Behind the Bastards - Part One: Robert E. Lee: A Lifetime of Failure

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Robert sits down with Jason Petty aka Prop to begin the epic story of Robert E. Lee, prominent furry, slave owner and Confederate General. (4 Part Series) Sources: https://archive.org/stream/memoirsrobertel01wriggoog/memoirsrobertel01wriggoog_djvu.txt https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-arlington-national-cemetery-came-to-be-145147007/ https://www.history.com/news/how-the-cult-of-robert-e-lee-was-born  https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/18/robert-e-lee-is-the-uniter-america-has-been-looking-for/  https://www.amazon.com/Lee-Considered-General-History-America-ebook/dp/B00ZVEM3T6  https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Lee-Me-Southerners-Reckoning-ebook/dp/B08BKJJJG8/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=lee+and+me&s=digital-text&sr=1-2  https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Lee-Allen-C-Guelzo-ebook/dp/B08RJ4S4DN/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=lee+guelzo&s=digital-text&sr=1-1  https://www.amazon.com/General-Lee-Biography-Robert-ebook/dp/B074N2GGTV/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=lee+a+biography+fitzhugh+lee&s=digital-text&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/Who-Was-Robert-Lee-ebook/dp/B00GYA5AUU/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=who+was+robert+e+lee&s=digital-text&sr=1-1 https://archive.org/stream/memoirsrobertel01wriggoog/memoirsrobertel01wriggoog_djvu.txthttps://gettysburgcompiler.org/2018/05/23/the-sins-of-the-father-light-horse-harry-lee-and-robert-e-lee/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/lee-timeline/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/making-sense-of-robert-e-lee-85017563/ https://www.americanheritage.com/robert-e-lees-severest-struggle https://spartacus-educational.com/USASwhipping.htm  https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-robert-e-lee-met-john-brown-and-saved-the-union   https://www.ducksters.com/biography/world_leaders/robert_e_lee.php  https://www.historyforkids.net/robert-e-lee.html  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Courson media. What's morning, my Carl Weathers. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where me and my friend, Jason Petty, AKA Prop are huge fans of the recently deceased, Carl Weathers. Prop! Man, rest of these to a real world.

He was a fucking real one. What was your favorite Carl Weathers? And you like you have to like pick a decade, you know what I'm saying? Like that's the hard part. Damn, you know, that man had a fucking career. Because I mean, obviously like Happy Gilmore. Yeah. The character is just.

Absolutely. It's in the pantheon. The screen. Yeah. Yeah, like that's in the pantheon. Like you can't yeah, you can't pick a character, you know Just so important. I think happy Gilmore. Yeah, my favorite movie as a kid Like we would paint Warhammer minis and watch it every I probably saw the movie 200 times And yeah, he just and then fucking predator to and rock Rocky my predator like he had the big old like 20 inch pythons and like And yeah, he just, and then fucking predator too. And Rocky, don't forget, don't forget. Rocky, my God. Rocky, predator, like he had the big old like 20 inch pythons and like, like just huge. He got yoked, crazy dude.

I mean, rest in peace or real on this second day of Black History Month. Matter of fact, happy Black History Month. Yes. And I'll trade, if I could speak for the Black delegation, like I'll trade Tim Scott for a, let's say simply red. We're gonna call simply red black for this month. Okay.

We're gonna call him black, cause that like, we're gonna call him black. We're gonna call him black for this month. Like that white boy has some soul. Wow. Okay. I'll keep holding on. There's no way that man ain't black. We'll send out a letter.

We'll send out a letter. Yeah, send it to Manchester. You know who definitely isn't Blackprop? Oh boy. What a terrible transition. What a terribly wrong. What am I wrong? Wait, wait, wait, take a bow, bro.

Take a bow. I'm saying in four seasons, this is, yeah. Like this might be a top five. Top five transition. Yeah, we are doing finally the Robert E. Lee episodes. Yeah. Which like, you know, growing up in the South, as I did, I'm a Texan boy, right?

I think that people are broadly aware of that. There were like three heroes who were like the canonical, three male heroes, because everybody loves Dolly Parton and Dolly's, Dolly's, Dolly's, Dolly's Jim. Yeah, exactly. But there were three men that were like the holy trinity of like Southern masculinity when I was a kid.

There was Dale Earnhardt, Samuel Houston, and Robert E. Lee. Samuel who? Samuel Houston. He's the founding, he's the George Washington. No, I was like, what? I mean, I like him as a kid. That is a curve ball. I was not prepared for that.

I wouldn't call him like an arcana Southern masculinity though. And honestly, of those three, Dale Earnhardt's the only one who was actually a decent person, right? I think that's brought people are broadly aware of that now. Robert E. Lee was a deep, at least the kind of people who listened to this podcast was not a great man, but there's still this kind of attitude that like, well, yeah, he was obviously fighting for an evil side.

And so that says bad things about him, but he was a really good general. He was a great commander. And... Good old revisionist history. We will be talking about what he was good at and what he was bad at in these episodes. And we will also be talking about in addition to his life, kind of the ways in which his life has been distorted and deranged by the kind of media that's come out in the century and a half since the first Civil War, right? Yeah.

And obviously, you know, we'll be you'll be doing an episode in our second week of these about the lost cause mythology and how that took off. I'm going to sprinkle a little bit of that in here because for one thing, Robert E. Lee is kind of like on his own. He's not like Saddam Hussein. He's not threatening his high school teacher with a handgun to teach him how to read. Right? He's he is kind of the slight goody two shoes. So in order to keep it interesting, we do need a gun of pepper in some of the deranged things people have said about him since that really exaggerates his legacy. And a good example of this, a modern example of this is the book Who Was Robert E. Lee by Bonnie Bader. Now, you have seen books in the Who Was series. These are these kids books where everybody has a huge head, right?

It'll be like some like massive head. He had one. Yeah. Yeah, he's got one of those. And they're not from what I can tell, they're not on the whole super problematic. And I will say this one is not fully lost cause. It's more that it like absorbs some lost cause stuff in the middle of like, like it's trying to be fair, but it, it's almost impossible unless you're actually being a rigorous historian to not

absorb some of that because there's so much of it. I'm not saying that to like forgive these people for doing it, but it's not like a, it's not like a pro confederacy book, right? Yeah. The cover of this is very funny. All of the covers of these are unhinged. I don't know why they give, it's like everybody does like the golden eye big head sheet for the people on these books.

Yup, yeah. We got a Rosa Parks one for our daughter. Like, yeah, we got a kind of those, I will say this though, speaking to like, you know, obviously like, as far as like American bastards, like Robert E. Lee's he's on our Rushmore. Yeah.

Like you can't not take him off the Rushmore. But to add to his mystique, like I can even say me as who again, listeners are not I say at all time, you know, I'm a child of a freedom fighter, you know, black militant. I'm the child of one, but kudos to him because the first time I heard of the General Lee was Dukes of Hazard. Yeah. Yeah. And I loved the show. And I had a little General Lee Hot Wheels

with a Confederate flag on top and shout out my dad for not ruining my innocence. Yeah. And letting me love this thing, having no idea or not connecting the dots. You know what I'm saying? Because of course, it was slavery was. You know what I'm saying? But like, I didn't connect the dots.

