Posted on 10/17/2005 8:24:21 AM PDT by Incorrigible
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AMERICAN IDENTITY With Malice Toward None, With Amnesty for All: The Pardon of Robert E. LeeBY DELIA M. RIOS |
WASHINGTON -- On Christmas Day 1868, President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation granting "universal amnesty and pardon" to "every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion."
Certainly this included Robert E. Lee, former commanding general of the Confederacy's famed Army of Northern Virginia.
So then why, in the summer of 1975, did President Gerald R. Ford cross the Potomac River to sit among Lee's descendants on the portico of the general's hilltop home? He was there, Ford explained, to right an old wrong. He chose that place, Arlington House, to sign a congressional resolution restoring "full rights of citizenship" to Virginia's native son. Then he handed a souvenir pen to 12-year-old Robert E. Lee V.
Ford spoke of Lee's labors to bind the nation's wounds after the Civil War -- even as contemporary America reeled from the April withdrawal of the last U.S. forces from Vietnam, ending another long, bitter conflict.
Was it really Lee who needed Ford's healing hand? Or was Lee, in fact, pardoned twice -- for reasons that had more to do with 1975 than 1865? "It is a good question," says Michael Hussey of the National Archives.
The search for an answer begins in the strange odyssey of Lee's amnesty oath.
Weeks after the war ended, Andrew Johnson invited high-ranking Confederates to apply for amnesty. Lee actively promoted reconciliation. He wanted to take Johnson up on his offer, but learned he had been indicted for treason. He believed he was protected by the "parole" granted as a condition of his April 9, 1865, surrender to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. His old adversary threatened to resign if Johnson did not honor the parole. Johnson agreed, freeing Lee to seek amnesty.
In doing so, Lee signaled that "opposition to the government was at an end," Douglas Southall Freeman wrote in his landmark history. "No single act of his career aroused so much antagonism."
But Lee did not realize an oath was required of him. It wasn't until Oct. 2 that he went before a notary public and signed his name to this pledge:
"I, Robert E. Lee, of Lexington, Virginia, do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Union of the States thereunder, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves, so help me God."
The oath apparently was forwarded to Secretary of State William H. Seward. Then it disappeared from history. Did Johnson see it? Was it misplaced? Suppressed? No one knows. One thing is certain: Lee's request for an individual pardon was never acted upon.
Lee did not press the matter. He was resigned to "procrastination in measures of relief," as he wrote his son, Fitzhugh. But relief did come -- on Dec. 25, 1868, with Johnson's universal amnesty, making Lee's appeal moot.
Only one restriction remained, from the 14th Amendment ratified in July 1868. Any Confederate who had sworn before the war to uphold the Constitution was barred from holding federal or state office. That included Lee, a former officer in the U.S. Army.
Lee died Oct. 12, 1870, at age 63.
Almost 100 years later, an old grievance surfaced -- along with Lee's long-lost oath.
Inspired by the Civil War centennial, an archivist named Elmer O. Parker, began looking for Lee's oath. This great-grandson of Confederate soldiers located the document in a cardboard box among State Department files in the National Archives -- under "Virginia" and "L" for Lee. "Exactly where it was supposed to be," Hussey says. "But no one had thought to look for it."
His find might have been a footnote to Lee's story -- after all, historians already knew that Lee had applied for amnesty. Instead, it stoked a stubborn misconception.
"General Lee died a man without a country," the Richmond News Leader protested early in 1975. The sentiment was repeated in news coverage of Ford's visit to Arlington House, and persists today.
If Lee believed this, it would be news to his biographer Emory M. Thomas and to scholars at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond. All Ford actually corrected -- posthumously -- was Lee's right to hold political office, something Congress had restored to former Confederates in 1898.
This was about symbolism. But for whose war?
In July 1975 -- when Congress took up the Lee resolution -- the United States was confronting its failures in Vietnam, with the bicentennial of the American Revolution -- heralded as a unifying event -- just months away.
Listen to Michigan Democrat John Conyers, addressing his colleagues from the floor of the House: "I would suggest to the members that until amnesty is granted to, and full rights of citizenship are restored to, those young Americans who, according to their consciences, resisted the ignoble war in Indochina, this resolution will be neither healing nor charitable."
