Comes A Stillness

They introduce themselves politely in restaurants or diners, in a movie lobby or at some civic event, even in front of the Little Rock gate in Atlanta, which has become a kind of Arkansas crossroads. ("You don't know me, but . . .") Then they thank me for remembering Robert E. Lee every January 19th with a column on his birthday.

They don't tarry, and I may never see them again. Then they fade away, much like the Army of Northern Virginia (R.E. Lee, General). They have a look about them, or rather a manner. They come in different shapes and sizes, but they all have the same, diffident way about them -- as if they were used to dealing with people as persons, rather than en masse as customers or readers or voters or some other impersonal category. They know how to visit with others. It's a Southern thing, no matter where it happens.

Let's just say they have a shared understanding. They may be older, genteel white ladies or young military cadets. Sometimes they're aging black men, usually with roots in the Deep South, who mention that they had a grandfather or great-uncle named Robert E. Lee Johnson or Robert E. Lee Wilson, much like their white counterparts. Whatever the differences in their appearance, they share a distinctive quality that is never imposing but very much there.

Sometimes they'll let you know they don't make a habit of this sort of thing, that they're not interested in reliving the past or anything like that. They're the furthest thing from the bane of such discussions in these latitudes, the professional Southerner. ("I'm no Civil War buff or big Confederate or anything -- I do well to tell Gettysburg from Vicksburg -- but I just wanted to say . . .")

They're never intrusive. Indeed, they are concise almost to the point of being curt for Southerners, a voluble breed. It's clear they wish to make no display. It's as if they just wanted to . . . enroll. To go on record, that's all, and leave it at that. They know The War is over and, like Lee, they would let it be over.

The quality they have in common may be deference -- not only to others, and certainly not to the general himself, for deference would not in any way approach their feeling on that subject, but a deference to the human experience, with all its defeats and losses. Maybe that is why so many of them are middle-aged or older, as if they had encountered some defeats and losses of their own -- losses and defeats that can never be erased, that will always be a part of them, but that they carry almost with grace. The pain will always be there, but now it is covered by forbearance. They have learned that there are certain hurts that, in order to be overcome, must be gone through. Continually. Till it is part of their ongoing character.

The name for the kind of deference they exude, unmistakable for anything else, a deference to fact and to sacrifice, is maturity. They have discovered that duty is not only burden and obligation but deliverance. They would never claim to understand Lee, and they certainly would not presume to praise him overtly. They just want to indicate how they feel about the General, to let us know the bond is shared, and go on. For where Lee is concerned, there is a silence, a diffidence, that says more than words can. Or as Aristotle said of Plato, there are some men "whom it is blasphemy even to praise."

Ever hear a couple of Southerners just passing the time, perhaps in some petty political quarrel, for we can be a quarrelsome lot, when the name Lee is injected into the argument? The air is stilled. Suddenly both feel ashamed of themselves. For there are some names that shame rhetoric, and when we use them for effect, the cheapness of it, the tinniness of it, can be heard at once, like tinkling brass. And we fall silent, rightly rebuked by our better selves.

To invoke such a presence, to feel it like old music always new, invariably gives pause. The young officer in Stephen Vincent Benet's "John Brown's Body" pauses before he enters Lee's tent to deliver his dispatch. Looking at the shadow of the figure within bent over his papers, knowing that The War is inevitably winding down, the messenger can only wonder:

What keeps us going on? I wish I knew. Perhaps you see a man like that go on. And then you have to follow.

The Lost Cause still has its shrines and rituals, dogmas and debates. For four exhilarating, excruciating, terrible years, it had a flag of its own -- several, in fact -- and an army and even something of a government. But in the end all those proved only transient reflections of what endures: the South, the ever-fecund South.

What held that disparate, desperate concept called the South together, and holds it together still from generation to generation, from heartland to diaspora? After all our defeats and limitations, why do we yet endure, and, in Faulkner's words, even prevail? What keeps us going on? I wish I knew. Perhaps you see a man like that go on. And then you have to follow. If there is a single name, a single syllable for that shared bond and depth and grief and aspiration, it is: Lee.

No brief outline of the general's career can explain the effect of that name still: After a shining start at West Point, our young officer spends 12 years of tedium on the Army treadmill, followed by brief renown in the Mexican War, then a two-year leave to attend to matters at home. Returning to the service to put down a fateful little insurrection at Harper's Ferry that cast a great shadow, he declines a field command in the U.S. Army as a far greater insurrection looms, one he will lead. He accepts command of the military of his native country -- Virginia. Then there comes a series of brilliant campaigns that defy all the odds, at the end of which he surrenders. Whereupon he applies for a pardon, becomes a teacher, and makes peace.

