Posted on 10/11/2009 3:38:41 PM PDT by BigReb555
"Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by this nation." unquote--Dwight D. Eisenhower
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
You will like this thread.
W&L was my daughter's second choice for college - she was admitted there but wound up going to her first choice, Davidson College. Personally, I might have gone with W&L, but I'm not my daughter, she's much shyer and more gentle than I.
When we toured the school I was very impressed with the beautiful Lee Chapel. His faithful horse is interred just outside the side door, and when we walked past somebody had left a bouquet of carrots on his headstone.
I had the inestimable honor of meeting him once, when I was 18. What a man. His warning to the ages about the military-industrial complex was right on target. Washington has become a monster, both in terms of government power over the lives of citizens and in terms of the cluster of government agencies, high-tech and defense industries crowding all around it, driving real estate values to insane heights, clogging all the roadways for a 60-mile radius and driving out the kind of creativity that comes from ordinary people living in safe neighborhoods doing grassroots development of small businesses. It has become the most financially-intense, lawyer-ridden zone in the country, worse than LA or NY.
Me too, but I’m afraid that this nation is too politically fractured to avoid it.
It was a toss-up between W&L and Hampden-Sydney for me. I went with Hampden-Sydney because W&L was about to go coed (back in the mid-1980s). W&L is a wonderful school and I had a lot of good friends who went there. Lee Chapel is a very moving place to visit.
I’m with you here. A fine general and a great man but if not for his fateful decision, doubtless many thousands of lives would have been spared.
Great thread. General Lee was one of the finest Americans to ever live.
General Lee was a true gentleman and in my opinion a soldier without equal. In the LSU library there is a painting of him astride his horse Travler. Knowing the destructive behavior of the PC nuts, I doubt if the painting is still there. Maybe someone out there knows.
Both wonderful schools. You just can’t beat a small, Southern liberal arts (in the true classical sense) college to prepare for life.
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3718.html
Frances Lightfoot Lee signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation
Do you have a link for that letter somewhere? I’d be interested in reading it.
PING
I have a pretty good library of vintage Americana textbooks, with titles like “Great Americans” or whatever. Seems there has been a de-emphasis on instilling excellence in our young, outside of sports at least. Gen. Lee wouldn’t “make the cut” today, I Suppose. One problem with that tack, when glaring holes appear in certain areas most people get curious. I started to read Grants memoirs and biographies, stuff about Jefferson, Lincoln, and Lee. It’s just a small part of a decent, rounded education.
Lee said after the war that he had searched the history of great military leaders throughout the world and found no equal to Grant.
Grant had to deal with Lincoln and Halleck as well as command four or five armies spread all over the eastern USA.
Grant admired Lee greatly.
To this day, Grant and Lee’s military genius are studied.
“The only way to whip an army is to go out and fight it.”-Hiram Ulysses Grant.
These two great men-Grant and Lee, saved the union.
Difficult time and it probably played hell on is mind. Given what Lee saw was happening politically to the UNITED STATES (his beloved country and state), it was probably not taken lightly in his own mind.
To him Virgina embodied the United States he knew. The historical actuality he believed in was that Virginia was the United States whose soldiers had fought for from the beginning of the the Unions inception.
He believed he was fighting for both. Don't be so hard on Lee or his place in the history of the United States he deeply believed in and fought for. To Lee Virginia and the United States were one in the same.
Agreed 100% on both counts.
I am getting very concerned.
Without a free media and an educated population willing to consider the nation's best interests, I don't think wise governance is very likely.
I think he loved his state of Virginia above all. I read once that he was trying to keep the fighting out of Virginia the summer of Gettysburg so that Virginians could grow their crops so desperately needed. Also read he was suffering severe angina during the Battle, that he wrote about feeling disconnected from what was happening, giving nonspecific orders to his generals. I think he was a great man.
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