However, viewed according to the dogma of the neverending inglorious lost causers, this is the history of Arlington:
Arlington = Paradise Lost; Lee = God, treacherously deposed ....
There's an additional fascinating and informative column (unusual for that site that seems to have an ongoing contest among its hacks to throw up the most dum and dummer stuff) running today on salondotcom by a writer who usually gets things wrong, but not today (which show what can be done if a writer does some writerly work instead of hacking hairballs), "The Confederate We Still Don't Know."
All of that column is filled with vital information, but it was in a comment by a reader that the most interesting bit pops up, something I should have realized all along, when it comes to endless litney of the inglorious lost causers and how they didn't really lose, were only dishonorably betrayed by you name it. This is how it started, and why it was perpetuated.
The comment was written by James Levy and tells you what you need to know, and indeed did know, if you / me (and I hadn't, I am ashamed to say) had thought about it for a second:
But Lee granted many interviews after the war and commented on many things, just not on the record in his own words. He was part of the whispering campaign that followed the war, where everybody and his brother Down South tried to fob off the blame for defeat on someone else. There is a huge historiographical literature on how Lee's staff, Hood, McClaws, Jeff Davis, Longstreet (who became a Republican and was vilified by his former mates), Porter Alexander (more honestly than most), Jubal Early et al., waged an incessant battle to excuse their mistakes, glorify the "Lost Cause", and explain away defeat. The idea that Lee was just some private citizen after April 1865 is not credible.
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