Remembering Robert E. Lee

Canda Free Press ^ | January 16, 2010 | Calvin E. Johnson, Jr.

[BigReb555]

Tuesday, January 19, 2010, is the 203rd birthday of Robert E. Lee, whose memory is still dear in the hearts of many Americans and people throughout God’s good earth.

[BigReb555]

“Duty is the sublimest word in the language. You can never do more than your duty. You should never wish to do less.”—Robert E. Lee

Did you know that Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, Martin Luther King and Robert E. Lee were born during the month of January? History can be great fun when parents and grandparents share stories about the past with their children making the study of American history a ‘Family Affair.’

Tuesday, January 19, 2010, is the 203rd birthday of Robert E. Lee, whose memory is still dear in the hearts of many Americans and people throughout God’s good earth. During Robert E. Lee’s 100th birthday in 1907, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., a former Union Army Commander and grandson of United States President John Quincy Adams, spoke in tribute to Robert E. Lee at Washington and Lee College’s Lee Chapel in Lexington, Virginia. His speech was printed in both Northern and Southern newspapers and is said to had lifted Lee to a renewed respect among the American people.

Robert E. Lee-Stonewall Jackson Day events are planned for Saturday, January 16, 2010, in Lexington, Virginia that includes a Memorial at Lee Chapel featuring Guest Speaker Pastor John Weaver, Past Chaplain in Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. For additional information go to: http://leejacksonday.webs.com/ Many events are planned for Lee’s birthday that includes:

The United Daughters of the Confederacy’s annual Robert E. Lee birthday commemoration held in front of Lee’s statue which is in the Crypt area of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. See upcoming events at: http://www.leecamp.org/ and

The Sons of Confederate Veterans 23rd Annual Robert E. Lee birthday celebration in Milledgeville, Ga. on Saturday, January 23, 2010, beginning with a 10:45 a.m. march from the old governor’s mansion to the one time capitol building of Georgia. See details at: http://www.georgiascv.com/

Do you remember when…

On August 5, 1975, 110 years after Gen. Lee's application, President Gerald Ford signed Joint Resolution 23, restoring the long overdue full rights of citizenship to Gen. Robert E. Lee. Read more at: http://www.ford.utexas.edu/library/speeches/750473.htm Who was Robert E. Lee?

Robert E. Lee was born on Monday Jan. 19, 1807, at ‘Stratford’ in Westmoreland County, Virginia. The winter was cold and the fireplaces were little help for Robert’s mother, Ann Hill (Carter) Lee.

Ann Lee named her son ‘Robert Edward’ after two of her brothers.

Robert E. Lee undoubtedly acquired his love of country from those who lived during the American Revolution. His Father, ‘Light Horse’ Harry was a Revolutionary War Hero, served three terms as Governor of Virginia and was elected to the United States House of Representatives. Two members of his family also signed the Declaration of Independence.

Lee was educated at the schools of Alexandria, Va., and he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1825. He graduated in 1829, second in his class and without a single demerit.

Robert E. Lee’s first assignment was to Cockspur Island, Georgia, to supervise the construction of Fort Pulaski.

While serving as 2nd Lieutenant of Engineers at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Lee wed Mary Ann Randolph Custis. Mary was the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the Grandson of Martha Washington and adopted son of George Washington.

Mary was an only child; therefore, she inherited Arlington House, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., where she and Robert E. Lee raised seven children.

In 1836, Lee was appointed to first Lieutenant. In 1838, with the rank of Captain, Robert E. Lee fought in the War with Mexico and was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec.

Lee was appointed Superintendent of the United States Military Academy in 1852.

General Winfield Scott offered Robert E. Lee command of the Union Army in 1861, but he refused. He said, “I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children.”

Lee served as adviser to President Jefferson Davis, and then on June 1, 1862, commanded the legendary Army of Northern Virginia.

After four terrible years of death and destruction, Gen. Robert E. Lee met Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia and ended their battles.

Lee was called Marse Robert, Uncle Robert and Marble Man.

In October 1865, Lee was offered and accepted the presidency of troubled Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. The school was later renamed Washington and Lee College in his honor.

Robert E. Lee died of a heart attack at 9:30 AM on the morning of October 12, 1870, at the college and is buried at Lee Chapel with his family and near his favorite horse, Traveller.

