Behind the Bastards - Part Four: Was Robert. E. Lee a Good General?

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Robert and Prop answer the final two great questions about Robert E. Lee: did he fuck that horse, and was he any good as a general?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My name is M. William Phelps. For the past several years, I've been re-investigating the cases of two young women, abducted from their small towns, their bodies dumped deep in the Ozark woods, with a connection to one very familiar name. Find them, torture them, kill them, BTK. Secrets finally revealed sending authorities rushing to confront a suspect who's been hiding in plain sight for decades. Listen to Paper Ghost season 4 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. I'm John Cipher.

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Probably. You really love it. Yeah, I feel like I always think my stand up is a dinner party. I know what I'm going to make. You're my guess. I don't know what's going to happen. But the thing about stand up that amazes me is it's only going to happen in that moment in time. Even if we film it, it's never going to be what it feels like live. Listen to the new season of Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Caution, media. What's visible, my celebrity penises? This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where Drake's dick just got leaked on Twitter. I didn't see it, but I have a celebrity penis story for you all. If you watch the movie Galaxy Quest in the scene where Tim Allen's in his house

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Shout out to Musk for having lack of safety features on Twitter. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about famous people's genitalia. Yeah, it's also a podcast about Robert E. Lee. And actually, we're about to start at an earthquake that just happened. Oh, yeah. And we just had an earthquake just out of California. What a day. All right. Speaking of celebrity penises, prop,

this is part four of our series on Robert E. Lee. And- That horse, man. When you talk about Robert E. Lee, the question everyone has is, did he fuck his horse traveler, right? This is something historians have debated about for generations. I mean, I'm seriously like this whole time time when we first started talking about doing these episodes,

I'm talking 2023 when we started doing this. I was my first question. I was like, are we going to talk about the horse? Are we going to talk about the horse? Now, it's undeniable that Lee held a special fondness for his horse, Traveller Lee, which is why he loved that horse, which is why in 2015, Funny or Die put together a commemorative flag celebrating Robert E. Lee's love for his steed.

And we're gonna put that, we'll probably have that image lead our episode. Oh my Lord. Yeah, it's great, you know. It's the only version of the Confederate flag that I think has some historical value. It's the stars and bars with Lee fucking Traveler right in the middle.

Oh man, pants at his ankles. Oh yeah. Sword, both his swords up. Couldn't even get those pants off. Yeah, good God almighty. What if this was on the hood of the general Lee? Bro, yeah, and my dad was still such a real one, it was like son, you need to see this, you're a to see this you're fan. I want you to see it yourself

Some people really like horses Hey So let's get into the history of this here because Lee's horse traveler developed a fan following like during the war really like this horse is People cannot say enough about traveler and that that fan following really accelerates to kind of a ridiculous degree after the war. This kind of obsession with traveler as like the perfect horse, it mirrors this obsession with Lee as the perfect southern man. And it is also a part of the lost cause mythology. Yeah, kind of like a Knight Rider, like Michael Knight and Kit, the car. Yeah, it's the Kit of being a traitorous slaveholder. Being a traitor.

Now Fitzhugh Lee's fawning biography of his relative Robert E. Lee is part of the process of canonizing both Robert E. Lee and canonizing Traveler, an animal that had no idea what it was doing. Let's be clear about that. Traveler is not a traveler, an animal that had no idea what it was doing. Let's be clear about that. Traveller is not a bad, incapable of understanding what it's fighting for. Not the topic of the bastard episode.

No. Innocent bystander here. Yeah, yeah. It's like a police dog. Does not realize what it's being used for. Doesn't know it's racist. Just biting people, doesn't know it. Now, that biography by Fitzhugh Lee

cites a letter that Lee wrote to his daughter when she asked him basically like, hey, I've got an artist friend and like traveler. Everybody's talking about how noble and wonderful your horse is. My artist friend wants to draw a picture of traveler. Would you send along a description? Now, I want you to listen to how Robert E. Lee describes this horse. And you tell me if this is these are the words of a man who is not fucking his horse.

He finna give 50 shades of gray on us right now. I'm about to stand in a supermarket line. Here's Lee. If I was an artist like you, I would draw a true picture of traveler, representing his fine proportions, muscular figure, deep chest and short back, strong haunches, flat legs, small head, broad forehead, delicate ears, quick eyes, small feet and black mane and tail. Such a picture would inspire a poet whose genius could then depict his worth and describe his endurance of toil, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and the dangers and suffering through which he passed.

He could dilate upon his sagacity and affection and his invariable response to every wish of his writer. Now sure, when he uses the word dilate, he might be using it. He could be using it. Definition number three in the American Heritage Dictionary is to speak or write at great length on a subject. Perhaps that's what Lee means. But one could also read this as him admitting that his horse could dilate on command to the every wish of his writer, you know, to make their forbidden love making easier.

And this is the interpretation of his words that I choose to take. That's why you read original sources, kids. You learn stuff like this. Because, yeah, he said what he meant. Mm-hmm. There's definitely very much a sound of like Sir Mix, a lot of the 1800s on some like Baby God back. Yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, the song Jolene. It's a great, great song. But also my head cannon for the song Jolene is that the woman singing that is less worried that her man's gonna leave her for Jolene and more nursing a crush herself because you simply you don't describe a romantic rival that way yeah she is into Jolene yeah and Robert E. Lee is into his horse you know yeah that's the only that's that's my interpretation so I mean that's the only one I'm willing to accept, you know?

He already weird and yeah, well, you know what? Nevermind, I'm not gonna call him, I'm not gonna call it weird, okay? Forgive me, I'm gonna be more tolerant with that poor horse. Yeah, that poor, poor horse. If only we'd had like a Mr. Han sort of situation with Robert E. Lee, but alas.

So, now that we've gotten the horse fucking out of the way, it's necessary that we spend some time talking about Lee's actual performance in battle. His personal nobility, which I think we have deflated in the preceding episodes, is one part of the pillar that bears him as the central figure of the Lost Cosmetology. But obviously, you can be a shitty person

and a great general, right? History's full of bad lost cosmology. But obviously, you can be a shitty person and a great general, right? History is full of bad. I would go so far as to say most girls generals probably sucked as human beings, you know? One of the things you have to be in order to be a great general is willing to send a lot of people to their deaths, you know? Yeah, the job requires it. It's like being a billionaire. Like at some point, you have to not give a shit about human value. We can debate there's arguments as to like, how much of the Soviet death toll was necessary.

Did Zhukov, was he too kind of loose with the lives of his men? But also the Nazis had to be stopped. And at a certain point, you had to just throw lives at the problem. So like, I'm not saying that making the decision to send men off to death is necessarily a moral. Sometimes it's necessary, right? But what I am getting at is like another pillar of the Lost Class mythology is this idea that Lee was not just a noble man,

which I think we busted, but that he was the greatest field commander that the US produced in the 19th century. That is how you will, yeah. That is how you'll see him described. And this is how Jubal Early, one of Lee's generals, eulogized him. Our beloved chief stands like some lofty column which rears its head among the highest in grandeur, simple, pure, and sublime. Biographer Roy Blunt Jr. described Lee as one of the greatest military commanders in history, although he noted that Lee was quote, not good at telling men what to do, which would seem to be a contradiction, right?

I love it. Being a great commander is definitionally about commanding troops. So like Blunt is doing kind of some lost cause shit here. I don't know how you, he was a great commander. He couldn't order men to do stuff though. Yeah, it's almost like... I mean, he's a comedian. Like, he's humorous. So like, I think there is a possibility that he's like kind of like cracking a joke here. He's like greatest

commander of all time. It wasn't really good at like telling people what to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was the greatest basketball player of my generation. I couldn't dunk or make three pointers, you know. It wasn't really good at dribbling either. Never actually played much basketball. But, but, Telling you greatest. Telling you the very best. Yes.

Now, the best book length summary of Lee's actual strengths and weaknesses as a commander that I have read is Lee Considered by Alan Nolan. And it is, by the way, really good book, very readable. I recommend it heavily. It gives a wonderful rundown of some of the most extreme superlatives thrown Lee's way in post-Lost Cause history books. The 1989 edition of Encyclopedia Americana

states that Lee was one of the truly gifted commanders of all time, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, soldier who ever spoke the English language. The entry for Lee in the 1989 Encyclopedia Britannica reflects a similar judgment. According to the 1988 revised edition of the Civil War dictionary, Lee earned rank with history's most distinguished generals. Now, what? The kind of easiest repose to this is like, yeah, it he lost. How do you do be that good if he fucking lost? I will actually push back against that a bit. Not in Lee, but I don't think you have to have won your war

to lay claim to being one of the greatest generals in all of history. Most contenders for that greatest general title did conquer a lot of land, did win a bunch of wars, right? Napoleon wins a number of wars, conquers most of Western Europe, defeats multiple nations in decisive battles. He does eventually lose, but he wins a lot before he loses.

And that's the sheer number of field battles that he won is like a big part of like, you can't really argue the man was one of the best to ever live at commanding armies in the field, right? Absolutely put up numbers. There's another way around that. Yeah, and there's a number of generals like that. Erwin Rommel is an example.

