The Lost Robert E. Lee Oath Theory (1975) w/ John Reeves [[Archive Episode]]

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On Sundays this summer, we’re bringing you some of our favorite episodes from the archives. We’ll continue to do new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Happy summer!

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It’s July 22nd. This day in 1975, Congress voted to restore citizenship to Robert E. Lee, more than a hundred years after his death.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie are joined by author John Reeves to talk about why this vote took place, how it tied into a false theory about a missing citizenship oath, and what the myth of Lee says about how the Confederacy has been restored in the public imagination.

John Reeve’s book is “The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case against an American Icon”

Find a transcript of this episode at: https://tinyurl.com/esoterichistory

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Julie Shapiro, Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone Jody Avigan here on Sundays over the course of the summer July and August
0:04.4	We're going to be bringing you some of our favorite episodes from the Archives
0:07.8	You're still going to get brand new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we're giving ourselves a little bit of a break on Sundays running a previous episode.
0:15.4	It's still from around the same date, so it will still hook in in that way.
0:19.6	But look, we've done about 450 of these.
0:22.1	There's a good chance you haven't heard this one or haven't heard
0:24.5	it in a while and might want to re-listen. So here we go with a Sunday favorite from the archives.
0:31.2	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from
0:34.4	Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan. This day July 22nd
0:40.8	1975 the House votes to restore U.S. citizenship to Robert E. Lee, who commanded
0:47.9	Confederate troops during the Civil War.
0:50.3	I don't want to do much more in this intro because I think this simple fact Robert E. Lee had his citizenship restored
0:56.0	opens up a lot of natural questions like why did Robert E. Lee not have citizenship or why were they restoring restoring it in 1975?
1:03.0	And all those, as you would expect, have very fascinating answers,
1:06.0	or at least I think so, will leave you to judge that.
1:09.0	You tell us at the end of the episode,
1:10.0	did you think those were fascinating answers.
1:12.0	Here to provide those answers are, as always,
1:15.0	Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.
1:18.0	Hello, there.
1:19.0	Hello, Jody.
1:20.0	Hey there.
	...

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