I thought it was cool seeing the car jump over to, you know, in the stupid 80s show, they jump over ditches and, you know. I watched that show as a kid, right? And I watched the reboot movie, which wasn't great. And that probably counts as like of the Lost Cause stuff, right? But these Who Was books, one of the things

that's interesting about me is the kind of dichotomy between the bits of Lost Cause shit in there and the stuff that is trying to be accurate history. For example, there's this paragraph about the plantation system in the book. That's not bad, right? And this appears, this is like a little box that they put in when they say that like the Lee family had a plantation.

It's like a plantation life. Rich white people in the South lived on big farms called plantations where crops such as cotton and tobacco were grown. Most of the workers on these plantations were slaves who were either born in Africa or descended from people taken from there. These slaves were forced to work for free from sun up to sun down. The slaves had no rights and the plantation owners grew rich. And that's like not bad. That's a pretty good way to explain that to a kid, I think. Those are bullet points. That is correct. That's the important stuff.

Yet here's how the book summarizes Lee's decision to fight for the Confederacy and fight for slavery. When asked to lead northern troops against the South, Robert E. Lee was even more torn. How could he go to war against his friends and family who lived in Virginia? It was a hard choice. Robert thought about loyalty. He thought about honor. In the end, Robert decided to fight against the country that his forefathers helped to create. For Robert, the most important thing was his family and his home, Virginia. And that is bullshit. That's not, Virginia. And that is bullshit. And we will talk, we will be in the episode

where we get to this, we will talk more about that. But like just as a quick aside, he had multiple family members who fought for the union. So like, no, it wasn't just a matter of not wanting to fight his family. Right? Cause he did, he objectively did. That said, this is a good example of like the milder

and kind of the more modern side of the pro-lea spectrum, right? This is a casual absorption of the of the lost cause narrative as opposed to a dedicated one. And I think it's interesting to kind of look at that in addition to some of the older and harder stuff, right? Yeah, I think I'm gonna like, I wouldn't when we do the lost cause thing, I'll probably hit this point hard. But I think it's important to, because it keeps coming back, like that the difference between, and the importance of the difference between history

and memory. And like, and that memory is really more about the future and history is more about the past because I like memory is malleable. Like you can shape that memory shapes identity. It forms culture. It creates, that's what memory does. Whereas history is the factual truth of what happened,

which for most of us, even now, for most of us is rarely the point. It's like what actually happened. It's our memory of what happened and how that shapes how I view the world now. And I think that he's a perfect example of that. You're choosing to remember him a certain way. And it's interesting, I think that that dichotomy

between like reality and memory is especially harsh when it comes to war. And I can think of a modern example this from my own life. I have a couple of friends who served in a Marine unit in the early invasion of Iraq. And I've gotten to spend some time both with them and some of their like gatherings of their old units. And one of the interesting things is hearing different people tell stories about the same event and then talking to others about them. You're like, that is not what happened. That is, and they were all there.

Right. Like that. And they have some people have convinced themselves, and who knows how much of it is like wanting to believe that you did better than you did. Who knows how much of it is just honestly, like it's a chaotic situation. Like your memory gets fucked up, trauma fucks up memory. Like it's super malleable. So when you get to the history of warfare, right? Yeah.

Like just be even just because something is an eyewitness account doesn't mean it's fucking true. Yeah, it's not even what it is. Yeah, that's just the reality of the situation. But to get to the truth of who Robert E. Lee was and why he did what he did, we have to start a lot further back than his own life. Back, in fact, to the earliest Lees in the historical record. Now, the precise reality of his genealogy past a certain point is up for questioning, right?

Given the state of record keeping. Yeah. You should interpret what I'm saying is not like this is the objective genealogical truth, but this is the family lore that he was raised with, right? So this was the truth for him, which is what matters for how his background affected him more than the reality of it, right? Yeah. And the family lore of the Lees traces their line back to the Norman conquest of England. The founder of the family, according to legend, was Lancelot Lee from Le Dune, France. He marched into England with William the Conqueror

and earned a name for himself in the Battle of Hastings in 1066, right? That is the origin of the Lee family and family lore, right? Wow, as they know it, that they formed modern England. Yes, yes. Wow, that they know it, that like they formed modern England. Yes. Yes. Wow. That's quite it. And also, from the beginning, military men and aristocratic military men, right? That is, that is a high social status. And his descendants have continued up to the present day. There have been leads in modern wars, right? Descendants of his family and serving at a pretty high rate. So

that is, I think probably a mix of both the weight of legacy and just like, yes, some people are naturally inclined to be warriors, right? Like that's just a reality of history, you know? Like if all of your ancestors served in various militaries, it probably means like you're drawn to that kind of thing inherently. Yeah, like a good bit of like nature and nurture.

Like, you know, that's just, like I said, how this is, this is how we form identity. This is what the men in our family do. They are violent. And this is a consistent thing for the Lees. Generations after Hastings in 1192, his ancestor Lionel Lee was a cavalryman in the third crusade, which ended well, I think, right?

One of the things about the Lees is that firstly, who picked the Norman side is like the best of them at deciding what side of the war to be on. They're pretty much one in 50 apparently. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe two, maybe two. We'll talk about the other one. Yeah, centuries of service, though, to the crown and expanding wealth eventually kind of culminates in Sir Henry Lee.

And he is a knight of the garter under Queen Elizabeth, but he's also a young son. So he's not going to inherit any of the family money. If you know anything about the colonization of the Americas, a lot of it was done by like second, third, fourth, a lot of like the leadership, right? Would have been these second, third, fourth, fifth, whatever sons of wealthy families who like,

I'm not gonna get anything unless I go take part in this, right? My family name can secure me a position, but like I'm not going to inherit, you know? And that's what Sir Henry Lee does. And that's why he winds up moving to America to be the colonial secretary of the Virginia colony under Governor William Berkeley.

One of my sources for this is the very dishonestly named memoir of Robert E. Lee, which is like, it's billed as his autobiography that he never finished. So like other people put it together based on interviews and notes. It's a biography. It's a very cloying positive biography, but they call it a memoir, which should let you know how reputable it is, but it's interesting how it describes some things. And this is how it describes Sir Henry Lee,

the first American Lee. He was possessed of a handsome person, fine talents in popular manners, and by these qualities was unable to secure influence over the colonists. Now, when I say influence, what that means is, like the Virginia colony is a corporate monopoly, right? It is a corporation. And it is, it is a dangerous thing. Like going

there, you don't have a high odds of surviving about 65% of immigrants to the colony in the period that he came over died soon after moving there. So this is a dangerous gig. I'd also say too, like, you know, to interrupt you real quick is like the, the like telling of it's, it's man, it's just, it keeps coming up. But like the telling of even just the founding of America that these, it was these like lofty ideas of these like extremely pious people searching for freedom to practice their faith freely is like, it's like, well, that's one way to tell it. You know, another way to tell it is kind of what was the majority of it, which was like you said,

it's like people that ain't gonna get no inheritance, well, I'm gonna go try to get some land and we're gonna go make some money This was a financial Yeah move for the vast majority of people that came over here. It was a money move It wasn't like that's one group of and and according to the rest of the The rest of the year like the colonists coming from from Britain like the pears is weirdos like yeah Like y'all are y'all are religious weirdos. Like we are here trying to get this bread.

