In Defense of History: Robert E. Lee
While unscrupulous petite bourgeois careerists call for Edinburg to change the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary, we owe a duty to history to understand who he truly was and why he's important.
Did you know Robert E. Lee believed, for his entire life, that slavery was an evil institution?
Did you know Robert E. Lee was the most heroic fighter of the Mexican-American war, the victory of which helped end slavery by bringing into the Union more free states, thereby equalizing the balance with slave states?
Did you know Robert E. Lee’s commanding of the Confederacy was only ten percent of his military career?
Did you know Robert E. Lee was the first military commander of whom President Lincoln, immediately upon entering office in 1861, asked and even begged to lead the Union Army against Southern secession?
Did you know Robert E. Lee was married to one of George Washington’s descendants?
Did you know that Robert E. Lee led a college named after George Washington, post-Civil War, as its President, which still stands today?
Did you know that American Army Generals who helped defeat the Nazis during World War II looked to Robert E. Lee for inspiration?
And above all else, did you know Robert E. Lee advised Southerners to help rebuild the country and remain loyal to the Union, after the Civil War ended?
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
And to the republic for which it stands,
One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
— Original version of Pledge of Allegiance did not include the words “under God” and was written by a socialist to unify the country after the Civil War. Extra words were added in the 1950s, during the McCarthyite Witch Hunt era.
The great historian, playwright, novelist and journalist, Gore Vidal (1925-2012), was once asked what he thought about the teaching of history in American schools. He replied, “That sounds like an excellent idea.” But today’s petite bourgeois activists going around attempting to get names removed from buildings, or statues taken down, only adds to this disparity of knowledge.
Locally, liberal activist, Margarita Gonzalez (a Texas health and human services and Texas American federation of teachers employee, according to her Facebook profile), is running a campaign to pressure the Edinburg school district to change the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary. It has been sponsored by the million-dollar “nonprofit” Trucha RGV (formerly Neta RGV) [financials shown up ahead]. The process to consider changing the name began in Fall of 2020, as the district unanimously voted to only accept name changes for the school, although it thankfully ended there.
Gonzalez falsely labels Lee a white-supremacist in a petition she launched, bringing the issue back to light, and falsely claims that his name represents “idolatry”, as if everybody was some kind of Christian and considered the act “sinful”. Gonzalez also says Lee is a symbol of racism and hatred, which (as I’ve demonstrated and will continue demonstrating) he absolutely is not.
An article featured on Trucha, written by Gonzalez, is full of falsehoods and slanderous remarks against the school district, calling them racist and sexist, for which they should sue Trucha RGV.
First is the untruth that George Floyd was murdered, as new evidence released conclusively demonstrates that he actually died from a drug overdose, drugs which he quickly ingested orally as he was being approached by police. She references the Floyd incident because original efforts to rename the school began around the time of his death. Gonzalez then decries a supposed disregard for “the democratic process”, when all the schoolboard did was vote to accept alternative names.
Gonzalez then engages in a childish psychological phenomenon known in the field as ‘splitting’, wherein things or people are divided into simple categories of either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, when she says “it is essential to teach history appropriately to honor good people and changemakers.” Good people? Lee, whatever you think of him, was certainly a “changemaker”, if such a dumb word is to be used.
Like her petition, she draws a comparison between Hitler and the Third Reich with the Confederacy, in the Trucha article, despite the fact that she hosted a rally last year in which the swastika was superimposed on the Israeli flag. She argues that because Hitler is not honored with statues or institutions, Robert E. Lee shouldn’t either.
She might not realize it, but Gonzalez honored Hitler and the Third Reich by organizing an entire campaign calling for an arms embargo against Israel (the creation of which was necessitated by the Holocaust and opposed by Nazis who fled to Arab countries that wanted to destroy Israel during its war for independence, helping the regimes fight the Jewish state). Moreover, American generals who helped defeat the Nazis—like MacArthur and Marshal—studied Lee as a military genius, for guidance, as mentioned above. Marshal was even in direct contact with Lee’s biographer during the war, seeking guidance and wisdom.
Gonzalez and Trucha (who likewise gave positive coverage to local forces calling for Israel to be destroyed) have no right whatsoever to lecture anybody about the Third Reich, Hitler, nor the struggle against fascism.
