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In Defense of General Lee


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IN DEFENSE OF GENERAL LEE

By Edward C. Smith
Saturday, August 21, 1999
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

Let me begin on a personal note. I am a 56-year-old, third-generation, African American Washingtonian who is a graduate of the D.C. public schools and who happens also to be a great admirer of Robert E. Lee's.

Today, Lee, who surrendered his troops to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House 134 years ago, is under attack by people -- black and white -- who have incorrectly characterized him as a traitorous, slaveholding racist. He was recently besieged in Richmond by those opposed to having his portrait displayed prominently in a new park.

My first visit to Lee's former home, now Arlington National Cemetery, came when I was 12 years old, and it had a profound and lasting effect on me. Since then I have visited the cemetery hundreds of times searching for grave sites and conducting study tours for the Smithsonian Institution and various other groups interested in learning more about Lee and his family as well as many others buried at Arlington.

Lee's life story is in some ways the story of early America. He was born in 1807 to a loving mother, whom he adored. His relationship with his father, Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, (who was George Washington's chief of staff during the Revolutionary War) was strained at best. Thus, as he matured in years, Lee adopted Washington (who had died in 1799) as a father figure and patterned his life after him. Two of Lee's ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, and his wife, Mary Custis, was George Washington's foster great-granddaughter.

Lee was a top-of-the-class graduate of West Point, a Mexican War hero and superintendent of West Point. I can think of no family for which the Union meant as much as it did for his.

But it is important to remember that the 13 colonies that became 13 states reserved for themselves a tremendous amount of political autonomy. In pre-Civil War America, most citizens' first loyalty went to their state and the local community in which they lived. Referring to the United States of America in the singular is a purely post-Civil War phenomenon.

All this should help explain why Lee declined command of the Union forces -- by Abraham Lincoln -- after the firing on Fort Sumter. After much agonizing, he resigned his commission in the Union army and became a Confederate commander, fighting in defense of Virginia, which at the outbreak of the war possessed the largest population of free blacks (more than 60,000) of any Southern state.

Lee never owned a single slave, because he felt that slavery was morally reprehensible. He even opposed secession. (His slaveholding was confined to the period when he managed the estate of his late father-in-law, who had willed eventual freedom for all of his slaves.)

Regarding the institution, it's useful to remember that slavery was not abolished in the nation's capital until April 1862, when the country was in the second year of the war. The final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was not written until September 1862, to take effect the following Jan. 1, and it was intended to apply only to those slave states that had left the Union.

Lincoln's preeminent ally, Frederick Douglass, was deeply disturbed by these limitations but determined that it was necessary to suppress his disappointment and "take what we can get now and go for the rest later." The "rest" came after the war.

Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the few civil rights leaders who clearly understood that the era of the 1960s was a distant echo of the 1860s, and thus he read deeply into Civil War literature. He came to admire and respect Lee, and to this day, no member of his family, former associate or fellow activist that I know of has protested the fact that in Virginia Dr. King's birthday -- a federal holiday -- is officially celebrated as "Robert E. Lee-Stonewall Jackson-Martin Luther King Day."

Lee is memorialized with a statue in the U.S. Capitol and in stained glass in the Washington Cathedral.

It is indeed ironic that he has long been embraced by the city he fought against and yet has now encountered some degree of rejection in the city he fought for.

In any event, his most fitting memorial is in Lexington, Va.: a living institution where he spent his final five years. There the much-esteemed general metamorphosed into a teacher, becoming the president of small, debt-ridden Washington College, which now stands as the well-endowed Washington and Lee University.

It was in Lexington that he made a most poignant remark a few months before his death. "Before and during the War Between the States I was a Virginian," he said. "After the war I became an American."

I have been teaching college students for 30 years, and learned early in my career that the twin maladies of ignorance and misinformation are not incurable diseases. The antidote for them is simply to make a lifelong commitment to reading widely and deeply. I recommend it for anyone who would make judgment on figures from the past, including Robert E. Lee.

[Dr. Smith is co-director of the Civil War Institute at American University in Washington, D.C.]

http://vaudc.org/lee-defense.html

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Thank you, very much, Shiloh. What I have read, all of it,  and just learned, has blessed my day. I seek out to learn of men of the past who stood fast upon their principles, worrying not the results. Too bad you will never see anything about this in any media. Years back, when the government schools were throwing away older history books and rewriting it, our family and other home school groups were buying them up at cheap at used bookstores.  Again, thanks.

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Should a secessionist be glorified in any manner?

Should there be statues of any man raised up for any purpose?

Should a statue of John Wayne adorn an airport?

Should the noses be broken off all statues everywhere?

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Hi Neighbor. Lot of questions you post. By chance, do you have any pictures of a loved one in your house" Perhaps one out in the den of someone you admire and respect, your father, old war buddy, some old friend? Maybe you belong to a fraternity or club or church, and there is a picture of the original founders the church holds dear. As you cannot very well hang a picture outside in weather, hence a statue. What should I tell my old war buddies if you come to my town and tear down the Viet Nam memorial put there, to remember those who gave their lives so you have the freedom you inherited. Those old statues were put up for past generations to show respect for those  who fought for what they believed in. Right or wrong, as viewed by the activist's today. The intent "I believe" was not to take away from the Glory of God, nor to reverence them instead of God. Perhaps it was for the same reason you have those pictures in your home.

oh_15:13  Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

 

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Guest shiloh357
1 hour ago, Neighbor said:

Should a secessionist be glorified in any manner?

Do you understand why he was a secessionist?

Quote

Should there be statues of any man raised up for any purpose?

What's wrong with statues?

Quote

Should a statue of John Wayne adorn an airport?