You know? It's a fine, yeah. It's a financial move. So like you said, Virginia was like, no, we're like, we try to get this bread. Like that's what we're here for. Yeah, and that's what Dickie Lee is there for, right? And he does pretty well in this position.

He's able to buy up huge tracts of land, which he works with enslaved people. By his death in 1664, he presided over an empire of about 16,000 acres in the northern neck of Virginia. And this Lee is the very first in his family line to serve during a civil war, right? This is the English civil war.

This is Cromwell versus the Cavaliers, I think they're known as, right? And obviously Cromwell wins, unfortunately. One of, we'll be doing him. He's one of the very worst people who ever lived. And kind of how this Lee makes his name very differently from the last Robert E. Lee, right? Who picks a side right away.

This Lee's job, his influence over the colonists is to stop them from picking a side until it's over. Basically, basically, fucking, we're sitting there. We are about making money. We don't need to be picking aside in this war. That's not going to help us until, and then as soon as it becomes clear, Cromwell's winning. He's basically like, yeah, we thought you were, you were the tits this whole time, bro. Congrats, you know? And in return, Cromwell didn't kill everybody, which was his general move, right? So when the war ends, Lee had to like he had acquired this land during the English Civil War, but like he hadn't been able to actually like lock it in

as a legal purchase because you couldn't do that while the war was going on. So after the war, he and his descendants in order to basically lock in their inheritance have to make friend make themselves into the patsies of the most powerful family in the area, the Fairfaxes. And they basically do this by becoming their tax collectors, right? That's the leisure like musclemen for the biggest guy in the Virginia planter aristocracy. Wow. Yeah. And, you know, they become in the generations after Dickey Lee, they become like one of

the biggest families in terms of like wealth in the area. There are about 7,000 tax paying white citizens in the neck. That means men, right? We're saying men. There's more white people than that. By the late 1700s and basically none of them own significant land. Only 1% had more than 300 acres. So the Lees are part of that 1%. Like most, yeah, very rich. And like most generationally wealthy families, the Lees are kind of full of themselves. You can see some of this from the fact that our Robert's grandfather, his 3500 acre estate is named Lees, Sylvania. So they love there's a good bit, actually.

There's that. Seriously, that's like the lamest thing I've ever heard. Yeah. My God. There's seriously, that's like the lamest thing I've ever heard. Oh my God! There's that movie, that musical, 1776. I haven't watched it since I was a kid, but it stars Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World. My Highest Close Through Teacher made us watch it. Yep. And one of the, I'm sure that movie's

got some problematic things, but one thing it does get accurate is it portrays Robert E. Lee's dad in this, and he's like naming everything after He has a whole song where like everything is Lee And that does seem to be the family's thing, right? It's like we are obsessed with ourselves That is hilarious. Yeah Now that said Robert's father who's going to be Henry Lee is not

He's again kind of like their first ancestor in the Americas. He's not one of the wealthy Lees. Like his family is wealthy, but he's not going to get a bunch of money on his own because of, I think, just his position. Like, he doesn't get, you can tell this, he doesn't get sent to England to be educated. Like his cousins in Stratford, the Stratford Lees, send their kids to England to be educated. But Robert E. Lee's dad doesn't get that. So yeah, we're clearly, we're talking like Patrarilineal, we're talking dad's side of the family. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's again, he's wealthy for normal people's standards. But from the standards of the aristocracy, Robert E. Lee's dad on his own isn't going to get the big

payday, right? Now the Lees put a lot of stock in being farmers. That is how they identify. And it is important to note that when rich white people in this period talk about being farmers, they are not doing any real farming. They're not farming. No, absolutely not. And one of the major sources for this episode is an excellent biography of Lee by Alan Guelzo.

And I'm going to read a quote from that now talking about the degree to which these people were farmers. And it's talking about Lee's family and his cousins. The Lees, Talos, and Carter's never owned fewer than 50 slaves each across the decades of the 18th century, while Robert Carter owned 345 slaves, John Talo 173, and George Tuberville 68. Thomas Lee had, at varying times, owned between 60 and 100 slaves at Stratford, and his latest 1782, 83 slaves worked for Thomas Lee's successors there.

But these grandees were not necessarily prospering on their land. Although Virginians had made early fortunes in the 17th century through tobacco, the demand for Indian weed declined throughout the 18th century, as had the nutrients and the soil of the neck that supported it. Few people in England,

complied Richard Henry Lee in the 1760s, understood how much labor is required on a Virginia state and how poll the produce. Interestingly, the great plantations turned to growing wheat, fodder, and pork for export to the West Indies, where they could be fed to the slave and animal populations of the sugar islands, whose vastly wealthier owners declined to waste

arable sugar lands on growing food. So that is what the Lee family farming goes towards is to feed slave plantations growing sugar cheaply. Right. That is that is where their family money comes from. Yeah. So like I did a quick little Google search. Go and make sure I got the numbers right. Yeah. Like just to understand like the economy of the time I feel like to understand the economy of the time, I feel like with anything, the further away from us timeline wise, the more Narnia it becomes to us,

we don't really understand, one, how recent it was and two, the connections of it. So you just say somebody had 385 slaves. And a slave at the time to purchase a slave was about like $150, $160. And if you adjust that to inflation, it could be like $3,200 a person to purchase. And obviously, you're not paying for the labor, but to have a workforce of 300 people

want to have the land acreage that even if you're putting them in slave shacks, you still have to house them. They're still in a slave shack. And they're still functioning on your land. Like it is a lot of money and you're generating a lot of wealth and like you said it's like for for any of their lifestyle to exist which I'm fast-forwarding but like to get to the lost cause

Shit, but like all of the whole southern gentleman southern Gentile shit clearly means they're not working. Like you know what I'm saying? And your whole lifestyle only works if you've got enough money to support this type of labor, to do the labor that generates the money to live the lifestyle you live. And I also want to note something which is that like you talk about like it's cost about like 3,500 bucks a piece, something like that for each of these enslaved people. Even that kind of understates how expensive this is and how rare it is, right? Because that makes it seem like well, a middle-class person might be able to have slaves working their land, which wasn't really the case often because

most people just don't have money. Period. We're going to have a whiskey rebellion right after the U.S. is independent and it's part of the whiskey rebellion is that like whiskey is currency because people just don't have money. You know like poor white people do not actually have money in this period. Yeah. Yeah. So like the people who have slaves are so far above the norm. Yeah. Because like you said like there isn't like this is pre-industrial, like there isn't like, this is pre-industrial revolution. Like there's no, you don't go to the office to work

and you get a paycheck. No, you grow your food, right? And you take care of your family and you hopefully chop down some timber and sell it at the corner, but you, there's no jobs for you to be able to, like you said, to have a middle class thing to be like, oh, I'll just save up 160.

