Posted on 06/22/2014 1:52:36 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
All the time I was growing up in Atlanta, the face of Robert E. Lee was taking shape on the side of an enormous granite mountain just outside town. He loomed like a god above us, as much a presence as any deity, and God knows he was accepted as such. It was only much later that I began to question his sanctity, and then to hate what he stood for.
When I was in elementary school, the face of Lee on Stone Mountain was a rough-cut thing, weathering and wasting as the generation that began it in 1912a generation that still included veterans of the Civil War 50 years beforegave way to generations with other wars to focus their attention.
Then the carving began again in 1964 in a centennial haze of romantic memories about the Old South and frenzy of fear and defiance provoked by the civil-rights movement. As Martin Luther King Jr. was marching on Washington, Confederate battle flags floated above state houses and sculptors using torches began again to carve the granite features of Lee, along with Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, taking up three vertical acres on the mountains face.
It is this sort of imagethe bas-relief nobility of memorial sculpturethat Michael Korda chisels through in his massive and highly readable new one-volume biography: Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee. But, as Korda clearly recognizes, Lee himself could be almost as impenetrable as stone.
He was not cold. He was very loving with his wife and many children. He enjoyed flirting (harmlessly, it seems) with young women. He had the self-assurance of a Virginia aristocrat, albeit an impecunious one, and the bearing of a man born not only to be a soldier, but to command....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Typical liberal bigotry. Nothing new.
Lee rejected America so saying he was a fine honorable American is like saying Benedict Arnold was a fine honorable American.
Correction Bush 41 didn’t say no new taxes, what he said was NO New Texas,/S
That's exactly what the Michigan middle school history taught us in the late 1960's. The Emancipation Proclamation (similar to an executive order) wasn't signed until a few years after the war had started.
My great grandmother’s uncle and father joined the Union army on the same day but her uncle later switched sides and fought for the south.
I read some letters my great great grandfather wrote to his parents both during the war and after. He called it “This damnable war that no one desires anymore”. He spoke of confederate POWs seeking news of family members fighting on the union side and union soldiers asking confederate POWs for news about family members fighting on the confederate side.
He was in my opinion as well. And evidently a fine general given the circumstances.
Evidently, Grant thought so as well.
Yo..right on dude.
Then why do so many of the articles of secession explicitly mention slavery rather than taxation? Those were their chance, like in the Declaration of Independence, to express their highest ideals. Some, like Florida and Louisiana, essentially said the union with the United States was dissolved without giving reasons. On the other hand Mississippi said "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."
The taxation reason appears to be mainly post war revisionism. Preservation of slavery was the reason why the southern states left in 1861.
Western states, the old Northwest, had much in common with the Southern states when it came to taxes and tariffs. Ohio farmers were as hurt by East Coast manufacturer's tariffs as the Southern planter. They had much in common—but one thing stood out:
Slavery.
It was the constant defense of that Peculiar Institution that drove the Deep South states to abandon the rest. My Alabama seceded on January 11, 1861, and Lincoln wasn't even inaugurated yet. The RICH planters who ran the state met in Montgomery and drafted up a document explaining their decision—it was about slavery as THE issue.
The original document:
Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions* and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and manacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security, therefore:Be it declared and ordained by the people of the State of Alabama, in Convention assembled, That the State of Alabama now withdraws, and is hereby withdrawn from the Union known as "the United States of America," and henceforth ceases to be one of said United States, and is, and of right ought to be a Sovereign and Independent State.
Sec 2. Be it further declared and ordained by the people of the State of Alabama in Convention assembled, That all powers over the Territory of said State, and over the people thereof, heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America, be and they are hereby withdrawn from said Government, and are hereby resumed and vested in the people of the State of Alabama.
And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States.Remember that Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Arkansas—Confederate states with the least amount of slaves—that joined the original Confederacy after Lincoln called for an army of 75,000 volunteers to conquer the Deeper South.
*Negro Slavery
If you want to hate, nobody deserves it more than William T Sherman.
Because he won?
Benedict Arnold adhered to a foreign monarch a vast difference from a people who attempted to leave the Union by lawful process. No person was ever tried and convicted of treason who adhered to the CSA. The fanatics that ran the Federal government after the Civil war knew they could never get treason convictions so they passed the 14th amendment.
Lastly, the winners define who is a traitor. If King George had won the Revolutionary war all the signers of the Declaration of independence would have been hung. They said so themselves. Lee was a noble man even General Grant said so. A democratic fanatics can never understand the idea of the noble enemy.
You and Mr. Dickey seem to have a lot in common.
On this particular Sunday morning, Lee attended St. Pauls Episcopal Church in Richmond, V.A. The church service progressed as usual until it was time for communion. When the call to communion was made, an unknown black man rose from his pew in the back of the church and made the long walk down the aisle to the front of the church where he proceeded to kneel at the communion rail.
The members of the church were shocked by this act and remained seated, unsure of what to do. Then, Robert E. Lee rose from his pew. He strode down the center aisle and knelt down next to black man, and the two received communion together. After this act, the rest of the congregation followed suit and took communion.
Given that there is no specific citation or date, I fear that this may be legend or apocryphal, but somehow I think that it matches the man in history.
Lee didn’t reject America, America asked him to take arms against Virginia. He refused. If you don’t understand what that means then you are beyond help.
You might try being more like Lee. You would be a better person and a better American. You would also temper your comments on subject of which you are ignorant.
Be like Lee.
Lee left his Country to form another Country thus he was not an honorable American he was a citizen of the Confederate States of America which had its own Constitution.
You can admire Lee all you want but don’t delude yourself to say he was an honorable American since he rejected America, its Constitution and its Founders.
I would say that slavery severely aggravated the relationship between North and South but was not the immediate cause of the outbreak of war.
After all, how many Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio farm boys - not to mention Irish kids from the cities - were willing to march South to free the slaves? Save the Union, yes; but free the slaves, no.
Lee was a Virginian. Do you not understand?
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