For a school so difficult to get into, W&L has a remarkable number of students and faculty with a limited understanding of the past. They believe only the mantras of the ignoramuses behind the 1619 Project and other works of historical fiction and, as a result, are now coming after one of our namesakes for crimes he did not commit and views he did not hold. 

First, let me highlight the truth behind a few historical fallacies:

• No, Lee did not beat or mistreat Traveller while in Lexington. Supposedly, a few students plucked hairs from his tail, but other than that he was well treated and died only after stepping on a nail and contracting tetanus. He loved that horse dearly.

• No, Lee was not pro-slavery; he viewed it as “a moral and political evil in any country.” After he inherited a number of slaves when his father-in-law passed, he set about educating them, which was against Virginia law at the time, so that they would be able to get along in the world as free men and women. He felt it unethical to free them before educating them, as freed slaves had to leave Virginia immediately after their emancipation. 

• Lee contributed much more to the school than merely changing the dorm system, as one student suggested online. During the Civil War, Washington College was looted by federal troops. Because of that attack on civilian infrastructure, Washington College badly needed someone who could help it recover, both in terms of attracting students and soliciting donations to help rebuild. Lee, the former superintendent of West Point, lent our struggling school his name and prestige, helping it quickly recover from the ravages of war. Thanks to Lee, the student body increased from 100 to 400 within the span of a year and his prestige helped the school earn its place as the excellent academic institution it is today.

• Lee was not a traitor that betrayed America to defend slavery. Even his nemesis during the war, Ulysses Grant, worked to protect him from such charges after Appomattox and he was never convicted of any such crimes. He decided to fight for his state because he was against the idea of the Union invading Virginia, his homeland – not because of any enthusiasm for secession or slavery. As former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said of him in 2017, “He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days.” 

• Lee is largely to thank for the lack of drawn-out guerilla conflict after his surrender at Appomattox. His calls for Confederates to lay down their arms and go home, along with his continued efforts after the war to preserve the peace (such as encouraging his former troops to apply for pardons) are some of the main reasons why, other than Jesse James, bands of guerillas never roamed the former Confederacy.

If you want to learn more, I recommend one of the better biographies of Lee, called Clouds of Glory by Michael Korda – it’s where most of the above facts came from, and reading it would be well worth your time.

The point is not that Lee was perfect. Like any man, he had flaws. Yet he also did much good, both for Washington and Lee and for the nation more broadly, and should be honored for that. Who among us would encourage the end of hostilities and resumption of unity after an invading army burned down one of our houses (his “White House” plantation, the house in which George Washington courted Martha Custis), took another (Arlington), and sent an army to ravage our homeland (Sheridan’s campaign of terror through Virginia)?

Given that so many people are angry and embittered because of the name of a school they voluntarily chose to attend, I highly doubt many of us would remain so cordial in such circumstances. Yet Lee did. He pushed for reconciliation after the war. He furled his banner, sheathed his sword, and went to work picking up the pieces. That, like most of his actions throughout his life, reveals his honorable and graceful bearing. 

Lee is a man that should be remembered. Throughout his life he was a living exemplar of honor and was a near-perfect southern gentleman, as George Washington had been before him. Most Americans, both in the North and the South, held him in high esteem after his surrender, and even during the Civil War.

Moreover, the Army named a tank after him, the M3 Lee. The Navy named a George Washington class nuclear missile submarine after him. John Kelly, whom I previously mentioned, defended him and his actions in 2017. President Gerald Ford restored his American citizenship in 1975. Dwight Eisenhower, the president who sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to encourage integration, was proud to have a portrait of Lee in his office.

But now the Jacobins of the present want to erase Lee’s memory. They falsely paint him as an evil man and vicious racist, spreading lies to make others more amenable to removing him from public life. Even here, on the hallowed grounds of his final days, professors and students spend their time dismantling rather than defending his legacy.

Perhaps they did zero research before attending this school and were repulsed when they found out what the “L” in W&L represents; perhaps they are opportunists, hoping to boost their SJW credentials; or perhaps they came here for the purpose of attacking Lee. Whatever the catalyst for their hatred of Lee, the end result has been the same: these uninformed Jacobins are doing their best to wipe away a magnificent man who contributed so much to our community, simply because they disagree with a few of his perspectives and actions and haven’t taken the time to research his life thoroughly.

What is their view? Is it that Lee should have immediately freed the slaves he inherited and kicked them out of the state with no resources or education, rather than educate them, in defiance of Virginia law, so that they could eventually succeed as freemen? That his decision to stick with one sovereign entity (the Old Dominion) over another (the northern half of the United States) was so repulsive that he must be erased from the past in an Orwellian fashion? That all he did to promote reconciliation and permanently end the conflict is meaningless in the face of his role in the Confederate Army?

If those are the lines of logic behind the vicious, unprovoked attacks on Lee, which other historical figures must be purged from the dwindling pantheon of great Americans? Should George Washington be struck from our school’s name because he owned slaves – slaves he took far longer to free than Lee? Will we cancel the Declaration of Independence and Constitution because they were written by Jefferson and Madison, both slaveholders? Perhaps the Lincoln Memorial should be blown up because of the president’s one-time support of the Liberia Project, and FDR reviled for putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps. Once the purges begin, there is no stopping; destruction is the ultimate end of the Jacobins, not growth.

Such radical and historically illiterate demands are those of the enemies of freedom. The Taliban blew up the fifteen-hundred-year-old statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley because it so greatly resented conflicting perspectives. The Jacobins in France beheaded the statues of the Kings of Judah because of their hatred of monarchy. Mao, during his Cultural Revolution, sent the Red Guards to erase all traces of China’s imperial past. And today, Antifa is tearing down statues of Lee and Washington in America while attacking statues of Winston Churchill, the greatest anti-fascist of them all, in Great Britain. These are actions of ignorant tyrants, not of virtuous and well-informed citizens. Yet we are now told by W&L’s own Jacobins that we must follow their lead and erase Lee. 

Yes, Lee was not perfect. No one is. But he was a great man and far more virtuous than most, especially when compared to the degeneracy of the modern era. His sense of honor, duty, and service are ones that we are far better off emulating than replacing with the values of those who vandalize statues in the dead of night. The titans of the past must not be erased by the Jacobins of the present.

[The opinions expressed in this magazine are the author's own and do not reflect the official policy or position of The Spectator, or any students or other contributors associated with the magazine. It is the intention of The Spectator to promote student thought and civil discourse, and it is our hope to maintain that civility in all discussions.]