I'll save up 3K. It'll take like two months. No, you have to have a job for that. Like there is no jobs. Yeah, yeah. And now, and again, we also state like these people are rich, but rich means a different thing because most of them are really bad

at running these plantations, especially after a couple of generations. So they're rich in land, and rich in the number of enslaved people they have, but they are also generally cash poor. Part of keeping up socially in the culture of rich plantation owners is going horribly into debt. And this is a holdover, this is something they inherit from the English aristocracy, right? You can't be given money as an aristocrat, that's dishonorable, but you can take loans often

from other aristocrats and the like. And this is what all of these big families, including the Lees would do to maintain these big palatial, beautiful manners that are such a part of this imagined like Southern heritage. All of this is taken on with debt, right? This is like such a thing. There's this Anglican parson, Jonathan Butcher, who lives in the neck for a while and preaches there. And he later said of his time there, I can hardly remember a time when I did not owe some larger than my credit might seem worth. All I have to offer and vindication of it is that, determined as always to raise myself in the world, I had not the patience to wait for the slow savings of a humble station,

and I fancied I could get into a hire only by being taken notice of by people of condition, which was not to be done without my making a certain appearance. So all of these people, no matter how wealthy they are on paper, most of them are like desperately in debt and they're in debt purely because they're trying to keep up with each other. They're trying to like, it's all about image, like the degree to which this is shallow and irresponsible and always based on a house of cards is not discussed enough when we talk about the self. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that and that and that legacy of like, so let's take our favorite person, Elon. If he gets.

Yeah, this guy gets a contract from NASA to be like, hey, we want you to build our next four spaceships. And it's like, okay, dope. It's gonna cost me $7 billion to build these ships. He doesn't just go to the bank and swipe his card. Like he doesn't have $7 billion. He goes to someone else and says, hey, I got this PEO, I got this purchase order for these things and I'm gonna make this much money.

Will you give me the money to make this? But he ain't got it. Like I can't stress this enough. They don't have the money. Yeah, no, it's important to note that. Yes. Yeah, so this is all gonna be important also for just understanding what happens to Robert's

father and how it influences the man he's going to become. And Robert E. Lee's daddy was Richard Henry Lee III. He graduates from law school in 1773. But as you can guess from the time, he's kind of diverted from serving as a lawyer by the outbreak of what will become the American Revolution. Henry is a hotheaded young man and like his ancestor insecure about being born without the expectation of a great inheritance. He saw in war with England an opportunity to make himself into a great man like his ancestor had done after the Norman conquest. Alan Guelzo writes, quote, above all, it was Richard Henry

Lee, a tall spare man who hid the left hand he had maimed at a shooting accident in a black silk glove who would offer the climactic resolution in the Continental Congress in 1776. That these United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved. Lee's resolution, in turn, would become the core around which Thomas Jefferson would write the Declaration of Independence. And to his credit, Richard Henry Lee is not just talk. He joins the army. He becomes a captain

in the Dragoons, which is like a mounted infantryman and is an excellent soldier. That is one thing you have to give the man. The Lees are all as foot soldiers, as grunts really, even Robert E. Lee is a really good, like lower level officer. Like when we talk about him being incompetent, it's as a commanding general, but like they are all good at normal soldierly jobs. And Henry shows his skill particularly as a scout.

He is a small unit commander. He's basically an early special forces guy, right? He's leading these... And his dad. Yeah, yeah, his dad. His dad, yeah, okay. Yeah, he's leading these small units of scouts, often doing ambushes and the like

on small British units supply depots. And he kind of gets a reputation for this almost suicidal disregard for his own safety. He earns the attention of George Washington after he takes a 10-man unit out and they are ambushed by 200 British cavalry and somehow fight off the ambush. Ooh, yeah, he's good at fighting, right?

And Washington is kind of like, well, shit, this guy needs to be in my inner circle. Henry Lee earns the nickname Light Horse Harry. And in 1779, he achieves one of his greatest successes, marching a small unit of men 30 miles in the driving rain to attack a much larger British garrison armed only with bayonets. They secure the element of surprise and take 158 men prisoners. Congress minted him a special gold medal. This is an extremely rare decoration for the period. There's like seven of them given during the war.

And then he sent south to fight alongside Nathaniel Green. And he basically, his unit is like the eyes of the Southern Revolutionary Army, right? The Southern colonies had been occupied by British forces and Green and Lee carried out a successful campaign to retake them. Light Horse Harry played a crucial role here, cutting off supply lines, rating depots, and

forward bases. Now, he's a good soldier, but he is not a good person. He is not overly concerned with the niceties of wartime ethics. From an article in the Gettysburg Compiler, quote, During the war, he was known for his brutal tactics. In 1778, he assisted General Anthony Wayne in capturing a fort at Stony Point, New York, where he caught three deserters One of which he ordered to be hanged and decapitated. He then sent the deserters decapitated head to Washington

He also interrogated a loyalist prisoner in North Carolina by pressing a red-hot shovel to his feet to get information out of him God, this guy kills people. He puts heads on the unlike pikes and shit. He's torturing prisoners. He's not a nice man Yeah, ain't you with yes. Yes. Dang So despite these war crimes liens the war is one of the usa's first great military heroes on the strength of this He's elected to the continental congress in 1785 and he partakes in virginia's constitutional convention in 1787 Where he plays a crucial role in talking his neighbors in Virginia into ratifying the constitution. He becomes governor. I think it's a good thing to stop and you said he became governor You said the guy that like decapitated. Yeah. Oh, he loves he loves that shit. Yeah. Yeah, and then sent heads in a bag

Was a part of the constitutional convention that's been governor like the dog. Oh, bag head. Oh, bag head Lee. Oh, bag head, right? I was like, you better put him on there because you don't want to piss him off. You know who doesn't cut the heads off of prisoners and stick them on pikes?

Oh man, I mean, I showed who hoped not. Yeah, I hope our sponsors don't do that. Although if they do, maybe those prisoners had it coming. You never know. If they do, I just want you to know that we at Hood Politics love everything y'all sell. We believe in everything you do. Yeah, yeah, great.

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You have to send someone. What's going on? Whatever it is, that's our entire emergency force on the way somewhere. They're saying there's a body in the woods. Excuse me, I don't seem to recognize you. Um, that's because I'm not from here. A small town stuck in the past. There's only one cell tower and currently it's out of order.

