Kelly is right about Robert E. Lee

In these willfully ignorant, fiercely partisan times, let’s recall that we fought our bloodiest war to end human bondage. Almost three-quarters of a million Americans died in a complex struggle that began to right an inexcusable injustice.

Now we’re re-fighting our Civil War with neo-Stalinist, fact-purging propaganda that makes cartoon villains of the dead. We rush to tear down statues of men we refuse to understand. We rob one group of citizens of their heritage to please another.

And the president’s chief of staff cannot state facts about our history without triggering mob-rule outrage from those who could not even tell you when the Civil War was fought.

Yes, slavery was the catalyst of our Civil War. Without slavery, sectional disagreements would have remained, but none would have brought us to make war on ourselves. Still Trump Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly’s televised remark that “the lack of an ability to compromise” provoked our Civil War was also accurate. Despite repeated attempts by Northern states to find a political compromise, nothing satisfied Southern firebrands.

There’s much more to it, though. While slavery brought us to fratricidal war, that doesn’t mean everyone who wore a Confederate uniform fought for slavery. Quite the contrary. Rare was the Rebel soldier who owned a slave (as usual, the rich often stayed home).

Let’s judge the dead as we’re admonished to judge the living: as individuals. As a student of the Civil War since childhood, it astonished me when the media reacted to Kelly’s statement that Robert E. Lee was “an honorable man” as if Kelly had praised Pol Pot.

Robert E. Lee was, in fact, a man of flawless honor in his times. He abhorred secession and viewed slavery as doomed.

...”It’s not about Robert E. Lee. It’s not even about the civil war. It’s about purging history of anything good and decent so only an America of evil, slave owning non-white person killers exists. That makes it easier to reshape the country based on progressive ideals.”...

Exactly right! We live in a pre-Communist society because those who now occupy our major institutions, by and large, come from historical ignorance, because their aim is not the preservation of our “freedom for all,” society, but their aim is power or the retention of power for themselves. They know they must demonize and wipe out American history to do that. The Ivy Leagues have played a major role in all this and the government controlled American media, so full of propaganda reflects all that. Donald Trump is a true American and desires to keep this country alive and functioning for all who come here to be Americans and to participate in the freedom she offers. That is why he is hated by the deep, dark, establishment who have other goals for our future. We are the only nation who has fought a war to end slavery, though all nations practiced it and many still do in one form or another. Those who are experts on the Civil War are aghast that the ignorant leaders among us are allowing our history to be wiped out, but, alas, they are ignorant of Communist history, as well. We are returning to whence we came, the jungle, where physical strength and the willingness to do anything is the rule for survival. That is, if those few who do know and revere history do not stand to make their voices loud so they can be counted, such as Ralph Peters has done through this article. God bless him!

This was a eulogy given on the death of Robert E Lee. Quite prophetic with its reference to monuments and the likely decline in manliness in the nation. The quote that struck me is: “I’ll fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay”

I wish President Trump would be the “future orator” referenced and read this at the State of the Union in 2018. The haters are destroying the reputation of one of the greatest men in America’s history. The man who chose to negotiate honourable terms of surrender, when he could have incited his troops to carry on guerrilla warfare.

in, Texas, and San Francisco: South-West Publishing Company, 1910, pp. 162–65).
EULOGY OF ROBER E. LEE
CHARLES E. FENNER

Of the New Orleans Bar

(Extract from an oration delivered at the unveiling of the statue of General lee, at Lee Circle, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 22, 1884.)

BOUNTIFUL nature had endowed Robert E. Lee with exceptional gifts of physical beauty. The eye of the South Carolina poet, Hayne, once rested upon him in the first year of the war, when he was already on the hither verge of middle age, as he stood in the fortifications of Charleston, surrounded by officers, and he has left the following pen picture of him: “In the middle of the group, topping the tallest by half a head, was, perhaps, the most striking figure we had ever encountered, the figure of a man seemingly about fifty-six or fifty-eight years of age, erect as a poplar, yet lithe and graceful, with broad shoulders well thrown back, a fine, justly proportioned head posed in unconscious dignity, dear, deep, thoughtful eyes, and the quiet, dauntless step of one every inch the gentleman and soldier. Had some old English cathedral crypt or monumental stone in Westminster Abbey been smitten by a magician’s wand and made to yield up its knightly tenant restored to his manly vigor, with chivalric soul beaming from every feature, some grand old crusader or Red Cross warrior, who, believing in a sacred creed and espousing a glorious principle, looked upon mere life as nothing in the comparison, we thought that thus would he have appeared, unchanged in aught but costume and surroundings. And the superb soldier, the glamour of the antique days about him, was Robert E. Lee.”

If such was the Lee of fifty-six years, what must have been the splendid beauty of his youth? The priceless jewel of his soul found fit setting in this grand physique, marked by a majestic bearing and easy grace and courtesy of gesture and movement, sprung from perfect harmony and symmetry of limb and muscle, instinct with that vigorous health, the product of a sound mind in a sound body.

Such was the magnificent youth who graduated from West Point with the honors of his class, and dedicated himself to the service of his country. It was easy to see that “Fate reserved him for a bright manhood.” Not his the task, by the eccentric flight of a soaring ambition, to “pluck bright Honor from the pale-faced moon,” or with desperate greed to “dive into the bottom of the deep and drag up drowned Honor by the locks.” This great engineer laid out the road of his life along the undeviating line of duty, prepared to bridge seas and scale mountains; to defy foes and to scorn temptations; to struggle, to fight, to die, if need be, but never to swerve from his chosen path. Honor and Fame were not captives in his train. Free and bounteous, they ambuscaded his way and crowned him as he passed.

It is fitting that monuments should be erected to such a man.

The imagination might, alas! too easily, picture a crisis, in the future of the republic, when virtue might have lost her seat in the hearts of the people, when the degrading greed of money-getting might have undermined the nobler aspirations of their souls, when luxury and effeminacy might have emasculated the rugged courage and endurance upon which the safety of states depends, when corruption might thrive and liberty might languish, when pelf might stand above patriotism, self above country, mammon before God, and when the patriot might read on every hand the sure presage:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay!
In such an hour let some inspired orator, alive to the peril of his country, summon the people to gather round this monument, and, pointing to that noble figure, let him recount his story, and if aught can arouse a noble shame and awaken dormant virtue, that may do it.

The day is not distant when all citizens of this great republic will unite in claiming Lee as their own, and, rising from the study of his heroic life and deeds, will cast away the prejudices of forgotten strife and exclaim:

We know him now; all narrow jealousies
Are silent, and we see him as he moved—
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself—
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life.

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