Gonzalez then goes on to label the school district as expressing “anti-Blackness” (an arcane term she leaves undefined) and claims to speak for Black students who may “feel” left out, though she quotes none, as she evidently did not interview any Black students nor families. She argues that the school should be renamed after the poet and former UT-Pan American author, Gloria Anzaldua, who is actually an idol to local petite bourgeois activists and professors affiliated with Mexican American Studies department on campus. One of those professors, Stephanie Alvarez, is a paid member of Trucha RGV’s board and makes a living as a professor cynically race-baiting white-skinned people, as do her ‘colleagues’.
Gonzalez then let’s the cat out of the bag, showing this campaign to be simply a project for middle-class liberals who are financially dependent on ‘D.E.I.’ bureaucratic jobs, and admitting that Anzaldua is the true “idol” of the situation, when she writes:
“[Anzaldua] was a literature powerhouse [she was not] and an LGBTQIA+ icon [this acronym did not exist when she was alive]. [Anzaldua] wrote prominently on feminist theory, queer theory and Chicanx history. [Anzaldua never used the term ‘Chicanx’ and may have even found it ridiculous, as it is.]”
Included in the article is a video hosted by the UTRGV Mexican American Studies department, further illustrating the true motives behind this veil of supposedly being anti-Confederate. Gonzalez takes a further dig at the teaching of history, decrying a statue at UTRGV’s Edinburg campus showing an early Spanish colonizer of the region, using her middle-class morality to judge somebody who lived hundreds of years ago, long before America was even conceived as an idea. As I explained in a recent article about these types, they lack both a long and sophisticated view of history. They are pseudo-intellectuals.
Gonzalez further illustrates her liberal political leanings, attacking the Edinburg school board for being “conservative.” (So much for respecting the democratic process.) She openly “speculates”, her own word, that the Edinburg school board is homophobic—a slanderous claim which the school board should sue Trucha for publishing—when she says:
“It is easy to speculate that school board members might have had a homophobic reaction to Anzaldúa’s winning nomination for the elementary school’s new name, contributing to their shelving of the idea. This would make ECISD’s behavior of ignoring constituents offensive both to residents of African American descent and to those who identify as LGBTQIA+.”
Again, she awards herself the right to speak for Black students, a right to which she is by no means entitled.
Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District is not only in a good position to demand a retraction of this article, backed with a real threat of lawsuit; they have an obligation to sue, as these claims should not be tolerated.
Brief Background of Gonzalez and Trucha RGV
These actions mirror similar moves by other middle-class liberal individuals and ultra-left organizations around the United States to change names of buildings and institutions that carry those of former Confederacy officers.
While Gonzalez claims in her petition that she recognizes “honoring history is important,” she makes the ahistorical claim that there is such a thing as a “right kind of history. [Emphasis her own.]” The only “right” kind of history is true history, of which she evidently knows nothing. She simply employs an extremely lazy reading of Civil War history to advance her bizarre admiration for Anzaldua.
Gonzalez also has a propensity for using pseudonyms, as she hardly possesses the courage to stand by her claims and positions. Judging by her a-historicity and lazy reporting, one can see why. For instance, she held protests against the existence of the Jewish state of Israel under the pseudonym “glitterpanther_” on Instagram and ‘Magpie’, only recently adding her first name ‘Margarita’ to her profile. She was so mortified by my exposé of a June 2024 event, which I infiltrated in order to cover closely, that she took down a blog she used to host online—956writes.com I pointed to how, in it, she described Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz as a “braindead Zionist” and a “traitor” to the United States just because she defends Israel’s right to self-determination. In the blog, before being taken down, Gonzalez said she was “trained in Anthropology,” but was now studying Social Work (from one bullshit field to another.)
While Trucha attempts to portray itself as an independent, radical and “community” media outlet, it reported to receive over $800,000 in 2024, with over a million dollars in total revenues, according to their tax returns, which anyone can Google. Its director, Josue Ramirez, who is credited with the stenciling of the lame design featured in Gonzalez’ article, and their second-in-command, Omar Casas, handsomely paid themselves over $60,000 in 2024:
Part of Trucha’s funding, which they have disclosed previously on their website, comes from the Ford Foundation, who also funds other liberal nonprofits like La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), a close affiliate of Trucha. The Ford Foundation was founded by Henry Ford’s son, Edsel, in 1937. Edsel was President of Ford Motor Company at the time. Henry Ford, the company’s founder, was a well-known financial backer of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, and was himself a rabid antisemite who republished the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a text cited by Hamas in their founding covenant, ‘claims’ of which are liberally repeated by middle-class left elements to which Gonzalez belongs, adding to the reasons why she is nobody to lecture anyone about Hitler or the Third Reich. Her ignominious referencing of Nazism is just a way to rehab herself for her well-documented record of antisemitism, from which she will never be able to escape.
