Robert E. Lee Day first of 3 Confederate holidays observed in Florida

On By Littum

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On Sunday, January 19, the state of Florida officially honors the birth of a man who led armies to fight against the United States.

Robert E. Lee’s birthday is one of three Confederate holidays still on the books for Florida after more than a century, despite numerous attempts to remove them.

The holidays were adopted by states throughout the South in the years after Reconstruction, historians say, when Confederate supporters were promotes the false “Lost Cause” mythology downplaying the causes of the Civil War and the evils of slavery and framing Confederate leaders as inspirational heroes.

Southern textbooks changed historical facts in lessons about the “War Between the States,” cities and counties were named or renamed, and Confederate monuments were erected in Southern public squares. Supporters say the monuments, names, holidays and flags honor Southern ancestors who fought to defend states’ rights and their way of life. There was another increase in response to the expansion of civil rights in the 1950s and 60s.

In the past few decades, there has been a push to remove public memory of the Confederate States and relegate it to museums and history books. Confederate monuments have been removed, nine military bases named after Confederate generals was renamed, the schools have been renamed (including Robert E. Lee High in Duval County), Confederate flags have been removed from government buildingsand Confederate holidays have been quietly removed, renamed or dropped from “paid holiday” status around the country.

The effort gained momentum after the murder of George Floyd and the rise of Black Lives Matter protests around the country that draw attention to disproportionate killing of black people of law enforcement. But there have been backlash against further removal of the Confederacy.

Backlash to Confederate backlash

A school board in Virginia voted in favor restore the names of Confederate leaders to two schools four years after they were switched. ONE bill in last year’s Florida legislative session would have punished not only someone who removes Florida’s Confederate Memorials but would have been retroactive back to January 2017 had it not died in committee.

While we’re talking about Fort Bragg, named for an ineffectual Confederate general who was renamed Fort Victory in 2023, National Guard veteran and former Fox host Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, said, “We should change it back because legacy matters.

“My uncle served on Bragg. I served on Bragg. It breaks a generational link,” Hegseth said on a podcast last year while promoting his book “The War on Warriors”. He has also called the effort “a sham” and “garbage”.

At campaign rallies, Trump promised to restore the name of Fort Bragg.

“We won two world wars from Fort Bragg, didn’t we?” Trump asked a crowd in Fayetteville, North Carolinaless than 10 miles away from the new Fort Liberty. “So it’s not time to change the name and we’re going to do that. We’re going to do everything we can and we’re going to get it back.”

During his first term as president, Trump defended the Confederate flag as a matter of free speech and condemned NASCAR to ban it at events. When The Pentagon banned the flag from military installations in 2020, officials said the order was carefully worded so as not to anger the president.

What Confederate Holidays Does Florida Observe?

  • Robert E. Lee’s birthday on January 19
  • Confederate Memorial Day, April 26
  • Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ birthday on June 3

Who is Robert E. Lee?

West Point graduate Robert E. Lee of Virginia was such a famous warrior during the Mexican War that his former mentor, General Winfield Scott, asked him to lead Union forces south as tensions rose over southern secession. Lee declined, saying he could not fight against his home state, and he resigned from the US Army.

Instead, Lee led Virginia state forces and became a general in the Confederate army, praised as a tactician who led his men to a mixed record of victories against vastly superior forces, largely due to his aggressiveness on the field, according to historians.

But while he won great victories, he was often stopped by Union forces and was famously defeated at Gettysburg by Union Major General George Meade. A few weeks after becoming general-in-chief of the Confederate States, Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865, to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, against whom he had fought in several battles, including the Siege of Petersburg , which eventually destroyed most of Lee’s army.

Lee resisted efforts to build monuments in his honor after the war, preferring to move on, but after his death he was lionized as a cultural icon and the central figure in “The Lost Cause,” an attempt to romanticize the war into a revisionist narrative that suggested that the Civil War was just and inspiring.