With secrets hidden for centuries. We hear things, you know. When they whisper or when they think they're alone. And a curious stranger who may be their only chance for survival. I'm talking about the murder and disappearance in small town New Hampshire. What do you think? I'm sorry, have you ever listened to a single true crime podcast? You turn up in Danville just as the town sees its first real crime in decades? This is Consumed, an all-new supernatural audio thriller inspired by the novel by Aaron Mankey.

I did not wake up this morning preparing to deal with forces beyond my understanding. Please, I call that breakfast. Listen to Consumed on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So that's a pretty full resume for Light Horse Harry. But we're just actually getting started on this guy because after the war ends, his life veers very quickly from like military hero to hilarious failure. And this is because he's one of these guys.

You get these not uncommonly that are like, they're great in war, they're really good soldiers, at least in terms of their like effectiveness in combat. But outside of war, they just are completely useless. Now there were always some signs of the man's weaknesses. Obviously he took too many risks. He actually, that big raid he carried out that he won an award for, he got court-martialed for it too.

Because some people in his command were like, yeah, it worked, but he risked a bunch of men's lives on what shouldn't have worked. Like this was, we should not award people for being this reckless. In 1782, Lee resigns his commission in the Continental Army because he's angry that he's unappreciated. And again, this man got a gold medal awarded to seven dudes total in the Continental Army because he's angry that he's unappreciated. And again, this man got a gold medal awarded

to seven dudes total in the entire war. That they made, like custom made gold medal. Yeah, got it. He's not really unappreciated. I think what it is, reading between the lines, he's frustrated that he's not George Washington. Like he loves Washington, they're close buddies and like Washington's his patron kind of,

but you get the feeling he's like, why does Washington get to be the father of the country and not me I was so much I cut off hands for y'all yeah exactly man and I think you do get wood teeth yeah I think this insecurity this is gonna drive the Washington insecurity is gonna drive Robert E. Lee as well. Except those were not actually wood teeth. No they weren't. No they sure weren't. No, they sure weren't. No, I just put that in there. But distance security is going to drive Henry Lee as well. Okay. So Washington, for his part, considered Lee a reliable officer and had an opportunity

to make him feel appreciated and also betray the spirit of the revolution at the same time. In 1794, a bunch of Pennsylvania farmers started protesting against attacks on whiskey, which was their primary form of currency. Despite the fact that their grievances absolutely mirrored the ones that had sparked the revolution, Washington, now that he's in charge of a country, sends the Army in to crack down. This is the whiskey rebellion, and Henry Lee is the guy who's going to command that army. Now, while the actual rebellion itself had a few clashes and a small number of deaths, Harry's not involved in that.

By the time he gets there with the army, he's basically there to swing the nation's newly-tumnescent dick around until everybody goes home. He like scares them with an army, right? That is the end of his military career. And now that he had earned a position of what he saw would be everlasting respect and fame in the heart of the new nation

He sat down to accomplish the true goal of any ambitious man making a bunch of fucking money. Yes now Unfortunately, he's terrible at this. He knows nothing of farming. He knows nothing of business So his attempts to get rich devolve into a series of incompetent get rich quick schemes These seem to have been inspired in part by the advice of George Washington in letters Washington warned Henry that investments in such hazardous and perishable articles as Negroes, stock and chattels were prone to be swept off by innumerable disasters. Thus, an enterprising man with very little money should invest in the rich backlands in the new settlements and wait patiently for them to appreciate.

So that's, yeah, pretty bad. Yeah, don't buy no Slays, man. That's gonna go out of style, man. It's just too much work, homie. Like slays die. They die, bro. It's like, yeah, gold rush like millionaires where the shovel salesmen like, bro, like, you know,

you gotta think a little, you know what I'm saying? You gonna be out here panning for gold? Well, they gotta use pans gotta think a little, you know what I'm saying, you're gonna be out here panning for gold, well they gotta use pans, so why don't you sell them to pans? Yeah, damn it. And then as we see between Henry and George Washington, we see the difference between a smart bad man and a dumb bad man, right?

George Washington is a smart bad man. He's good at making money. Like, Henry Lee is a dumb bad man. And he tries to follow this advice, but he is dog shit at picking real estate. And rather than slow, sober investments, he approached his finances the same way he approached war with a series of risky gambles. Here's the Gettysburg compiler.

One of these schemes was to build a canal in Great Falls, Virginia that would link the United States to Western lands on the other side of the Alleghenies. He bought 500 acres around Great Falls that he hoped would make into a city named Matildeville, named after his first wife and second cousin, Matilde Lee, who died in 1790. Neither the city nor the canal came to fruition. He tried to get out of debt by borrowing more money and buying more land, but he only ended up digging himself deeper. He started selling property he did not even own, and he put up chains on the door of his

house to keep creditors out. He became very mobile in the early years of the 1800s, hardly staying at home in order to keep from paying his debts. He went from the bill collectors. He is, he is, but- That is ratchet. He is such a redneck, like first off, marrying your second cousin and trying to get a town after her.

And then like, yeah, hiding from bill collectors, most of your fucking life. He's like, hey, don't answer the phone, baby. Hey, listen. Yeah, don't answer the phone. Listen, I'm most of your fucking life. Hey, don't answer the phone, baby. Hey, listen. Yeah, don't answer the phone. Listen, I'mma go to the store. Yeah, don't answer the phone. And don't answer the phone.

It's they look, they gon' get their money. I get it on Tuesday. Yeah, I get it next Tuesday. And this is my auntie. Look, as a southerner, I'm not proud of this heritage, but this is definitely our heritage. Like hiding from the bill collectors, selling things you don't really own.

That is ratchet, dog. Yeah, that's scans. That's scans. Yes. I was like, okay, wait, of all the things you said, I'm like, yeah, that's the really shit. As a child, you're weird, though, but that's real. As a child who grew up on a farm in Oklahoma,

that I knew like 40 of those guys. Listen, let me tell you something. All my friends in elementary school had bad credit because the electric bill was in our name. You know what I'm saying? Because they just, you know, mama put the gas bill in the oldest son name. And this, because we just try to like,

look, they won't give me no more power. So yeah. Yeah. So despite owning on papers somewhere around a million acres at the height of his investments, which is an enormous, that's bigger than multiple countries today. Yes. Henry Lee never realized any return on his investments.

The towns and canals he speculated on never came to pass and his creditors came calling long before he could flip them 20 years down the line as Washington had advised. His first wife, Matilda, died midway through his long road to going broke. He'd already sold off most of her inheritance, a plantation in Stratford, to pay off his own debts. Showing a surprising degree of fortitude, while she was dying, Matilda signed a trust with two of her cousins as executive executors. So the remainder of her inherited property would pass on to her sons with Henry when they were old enough. This meant she was basically her last act was like, my husband cannot

get what's left of my property. He won't just waste it being a dipshit. Smart. That is smart, right? Yeah. This does put Henry in a desperate state, though. His bills were come due and legally there was no one he could pressure to sell her properties. So he remarried. That's how he decides to get out of debt. He married somebody rich, right? Look here. Here's what we're going to do.

