A Confederacy built on slavery shows Robert E. Lee’s battles were efforts to preserve a regime of terror

When Americans debate terrorism, they rarely place Robert E. Lee in the same category as groups like Hamas or Al-Qaeda.

Yet the general who led Confederate armies against the United States was responsible for more American deaths than any single figure in the nation’s history. The reluctance to frame him as a terrorist exposes the enduring power of old narratives that sanitize the Confederacy and minimize its central commitment to preserving racial slavery.

The Confederacy’s secession and war were acts of rebellion against the United States. But more than that, they were campaigns of terror to sustain a system built on human bondage. Enslaved African Americans lived under permanent threat — whipped, raped, sold, and separated from their families.

Violence was not incidental to slavery.