I will agree with the dignity part, but not with honor.
Lee swore an oath of allegiance to the U.S. and broke that oath.
Lee said he would only fight for Virginia and broke that promise.
Lee said he would only fight on the territory of Virginia and broke that promise.
And his pride was too great to back off from Gettysburg once he realized what he was facing so he sent in Pickett to salve his pride.
August 9, 1960
Dear Dr. Scott:
Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War Between the States the issue of Secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.
General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his belief in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.
From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.
Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.
Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'll see your "anonymous guy on the Internet" and raise you a grandson & great-grandson of two US Presidents - who fought against Robert E. Lee, and would have been thrilled to kill him, or see him dead during the war.
Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (May 27, 1835 – May 20, 1915) was a member of the prominent Adams family, and son of Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams). He served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
HAVING occasion once to refer in discussion to certain of the founders of our Massachusetts Commonwealth, I made the assertion that their force “lay in character;” and I added that in saying this I paid, and meant to pay, the highest tribute which in my judgment could be paid to a community or to its typical men. Quite a number of years have passed since I so expressed myself, and in those years I have grown older—materially older; but I now repeat even more confidently than I then uttered them, these other words—“The older I have grown and the more I have studied and seen, the greater in my esteem, as an element of strength in a people, has Character become, and the less in the conduct of human affairs have I thought of mere capacity or even genius. With Character a race will become great, even though as stupid and unassimilating as the Romans; without Character, any race will in the long run prove a failure, though it may number in it individuals having all the brilliancy of the Jews, crowned with the genius of Napoleon.” We are here to-day to commemorate the birth of Robert Edward Lee,—essentially a Man of Character. That he was such all I think recognize; for, having so impressed himself throughout life on his cotemporaries, he stands forth distinctly as a man of character on the page of the historian. Yet it is not easy to put in words exactly what is meant when we agree in attributing character to this man or to that, or withholding it from another;—conceding it, for instance, to Epaminondas, Cato and Wellington, but withholding it from Themistocles, Cæsar or Napoleon. Though we can illustrate what we mean by examples which all will accept, we cannot define. Emerson in his later years (1866) wrote a paper on “Character;” but in it he makes no effort at a definition. “Character,” he said, “denotes habitual self-possession, habitual regard to interior and constitutional motives, a balance not to be overset or easily disturbed by outward events and opinion, and by implication points to the source of right motive. We sometimes employ the word to express the strong and consistent will of men of mixed motive; but, when used with emphasis, it points to what no events can change, that is a will built of the reason of things.” The more matter-of-fact lexicographer defines Character as “the sum of the inherited and acquired ethical traits which give to a person his moral individuality.” To pursue further the definition of what is generally understood would be wearisome, so I will content myself with quoting this simile from a disciple of Emerson—“The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.”
That America has been rich in these men of superior virtues before whom the virtues of the common man have bent, is matter of history. It has also been our making as a community. Such in New England was John Winthrop, whose lofty example still influences the community whose infancy he fathered. Such in New York was John Jay. Such, further south, was John Caldwell Calhoun, essentially a man of exalted character and representative of his community, quite irrespective of his teachings and their outcome. Such unquestionably in Virginia were George Washington and John Marshall; and, more recently, Robert Edward Lee. A stock, of which those three were the consummate flower, by its fruits is known.
Here to commemorate the centennial of the birth of Lee, I do not propose to enter into any eulogium of the man, to recount the well-known events of his career, or to estimate the final place to be assigned him among great military characters. All this has been sufficiently done by others far better qualified for the task. Eschewing superlatives also, I shall institute no comparisons. One of a community which then looked upon Lee as a renegade from the flag he had sworn to serve, and a traitor to the Nation which had nurtured him, in my subordinate place I directly confronted Lee throughout the larger portion of the War of Secession. During all those years there was not a day in which my heart would not have been gladdened had I heard that his also had been the fate which at Chancellorsville befell his great lieutenant; and yet more glad had it been the fortune of the command in which I served to visit that fate upon him. Forty more years have since gone. Their close finds me here to-day—certainly a much older, and, in my own belief at least, a wiser man. Nay, more! A distinguished representative of Massachusetts, speaking in the Senate of the United States shortly after Lee's death upon the question of a return to Lee's family of the ancestral estate of Arlington, used these words: “Eloquent Senators have already characterized the proposition and the traitor it seeks to commemorate. I am not disposed to speak of General Lee. It is enough to say he stands high in the catalogue of those who have imbrued their hands in their country's blood. I hand him over to the avenging pen of History.” It so chances that not only am I also from the State of Massachusetts, but, for more than a dozen years, I have been the chosen head of its typical historical society,—the society chartered under the name and seal of the Commonwealth considerably more than a century ago,—the parent of all similar societies. By no means would I on that account seem to ascribe to myself any representative character as respects the employment of History's pen, whether avenging or otherwise;[note] nor do I appear here as representative of the Massachusetts Historical Society: but, a whole generation having passed away since Charles Sumner uttered the words I have quoted, I do, on your invitation, chance to stand here to-day, as I have said, both a Massachusetts man and the head of the Massachusetts Historical Society, to pass judgment upon General Lee. The situation is thus to a degree dramatic.