His cult of personality is kind of similar to Lee, right? Where like, there's this attitude to believe like, he was one of the good Germans in that war. He was a fundamentally moral man with an evil system. And he was also just this genius brilliant tactician. That is not accurate. He was not as good as his historical reputation. But I think the consensus is he was not

like a bad field commander. Like he just, it gets exaggerated well past the point of rationality. And I would even say too, like, I mean, at the end of the day, you got to check the scoreboard. But, you know, when it comes to something like as complicated and messy and unpredictable as war, it's like, there's so many other factors

that factor into, you know, the freaking weather. Like you're saying like, it's gonna be the weather, you know? Just so many things factor into it that don't necessarily mean you were a good or bad general. It's just, things happen, yeah. Yeah. And because of that, there are great, like the best example of a guy who lost his war, who is nonetheless rightly regarded as among the very, Charles Barkley. Charles Barkley. Yeah. No, the Charles Barkley of Carthage, Hannibal Barker, right? Yes. Hannibal loses his war against the Romans. He loses the Battle of Zama, which is the final battle of the Second Punic War.

And he loses after that he continues to fight a naval war against Rome for some other people. And he loses a number of battles there. He is still universally, there's really no argument that he is one of the most talented and skilled field generals who ever ever existed in the history of human conflict. And there's it's because when you look at what he actually did in the field, you simply can't deny the brilliance. The battle of Caneai, which is his his like crowning moment is basically this massive Roman army larger than his. He is able to double envelop. He completely encircles them and massacres them to the man at the loss of very few of his troops Yeah, it is such a victory that if you read what German generals were writing in like the early stages of World War one

Like why they were executing the plans they were executing Yeah, twenty two hundred years after the Battle of Cane I all of these German generals are talking about wanting to do a Cane Right. He is Hannibal Barker was like the it was the like the high watermark for general ship from longer than Christianity has been around. Yeah, from the longest Christianity existed. Yes. Exactly as long as it's been the faith he's been there. Yeah.

And I think too, like just the fact that like history essentially like the only reason we know what we know is cause some dude kept a diary. Yeah. So if a dude like was that impressive to the point to where somebody wrote it down like, yo, this Hannibal kid, the kid is a cold piece of work, y'all. And he upset. And at last he's like, we won. Yeah. But damn. god damn. Yeah kid is cold. Yeah He made it all the way to now. It's just some dudes job diary right now his wife like yeah shit Yeah, this guy's scary as hell fool was whooping my ass. Yeah

And Lee gets compared to Hannibal a lot because again, they both lose their war But they're both seen as like well, they fought so well despite they were outnumbered Yeah, the other nation had a much better industrial base. It was a doomed cause from the beginning, but they still almost pulled it off, and that's what makes them great, right? That's true for Hannibal. I don't think there's any realistic,

I'm sure you can find some historians, but I think the vast consensus is, yeah, the man was a fucking genius at war. That is not true for Robert E. Lee, and it's not true based on his very clearly documented record. Robert E. Lee was one of the first four generals named for the Confederate States. But he was not as soon as Virginia gets, you know, integrated into the Confederacy, he is not the top general yet, right? He's actually below two other generals, Samuel Cooper and Albert Sidney Johnson. And in the early days of the war,

because he's kind of trying to give his thoughts on everything like what should we do here, what should we do here? He gets ignored by other commanders a lot. But there's a point where like, they're looking at like Manassas, which they think the union is going to attack. They know the union is going to attack.

And Lee is like, I think we should fortify Manassas and hold it in a defensive action. And PGT Beauregard declines to fortify Manassas as lead had advised and instead counterattacks the Union advance. This is the battle of Bull Run and the Confederacy wins the battle of Bull Run. So Beauregard ignores Lee's advice and wins one of the earliest critical battles for the Confederacy. I mean, everyone's heard of Bull Run, right? Yeah, totally. He wins it doing the opposite of what Lee had suggested he do. Now, you can't call this a failure on Lee's part, right?

Because that's just part of any functional military. You're going to have guys proposing. Yeah. But it is an example of two commanders, because it was, I think, Johnson and Beauregard at Bull Run. It's an example of two commanders, because it was, I think, Johnson and Beauregard at Bull Run. It's an example of two commanders ignoring Lee's advice and then winning, right? Which is, certainly does not suggest

like the greatest military mind America ever produced, right? Now, Lincoln responds to Bull Run by moving Union troops into Western Virginia, which was at the time just part of normal Virginia, right? We're talking about like the region, not the state. It's not a state. The physical location of the place. Now this is going to be where Lee has his first combat command

of the Civil War. His opponent initially, McClellan's gonna get transferred, his opponent initially is George McClellan. And likely McClellan is a Mexican war veteran. In fact, during the Mexican-American war, McClellan had reported to Lee as a junior lieutenant. And he and Lee are kind of mirrors of each other in a way in that they both owe this sudden rise to command and to like being generals to the Civil War. McClellan is also like personally, he's really sympathetic to the South.

He likes Southerners better than he likes Northerners. But he's also just not a fucking traitor. Now, not a great general either, but he's not a traitor. So he has some initial success in West Virginia. He overruns another Confederate commander's forces in West Virginia, right about the same time Beauregard and Johnson win Bull Run. Now, because the Union has suffered this defeat at Bull Run, but McClellan has had this kind

of smaller success, this is just basic propaganda, right? The Lincoln's people are like, well, we got our asses kicked here, but like this guy saw a win. So we really need to hype this, right? And this is also probably where we should pour more resources into. Right. We had one when maybe if we give, we put some more men into this, we put some more power behind this, they can crack in further. Right. So Lee gets sent to counter this Union advance. Right. And Jefferson Davis orders Lee to strike a decisive blow in West Virginia. Lee takes command of the Confederacy's

Northwest. Well, he doesn't quite take command of the Confederacy's Northwest. Well, he doesn't quite take command of the Confederacy's Northwest Army, but he's sent there, right? He's sent there and people would treat it as if he's going to be in command of the army. And this causes a fever pitch of excitement to build back in the Confederate capital. Now remember, Lee had been lauded prior

to the start of the war as the best soldier in the United States, right? That was the buzz around him. And so there's this excitement like, man, yeah, Johnson and Beauregard did great at Bull Run, but like Lee's really gonna fucking kick there. Like he's gonna fucking put up numbers. Yeah, when he really starts getting hot.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is a big news story that Lee's about to be, you know, finally in action. And people at the time follow it kind of like they follow celebrity gossip today. When he's finally sent into the fight, his fans are so certain that he's going to be like huge that they write a song about him.

Oh, God, who dare invade our homes and country? Braggarts, though the villains be will dose them well with shot and bullets to the tune of General Lee. I don't know. Not a great song, but yeah, whatever. Lee's father. The tune of General Lee. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why I went to that one. So Lee's father had once owned most of this state,

like most of West Virginia, right? When when Light Horse Harry's trying his like land buying schemes to get rich, like he winds up. Oh, yeah. This is where like his million acres are. Yeah. And obviously it does him no good. He loses it all.

And Robert E. Lee is about to make losing West Virginia a family tradition because he follows his dad's footsteps here. He may have had some inkling of this when he wrote this to his wife while traveling the countryside with his army. What a glorious world Almighty God has given us, how thankless and ungrateful we are, and how we labor to mar his gifts.

He's just being a little emo there like, wow, the world is so beautiful. Why are we wasting all of our time and lives fighting this hideous war over it? Yeah, now you like these trees in Virginia. You know what I'm saying? You was making fun of the trees in Virginia early, oh, they'll be pretty without me. Now you see it, huh? So, the army, the Northwest Army, that he kind of inherits, and we're building to like the degree to which he's actually in command, but he kind of inherits this army, it's in really bad shape. Again, it's still basically, it's like halfway between a militia and being turned into a proper fighting force.

Okay. Shit's so primitive right now, he doesn't have a uniform, right? He's just like wearing, he just has like kind of a gray jacket that he's wearing, right? Hey guys, just pair of comfy shorts, some good strong boots, and just, just a way for me to be able to tell which one of y'all is us, okay? Yeah. So just, yeah. Don't shoot me please, like you're about to do to Stonewall.

Yeah. So he's also to make matters worse. Everyone's gotten measles. Like the whole army is sick as hell. That's not his fault. That happens to everybody. Yeah. I was like, yeah, welcome to the 1800s. All of these people are shitting themselves to death as they're fighting the civil war and to make matters worse.

And this is what really is promised. Jefferson Davis is a fucking dipshit, right? So he orders Lee to smash the Union forces here, but he doesn't actually put him in command of this army, right? Legally, Lee is an advisor to the Northwest Army, right? And so the senior officers who he's trying to give orders to, he's not technically directly in charge of them, and they don't want to listen to him. I think in part they may have been aware that he was wrong about Bull Run. And this is, again, this is not specifically Lee's fault because Davis made the bad decision

to not actually put him in proper command, but also a better general. One of the things people will say about Lee, and we kind of mentioned this earlier, he's actually really bad at giving direct orders to people, and he's not good at personal conflict. You got some of this in the last episode where he can never admit that he's turned trade into his friends. Yeah, you just stay like, stand on your square, you ain't got no code. He's a little bit of a coward. He can't actually stand up for himself. And so he's unable to master this situation. I think a stronger commander, even if you're not legally in command,

you just be like, look, man, I will fucking beat the shit out of you myself if you don't do what I'm saying, right? I will have a moment of my boys fucking cap you. You are going to do this, you know? I wonder if any of the dudes in the ranks kind of heard how he even got the position that like he did it

in kind of like a coward way where it was like, oh, you wouldn't even tell him no. And like you said you was gonna go, you just didn't respond. Like God sound like God sound a little soft to me homie. Like I wonder if they like caught wind of that. And they was like, oh, this fool ain't got no backbone or whatever.

