After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee inherited slaves from his mother. Slaves were still considered property by slave owners. Lee then married into one of the wealthiest slave-holding families in Virginia — the Custis family of Arlington. When Lee's father-in-law died, Lee left the U.S. Army to run the struggling estate, where he encountered resistance from slaves expecting to be freed after the Civil War. Robert E. Lee instructed his overseers to severely beat any slaves attempting to escape. After Lee’s death, some Southerners adopted "The Lost Cause" revisionist narrative about the Civil War and placed Lee as its central figure. The Last Cause argued that the South knew it was fighting a losing war and decided to fight it anyway on principle. In addition, the Last Cause denied the fact that the war was about slavery. Southern revisionists pushed to memorialize Lee, ignoring his infamous role as a cruel slave owner. Lee monuments were erected during the 1920’s when the Ku Klux Klan experienced a resurgence and new Jim Crow segregation laws were adopted. This picture, The Fall of Lee, envisions a new era.