Welcome to this week's classic episode. Fellow Ridiculous Historians. We are as we record in the great metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia, and Atlanta, Georgia, like a lot of the Southern United States, has a bit of.
A history to it.
Yeah, yeah, not the best history. From eighteen sixty one to eighteen sixty five, the USA was participating in a little something called the War between the States. More than a century later, it remains America's bloodiest war, and it happens right here, oh man, among other places. But you know, it was a pretty pretty central location to the Civil War.
And after the conflict concluded and the Union one the Confederate Army surrendered, General Robert E. Lee survived, and he found himself constantly a pro getting all these cold calls to endorse different memorials or statues or buildings and so on. And here's the thing, he hated it. Yeah, let's find out why.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio, Casey. Can we get a little bit of a kind of a Gettysburg vibe music, you know, like with the drums flute, there we go.
I feel that cadence sounds like a nineties song. Like Jumper by Third Eye Blind.
Or something in that from the centuries earlier. Yeah, yeah, totally.
It's it's those marching drums that really give them feels up.
And speaking of feels, thanks for tuning in. We hope that you are feeling great. Uh, this is ridiculous history. My name is Ben, my name is Nolan, and the man on the ones and twos as always give it up for our super producer, Casey Pegram. Today's episode does concern some heavy history that we we have to bring into the story, but we we don't have to get to too in the weeds about it. You've heard the story a thousand thousand times, whether or not you live
in the US. It's a story of brother against brother, North and South, a nation divided, the US Civil War? Noel, how would you describe the US Civil War to someone who had never heard of it?
It was real, main spirited man. Brothers were fighting brothers. Everyone was at each other throats. Is the North from the South? And why can't we all just get along? And wasn't any fun? Man? Wasn't any fun?
From April twelfth, eighteen sixty one to April ninth, eighteen sixty five, this nation was embroiled in what would later become the most heavily documented research war in US history. Yeah, that too, So I think all of those facts together are are a pretty good high level look at at
this conflict. But the ramifications of the US Civil War carry on in the United States today, not just in the southern part of the continent, but in the policies and the legislation created on a state and federal level. The war created several larger than life historical figures, people who were and are enormously influential here in twenty nineteen. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, right, the guy who brought everybody
back together hell or high water. And today's episode is about another one of those giants, a man named Robert E. Lee or we can only imagine Bobby Lee to his friends.
Yeah, or maybe some people called him Eddie because his middle name, the E is for Edward.
Yeah, I foind out.
I know that was eating a lot of you up inside, not knowing what that E stood for?
Was it ihorn?
Exactly?
So what do we know about Robert E. Lee?
Well, like, okay, so he was born January nineteenth of eighteen oh seven, passed away October twelfth of eighteen seventy, and he was a decorated general. He was born in a plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and he came from a military family. His father's name was Major General Henry Lee the third had a pretty dope nickname as it with lighthorse Harry, and he was also the governor of Virginia.
And he was had Robert E. With his second wife, Ann Hill Carter, and he was raised in this very regimented military family, and he carried on that legacy with a career in military engineering. His father actually had some difficulties that he ended up in debtors prison due to some financial troubles he had while doing business in the
West Indies. But Robert was left undeterred and he got himself a pretty choice spot at the prestigious military academy at West Points, where he graduated second in his class in eighteen twenty nine. But it would be some time
before Lee actually ever saw battle. It wasn't until eighteen forty six in the War with Mexico that he was able to really get his feet, wet, his hands bloody, whatever the euphemism you'd like to use under General Winfield, Scott Brigade or whatever you want, regiments, I don't know.
He became a pretty well respected soldier for bravery, and he came out of that situation with the rank of colonel and then was appointed as a superintendent at West Point, where he served from eighteen fifty two to eighteen fifty five. But let's remember where this story starts. He was at heart a Southern gentleman raised on a Southern plantation, and was also a slave owner, and reports are that he
was quite cruel to his slaves. In fact, in a biography brief biography on Battlefield dot org, the writer points out that during his tenure as the superintendent, which is like the head honcho of West Point, he would be overseeing cadets who would serve on both sides of the Civil War, both under him and in opposition to his forces, because as we know, he went on to become the general of the Confederate Forces, which were the forces that supported slavery.