[note] Possibly, and more properly, this attribute might be considered as pertaining rather to James Ford Rhodes, also a member of the Society referred to, and at present a Vice-President of it. Mr. Rhodes characterization of General Lee, and consequent verdict on the course pursued by him at the time under discussion, can be found on reference to his History of the United States (vol. iii, p. 413).
Though, in what I am about to say I shall confine myself to a few points only, to them I have given no little study, and on them have much reflected. Let me, however, once for all, and with emphasis, in advance say I am not here to instruct Virginians either in the history of their State or the principles of Constitutional Law; nor do I make any pretence to profundity whether of thought or insight. On the contrary I shall attempt nothing more than the elaboration of what has already been said by others as well as by me, such value or novelty as may belong to my share in the occasion being attributable solely to the point of view of the speaker. In that respect, I submit, the situation is not without novelty; for, so far as I am aware, never until now has one born and nurtured in Massachusetts—a typical bred-in-the-bone Yankee, if you please—addressed at its invitation a Virginian audience, on topics relating to the War of Secession and its foremost Confederate military character.
Coming directly to my subject, my own observation tells me that the charge still most commonly made against Lee in that section of the common country to which I belong and with which I sympathize is that, in plain language, he was false to his flag,—educated at the national academy, an officer of the United States Army, he abjured his allegiance and bore arms against the government he had sworn to uphold. In other words he was a military traitor. I state the charge in the tersest language possible; and the facts are as stated. Having done so, and admitting the facts, I add as the result of much patient study and most mature reflection, that under similar conditions I would myself have done exactly what Lee did. In fact, I do not see how I, placed as he was placed, could have done otherwise.
And now fairly entered on the first phase of my theme, I must hurry on; for I have much ground to traverse, and scant time in which to cover it. I must be concise, but must not fail to be explicit. And first as to the right or wrong of secession, this theoretically; then practically, as to what secession in the year of grace 1861 necessarily involved.
If ever a subject had been thoroughly thrashed out,—so thrashed out in fact as to offer no possible gleaning of novelty,—it might be inferred that this was that subject. Yet I venture the opinion that such is not altogether the case. I do so moreover not without weighing words. The difficulty with the discussion has to my mind been that through out it has in essence been too abstract, legal and technical, and not sufficiently historical, sociological and human. It has turned on the wording of instruments, in themselves not explicit, and has paid far too little regard to traditions and local ties. As matter of fact, however, actual men as they live, move and have their being in this world, caring little for parchments or theory, are the creatures of heredity and local attachments. Coming directly to the point, I maintain that every man in the eleven States seceding from the Union had in 1861, whether he would or no, to decide for himself whether to adhere to his State or to the Nation; and I finally assert that, whichever way he decided, if only he decided honestly, putting self-interest behind him, he decided right.
Paradoxical as it sounds, I contend, moreover, that this was indisputably so. It was a question of Sovereignty—State or National; and from a decision of that question there was in a seceded State escape for no man. Yet when the national Constitution was framed and adopted that question was confessedly left undecided; and intentionally so left. More than this, even: the Federal Constitution was theoretically and avowedly based on the idea of a divided sovereignty, in utter disregard of the fact that, when a final issue is presented, sovereignty does not admit of division.
Yet even this last proposition, basic as it is, I have heard denied. I have frequently had it replied that, as matter of fact, sovereignty is frequently divided,—divided in domestic life,—divided in the apportionment of the functions of government. Those thus arguing, however, do so confusedly. They confound sovereignty with an agreed, but artificial, modus vivendi. The original constitution of the United States was, in fact, in this important respect just that,—a modus vivendi: under the circumstances a most happy and ingenious expedient for overcoming an obstacle in the way of nationality, otherwise insurmountable. To accomplish the end they had in view, the framers had recourse to a metaphysical abstraction, under which it was left to time and the individual to decide, when the final issue should arise, if it ever did arise—as they all devoutly hoped it never would arise—where sovereignty lay. There is nothing in connection with the history of our development more interesting from the historical point of view than the growth, the gradual development of the spirit of nationality, carrying with it sovereignty. It has usually been treated as a purely legal question to be settled on the verbal construction of the instruments,—“We, the People,” etc. Webster so treated it. In all confidence I maintain that it is not a legal question; it is purely an historical question. As such, furthermore, it has been decided, and correctly decided, both ways at different times in different sections, and at different times in opposite ways in the same section.