I think that's probably not well known to his guy. Again, how many of them can read, you know? True. Touche, Touche. Yeah. So Lee, in order to kind of compensate for the fact that these guys are not listening to him, he winds up having to like carry out reconnaissance missions

himself, which is an insane thing for a general to do. For a general, yeah. Because like they won't listen to him, they won't do what he needs doing. In September, he's able to kind of get everyone to launch an attack and he patterns this attack after a victory that he'd won with Scott In in the Mexican war in Cerro Gordo There's a lot of excitement and Confederate media over the fact that he's about to do this The Richmond Inquirer predicts that his victory would quote stand as a to his fame, of which any professor of the military art,

however gifted or fortunate, might well be proud. So again, the Slosskaw shit starts before he's actually done anything. And as it ends up. Yeah, when I was preparing for the Loskaw stuff, I was like, damn this, we got prequels. Like we're gonna do a prequel to this mug. As a decide, it's a fucking disaster. I'm going to quote from Lee considered here.

Orders and communications went awry and the attack fizzled the next day struggling to retrieve something from the failure. Lee looked for a path that would the Federals and put out reconnaissance parties all around Sheet Mountain. One of these John Washington, a cousin by marriage, blundered into a union picket line, and in the fuselage of bullets, Washington was shot dead. For the first time, the war had reached into the wide circle of Lee's relations and struck down one whose intimate association, and for some months has been more fully disclosed to me his great worth than double so many years of ordinary intercourse would have been sufficient to reveal. So not only- So he got his cousin killed?

Yeah, he gets his fucking cousin killed awkwardly. Like because he winds up blundering into the union lines because Lee cannot take command of this fucking army. Like they won't listen when he says to attack. Like it is just comprehensively a disaster. Now, because this is such a failure, the papers even start second guessing Lee at this point. Jeb Stewart, his former student,

even described himself as disappointed in Lee. Lee chased that failure with more failures. He became despondent, writing to Washington's family that their son was better off dead because the Confederacy's current position is so miserable. In short order, Lee and the Confederacy had to basically flee everything in Virginia between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Ohio River.

The ultimate result of this is the state of West Virginia. We get West Virginia because Lee loses it so badly. Right away, the first thing he gets to do is lose West Virginia. I tend to think of the Confederacy in the professional career length of Nirvana. Because Nirvana lasted longer than the Confederacy. And like, at this point, like, nevermind hasn't even dropped.

Had an already lost these big wars. We've got Dave Grohl yet. Had already lost big wars. Yeah, we've got Dave Grohl yet. Mm hmm. He already lost these wars. One of the things I will point out is that like Rojava, the the autonomous kind of quasi anarchist region in northeast Syria that like has been independent, has number one won a war against ISIS. And at this point, been been around almost three times as long as the Confederacy. And like these people have no industrial base whatsoever.

Y'all at least grow food over here. Yeah, yeah, like it is the degree to which the Confederacy is a shit show. And this really shows it, right? This isn't all on Lee, except for the fact that Lee chose to join the shit show of a cause, right? They won't listen to him. His boss will not actually give him the command he needs to carry things out. And Lee is unable to master the situation.

He gets his fucking cousin killed and then flees West Virginia with his tail between his legs, LMAO. Yeah. You know who doesn't lose West Virginia? Oh, nigga, these products, cause. That's right, that's right. In fact, our podcast is sponsored entirely by the state of West Virginia.

West Virginia. We're a state. All of a sudden, he says, Linda, I see a skull. Deep in the heart of the Ozarks, a mysterious disappearance turns into a grisly discovery. Two young women murdered. My name is M. William Phelps. For the past several years, I've been reinvestigating the cases of two young women abducted from their small towns, their bodies dumped deep in the Ozark Woods. With a connection to one very familiar name, He chose his own moniker,

binded them, tortured them, killed them, B2K. Cold cases, I'm breaking wide open, as a heated confrontation with an alleged psychopath ensues. Did you kill those girls? You got all this information, then why did you ask me if you already knew? Long-held secrets finally revealed sending authorities rushing to confront a suspect who's been hiding in plain sight for decades.

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on the planet are happening every week with owner Ruthie Rogers, an amazing guest. Like Martha Stewart. Well, he did have an affair with one of and amazing guests. Like Martha Stewart. Well, he did have an affair with one of his best friends. Jimmy Fallon. Do you want a zip line over your dad while he gets attacked by alligators? And Paul McCartney.

John and I hitchhiked to Paris. We've saved you a seat. Ruthie's Table Four. Listen to Ruthie's Table Four on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. So Bobby Lee, our buddy Robert is heartbroken at the loss of West Virginia and at the general quality of the Confederate Army.

It is unruly. The militia is so unreliable. Like one of the things he has to deal with is that when he takes kind of command of this army, three regiments disappear. Like they were they were militia who had shown up and then decided before the fighting started. Actually, we don't want to be in the Confederacy because they're not an army. Yeah, because it's not an army. It's not an army.

They just go the fuck home. This bullshit. One of the things he is good at, he's a competent organizational leader. And he does have a major role to play in the fact that the quality of the Confederate army improves markedly, right? Some of this is just people get experiences, combat goes on, but he formalizes a chain of command.

He sets up stuff like quarter masters. Like he's a major part of that. And this is the stuff that he's reasonably good at, you know? Like it's organizational shit, but that's obviously important, right? Do I deisenhower for example is not I don't think he ever sees a shot fired in anger But he's like a really competent as supreme commander of the Allied forces his job is like administrative, you know And that's necessary. You can't win a war a big war without yet can't be a brawler only. Yeah

You got to have a book nerd. Yeah, this is by the way, a lot of people, the Spartan mythology is so like all based around how great they were as fighters. That's not why Sparta when Sparta had its period of military dominance, it was because of how much better organized they were as a state. Organized. Yes. Yeah. They had they were competently organized and could number one, survive defeats and also could like better provision and equip their soldiers and keep them in the field more effectively. Like it was not because they were just all really good at one-on-one combat.

They were not really any better than anybody else, but they did have a more functional state behind them. That's like, you'll get the Roman Empire, right? Why did the Roman Empire, why was it such an unprecedented success for so long? Well, it wasn't because they were the best at war as like on a battle to battle basis. They lose, but all of Roman history is like, they sent 70,000 men out and all of them died.

Yeah, they lost all the time. And then they sent another 70,000. Yeah, yeah. There was a ton of them and it was like, it was a bureaucracy. Yeah. And then they sent another 70,000. Yeah. Yeah. There was a ton of them. And it was like, it was a bureaucracy. Yeah. It was an amazing bureaucracy because you can't have, you can't have outposts all the way in Germany and not be a bureaucracy. No, like what made them great in part is the fact that they had this ability to, they could take a

punch like a modern state can like back in the day, most of the their rivals They have the army and if the army loses that's the army right like you're fucked. Yeah Rome Rome had armies They have an industrial base. Yeah. Anyway, we're getting off topic here But like that is um that is you know a big part of his early job and this is not something he's bad at right? He's not the only one doing this, but this is an area of competence for Lee. In June, 1862, he takes command of the army of Northern Virginia. And in an extremely effective campaign, he fights off several federal offensives and saves the capital Richmond. This is where a lot of like the, you know,

the genius Lee thing comes from from and this is an effective campaign One of the things we're building towards because I am going to make the case I don't I think he was bad at his job, but he is not bad at every part of his job He is a competent not the best we ever produced but a competent field commander of armies He orchestrates a campaign in Pennsylvania next and an attempt to take territory from the north and threaten the US capital that ends at Gettysburg. And during this period, from him taking command of the Army of Northern Virginia to Gettysburg, he fights 10 field battles and wins six of them. That's not a bad record. That like makes him above average. And I think if this were an if he were a normal general

in an army, if he had stayed with the Union, right? And he'd been under a guy like Grant or McClellan, or if he had just been under somebody else for the entire war as the Confederacy, if he's just like a core commander, he would probably be remembered as like, yeah, he was above average skill. That is not his job, right? That's that we're building to that. So Douglas Southall Freeman is one of like

the premier lost cause historians. And he writes a biography of Lee in the 30s that is like kind of the foundational, not the foundational, that's maybe even Fitzhugh Lee's book, but it's one of the most influential lost cause history texts about Lee. And he summarizes Lee's first two years in command this way.

During the 24 months when he had been free to employ open maneuver, a period that had ended with cold harbor, he had sustained approximately 103,000 casualties and had inflicted 145,000. Holding, as he usually had to the offensive, his combat losses had been greater in proportion to his numbers than those of the Federals.

