by Stephen Pate

Created on: December 18, 2009   Last Updated: December 19, 2009

Should Robert E. Lee have been tried for treason?  No, absolutely not.  There are two major factors for this decision.  One factor is legal in nature, which asks whether or not Lee actually did commit treason.  The other factor is political in nature, which asks whether or not it would have been expedient or productive to put Robert E. Lee on trial.

There is a legal gray area when determining whether or not Robert E. Lee was committing treason on the United States for joining and leading the Confederate States Army.  It could be argued that Lee did not betray the U.S.  Instead, he left the U.S. and joined a separate and foreign nation.

Treason is a crime in which a citizen commits a serious act of disloyalty against his country, especially in aiding a foreign nation against his country.  Now it is true that Robert E. Lee was born a citizen of the United States and he fought against the Union in the Civil War.  But there are many technicalities that would prevent an easy trial for prosecutors.

For one, Lee may not necessarily be considered a citizen of the United States during the Civil War.  This argument can be made with several points.

Many Confederate apologists do not use the term “Civil War” for the conflict.  This is because a civil war usually means that two sides are struggling for greater control of the same country.  This is not necessarily what happened in the War Between the States.  The Confederate States of America was fighting a war for secession from the Union, not a war for control of the whole U.S.  Under this pretext, the C.S.A. was fighting a war for independence, not domination of the North.  While the U.S. called it a civil war within a Union, the C.S. called it a war against a foreign aggressor for it’s own self-determination and independence.

This is validated by the fact that the state legislatures that formed the C.S.A. used political means to announce their secession and form the C.S.A. government.  The C.S.A. wrote a Constitution, created a Congress, and elected a President an appointed Cabinet.  This has all the trapping of the creation of a government.  The C.S.A. was not some ragtag band of rebels; it’s leaders considered it a legitimate nation in it’s own right.

So when Virginia decided to secede from the Union and join the C.S.A., it considered all of it’s citizens to no longer be under the law of the United States;

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