THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

Grant a Better General Than Lee? No.

Grant a Better General Than Lee? No.

By Joe Wolverton on Apr 14, 2020

A review of Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian (Regnery History, 2012) by Edward Bonekemper, III.

I don't think a person of sound mind and impartial understanding of the so-called Civil War could get past the second paragraph of the introduction of Edward H. Bonekemper III's book Grant and Lee: Victorious American and Vanquished Virginian without realizing that next 400 or so pages were going to be an exercise in intellectual endurance.

"Because Southerners were more greatly affected by the war and had a need to rationalize its origins and results, Southern-oriented historians dominated Civil War historiography for the first centery after the war. They created the 'Myth of the Lost Cause' and designed Lee as the god of this mini-religion."

Good Lord.

Southerners were more greatly affected by the war? Well, that typically happens when a country is invaded. Remember, South Carolina and her sister states of the Confederate States of America did not seek to seize control of the government of the United States. Nope. They left the United States. That's it. They left. There would have been no bloodshed at all had Abraham Lincoln not decided that he was not bound by the U.S. Constitution — the one he swore to God to uphold — and sent soldiers to pillage and plunder the states whose people had voted to leave...peacefully.

So, when Bonekemper writes that the South needed to "rationalize" the cause and effects of the war, it would seem that by his purposefully erroneous retelling of the facts surrounding those causes and effects, that he is the one who has some need to rationalize.

That makes sense, though, in light of the facts I recited above. It's hard to make heroes out of men who invaded other men's homes and farms, particularly when the latter group had no intent of ever doing anything harmful to the lives, liberty, or property of the former group of men. This fact can never be repeated often enough: there would have been no war had Abraham Lincoln not violated the U.S. Constitution and ordered U.S. troops to invade South Carolina. That was an act of war. Secession was an act of peace. If you, like Bonekemper, don't understand that, then his book is probably for you.

Now, on to the rest of this hefty hagiography of Ulysses S. Grant and the justification for Northern invasion and plunder.

The author writes that Robert E. Lee "oversaw the slaughter, decline and surrender of his army...."

Well, I guess one could see it that way, but an intellectually honest person could see that Lee's army would never have been "slaughter[ed]" had Abraham Lincoln not sent soldiers down to slaughter them!

Robert E. Lee would have lived a peaceful and prosperous life had he not been forced to fight for the freedom of his farm and family. He did not ride to Washington, D.C. at the head of army seeking to install himself or Jefferson Davis or any other Southern man in the White House.

Was the Southern army slaughtered? Yes, for the most part. Was Robert E. Lee the head of the Confederate army? Yes. But that is hardly the end of the story.

In the law there is a concept known as the "proximate cause." Simply, it is the "but for" cause of an effect. In other words, what was the one thing that happened that more than any other caused a certain event to occur? Regarding the massacre of men in the Confederate army, the proximate cause was not Robert E. Lee's abilities as a general, but it was Abraham Lincoln's violation of the U.S. Constitution and the subsequent invasion of the South by armies of the United States, at his command.

To pen a chapter-by-chapter review of Grant and Lee would be an irresponsible redundancy. It follows the familiar script drafted in the days of Reconstruction: the North fought to free the slaves, Abraham Lincoln was the "Great Emancipator" and a martyr of liberty, Southerners were fighting to keep their slaves, and after the war, the South remained racist despite the dedicated and enlightened efforts of the virtuous and victorious North.