pollard concluded that Lee's influence on the Confederacy's general affairs was negative (Bruce 1866 pp.133). After his death on October 12, 1870, however, Lee became a southern and then a national deity or idol. Previously second to Jackson in the literature and hearts of the South, Lee was elevated to the flawless southern embodiment of The Lost Cause. No criticism of him went unchallenged, and the South's other leading generals were seen as a threat to Lee's exaltation, and thus became fair game for censure and condemnation. One of the major reasons for Lee's elevation to god-like status was that former Confederate officers associated with Lee could promote themselves through idolization of Lee. Wartime incompetents Jubal Early and William Nelson Pendleton were among the leaders of the pro-Lee and anti-Longstreet cabal. (Piston, 1998, pp. 47-51). "When the Civil War ended, Early and Pendleton were generally viewed as failures. For Early and Pendleton, the worship of Lee seems to have given meaning to otherwise empty lives." Ok to add the above in since I'm not using footnotes/endnotes Also, what pages (if any) should I reference Ok to add it in! Just reference it in the same style as throughout the paper. Early had faltered at Gettysburg, lost the Shenandoah Valley and his corps, had been relieved of command by Lee, and fled the country for a few years after the war. Through his pro-Lee efforts, he hoped to cover up his own disastrous record and spread the blame elsewhere. He became the power and brains behind the anti-Longstreet movement with his famous January 19, 1872 Lee Birthday Speech at Washington and Lee University. (Gallagher, 1996, pp. 37-73) In that speech, which was widely distributed as a "Lost Cause" pamphlet, Early created the myth that Lee had ordered Longstreet to attack at dawn on the second day at Gettysburg. (Piston, 1987, p. 118) Early proved to be a better propagandist than general and dominated the pro-Lee cult for three decades as an author and as president of three Lee-worshiping organizations, the Lee Monument Association, the Association of the Army of Northern Virginian, and the Southern Historical Society. (Gallagher, 1996, pp. 90-91). (Need to add this to Works Cited page). Pendleton furthered the myth that Lee ordered Longstreet to attack at dawn in his 1873 Lee Birthday speech, which contradicted his 1863 after-action report to Lee.1 (Piston, 1987, pp. ) Below you give numerous pages do I list all of them There are numerous places that this comes up, you can pick one or list all page numbers. Another Minister, J. William Jones, published his idolizing Personal Reminiscences of General Robert E. Lee in 1874, gained control (with Early) of the Southern Historical Society, and used its periodic Papers to worship Lee and damn his critics from 1876 through 1887. (Piston, 1987, p. 130) Unabated praise for Lee continued in hundreds of books and articles published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jefferson Davis referred to the Southern Historical Society Papers as resolving the issue of responsibility for Gettysburg, implying that the responsibility for failure was Longstreet's. Among other noteworthy and influential books in this period was Robert E. Lee Jr.'s Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (1904). Praise for Lee knew no bounds in this period; he was enshrined as a military genius and obedient and loyal general, faultless and perfect. Lee's permanent elevation is found in the classic seven volumes written by Douglas Southall Freeman, the four-volume, Pulitzer Prize winning R.E. Lee: A Biography (1934-35) and the three-volume Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command (1942-44). During his twenty-five years of working on his historical works, he revered Lee and saluted his statue on the way in to work every morning. In 1914 he said of Lee that; "He entered upon the year 1863 with a series of victories unbroken from the time he had taken commandHe ended the year with the greatest opportunity of his career lost through the blunders and worse of his subordinates Lee seemed then the very incarnation of knighthood."2 (it's attributed to Freeman, you don't have to put anything (Freeman, , p. xxxiv.xl) In his volumes of documentation, Freeman found Lee to be perfect in very nearly every way. According to Freeman, Lee had in his veins the blood of Virginia's finest families. He was brilliant, humane, prescient, intelligent, and virtually flawless. Like some of his nineteenth-century predecessors, Freeman cited Lee's failure to criticize Longstreet's conduct at Gettysburg as proof of Lee's great Christian morality, instead of as evidence that Lee had in fact found no fault with