Posted on 07/12/2007 6:04:07 AM PDT by RDTF
Two old steamer trunks sit in the rare-book room at the Virginia Historical Society, looking worn and forlorn. The smaller one was once red but the paint has faded to a dull rust. The larger one is brown with a piece of tin patching a hole in the top. On one side, a name is stenciled: "M. LEE."
That's Mary Custis Lee, Gen. Robert E. Lee's adventurous eldest daughter. In 1917, she stored these wooden trunks in the "silver vault" in the basement of Burke & Herbert Bank & Trust in Alexandria. A year later, she died at the age of 83. Her trunks sat in a dusty corner of the vault for 84 years, unclaimed, until E. Hunt Burke, the bank's vice chairman, discovered them in 2002.
Burke called his high school classmate Rob E.L. deButts Jr., who is Robert E. Lee's great-great-grandson. Together, the two men descended into the vault. Burke carried a basket of old keys.
"The first one I pulled out was a perfect fit," he says.
The trunks were stuffed with Lee family papers -- a priceless cache of 4,000 letters, photographs and documents. DeButts carted them to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, which houses the world's largest collection of Lee papers. He spent a week there, sitting at a desk in the research library, reaching into Mary Custis Lee's trunks and picking out treasures and trash.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
==> “ Guess I will need a digital camera fast enough to not need a flash. Any suggestions anyone?” <==
Look for a very high ISO number. This is analogous to film speed, and indicates the effective sensitivity of the sensor to light. However, in digital cameras this is usually achieved by electronic means that introduce noise (random variations) into the picture. The alternative is a better lens that gathers more light, a more expensive solution.
I think his men were loyal to him because he won far more often than he lost.
Not to get off the subject of the thread (letters from the daughter of one of this nation’s finest heroes) but I have to say what you just typed has to be the most warped messed up nonsense I’ve ever read. Course you would believe Hamilton’s ilk was the original ‘conservatism’. You claim to be a theocrat who supports slavery in the ‘right’ condition? No doubt about it, you’re a yank through and through...
WOW!
“I don’t understand why it was “perverse.””
Because the war that her father led was infinitely more about keeping slaves than states rights.
Try proof-reading that post bigboy.
On Sept. 23, 1862 — a few days after Lee’s army retreated to Virginia after an unsuccessful invasion of Maryland — the general wrote to Mary on a piece of cheap blue paper. Now, nearly 144 years later, the words are barely legible. “We had two hard fought battles in Maryland and did not consider ourselves beaten as our enemies supposed,” he wrote. “We were greatly outnumbered and opposed by double if not treble our strength and yet we repulsed all their attacks, held our ground and retired when it suited our convenience.”
That’s an interesting spin on the Battle of Antietam, an event that Abraham Lincoln considered a Union victory.
Actually, this is an interesting ‘spin’ by the Washington Post about the battle of Antietam / Sharpsburg.
Lee’s view is historically accurate. Lincoln claimed it was a ‘victory’ for the simple reason he was desperate to offer up the Emancipation Proclamation.
Between McClellan’s cowardice, and the ‘vaunted’ Pinkerton’s completely and totally fabricated ‘intelligence reports’ stating Lee had 200,000 troops when he had at best 37,000 the battle that should have ended the war right then and there was mismanaged to a degree thats unbelievable.
In 1874, the Lee family filed suit to reclaim its Arlington estate. In 1882, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in the family’s favor, saying, in essence, that the government cannot seize a man’s land simply because he has led an army of rebellion against that government. Of course, the family members did not want to live in a cemetery, so they agreed to accept $150,000 for the land — a huge sum in those days.
Another ‘wow’. I had no idea they sued and won, and were paid for the property.
I don’t understand why it was “perverse.”
Perhaps because she treated negro slaves back then better than black American leaders treat black Americans today ;-(
“Dear Plantation Forum, I never knew the stories in your newspaper were true, until one night when Stonewall Jackson and I encountered a woman named Mary Todd who invited us for some supper...”
I agree, pretty cool stuff!
Nice post!
What do you think is a moral justification for slavery? As long as it elevates them to some level deserving of rights? Should there be federal slave regulation overseeing their education for the day they’re eventually freed, (you know, along “divine guidelines”)? Or should there be some kind of private PETS (People for the Ethical Treatment of Slaves)?
Oh who cares… If someone politicked it into The Bible, you think it’s “God’s law” and how how your slaves are treated is between you and your God, right?
But my God (objective reality) shows that rejection of slavery in principle is beneficial to my social environment and therefore to my life, and that anyone promoting it under any circumstances is foolish at best, and that I’m morally required to support legislating slave holding away.
And since I can promote and defend my belief way better than you can promote yours, you're SOL.
Also unmentionable nowadays was the fact he was very religious and humble. I've read Lee's previously published diaries and letters to his wife -- there can be no doubt of his character.
“Was Robert E. Lee’s daughter, in some perverse way, a forerunner of Rosa Parks?”
I don’t understand why it was “perverse.”
Its not. The ‘perversity’ is found in the WaPo’s description of it.
Just finished reading the entire article (had to stop and get some lunch). My wife and I are heading to Gettysburg next week, she’ll be facinated by this as you and I are.
‘His military brillance, his character, his love of his country, Virginia are all unmentionables. Ask a teenager about Lee today, most of never heard of him.
And that’s the way it is.’
Teenager responding to the question of who Robert E Lee was;
‘Oh I know! That the guy that built the car for the Dukes of Hazard!’
(chuckle)
‘It’s kind of interesting that General Lee’s estate has become the closest thing we have to sacred ground in America. I think he’d be proud of it today.’
Given his view of the ‘sacred ground of home, Virginia’ I doubt it.
He’d still be infuriated they turned his ancestrial home into a graveyard, no matter how it was justified after the fact.
Please add me to your CSA ping list.
If there is a CW ping list, I’d greatly appreciate being added to it.
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