February 4, 2020/Press

ICYMI – Rep. Pittman says Lincoln was a ‘traitor’ and Robert E. Lee ‘hated slavery’

Raleigh – Rep. Larry Pittman (HD-83), not a stranger to total fabrication, has yet again doubled down on his praise for Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his criticism of President Abraham Lincoln when he said “Lincoln was the traitor who repeatedly violated the Constitution.” 

The comments were part of a Facebook post in which he asked readers to “praise God for such a great patriot and Christian gentleman as Robert E. Lee.” He also claimed Lee “hated slavery, and freed the slaves he inherited well before Lincoln’s War Against Statehood,” a statement with “no basis in fact” according to the News & Observer. Pittman has previously called Lincoln: “the same sort (of) tyrant” as Hitler.

“Comments like these are shocking and upsetting, it is disappointing that some representatives, like Rep. Pittman refuse to see past their biggoted views and accept reality,” said Meredith Cuomo, Executive Director of the North Carolina Democratic Party. “Comments like these are why we are working hard every day to make sure that voters know they have an opportunity to elect new leaders, in house district 83 and across the state, who base their opinions and actions in historical reality.”


The News & Observer: Fact check: NC lawmaker says Lincoln was a ‘traitor’ and Robert E. Lee ‘hated slavery’
By Will Doran
February 03, 2020

  • The issue: What was Robert E. Lee’s stance on slavery? Rep. Larry Pittman, a North Carolina state lawmaker who once compared Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler, is again receiving attention for his pro-Confederate views, including claims that Lee was anti-slavery, Lincoln was a “traitor” and the Civil War was a “a completely unjustified invasion.”
  • “The people who did this dastardly deed are no better than ISIS tearing down monuments overseas,” Pittman told the N&O.
  • “It was primarily a political and economic war,” Pittman said. “The issue of slavery was, of course, involved, after abolitionists convinced Lincoln that such a move would gain him more support for the war than he had before, but was not the primary impetus for the invasion.”
  • Lee was a slaveholder before the war, and while he wrote a letter to his wife calling slavery “a moral and political evil,” Lee clarified in the same letter that he believed slavery was actually “a greater evil to the white man than to the black race.” And as for slaves themselves, Lee wrote, the “painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction.”