Who Robert E. Lee really was and why it’s important to teach him
Robert Edward Lee was born to a Virginian family in 1807. He was a graduate of WestPoint Military Academy and joined the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after his formal education. He served for over three decades in the armed forces, but is largely known by ahistorical fools like Gonzalez and Trucha for the three years he spent as commander of the Confederate Armed Forces.
Lee was the son of White Horse Harry Lee, who was a commander in George Washington’s Continental Army, during The First American Revolution, and who famously eulogized the nation’s founding father as: “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Lee actually married the daughter of General Washington’s adopted son in June of 1831. A great uncle of Lee’s, amazingly, sired two signers of the Declaration of Independence, the only person who can claim such an honor.
Historians of the period and biographers of Lee agree that he was quite torn between the two sides of the war, well before it began, as he was even offered the role of commanding a force against secession on the eve of conflict. Lee is considered one of the great generals not just in “American history” but in world history, to be mentioned in the same breath as Alexander, Hannibal and Napoleon, although some say he did more with much less than those others.
Lee actually got his start as a military genius during the Mexican American war, as part of General Winfield Scott’s army regimen, which paved the way from Veracruz to Mexico City. It was a very successful campaign, in which Lee played a decisive role, as he was able to find routes for the Americans to travel, in order to get around the Mexican Army. Scott, who would live to see the Civil War, said that Lee was the best soldier he had ever seen on the battlefield.
At a time when Mexican-American history is being bastardized by people like Gonzalez and outlets like Trucha, who falsely claim that the United States “stole” land from Mexico, studying Robert E. Lee becomes even more essential. The southern U.S. states, including La República del Rio Grande, seceded from Mexico in the 1830s and willingly joined the United States.
The U.S. obtaining a west coast, and opening up the Pacific Ocean to world trade was essential not just to the American Republic, but to world civilization. Writing in February of 1849, against the French philosopher Bakunin, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in part:
“Will Bakunin accuse the Americans of a “war of conquest”, [as Bakunin’s intellectual descendants do today] which, although it deals with a severe blow to his theory based on “justice and humanity”, was nevertheless waged wholly and solely in the interest of civilization? Or is it perhaps unfortunate that splendid California has been taken away from the lazy Mexicans, who could not do anything with it? That the energetic Yankees by rapid exploitation of the California gold mines will increase the means of circulation, in a few years will concentrate a dense population and extensive trade at the most suitable places on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, create large cities, open up communications by steamship, construct a railway from New York to San Francisco, for the first time really open the Pacific Ocean to civilization, and for the third time in history give the world trade a new direction? The “independence” of a few Spanish Californians and Texans may suffer because of it, in some places “justice” and other moral principles may be violated; but what does that matter to such facts of world-historic significance?”
Every single thing Marx and Engels anticipated would happen as the result of the U.S. obtaining its west coast all came to pass.
The addition of new Mexican states, actually, only exacerbated the coming conflict (The Second American Revolution), as it added more free states to the union. Thus, simpletons like Gonzalez who argue that Lee only contributed to slavery have this irony of history to deal with, as Lee’s military contributions actually added to the anti-slavery cause.
Quoting once more from the great sages, Marx and Engels who were the best defenders of the Union and President Lincoln on the question of slavery and in particular the successive steps towards the inevitable conflict, they wrote:
“The progressive abuse of the Union by the slave power, working through its alliance with the Northern Democratic Party, is, so to say, the general formula of United States history since the beginning of this century. The successive compromise measures mark the successive degrees of the encroachment by which the Union became more and more transformed into the slave of the slave-owner. Each of these compromises denotes a new encroachment of the South, a new concession of the North. At the same time none of the successive victories of the South was carried but after a hot contest with an antagonistic force in the North, appearing under different party names with different watchwords and under different colors. If the positive and final result of each single contest told in favor of the South, the attentive observer of history could not but see that every new advance of the slave power was a step forward to its ultimate defeat. (Marx, The American Question in England, New-York Daily Tribune, October 11, 1861.)”
