Posted on 01/30/2007 11:33:39 AM PST by RayStacy
Robert E. Lee: Icon of the South -- and American Hero By H. W. Crocker III Published 1/30/2007 12:08:14 AM
January can be a depressing month. The Christmas decorations come down, the creche is returned to its box (save for those hardliners, like the Crocker family, who leave the nativity set up until 2 February, the Presentation of the Lord), and the tree is dragged unceremoniously from the house. If you've had any time off of work, it ends; the spirit of Christmas can deflate pretty fast, if you're not careful. Even if you are, and you're returning to a desk job, you might start day-dreaming (as I always do) about whether you could, in good conscience, risk the family finances and try your hand at farming or ranching or doing anything that would get you out of an office and away from the corporate crowd.
But we all have to buckle down to our responsibilities, and as we settle down to it, there comes along another anniversary, another date to mark, another birthday to celebrate. In traditional Southern households, four weeks after Christmas, comes the birthday of Robert E. Lee, icon of the South, "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived, and of the greatest captains known to the annals of war" (according to Winston Churchill).
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Lee's birth, and yet so far it seems to have been marked largely by silence. How many of you noticed, or celebrated yourselves, Lee's birthday on 19 January (or Stonewall Jackson's on 21 January)? Lee's birthday is still officially marked in some Southern states, but the great and good general seems to be slipping from America's consciousness, or at least from America's esteem.
Lee, in the mind of some, has become a sectarian hero, when he used to be a national one. Theodore Roosevelt, scion of a Yankee father and a Southern mother, thought Lee was "without any exception the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth." On Lee's death in 1870, a Northern paper, the New York Herald, editorialized: "Here in the North... we have long ceased to look upon him as the Confederate leader, but have claimed him as one of ourselves; have cherished and felt proud of his military genius as belonging to us; have recounted and recorded his triumphs as our own; have extolled his virtue as reflecting upon us -- for Robert Edward Lee was an American, and the great nation which gave him birth would be to-day unworthy of such a son if she regarded him lightly. Never had mother a nobler son."
IT IS IRONIC THAT LEE was so respected as a national hero when the wounds of war were still fresh, but now, a century and a half later, he is considered discredited because of the cause for which he fought. Yet his cause, if anything, is another reason to admire him.
If that last statement sounds controversial, consider, without prejudice, the cause for which Lee sacrificed everything -- his life, his family, his career. It was a simple and eloquent one that every humane man should be able to rally round: "With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty as an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home." In another letter, he wrote, "a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets has no charm for me. If the Union is dissolved and government disrupted, I shall return to my native state and share the miseries of my people, and save in defense will draw my sword on none."
Lee would have endorsed the view of General Richard (son of Zachary) Taylor who said that he and his fellow Southerners had fought not for the preservation of slavery -- regret for slavery's loss, Taylor noted after the war, "has neither been felt nor expressed" -- but rather, they had "striven for that which brought our forefathers to Runnymede, the privilege of exercising some influence in their own government."
That Lee believed that the Confederacy had only exercised its rights as guaranteed under the Constitution, defended by the founders, and invoked by states and statesmen "for the last seventy years," can be seen in his letter of 15 December 1866 to Lord Acton, in which he says precisely that. He wishes that "the judgment of reason" had not "been displaced by the arbitrament of war," but concludes it has been, and it is time for the South to move on, to accept "without reserve... the extinction of slavery.... [A]n event that has been long sought, though in a different way, and by none... more earnestly desired than by citizens of Virginia," and to "trust that the constitution may undergo no [further] change, but that it may be handed down to our succeeding generations in the form we received it from our forefathers."
This does not sound like a man whose politics should bar him from the admiration that used to be his due.
I THINK, HOWEVER, THAT THERE IS another, deeper reason why Lee makes modern America uncomfortable. It is his Christianity -- not the fact the he was a believer, but that he actually knew what it meant to pursue the imitation of Christ. Try reading the Gospel of Matthew and you'll find that it's arresting stuff. And Lee, though gentle in demeanor -- indeed a thoroughgoing gentleman -- could be equally arresting.
When a young mother sought Lee's advice for raising her infant son, Lee replied, "Teach him he must deny himself." Or how about this: "Duty...is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things.... You cannot do more; you should never wish to do less."
Lee always put others first; he believed that to lead is to serve; he believed that the "forbearing use of power does not only form the touchstone, but the manner ... of a true gentleman.... A true gentleman of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others."
Today, Self seems to be the great god of most people. They bow before the presumed truth that happiness lies in self-esteem and "self-actualization" -- a very self-flattering way of affirming that one's "inner self" is always right, and the source of all truth. Self-denial, unless it is in the form of a diet (to make us feel better about ourselves), is not much in vogue.
Well, Lee was the great anti-self-actualizer of American history. As Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Douglas Southall Freeman put it: "Had [Lee's] life been epitomized in one sentence of the Book he read so often, it would have been in the words, 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.'"
Today, many find that sentence too bracing, and Lee, who embodied it, becomes an affront, a perfect example of Mark Twain's apothegm that "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
And it's not just that, of course. Ignorance is part of the problem too. For how many Americans today know the real Robert E. Lee or know anything about him at all, save that he was a general "who fought for slavery."