Let's just freshen up a little bit. Okay. Maybe show off a few of them heads I chopped off and just find us a new dame. Yeah, what a respectable, honorable man. So, Leah. What a real one. Yeah. You simply have to give the man credit.

You looked out. Yeah. So, yeah. Lee remarries using his cachet as a war hero to win the hand of Anne Hill Carter. The Carter's are a wealthy planter family and Anne's father tried to protect her from Henry's or from Harry's, well, both was fine,

profligacy by putting her inheritance into the equivalent of a trust. And I'm gonna quote from Robert E. Lee, A Life Here. A trust fund that was to remain securely in Anne's name, free from the claim, demand, hindrance, or molestation of her husband, General Henry Lee or his creditors. Anne soon learned how well founded her father's reservations about Harry Lee were. In the short space of a fortnight, recalled her cousin, Mariah Farley, she awoke to a life of misery as every loose Carter penny she could beg from her family was soon thrown away upon his debts contracted previous to marriage.

By 1797, Henry's legal or financial situation was beyond repair, and he would spend the next few years juggling debts and loans, but he eventually loses the ability to keep up entirely and he goes on the run, hiding from his creditors. It's during this period of Henry's life when he is a broken, failed shadow of himself that his third son comes into the world. Robert Edward Lee, that's our boy. That's our, well, that's our subject for the day.

That's the subject, yeah. Man, I like that, that origins, it sounds like, I mean, he's like better called Saul. He's such a piece of shit, it's so funny mean he's like better call Saul Looking for a sugar mama and like yeah like and and the sugar mama's daddy was like This nigga like this Bobby Lee is like a goody to he's a goody two shoes within an evil society So he's still doing bad stuff, but he has a goody two shoes when I found out about what a piece of shit His dad was like, oh, thank God. We really needed something fun to lead into this. Yeah

This history I had no idea about and I am it fills me with so much joy to just just how It fills me with so much joy to just just how Just how ain't shit that man. What yeah, it's it's funny There's a Christmas movie that my mom always had us watch that actually I mean it's got some great stuff It's got Bing Crosby and and what's Danny K and at white Christmas Yeah, and there's a line in there It the plot is these guys were all in a unit together in World War Two and then they become famous entertainers. They meet their old commanding general and he's like sunk all of his money into this resort in Vermont that is hemorrhaging money. And one of his workers compares him to Light Horse Harry. He's like Light Horse Harry, but he's

like charging off into debt. And I didn't realize like, oh, that was just a reference to the fact that Light Horse Harry was a piece of shit. He was like wasted all of his money on bad investments. Good on you, white Christmas with the historical accuracy. You know what I'm saying? Throwing a little dagger in there for you to go Google later. I love it. Funny, funny.

So Robert Edward Lee was born January 19th, 1807 at Stratford Hall Plantation. The year after Robert was born, Henry went to debtor's prison for a year, right? So Bobby Lee is one years old when his dad goes to debtor's prison. It was like, you better have my money today. And he was tired of being on the run and hiding. So he's like, look, if you put me in prison for a year, can I get out of some of these debts? Oh my God. Ann is left to look after Henry's two sons from his first marriage and the five children

he'd left her with. OK, so you're hundreds and hundreds of dollars in debt. I'm a big separate checking accounts guy. You know, like listen. It's just best to keep that out of the relationship. I've made 14 years. She got her own account. I got her own account. We got to count the bills come from.

Don't everybody argue over it. What she, when she, if she, if 72 Amazon packages come to my door, that wasn't out of, that's her account. She buy whatever she want. Now I judge her for buying at Amazon, you know what I'm saying? But the point is, you know what I'm saying? That's her money. I was waiting for the shade.

I saw it in your eyes. You saw it in my eyes, yeah. I'm like, I don't know why you keep ordering from that evil corporation. And she says, shut your whole ass up. That's my wife's a gangster. So Bobby Lee, 1807, Stratford Hall Plant A. And yeah, and so, you know,

not long after Henry gets out of prison, his oldest son from the first marriage that he'd had to Matilda comes into his inheritance, the property they're living on Stratford. And the way Guelzo depicts it, Henry's new wife is kind of Mary is uncomfortable living under a roof that's not hers. So they put the family finances into kind of order, right, to where they're not completely drowning. They sell off a bunch of stuff. And then they moved to Alexandria. This is done out of a degree of desperation. The family no longer has a plantation house, nor could they afford one.

They had also lost most of their enslaved people. During their last days at Stratford, they probably had around 30 human beings enslaved attending to their needs. By the time they moved to Alexandria, they had sold all but six, three of whom they hired out to make money to pay Harry's debts. So which by the way, super like that's who's actually trying to like make up for his horrible financial decisions is the people that they own. Yeah. Not an uncommon situation with the landed gentry here. Now, Harry blames his financial situation on Thomas Jefferson, and in doing so became the first great American hero to blame the Democratic Party for his own fuckups.

Yeah. Wait, you gotta connect that dot for me. Yeah. Like, Thomas Jefferson, like, did he know the guy? Like, wait, connect his dot for me. I mean, I think they did, but his argument is basically their financial policies are why none of my investments worked out no that's not the case light horse area you piece of shit it's fucking Democrats yeah he called the Democrats that party which has consummated the ruin of the most glorious republic the sun ever shown on oh and now it's obvious that the move to alexandre was a source of shame for

henry and probably the other men in his family. Yet Roberts not actually written by him memoir brushes over this entirely saying in 1811 Henry Lee moved with his family to Alexandria for the purpose of educating his children. There's nothing Henry Lee was less interested in than educating his kids. He was barely there hiding from debt collectors. Putting a vinyl horse in Robert's name. Like is this guy, hey, this, since the guy signing this doesn't know his ABCs yet.

Like who's? And you get the feeling this, the fact that they have to move away from a plantation to live in the city is a source of enduring shame for the Lee family. I found a biography written in the 1890s by Fitzhugh Lee, one of Robert's descendants, that says, this is all it says about the move.

Robert was four years old when his father removed the family to Alexandria. Why did they do that? Was it deep financial failure and shame? Yeah, cool stuff. So Harry's next and last attempt to get rich was to publish a memoir, one he actually wrote while in jail.

He hoped it would be a huge hit and like restore the family finances. And it was widely read, but Henry learned a lesson that every writer eventually learns, which is that there's very little money in books. Like, you are not George R.R. Martin, bro. It's not gonna work out for you.

You better get your advance and get out because that's all you go see. Yeah, relatable. Yes. He's got, man, I'm telling you, man, this guy's like, his seesaw is balancing out for me. Because that's real. That's real too.

You know what else is real? Yes, I do. The products and services that support this podcast, all real. None of them are a money laundering scheme for the Sinaloa cartel. That's not what sponsors this podcast, you know? So don't think about it too much. At one of the most famous restaurants in the world, there's a table in the corner where the most incredible conversations on the planet are happening every week with owner

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They're saying there's a body in the woods. Excuse me, I don't seem to recognize you. Um, that's because I'm not from here. A small town stuck in the past. There's only one cell tower and currently it's out of order. With secrets hidden for centuries. We hear things, you know, when they whisper, or when they think they're alone. And a curious stranger who may be their only chance for survival.