Right.
So, one thing that people forgot pretty quickly after the close of the Civil War and Robert E. Lee's death is that he was by no means a perfect man. There are a lot of myths about lee that are still circulating today, one of those being that he was opposed to slavery. After the Civil War, he did attempt to present himself as always having been opposed to slavery.
In an interview.
Shortly after his surrender at Appomattox, he said that the best men of the South have been eager to do away with the abominable practice. In eighteen sixty six, he testified before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction that he had always been in favor of emancipation, gradual emancipation. However, he owned or managed slaves for over thirty years in eighteen sixty one, in April, he oversaw roughly two hundred individuals.
Not to mention that there were reports. You know, maybe we haven't a hundred percent confirmation, but he wasn't a particularly kind slave owner, that he may have been much more on the cruel and brutal side.
We give this just to lay out those facts. These are very very important things. However, his personal or non military life aside, he was known as one of the finest officers in the US Army. In eighteen fifty nine, he was called upon to suppress the raid at Harper's Ferry, led by the abolitionist John Brown, and was so successful that in eighteen sixty one, Abraham Lincoln offered him command
of the full Federal forces. Not only did he decline, he resigned from the army when the state of Virginia seceded from the Union on April seventeenth of the same year, his reasoning being I cannot make war against my own people. And he didn't just resign, he didn't go, you know, hang out on a farm somewhere. Instead, he joined up with the newly formed Confederate Army as a general. So his first military engagement is at a place called Cheat Mountain, Virginia.
Well now it's West Virginia, but back then it was just Cheap Mountain, Virginia on September eleventh, eighteen sixty one. It was a victory for the Union, but he still weathered the storm and was also a military advisor to President Jefferson Davis until eighteen sixty two. And there are so many fantastic stories, books, biographies, podcasts, research papers, and so on written about the Civil War that we would
helpfully re for you to any one of those. Let's fast forward to the end of the Civil War, because this is when our story really begins to take shape. So we said that the Civil War ended in eighteen sixty five, right.
Yeah, it's true because upon defeat, Robert E. Lee had to or didn't have to, but he seemed to acquiesce to swearing allegiance to the Union and to admitting defeat, and to not being particularly sore sport about the whole affair because he was, you know, in fact, a professional military man, and he understood the rules of engagement and he wasn't gonna pitch a fit about it, and he kind of went quietly.
Yeah.
On April ninth, eighteen sixty five, Lee surrendered the Confederate Army to Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse. This ended the Civil War, I mean effectively, he went home on parole, and his life when on for about five years after the Civil Wars end, and he eventually became president of Washington College right before his death on October twelfth, in eighteen seventy. There's an interesting timeline here, right, So he only lives about five years after the close of
the Civil War. And similar to the way that myths sprang up about George Washington, you know, even while he was alive and certainly immediately after his death. We see the same thing in certain parts of American culture with Robert E.
Lee.
He was romanticized, he was memorialized. You could say people in the South wanted to build statues to him. They wanted to waive the stars and bars and talk about, I don't know, the South rising again, right, Yeah, I mean that's.
What they said.
It absolutely, but it ends up feeding into some pretty toxic romanticizations of these ideas.
Oh yeah, let's have no illusions about that.
It's bad stuff. And we will get into how that plays into more contemporary history in just a little bit. In an article on PBS dot org by Lisa and I'm going to go ahead and really french this one up Lisa Desjardins, which I may be overpronouncing it, but
I'd rather overpronounced than underpronounced. She mentions how Lee was pretty clear about the way he felt about that kind of romanticization well before his death, and that he stressed this idea that it was very important for a country that had been torn by war to move past it, and that includes not memorializing it with any kind of symbolism or militant monument remembrances things like that that would continue to cause to sort of sow the seeds of separatism.
