Hey everyone, welcome to the 40th episode of our Civil War podcast. I'm Rich.

I'm Tracy. Hello, y'all. Thanks for tuning into the podcast. So as you can probably tell from the most recent episodes, April 1861 was a busy time, what with it being the start of the war and all, but we hope that with the way we've chosen to present things that you've still been able to get the feel for all that was happening pretty much all at the same time around the Follow Fort Sumter, or shortly thereafter,

and we actually have a timeline laid out for the podcast for the episodes of the events and happenings and topics and whatnot that we want to cover. And next up is yet another significant event that happened within this same short time span that is within a week or so, the Follow Sumpter. And on our timeline, it's very simply labeled Lee Resigns.

On April 19, 1861, while on business in Alexandria near his home at Arlington, Robert E. Lee learned that Virginia's secession convention had voted to take the state out of the union.

A few hours later, shortly after midnight on the morning of April 20, Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army after nearly 32 years of service.

In a letter to his sister Anne, a unionist, he stressed that his decision was more personal than political.

Lee told her quote,

with all my devotion to the union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.

I know you will blame me, but you must think of me as kindly as you can and believe that I have endeavored to do what I thought right."

Those words that Lee wrote to his sister have been our touchstone as we've worked on this particular show.

Since to be honest, we've been looking forward to this episode with no small amount of trepidation.

That's because Robert E. Lee is one of those figures whose legend is so persistent that it often confounds historical reality, especially in the popular imagination.

Such is the enduring power of hero worship that still, nearly 150 years after the end of the Civil War, much of the Lee legend is still automatically accepted as fact.

It should be pointed out that Lee, who died in 1870, himself contributed little toward constructing the legend.

Most of it is instead due to a distorted version of Civil War history known as the Lost Cause, which originated in the post-war propaganda, disseminated by thoroughly beaten but largely unrepentant ex-Confederates.

The Lost Cause was and is an elaborate and intentional effort to rationalize secession in the war itself by falsifying history.

And those who constructed this mythology and have perpetuated it placed Robert E. Lee's memory on a pedestal and set him up as the patron saint of the Lost Cause.

Jubel early memorialized his late commander by saying, quote,

Our beloved chief stands like some lofty column which rears its head among the highest in grandeur, simple pure and sublime. End quote.

Lee's most prominent biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, wrote that quote,

Lee was one of the small company of great men in whom there's no inconsistency to be explained, no enigma to be solved.

What he seemed he was, a holy human gentleman, the essential elements of whose positive character were two and only two, simplicity and spirituality. End quote.

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