Citizen Lee

 

At the time of his death, was Robert E. Lee a man without a country?

No, the Gray Fox of the Confederacy was not like the naval officer in Edward Everett Hale’s novel who cursed his country.

Lee’s country, before and after the War Between the States, was the United States of America, a republic he served with valor and distinction. During the War, Lee served a new nation as the general-in-chief of that na­tion’s armies, but after Joe Johnston’s surrender to Sher­man, the Confederate republic ceased to exist for all practical purposes.

Indeed, it was the official policy of the administration of Union President Andrew Johnson that there had been, in fact, no such entity as “the Confederate States of America.” And the several states that had made up that republic were, in Johnson’s view, simply states “lately in rebellion.”

But because General Lee had served as the ranking military officer of the so-called “rebel” army, he and others who held high position in the late Confederacy were denied their civil rights and indicted for treason. Later, that indictment was dismissed and no one who had served the Confederacy in its high command was actually brought to trial.

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