Talk:Robert E. Lee

Extensive edits needed - tone, length, grammar
A Wikipedia article should be concise, as neutral as possible, and understandable to someone with little to no previous knowledge of the subject. As someone with little knowledge of this figure, I found this article very difficult to navigate, poorly written, and overtly opinionated - which in this kind of format reads not only as unnecessary, but also incredibly misleading.

From an editing perspective, this article could really do with some professional writers/editors to read over it a couple times. It doesn't flow particularly well, lots of lengthy sentences could be shortened or divided, or even cut completely, which goes onto my next point. There is a lot of unnecessary narrative detail and misguided analysis of historiography. Much of this detail reads more as the author's opinion than fact, and some pretty disturbing ideas are put forth without appropriate acknowledgment of whether they are the author's opinion, a secondary opinion, or from the subject himself. For example: "Robert Lee was tidy and punctual, qualities his wife lacked." Look - no Wikipedia article is truly 'neutral' - but this seems like either an bold assumption or a quote from someone else's work - or simply a personal opinion from the author which really shouldn't appear so blatantly in this format. This becomes a much more harmful issue throughout the article, especially when discussing slavery.

Firstly, there is some very ignorant, outdated use of language, which comes across as racist and insensitive. In particular, the author repeatedly used the term 'blacks' to refer to black people. This might seem like nitpicking but these terms are dehumanising and have a history of being used for exactly that purpose. If the author is simply rephrasing the language of primary sources from the time this NEEDS to be specified.

Next, the author seems conflicted with their own personal opinions about Lee and slavery, (which shouldn't come across in a Wikipedia article in the first place), sometimes defending Lee without critically evaluating why - and these are big, sometimes horrific things to be uncertain about! For example, under the heading 'Arlington plantation and Custis slaves' the author describes Lee's barbaric, horrifyingly oppressive and violent treatment towards enslaved people. The author's tone in this section is inappropriately flippant. After this section, the author goes on to discuss the historical disputes over Lee's position on slavery, which conflicts with what we have just been told about in the previous section. I might be misremembering but I think it said early on the article that Lee owned hundreds of slaves, and later that he only owned a few. Which either way is terrible!? Why do we need to know the specific details of this historical debate anyway, when we've been given information about Lee's treatment of enslaved people, which a reader is capable of evaluating themselves?

One more example of a big historical generalisation - 'There are various historical and newspaper hearsay accounts of Lee's personally whipping a slave, but they are not direct eyewitness accounts.' This reads as a middling-mark high school essay. ‘They are not direct eyewitness accounts’ is not relevant. Very few primary sources are direct eyewitness accounts, this does not make them less valuable. A Wikipedia author does not necessarily need to have extensive knowledge of historical practice, but if you don’t, then don’t write about it extensively as if you do know what you’re talking about.

Overall, this article needs extensive editing, maybe even rewriting completely. It is incredibly long and rambling, full of conflicting information, misinformation and unnecessary opinions and details. The sections of slavery especially need to be reevaluated and read over by an academic, really given the state of this article a black writer/editor should be consulted. If this isn’t possible, this article should really be taken down, it reads as a confused, insensitive, and overly-assuming. I am not an experienced editor myself and even I can see that it’s a mess, please consult a second, third, and even fourth opinion, from someone who at least knows how to edit a Wikipedia article.

And on a personal note to the author of this article - as a history nerd myself, I know how it is having to restrain yourself from dumping out every piece of information and every opinion you have on to whoever asks. But an account of an individual figure on Wikipedia needs to be concise and readable, meaning no rambling anecdotes, no unelaborated generalisations, and no lengthy (and obviously uninformed) explanation of historical debates which the average reader doesn’t want to know about. Then again I struggle to sympathise with you because this article is so full of racism. You should really do something about this!!! Leahbindmancohen (talk) 18:07, 18 April 2024 (UTC)


 * @Leahbindmancohen Many valid points! But please understand that there no "author" of this article ... there are hundreds of contributors, and I invite you to become on of them.  You already have 2 edits, and if you make 8 more edits on unprotected articles, you will be auto-confirmed and be able to contribute to this article.  I suggest visiting the Introduction page to get started.  • Bobsd •  (talk) 03:19, 30 June 2024 (UTC)