Gonzalez, Trucha, and their political allies on the petite bourgeois left focus on the fact that Lee and others owned slaves, as if that alone is enough to indict and condemn them historically. They likely don’t know or care to know that Jefferson, Thomas Paine and others attempted to write slavery out of the Constitution at the founding national convention, either. George Washington’s famous will, in fact, requested that the slaves on his plantation be emancipated. The mighty Washington wasn’t powerful enough to emancipate every slave of the Union, but he did the best he could. Washington actually only freed one half of the slaves on the plantation, as his wife’s first husband (whose daughter married Lee) continued owning slaves. The Washington plantation was thus a microcosm of the “half-slave, half-free” situation across the entire Union, as described later by Lincoln.
This approach to history advanced by Gonzalez and Trucha, which condemns people as ‘good or bad’ (again, a psychological defense mechanism known as splitting) is also simplistic, because it expresses a wish, a desire, and a fantasy of—and for—purity, like children who wish for history to be a morality tale, in order to avoid the hard work of understanding history dialectically and as it truly was, with its contradictions and complexities.
One should also bear in mind, when studying history, that slavery was the mode of the civilized world for millennia. ‘Twas only with the advent of the American Revolution that the bonds of the ‘peculiar institution’ began to break. None of the founding fathers, nor Lee, ever knew a world without slavery.
It may surprise the simpletons to know that Lee actually believed slavery was “an evil institution,” arguing quite cleverly that slavery was worse for the slave-owners, and argued himself in favor of free and independent labor, the cause that would later be championed by Marx and Engels. It was actually Lee’s marriage to one of Washington’s descendants which legally bound him to slave-holding. The slavery contradiction, therefore, was part of Washington’s inheritances to Lee.
Like many affluent Americans, Lee hoped that slavery could be solved civilly, but history is more cunning and would not allow for this, as a terrible clash and war was the only means by which slavery could be ended, especially with the secession of Southern states.
Lee was at an army base in Texas when Lincoln was elected President, the former having received not a single vote in the South. Lee was actually reading a biography of Washington, after which he concluded Washington would have opposed secession, a conclusion I share with Lee. ‘What would Washington have done?’, is actually a question that was hotly debated at the time. Southerners incorrectly argued that as a rebel against the British crown and a slave holder, Washington would have been on their side. Northerners, however, correctly replied by referencing his famous Farewell Address, in which Washington said: “Prize the Union above any other allegiance you might have.”
Lee was on his way back to Washington D.C., having been recalled by his Mexican-American war commander, Winfield Scott, just as news broke that Texas was seceding. The now aging Scott was in no position, however, to command the army against the secessionists and thought Lee should lead the struggle against the South. Lincoln’s emissary, Francis Blair, asked Lee to lead the army as “the country looks to you as the representative of the Washington family.” Blair tried every which way to convince Lee to accept the role, but Lee (wishing war could be avoided civilly) could not in the end agree to “lift my sword against my fellow Virginians.” Virginia had not yet seceded, but it seemed likely that it would, as it ultimately did.
For us mere mortals who have known nothing except loyalty to the Union, these matters were still largely unresolved then, as Lee said after the war, of such questions: “They were answered by the sword.” Blair, a fellow Virginian, would finally say to Lee, “You’ve made the biggest mistake of your life; but I feared it would be so.” Nevertheless, every school child should know that President Lincoln’s first choice to command the Union Army was Robert E. Lee.
Although Lee put down the great abolitionist John Brown’s rebellion at Harper’s Ferry in 1859, Lee took command of the Virginian forces, although command would be overtaken by the Confederacy. Southerners, actually, disliked Lee very much, because he was unable to put down a rebellion by western Virginians, the area now known as West Virginia, as they said he was not “passionate” enough about the Confederate cause, which he was not. Lee, however, would eventually become more passionate as General George McClennan’s army overtook the Washington estate in Arlington where was born and raised. It’s at this point, in 1862, that Lee becomes the R.E.L. we know from history.