And there's a really great quote from him that you think you can kind of take as faith face value. Then we can kind of dissect it a little bit too, Ben, Do you want to read that one?
Sure?
This quote comes from a piece of correspondence about a proposed memorial at Gettysburg written in eighteen sixty nine. I think it was not to keep open the souls of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who were endabled to obliterate the marks of civil straff, to commit to oblivion little feelings in gender.
Very well spoken, sir. That's not me, that's Robert E.
Lee.
I found don't know where we got the audio.
I felt as though he floated right into the room. Yeah, it's true. And that has led many to believe that what he meant was any of these Confederate monuments were counter to his idea of how it would be best to deal with the fallout from a war like that, that by having these romanticizations or any kind of these big reminders steering you in the face, whatever side you
were on. It's not a good thing, and it would continue to sow those seeds of division and hostility between the winning and the losing sizes.
Yeah, there's a great biography of Lee by a fellow named Jonathan Horne, The Man Who Would Not Be Washington fantastic title, and he points out that Lee himself, Roberty Lee himself after the Civil War, in those five years before his death, he opposed monuments, but specifically opposed Confederate War monuments, and in his correspondence we have multiple documented reasons for his opinion. So in one case he questions the cost of a monument to Stonewall Jackson, and he
finds some other ways to approach this issue. But his underlying prime objection to this is that we empower a cause or an idea when we remember it. That's why so many civilizations work so ardently in the past and the modern day to erase things from your history books. In his mind, the war had ended, the nation was one again, and it needed to look forward to the future rather than celebrating this social upheaval and then potentially leading to further discord down the road.
Yeah, he see.
He puts it pretty eloquently in this discord that we also have tape up.
As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated, my conviction is that, however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the attempt, in the present condition of the country, would have the effect of retarding instead of accelerating its accomplishment, of continuing, if not adding to the difficulties under which the Southern people label. We do want to point out there that he is using a word that could be seen as offensive. He's in
the correct way, you know what I mean. He's meaning to sty me the progress of the country.
Yeah, indeed, And there's this actually was so divisive it made the news really recently because of the senseless and bizarre and unfortunate attack for lack of a better term, that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia in twenty seventeen, where in fact, an alt right or a white supremacist group descended on the small college town because of a proposal to pull down a statue of General Robert E.
Lee.
And there was violence. A young woman was hit and killed by a car, and it at the time it was just utter chaos. It became a very divisive political issue. Even before this event, it became a very divisive political issue, the idea of should we erase these marks of the past because of what they represent, which you know, you could argue is racism, is division, is pro slavery attitudes.
Some Southerners, old school Southerners, say it's their heritage or represents, you know, just the history of the South, and that taking it down is disrespectful to them. So say what you will. Our president had this to say about it, sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.
You know, no, I noticed you didn't do a Trump voice for that, And I think that's I think that's a good call, because I gotta tell you, I've been looking around and I just cannot, for the life of me, find a good impression of that guy, you know what I mean, Like Alec Baldwin in one is not that great.
Well, that's sort of what makes his funny, right, is that it's like it's, yeah, it's so out of left field that it just kind of is like cartoonish, as you would say, right.
Yeah, even Stephen Colbert Love the guys just I don't know, maybe it's a tough voice. They're the pros. Let know, if you've seen a decent impression. And I'm not saying anything further than that, it's just usually when someone's president, there's like one person, often from Saturday Night Live, who does the best impression of that president. And it looks like we're still looking for one. No offense to any Alec Baldwin fans in the house, but your point, your
point stands, Nolan. It goes back to what I was saying at the top. We see these ramifications carry on to the modern day. Faulkner was right when he said the past is not over. It's not even passed. And I'm paraphrasing there, but this is an important point I believe now. Currently, as it stands, there's somewhere around seven hundred and fifty monuments all told, across the US that are their memorials for the Civil War, and that's according
to the Southern Poverty Law Center. People who want the removed say that the continued presence of the monuments confers undue dignity on a faction that fought to preserve slavery and white supremacy, So they agree with Roberty Lee, but perhaps for different reasons.