Booker T. Washington, America’s great Black-American Educator wrote in 1910, “The first white people in America, certainly the first in the South to exhibit their interest in the reaching of the Negro and saving his soul through the medium of the Sunday-school were Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.”

Let’s not forget those who made our nation great!

[Jemian]

Thank you for remembering and posting this. He was a great man. I look forward to meeting him.

[nathanbedford]

What follows is an old reply of mine made the context of the aeonian debate over Pickett's charge. I think it reveals a bit of the essence of Robert E. Lee:

Let me chip in my armchair strategizing since I owe it to my great-grandfather who was at Culp's Hill.

The observation that Lee is not recognized by most folks for his authentic genius is quite true. After the battle of Seven Pines Lee took command of the vastly outnumbered and outgunned force with its back to the city walls of Richmond whose investiture by McClellan would have spelled the end of the war before the rebellion had scarcely begun.

It was Lee who turned loose Stonewall Jackson in the Valley who thus pinned McDowell down thereby preventing the combination against the Confederates before Richmond of a really overwhelming force. For some reason, Lee from the very beginning recognized Jackson's eccentric genius and gave him a full play both in the Valley where he acted independently and on the left flank of the Confederate forces in the Seven Days Battle which ultimately saved Richmond. After McClellan's much superior force was driven back from Richmond and marginalized, Lee again turned Jackson loose. He contrived to get on Burnside's rear and the ensuing battle of Second Manassas completed the elimination of federal forces on the soil of the Old Dominion. An astonishing turnaround really from the desperate plight of the Confederates on this day in 1862 when Lee took over.

Both Lee and Jackson were superb tacticians but each took the longer strategic view and to my knowledge their fundamental assumptions about how the war should be fought were never at variance so long as Jackson lived. Their strategic conception was to drive the Yankees out of the war by beating them on their own soil and thus undermining the war party along with the morale of the North. This is a course Jackson had been advocating since 1961 and lee undertook it just as soon as he could drive the Yankees out of Virginia in the fall of 1862.

So Lee made his first invasion of the North which culminated in the single bloodiest day of the war at Sharpsburg. The battle was mismanaged by McClellan who, again, vastly outnumbered and outgunned the Confederates but he committed his forces piecemeal against Lee's line. The casualties were appalling on both sides and the day was only saved for the Confederates by the nick of time arrival of AP Hill's forces literally running themselves to exhaustion from Harpers Ferry. The scene is something that Hollywood would contrive: the federals are finally combining to cross Antietam Creek and are pushing in Lee's line which means the day is lost and, with the day, his Army. Lee asks a younger officer with younger eyes to look to the east and tell him what he sees in the dust made by moving troops. "Those are Yankees sir" Lee pivots in the saddle and points to the South, "what do you see there?" The junior officer replies, "those are Confederates, sir." Lee says only, "thank God, it is AP Hill come from Harpers Ferry."

AP Hill was in Harpers Ferry pursuant to written orders which had assigned Stonewall Jackson the task of investing and taking the place. By another Hollywood quirk, a copy of the orders was somehow caused to be wrapped around a few cigars and left behind for the Yankees to discover near Frederick, Maryland. Even McClellan could not fail to be electrified by what these orders told him: Lee had divided his inferior force thus offering McClellan with his hosts the opportunity to smash him in detail! For once in his career McClellan acted with dispatch and pursued Lee who drew up what forces he could collect on the West side of a rill known as Antietam Creek.

The fighting was so vicious that it moved Stonewall Jackson to declare "anyone who cannot see the hand of God in this affair is blind, sir, blind!" The day, he added was won, "only by hard and stern fighting." My ancestors fought in the vicinity of the Dunker Church under Stonewall Jackson near the cornfield where rows of men were cut down as neatly as the corn itself, row on row, until there was nothing left of the field but dead bodies and corn stubble. The Confederates, out of ammunition, held their ground throwing rocks at the Yankees.

The Army of Northern Virginia, badly battered, was not broken and the battle was a tactical draw but the draw was converted into a strategic victory for the North by Lee's reluctant, stubbornly delayed, but unavoidable withdrawal back across the Potomac, necessitated by his inferior force. Abraham Lincoln's announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation completed the conversion of a tactical draw into a strategic victory.