As McClennan closed in on Richmond, Joseph Johnston, the Confederate general, got shot. Jefferson Davis, leader of the Confederacy, then selected Lee to take charge. Lee had no choice but to fight. He defended Richmond and repelled McClennan, forcing him into a retreat. Lee would go on to win more battles against McClennan’s forces, however. Across the Potomac, in Maryland, McClennan actually received a copy of Lee’s battle plan and was still unable to defeat his forces. They reached a stalemate at the Battle of Antietam, and Lee would famously win the battle of Fredericksburg.
One of my Irish guitar teachers and mentors, John Doyle, actually wrote a wonderful song about those two battles called ‘Clear The Way’, in which he describes the former battle, where both sides of the Union and Confederacy were almost entirely Irish. At the apex of the song, to illustrate how closely the war split families and communities, John writes:
“Hand to hand and face to face there, a young rebel he did charge me in the fray. I turned around and my blade went through him. I did the devil’s work that day. For I saw my face there before me, in the boy that I mewed down. He could have been a friend or a brother, another exile from my town.”
Lee was evidently tortured by what he had to do, as he once said that “it’s a good thing war is so terrible; otherwise we would grow fond of it.” Lee ordered what we today would call ‘blitzes’ against the Union Army, against the advice of others who thought the Confederacy could wait-out the North, as it’s an established historical fact that Lee always believed from the beginning that time would ultimately work against the South and in favor of the North. For Lee, either the South would win a quick and decisive victory, or the North would ultimately win.
General Ulysses Grant would surround Lee’s forces who were in retreat in 1865 at Appomattox, where they negotiated surrender. Several hundreds of thousands of Americans died during the revolutionary war to put down slavery.
Robert E. Lee’s Second Act
After defeat, Lee was at first not sure what to do, but he was offered the chance to lead a small college in the Shenandoah Valley called Washington College. The college was endowed by General Washington, although it was decimated during the war. He took the offer, rode across the Blue Ridge Mountains, and rebuilt the college which today is known as Washington & Lee University.
While Lee would have hoped that slavery could have ended without war, he nevertheless was glad that the war ended and encouraged Southerners to be loyal to the Union and help rebuild the country. Some former Confederates asked Lee why he didn’t leave the country, like his father who was exiled, but he opted to remain faithful to the Union and felt a duty to help rebuild. As a college president, Lee focused on educating students in trades, including journalism.
After the war, when asked if a statue should be built of his best lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson who was killed at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Lee ironically argued that “Now wouldn’t be a good time.” For the rest of his life, however, he actually always opted against commemorating the Civil War—thus another irony of history that the simpletons will have to reckon with. Nevertheless, Lee’s main goal was to move past the Civil War, and almost forget about it. Thus, those who wish to tear down reminders of Lee are in their own way attempting to reopen the wounds Lee thought should stay closed, as well as erase any memory that Lee was well regarded long before the Civil War, including by Lincoln himself.
Statues of Lee did not start going up until the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century by those nostalgic for the Confederacy, long after he died in 1870. This fact is unimportant, however, because we are not bound by those who wished to commemorate slavery long after he died. Lee was also broadly remembered by military geniuses in more contemporary times who fought and defeated the Nazis, such as General MacArthur and General Marshal, the latter of whom corresponded with Lee’s most famous biographer throughout WWII.
Conclusion
The rot of so-called political correctness and ahistorical views by unscrupulous careerists like Gonzalez, Alvarez and Trucha—who only want notoriety for changing the name of buildings for personal ambition—has spread so far today that Washington and Lee University was considering dropping ‘Lee’ from their name a couple of years ago, not realizing that without Robert E. Lee, the college wouldn’t exist. This has been going on for a while, however, as in 2005 a school named after Thomas Jefferson was renamed to ‘Sequoia’. President Donald Trump (By the way, does Gonzalez recognize Trump’s democratic election and mandate?) correctly anticipated during his first term in office that if statues of Robert E. Lee were taken down, then George Washington would follow. They have begun doing exactly that, as the American Revolution and its heroes are their true targets.
Those who attacked Jefferson back then harbored sympathies with anti-American, anti-Jewish and anti-democratic forces, like Al Qaeda, just as Margarita Gonzalez and Trucha RGV have expressed sympathy and solidarity with Hamas. Although they claim to speak in the name of history, they prove far beyond any reasonable doubt—with their lazy writing and commentary—to know nor care absolutely nothing about it. They shouldn’t be listened to.