But he had demonstrated how strategy may increase an opponent's casualties, for his losses included only 16,000 prisoners, whereas he had taken 38,000. And that sounds really good when you describe it that way. But Freeman is kind of pointing out these combat record as this ratio of wins and losses. And Freeman is like, you can't just look at it that way, though. You also have to look at what he prevented by being in the field, right? So it's not just a matter of like he won this many battles, he lost this many. But it's like, what wasn't the union able to do because he was taking other

actions that they had to respond to? This is fair, but it's also not fair to judge Lee just based on his field command performance. After saving Richmond, he becomes basically the Confederate war leader, right? He's not on paper, you know? Yeah, this kind of solidifies, like now the dudes believe in it. Yeah, he is though. Yeah, like you have to view because he is effectively the guy orchestrating the Confederate primary Confederate war strategy, and he is in command of like the center of their army and making decisions about how to try and win this thing you have to analyze his level of competence not as what did he win and lose in individual battles but how well

did he do actually prosecuting a war and I think that is where the only responsible, the only conclusion you can come to is he was bad at it. He was a bad general because of the job he is taking is not just as a field commander. It is the commander of Confederate forces trying to orchestrate a victory, which he fails at doing. Yeah, it's interesting going back to your point about like, had he taken the job in

The Union Army it might have like played to his strengths more. Yeah, and May have gone down in history Like you said in like a better scenario for himself because it played to his strengths It's like you're not asking you to do something.'re not good at. His early successes get him promoted essentially. He's put into position because he's like the winningest general the South has for a while. He's put into position where he's far in excess

of his capabilities. If he had always, if he had stayed a core commander and someone else was telling him, this is the broad, someone like Grant who is good at grand strategy had been telling him like, you know, I want you to command this the left wing of our army in this battle. He would have been fine. I think because he was not incompetent at that sort of thing, but he regularly needed to be overruled.

He had terrible instincts about a lot of things. And in the book, Lee considered Alan Nolan makes this eloquent assessment about how this fact that like you can't view Lee as a field commander because he was overall the guy in strategic command of the Confederacy gets ignored in analysis of Lee. Quote, his campaigns and battles are typically considered almost as disembodied abstract events unrelated to the necessities and objectives of the war from the standpoint of the South. And without regard to whether they advanced or retarded those necessities and objectives, it is as if a surgeon were to be judged on the basis of his skillful, dexterous and imaginative procedures, incisions and sutures,

without regard to whether the operation actually improved the patient's chances for survival. That's a cold quote. Listen, man, the scar from my surgery, it's beautiful, curvy, it's so gorgeous. The heart didn't work, but the scar, barely see it. Yeah, like, wow, look at the quality of these sutures on my dead cousin. Yeah, I'm telling you, man. The heart failed still, but. To properly analyze Lee and his level of competence

and success, we have to accept one thing first off that is gonna be hard for some people. The Confederacy could have won, right? This is the thing a lot of people are like, oh, it was always hopeless. Look at how much bigger the industrial base, the population base of the union is. I think that's very silly.

I think that ignores some really crucial facts. And to be clear, when I say victory, I'm not talking about like some counterfactual or the Confederacy conquers the North, right? I don't think that was ever in the cards. Victory is a succession. Yeah. Yeah, they continue to exist, right? The Confederacy continues to exist and the war ends, right? That's that's what I mean by victory.

That was within their capabilities. A big problem people make is like, they get kind of like video game brain about this where they're just sort of like looking at the assets of each side and like a ledger and like, well, yeah, they never could have won this. The Civil War wasn't a video game. Public opinion was a huge factor

in how this war was going to go. And in the North, public opinion teetered for large pieces of the war. It was not impossible that Lee could have done enough damage to force Lincoln to come to the table because the people of the Union were not willing to continue fighting, right? That was possible. There were strategies that the Confederacy could have taken that might have secured this ending and Lee did not take them historian Bell Wiley is one of the first people to make this case as a repost to the lost cause narrative and it's key to the Lost cause narrative that you believe they couldn't have won right?

It's a noble doomed struggle He did the best anyone could have done but it was unwinnable Because that means that he couldn't have done better than he did. And that is bullshit. That's why you have to repost this. And I'm going to quote from Bell Wiley here. The North unquestionably had an immense superiority of material and human resources, but the North also faced a greater task. In order to win the war, the North had to subdue a vast country of 9 million inhabitants,

while the South could prevail by maintaining a successful resistance. To put it another way, the North had to conquer the South while the South could win by outlasting its adversary, by convincing the North that coercion was impossible or not worth the effort. The South had reason to believe that it could achieve independence, that it did not was do as much, if not more, to its own failings as to the superior strength of the foe. Yeah. Again, like, I always have to come back to reality and like, you're still fighting about my people. Sure.

And like, I think that this is where like, a lot of my history knowledge kind of falls in, into like, the role that like, black regiments played in making sure that this ended the way it did. And it's like their own ignorance and racism, shooting them in the foot, like the fact that you were so racist and could not even think of the idea of fighting alongside a person of color, right? And then the obviousness of African-Americans,

like black people at the time being like, which one of y'all are gonna set us free? We'll fight for y'all. Yeah. So I'm a union man. I guess I'm a union man. Like I don't care what the fuck you actually believe. All I know is I ain't going back to this goddamn plantation. You know, so if that's the case, then shit, give me one of them, give me one of them things, you know, I'm

saying, and the union having then shit, give me one of them things, you know what I'm saying? And the union having sense enough, which I believe again, is like our hell sweet brother, Frederick Douglass, you know, who was such a huge influence on Lincoln to get to move Lincoln from like saving the universe, universe, that's what we think Americans, right? Saving the union to an abolitionist is a lot of times the effects of Frederick Douglass

and then him being like, we're humans too and we're willing to fight for our own freedom. Like you understand we willing to die for this shit too. Like give them some fucking guns, fam. Like, and that playing such a role in the, in the, in the union's victory, um, being a thing, but also to your point, could have also swayed the, the Northern public who wasn't any less racist. They just was like, slavery's clearly wrong.

You know what I'm saying? So like him enlisting black soldiers could have also played against the slavery's clearly wrong, you know what I'm saying? So like him enlisting black soldiers could have also played against the union's winning is what I'm saying. Yeah, it was, yeah, there were a number of ways in which like it could have been fucked. So like, and I think that's, that is so important to accept because number one, a lot of people in the union,

Lincoln and Grant chief among them had to make the right calls to win. And also Lee had to make the wrong calls to lose, you know? Yes. Alan Nolan quotes analysis from four different historians who carried out an in-depth review of Confederate defeats, basically analyzing all of the times the Confederacy lost in the field.

And they concluded, quote, no Confederate army lost a major engagement because of the lack the Confederacy lost in the field, and they concluded, quote, no Confederate army lost a major engagement because of the lack of arms, munitions, or other essential supplies. And this again, there's this big argument that like, well, they just didn't have the industrial base necessary to win. The reality is the Confederacy actually,

some of the people in the Confederacy who did their fucking job were the people who like were responsible for creating an industrial base to sustain the war effort. The Confederacy created a very effective industrial base given the poor state, not an objective sense, but given how shitty it was at the start of the war, right? They had weapons. What they did not have was men, right? And so when you're in that position, yeah, we've got guns, we've got enough guns, right? For the number of men we've had,

but we just don't have enough men, right? That was the thing that the union had on them. And I do know, Prop, we've talked around this. I am focusing purely on matters of like strategy of what could have happened rather than the moral dimension, just because like that's not a factor in winning or losing. Right? Yeah, facts. Yeah.

Because it's just the only way to like kind of analyze this. But the industrial base was sufficient for the number of men that they had. When you know then that your primary issue is you don't have the manpower, right? Yeah. The most sane tactic, if you want to give yourself the best chance to win, is to set up a grinding defense, right?

Force the North to bleed for every square inch of territory it takes. At this point, weapons have advanced a significant degree. We have rifles, right? So not muskets that you can't shoot accurately. You can hit, you can snipe. We have cannons with like much better shells that are accurate at a much longer range. The Confederacy could have set up like we're talking like World War One style, like static defenses and made basically adopt the strategy of if we can bleed them white, they will lose public support for the war. Lee is not willing to do that. He becomes obsessed with the idea that we have to end the war quickly.

Right? His attitude is, and you can see why he feels this way that we have to end the war quickly because of how much bigger their industrial base is. Hey, everyone, Robert here. I wanted to be clear. Lee's not trying to take DC because it's far too fortified for that to be a realistic possibility, but he's hoping that by consistently advancing in that direction, he can pull federal troops from other theaters, which will allow Confederates to make gains there, and that if he defeats a Union army, right, at basically the gates of the capital, that that will have kind of

the morale impact on the populace that he's looking to have and help force an end to the war. impact on the populace that he's looking to have and help force an end to the war. And defensives always cost more lives than defensive operations, right? The attacker should always have numeric superiority because of this, right? You can offset this in some ways, right? If you can get their firstest with the mostest, right? It doesn't matter that your army has less men if you have more men at the point where it matters, right? And that's what Lee is trying to do. But by doing that, he kind of throws away the option of like, well, if from the beginning our goal had been to cost as many lives of the North as possible,

maybe a year or two of like nightmarish casualties and much less losses from the Confederacy, Lincoln loses that popular support, you know? Wow. Now, there is some debate among scholars as to whether or not this should be considered the Confederacy's official grand strategy, because they never lay out and say like Jefferson Davis never says, this is our strategy.

One school of thought is that the official strategy of the Confederacy was a defensive wait out the clock option, and Lee was not acting in concert with the overall plan. Other historians will argue, well, Lee was obviously the one orchestrating the Confederacy's grand strategy. One historian notes that his basic shortcoming was his failure to map an overall strategy.

So basically, Lee had an overall strategy that we can see from his actions he was pursuing, but he never straight up wrote that out or tried to get the rest of the state organized around it, which is another failure as a general for sure. Like you supposed to get us on board. Yeah, where are we going? Get us hyped up. That probably would mean something.