The year 1863 in many ways was a replay of 1862.

Virginia was again invested by overwhelming numbers of Yankees and Lee loosed Stonewall Jackson on the right of the Yankee line at Chancellorsville where Jackson's surprise was so complete that the Union force was nearly destroyed. Lease victory has been described as the single greatest military stroke in American history.

Another Hollywood scene before the battle is offered: Lee, fully aware of the overwhelming odds against his inferior force sits down at a campfire with Stonewall Jackson to plan their salvation. They had been informed that the Yankee right was "in the air" and there was a possibility that a force could make its way around to the left and, if the gods of surprise favored, attack the Yankee line at that point of vulnerability. It is necessary to emphasize the gross disparity of forces in which the Union, led by Gen. Hooker, vastly outnumbered Lee's forces. Both men around the campfire were well aware of this daunting inferiority when Lee turned to Jackson and asked, "how many of your command will you take with you?" Without dramatics Jackson uttered a phrase which must have turned Lee's heart cold because of its implications, "I will take my whole command."

If Jackson took his whole command on a Hail Mary pass to the left and he failed to get on Hooker's right or if Hooker simply attacked Lee's denuded remnant, the game was over because Lee simply could not survive against those overwhelming odds. Put yourself in Lee's place and consider what moral courage it took to assume responsibility for such a breathtaking risk. If the gamble failed the fault was all Lee's. If he kept his force together only to watch it slowly attrited into extinction, history could not fault him for simply obeying the first maxim of war: do not divide your force in the face of a superior enemy. Lee knew the risks and he shouldered them at the peril of his own reputation.

This was not the only time in the war that Lee took tremendous risks when he felt that circumstances warranted. I believe that Gettysburg was simply a bridge too far for the man who before and after Gettysburg demonstrated that he had the moral courage to risk all when he considered that the conventional path was riskier.

Lee's second invasion of the North was itself a strategic gamble and it was made as much out of desperation as it was out of confidence. It is well known that the reason the battle was fought at Gettysburg was because elements of Lee's forces had heard that there were shoes to be had there. Such was the embarrassed state of Lee's army of invasion.

Worse, four this invasionLee did not have Stonewall as his trusted lieutenant who could be relied upon to go "straight as the needle to the poll to the effectuation of my purpose." Lee did have his "old war horse" General Longstreet. Longstreet was the sort of general who said, "I do not like to go into battle with only one boot on." There was a fundamental philosophical difference of emphasis between the Lee/Jackson way and Longstreet's approach. Lee was never under any illusion that eventually the South would be overwhelmed by the weight of Northern numbers and matériel. Therefore, he regarded risks, including tactical and strategic risks, must be consciously accepted in order to overcome these strategic deficiencies. To some degree Lee felt that the strategic imbalance to be so grave as to justify tactical risks. We saw that at The Seven Days, at Second Manassas, and at Chancellorsville. We saw in Lee's first invasion of the North and now in 1863 in his second invasion of the North.

Longstreet had a strategic conception which was that the Confederate Army ought to interpose itself between the Union Army and some strategic objective which the union must fight for or lose the war such as Washington or Philadelphia or Baltimore. The Confederates should choose to give battle with an eye to topography, forcing the Yankees to fight at considerable disadvantage on the ground. In a sense, Longstreet wanted tactics to drive the strategy. He wanted Lee not to offer battle on the third day of Gettysburg but to maneuver around Meade to interpose himself as described.

Lee was not unaware of Longstreet's conception but he replied, "there is the enemy and there he must be defeated." If one stands at the jump off point of Pickett's charge and gazes up the rise to the copse of trees near the point of the high watermark of the Confederacy, one cannot help but ask, how could men be expected to carry that objective? They could not carry it and Robert E. Lee owns the ultimate responsibility for ordering the attempt. He would be the first to say so, in fact, he was the first to say so. One of the most poignant scenes of the war surely must be the figure of Robert E. Lee wandering in among the retreating remnants of Armistead's Virginians saying, "it is my fault, it is my fault, it is all my fault."

