This is from Benjy Sarlin's "
Michele Bachmann’s Radical Reading List" (
Talking Points Memo):
Earlier in her political career, Bachmann recommended a biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins on her State Senate campaign site under "Michele's Must Read List."
In it Wilkins describes the Civil War as a holy conflict between the godly South and heathen North and writes that "most southerners strove to treat their slaves with respect and provide them with a sufficiency of goods for a comfortable, though--by modern standards--spare existence" and that the institution bred "mutual esteem" between races as slaves adopted Christianity. Bachmann recently came under fire for signing onto a social conservative pledge that suggested African Americans families were better off under slavery (she and the group subsequently disavowed the language.)
