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Robert E. Lee: Icon of the South -- and American Hero
American Spectator ^ | 1/30/07 | HW Crocker III

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: americangeneral; greatest; lostthewar; robertelee; traitor; youlostgetoverit
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To: stand watie
imVho, you're too DUMB, filled with HATE & IGNORANT to KNOW the truth or most anything else. you are a JOKE to most here. (don't you get tired of essentially everyone believing you are STUPID & a BIGOT???) BUZZ OFF, chump. free dixie,sw

By the way, which branch of the military did you serve in?

301 posted on 02/23/2007 5:07:50 AM PST by fortheDeclaration (For what saith the scripture? (Rom.4:3))
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To: fortheDeclaration
whatever, BIGOT.

nonetheless, i'd start saying "bye, bye" to all your fellow BIGOTS, idiots & fools of the "coven", if i were YOU.

you might also consider notifying "whiskey papa", "heyworth", "modernman", "etypejag" & a HOST of other FORMER members of "the DAMNyankee coven of lunatics, HATERS, fools, REVISIONISTS & BIGOTS" that you' be joining them soon on DU and/or on "moveon.org".

laughing AT you.

free dixie,sw

302 posted on 02/23/2007 9:15:22 AM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: fortheDeclaration
US Army. 20 years, 5 months & 4 days AD. (a little over 28 years total, counting USAR & ARNGUS service.)

free dixie,sw

303 posted on 02/23/2007 9:17:17 AM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: fortheDeclaration
AND you could participate in the A.N.S.W.E.R. march of the America HATERS on 3/17/7 in DC, at the so-called "peace march".

if it goes like last time, there'll be at least TWO (2) of the former "DAMNyankee coven" members marching with the SCUM of the EARTH. say HELLO to "wlat" & "your other buddy" for us. tell them to STAY GONE from FR!

free dixie,sw

304 posted on 02/23/2007 2:29:42 PM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: stand watie
AND you could participate in the A.N.S.W.E.R. march of the America HATERS on 3/17/7 in DC, at the so-called "peace march". if it goes like last time, there'll be at least TWO (2) of the former "DAMNyankee coven" members marching with the SCUM of the EARTH. say HELLO to "wlat" & "your other buddy" for us. tell them to STAY GONE from FR!

Are you going to be there waving the Confederate Flag?

305 posted on 02/24/2007 4:32:01 AM PST by fortheDeclaration (For what saith the scripture? (Rom.4:3))
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To: beckysueb
A new book out "Den of Misery: Indiana's Civil War Prison" by James R. Hall (Pelican Pub.) mentioned that the treatment at Camp Morton was not better than in Andersonville.

Another interesting book just out is "Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery" by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank (Ballantine Books).

Both books are reviewed in today's The Washington Times.

306 posted on 02/24/2007 10:41:28 AM PST by Dante3
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To: MamaB
One site said that the land was returned to the Lee family by the Supreme Court and it was later bought for the $150,000.

In December 1882 he Supreme Court ordered the property returned to the Lee family saying it had been seized without due process. By that time the cemetary was well established and I doubt anyone seriously believed that Custis Lee wanted to resume residence there. The decision forced the Congress to compensate Lee's heirs for the value of the property and the $150,000 paid was fair market value for the house, furnishings, and land. Claims that Custis Lee milked the government for many times their true value are complete nonsense.

307 posted on 02/24/2007 10:50:03 AM PST by Non-Sequitur (Proud owner, 10,000th post on the 'Anna Nicole Smith Has Died' thread.)
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To: fortheDeclaration
NOPE. i'll be with "the counter-demonstrators", defending the various memorials from the FILTH that will be ON the street.

IF you're in DC that day, i suspect you'll be ON the street & marching with "Wlat" & the other FILTH.

free dixie,sw

308 posted on 02/24/2007 2:16:58 PM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: Non-Sequitur
how do you respond to Shelby Foot's comment that the Lees "received MORE than FOUR TIMES the assessed value for Arlington House & the surrounding grounds" in the property settlement??? (emphasis: MINE)

free dixie,sw

309 posted on 02/24/2007 2:54:56 PM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: stand watie
how do you respond to Shelby Foot's comment that the Lees "received MORE than FOUR TIMES the assessed value for Arlington House & the surrounding grounds" in the property settlement??? (emphasis: MINE)

Same way I respond to most of your stuff. I just chalk it up to yet another figment of your imagination.

