It's a simple question.

Was Robert E. Lee a great general?

The answer is a little more complicated and tells us as much about the values and priorities of the analyst as it does about Lee himself. First, whether you believe that Lee was a gentleman of sterling character or a slaveholder who betrayed his oath to support an insurrection to protect slavery (or simply "went with his state") is largely irrelevant to this question.

I am always amused when someone tries to discredit my scholarship by claiming I am an activist.

As if the word itself is something forbidden or dirty.

History is a form of activism when done right. We study the past, not only to understand what happened on its own terms, but also to use it to inform our understanding of the present.

The questions we ask are shaped in part by who we are and where we are.

That's why history is inherently revisionist.

Time and again critics of Ulysses S. Grant's generalship claim that, above all else, he was "Grant the Butcher," who prevailed because of his superiority in resources (which was seemingly endless) despite a certain mindlessness and dullness. Grant's supporters counter this charge largely in a statistical fashion. They compare the percentage of Grant's losses versus the percentage of losses suffered by other generals, including Robert E. Lee.

Today's the 160th anniversary of one of the most misunderstood battles of the American Civil War ... Cold Harbor.

The story of the battle has turned into a myth that in turn has long shaped the image of Ulysses S. Grant's generalship. Make no mistake about it ... Cold Harbor was a significant setback for Grant and US forces during the Overland Campaign. Several US commanders performed poorly that day, especially in not carrying out George G. Meade's orders to reconnoiter the Confederate position.

It's often asserted the as president Ulysses S. Grant destroyed the Ku Klux Klan.

The reality is not nearly as satisfying or uplifting to those who deplore white supremacist paramilitary terrorism as conducted primarily by veterans of the Confederate war effort. The KKK became a shorthand descriptor for the many forms of white supremacist terrorism that slowly took organized form in the late 1860s. There were other massacres (Memphis) and attacks (New Orleans) against blacks and their white allies in the Reconstructing South.

Yesterday I shared with you various images of the events in Wilmer McLean's parlor on April 9, 1865.

Today I plan to share a few more images that shape our memory of what happened that day ... and April 10, 1865 as well.

Grant and Lee met a second time this day in 1865. These images fall into three categories.

First, there are images of an imagined surrender conference outside that draw upon talk of an apple tree at Appomattox.

Second, there's Lee's departure from the McLean House.

Third, there's the April 10 meeting.

Visual portrayals of what happened in Wilmer McLean's parlor on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House are worth some study.

Here's a simple early version: two generals, one table. The table is a curious effort to bring together elements of the two tables involved in the event. Grant said at a brown wood oval table; Lee sat at a squarish marble table. Grant's chair was a swivel desk chair backed in leather, while Lee sat in a high-backed chair.

As true Americans commemorate the anniversary of Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox, let's recall that the events of April 9 marked an end to one of the most successful pursuits in military history ... one that is often underappreciated. In some sixteen days the US forces under Grant's command repulsed a breakout attempt, severed Confederate supply lines and railroads, forced the evacuation of Petersburg and the the Confederate capital at Richmond.

That's for starters.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.

Most of us recall the generous terms Grant offered Lee, which stood in contrast to his reputation as "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.

But what about Lee? After all, on April 6, at the battle of Sailor's Creek, Lee watched as his army crumbled under US attacks. "My God, has the army dissolved?" Lee declared in desperation.

Lee was in dire straits.

A few notes on Ulysses S. Grant's personal involvement with the institution of slavery prior to the American Civil War for those who might be interested ... Grant grew up in an antislavery home. As a boy his father had worked in a tannery owned by Owen Brown, who had a son named John. I bet you've heard of him.

As a boy Grant attended a preparatory school in Ripley, Ohio, run by Reverend John Rankin.

What stake did non-slaveholding southern whites have in the protection and preservation of slavery? Why would they support secession? Why would they go to war?

Reasonable questions. First, not all white southerners supported the Confederacy. There were Unionists. There were also deserters.

The Confederacy had to resort to conscription in 1862 to recruit its ranks. Even Lee complained about desertion and questioned the commitment of Confederate civilians.

In 1865, with the US Army choking Richmond and marching its way through the Deep South unopposed, Jefferson Davis rejected proposals for peace that meant the end of Confederate independence and slavery.

The blood of the spring of 1865 was on his hands. After all, look at the situation at the time.

Sherman marching through Georgia and the Carolinas ... and David did nothing to stop that destructive path of war.

Grant having cornered Lee, who would have to abandon Richmond if he wanted to survive.

What was the Crittenden Compromise? What did it entail? Was it truly a compromise settlement, or a series of concessions to southerners to prevent secession?

Why did Lincoln oppose it? What did Jefferson Davis say about it? What was it impact on the secession movement? The Crittenden Compromise was a series of proposals offered by Kentucky Senator John C. Crittenden on December 18, 1860.

There were six proposed constitutional amendments and four resolutions in Crittenden's package of proposals.

The origins of section three of the Fourteenth Amendment, a constitutional clause currently under discussion, is worth remembering.

The clause now being cited to prohibit Donald Trump from returning as president originated during Reconstruction. In 1865 Andrew Johnson issued a series of proclamations looking to reestablish civil government in the former Confederate states and to frame an amnesty policy for Confederates ... although the latter also used the term pardon.

It has become tiresome to deal with those people on the far right who like to claim that Republicans ended slavery while the Democrats founded the KKK ... as if we should then say that this says anything meaningful about the parties today.

It doesn't. First, while Republicans helped end slavery, they didn't do it on their own, and the primary reason slavery ended was because the Civil War did much to destroy it.

Period.

Yes, the vast majority of Democrats at the time were not interested in ending slavery. That's a fact.

Today I want to say a few things about Ulysses S. Grant's decision to cross the James, a move sometimes as misunderstood as it was brilliant. First, we might want to set aside the notion that Grant's decision to cross the James was conceived in a moment of inspiration after the defeat at Cold Harbor.

Grant was far more open-minded and flexible than that.

I see where my post on the removal of the Philip Schuyler statue from a traffic circle in Albany has attracted the usual suspects, none of whom are careful readers (I'm being very kind as to their capacity to understand any argument).

So let's review a few points. First, as any reader of my blog knows, I did not lead the charge for the removal of Confederate monuments, nor did I participate in the first wave of that movement.

Few historians did, and most who did came aboard once the movement was well underway.

Today's lesson in writing history should serve as a warning in many ways.

In 2017 Ron Chernow's biography of Ulysses S. Grant appeared. It was much anticipated, especially given the fame Chernow had earned when his biography of Alexander Hamilton brought him great attention. As is usually the case, folks interviewed Chernow and some close friends on the eve of the publication of his new biography. It's part of the cult of the biographer, after all. It's good PR.

One comment understandably annoyed me. It appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

We've had a resurgence in chatter about the Corwin Amendment, the "original Thirteenth Amendment."

It's a document that is often cited without being read or understood.

Let's take a look.

First, the wording of the amendment: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or services by the laws of said State."

People who find it difficult if not impossible to engage in argument over the interpretation of the Constitution seem to think that a smart evasive manueuver is to make a simple demand that you read X ... ... with the assumption, I presume, that if you simply read X you'll see things as they do.

That's a highly ineffective retort, one that demonstrates a lack of logic and an inability to interpret or understand very much.

Let's remember that secession and war presented to Lincoln the opportunity to strike at slavery.

It was nearly five years to the day from South Carolina's secession to the promulgation of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Over those five years, Lincoln offered solutions and framed policies, aware of time, context, political realities, public opinion, and both institutional and constitutional restraints.

Not everything worked.

But in five years the institution of American slavery was destroyed.