Yeah, and not to mention that. In August of twenty seventeen, PBS News Hour and NPR an Emerist poll found that sixty two percent of people responding to the pole thought that monuments such as this should stay in place as historical symbols.
So it is a.
Tricky argument because on the one hand, it's a form of revisionist history. On the other hand, you know, real estate is scarce, maybe we should devote it to more positive things, you know what I mean, like as opposed to something that represents things that are painful to others who have family members that possibly even lived through it or were connected to it more directly.
And one thing that a lot of people miss when they hear the headline Roberty Lee opposed Confederate memorials is that he also opposed Civil War memorials in general. He turned down the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association back in eighteen sixty nine. He really wanted the battlefields to be erased, to turn into farms, to turn into towns and other peaceful areas of the nation, rather than memorializing them. He
saw it as a way to speed reconciliation. So it's not as if he was wholly repentant, you know what I mean, Nor was he penitent. He said all of the memorials would be better if they were left unbuilt.
That's right, yep, for sure. And this is one of those quotes, the original one that we said about, you know, the sores of division or whatever, that you can very easily take out of context and use to support arguments on either side.
Right, And this is where our hal draws to a close. But we didn't want to end on too somber a note because there is a very specific type of unorthodox Confederate memorial that will never be removed from the US because it doesn't exist in the US. We were talking about the Confederados, the ten thousand to twenty thousand Confederate American refugees who fled to Brazil, mainly in South Paulo, and then lived reproduced, had descendants. They founded the City
Americana Brazil. We did this on previous episodes, totally.
Yeah, it was that obsession with the Confederate South in the very same way that they romanticize it in an almost weird kind of like alternate reality. Man in the High Castle, fictionalized kind of way, as though if they had won the war, what it would be like. That's a weird one.
And you can see the residents of Americana Sal Paulo talking about how they how much they enjoy the festival they hold every year, and how it's for them not about commemorating a regime, right, it's not about commemorating racism or slavery year, all the things tied to the Civil War. It's just for them part of their culture. Very interesting town. So if you've ever been there, check it out and let us know what you find.
And you know in fact, snopes dot com, the famous fact checking site, decided to weigh in on this as well, with the question was Robert E. Lee opposed to Confederate monuments? And they classify it as a mixture of true and false, with the truth being supporting the validity of those quotes that he expressed opposition to Civil War monuments memorials, including the Stonewall Jackson one specifically. But what isn't clear is
the breadth of this position. His opposition to Confederate monuments was probably more pronounced than his opposition towards Civil War monuments in general.
But it was still against against them overall.
That's right, that's right, but it is one of those mixed mixed snoops responses. And then the continuation of the President Trump's quote from earlier. The tweet was this, he says, you can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E. Lee Sonwell Jackson, who's next? Washington? Jefferson? So foolish. Also, the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able
to be completely replaced. So we can see where where our boy Donnie Trump falls in that debate.
I'd also like to hear from you, fellow ridiculous historians. Where where do you fall in this debate? And speak of hearing from you, what do you guys say we do a little listener mail.
I think that's a smashing idea.
Did you see that?
One listener wrote in and said that the listener mail sound effect fills them with abject terror?
I saw that?
Yeah, yes, yeah, interesting?
Was that on Facebook?
It was on Facebook?
I think you can you can see what we're talking about if you're joined forces with us on Facebook at ridiculous historians. Just getting that plug out of the way right now.
So what do we got? You got you got any hot takes?
No?
I do.