You're right. But also like you're just going to throw lives at this when that's what we have the least of as opposed to trying to maintain our strength. How Lee, how are we supposed to do this? Now, a big part of the Lost Cause lore is that the major fuck ups on the Confederate side were made by lesser generals around Lee, right? He was perfect.

It was all of these subordinates who bungled his plans and cost us the war, right? You know, that was the thing. He just, he didn't have enough good men. Stonewall Jackson was great, but then he gets shot by his own guys. And, you know, Allen Nolan points out that this ignores a lot of Lee's agency.

Quote, Connolly and Jones, who were two other historians, correctly state that although President Davis asserted unity of control over the Confederate war effort, there was a large measure of autonomy for department commanders. The notion that Lee had little power, they describe as one of the great myths of the Civil War, in point to fact it was Lee, not Davis, who proposed and initiated the movements of Lee's army, movements that brought on its battles, including the Maryland campaign in Gettysburg, and he had complete tactical control of that army.

So again, part of this is a failure of like, Davis is not exercising the control he technically should be exercising in order to like actually have a cohesive war plan. But Lee, having this big army that is effectively the center of the effort is exercising grand strategy, but it's not actually like informing anybody.

And because he is in such control, you have to look at how well he did, and you have to see his failures as his, not as failures of the broader system or of his subordinates. So, Yeah, both ways, dude. Yeah, you can't have it both ways. And we're gonna talk about Gettysburg and Lee's biggest failure in tactical control of an army. But first, here's some ads. All of a sudden, he says, Linda, I see a skull.

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At one of the most famous restaurants in the world, there's a table in the corner. We're the most incredible conversations on the planet are happening every week with owner Ruthie Rogers, an amazing guest. Like Martha Stewart. But I did have an affair with one of his best friends, Jimmy Fallon. You want to zip line over your dad while he gets attacked by alligators and Paul McCartney. John and I hitchhiked to Paris. We've saved you a seat. Ruthie's Table Four.

Listen to Ruthie's Table Four on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. All right. So the definition Alan Nolan uses of grand strategy is the use of engagements to attain the objects of war. And he cites this piece of writing by Lee as the closest Lee came to citing an overall strategic vision. If we can defeat or drive the armies of the enemy from the field, we shall have peace. All our efforts and energies should be devoted to that object.

And that is A failure that's a fuck-up because that is not how you win as the Confederacy, you know when by the so vague It's it's really vague one thing. It's like yeah, you win by beating the enemy Yeah, you know, let me tell you how I play basketball. This is our game. We just gonna score more points than it What this shows? Lee We just gonna score more points than them. What this shows, Lee doesn't understand modern war. One of the reasons I think Grant is objectively a better general, Grant understands modern war.

He knows what war is going to, Grant is one of the people who first sees what war is gonna be like in the 21st century. And he carries out a strategy based on that. Lee is still stuck in this, will you win war by driving your enemy's armies from the field? And like, how did Vietnam beat the US? Did they smash our armies?

No, we won pretty much every single field engagement that we fought in that war. And it doesn't matter. Battles are not what wins wars. Strategy is what wins wars, right? You can win a war losing every battle if you exact enough of a toll from the enemy that they stop being willing to fight you, right? And Lee doesn't understand that and that is a failure, you know?

So his attempts to achieve this plan start with the Chancellorsville campaign, which he wins despite being outnumbered and attacking an entrenched enemy. Lee defenders will cite this long odds win as proof of his genius. And this is a I think a competently carried out battle. But if you view it within the overall strategy, the Confederacy had to use in order to win, this is a fuck up. Right. Lee describes it as a triumph, most honorable to our arms. But it costs him 21 percent of his army, which is a higher percentage. Again, people point out like, well, he killed more, he was outnumbered and he still killed more of them

and they killed of him. And it's like, yeah, but the union lost a lower percentage of their army. Yeah, percentage wise. We don't think you understand numbers, fellas. Yeah. That's what the Confederacy, the Confederacy can jink around and move and capture material to make up

some of that manufacturing capacity. They cannot make up the lack of men. And that's what he's throwing away. Despite losing this hideous chunk of his army, he carries on the offensive, harassing Meade's retreating army. Just to be clear here, Meade is not in command at Chancellorsville. He's like one of the Union generals who is leading a chunk of the army. He is going to be in command at Gettysburg and the rest of the stuff about Lee harrying him and harassing his retreating troops is accurate. I just kind of didn't say clearly what was going on here.

Mead, who has lost this battle, doesn't like give up or panic or what he shows his metal here, right? Lee reforms his army and Lee tries to goad Mead into attacking. He basically like once Mead reforms, Lee tries to entrench his forces in the hope that like Mead will attack him and he can bleed them white, right? By having his guys on the defensive. And Mead doesn't take the bait. He refuses to be tricked by Lee.

And so the army of the Potomac and the army of Northern Virginia jockey about for a while, trying to get into a better position, Lee really wants to be on the defensive because then he'll lose fewer men. But eventually he has to contend that like, Meade is not an idiot. Meade's not going to let him do that. And so in July of 1863, Robert E. Lee decides to execute an attack on Meade's entrenched forces at Gettysburg.

Now, before this fateful battle, we know that Lee was writing to Davis about how bad the manpower crunch was and about how it harmed Confederate chances. His gamble at Gettysburg was that if he could destroy the army of the Potomac, it would shatter the Union's will to fight, right? We'll never know if that would have been the case. The Union could have rebuilt another army,

could have like, you know, done that thing. But also there's the decent chance that if the army of the Potomac is wiped out, people like that might end the Union's willingness to actually keep prosecuting the war. Not impossible, right? It's almost DC, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're close.

So Gettysburg takes place July 1st through the 3rd, 1863. And this is the battle that ultimately decides the Confederacy's fate. This is the high watermark for the Confederacy. This is what destroys Robert E. Lee's shot at being George Washington, right? Yeah. Now the battle starts with a huge Confederate fuck up. J.E.B.

Stewart, I like calling him Jeb, his scouting failed to identify Meade's proper position, and the army of Potomac actually gets behind Lee between him and his supply lines. That is Lee being out-generaled by Meade. Wow. Like, these are wars of maneuver, right? That's part of what determines skill. Meade cuts off his supply line, and the fact that Lee lets himself get in this position represents a strategic failure, you know? that is him being out general. Still, when he attacks on July 1st, he nearly routes Meade's vanguard.

The Union position is only saved from like losing access to the high ground because of a major general named O. O. Howard, who had been one of Lee's students at West Point. O. O. Howard had actually been kind of the nerdy kid at school and Lee had like defended him from bullies, which is an interesting like beside bit that like this guy winds up thwarting his aims. And thanks to Howard, the Union is able to save their position and dig in on the high ground. Now, so because this vanguard doesn't get completely routed, basically Meade's army is stationed on a bunch of hills, set up, dug in with guns and artillery. This is a bad situation to attack. You do not want to attack an enemy that has the high ground. I don't think I need to explain why,

but like it's like the worst thing you can do in a war like this. Have you been there? Gettysburg, yeah. Yeah, yeah, getting a feel of the land, like, and like you said, the idea of the high ground and just if you could picture it, you're just like, yeah, bro, this is a bad move, homie.

Like, yeah, like you. If you're confused about it, like even not taking into account that while you are advancing towards the high ground, you're getting shot the whole time. Yeah. I want you to put on like 40, 50 pounds of gear and a rifle and run up a hill.

And then think about trying to stab a man to death immediately afterwards. First of all, number one, and number two, who's watching you run up? Yeah, who's watching you run up and who is not out of breath. Yeah, who's sitting there. It's just like, hey, here they come.

Y'all ready? Hey, let me finish this cigar first.'s sitting there? It's just like, hey, here they come. Y'all ready? Yeah. Hey, let me finish this cigar first. Yeah, and keep in mind, like, maybe, you know, if you're in great shape, sure you can do that, right? Modern people, modern nutrition, modern, like, you can train for a situation like that.

These guys all have fucking rickets. They're all sick as shit, you know? They've been marching in the field. Like, they're not at their best health-wise anyway, you know? Like, it's such a bad idea. Despite this being a terrible position to attack from, Lee felt like he had the numbers, right? Right now, because, you know, Meade's whole army isn't, you know, that these armies are maneuvering and getting into position and stuff, Lee's got, feels like I've got more

men at the critical point right now than Meade does. If I don't attack now, I'm going to lose that advantage." And so he orders the attack. Now one of his core commanders, James Longstreet, is like, this is a bad idea. Please don't order the attack. And Lee responds to him, the enemy is there and I am going to attack him there. This would prove to be a terrible mistake, as this article for Smithsonian Magazine makes clear.