If we want an America of heroes, we need to cherish our heroes of the past. It is to the advantage of every Southerner, of every American, to renew his acquaintance with Robert E. Lee, because there simply is no finer American hero.
My point exactly. The South became sovereign as it was perfectly legal to do.
We just got a cat and I think we are going to name him General Lee..
Then I get on line, come here and there it is. Confirmation for me.
His name is General Lee.
fyi, even N-S, the DAMNyankee Minister of Propaganda knows that, though he tries to pretend otherwise.
free dixie,sw
Thanks for playing, next contestant, please.
And what of the Thousands of Southern women and children who suffered and died because Sherman burned their homes and crops. How many women and children were murdered and raped by Blue Belly scum on direct orders of that monster.
Yeah.
Nor was there an official surrender of the CSA. Nor was there a trial for treason by CSA leaders.
The confederacy began with a bang and ended with a whimper. The fact that there was never an official surrender isn't surprising, the confederacy never issued an official declaration of war before it attacked Sumter, either. And the lack of treason trials was due to amnesty declarations and the ratification of the 14th Amendment.
Ummm...N-S has labeled this claim of your to be complete and utter nonsense every time you've made it. All of it, start to finish, bears no more resemblence to fact than any of your other posts. From your fabrications about 'officer property records' to your lunatic claims about Grant being a overseer and 'a good hand with a whip', it is a total lie.
But not without leaving behind evidence. And there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that your claims are true. The Dent family slaves were, in fact, freed early in 1863 and none were seen with either Grant or his wife after that time.
None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch. If you have any evidence that any women and/or children were murdered and/or raped on the direct orders of General Sherman then by all means produce it.
What I know is that the southern acts of unilateral secession were illegal, that their actions were, in fact, a rebellion, and that they got their ass kicked as a result. This message is presented just so nobody is under any misconception that you know what your talking about.
The reality is what Sherman said. "War is all hell."
And if you are trying to say the CSA never raped or pillaged, you are naive.
I suggest a book, America's Victories by Larry Schweikart for an insight to how and the way America fights, even on our own soil.
Amen. We in Texas have another view of Sherman. He was the one who finally broke the Comanche hold on the Panhandle and west Texas. And he was no arm chair general. He took part in a face-off with two chiefs who had escaped from the reservation. In was a trap in which Sherman was the bait. His original name was Tecumseh, and he and that notable had much the same spirit.
In all fairness thousands of Southern POWs died at Elmira and Camp Douglas and Point Lookout. Treatment of POWs is not a matter of pride for either side. Both could have cared for their prisoners better but didn't. Both could have provided adequate food and sanitary conditions but didn't. Both could have provided decent shelter but didn't. All those prisoners died due to the neglect of the respective government holding them.
However, let me also point out that Sherman was correct when he said, "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."
"...scenes transpiring yesterday in the execution of your order...The colored people became suspicious of the presence of the companies of soldiers detailed for the service, who were marching through the islands during the night...They were taken from the fields without being allowed to go to their houses even to get a jacket..."In another case, a Northern reporter from the St. Louis Republican witnessed the Union assault on Alexandria was so moved by this wanton, barbaric act that he wrote an account of the burning. He stated,"There was sadness in all. As those on this plantation were called in from the fields, the soldiers, under orders, and while on the steps of my headquarters, loaded their guns, so that the Negroes might see what would take place in case they attempted to get away..."
"On some plantations the wailing and screaming were loud and the women threw themselves in despair on the ground. On some plantations the people took to the woods and were hunted up by the soldiers...I doubt if the recruiting service in this country has ever been attended with such scenes before."
"Women gathering their helpless babes in their arms, rushing frantically through the streets with screams and cries that would have melted the hardest hearts to tears; little boys and girls, running hither and thither crying for their mothers and fathers; old men leaning on a staff for support to their trembling limbs, hurrying away from the suffocating heat of their burning dwellings and homes."
I believe the claim was that women and children were raped and murdered on the direct orders of Sherman. I'm afraid I don't see anything in your post that supports that claim.
Yes Northern prisoners died in those camps. Just like Southern prisoners were starved and killed in places with names like Camp Douglas, Elmira prison camp and Fort Jefferson.
Confederate soldiers did loot rape and murder. But it was never the official policy of their commanders.
But the abduction of free blacks from Pennsylvania and Maryland and their return to the South was official policy and done with the knowledge and approval of commanders of the Army of Northern Virginia. And was, theoretically, illegal since the confederate constitution allowed only for imports of slaves from the slave holding states of the U.S. Pennsylvania was not one of them.
I saw an interesting episode of the history channel last night. Have you ever heard of the USS Constellation? She and about six other ships were assigned the mission in the 1850's to capture slave ships from Africa. They weren't very successful because there were so few of them and there were so many slave ships.
I saw that on the guide. Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch it so I recorded it and plan on watching it during the course of the week. Sounds very interesting.
If memory serves the Constellation mentioned in the program is the one currently restored in Baltimore, but is not the original frigate USS Constellation. That ship was broken up about the time the second Constellation was being built.
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