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 1912—a generation that still included veterans of the Civil War 50 years before—gave 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 mountain’s face.
It is this sort of image—the bas-relief nobility of memorial sculpture—that 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 ...
This Yankee happens to think Lee was a fine honorable American
He was a fine honorable American. His enemies are those that lack hence hate honor.
on antique roadshow the Confederate memorabilia always goes for ten times the union crap. who wants that union filth?
Haters gonna hate.
What he stood for was states rights.
Looks like this li'l librul sure learned his lessons good in the federal indoctrination centers called public schools.
As a Southerner who deeply loves his entire country and loves with all his heart the South, the whole Civil War period is a very sad time for me.
I look upon the Confederacy as destined to failure due to slavery. I agree with Lincoln that it was God—not punishing us for it—but tempering us to a better way.
Steel is made stronger by burning it to a red hot glow and then beating it against an iron anvil with a heavy iron hammer.
I suppose from the steel’s perspective this is very painful and cruel!
And so God tempered us during that time.
I do believe slavery was wrong and Lee did to. Yet he still fought for his country, which in his mind was Virginia.
I think we are eventually failing God’s test as a nation; I really do. There is either another tempering coming, or we are abandoned to our own lustful desires.
Which is it? I fear being abandoned the most but pray the tempering will be done, even though that itself will be terrible.
My family fought in the West the whole war, Veteran Volunteers, Union, lost one or two.
I am a Longstreet fan but Lee did what he had to do to expand the war and bring the Limeys in, which I believe was the plan. He screwed up at Gettysburg, wrong attack at the wrong place. He was an honorable man.
How right you are.
So his only complaint against Lee, the only blot on his character, is the fact he didn’t surrender soon enough?
The American Civil War was not a war over slavery. Slavery was actually a side issue. The war was actually a fight over taxes.
He doesn’t understand the difference between casualty and KIA.
The writer lost me (and any credibility) when he said that “50,000 lost their lives over three days” referring to Gettysburg. There approximately was that many casualties between the two armies but deaths, which the author is referring to, were ~7,900 between both armies. Anyone with such an egregious error in their work probably should refrain from opining about Gen. Lee at all.
Sounds like the main one, as far as this individual is concerned.
The transformation of American History before our very eyes...
Beautifully written.
I know about how it all turns on God, and so ends well. What bothers me these days is the getting there...in which we’re all yet equally obligated to do the Good, which yet seems so elusive....
Ever notice how Democrats are so stupid in their zeal that they have to compare conservatives to.....racist Democrats?
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