Lee didn't know that in the night, Meade had managed by forced marches to concentrate nearly his entire army at Lee's front and had deployed it skillfully. His left flank was now extended to Little Round Top, nearly three-quarters of a mile south of where Lee thought it was. The disgruntled Longstreet, never one to rush into anything, and confused to find the left flank further than expected, didn't begin his assault until 3.30 that afternoon. It nearly prevailed anyway, but at last was beaten gorelly back. Although the two-pronged offensive was ill-coordinated, and the federal artillery had knocked out the Confederate guns to the north before Yule's

attack, Yule's infantry came tantalizingly close to taking Cemetery Hill, but a counterattack forced them to retreat. On the third morning, July 3rd, Lee's plan was roughly the same, but Meade seized the initiative by pushing forward on his right and seizing Culp's Hill, which the Confederates held. So Lee was forced to improvise. He decided to strike straight ahead at Meade's heavily fortified midsection. Confederate artillery would soften it up, and Longstreet would direct a frontal assault across a mile of open ground

Against the center of Missionary Ridge again Longstreet objected again Lee wouldn't listen the Confederate artillery exhausted all its shells ineffectively so was unable to support the assault which has gone down in history as Pickett's charge because Major General George Pickett's division absorbed the worst of the horrible bloodbath that turned into and This is that's a series of fuck ups, right? Very much so. That is Lee being out generaled, being beaten fair and square. It's not that they don't have the material. It's not that they don't at this point like they use the men, but like they make a series of bad calls. Yeah. Pickett's charge bleeds the Confederacy of the skilled troops that it needed to have any chance of victory.

Gettysburg on the whole is kind of like what kills any hope they might have had. Yeah, okay, this is a, I mean, this comparison's on the struggle bus for sure, but when you are like, you're outflanked, you're outnumbered, and you're about to get jumped, like the, everyone knows, don't let nobody get behind you. Like if somebody gets behind you, you're done. You know what I'm saying? Like get your, get yourself to

a position to where you can see everyone, right? Get as many blows as you can get in and then get out of there because you can't, it's out of your control. But for you to think that you're some sort of like movie character and you're gonna karate chop all these guys is just absurd, that's not real. You can't, you watch too many movies. Like it's not true.

So if you're in a position where Yohomi is telling you, hey, hey, cut, they done already spun the block on you. They coming around the back, bro. Like they're coming down the alley. Like, you, what do you get out of here? It's time to fucking run. Yeah. Get the fuck out dog.

Like you can't take this. No, man, they gonna feel this. They gonna have to see me. I'm like, okay. You know what I'm saying? Like you about to get your ass kicked. Like you cannot, they've gotten behind you. If they got behind you, they got beside you.

You ain't got the two arms. Like this is not, he ain't gonna leave lumped up. Okay, all right. Yes, you lumped up the guy in the middle. Okay, you feel better now? Yeah. Now go home. And Lee lumps up Mead, but like he loses

a third of his army in this battle, right? And this is the Confederacy never again regains momentum or the ability to mount a serious offensive. Because he does this reckless attack, he bleeds his army to the point where like, it's never going to be as effective again. And that hobbles the whole Confederate effort as opposed to like,

what he should have been doing the whole time was doing what Mead did most days at Gettysburg. Just fall back and wait. Finding good defensible positions and shoot the fuck out of them, you know? Just fall back and wait, yeah. Yeah, he doesn't, he chooses not to do that. Steven Seagal, like I'm gonna go Chuck Norris this thing,

man, I'm gonna go like, nah, fam. Yeah. Like, yeah, I'm not even sure. Yeah, there's a lot more battles that lead, like maybe it's unfair of me that I'm not talking about some of the genius moves that he makes. Is he, there's some things he's very good at when it comes to being a field commander.

There's some things his army is very good at, but it doesn't matter because his job is not to be great at those little things. His job is to win the war and he doesn't. I don't care yet. I don't look, look, look, look, Sophie. I don't care how many triple doubles you got. Where's the banner?

Yeah, literally. You know what I'm saying? Literally. Yeah, where's the banner? Like. You know what I'm saying? Literally. Yeah. Where's the banner? Like, you know what I'm saying? So I'm like, if you ain't got no rings, okay, how many points you scored today?

So that's the facts, yeah. And there's two things. First off, while Lee has some competences as a field commander in tactical matters, he's not as good as people say, Mead comprehensively outmaneuvers him. Not even talking strategy, Mead comprehensively outmaneuvers him. Not even talking to strategy. Mead beats him in general ship. But also, like Grant, he never, I'm always frustrated

at like how little credit Grant gets. He was described to me as like he was just a butcher. He won because he was just willing to blindly throw troops into a meat grinder. First off, Grant has his excellent campaigns that you can read. He's not perfect. He makes his share of mistakes. But he gets a chance to show his quality in tactical matters. And he has not, he has some very good skill there. But Grant understands what modern war wins. His strategy, this both his willingness to like, all right, well, there are sometimes where we just need to throw minute guns. But also, this strategy of like, all right, well, there are sometimes where we just need to throw men at guns. But also, this strategy of like, we are going to grant understands what total war is going to mean. And that this is the future of industrialized conflict and like, well, what we're going to do

is destroy their industrial base and their agricultural base, we are going to burn the country out from under them. That is strategic thinking. That is Grant knowing what war he's fighting and Lee never fucking does. Grant. It's always, it's, it's, it always like works against you when you have, when you're playing from a position of you feel you have something to prove because I'm being careful how I say this, but like, it's because you actually don't have any self confidence. Like, so you're actually really trying to prove it

to your own self worth. And when you playing from that, you're not stable. Like, and if you already like, and it clearly he knows his cause isn't just. So there's like, you're gonna make dumb ass mistakes cause you not writing ahead. So I feel like, you know, you take somebody like Ulysses S. Grant who obviously like,

I ain't got no Ulysses posters on my wall like this is the game of my hero. But I will say he could fall back and say, well, let me think about this for a little bit. Like I have time to think this through cause I know who I am, I understand my position, I don't give a fuck about y'all's glory. Like we finna win this.

Yeah, Grant is never fighting the war to like make a name for himself. Yeah, there's no daddy issues in it. Yeah, Grant just understands what needs to be done and he fucking does it. Yeah, Lee's defenders are down so bad when it comes to explaining the disaster that was Gettysburg, that rather than like analyzing that because it's just bad for them, they have to focus on how stoic and eloquent Robert E. Lee was in defeat, which is one of one of my favorite bits of cope.

I'm going to quote from Smithsonian Magazine here. As the minority who hadn't been cut to ribbons, streamed back to the Confederate lines, Lee rowed in splendid calm among them, apologizing. It's all my fault, he assured, stunned privates and corporals. He took time to admonish mildly, an officer who was beating his horse.

Don't whip him, Captain, it does no good. I had a foolish horse once, and kind treatment is the best. Then he resumed his apologies. I am very sorry, the task was too great for you, but we mustn't despond. Shelby Foote has called this Lee's finest moment, but generals don't want apologies from those beneath them, and that goes both ways. After midnight he told a cavalry officer,

I never saw troops behave more magnificently than Pickett's Division of Virginians. Then he fell silent, and it was then that he exclaimed, as the officer wrote it down, too bad, too bad, oh, too bad. Like, that is so lame. Just like, first this like, oh, you know, it's my fault. And it is his fault, but like, the fact that like, his defenders take this like,

this was his finest moment. Well, you have to view it as his finest moment because he didn't fucking win, right? He's just so magnanimous in defeat. Like he got tens of thousands of men killed pointlessly. Why is the fact that he was pretended to be humble about it good? I don't get it, dude.

Of all the things they could have told themselves, the effort you had to go through to create the lost cause, which of course grew over time. But I'm like, it seemed to be more simple and eloquent for them to just be like, nah, man, generally, dog, he didn't know what the fuck he was doing. That's why we lost. Like you could have just said that.

And that might have actually, then you wouldn't have to make up some other fantasy stuff. You could just be like, ah man, he ain't know what he was doing. Like you could have just said that. Yeah, sure. Jim put his hand into the disposal and turned on the blades

and it cut his entire hand to ribbons. And that was really dumb, but he had such a stoic look on his face the whole time. You know? I really respect the way he ground his hand into hamburger meat. So absurd. Now, that article gives us a more comical look at Lee than guys like Foot tended to want to accept.

Quote, For months Lee had been traveling with a pet hen. Meant for the stew pot, she had won his heart by entering his tent first thing every morning and laying his breakfast egg under his Spartan cot. As the Army of Northern Virginia was breaking camp and all deliberate speed for the withdrawal, Lee's staff ran around anxiously crying, where is the hen?

Lee himself found her nestled in her accustomed spot on the wagon that transported his personal materiel. Worried about his fucking hen, you've just gotten like fucking tens of thousands of men killed and maimed in your stupid fuckup. Worried about your goddamn hand. You loser.

This is a guy? Yeah. This is, you're such a loser. This your man like, that's your dude, this is y'all's dude. Yeah, this is your boy, huh? Yeah, word, got you. In the end, Lee failed. After almost two years of feudal slaughter,

he finally found himself checkmated by Grant. His fighting retreat started with 64,000 men. By April 9th, 1865, he had less than 10,000 effectives in the Army of Northern Virginia. His casualties, this like I think 64,000 casualties, something like that, cost the Union 63,000 men. This is a ratio that technically favors him, but not to a degree that is impressive or noteworthy.

The so-called greatest American field commander of the 19th century, as lost cause histories claim, was defeated in the field by both Lee and Grant. Now, there were some in Lee's command who had advocated that he take his army into a guerrilla struggle. Lee rejected this, telling his artillery commander, the men would become mere bands of marauders, and the enemy's cavalry would pursue them and overrun many wide sections they may never have occasion to visit.

We would bring on a state of affairs, it would take the country years to recover from. And as for myself, you young fellows might go bushwhacking, but the only dignified course for me would be to go to general grant and surrender myself and take the consequences. And this is the first time he makes a good call in this war where he's like, it's done.