Another Democrat, Joshua Eilberg of Pennsylvania, countered that the Bicentennial Congress should demonstrate "how we as Americans once divided can learn from our historic past and once again reunite when it is in our nation's interest."
The vote was overwhelmingly in favor. And so the nation's leaders looked to Robert E. Lee and the distant past for reconciliation and peace not yet realized in their own time.
X X X
A sampling of the billions of artifacts and documents in the National Archives is on view in the Public Vaults exhibit. On the Web, go to www.archives.gov and click on "National Archives Experience," then "Public Vaults."
Oct. 14, 2005
(Delia M. Rios can be contacted at delia.rios@newhouse.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
All more than happy to show you southron boys the error of your ways:
Let's get back to the original claim, Sherman salting the farm fields througout Georgia. Even you would have to admit that neither Georgia or Charleston was covered with salt by Sherman or anyone else.
The southern states weren't readmitted. They were never out of the Union to begin with.
So what do you suppose Washington meant?
But the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Confiscation Acts passed in 1861 and 1862 which allowed for the seizure private property of those supporting the rebellion.
Washington was quite clear, and didn't qualify his statement at all. Loyalty to nation overcomes loyalty to locality. Washington considered himself an American, not a Virginian living in America.
Stonewall will do this all while sucking on a lemon and holding his hand in the air so that his health won't get out of balance...
Then, alas, just as said wedgie is to be administered, one of Stonewall's own, drunk on a little virgini whiski, will strike him down.
That's nice but it doesn't mean beans to an uneducated farmer in the south. Look at how people "belong" to their alma matter. Years after they've graduated they pull for the home team. There were no home teams in 1861, only home locations as indiviual states.
You can quote Washington all you like but it's meaningless in this context.
You mean other than to demonstrate that your claim that "there really wasn't a concept of "nationalism" in 1861 like we have today" was bogus?
Now be fair, it was the 18th North Carolina that shot Jackson and not a Virginia regiment.
Just because GW made a statement it is instantly "the truth" and applies to all? That is stupidity.
You are an idiot and I'm wasting my time talking to you. Goodnight.
"Lee died Oct. 12, 1870, at age 63.
"America lost a great and noble man that day
"Signed,
"A Yankee"
Also a Yankee, I agree. He was also a great
man of God.
I know, that's why he was great
As a sidebar, a lover of animals also
His relationship with his horse Traveller was very special
"Stonewall will do this all while sucking on a lemon and holding his hand in the air so that his health won't get out of balance...
Then, alas, just as said wedgie is to be administered, one of Stonewall's own, drunk on a little virgini whiski, will strike him down."
Said wedgie will have already been administered by this time.....
Yep. Ol' Stonewall was a little quirky. - no matter, there was no finer generalship demonstrated in that war than by Lee & Jackson et al.
Denigrate them as you may, military men the world over still study them - you don't have to like it - but they are among the greatest of Americans, and we southern americans love them for their contribution to our history and heritage.
Now, I'll get back to my "virgini whiski" and you can get back to your Chicago crackpipe and reflect on the disrespect you have shown these two great men, these two great Americans, Lee & Jackson.
Yes, they were each readmitted, and if I recall, Texas didn't even become readmitted until 1870 or 1871. Each state had to follow certain guidelines before they were accepted.
No, actually, I did not. In fact, I've read about it in a handful of primary sources (books from the 1870's mainly), and haven't found any evidence to the contrary. What do you have that I've missed? I'd definitely be interested in doing further reading if you can pass me the sources.
Regards,
~dT~
It's also worth noting that while the defeat of Cornwallis in 1781 at Yorktown is often viewed as the end of the American Revolution, the frontier along the west side of the Appalachians was the scene of many skirmishes between settlers and bands of British soldiers and Indians long after that. The last "official" battle of the war took place in September of 1782, when a small group of settlers (as few as six, according to some sources) fended off a raid by several hundred Indians and British soldiers in the Dutch Fork region of Pennsylvania.
"His relationship with his horse Traveller was very special"
I'd heard that, but I don't much about it. Nice to
hear.
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