Comment

New From Olbermann: Did Trump Spot the Indictment's Most Damning Phrase?

252
LeftyRambles2413 (HappyWarrior)11/01/2017 7:28:01 am PDT

re: #239 Sir John Barron

I’ve always wondered why there was—is—such great attachment to General Lee as opposed to, say, Jefferson Davis.*

I’ve concluded that it partly has something to do with the glamour of war, and partly that it is a way to subtly affirm the Confederacy without appearing to actually embrace the cause of splittering the Union or supporting slavery (hence all the bogwash about how Lee was supposedly against secession and hated slavery, etc). Likewise, there’s no love for someone like Jefferson Davis whose “mere” political office was less “honorable”, politics being a dirty business, and Davis was rather unglamorously captured after fleeing Richmond.

*I mean I know there are highways and schools and counties named after him and all, but he doesn’t get all the books and titles like “honorable” and “great man”.

You answered the question. Plus Lee’s admirers and subordinates wrote the Lost Cause History. But you’re right, Davis isn’t a secular saint in the South the way Jackson and Lee are.