I'm talking about the murder and disappearance in small town New Hampshire. What do you think? I'm sorry, have you ever listened to a single true crime podcast? You turn up in Donville just as the town sees its first real crime in decades? This is Consumed, an all new supernatural audio thriller inspired by the novel by Aaron Mankey. I did not wake up this morning preparing to deal with forces beyond my understanding. We're back. So the Lees are now in Alexandria. They wind up renting for a while this like two bedroom apartment basically, which is that's not great for a family of the landed aristocracy. No, you are descended as somebody that like fought with the norms and now you

just in an apartment. Your apartment. You down bad. Now they move pretty quickly into a large house that's owned by some of Ann's relatives, which is why they're able to afford it right, because they are broke. This is not an uncomfortable situation. Again, they're still doing better than 99% of people, but for Henry, it's intolerable.

During the War of 1812, which he opposed, he took a job providing security for a federalist newspaper. This was more dangerous than it sounds because the Jeffersonians, who he'd roundly criticized in his book, regularly attacked the editors. This blew up in late July, 1812. After a series of attacks on the paper, Lee recommended surrendering and letting a local militia protect them in jail. This proved bad advice as the mob just burst through the jail,

killed one of Henry's colleagues and slashed him with a sword. They tried to blind him by pouring hot candle wax in his eyes. Hot candle wax? Yeah, fights over papers were ugly. Yeah. Listen, dude, like it's important to remember, okay, it's it as-timed as this might sound. Like, you know, we are collectively as a species, vastly less violent than we were. Yeah, less lead. Yeah, yeah, like, don't get me wrong, violence has not been eradicated.

We ain't fully evolved yet. Obviously points wildly across the whole spectrum of our world right now. However, they sliced a man with a machete and airport hot. Like we were a violent, violent people trying to blind him with hot candle wax. That's creative bad. And it's funny, like his writing about this, he describes himself as so covered in bruises

that he looks like a black man, right? Like that's how Henry Lee describes his injuries, which does nicely evaporate my sympathy for him. So there you go. So there's that. Yeah, like I said, he keeps balancing. Probably, you know what? I was gonna go, never mind.

I've never known a guy before who I thought like, yeah, maybe he should have been blinded by candle wax, but maybe he should have been blinded by candle wax. Yeah. So Robert E. Lee was four again when the family moves to Alexandria and six when his father gets injured by that mob. After getting injured, Henry makes the decision to abandon his family and move to the West Indies.

He's hoping, basically he describes as like, I'm hoping that family and move to the West Indies. He's hoping basically he describes as like, I'm hoping that if I move to the West Indies, I'll recover from my injuries, which like, bro, I don't know how going to the tropics is going to help you with getting stabbed. I'm not really sure how that's supposed to work. It's too cold out here. Let's just go down to where the weather's nice. Yeah, that does. Maybe my stab wound will heal and the dentist can find me.

So there's a lot about medicine of the day that like a doctor's like, yeah, that stab wound will get better if you move to the tropics. That seems like the solution. Listen, listen, hear me out. Sun, humidity, coconuts. Yeah.

Just saying. It does not work. He wanders around for five years, mooching off of some friends from the war until he dies horribly when Robert E. Lee is just 11. Now he's gonna get buried back at home. Lee will not visit his grave until he's a middle-aged man, which should tell you something about like the degree of esteem in which he holds his father.

What he thought of that dude, yeah. Yeah, given all this, it probably will not surprise you to learn that the future famous general Lee is a mama's boy. As Fitzhugh Lee wrote, if he was early trained in the way he should go, his mother trained him. If he was always good, as his father wrote, she labored to keep him so.

Lee's own memoirs say just this about his childhood. Persons are yet living who remember Robert Lee in those days of childhood and who have an abiding recollection of his thoughtfulness of character and of his earnestness and the performance of every duty. So that is what you'll find from basically everybody. He is a really dutiful kid. He's very serious.

He doesn't really have a childhood, right? Yeah. And this is- I have found that for like, and it's probably true in like a lot of our lives, Right? Yeah. And this is- I have found that for like- Yeah. And it's probably true in like a lot of our lives, like when your parents are like absolute messes and just- Yeah.

Chaos, like for you to just have a stable psyche, the children are usually square. Yeah. Because just like there's no stability. So you have to like create your own stability by being as just square as possible, you know? Yeah, because when I started getting into this, one thing that struck me as weird, Lee is a very well-documented man. For one thing, he grew up in a time

when people were taking documentation. There's tons of letters from all of his family because there's social class. There's a lot of people who knew him and who talked about him and there's almost no anecdotes about him as a kid. And usually when that's the case, it's because of something being covered up.

But in this case, I think there's just, he is the head of the family from the time he's 11. His job is managing the family businesses, being the man of the house. I don't think he has time to be anything but just like a little, basically cleaning up his dad's mess, right? That's his job starting at age 11.

When I was teaching, it sounds like, I mean, obviously it's not the same, but when I was teaching, there was this kid that used to like, I mean, I taught freshman and like, he was, if he didn't drive a Cadillac to school at 13 or 14 years old, just driving, you know, he would be on his bike,

he'd show up like 10, 15 minutes late all the time. Street dude, but like always had his work, super respectful, hey, Mr. Petty, what did I miss? Here's my homework, just like, and I could not for the life of me figure out like why this little hood dude was so mature and number one, like why are you driving a Cadillac at 14 years old?

And yeah, he was like, pop was alcoholic. He had to learn how to drive to go pick up his dad every night, you know, so he drove him home from like the bar had to drop his little brother off at school, you know, before he got to school and he just had to be an adult already. So I'm like, but also live, but he was just a hood kid. So he was like, like, it wasn't like, you know,

like don't fuck with him. Like he, he went to shits, but like eventually I just stopped marking him tardy. Cause I'm like, well, you're, you're adulting. You're doing stuff. Yeah. You're doing shit. Like you're adulting, bro. Like you're good, you know. And that is Robert E. Lee in a nutshell.

His family's not like what we would call poor, right? They're poor for rich people. But he is the man of the house. And in addition to like needing to fix his disastrous financial situation, help his siblings, his mom is sick the whole time that he's a kid. So he's also here,-in nurse, you know? And that's how he spends his childhood. Most of what you get.

Stop making him sympathetic, dude. Yeah. I mean, at this point, he's a kid, right? He hasn't, he's not able to choose to, he hasn't, like, he hasn't done anything bad at this stage. He's a child. And most of what you get from his friends and family is a mix of a lot. They will talk constantly about how handsome he is, right? Which everybody does. So I assume he actually was good looking, you know, for the time. But they also would say he's like weirdly weighed down with duty for a boy so young.

