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Should Robert E. Lee have been tried for treason?
Results so far:
| Yes | 37% | 440 votes | Total: 1177 votes | |
| No | 63% | 737 votes |
Yes
by Gary C. Gibson
Created on: May 06, 2009 Last Updated: April 02, 2012
Robert E. Lee avoided the hangman's noose because a fall through the scaffold would have stimulated another round of civil strife in a guerrilla phase-probably Johnson was willing to tolerate the retirement of the butcher of the civil war with Lincoln dead in Ford's theater; perhaps Johnson was a little sympathetic to the southern cause or concerned about his personal security if Lee was arrested and hung directly as he should have been (except for those of us opposed to capital punishment generally the leader of the southern treason was assuredly worthy of death for leading the treason.
The legal theory of a United States without a right of succession of any state became a moot point when adequate force and opinion existed to separate without the consent of dissidents to de-unionization. The laws of a nation such as the United States with its nominal democracy existed with the consent of the governed-the paradox is that without the right of succession it is difficult to dissent from being governed without exiting the nation. Presumably southerners had a right individually to exit the United States and move to Mexico. I had felt for some time that Florida would have been a better place to locate the capitol of the confederacy because of it's swamps, or at least Ashville North Carolina because of its altitude and inaccessibility for certain kinds of military formation. General Lee deserved to be tried for treason to the south too for not insisting that Richmond immediately give up its leadership city status for more defensible terrain, and for wasting so many lives from Gettysburg and Cemetery Ridge to the Wilderness campaign all the way over to Cold Harbor.
General Lee and Jefferson Davis if convicted of treason and hung would have been anticlimactic and politically pointless-the North had proven that it could win any conflict against secessionist states and antagonizing the southerners or troubling their already bruised pride farther would have been a bad policy choice. Like most American conflicts of large scale demobilization rapidly followed the conclusion of the civil war , and the federal government had little ability to send federal agents or garrison troops to police southern states following the war to enforce policy such as affirmative action. The best the U.S. Government could do was to take the political high ground of states remaining in the Union and slowly over time increase the civil rights prospects for the formerly enslaved southerners that experienced continuing oppression in other forms after the war.
Southern laws that made it legal to invade the north to recapture escaped slaves were justification in themselves for prosecuting Robert E. Lee as a traitor to the United States. Living as a neighbor and friend of the family of George Washington the Virginia Lee's had produced a son with ambitions to excel his former Virginian countryman and remake the United States as a sort of malleable clay for subject to his courage...that megalomania was another treasonable motivator for Robert E. Lee that bore fruit in his choice to protract rather than conclude the war. Having been the aggressor he retreated to an interior lines defense of yin upon which General Grant punched repeatedly. General Lee was not roping a dope-he was a battered Muhammad Ali taken a zillion punches moving over the ring from west to east on the bay-just one brilliant break through horseman flanking Lee's south (General Sherman) was needed to wither and erode the strategy of Lee on the Northern, defensive front. Treason was General Lee's primary purpose in fighting the United States-like today's global corporate C.EO.O.'s off shoring U.S. business to China, Robert E. Lee pursued his own personal ambitious interests and was happy to continue the enslavement or oppression of U,S, citizens.
Those oppressors of human life of any race, and those aborters of the unborn at any stage, bring the wrath of God upon the nation-death and conflicts build up while the stupid promote continuing stupidity politically and developmentally. A perfect social continua can only be normalized with substantial good will, intelligence and optimism such as was not found in the evil greed to rattain repressive power in the heart of darkness of Robert E. Lee.
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No
by G E Barr
Created on: January 06, 2010
Henry Lee, also known as Light Horse Harry served his country under George Washington, during the American Revolutionary War. There is no doubt that his son, Robert E. Lee, grew up with a very special appreciation of, and loyalty to his country. Unfortunately, Henry Lee made the mistake of supporting someone other than Thomas Jefferson during his bid for the presidency and it forever effected his political and social standing. Henry Lee learned a hard lesson and it effected his family, as well.
Robert E. Lee was a man of principle and one would be hard pressed to find a man more loyal in history. Robert E. Lee had been steeped in loyalty and it was his mother who raised him to be the gentleman that he was.
As well, unlike Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee was not a machine of war. He had other skills and a broad, classical intellect. He was a thinking man, in the highest regard of that definition.
Robert E. Lee was no Napoleon. He was no rebel. He was no mercenary. He was a general in the Confederate Army, who turned down the offer to join Lincoln and the Union. Further, he did not declare war against the United States. A president and a Union Army declared war on the South. The way our Treason Law is written, civil war within the United States is not treason. There is a reason for that and if you read the Constitution, the reason is clear.
Robert E. Lee did not commit treason and therefore could not have been tried as a traitor.
The American Civil War, was a war of political philosophy. A difference of opinion between two sectors of a country, which threatened to tear the country in half and the only solution was war. It is the same principle when two people argue and cannot reach a middle ground. A common ground. An agreement.
Fight or flight. There could be no flight.
Further, while it has been stated that the American Civil War was not fought to free slaves, but keep a country together; had the South never brought African slaves to this country, the war probably never would have occurred.
There has to be proof of intent, in order to take someone to trial for treason. Treason was not the intent of Robert E. Lee. In fact his intent was quite the opposite.
Robert E. Lee was a racist, white general. A member of a class of people who'd lived like royalty in a country where that is not allowed and in fact denied as a right. One does not have the right to live as royalty in the United States. It is forbidden.
And that's why we had a Civil War.
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