So am I. We told you yankees the South would rise again.
Posted on 01/18/2005 5:57:53 PM PST by wagglebee
All the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our Forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth.
--Robert E. Lee
Why do Americans continue to remember their past?
Perhaps it is because it was a time when truth was spoken. Men and women took their stand to give us the freedoms we now enjoy. God bless those in military service, who do their duty around the world for freedom.
The Hall of Fame for great Americans opened in 1900 in New York City. One thousand names were submitted, but only 29 received a majority vote from the electors. General Robert E. Lee, 30 years after his death, was among those honored. A bust of Lee was given to New York University by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Let America not forget January 19, 2005, the 198th birthday of General Robert E. Lee.
Robert E. Lee was born at Stratford House, Westmoreland County, Virginia, on January 19, 1807. The winter was cold and fireplaces were little help. Robert's mother, Ann Hill (Carter) Lee, was suffering from a severe cold.
Ann Lee named her son Robert Edward after her two brothers.
Robert E. Lee undoubtedly acquired his love of country from those who had lived during the American Revolution. His father, "Light Horse" Harry, was a hero of the revolution and served as governor of Virginia and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Members of his family also signed the Declaration of Independence.
Lee was educated in the schools of Alexandria, Virginia. In 1825, he received an appointment to West Point Military Academy. He graduated in 1829, second in his class and without a single demerit.
Robert E. Lee wed Mary Anna Randolph Custis in June 1831, two years after his graduation from West Point. Robert and Mary had grown up together. Mary was the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington and the adopted son of George Washington.
Mary was an only child; therefore, she inherited Arlington House, across the Potomac from Washington, where she and Robert raised seven children.
Army promotions were slow. In 1836, Lee was appointed to first lieutenant. In 1838, with the rank of captain, Lee fought valiantly in the War with Mexico and was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec.
He was appointed superintendent of West Point in 1852 and is considered one of the best superintendents in that institution's history.
President-to-be Abraham Lincoln offered command of the Union Army to Lee in 1861, but Lee refused. He would not raise arms against his native state.
War was in the air. The country was in turmoil of separation. Lee wrestled with his soul. He had served in the United States Army for over 30 years.
After an all-night battle, much of that time on his knees in prayer, Robert Edward Lee reached his decision. He reluctantly resigned his commission and headed home to Virginia.
Arlington House would be occupied by the Federals, who would turn the estate into a war cemetery. Today it is one of our country's most cherished memorials, Arlington National Cemetery.
President John F. Kennedy visited Arlington shortly before he was assassinated in 1963 and said he wanted to be buried there. And he is, in front of Robert E. Lee's home.
Lee served as adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis and then commanded the legendary Army of Northern Virginia. The exploits of Lee's army fill thousands of books today.
After four terrible years of death and destruction, General Robert E. Lee met General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, and ended their battles. He told his disheartened comrades, "Go home and be good Americans."
Lee was called Marse Robert, Uncle Robert and Marble Man. He was loved by the people of the South and adopted by the folks from the North.
Robert E. Lee was a man of honor, proud of his name and heritage. After the War Between the States, he was offered $50,000 for the use of his name. His reply was "Sirs, my name is the heritage of my parents. It is all I have and it is not for sale."
In the fall of 1865, Lee was offered and accepted the presidency of troubled Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. The school was renamed Washington and Lee in his honor.
Robert E. Lee died of a heart attack at 9:30 on the morning of October 12, 1870, at Washington-Lee College. His last words were "Strike the tent." He was 63 years of age.
He is buried in a chapel on the school grounds with his family and near his favorite horse, Traveller.
A prolific letter writer, Lee wrote his most famous quote to son Custis in 1852: "Duty is the sublimest word in our language."
On this 198th anniversary let us ponder the words he wrote to Annette Carter in 1868: "I grieve for posterity, for American principles and American liberty."
Winston Churchill called Lee "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived." Lee's life was one of service and self-sacrifice. His motto was "Duty, Honor, Country."
God Bless America!
In your opinion. I feel the same about HUG, as do many others - including many Southerner's
That is simply not true.
