Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Descendant: Statues 'Must Be Removed'

Newsweek ^ | July 21, 2020 | Meghan Roos

[C19fan]

A descendant of Confederate General Robert E. Lee argued in favor of removing a statue of his ancestor at the Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland during a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday morning.

Reverend Robert Wright Lee, who identified himself as a distant nephew of the Confederate general, said the statue at Antietam and others "must be removed for a more perfect Union." He spoke before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands to weigh in on the proposed Robert E. Lee Statue Removal Act, a bill Rep. Anthony Brown of Maryland introduced nearly three years ago.

[C19fan]

This POS does not deserve the name of Lee. As anyone could have predicted, the Iconoclasts are going after battlefield statues. I guess only Yankees, I am one, will be remembered.

[C19fan]

There are 39 Confederate statues and makers at Gettysburg. I guess those all must go too. /sarcasm on/Who is this Pickett the tour guide keeps on talking about?/sarcasm off/

[teeman8r]

When we diminish the conquered to ashes, the victors are also reduced.

Descendants of lee do not want to be hassled by the marxists, who have made whole families disappear.

[Gen.Blather]

Uhm, no. Lee had the opportunity to extend the war into the indefinite future. He told his generals, who had suggested dissolving the army into a gorilla operation that, no, it was time for reconciliation and healing. Lee was an American patriot who had, understandably in the light of his times, divided loyalties. He was offered command of the Union Army and turned it down. If he was a evil man he would have accepted and lost.

We can’t allow our history to be erased based on liberal’s bubblegum wrapper understanding of it.

[Ancesthntr]

First of all, just one person. second, not even a descendant, just a nephew probably 7 or 8 generations removed. So what?

[ClearCase_guy]

I think it says something about the press that this is "news".

How many descendants does Robert E. Lee have? Probably quite a few. Well, they found one -- one -- who will step forward and support destruction of battlefield statues. How many descendants could they find who might support the continued display of battlefield statues? Perhaps dozens. But who cares about those people? That wouldn't be a news story. That wouldn't fit the Narrative. So we'll just make a big deal out of this one guy. Because this idiot is useful.

[dp0622]

There are no yankees and confederates anymore.

There are conservatives and enemies of the state.

Second CW wouldn’t have such clearly cut lines.

Any state where the winner got 70 percent or more in the 2016 election is a pure state.

Others..there will be varying degrees of internal conflict.

[Altura Ct.]

Newsweek?

So one descendant out of how many?

[\/\/ayne]

General Robert E. Lee's Parole and Citizenship

On May 29, 1865, President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to persons who had participated in the rebellion against the United States. There were fourteen excepted classes, though, and members of those classes had to make special application to the President.

Lee sent an application to Grant and wrote to President Johnson on June 13, 1865:

"Being excluded from the provisions of amnesty & pardon contained in the proclamation of the 29th Ulto; I hereby apply for the benefits, & full restoration of all rights & privileges extended to those included in its terms. I graduated at the Mil. Academy at West Point in June 1829. Resigned from the U.S. Army April '61. Was a General in the Confederate Army, & included in the surrender of the Army of N. Va. 9 April '65."

On October 2, 1865, the same day that Lee was inaugurated as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, he signed his Amnesty Oath, thereby complying fully with the provision of Johnson's proclamation. But Lee was not pardoned, nor was his citizenship restored. And the fact that he had submitted an amnesty oath at all was soon lost to history.

More than a hundred years later, in 1970, an archivist at the National Archives discovered Lee's Amnesty Oath among State Department records (reported in Prologue, Winter 1970). Apparently Secretary of State William H. Seward had given Lee's application to a friend as a souvenir, and the State Department had pigeonholed the oath.

In 1975, Lee's full rights of citizenship were posthumously restored by a joint congressional resolution effective June 13, 1865.

[C19fan]

I guess this beautiful statue needs to go too:

https://thecaffeinatedchristian.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/angel-of-fredericksburg.jpg

How dare the humanity of a Confederate solider be memorialized.

[neverevergiveup]

Leave all the statues up, and put plaques up that give an accurate history lesson about the role of that person in America’s history.

[Salamander]

Local rumor has it that some of the park rangers were in involved in this

[windsorknot]

must be removed for a more perfect Union

Solving the world’s most pressing problems one statue at a time. Utopia is just around the corner.

[Zhang Fei]

A nephew is not a descendant. Maybe Newsweek should rename itself Newspeak.

[sauropod]

Agree. This is disgusting.

[bankwalker]

I’m sure many park rangers are a result of affirmative action.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Lee looks homosexual to me Jim. No wonder he's "all in" on BLM.

[Buttons12]

Take the beam from your own eye, Reverend Wright. Shed that racist relic from your ID and credentials.

And snip it from the family bible wherever it appears.

[Buttons12]

Oh, him. I didn’t recognize him without the pj’s and tea.

[spincaster]

The hell with him! Erase our history and usher in Communism
is what they want to do. When is the last straw ?