And this was necessarily and naturally so; for, as development progressed along various lines and in different localities, the sense of allegiance shifted. Two whole generations passed away between the adoption of the Federal Constitution and the War of Secession. When that war broke out in 1861 the last of the framers had been a score of years in his grave; but evidence is conclusive that until the decennium between 1830 and 1840 the belief was nearly universal that in case of a final, unavoidable issue, sovereignty resided in the State, and to it allegiance was due. The law was so laid down in the Kentucky resolves of 1798; and to the law as thus laid down Webster assented. Chancellor Rawle so propounded the law; and such was the understanding of so unprejudiced and acute a foreign observer as De Tocqueville.[note]
[note] See Appendix.
The technical argument—the logic of the proposition—seems plain and, to my thought, unanswerable. The original sovereignty was indisputably in the State; in order to establish a nationality certain attributes of sovereignty were ceded by the States to a common central organization; all attributes not thus specifically conceded were reserved to the States, and no attributes of moment were to be construed as conceded by implication. There is no attribute of sovereignty so important as allegiance,—citizenship. So far all is elementary. Now we come to the crux of the proposition. Not only was allegiance—the right to define and establish citizenship—not among the attributes specifically conceded by the several States to the central nationality, but, on the contrary, it was explicitly reserved, the instrument declaring that “the citizens of each State” should be entitled to “all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” Ultimate allegiance was, therefore, due to the State which defined and created citizenship, and not to the central organization which accepted as citizens whomever the States pronounced to be such.[note]...
Read the rest @ http://leearchive.wlu.edu/reference/misc/centennial/adams.html
I think you mischaracterize Lee.
For one thing, Lee never said he would ONLY fight FOR Virginia: What he said was he would NOT take up arms AGAINST Virginia, and would defend Virginia if it were attacked. Makes sense, since Virginia was his home. And, remember, prior to Andrew Jackson (arguably) and to Abraham Lincoln (definitely), it was pretty much well-understood that the states were sovereign to the federal union, and that the federal union existed ONLY because the states agreed to create it, but for a limited, restricted purpose. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments made that clear.
I am also unaware that Lee EVER said he would ONLY fight on the territory of Virginia (which is an unusual comment given Lee’s record in the war with Mexico). And, even if you attempt to limit Lee’s words to the years 1861-1865, such a comment by Lee would have been wholly uncharacteristic, as it would imply he would disobey orders if directed to fight outside Virginia’s borders.
He sent in Pickett to salve his pride? Humbug! It had nothing to do with pride; but was, rather, a tactical mistake. Lee missed Jackson so much at Gettysburg, and perhaps his failing at Gettysburg was that he believed his other generals could and would act and perform as Jackson would have.
Lee’s army at Gettysburg lacked the audacious and daring aggression that Jackson embodied, and because of that he lost Gettysburg. THAT was Lee’s great failure at Gettysburg. He fought Gettysburg the way he would have fought it had he HAD Jackson, when, of course, he didn’t.
I suggest to you that had Jackson been with Lee at Gettysburg, the outcome would have been quite different.
As for the oath part, Lee did NOT break his oath. Rather than break his oath, he resigned. An oath should be honored unless and until it becomes untenable to keep, at which point an honorable man would announce he could no longer abide by it, and would renounce it.
I don’t know if you ever served in the military, but please consider the following illustration:
As members of the military we swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and (in the case of enlisted personnel, which I was) obey the orders of our officers. However, had one of my officers given me an unlawful order I would have refused to carry it out. Likewise, had one of my officers ordered me to follow a truly repugnant order (i.e., one that went deeply against my morals and principles), I would have refused to follow it, and would have accepted the consequences of my refusal (Article 15, court martial, etc.) But my refusal would have been the honorable thing to do.
By taking an oath we do not abandon our principles, and we do not become robots.
Things get mixed up in war so I can understand Gen. Lee's attempt to take the offense. Also, as for Pickett's charge, it appears that Robert E. Lee suffered from what many excellent warriors suffer from and that is victory disease. Gen. Lee was coming off his great victory at Chancerville (sp) and thought he could do anything. Robert E. Lee's fame filled the world after the battle that cost Stonewall Jackson his life. Gen. Longstreet did not suffer the same hubris, but the great Lee was the head General of the army of Virginia and would not listen to Longstreet. His behavior at Gettysburg was quite understandable. Also, Gen. Lee did not have the brilliant, eccentric and wiley Stonewall Jackson with him. Stonewall Jackson's death by friendly fire was probably equal to the loss of many many Confederate divisions.
Washington signed an oath to the Crown when he became a colonial officer. Was he also without honor when he broke that oath?