Sherman was the best thing that ever happened to the south. He did more damage to the Southern war effort wit LESS death than would have been possible otherwise. He was the atomic bomb of the war that ended it far sooner and with less loss of life than would have occurred otherwise.
The reality is that the deaths he caused on his march were a pittance next to the bloodletting elsewhere. That was his point. The official records bear this out. isolated incidents to the contrary do not change this. There were very few civilian or military casualties on his march. This is fact. Anecdotal evidence of victims who, understandably, wove great lamentations to his coming do not change the statistical data.
Regarding the Indians, one of the greatest American presidents, and a southern democrat, Jackson, was far worse to Indians.
No other general gained so many strategic victories with so little loss of life. Nor did any other general's actions do more to hasten the end of the war.
Savannah, GA, The Morning News: The news of Gen. Grant’s death will be read with profound sorrow in this country and with deep regret throughout the civilized world. Gen. Grant was a great soldier. . . . His magnanimity at the Appomattox surrender showed that he was as generous as he was brave. --------------------
Mobile, AL, The Register: He is gone. The grave closes over a brave soldier, a man whose impulses, had they been properly directed, (I assume southward), would have made him the foremost man of his times. The South unites with the North in paying tribute to his memory. He saved the Union. For this triumph – and time has shown it to be a triumph for the South as well as the North – he is entitled to and will receive the grateful tribute of the millions who in the course of time will crowd this continent with a hundred Imperial Sates and spread to the world the blessing of republican freedom. --------------------
Richmond VA, The Dispatch: He is not only one of the immortals, but he is one of them by right. He was an Agamemnon – a “King of Men.” --------------------
Charleston SC, The News and Courier: The North had no thought save of the man of Appomattox and the South had no thought save of him who told the worn and ragged Confederate soldiers of Lee’s army that they must take their horses home with them, . . . . .There is peace throughout the land – peace in the North and peace in the South. The country is one again in heart, and thought and hope. . . . In this time of peace there is naught but regard and regret for him for whom strife and disquiet are no more. --------------------
Louisville KY, The Commercial: The greatest soldier since the day of Napoleon is dead. --------------------
New Orleans, The Picayune: Brethren of the North and South let us join mournful hands together around that newly opened grave . . .
New Orleans, The Chronicle: A united country mourns an honored son. His private virtues were equal to his patriotism and military genius. --------------------
Galveston, TX, The Evening Tribune: Those of the gray who had fought against him are earnest in their sorrow that a gallant soldier has gone to his long resting-place.
Yes, I accept the US Constitution, as ratified.
That's why the 1787 proposal to allow Federal suppression of secession was explicitly rejected by Madison during the Constitutional debates. That's why "perpetual union" was dropped from the final version of the Constitution. It was not supposed to be indissoluble.
Too, the Hartford Convention never seriously debated secession.
Interesting that you know that, considering no records were kept of the proceedings, owing to their arguably treasonous nature....or are you saying it wasn't treason?
If you read the declaration issued by the convention you would find that nowhere does it threaten secession.
Of course it doesn't, but that doesn't mean it wasn't discussed. In fact, were not representatives dispatched to Washington to negotiate such, in addition to the declaration/proposed amendments to the Constitution?
Heck, the Federalists were so out of the mainstream they didn't run a presidential candidate in 1820!
Besides, Aaron Burr was part of a secession attempt nearly a decade before Hartford, as a result of the Louisiana Purchase. It wasn't the South...it was New York and New England.
"It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton to Clinton and Mason, who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every State had a right to peaceably withdraw.""The People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will." --Virginia's ratification conditions for the Constitution, 1788.
--Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
Why not do it Constitutionally?
Oh yeah, cuz he had no quorum... or else no jurisdiction.
Amen brother. keep up the good fight. Truth will always win out against propaganda.
It is only the most un-reconstructed Neoconfederate that spouts this drivel. I have been immersed in the Civil War world for over a decade. The vast majority of honest members of this community with Southern sympathies acknowledge the truth. As I type here on my official us-civilwar.com mouse pad from the 2001 muster at Chickamauga I recall my fellow members of vast knowledge and southern leanings who admitted this.