You know, it took him way too long, but he does. So it is a long time ago, but yeah. All right, man, yeah. So contrary to the opinions of Weizerman, Lincoln's successors opted for a conciliatory response to the traitors who survived. Lee, along with Jefferson Davis and other major Confederate officers, was subject to some restrictions after the war, but these are all eventually lifted.

The primary long-term consequence for Robert E. Lee of losing is that he and Mary never get Arlington back. And this brings us to one of the more amusing parts of the Robert E. Lee saga. Once Mary had forfeited the property for failing to pay her taxes, it went up for auction. The US government was the Adam Sandler in this incident to return to our happy Gilmore comparison and makes the only bid. They get a good deal, about 25% under the assessed value of the property. Arlington is first used as a cemetery two years after the U.S. buys it,

when quartermaster of the army, Montgomery Meigs, turns to it in desperation. From the Smithsonian Magazine, the first soldier laid to rest there was Private William Christman, 21 of the 67th Pennsylvania Infantry, who was buried in a plot on Arlington's northeast corner. On May 13, 1864, a farmer newly recruited into the army. Christman never knew a day of combat. Like many others who would join him in Arlington, he was felled by disease. He died of Peritontitis in Washington's Lincoln's General Hospital on May 11th. His burial was soon followed by other soldiers, men who were, quote, too poor to be embalmed and sent for burial.

Wow. It is perhaps fitting, then then that one of the first jerky steps this country took towards equality happened when poor free white men were buried across the field from a graveyard for slaves and freedmen of the leaf and Custis families, right? This is one of the first things that happens with Arlington is you have poor white men buried in the same place.

In a racial place. Yeah. You got to start somewhere. I guess. Yeah. The need for burial space only increased as the summer of 1864 wore on, and Meigs recommended that the land around Arlington Mansion be turned into a national cemetery. A separate chunk of the property was turned into a village for newly freed former slaves.

So like, there's like a little town there for people who have just gotten freed on the former Custis property. And this is done out of spite. Yeah, totally done out of spite. Yeah. Meigs is not just doing this because it's necessary. He's doing this because fuck Robert E. Lee. Basically.

Yeah, exactly. Quote, Meigs evicted officers from the mansion, installed a military chaplain and a loyal lieutenant to oversee cemetery operations and proceeded with new burials and circling Mrs. Lee's garden with the tombstones of prominent Union officers. The first of these was Captain Albert H. Packard of the 31st Maine Infantry, shot in the head during the Battle of the Second Wilderness. He was laid to rest where Mary Lee had enjoyed reading in warm weather, during the Battle of the Second Wilderness, he was laid to rest where Mary Lee had enjoyed reading in warm weather, surrounded by the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine. By the end of 1864, some 40 officers' graves had joined his. And in short order, Meigs adds the remains of more than

2,000 unknown soldiers, many of them new immigrants whose first act after arriving to this nation in total poverty was to fight and die in the cause of liberty. These men were buried in Mary Lee's former garden as well, which is, you know, a purposeful move. Yeah, yeah, a symbol for generations to come. Yep. By October of 1864, the war had claimed Meigs's son as well. He was shot while scouting in the Shenandoah. And while he was not buried in Arlington, his loss deepened Meigs's commitment that Arlington should never return to the Lee's possession. When Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, Meigs wrote this, The rebels are all murderers of my son and the sons of hundreds of thousands. Justice seems not satisfied if they escape judicial trial and execution by the government which they

have betrayed and attacked and those people loyal and disloyal that they have slaughtered. And I agree with them. We should have killed all these guys. Yeah, we should have executed Lee. We should have executed Davis. It was the only ethical thing to do. We didn't do it. And that's a lingering mistake. It remains a mistake to this day. Yeah. That said, Meeg's in his actions ensures some sort of vengeance to Robert E. Lee, not enough, but it's something. Lee lives another five years after the Civil War, and he is unfortunately widely respected, both as a symbol of white supremacist rebellion, and as a symbol of the attempted unity after the Civil War. That said, he never sees Arlington again. after the Civil War. That said, he never sees Arlington again. Lost cause historians paint this last chapter of his life as a crucial period for the United States. As biographer

Douglas Freeman claimed, Lee the warrior became Lee the conciliator. Within less than five months from Appomattox, he was telling southern men to abandon all opposition, to regard the United States as their country, and to labor for harmony and better understanding. Seldom had a famous man so completely reversed himself and so brief at time and never more sincerely. And it's true that Lee regularly expressed advocacy for reunification. His last job was as president of Washington College, and we can view this as his consolation prize.

He doesn't get to be the George Washington of a new country, but he gets to run a college named after him. You gotta get to be a dean, you know. Yeah. In a letter accepting the job he stated, I think it is the duty of every citizen in the present condition of the country to do all it is power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony, and in no way oppose the policy of the state or general governments directed to that object. It is particularly incumbent on those charged

with the instruction of the young to set them as an example of submission to authority. Interesting. I'm like kick rocks. You had a chance. You could have this could have gone so different. Yeah. And it is also not accurate to say that he was this this figure of conciliation as we're building towards, right? He was not. We have to see that statement he just made in context. Reconstruction had just begun and it faced tremendous and often violent resistance.

Yeah. Lee did on paper in some of his public statements seem to oppose insurgent attempts to fight Reconstruction. But his heart had not changed, and in private he complained to his friend and fellow general, E.G.W. Butler, we are obliged to confess that, notwithstanding our boastful assertions to the world for nearly a century, that our government was based on the consent of the people, which we claimed

was the only rightful foundation on which any government could stand. It rests upon force as much as any government that ever existed. And like, well, that's true. What about your keeping slaves? And what about the enforcement of a racial hierarchy? Right? Like Lee doesn't care about the fact

that the government enforces its shit through violence. He's just angry he lost, you know? He and his friends were worse at doing violence. In rampant correspondence with influential friends around the country, Lee harangued the North for what he viewed as its unconstitutional imposition on the South. His reputation as a uniter is based on a couple of public statements and at odds with his actual behavior. In 1866, the old colonel, for he was never made general

in the army of a recognized nation, was interviewed by the Duke of Argyle. Here he sketched out the early dimensions of what became lost cause mythology. The relations between the Negroes and the Whites were friendly formerly and would remain so if legislation be not passed in favor of the blacks in a way that will only do them harm. Yeah. Friendly. Friendly. Do I need to reread the quotes of you whipping people? Yeah. Yeah. Friendly. Yeah. Yeah. I cannot wait. I cannot wait for when we get to do the lost cause stuff and that and the role that that actual. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's sick. Most black people liked it. Like that was the lost cause stuff and that and the role that that actual yeah well every

black people liked it like that was it was fine before fine before you guys came out there and told them they were slaves they didn't know now Alan Nolan goes on to summarize Leithan continued that the North was raising up feelings of race and argued that laws in behalf of the blacks would not work to their advantage and would keep alive bad blood in the South against the North. The Southeastated should be left alone.

The contrary course was provocative of Southern hostility. He continued, the Southerners took up arms honestly. Surely it is to be desired that the goodwill of our people be encouraged and there should be no inciting them against the North. And what he's saying here is, it's not fair we lost, and even though we did, we should get to act like we won, right? Yeah, well just leave us alone. No, that's what you wanted. Can you not just pretend we won? No, you lost. You lost.

Yeah, and they're trying to do like whoever smelt it, dealt it, racism. Yeah. They're like, yeah. Like, you know who only talks about racism is racist. So you shouldn't have came down and told him that. Yeah. Like by trying to enforce laws letting black people vote, you're the ones being violent. Yeah. Right?

No, no, no. That is what he's claiming. You're the racist. Yeah. Yeah. It's so the same as as the people say today, right? Yes. Anyway, Lee did not keep his activism private. In 1868 Union General William Rose Kranz, a Democrat, commissioned the writing of a letter that would lay out the supposed views of the southern people about their defeat and what should come after. It complained that although Southerners had no

unfriendly feelings towards the government anymore, their rights were being infringed by laws enforcing black civil rights. This, they insisted, was not due to racism or their desire to enforce a racial hierarchy. They have grown up in our midst and we have been accustomed from childhood to look upon them with kindness.

This change in the relation of the two races has brought no change in our feelings towards them. They still constitute an important part of our laboring population. Without their labor, the lands of the South would be comparatively unproductive. And without the employment which Southern agriculture affords, they would be destitute of a means of subsistence

and become poppers dependent upon public bounty. It's such a, no, we don't hate them. We need them to do the work that we're not going to do. We just don't want them to have any rights. Listen, but like, okay, hear me out. If they don't have to work our fields, that mean we have to. Yeah, and that's not fair.

That's not fair. Lee doesn't just sign this letter, he actively pushes other former Confederates to sign it as well. And while that letter is obviously racist as fuck, what Lee said in person is even worse. Alan Nolan recounts one incident during a visit of Lee to his cousin, Thomas Carter.

In discussing farming, Lee advised Carter not to depend on labor for the 90 or so blacks who still lived on the place. The government would, Lee said, provide for them. Carter should employ white people. He then drew a comparison that, like many racist comments since, dealt in stereotypes and completely disregarded the cause and effect where race is concerned. I have always observed that wherever you find the Negro, everything is going down around

him, and wherever you find the white, everything is going down around him. And wherever you find the white man, you see everything around him improving. And I think that's funny. From a man who led his side to a defeat so bad that its cities were burnt to the fucking ground. Was everything going down around you at the in 1865? How was the South doing, Bobby Lee? After you and your friends were in charge for five years. Was it all improving?

