Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day July 22nd, 1975, the House votes to restore U.S. citizenship to Robert E.

Lee, who commanded Confederate troops during the Civil War.

I don't want to do much more in this intro because I think

this simple fact Robert E. Lee had his citizenship restored opens up a lot of natural

questions like why did Robert E. Lee not have citizenship or why were they restoring it in 1975 and all those as you would

expect have very fascinating answers or at least I think so will leave you to judge

that you tell us at the end of the episode did you think those were fascinating

answers here to provide those answers are as always Nicole Hammer of

Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley hello there

hello Jody. Hey there.

And our special guest for this episode

is John Reeves, author of a number of books,

including The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee,

the forgotten case against an American icon.

John, title alone, we know you're the man for this conversation,

so thank you for coming.

Thank you.

And the book goes well beyond the title. It has an entire chapter on this 1975 vote. But, you know, I will say this does bring up all sorts of interesting themes like the legend of Lee and Lost Cause mythology. of the long lost documents. It's really fascinating. Do you want to start, John, though, with this simple question of why did Robert E. Lee not have citizenship?

Yeah, and maybe start first with the resolution itself because the premise of the resolution is sort of funny and kind of bizarre too.

It's premised on the notion of the missing oath theory and apparently an archivist at the National Archives found supposedly Robert A. Lee's oath that was supposed to go with his pardon application back in 1865.

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