Longstreet's performance. In a nutshell, R.E. Lee demonstrated how great Lee was, and Lee's Lieutenants described how all his subordinates had let him down. (Piston, 1987, pp. 174-176) It was, however, inevitable that the dichotomy between the image of the flawless Lee and the reality of the devastating defeat of his Confederate army would become the subject of more adverse critical historical analysis. One of the first break-thoroughs was the 1907 publication of Confederate Brigadier General E. Porter Alexander's classic and balanced Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative. All of them, including Lee, received both plaudits and negative criticism for what Alexander deemed their respective strengths and weaknesses. Even more valuable is the updated 1989 printing of the original version of Alexander's work, Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander, which was retrieved and edited by Gary W. Gallagher.3 (this was just a citation in Gallagher's works. You do not have to attribute a citation at all Among the many valuable insights of Alexander's works are his criticisms of Lee's decision to fight a battle he could not win at Antietam, many of Lee's tactical decision at Gettysburg, and Lee's failure to coordinate his activities with those of Confederate forces unsuccessfully defending Vicksburg and Tennessee in 1863 and Atlanta in 1864. Another British military historian, Basil Liddell Hart, wrote two devastating mid-1930s articles critical of Lee in the Saturday Review of Literature. In "Lee: A Psychological Problem," he found Lee to be mediocre, overly concerned about Virginia (instead of the entire Confederacy), and guilty of bleeding the South to death with his suicidally aggressive tactics.4 (Hart, 1934, p. 365) In "Why Lee Lost Gettysburg," Hart criticized Lee as a strategist for failing to recognize the Confederacy's limited man-power resources.5 (Hart, 1935, p. 561) Thomas L. Connelly followed up Williams' work with a 1969 Civil War History article criticizing and detailing Lee's ignorance of the western theatre, his obsession with defending Virginia, and his persistent uniformed demands for reinforcements from the West and Deep South.6 (pp. 50-64) Next, in a 1973 article in the same publication, Connelly described the image of Lee historians had created. In particular, he argued that "Lee was a symbol of victory in a defeated region" and cited 1880s Southern Historical Society Papers articles seriously contending that Lee had never lost (Antietam and Gettysburg being strategic withdrawals).7 (pp. 50-64) (it's fine to leave it as the pages it's listed as. Finally, in his remarkable The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society (1977), Connelly traced the idealized historiography on Lee's life and especially his Civil War activities. He described the myth of The Lost Cause created by former Confederate officers who made Lee, Virginia, the Confederacy and themselves look good by praising Lee and attaching Longstreet. Connelly descried how Early and Jones had falsified documents and cut deals with other authors in their quest to praise Lee and Early and to damn Longstreet.8 (Gallagher, 1996, pp. ) (Do I need a page number here) as a general idea quote you do not have to give a specific page number. For example, they had published Jeb Stuart's report on Gettysburg, deleted a paragraph in which Stuart had criticized Early for failing to watch for Stuart's cavalry, been caught in their fraud by Stuart's former adjutant, and then struck a bargain with him calling for no aspersions on either Stuart or Early and placement of full blame for Gettysburg on Longstreet.9 (Connelly, 1997, pp. 87-89). Connelly also explained how Lee's son Robert and the Reverend Jones promoted Lee as a national, not just a southern, hero by deleting documents or portions of documents written by Lee that reflected pro-slavery or anti-northern views. Others who followed Connelly's lead in exposing the deliberate but flawed deification of Lee were William Garrett Piston in his Lee's Tarnished Lieutenant: James Longstreet and His Place in Southern History (1987)10 (Piston, 1987, p. ) Again, do I need page numbers here and Alan T. Nolan in Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History (1991)11 (Do I need page number/s) The most recent criticism of Lee's overly aggressive approach was John D.McKenzie's Uncertain Glory: Lee's Generalship Re-examined (1997).12 (Do I need to put an in-text citation and list this in works cited page) these are all not specific quotes from these books, but references to the general book. Just the intext name of book is sufficient. James Mc Pherson in his book, Ordeal by Fire touches on the character that is