Everyone knows like it's peculiar how serious and dutiful he is. And he's got, you know, a demanding childhood. He would later describe himself in this period as my mother's outdoor agent and confidential messenger. Now, one of the very rare anecdotes we do get of him as a child comes from that memoir. Quote, The boy chanced during a vacation to find himself an invited guest in a house where these undesirable customs I think they're talking about alcoholism were kept up. The host was a fascinating gentleman, possessed of all graces of mind and manner, yet, while not dissipated, his mode of life was such as a shock to the sternorsons of morality

of his youthful visitor. Robert made no comment on what he saw, but his unspoken rebuke proved more efficacious than any words of reproach could have done. The night before his departure, his host came to his bedside, and an affecting language sought to excuse himself for the wild life into which he had fallen. He offered his sorrow for the loss of those dearest to him as a reason for habits which he could not seek to defend, and he impressively warned his young guests to beware of similar habits, advised him to persist in his commendable course of life, and earnestly promised that

he would himself endeavor to reform if but to render himself worthy of the respect and affection of so of a steamable character. And this is kind of why the memoir says Lee is a T totaler his whole life, right? He's probably not very much inclined to abuse of alcohol or other narcotics, because people do have access to other narcotics, right? Opiate abuse is not uncommon in this period.

People are using nitrous oxide in this period of time, creationally, which I like, pre-revolutionary war, people are huffing nos, fascinating shit. Yeah, and this I think this this seems to have an impact on him, right? He's also his mom is extremely religious. She is, Mary Lee is the kind of religious that Christians in rural 1800s Virginia noted as being a little much, right? So she is very serious about this. Yeah. And his other son, her other son, Smith Lee, recalled that she lectured them to quote, repel every evil by which she meant drugs and alcohol. The Lizar Episcopalian, which is

like Catholicism with a worst set designer, right? He was well educated for the day and his mother hired him as a tutor, telling him he'd regret it if he neglected to lay in a store of knowledge now while he was young. Which is an odd way to look at an education, but not necessarily a bad one, so there you go. In 1823, Robert announced to his family that he wanted to attend West Point, which had become the nation's premier military academy. His oldest brother was at Harvard, and his second oldest brother was a Navy man So it was surprising to his family that he chose to join the army and follow in his disgraced father's footsteps again Joining the army is like doing the thing his dad did and that does kind of like Shock his mom a little bit cuz like yeah, he does not like his dad. Yeah

But yeah, so this is the thing he decides to do. Anne enrolls him in a preparatory school. You have to get a West Point, now we think about it as like a school that teaches you how to be like a soldier in the general sense. It's an engineering school in this point in time. So he has to get a serious math grounding, right? In order to be able to compete at West Point.

Now, despite the fact that his mom puts in the effort to make sure he's able to get this grounding, she does not want him to go away West Point. Now, despite the fact that his mom puts in the effort to make sure he's able to get this grounding, she does not want him to go away to college. She wails, how can I live without Robert? He has both son and daughter to me, which says a lot about the family relationship. I think. And he had siblings, right? Yeah. Yeah, he's got a he's got a sister and he's got older brothers. Now, gaining admissions to West Point

would be the only time in Robert's life when the existence of his father is a positive. And basically, and this is actually today, West Point still works this way, right? That if you've got a family member who went or who was a successful officer in the military, you get their other officers and whatnot who knew them to write you letters of recommendation.

Like that's how people often get into West Point today. Yeah. Somebody in that admissions office saw that boy last name. It was like, oh, is that a head chopper? You talking about head chopper Lee? Oh, I love the way he cut people's heads off. Oh, dog, you remember that dude? Oh, that boy crazy.

Yeah, we all let his son in. He'd be cool. Yeah. Now, obviously I actually don't think in that, like this is a degree of nepotism, but given the, how much shit his dad put him through, I don't think it's unfair to like try to get something out of that relationship. But it is interesting, in his memoir,

his biographers try to pretend this didn't happen. They write the line, no one knew better than he that in a republic and in a great war, a man's ancestry could not help him, but that place in promotion depended on individual merit, which like, no, he does get into West Point because of who his dad is. Like, yeah.

Come on, man. But yeah, that's less on him and more on the start of the Lost Cosmith, like he was completely self-made. Well, entirely. No, no, no, no, man. These people ever are. And prop, that's gonna be part one for us. Okay.

Again, not a lot of bastardry on Lee's side today. Not this year. Part two, a lot of bastardry from Robert E. Lee. So don't worry, we're getting into it. This one hung a lot on his dad. Yeah. Glorious. Yeah.

Dad, did dad sound like he just sound like, you know, a Chuck from down the street. Just, yeah. Just messy, like. He is such a modern kind of scumbag. Yes. It's pretty funny. Yes, exactly. It's so, there's, it is so modern.

Yeah, like he's selling you VCRs that ain't his. Oh my God. This man would absolutely try to sell you steaks out of the back of a van Bobby Lee So Jason yeah, you got any pluggables to plug. Do you have a podcast maybe I do I have a podcast That's uh, yeah, man. That's kind of kind of gonna be your like, your, your primer for the, uh, the shit show that is like our, our political spectrum right now. The politics will prop, man. Um, new season, we got music with it. And, uh, yeah,

man, it's like this year is no shortage of incredible things to talk about that can feel all over the place. So we like really upped our game as far as like research, development, like yeah, we really, we really put our foot on our gas this year with politics with Prop. So like, please tap in with me. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Put your foot on the gas with Prop and do a, I forgot the name of that movie where the two women drive off women drive off drive off the cliff together but it's like nice. Thelma and Louise? Thelma and Louise. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's all do the podcast. I can't believe I guessed that. One of that movie. Why did you not know that? I don't remember most names Sophie. There's a lot of names to pull. I would play a terraform but like I'm out of money so there's no more coffee left.

So I still gotta buy more coffee first so like like, but you could buy like hoodies there. Like I got merch. I got hoodies so prop can buy coffee. You could also plug Terraform the book. Oh yeah, which came from a book. Yeah, Terraform the poetry book. I forgot speaking of things that don't make you money. I put together a book called Terraform,

Building a Livable World. I think sort of, this is a rambling plug, but it's a plug for our network completely. Like, I think one of the things that is unique about, and I mean, if you listen to the show, you probably already know, but like what's unique about our sort of collective of shows is it's equal parts, how the world is awful,

and also the beauty of how it could be and people actually trying to make it better so it's like it's both you know I'm saying so like Terraform is that too it's like man it's building a livable world and I think that's what like what we all share in our network absolutely well that is gonna do it for us for part one. Check back in later this week, where we will have part two of the Bobby Lee story. So, until next time, I love some credits. I love a minority of you, but if you assume you're in that,

then maybe it'll make your day better. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. On our new podcast, True Crimes with John and Deanna, we're turning our online investigative skills to some of the most unexplained, unsolved, and most ignored cases. Police say 33-year-old the **** was shot dead.

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