I got one from Hannah says Hello. I was recently listening to you or when West Virginia begged for foreign aid from the USSR, and I was inspired to inquire about a podcast on for Gotonia. For Gotonia is a west central section of Illinois that was forgotten when highways were expanded west and there was an attempt to secede from the United States. This section of Illinois felt cut off and decided to bring attention to it with this
major move. I have lived in this area my whole life, huh, and it amazes me how few people know of it. Please consider it for a future podcast. Thanks Hannah. Consider it considered, Hannah, Yes, consider it considered. I had not heard of Forgottonia before receiving your letter, Hannah, and I think it's fascinating. I I actually I've been reading a lot about it off air, and I hope that there are license plates.
I hope that there are stickers. I hope that you can, you know, send mail with Forgotonia stamps.
But I look forward to learning.
More and before we uh forget Tonia this segment, let's have Let's have one more listener mail.
Rebecca C.
Writes to us with an email entitled Ordeal by Cake. Hello, says Rebecca. I have been listening to this podcast since it started and it has become one of my favorites.
Ah. Thanks.
In parentheses, she says, I love the quizter. We have complicated feelings there. The war began by the dog was timely, as it came up in trivia last night. Or the guy who sets the questions also listened to the show. When you discussed undergoing trials, I was reminded of Ordeal by Cake, where the person would have to eat a dry cake without choking after swearing to something, the idea being that if you were lying, guilt would stick in your throat. Just a thought it might leave less scars
than other ordeals. Rebecca, thanks for writing. I had never heard of the Trial by Cake. The closest I remember hearing is that old stand up bit about cake or death right and Eddie Izzard bit. I just got confirmed off air by Casey, but I don't know. I would give it a try. It sounds kind of like an old school version of the saltine Challenge.
Have you heard of that?
Is that where you eat a bunch of saltines? Is it like the cinnamon Challenge?
Yeah? Pretty much so.
I don't know if that's a way to set legal precedent, but I'd be interested in trying it. I wonder if we could institute. Do you think HR would let us get away with that?
I mean, I say we What is it better to ask for forgiveness than permission?
Especially when Cake is involved?
Oh man, sign me up. I'll try anything once, especially if Cake is involved.
So thank you so much, Anna, thank you, Rebecca, and thank you for listening. This concludes listener mail, but not our show. Tune in because we have more ridiculous stuff on the way as always in the meantime. You can learn more about ridiculous, bizarre, strange exploits throughout the story of human civilization on our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians, our Instagram, or our Twitter. You can also follow our own personal adventures on Instagram where I am at Ben Bowling.
I am at Embryonic Insider. Big Thanks to super producer Casey Pegram Alex Williams, who composed our theme research associate Gabe Lozier, and of course I think we're due for a Christopher Hasiotis appearance and possibly a creepy drop in from our arch nemesis, the Quist Jonathan Strickland.
I have PTSD my friend podcast Drama Traumatic Stress Disorder, because this is gonna sound weird, But there are I know that it sounds like a bit sometimes, but there are genuinely times when we don't know that he's coming. It's it's strange. It's it's a bizarre situation and we've just been rolling with it.
It's also weird when he just kind of drops down from the ceiling and then his head turns around three hundred and sixty degrees and he kind of makes a weird cackling sound. This is a very guttural, like from the throat kind of situation.
Yeah, this is not a bit. Sometimes he doesn't even make it to the mic. He just drops in exorss style and then like skitters back up into the ceiling.
It is quite traumatic for all concerned. But at the same time, I missed the little guy.
You know, I'd like a statue. I gotta tell you, I was conflicted with this because I see Robert E. Lee's point about not wanting to memorialize this, this intense, divisive period in time, But also, wouldn't it be kind of cool to have a statue of your of yourself? I mean, so it's such a Kanye West move, you know, Casey, would.
You get a statue of yourself?
Probably not, someone else would have to build it right at the very least.
But I'll tell you what you will get.
Well, maybe not a statue, but some kind of apparel I think may be forthcoming.
Oh oh oh.
Stay tuned for more podcasts from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.