Lee Sí, Columbus No

Okay, that takes a little unpacking. What I mean is that I support the “de-Confederation” of American monuments (for the most part) but not the removal of statues of that racist tyrant and sometime jailbird, Christopher Columbus.

I’ve already defended the remembrance of Chris, several times, despite the numerous brutalities and casual cruelties he heaped on the hapless “Indians” he “discovered” (and misnamed). Thanks to his remarkable skills as a sailor and navigator, and to his optimistic miscalculations as to the size of the earth, he permanently altered the course of human history. For non-Europeans, of course, much of that alteration came at their expense, though the “pleasures” of living under the Aztec, Ottoman, Mughal, or Chinese empires were few indeed. Only centuries later would the descendants who those who saw their “native” oppressors replaced by foreign ones benefit from such things as modern medicine, science, and technology. Yet life is immeasurably better now than then, despite all the sentimental nonsense about the demi-paradises that flourished around the world before the white man came.

For Marse Robert and his ilk, the situation was quite different. They were traitors and enslavers, pure and simple. Furthermore, the cult of “Dixie” that first flourished after the Civil War, which allowed the traitors and enslavers to pretend that they were heroes rather than vicious, disloyal, and corrupt, simply never died. Even a man as profound as William Faulkner was capable of believing that the Confederate soldiers were literally the bravest men who had ever lived—as though the blacks who suffered their rule were not infinitely braver and more worthy of admiration. And there are plenty of southerners who believe this sort of thing today.

The fantasy that the Civil War was somehow all the North’s fault, and the South more sinned against than sinning, is quite alive today, nourished on the Right as a form of oblique racism, as I discussed in the second half of a recent post directed largely against the New York Times’ overwrought “1619 Project”.¹

The facts against Lee himself are far more damning than are generally known. Elizabeth Brown Pryor, author of Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee through his Private Letters, has an excellent post up about Lee and slavery. You can also read the personal testimony of one of Lee’s slaves, whom Lee had whipped for trying to escape to freedom.

Most shocking of all, to his admirers, there is ample evidence that Lee, far from the legendary commander of, well, legend, was an extraordinarily bad general! Ethan Arsht, an earnest number cruncher otherwise unknown to me, has produced a “sabermetric” study of some 6,000 generals, comparing each against a statistical “average general” in each battle fought—a “WAR score”—with an overall average weighted in terms of number of battles fought. There were two generals who were “anomalous”. The first was Napoleon, easily in a class by himself, with a WAR score of 16.703, followed by Julius Caesar, whose WAR was 7.365, even though Napoleon compiled his staggering score by fighting 43 battles, while Caesar only fought 17.² The second most aggressive general in history was Marse Robert—27 battles, followed by the Duke of Wellington (18)— but Lee’s WAR score was terrible: -1.994! Minus 1.994! Putting him way below average (0)! Worst of all, Ulysses S. Grant’s +5.023 put him in the top 10 generals of all time! Ahead of Alexander the Great!³

1. More bitching against the 1619 Project here).

2. Bonaparte buffs will also be pleased to note that Napoleon totally outclassed Caesar even though he was eventually defeated, while Caesar was not. Caesar was in fact planning an extended “Eastern Campaign” (against the Parthians) when he was assassinated. Whether he would have fared better than Nap is hard to say.

3. Because Alexander achieved his staggering conquests in a mere 9 battles, with a WAR score of 4.376.

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