There has been recent discussion in literary circles about the change in public attitudes toward General Robert E. Lee. Statues of Lee have been removed in many parts of the South along with the names of streets of many of his generals. This is a big change from the elevation of Lee and the Confederacy to a high status as the ‘Lost Cause.’
Who am I to comment on this issue? Done, I am not an historian and I have made no special study of the Civil War.
I am a unique individual who applied my own intelligence to the facts and debate about the Civil War and came to conclusions very different from my fellow Americans. In the middle of 1962 I tried to get major figures in the Republican Party to call for a celebration of the Centenary of the Emancipation Declaration for the Fall when President Lincoln wrote it and for January 1st 1963, the 100th anniversary of its implementation.
At the time I was a functionary in the Republican Party, having worked on local San Francisco campaigns and for Richard Nixon’s campaign for California Governor.
Again in 2012 I called on National leaders and Congress to declare a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration. This time as an expert legal witness for three Black civil rights organizations. I got two prominent black clergy on the West Coast to sign letters of support.
At neither time did I get any support from any other people in my campaign. A giant ‘nothing.’
Before my first appeal for a celebration I had come to my own conclusions about the Civil War. First, the South was much richer than the North with its vast exports before the War. Second, General Lee and General Jackson were above average generals but Lee’s other generals were petty and mediocre. General McClellan was a bumbling Union leader. Third, the North became a mighty industrial force because of the supply demands of the Civil War, especially the need for railroads.
I also concluded that the South had won the war because nearly all Americans believed in the honor and dignity of the Confederacy as tumpeted by the ‘Lost Cause’ storyline and the movie Gone With the Wind. Most Americans accepted the exaggerated storyline about ‘scalawags’ and ‘carpetbaggers.’ None of it was good history.
This is a good place to point out that in many wars the military losers were effectively the winners. WWI is a good example. The Allies forced a peace treaty on the Axis powers but the Axis came back to physically destroy France and Great Britain and tens of millions of civilians.
The Israelis in 1947 won their own state militarily but still have no peace after 70 years with the Palestinian hostility and three unrelenting neighboring countries.
The U.S. won the Vietnam War militarily and had a peace treaty in 1973 but lost the peace a year later because of American domestic opposition.
Other wars in Iraq, Korea, Afghanistan and the Cold War with the USSR have no military peace decades later. The same is true for the war between India and Pakistan.
Military victories in the past 175 years have had questionable outcomes.