I am an American history buff, though, and I have read about the Civil War all my life. I can honestly say I have been infinitely annoyed at how the South, inferior in practically every facet of war-making, and don’t forget morally wrong, were able to kick the North around for four full years.

In the course of reading a book I had picked up at a flea market, I think it was ‘Mister Lincoln’s Army’ about the Army of the Potomac, the author kept referring to Robert E. Lee’s ‘moral gravitas’.

Okay, I get it. He was the Best General Out There. Nobody on either side was as savvy at this war business than Lee, but that’s not saying much. When students at a Prussian military academy asked one of their instructors why they weren’t studying the American Civil War transpiring even as they spoke, in the United States, the instructor is said to have answered, “We teach you how to be soldiers here, not butchers.”

So, “moral gravitas”. Really? And the author didn’t say it once, but many times.

What the hell is ‘Moral Gravitas’? Moral: “Concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character”. Gravitas: “dignity, seriousness, or solemnity of manner".

Does not compute. And the book made it clear that this dignified seriousness of principles, right, wrong, character, had something to do with Lee’s humiliation of vain, timid McClelland with a quarter of the troops in the front of Richmond, and the staggering victory over arrogant, swaggering Hooker at  Chancellorsville in the face of being out-flanked, initially outsmarted, and, as usual, overwhelmingly outnumbered.

So I went to the library and got a biography of Robert E. Lee. “Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee” by Michael Korda, a Brit historian who has written about Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant, and T. E. Lawrence.

According to Korda, Robert E. Lee Rocked. As a mere lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers, he brilliantly re-routed the Mississippi, saving all sorts of commerce and cities. In the Mexican American War, he roundly condemned it as an act of naked aggression, but was instrumental in the capture of Mexico City. As George Washington had stressed, it is an American soldier’s duty to follow the orders of his civilian masters. A hard moral choice.

And this defines Lee over and over again in his life. Lee was a deeply religious man, and from that perspective was hard at odds with slavery. Deeply religious people in this country are morally opposed to abortion, hard at odds with it, but are told that they are not to inflict their opinions upon the public debate, impose their religion beliefs upon the rest of us. Lee was in the same situation. Korda goes into some depth of Lee’s version of Christianity as an addendum to his Presbyterian background, and it’s clear it’s more than just accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior. He had to live it. Did he compromise? We are all Sinners, falling short of our own expectations. Hey, if you’re perfect, cast the first stone. I dare you.

I’ll argue Lee was closer to the mark than most of us. His father-in-law owned what we know as Arlington Cemetery, which was a plantation across the river from Washington DC. Indeed, Dad owned several plantations, and something like five hundred slaves. Dad, as one of those morally suspect characters of history, promised those slaves that, having profited his whole life from their bondage, upon his death, they would all be freed, violating laws in every state this vast empire rested across.

So Dad dies, and it falls upon Robert E Lee to probate the Old Man’s will. Turns out Dad-In-Law was a lousy businessman. While land and slave rich, the estates all have massive debt that have to be paid off. Plenty of people counsel Lee, sell the slaves and land, pay off the debts and have a handsome profit for his family. It is illegal for him to free the slaves anyway. This is all happening just as the war is starting up, and Lee has to decide what side he goes with. He spends the entire first year of the war, Arlington almost immediately occupied by Union troops, fulfilling the wishes of his late father-in-law, paying off the debts accrued, releasing the slaves owned by his wife’s father, in violation of state law, in the midst of the Civil War.

Robert E. Lee was opposed to Secession, but could not see himself raising his sword against his beloved Virginia. Like most Southerners, and a lot of Westerners, Lee did not see himself as an American. They were Georgians, Alabamans, Texans, Virginians. The United States federal government was a mere construct for dealing with foreign countries, not something to be loyal to.

Lee’s faith, and incredible mental brilliance, made him make the hard moral decisions, pray to God for guidance, surrender his fate, and the fate of his troops, and his Cause, to his Lord, and do what he thought he had to do, what he thought was the right thing to do. He had a base core. This core, this ‘Moral Gravitas’ gave Lee perfect peace of mind, and with humility and an abject faith in God, he kicked Yankee Ass all over the battlefield. There’s no denying the ass-kicking. Tear down all the statues you can find, but you can’t tear down reality any more than you can rip the Moon out of the sky.

Read the book, or any book about Lee, then argue with me how we need to flush Robert E. Lee from our history, but just one more story from the book.

The South is defeated, Lee has surrendered. The North could have pressed charges against him, treason, murder, name it. They don’t, because even the Radical Republicans recognize Lee’s moral prowess, his image as principally righteous, and they leave him alone. He gets a gig as the president of some Southern university. He and his wife settle into academic life, attending the local Presbyterian Church as responsible leaders of the prim dignified, defeated South.

One Sunday, just before Communion, a Black man strides right to the communal rail and kneels there.

He’s a Presbyterian clergyman who has been angrily denouncing the Church for remaining segregated, and everybody there knows what he’s done. The Black minister is daring the white minister to deny him Communion, to refuse a fellow Presbyterian this fundamental sacrament that is supposed to be a universal recognition of Jesus’ sacrifice for all people, a holy process and right for all Christians with no consideration of color or anything else.

The white priest stands frozen, the white congregation holds it breath, and then Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, hero to rabid Rebels to this day, rises, strides to the Communal rail and kneels down next to that Black man.

That is not the act of a racist. That was the act of a leader. With Moral Gravitas.