Posted on 06/30/2015 6:19:22 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
With the revulsion against Confederate symbols that has resulted from shooter Dylann Roof's internet picture with the Confederate battle flag, Robert E. Lee has been put in the gunsights of social radicals. Lee was one of the two great generals of the Civil War and due in part to his good fortune in having an excellent biographer in Douglas Southall Freeman, is generally regarded as the greatest, although it should be noted that Grant won the war.
Lee came from one of the oldest families in Virginia and arguably its most distinguished. His father, Light Horse Harry Lee, was a general in the Revolutionary War and a relative, Richard Henry Lee, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Winfield Scott, general in chief of the Army before the Civil War, thought Lee the best soldier he had ever seen. Lee was offered the command of the Union army but resigned his commission to fight, as he saw it, for his homeland, Virginia. Before the Civil War, the country was referred to as “these United States.” After the Civil War, it was “the United States.” So, ante bellum, there was a different view of the country than we have now.
Lee was a great leader of men as well as a brilliant soldier. He came to represent the heart of the Confederacy. His aristocratic background and bearing, his having sacrificed his fortune for the Cause, and his victories in the field led him to become the ideal, almost the incarnation, of the Confederacy itself.
His leadership in the Confederacy is now considered dishonorable, or at least disreputable, by member sof the adversary culture. It is true, as Grant observed, that the Confederacy fought valiantly for “as bad a cause as there ever was.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
No, there aren't. There are a few who think of Lincoln as something close to Hitler, though.
The point the posters you criticize are trying to make may be that the idea of an American Army officer turning his back on the country to lead an army against it isn't something that we can wholeheartedly celebrate. It's at best morally very ambiguous, and perhaps worse than that.
If something like this happened today, and the former Superintendent of West Point took up arms against his countrymen we wouldn't just celebrate his character and victories, would we? We'd wonder about him, maybe condemn him. You don't have to. But it would help if you recognized that there's more than one side to the question.
As a fellow native of the Commonwealth, I’ll back you up on how Lee is seen in Virginia...or was when history was more honestly taught in the schools, anyway. Hero worship on a level that would probably make the man rather uncomfortable, honestly.
Forty years ago there was a nuclear missile sub named after Robert E. Lee (SSBN-601) as well as one named for Stonewall Jackson (SSBN-634) and nobody gave that a second thought. Can you imagine that happening nowadays in today’s anti-Southern climate?
}:-)4
It would never be allowed in today’s PC climate.
I know in WWII the 29th Infantry Division was named the Stonewall Division, loosely tracing it’s lineage back to Jacksons Army of the Shenandoah.
I don’t know if that would be allowed today.
The world has gone mad and I have, sorrowfully, lived to witness it.
...now we just name our ships for brain-dead anti-gun politicians whose attention-whore husbands (in violation of his own Oath to the Constitution) shepherd them around/exploit them for points with anti-gun totalitarian leftists.
Yes, Booth was born in and lived most of his life in Maryland.
Like many Marylanders Booth was a southern sympathiser who travelled in both north and south during the war.
Booth mistakenly believed he would be hailed as a hero in Virginia after killing Lincoln.
Far from it, he found no safe haven in Virginia because Virginians did not consider assassination either manly or courageous.
Booth may have been sympathetic to the south, but he did not understand the south.
I made a mistake.
The 116th Brigade of the 29th was known as the Stonewall Brigade.
The 29th was known as the Blue and Gray Division.
They say the memory is the first thing to go and mine has been leaving for some time now.
One of the most stirring images of the Civil War, whether rendered in written word or in painting, is that of an Abolitionist, former Maine college professor and Brevet Major General in the Army of the Potomac named Joshua Chamberlain calling the AOTP to “carry arms” in salute to the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia as they filed by in surrender at Appomattox.
That the meaning and relevance of such things are lost on today’s generation of Social Justice Bullies isn’t surprising ...
Your analogy isn’t relevant, actually.
The very nature of the understanding of the “United States of America” was fundamentally transformed by the Civil War. Simplistically but accurately represented as a change from “these United States” to “The United States”.
People simply cannot discount that change, can’t legitimately draw any sort of analogy between then and now. The idea that we are one nation, indivisible as opposed to a confederated republic made up of sovereign states is a product of the Civil War, was something decided by the Civil War.
Good reads on this point are the books “April 1865” and “Lincoln at Gettysburg” by Gary Wills.
If George Washington hadn’t won you’d be saying the same about him?
... LOL!
The depths of dishonesty people reach on the topic of the Civil War is astounding.
What part do you feel is dishonest?
Oh, I caught that. Rush said the Christie wants to compromise with Dems but the founders didn’t compromise with England, they simply compromised among their fellow Americans. I think that’s what I heard.
I don’t ‘feel’, I think.
The obvious dishonesty of your ‘question’ reinforces my point.
Kinda gives lie to that phony “detest southern history” BS. There’s no chance that anyone could have an alternate POV, LOL.
The 29th ID’s First Brigade (now called the 116th Infantry Brigade, Virginia Army National Guard) is still called the Stonewall Brigade, tracing its lineage back through the 116th Infantry Regiment (of Omaha Beach fame) to at least some of the Virginia infantry regiments of the original Stonewall Brigade. They used to have a shoulder patch of Jackson on his horse but now they wear the 29th’s blue-and-gray yin-yang. I don’t know when they last wore the Jackson insignia, I had a friend join the National Guard way back in the mid-80s and he was in the 116th, and they wore the 29th ID patch.
}:-)4
That whole war was a nasty and brutal business, fought by gentlemen. Chamberlain was one of the finest gentlemen on either side. So, most would agree, was Lee.
}:-)4
But the view of “country” vs. “state” is very different now than it was in 1860. Lee did not do what he did lightly, in fact, he shocked his own wife (who was apparently pro-Union) by resigning his commission and accepting the position of commanding Virginia militia troops. When one of Lincoln’s advisors offered him the job of commanding the defense of Washington DC itself, Lee told him: “Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?”
Many, if not most, people in those days owed their loyalty to their home state first and the United States second (and maybe even possibly their hometown or county above all). That’s why Lee did what he did. He considered himself a Virginian first and an American second, because in 1860, this country was still a collection of the “several States” instead of a monolithic Federal beast.
I think that’s one of the reasons Lee’s legend grew down here even over and above his tremendous skill as a general and his gentlemanly deportment. He didn’t want there to even be a Civil War, he didn’t want Virginia to secede, he thought the whole thing was stupid, but nevertheless he did his duty as he saw it and served his home state to the best of his considerable ability. There’s a hint of the romantically tragic about it.
}:-)4
“The very nature of the understanding of the “United States of America” was fundamentally transformed by the Civil War. Simplistically but accurately represented as a change from “these United States” to “The United States”.”
Well said. Prior to the civil war the biggest federal influence in people’s lives was the US postal service. outside of that everything was at the state level.
It was part of that discussion, an unnecessary addendum to it. What I think has happened is that over the years Rush has absorbed the neocon critique of the South that Paul Gottfried has described so well in his essay ‘The NeoCons’ Confederate Problem—And America’s’.
Bttt
That essay is best I’ve read on the topic and I think explains the south bashers here and the nest some fly from
Yes, after I posted I caught my mistake concerning the 116th and the 29th.
My memory isn’t what it used to be.
The old Jackson insignia for the 116th was beautiful.
I was at the dedication for the D Day memorial in Bedford, VA.
I was able to speak with an old vet from the 116th.
Very humble man who was very proud of the Brigade.
Did your friend know the history of the 116th?
Had I been able to serve, I would have been ecstatic to have been in his shoes.
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