Robert e lee american experience the boys

Marble statue

Eighty minutes of Robert E. Lee could have been a too-familiar history lesson, with the battles detailed in sequence, and ending with a fine sunset over Arlington.

Wisely, PBS has shuffled the pack and re-dealt it in the form of themes - glory, nobility, Christianity.

From his first day at West Point, Lee wanted glory, and applied himself to relentless study of the military arts, without a glimmer of comradely relaxation.

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As for nobility, this was his birthright as a blue-blood Virginian, conferring obligations that he took seriously indeed. Christianity he only got round to in middle-age, but it became the inspiration of his barefoot and starving troops as they trudged towards surrender.

Remember, though, that Christianity was also the pretext for slavery, and it is possible to view Lee's religious observance as social churchgoing, rather than a driving belief.

After all, he had declared that slavery was a great evil that the Almigh Watch Robert E. Lee | American Experience | Official Site | PBS, carousel DYK