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Lee’s own personal papers — which were pretty much unavailable for 150 years — show a drastically, profoundly, stupendously different view of Lee.

In fact, Alan Nolan, author of Lee Considered, says EVERYTHING we think we know about Lee, should be discarded, and start over.

For example, in Lee’s OWN HANDWRITTEN papers, he keeps obsessive track of certain escaped slave girls — mulatto girls. He paid six times his normal bounty for the return of one girl, about 13-14 years old, who escaped with her white looking child.

Lee’s bounty hunters searched for her for months, and when they found her, Lee had her bought to him, tied up, and tortured. He screamed at her during her torture — then rented her out to a plantation known for cruelty to slaves. To top it all off, he apparently sold her white looking child.

Elizabeth Pryor, author of “Reading The Man” had access to Lee’s papers. She adores Lee, and tries very hard to keep his halo on his head. But she reveals astonishing, baffling things.

She excuses what she can. She calls his torture of slaves “due to Lee’s poor cross cultural communication skills” — as if he could just talk to the slaves better, he wouldn’t have to torture the girls.

This is a man who had young girls TORTURED.

Not sorta, not kinda, he had them tortured, and while it was the law in Virginia to whip escaped slaves, Lee needed no law, he seemed to VERY much get into it.

Pryor excuses that too. She claims Lee “failed to appreciate his slaves desire to be free”.. Hello! How could he not notice! They kept running away! Despite promises of torture – which Lee made good on –Pryor said Lee had “an epidemic of escaped slaves”.

Who ever said Lee was loved by his slaves is goofy. Pryor says Lee’s slaves said he was “the meanest man I ever saw”.

Far from being against slavery, Lee was one of the biggest defenders. Yes, there is a letter to his wife, and in one sentence he says slavery is a political and moral evil — but the letter doesn’t stop there. IT goes on. Lee says the blacks are fortunate to be slaves!! He also writes that God knows slavery is cruel and painful – but pain is “necessary for their instruction”. And Lee was very willing to “instruct” they young mulatto girls.

Most stunning of all, Lee SOLD the white looking babies. Lee regularly sold the children of his slave girls. Pryor puts it this way “Lee separated every family unit, but one”.

Separated every family UNIT? Pryor deserves a lot of credit for exposing Lee’s torture, his cruelty to slaves — but the way she writes, you would think Lee just had a bad day. Lee could not sell the slaves themselves — due to the terms of the will.

But the will said nothing about the children born to his slaves. Pryor says he separated every family unit, and elsewhere she says all the female slave girls under 5 were gone. Okay — where did they go?

Did they vanish? Did they go up in a space ship? Pryor apparently knows, but doesn’t say. There is only so much the public could stand, Furthermore, her audience is wildly pro Lee — if she came out and said he sold white babies– and I mean this literally – her life could be at risk. Southern Lee lovers get that upset. Selling white babies? He would NEVER?

Oh, wouldn’t he? He would torture 13 year old girls. He would sell babies. What is he going to do with a white looking slave girl? Would he say “Oh my, this is a line I won’t cross” Are you kidding me?

In fact white looking slave girls — it was well known — sold for a premium. I will let you guess why. But whore houses loved to buy white looking slaves — more men would pay more money for that service. Books written AT THE TIME discussed this horrible reality.

But if he sold black women that would go to whore houses, and light skinned women, why on EARTH would he say, no, no this one is too white. Get real.

The real history of Lee has yet to be written. But then, the real history of the South has yet to be written too. Lee is very much a metaphor for the entire South, and the myths we have been told.

One more thing — If Lincoln’s papers were discovered, and showed he had young girls tortured, paid six times his n

Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly...

“Nolan, who is a lawyer and not an historian (a fact which should be borne in mind as you read this book), attempts to put the romantic, mythological Lee “on trial” and expose him for the flawed and decidedly unheroic person that Nolan believes him to be.”

” Like a good lawyer, Nolan denies trying to “convict” Lee in the beginning of the book, and even states that he admires him in some ways, but the rest of the book reveals Nolan to be committed to “convicting” his target of several specific charges.”

“Nolan presents a good deal of “evidence” (much of it in Lee’s own words), but like a good prosecutor he leaves out “evidence” which contradicts his theories.”

“Dr. James McPherson, the famed Civil War historian and author of “Battle Cry of Freedom”, can hardly be called a “neo-Confederate” historian (if anything he’s pro-Union), but even he has some problems with Nolan’s book.

A few years ago he wrote a criticism of “Lee Considered” in which he “judged” Nolan’s “trial” of Lee, and while he found Lee to be “guilty” of being more pro-slavery than the Lee myth allows, he also found Lee to be “innocent” of prolonging the War and that Nolan failed to “prove” many of his other charges”