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bobby lee
According to the daily newspapers, some Washington D.C. political insiders seem quite taken with the Southern Confederacy of the American Civil War. When asked if they also support slavery, they deny it vehemently.
The South, you see, they find romantic, brave, and beautiful. After all, didn't they have a right to secede and maintain their own customs - which, to be sure, might not be to everybody's taste?
They all, each and every one, love Robert E. Lee. What a wonderful person, they emote, listing examples of the model behavior of the Confederate military leader.
Lee was opposed to slavery, they trumpet. Really? Then how does this military paragon find himself leading the troops of the slaveholders?
The answer General Lee gave to this question was that all his friends were Southerners. That's understandable. And if a friend of Adolph Hitler was opposed to killing Jews, gypsies, gays and radical leftists but was put in charge of all the concentration camps, that would have been O.K. too.
There is an old saying that people are known by the company they keep.
Lee's personal relations weighed far heavier on his conscience and morality than the mere fact of chattel slavery! What kind of man was this - one to praise? He was a man without morals, without thought, who talked about freedom but acted to sustain the chains.
There have been a raft of books recently glamorizing the figures of the slave states. One such is "Jefferson Davis, American," by William J. Cooper Jr.
American? Maybe by the standards of the reactionary capitalist class that rules this nation but not to the brave soldiers who wore the blue of the North - who went to war singing, "John Brown's Body Lies a-Molderin' In the Grave, But His Soul Goes Marching On."
Now there was a hero. There was a true American. John Brown was a man for all time, who put his life on the line to free people of color from slavery.
And who caught and carried out the death sentence on John Brown? Why, that great stinking paragon, General Robert E. Lee!
Burn in Hell, Bobby.
The commentary above was written by Blackie D., and first appeared in the August issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