It should adorn all of them.

Quote

Should the noses be broken off all statues everywhere?

Why would we ant to do that?

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1 hour ago, shiloh357 said:
Quote

Should a statue of John Wayne adorn an airport?

It should adorn all of them.

Now that would be cool, to be greeted by the Duke..............I just saw the Flying Tigers last week for about the fiftieth time

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At core of this whole situation is the fact that these groups of people are completed focused on self. God is not the center of their lives they are, or at least they thing they are the center of their own lives. We need to be praying for them that God would bring someone into their lives that will share the gospel with them. 

But on the flip side they are also trying to destroy and rewrite history. And this is a very dangerous thing because then past mistakes are not remembers and as we all know that history repeats itself time and time again. 

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On 8/22/2017 at 11:19 AM, Gary Lee said:

Hi Neighbor. Lot of questions you post. By chance, do you have any pictures of a loved one in your house" Perhaps one out in the den of someone you admire and respect, your father, old war buddy, some old friend? Maybe you belong to a fraternity or club or church, and there is a picture of the original founders the church holds dear. As you cannot very well hang a picture outside in weather, hence a statue. What should I tell my old war buddies if you come to my town and tear down the Viet Nam memorial put there, to remember those who gave their lives so you have the freedom you inherited. Those old statues were put up for past generations to show respect for those  who fought for what they believed in. Right or wrong, as viewed by the activist's today. The intent "I believe" was not to take away from the Glory of God, nor to reverence them instead of God. Perhaps it was for the same reason you have those pictures in your home.

oh_15:13  Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

 

I guess I have need of a deadpan emolie for my posts. Much of what appears in my postings is my deadpan humor. My lets break the noses of all statues was of course reference to the silly  idea that doing that  defeats the "power" of the statues and objects of art that had been placed as worship items or as gods. I thought my questions to be answers as to why it is rather a foolish persuit to go around fretting about statues for the most part.

The tearing down of the images of those set up  as gods however, that I see as being  emotionally worthy. The tearing down of a Saddam Hussesin statue as example.

The choice of places to set up some statues, well that too can be a real problem.  The statues that do bring some sense of fear or even terror  to at least some that must visit a courthouse as example. Perhaps having items that strike a sense of fear or injustice into a person is best not erected at  places where one must go to seek justice or be judged.

I much enjoy the history squares of  old Savannah Georgia, but don't think it a great idea to make northern whites go into a southern city courthouse adorned with civil war stuff for example. Nor did I think it a great idea to have KKK and crosses on the entry road to our city as was the case when I first came here.

I still do not like the roadside county  placed signs that read  "This mile stretch of highway kept clean by the Ku Klux Klan". Might as well post one that reads, - MS 13 cares for this mile of highway -.  They are not quite like the Rotary Club in impression upon the mind that their name posted upon public places leaves with the traveler of the roads. 

To me there are both silly worries, and some real serious concerns. I'd rather see the real obviously offensive and intimidating pieces of art moved at the very least. And yes, societies have to decide they have to make choices, some hard to make choices, that is part of life  in this fallen creation. Not everything needs to be allowed just because something is allowed.  Not everyone has to be happy, there can be standards, and those standards do get argued over, it is just part of life.

I find places of remembrance, cemeteries, to be fine tributes, national cemeteries especially so. Though the politics of a few such as Arlington  at Washington dc are a bit offensive. To be expected I suppose, but offensive none the less.

Controversy is always surrounding monuments, everyone has an opinion. You mention the wall. The wall is awesome to the point of bringing internal emotional tears if not physical ones, and  in it's power to make one "see" what happened to us as a nation as it committed very real people to go to their death in uniform, and for what, was it really a goal that was not serious enough to battle as a nation to the end over yet  many get sent to their death and or serious life long lasting injury? The addition of the statues was very controversial, still is, but I think they are so well done that they at least fit in, if they do not add to what was rather perfect in it's message and remembrance to start with.  

When I go to the wall I see multiplied thousands of times the stories of individuals, a very few of whom whose names I knew through their surviving families. One family I still remember well has three names on the wall. Three of their own are dead. And I see several  families in my mind, their pride in their loved one plus their hurt in their nation or even their sense of great honor and duty to their nation. For it always overflowed in both directions. There's also the tally, the horror of what some politicians  just  measure out as numbers, doing ear counts of the enemy killed and other really awfully stupid things to try to make sense of their own failures, their policies and goals that kill others.

ps  - I grew up in a home that kept many pictures and newspaper headlines of significance to the members of the home, least if one likes  pictures of fighter pilots and young toddlers adored in their dad's flight gear along with framed newspaper headlines that reads JAPS SURRENDER . Till death has finally separated us. We still have some flight gear and flight log books and even ration coupon books from that era of history.  I have sat in on great family debates and even arguments between  some of us, as some flew the belly gun of B-17s over Italy and others were on the ground, Italian children whose  cities were being bombed. Makes for a great family thanksgiving dinner conversation. So who is a patriot and who is not who is liberal and who is not. Kinda depends on one's life experiences, and they  are not the same in all of us at all.

I am coming around to thinking that Christians have an obligation to let go of some dearly held convictions about such stuff in order to stay on the pathway that our Lord has set forth for each of us. We are to go into all the world sharing of the gospel of Jesus so that many may be found mature in the Lord.  That is our command, our mission. Our mission is higher than all the piles of statues we may save or heave. It is not our cause to save the statues, nor for that matter to heave them all, or even to bust off their noses. Our emotions over such stuff gets us distracted, and  serving as useful idiots for the ministry of the distractors.

 

 

 

Edited by Neighbor
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