John Kelly and Jubal Early

The allusion to Jubal Early in the criticism of John Kelly in the text:


“That statement could have been given by [former Confederate general] Jubal Early in 1880,” said Stephanie McCurry, a history professor at Columbia University and author of “Confederate Reckoning: Politics and Power in the Civil War South.”



is apparently a reference to articles written by General Jubal A. Early in the 1870s for the Southern Historical Society that created the symbol of "the Lost Cause."

Union General (and Virginian) George Thomas wrote of some of these "lost Cause" efforts:


[T]he greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed.



These points of the "Lost Cause" were not those advanced by John Kelly.

Link to McCurry text:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/10/31/historians-respond-to-john-kellys-civil-war-remarks-strange-sad-wrong/?utm_term=.a0e8058c88c5

See also the post of Ralph Peters , which includes:


Robert E. Lee was, in fact, a man of flawless honor in his times. He abhorred secession and viewed slavery as doomed. But when Virginia seceded from the Union, this hero of multiple wars felt compelled — as Kelly honestly noted — to defend his state, his family and friends. It was, for him and others, an anguished choice.

Nor was Lee alone in detesting secession. Many of the West Point-trained officers who became Confederate generals strongly opposed it. Jubal Early argued bravely against it. Thomas J. Jackson, soon to be known as “Stonewall,” preferred continued unity and peace.

Now students who have never taken a course in American history demonstrate to tear down statues of Jackson, a man who, before the war, defied his neighbors to start a Sunday school for blacks; who broke Virginia law by teaching slaves and free blacks to read; and who saved slaves from being sold into the Deep South. (Virginians, such as General-to-be Robert Rodes, were appalled by the treatment of slaves in the Cotton Belt.)



http://nypost.com/2017/10/31/kelly-is-right-about-robert-e-lee/