Robert E. Lee. Using the Gettysburg incident as an example - there are some noteworthy discussions about McPherson's interpretation of the events there. As McPherson failed to make notes as to where he was getting his information, we can only assume that he used the classically accepted histories that have already been discussed. No doubt taking into account the previous information that Early and Pendleton provided in their speeches and propaganda, McPherson (2001) seems to have taken to heart the belief that Lee had ordered Longstreet to attack at dawn, and Longstreet failed his commander. "Because Longstreet did not believe in Lee's plan, his leadership of the attack lacked enthusiasm: and because the most direct route to the attack point was under ovservation from a Union signal station, Longstreet's troops had to countermarch on a different route and did not attack until late afternoon." 13 (pp. ... I need to research this is the updated text that I have) This myth that Lee ordered Longstreet to attack at dawn by this point is engrained in history it has become fact even though it directly conflicts with Pendleton's 1863 after-action report. McPherson does not notate his information, so it cannot be determined where he got this information. It is from any one of several probable sources that accepted Early's speech as fact even though at the time it was not accepted as such. Lee had grown to mythic proportions, and no one could stop the runaway train. While McPherson's portrayal of Lee is not supported by referencing, neither is his portrayal an biased homage to a person. McPherson shows that Lee had faults, as in his showcasing of the conflict with Longstreet; "Longstreet again pleaded with Lee to maneuver around but Lee would not hear of it."14 (pp. ) and "Over Longstreet's objections Lee decided."21 (pp. ) McPherson also notes Lee's failures in a clear and objectionable way. McPherson says that Lee's overruling of Longstreet's requests was a poor decision, and in an "rare failure of insight into the psychology of his opponents"21, (pp. ) Lee continued as he thought best. McPherson does note that after Lee's surrender, when Grant was shaking his hand Grant acknowledged that he felt sad and depressed at the defeat of such a great opposing force who "had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause."15 (pp. ) McPherson further uses a colonel in the Union army's explanation to highlight the power of the force that was Lee. The colonel mentioned that he could hardly believe Lee had surrendered and had a sort of impression that we should fight him all our lives.16 (pp. ) Something that would have never been allowed by McPherson's predecessors was the demonstration of the heartbreak Lee must have felt at his failure to win the battle. McPherson notes that after the battle, which only half of his men returned Lee rode among them consoling them with the words "It's all my fault"and "You must help me"17. (pp. ) This frank and open portrayal of Lee's humanity would have never been allowed or accepted in the years of Lee's worship by historians. Lee as anything less than perfect would not have been acceptable and would have caused much dissention among historians. Unfortunately for historical accuracy, the deliberate enshrinement of Robert E. Lee and concurrent denigration of James Longstreet, Ulysses Grant and Stonewall Jackson have become deeply ingrained in the American psyche. This myth, this creation of historians does not allow future students of Robert E. Lee to truly grasp his persona, to truly understand his decisions, or to understand the reality of the truth. History is written by the writers, not the events. Works Cited Connelly, Thomas L., "The Image and the General: Robert E. Lee in American Historiography", Civil War History, (March 1973) Connelly, Thomas L. The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society NY, Knopf, (1977) Hart, B.H. Liddell, "Lee: A Psychological Problem," Saturday Review, XI (December 15,1934) pg 365 Hart, B.H. Liddell, "Why Lee Lost Gettysburg," Saturday Review, XI (March 23, 1935) pg 561 McPherson, James; Ordeal by Fire, Alfred A. Knopf Piston,William Lee's Tarnished Lieutenan;t James Longstreet and His Place in Southern History University of Georgia Press (1987) Gallagher, Lee the Soldier, University of Nebraska Press; annotated edition edition (January 1, 1996) Nolan, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History The University of North Carolina Press [1991], Chapel Hill (January 1, 1991) Piston, "Cross Purposes: in Gallagher, Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond (Military Campaigns of the Civil War) The University of North Carolina Press (August 5, 1998) Read More