General Robert E Lee: US Civil War rebel

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The US Civil War of 1861-65 left 700,000 troops dead. The Southern Confederate states rebelled against the Union of the North because the Confederates wanted to protect the right to own slaves. The hero of the rebel cause, General Robert E Lee, was charged with treason and had his citizenship revoked. So why did Congress reinstate his citizenship in 1975 more than one hundred years after his death? Claire Bowes has been speaking to former Democrat Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman who was one of just ten members of Congress to vote against the rehabilitation of General Lee and to John Reeves author of the book, The Lost Indictment of Robert E Lee. They describe how the proposal, put forward by a pro-segregationist Senator from Virginia, passed without even the mention of slavery.

Photo: General Robert E Lee courtesy of the Library of Congress

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Hello and thanks for downloading Witness History with me Claire Bowes on the BBC World Service.
0:46.0	In 1975 the US Congress voted to restore citizenship to the long dead Civil War General Robert E. Lee. He was a leader of the
0:57.1	Southern Army of the Confederates who rebelled against the Union and fought to
1:01.8	maintain slavery.
1:05.0	The American Civil War lasted four years,
1:10.0	from 1861 to 1865. 700,000 troops died. Many others were injured.
1:19.0	This was really about our nation's survival, the rebel leadership were committing treason against the United States.
1:29.0	John Reeves is author of the book The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee.
1:34.0	Yeah, so Robert E. Lee is a fascinating character.
1:37.0	He was in the United States Army prior to the Civil War,
1:41.0	but he was from Virginia, and when the war broke out, he chose to side with the Confederacy.
1:46.8	But of course, he lost in the end.
1:49.7	And at the end of the war, General Robert E. Lee was charged with treason by President Andrew Johnson.
1:56.0	Andrew Johnson became president after Abraham Lincoln, and he was gung-ho on punishing the leadership of the Confederacy and the punishment would have been death.
2:10.0	But after three years the treason case against Lee was dropped as the law required it to be heard in the former rebel state of Virginia where Lee was considered a hero.
2:23.9	By the time Lee died, he'd been pardoned, but his citizenship had been revoked.
	...

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