Yeah. Just watching Sherman burn his crops and going, wow, we've really improved the South. Things are looking up for us now. Listen, man, this had been so much better if we were in charge. It's such a funny thing for him specifically to say. Like you guys were in charge and you destroyed your entire culture.

Yeah, that's what I meant to say. Let me be in charge. Wait, what? What? You were in charge, sir. Yeah. So all of this is infuriating. I do think it punctures the myth that Lee was this great uniter after the war.

But because of how infuriating this is, I wanna end us on a happier note. The end of the winding story of Robert E. Lee's supposedly beloved plantation, Arlington. His wife, Mary Lee, wrote to one friend that the occupation of her family land enraged her as so much that she could not write, quote, with composure about it.

She howled, she was particularly angry that the graves could not write, quote, with composure about it. She howled. She was particularly angry that the graves of poor men, quote, are planted up next to the very door without any regard to common decency. If justice and law are not utterly extinct in the US, I will have it back. And again, this is part of like, these are poor men. How dare they bury them on my family land?

Oh my God. Have you no manners? Yeah. Like word? That's what you worried about? OK. Bobby Lee tries in secret to get this property back for his wife's family.

He asks a lawyer friend to find a path for him to take, retake possession and stop the government from burying soldiers there. Robert Poole writes, quote, Smith Lee made a clandestine visit to the old estate in the autumn or winter of 1865. He concluded that the place could be made habitable again if a wall was built to screen the graves from the mansion. But Smith Lee made the mistake of sharing his views with the cemetery superintendent,

who dutifully shared them with Meigs, along with the mystery visitor's identity. While the Lees worked to reclaim Arlington, Meigs urged Edwin Stanton in early 1866 to make sure the government had sound title to the cemetery. The land had been consecrated by the remains buried there and could not be given back to the Lees, he insisted. Striking a refrain he would repeat in the years since, yet the Lees clung to the hope that Arlington might be returned to the family, if not to Mrs. Leith lead into one of their sons. The former general was quietly pursuing this objective when he met with his lawyers for the last time in July 1870. The prospect does not look promising, he reported to Mary. And I love Meigs. I love that he's

like, he sees how important this is to them and is like, well, I can't make the government kill them. But I can damn sure make sure they never get to step foot in that fucking house again. And I also love Mary's like, or their cousin Smith is like, well, we can make the property, we just have to build a wall between the graves of all those dead heroes in your house. You can't walk outside.

This is no yard, it's a wall. It's such a, just and the degree of, what a disgusting person to be like, well, I can't, you can't expect me to look at poor men's graves, men who died fighting for liberty's graves. Like how sickening, what a bad person she was. How bad you could miss the point.

Just like, take the L, like just take the L. And yeah, yeah, shout out to me, It's like, take the L, like just take the L. And yeah, yeah, shout out Meeks to being like, being like, oh word, hey homie, I don't know how else to tell you this, this ain't your land. Yeah, you are not just a shit pack. Yes, like we broke up, stop texting me. Like we're not together, this not your land. As a matter of fact,

let me, like it, like good thing Meigs had like some coos because at that point I'm burying somebody like in the living room. I'm like, all right, you know, you're not getting a picture. I'm gonna put this coffin right here on your porch where you catch the vapors and drink your sweet tea. Actually, no shade on sweet tea. That's one of the greatest things

that's the South's ever given us. Robert E. Lee dies October 12th, 1870. Now, some will argue that this was the tragic result of a night of furious love making with his horse traveler. Some historians say it's likely that it was caused by a stroke in September that debilitated him and he died of pneumonia. Who is to say?

A stroke, if you know what I mean. Yeah. Now, the one mercy we have here is that his stroke caused him to have aphasia. So we don't know his last words because he wasn't really able to talk after that. It wasn't. Thankfully, right?

Yes. One claim is that he was like giving orders to his old subordinates to advance. We don't really know what, if he actually got anything out though. By the time he died, his myth was well-established. Frederick Douglass expressed rage that the hagiographic reaction to his passing, even in Northern media, quote,

"'We can scarcely take up a newspaper "'that is not filled with nauseating flatteries of Lee, "'from which it would seem that the soldier "'who kills the most men in battle, even in a bad cause, is the greatest Christian and entitled to the highest place in heaven. And yeah, I feel you. I feel you there, Fred. Oh, Freddie.

Freddie with the Afro. Bro, you're keeping it real, because it's like, this is, it's so infuriating. Yeah. Yeah. Afterwards, Mary was left alone in her quest to regain Arlington. She formally begged Congress to not just revisit federal ownership of the property, but to put together a plan to remove the bodies of the dead men interred there. Effectively, she wanted to desecrate a cemetery

filled with the brave men her husband had killed with his treason. The proposal lost 54 to four. Of course it did. Yeah, yeah. The media furor, yeah. You shouldn't have married him, okay? That was your bad. And she's like, this was my daddy's house.

His dumb ass. It's like, ma'am, that is your husband. That is your husband. So shameful. Yes, boo-hmm. That is your husband. So shameful. Yes. Boohoo. So, the media furor over her attempt to consecrate or attempt to take back Arlington, this is what consecrates it as a symbol of the union, right?

And like that is part of why, like to this day, it's the military cemetery. It's where you can be buried if you were a veteran. Freedmen continued to stay on the property for decades. They had children and they built lives for themselves in houses built by the army. Meigs also remained and spent 20 years turning the property into a temple for the honored dead. Mary Lee would see it only one more time.

In 1873, she like visits to like just kind of look at it one last time and she expressed the feeling that it had been so changed that she no longer Recognized the place. I'm glad we got to stick that knife in her. Yeah. Yeah before you. Yeah. Yeah, or you died The Lee family does eventually there's like court cases and it's it's determined that because she made a good faith attempt to pay The government hadn't been entirely legal So we have to the government has to pay the Lee family like 150 grand, which I think is bullshit, but they don't ever get the property back. And so that's as close to a happy ending.

That and the fact that they lost the war as you ever get on this show. So this could have gotten much worse. Yes. Yeah. There we go. That is behind the bastards. Robert Maw fucking Ely. Yeah. What a guy, man. I do. I.

Some people were just so obviously a tool that you're just like, how are we still talking about this guy? He's such a tool. Yeah, he sure was. But now he's dead. And now he's well, prop. That's the that's the show. Yeah. Is that the Anderson? Yeah, she has. That is the Anderson dog outside.

Now she's all right. Yeah, she got all right while they're on us represent. What do you think? Oh, she said, fuck Robert E. Lee, I'm glad he's dead. Where? Got Anderson. Thank'm glad he's dead. Mm-hmm. Got it. You got it, Anderson. Thank you. Well, Prop, you got anything to plug?

Yeah, man. PropHipHop.com. There's some poetry, some music. Glinky to hood politics with Prop. The podcast on Cool Zone Media, where we're really giving y'all the business, man. And, yeah, it's good times. I'm glad to be a part of this. Yeah. Well, we are glad to have you and we are glad to be done talking about Robert E. Lee. So check in next week where we will have a bastard that's not fucking Robert E. Lee. Yeah.

Because we did him and he's dead. Yes. And we're going to do a Lost Cause episode specifically, right? Yeah. No, that's on my feed. Yep, yep. Yeah, you guys, yeah. Like we've been talking about around like what it like we're going to do a show on Hill Politics that's like, okay, this is the Lost Cause.

These are the six points. This how it grew. This why it's not dead yet. Yep. Check that out. So check it out. You can get the ad free version of this show if you go to cooler zone media. And you can find my book after the revolution, wherever books are sold.

Just type it into Google with a K press or type it into whatever you use. Amazon, I don't care. Ask a bookseller, you know. Anyway, goodbye. We're done. or wherever you get your projects. My name is M. William Phelps. For the past several years, I've been re-investigating the cases of two young women, abducted from their small towns, their bodies dumped deep in the Ozark Woods,

with a connection to one very familiar name. Find them, torture them, kill them, BTK. Secrets finally revealed sending authorities rushing to confront a suspect who's been hiding in plain sight for decades. Listen to Paper Ghost season 4 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. I'm John Seifer and I'm Gerry O'Shea. We spent over 30 years in the CIA uncovering global conspiracies.

Conspiracies aren't just a theory to us, which is why we started our podcast Mission Implausible. Everyone has questions about conspiracy theories, but with our background we can actually answer those questions. Anyone can just start screaming about microchips and Jewish space lasers, but it's our mission to remove the bull and get down to what's real. This is the mission plausible on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. makers and so many other fascinating people, like jazz bassist Christian McBride. Jazz is based on improvisation, but there's very much a form to it. Most pop songs have a very strict structure, verse-verse chorus, whereas jazz, you get

a melody with a set of chord changes. You play that melody with those chord changes. Now, once you do that, you have a conversation based on that melody and those chord changes. So it's kind of like giving someone a topic and say, okay, talk about this. And comedian and actor Caroline Ray, you're most comfortable when you're on stage. Probably. You really love it. Yeah, I feel like I always think my stand-up is a dinner party.

I know what I'm going to make. You're my guest. I don't know what's going to happen. But the thing about stand-up that amazes me is it's only going to happen in that moment in time, even if we film it. It's never going to be what it feels like live.