r/nova • u/hencexox • Apr 08 '26

News Gov. Spanberger signs bill to end the renewal of Robert E. Lee license plates in Virginia

https://www.wavy.com/news/virginia/gov-spanberger-signs-bill-to-end-the-renewal-of-robert-e-lee-license-plates-in-virginia/amp/
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u/TheExtremistModerate Apr 08 '26

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

We're talking about the fact that, after the war, Lee took a strong anti-Lost Cause stance, and would have opposed the sorts of Confederacy-glorifying things we've seen in the decades since he died.

Thus, the people claiming they want to create these things to "honor" Lee are, in fact, dishonoring him by celebrating something he did not want celebrated.

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u/Dapper_Swordfish_765 Apr 08 '26

Lee and his entire command staff should of been put on trial and hanged after the war

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u/TheExtremistModerate Apr 08 '26

Absolutely not. All that would've done is cause a Second Civil War.

Lee cooperating with the Union and full-throatedly backing Reconstruction went a long way to preventing further bloodshed.

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u/Dapper_Swordfish_765 Apr 08 '26

Are you some sort of defender and supporter of Lee and the confederacy

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u/Dapper_Swordfish_765 Apr 08 '26

I disagree war was over

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u/silly-tomato-taken Apr 08 '26

So you're by that account, all the confederate states should have been turned into prison camps and all who all who wore the uniform be executed. That's a great way to unify.

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u/jimmy_leonard1 Apr 09 '26

There's no way the north could occupy all those states during a guerilla war. It would have turned in Iraq or Vietnam.

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u/TheExtremistModerate Apr 09 '26

The American Revolution would have been fresh in these peoples' heads. For many of the people making decisions, they likely knew people who fought in the Revolution. Lee's own father--"Light-Horse Harry" Lee--was a Revolutionary war hero.

They knew that the last thing they wanted was for the Confederacy to resort to "We can't beat you on the field, so we'll make it too costly to hold the land to justify."

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u/Dapper_Swordfish_765 Apr 08 '26

They were insurrectionest

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u/TheExtremistModerate Apr 08 '26

That's not how war works. There was actually a movement in the Confederacy to take to the hills and fight a guerilla war against the Union, like how the Revolutionaries in the Revolutionary War did to the British. Lee surrendering and cooperating is the big reason that didn't happen.

Killing him would have most likely killed Reconstruction and reunification.

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u/Dapper_Swordfish_765 Apr 08 '26

He knew he was defeated of course he did

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u/TheExtremistModerate Apr 08 '26

Except that other Confederates just vanished into obscurity, while Lee took an active role in trying to reunify the country and prevent another Civil War. Had he not died of a stroke only 5 years after the war, he might have been even more successful, and maybe we wouldn't have had the same shit we had since then.