When Robert E Lee surrendered the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis was upset about it. He said "How dare that man resent an order From the president of the Confederate States of America" Then somebody told him that General Lee had made the decision himself In order to save lives because he felt that the battle comin' up Would cost about twenty thousand lives on both sides And he said two hundred and forty thousand dead already is enough. So this song is not about the North or the South but about the bloody brother war Brother against brother father against son the war that nobody won And for all those lives that were saved I gotta say: God bless Robert E. Lee.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "When Robert E Lee surrendered the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis was upset about it. He said "How dare that man resent an order From the president of the Confederate States of America" Then somebody told him that General Lee had made the decision himself In order to save lives because he felt that the battle comin' up Would cost about twenty thousand lives on both sides And he said two hundred and forty thousand dead already is enough. So this song is not about the North or the South but about the bloody brother war Brother against brother father against son the war that nobody won And for all those lives that were saved I gotta say: God bless Robert E. Lee." in the context of "Johnny Cash, in his song "God Bless Robert E. Lee" from the album Johnny 99 (1983)." to mean that wisdom is timeless.