How did Robert E. Lee become an American Hero?

How did a slave-owning elitist who led a military campaign to destroy the United States government and replace it with a slavery-based plutocracy become an American hero?

That’s the intriguing mystery about Robert E. Lee. During the 20th century, Lee, the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, became an American icon. How did the Confederacy’s most famous general became a national hero in a multicultural democracy?

Military success is not the reason. A quick glance at Lee’s Civil War career shows enormous failures. In particular, the catastrophic Battle of Gettysburg that destroyed his army’s offensive capabilities.

History shows Lee’s principal opponent Ulysses S. Grant was a far better general. Yet for decades, Lee and not Grant, the man who saved the Union, was the national hero. Why?

The Deification of Robert E. Lee

Interestingly, there was a well-organized campaign to glorify Lee as an American hero in the decades after the Civil War.

Lee’s family and Army of Northern Virginia officers led and organized this campaign, historian Thomas L. Connelly demonstrates. Connelly’s book The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Image in American Society shows those people aggressively promoted Lee’s image and ruthlessly…