Among the many statues and plaques erected after his death, there are 12 counties in the United States named “Lee”, all in southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Lee County, Florida was formed in 1887 from Monroe County with Fort Myers, site of the Civil War Battle of Fort Myers, as the county seat.

What is Confederate Memorial Day?

Confederate Memorial Day was started in Georgia in April 1866 to commemorate the deaths of Confederate soldiers on the anniversary of the day Confederate General Joseph Johnson surrendered the Army of Tennessee to Union General William Sherman in Bennett Place, North Carolina, which many in the Confederacy believed marked the end of the Civil War. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant two weeks earlier.

The holiday spread to the other 10 Confederate states, with some changing it to locally important dates.

When did Florida add Confederate holidays to state law?

Confederate Memorial Day and Lee’s birthday were enshrined in Florida law in 189530 years after the end of the civil war. Jefferson Davis Day was added in 1905.

Does Florida recognize Robert E. Lee’s birthday and other Confederate holidays as paid holidays?

No. The three Confederate holidays are legal holidays, but not official holidays. Other legal holidays in Florida include Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, Good Friday, Pascua Florida Day (which marks the discovery of Florida in 1513 by Juan Ponce de Leon), and Flag Day.

Tuskegee Airmen Commemoration Day, observed on the fourth Thursday in March, was added last year to honor the nation’s first black military pilots, many of whom were from Florida.

Which states celebrate Robert E. Lee’s birthday?

Alabama and Mississippi still recognize all three days as paid holiday for government employees.

North Carolina shows Lee’s birthday and Confederate Memorial Day. Arkansas has one Robert E. Lee Day the second Saturday in October, along with Davis’ birthday.

After Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday became a federal holiday in 1983, several states combined the MLK and Lee holidays out of convenience to create “King-Lee Day” or “MLK-Lee Day.” All but Alabama and Mississippi later separated them again. Virginia, Lee’s home state, added King to their existing Lee-Jackson Day, which also honored Confederate General Stonewall Jackson until it seceded in 2000. Virginia continued to observe Lee-Jackson Day until 2021.

In the same year (2000) as South Carolina finally acknowledged the King with a state holiday, the state also added Confederate Memorial Day.

Tennesee observed Lee’s birthday from 1917 until 1969, when it was changed to a “day of special observance”, but state law requires the governor to proclaim January 19 as Robert E. Lee Day, along with Confederate Decoration Day (June 3), Nathan Bedford Forrest Day (July 13) and Davis’ birthday.

Lousiana honored Lee’s birthday until 2022, when it was removed successfully from the state holiday calendar. Texas has celebrated “Lee Day” since 1931, but changed it to Confederate Heroes Day in 1973. Georgia celebrated Lee in November and Confederate Memorial Day in April, but in 2015 both holidays were replaced with unnamed “Public Holidays”.

Why does Florida still have Confederate holidays?

Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book, D-Davie, has tried three times to have Confederate holidays removed from Florida statutes, starting in 2017 after the deadly rallies in Charlottesville, North Carolina. The first bill she filed took aim on Confederate Memorial Day, but it was withdrawn and another was introduced to remove all three.

Bills she filed 2021 and 2022 not only tried to eliminate holidays, but tried to hit Florida statutes 256,051 and 256.10which protects the “Confederate Flag” from being mutilated.

“As a state, we must emphasize diversity and undercut tribute to the Confederacy, which perpetuated the institution of slavery,” Book said so in a statement in 2021. “With the hatred and division we see today, it is more important than ever to condemn racism and affirm that we are indeed ‘one nation, indivisible, with freedom and justice for all – not just for some.’

The bills have faced intense opposition in the Florida Legislature from lawmakers who say Confederate holidays and memorials represent history and heritage, and who object to what they call the erasure of history and the rise of “nullification culture.”

“I always have a little bit of pain in my heart when I realize that people won’t respect each other’s history,” Fr. Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocalawhose great-grandfather, great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy, said of the 2022 bill. “The good, the bad and the ugly.”

All of Book’s bills died in committee.