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"Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail": Political Correctness, Neo-Confederates, and Robert E. Lee: An article from Southern Cultures 17:3, The Memory Issue
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Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail"
Political Correctness, Neo-Confederates, and Robert E. Lee
by Peter S. Carmichael
Why do we argue—and argue—so much about Robert E. Lee?
"While northerners might appear comparatively apathetic about the memory of the Union cause, white southerners have been tenacious in searching for moral clarity in the past."
Political Correctness, Neo-Confederates, and Robert E. Lee
by Peter S. Carmichael
Why do we argue—and argue—so much about Robert E. Lee?
"While northerners might appear comparatively apathetic about the memory of the Union cause, white southerners have been tenacious in searching for moral clarity in the past."
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 1, 2011
ISBN9780807882764
Author
Peter S. Carmichael
Peter S. Carmichael is the Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies, director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, and author of previous books, including The Last Generation.
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Book preview
"Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail" - Peter S. Carmichael
ESSAY
Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail
Political Correctness, Neo-Confederates, and Robert E. Lee
by Peter S. Carmichael
Ways of knowing are fundamental to the interpretive battles over Confederate history broadly and over Robert E. Lee in particular. Drawing from both the modernist and Victorian perspectives can bring greater complexity to historical inquiry. Robert E. Lee, 1864, photographed by Julian Vannerson, courtesy of the Collections of the Library of Congress.
Jefferson Davis sent Robert E. Lee an unusual note after the battle of Gettysburg. The dispatch did not contain any presidential recommendations or requests, only a clipped article from the Charleston Mercury criticizing Lee and his subordinates for failure in Pennsylvania. Why Davis sent this article is impossible to say, and Lee apparently was not interested in the president’s motivations. The General dismissed newspaper criticism of himself as harmless,
but the Mercury’s condemnation of the army disturbed him. He considered the charges harmful to the cause, for his officers and soldiers were beyond reproach. Defeat, Lee insisted, was his responsibility alone. No blame can be attached to the army for its failure to accomplish what was projected by me,
he wrote, nor should it be censured for the unreasonable expectations of the public. I am alone to blame, in perhaps expecting too much of its prowess & valour.
¹
As the press and public debated the cause and consequences of Gettysburg with nitpicking fervor, Lee assured Davis that the true story of the campaign would ultimately stand once the foamy wash of rumor and innuendo receded: Truth is mighty & will eventually prevail.
Here, Lee’s theory of history reveals itself as a field of study in which objectivity, grounded in unbiased facts, leads to unvarnished truth; the reality of the past reappears in perfect clarity, full of moral and intellectual lessons for future generations to behold and absorb. Lee’s understanding of history provides insight into how he thought and not just what he thought. Like so many nineteenth-century Victorians, Lee rigidly ordered the past and the present in attempts to rid himself of moral confusion, intellectual clutter, and emotional ambiguity.²
Lee’s underlying belief in historical objectivity as the straight and narrow path to truth swayed back and forth in the unpredictable winds of war following Gettysburg, leaving him confused, depressed, and wondering if people could actually perceive the course of human events and align themselves accordingly. Although he nearly abandoned his faith in the comprehensibility of the human existence, Lee, like so many of his Confederate peers after
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