"Oh, but Robert E. Lee was such a Southern Gentleman!"

Explanation: Robert E. Lee, the foremost general of the Confederate forces in the US Civil War, was a Southern Gentleman(tm).

And by that, I mean a horrific fucking slaver using civility towards white people as a mask for immensely inhumane cruelty.

Robert E. Lee personally owned slaves that he inherited upon the death of his mother, Ann Lee, in 1829. (His son, Robert E. Lee Jr., gave the number as three or four families.) Following the death of his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, in 1857, Lee assumed command of 189 enslaved people, working the estates of Arlington, White House, and Romancoke. Custis’ will stipulated that the enslaved people that the Lee family inherited be freed within five years.
Lee, as executor of Custis’ will and supervisor of Custis’ estates, drove his new-found labor force hard to lift those estates from debt. Concerned that the endeavor might take longer than the five years stipulated, Lee petitioned state courts to extend his control of enslaved people.
The Custis bondspeople, aware of their former owner’s intent, resisted Lee’s efforts to enforce stricter work discipline. Resentment resulted in escape attempts. In 1859 Wesley Norris, his sister Mary, and their cousin, George Parks, escaped to Maryland where they were captured and returned to Arlington.
In an 1866 account, Norris recalled,
[W]e were immediately taken before Gen. Lee, who demanded the reason why we ran away; we frankly told him that we considered ourselves free; he then told us he would teach us a lesson we never would forget; he then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to lay it on well, an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.

“…. who gave us the number of lashes ordered…”
”Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.”
Even Satan would tell this guy to calm down.
- Unfortunately, washing lashed backs with brine or hot pepper juice was a well-known 'additional' punishment levied on flogged slaves in the American South, whenever the punishers felt like the slaves deserved it, or looked at them wrong, or if the slavers were just having a moment of pure fucking meanness.

Growing up: “Robert E. Lee was a good man who fought on the losing side.”

As an adult: “Robert E. Lee was a Confederate and supported slavery.”

Reading a PugJesus post about Robert E. Lee: 🤮

It's really sad how lionized Lee is despite being worse than average even by slaver standards.
Like, history is my center of interest. I am acutely aware that morals and norms are deeply contextual things, and that most people will grow up absorbing the morals and norms of the time and place.
But how can someone be such a piece of shit that their own slave overseer refuses to carry out their orders? The man's job is literally to brutalize slaves, and HE thinks you've gone too far?
I mean, shit, at least lionize some blinkered fanatic like Stonewall Jackson. He was a slaver, but at least he was willing to break the law for the sake of treating slaves more humanely, rather than less humanely. It doesn't absolve him from being a slaver at a time when it was increasingly clear that slavery was not some fundamental piece of existence, but it at least absolves him of being worse than his fucking peers.
- One of the things I appreciate about Behind the Bastards is the acknowledgment that historically people were more racist and misogynist, and to then clarify that the subject of an episode was notably racist or misogynistic for the time. Like Dewey of the Dewey Decimal System, who had a colleague write about how horribly sexist he was.
- I mean, shit, at least lionize some blinkered fanatic like Stonewall Jackson.
  Jackson was a 19th century Christian jihadist.
  On the other hand... instead of Lee or Jackson, James Longstreet is right there.
- The only reason that “morals are deeply contextual” is that average people are dumb as shit in all the ways that matter. Moral reasoning is similar to mathematics, but whereas we have formalized math, which people study in school for 12+ years (and are still terrible at it), morality is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-and-do-your-best endeavor.
  That’s why there’s such a discrepancy between the opinions of ethicists and those of average people. Why we had slavery for 10,000 years, why Trump was elected. Why billionaires, religions, and cruise ships exist. Because average people are dumb as shit in all the ways that matter, and no discipline in the world reminds us just how close the average human is to a mindless animal than ethics.

Every American general that graduated from Westpoint has their portrait hung prominently at the school. Despite graduating westpoint and becoming a general, Robert E Lee does not have a portrait hung in Westpoint's gallery because he's a filthy fucking traitor and is burning in hell

Benedict Arnold has neither name nor portrait at West point despite being a literal war hero that only defected because he was owed money and continually denied promotion he justly deserved (Washington admitted to this and lamented the fact that if not for a promotion he denied Arnold he likely wouldn't have defected).
- In college I tried to stage a protest where we dressed up as British Redcoats waving a union jack flag at my state's capitol ostensibly protesting in favor of putting a Benedict Arnold statue next to a Confederate statue and just parroting talking points people bring up about the Confederate statue. I was going to call the group "The Sons of Loyalist Veterans" and talk about how we are just celebrating our heritage, not hate, and that we don't hate America we just want to celebrate our Loyalist ancestors and Loyalist hero Benedict Arnold. Unfortunately I couldn't get anyone to go with me and chickened out.
- In college I tried to stage a protest where we dressed up as British Redcoats waving a union jack flag at my state's capitol ostensibly protesting in favor of putting a Benedict Arnold statue next to a Confederate statue and just parroting talking points people bring up about the Confederate statue. I was going to call the group "The Sons of Loyalist Veterans" and talk about how we are just celebrating our heritage, not hate, and that we don't hate America we just want to celebrate our Loyalist ancestors and Loyalist hero Benedict Arnold. Unfortunately I couldn't get anyone to go with me and chickened out.

Fun fact: Robert E. Lee was one, of many, of the Confederate leaders that recognized the deep harm they caused the nation, and thus he specifically wrote in his diary and will, that no statue, memorial, or song should ever commemorate his traitorous actions.

Then Wilson became president and refounded the KKK, erected a fuckton of Confederate statues, segregated the federal government for the first time in history, and generally shat on as many brown people as he could.

More white washing of the Bobby Lee legacy. https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/editorial/lost-cause-myth-modern-whitewashing-robert-e-lee-influences-racial-politics-milwaukee/
- Interesting that your extremely northern source just repeated everything I just said. After the confederacy lost, many of them recognized the mistakes they made. I have no love for the traitors that made the confederacy. I do recognize the difference between a poor loser like Drumpf, and a man that recognized that he did wrong in his own lifetime, and attempted to fix it after the fact.

What is this Lee guy doing in the picture part of the meme? I don't get it

Just a look of gleeful, eager malice.

Who's memory? Am I too not-a-Southerner for this meme?

Unfortunately, as recently as 30 years ago, Robert E. Lee apologism was widespread in popular culture.

Why tf is he shown wearing a blue Union (Northern) uniform and not a grey Confederate (traitorous Southern) uniform?

Now, my color perception isn't great, but that looks more gray than blue to my eyes.