Robert E. Lee on national reconciliation, from the Virginia Museum of History and Culture: In his public letters, a number of which were reprinted in newspapers, he urged that “all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace.” Lee vowed to do “all in my power to encourage our people to set manfully to work to restore the country, to rebuild their homes and churches, to educate their children, and to remain with their states, their friends and countrymen.” Thus when Congress ordered the drafting of new constitutions in the former Confederate states and disgruntled southerners contemplated a boycott of the system, Lee announced that it was “the duty of the [southern] people to accept the situation fully” and that every man should not only “prepare himself to vote” but also “prepare his friends, white and colored, to vote and to vote rightly.”
Of the two, Robert E. Lee is held in the lowest regard these days, reviled as a military commander of the Confederacy rather than his role in reconciling North and South after the Civil War — largely during his tenure as president of the university. So it’s no surprise that W&L’s Commission on Institutional History and Community has issued recommendations to de-emphasize its connection with Lee. That would include re-naming Lee House and the Lee-Jackson House, along with Robinson Hall named for a Rockbridge County plantation owner, reports The News Gazette.
No mention of deleting Lee’s name from the university.
Meanwhile, the commission proposes incorporating the university’s history into its orientation program and curriculum. Among the specifics:
- “Require each undergraduate student to take a seminar that explores W&L history, including the involvement of the namesakes, the contribution of enslaved persons, the role of W&L in the creation and dissemination of the Lost Cause narrative, the training of soldiers on campus, and the impact of our graduates on the institution and the world. The goal would be neither to mask nor to bash the university’s history, but rather to tell the full story, confident that the university’s positive contributions to society far outweigh its shortcomings. …
- “During Spring Term, foster campus unity by selecting a topic or issue that the entire community explores and discusses, whether in multiple class offerings that address the topic from different angles; a speaker series that highlights different aspects of the issue.”
In the wrong hands, this could turn into an exercise in white guilt and self-flagellation. I don’t get the sense that W&L is loaded with professors steeped in identity politics bent upon de-legitimizing the nation’s founding… but then the content of a program like this really depends upon who is put in charge and how it is run. So, we’ll have to wait and see.
Whoever runs the program, though, I don’t see these recommendations as “fostering campus unity.” Fostering campus division is more likely.