As a boy I learned as an article of faith widely held by Virginians that if Stonewall Jackson had been at Culp's Hill on the first day the battle at Gettysburg he would certainly have taken that high ground and the battle of Gettysburg would surely have gone the other way. The people of the south of more than a half-century ago believed that they saw the hand of God in this, that Stonewall Jackson was suffered to be killed at Chancellorsville so the south would lose the war and God's grand purpose that the union should be preserved would thereby be effected. Thus did the South reconcile itself to the union and actually become the most patriotic region of the land, becoming devout believers in America exceptionalism-God ordained exceptionalism.

[Bryanw92]

I always celebrate Robert E Lee’s birthday on the 3rd Monday of January because the government conveniently put a holiday there.

[nothingnew]

Let’s not forget those who made our nation great!

Indeed. My only regret is that he didn't win.

FMCDH(BITS)

[kalee]

lol same here

[NTHockey]

“Indeed. My only regret is that he didn't win.”

Patience; all things come to he who waits. Appomattox wasn’t a defeat; it was time out.

[Responsibility2nd]

I'm waiting for Barack Obama to issue a White House press release in praise and honor of this great American hero.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting....

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting....

[two23]

[Jemini]

I am far from an expert on Civil War Generals, but I have read much on the era. I get the general impression that Lee maybe was not the best Confederate military strategist/tactician. After Jackson’s death at Chancellorsville, some have written there was not much strategic success. Could a Freeper enlighten me on what they have studied, or maybe I have just been reading too many Yankee history books!

[Psalm 144]

An honorable and noble man. Would to God that he had been subordinate to Stonewall Jackson, however, instead of the other way round.

[C19fan]

The CSA was really in a bind after Vicksburg fell (cutting the CSA in half), Lee lost Gettysburg, and the continual tightening of the noose of the Union blockade. Lee did the best he could with the hand dealt him. The CSA strategic objective was to keep on fighting and hopefully Union morale would break but even that fall back was defeated with Lincoln’s overwhelming reelection in 1864. Some have criticised Lee for just his eye on Virginia ignoring the rest of the CSA. There was some talk of shifting Lee and the bulk of the ANV to the West. But his whole rationale for fighting was to protect him home.

[strongbow]

Thats the way I learned it too. Richard Ewell(sic) wasn’t Jackson and gave up the strategic advantage by abandoning the high ground on the first day of Gettysburg. As Lee said after Jackson lost his left arm to amputation, “Jackson has left his left arm, I have lost my right”. Never were truer words spoken.

[DwFry]

Same here. Lee did much more for me & mine.

[Psalm 144]

Lee was an engineer. His training and personality leant themselves towards a methodical and unfortunately conventional style of warfare. The Confederacy could not win a conventional war, nor one which featured a tactical offense such are Pickett’s Charge.

He was also burdened with Jefferson Davis’s insistence on a basically linear defense.

More flexible attitudes and more irregular forms of Partisan and guerilla warfare, and a healthy measure of bloodlust would have served better, IMO.

Lee tried to fight a limited war against an opponent who fought a total war. Sherman, not Grant, won the war for the Union, and he did not do it through conventional means.

Nevertheless, he was a very gifted commander, careful of his troops’ lives and welfare, and tried to limit the horrors of war. A noble man, but too measured and restrained to prevail in a total war.

[Godebert]

[C19fan]

One can criticize Lee because he gave very vague orders to Ewell basically leaving it to his discretion to attack Culp’s Hill. He declined due to some intelligence reports and the what he considered the fatigue of his men.

[C19fan]

More flexible attitudes and more irregular forms of Partisan and guerilla warfare, and a healthy measure of bloodlust would have served better, IMO.

We would most likely still be living with the negative consequence of such a war today.

[Tallguy]

"Those are Yankees sir" Lee pivots in the saddle and points to the South, "what do you see there?" The junior officer replies, "those are Confederates, sir." Lee says only, "thank God, it is AP Hill come from Harpers Ferry."

Some of AP Hill's troops were clad in blue uniforms taken from the armory & rail cars at Harper's Ferry. Their hasty entry into the battle created momentary confusion for Burnside's troops. We would call that a lucky stroke; Jackson would have seen the hand of God.

[Yo-Yo]

Arlington National Cemetery is a former Lee estate.