310 posted on 02/24/2007 7:42:23 PM PST by Non-Sequitur (Proud owner, 10,000th post on the 'Anna Nicole Smith Has Died' thread.)
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To: Non-Sequitur
sadly for you, the comment by Foot was posted on another thread by one of your south-HATING, arrogant, LUNATICS. i think it was "etypejag", but i'm not sure.

free dixie,sw

311 posted on 02/25/2007 1:54:26 PM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: Non-Sequitur
i'm NOT surprised that you dismiss everything that DISAGREES with your PREJUDICES as a "figment of your imagination".

it's called DAMNyankee PROPAGANDA,twisting other's words,attempted diversions from the subject & DISTORTIONS of the facts. in other words: LIES!

such facile comments & LIES keep you from having to deal with the UNcomfortable TRUTH.

free dixie,sw

312 posted on 02/25/2007 1:58:52 PM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: stand watie
sadly for you, the comment by Foot was posted on another thread by one of your south-HATING, arrogant, LUNATICS. i think it was "etypejag", but i'm not sure.

Yet another example of "I know I saw it here somewhere" evidence that you're famous for.

313 posted on 02/25/2007 1:59:53 PM PST by Non-Sequitur (Proud owner, 10,000th post on the 'Anna Nicole Smith Has Died' thread.)
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To: Non-Sequitur
UNLIKE YOU, i don't:

a. claim to be an EXPERT on EVERY subject and/or

b. have a PERFECT memory.

otoh, everyone here doesn't believe me to be JUST a PROPAGANDIST, either.

free dixie,sw

314 posted on 02/25/2007 2:04:27 PM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: stand watie
NOPE. i'll be with "the counter-demonstrators", defending the various memorials from the FILTH that will be ON the street. IF you're in DC that day, i suspect you'll be ON the street & marching with "Wlat" & the other FILTH.

What-no Confederate Battle Flag!

Aw come on show some Confederate spirit!

The only 'filth' I know of is coming from your computer.

Garbage in-garbage out.

315 posted on 02/26/2007 2:30:32 AM PST by fortheDeclaration (For what saith the scripture? (Rom.4:3))
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To: fortheDeclaration
laughing at you, BIGOT! (the best weapon against BIGOTS is RIDICULE.)

free dixie,sw

316 posted on 02/26/2007 8:10:15 AM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: stand watie
laughing at you, BIGOT! (the best weapon against BIGOTS is RIDICULE.)

Actually the best weapon against bigots is truth, but what would you know about that?

317 posted on 02/27/2007 5:41:10 AM PST by fortheDeclaration (For what saith the scripture? (Rom.4:3))
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To: fortheDeclaration
well, since you're a TRUE BELIEVER in the sainthood of "DIShonest abe, the UNjust, of DAMNyankeeland", you are to IGNORANT to recognize TRUTH, so all of us will continue to RIDICULE your STUPID/PREJUDICED opinions.

laughing AT you, DUMMY.

free dixie,sw

318 posted on 02/28/2007 8:54:13 AM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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To: stand watie
otoh, everyone here doesn't believe me to be JUST a PROPAGANDIST, either.

You're probably right. The first job of propaganda is to appear truthful.

319 posted on 02/28/2007 10:16:53 AM PST by Bubba Ho-Tep ("fyi, i CAN get you banned."--stand watie)
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To: Bubba Ho-Tep
well, at least most FReepers don't consider me to be a LIAR, IDIOT,BIGOT and/or a TROLL, as they do YOU. (that IS your reputation on FR.)

as one of the FReepers said: "if Bubba's a TROLL, he's not a very intelligent one. i think he's just an prejudiced, half-educated, idiot."

BUZZ OFF back to DU, CHUMP.

free dixie,sw

320 posted on 02/28/2007 2:29:09 PM PST by stand watie ("Resistance to tyrants is OBEDIENCE to God." - T. Jefferson, 1804)
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