Freeman recycled many anecdotes about Lee that have no factual basis. He not only built up Lee to idolatrous dimensions, he also cut down other Confederate leaders whenever it would help enhance or defend Lee's reputation. He did estimate that Lee owned about a half-dozen slaves or so in his own right after his mother's death, and this is something we hear little about from neoconfederates.
Freeman faced some criticism and much praise for showing his era a more "human" Lee than his precursors in "Lost Cause" historical writing. But what may have struck Freeman himself and other Southerners in the 1930s as a "real" and "human" picture, has been found by most scholars since his day have mythical and unreliable.
We do learn things in history. False assumptions are discarded as time goes on, though they may come back in another guise. So just as Freeman may have corrected his elders errors and mistakes, we needn't be bound to his.
I see you are throwing an incendiary in order to "bolster your weak arguments".
Nothing of the kind, just a suggestion that if people put up with charges of "Anti-Southern bigotry" whenever they say that you don't like, you should be ready to be called on "Anti-Northern bigotry" the next time you make objectionable statements about the other side.
What a sad lack of understanding of our Constitution, to state something in such a form.
So am I. We told you yankees the South would rise again.
The South lost. A long time ago. My country, the U.S.A., by the grace and hand of God, won.
Sir, you have gravely embarrassed yourself with this post. The people writing these obituaries were the Howell Raineses of their day.
Grant was a confused alcoholic who failed at every endeavor, except killing Confederated soldiers. He roasts on a spit in Hell to this day.
All the South has ever desired was that the Union, as established by our Forefathers, should be preserved, and that the government, as originally organized, should be administered in purity and truth.
--Robert E. Lee, 1866
There's quite a contrast between Lee's prewar and postwar views. Lee didn't accept the secessionist's view of the Constitution prior to Sumter or Virginia's secession. Before the first shots were fired Robert E. Lee believed that the view of the early secessionists about the nature of the union was quite different from that of the founders.
A defender of Lee might respond that he believed that Lincoln's actions against the rebellion broke with the earlier understanding of the Constitution. But that didn't apply to actions undertaken before Sumter. Nor was Lee's postwar rationale for rebellion necessarily what motivated him at the time. It was more loyalty to Virginia and its people and institutions than any theory or understanding of the Constitution.
Lee certainly did have some very admirable personal qualities, and could qualify as a great leader of his cause or as a tragic hero. But if you think about someone who served in the US Army for thirty years and swore loyalty to the Constitution, only to declare that his race or ethnicity or religious denomination or region or state or political party was his "real" country and true "loyalty," it may not be so easy to give the full three cheers at full voice for Robert E. Lee.
Letter of General Lee snipped
I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional party of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it a chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the representatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism.
You're from blue state New Joisey....right? I heard you yankees want to secede and join with Canada. We here in "Jesusland" won't miss ya one bit.
As you have, sir, with yours. lies spread by traitors like Jubal Early, package for easy consumption by the gullible who failed to deal with the truth. Grant was a confused alcoholic who failed at every endeavor, except killing Confederated soldiers. He roasts on a spit in Hell to this day.
More lies (alcoholic) and judgments passed by a fool who has no more intuition as to who is in hell than I, and exposes himself as a fool for presuming to determine the will of the almighty and his judgments.
May I ask you, sir, do you fly the American flag on your porch?
Yes.
May I ask you sir, are you overweight?
Typical response I would expect from an unreconstructed Neoconfederate. Toss away half the country. You claim to be an American yet you would gladly see her disintegrate.
Tell me, and be honest, what did you do to help get President Bush elected? did you do more than I?
New Joisey eh? If I called you a brain-dead redneck with less sense than God gave a horse and less manners than he gave a slug would that be rude and insulting of me?
Jesus-land? So the fact that I live in NJ means I am a heathen?
Remember, oh proud son of Dixie, that the South also got LBJ and Carter (and to a lesser extent Clinton) elected?
May I ask you sir, are you overweight?
No. This is relevant to the discussion how? If I asked you are you inbred, aside from being insulting and unecessary, how would this relate to the discussion?
I thought you blue-zone yankees usually fly Old Glory upside down? At least some of you can get it right.
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