What is missing from such an abrupt summary of the general, his life and career, is everything -- everything inward that made the man Robert E. Lee. His wholeness. His integrity. His unbroken peace within. There was about him nothing abrupt but everything respectfully direct -- in his manners, in his leadership, in his life and, when he finally struck the tent, in his death.

Yes, he would fight what has been called the most nearly perfect battle executed by an American commander at Chancellorsville, defeating an army two and a half times the size of his own and better equipped in every respect.

Even in retreat, he remained victorious. One single, terrible tally may say it better than all the ornate speeches ever delivered on all the dim Confederate Memorial Days that have passed since: In one single, terrible month, from May 12th to June 12th of 1864, from after The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, Grant's casualties on the other side would total 60,000 -- the same size as Lee's whole, remaining Army of Northern Virginia, poor devils.

In the end, it is not the Lee of Chancellorsville or of Appomattox who speaks to us, who quiets and assures us. It is not even the Lee of Fredericksburg and his passionate dispassion atop Marye's Heights as he watches the trapped federals below, poor devils, being destroyed. He was no stranger to pity. ("It is well that war is so terrible," he murmured, looking down at the carnage he had engineered, "or we should grow too fond of it.")

It is not even the Lee of Gettysburg who speaks to us, the Lee who would meet Pickett after it was over -- all over -- and say only: "All this has been my fault." And then submit his resignation as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. Jefferson Davis may not have had much sense, but he had more sense than to accept that resignation.

In the end, it is the Lee who saw through all victory as clearly as he did all defeat who elevates and releases us, like one of the old Greek plays. It is the Lee who, for all his legend, could not command events but who was always in command of his response to them. Just to think on him now is catharsis. That is why his undying presence, just the mention of his name, was enough to lift men's gaze and send them forth again and again. It still does.

Having been raised and educated in Virginia, I visited the Lee Chapel at Lexington, Va. some years ago, as a sort of pilgrimage. The moment I entered the chapel I was overcome with emotion, the like of which I never experienced standing before the resting place of other historical figures. I recalled the words reportedly spoken by a lady of Gettysburg who said, as Lee rode past her, "Oh! How I wish he was ours." As I gazed upon the battle flags surrounding the Chapel's ceiling over Lee's resting place I thought, "He was indeed ours."

"Traveler" is buried immediately outside the Chapel. Local school children place sugar cubes and slices of apple for him when they visit.

According to TR, “(Lee)... was the greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth.”

The revisionists have no idea how universally loved and admired, by both Northerners and Southerners, the General was.

Thank you for adding these positive thoughts to my day. I will read more on the General and try to appreciate the fact that I have lived in the Great State of Tennesse for over 30 years...what a priviledge to know the Southern people and their strong moral character.

Your writing made me dig deep in my emotional bank to remember goodness after sloshing through the muck of today’s politics.

Excellent read - Bravo. I was just there at the Chapel last October, and at Traveler’s grave too. My daughter (23) is a 3L at Washington and Lee in Lexington and we were visiting. What a place!!! I can’t wait for her graduation in May - right near the chapel. As a northerner (conservative though, not liberal), I never expected to “get” what this article is saying, but I do understand (to a certain degree).

Again, Washington and Lee is a very special place.

PS Any FReeper lawyers in NYC hiring 3L’s? Daughter is in top 12% of her class, is on the law review, and has been published - not to mention she is graduating law school at 23 years old. She wants to work in New York. She also has an excellent resume - Freep mail me for her linked in profile.

Oh, there are men like him amongst us, of that I have no doubt.

It’s just that their true character hasn’t been revealed to us through struggle; indeed few knew of either Lee or Grant before the war.

I think that we will come to know them soon enough.

The most touching and telling mark of his great character was that after the war, he took care of his invalid wife until her death, and then took care of his mother until she died. What other “great” men in history did that?

The Lincoln Coven will show up soon enough, they wish Lee had been tried for treason and hung after the war. They fantasize about it.

Really? While I am not as big a Lee fan as many on FR, I haven't seen any threads suggesting that he should have been executed.

You may be projecting there, a little bit.

And inverting history, also.

You are describing actions that are expected of every decent person.

Who would abandon their ailing wife or ailing mother?

Why should Lee receive adulation for observing the absolute minimum level of personal honor?

Lee was a man of great character, with a tragic flaw, and certainly deserves admiration on many fronts - but it is bizarre to say that he should be admired because he did not abandon his wife and mother.

What other “great” men in history did that?

Another great man in history, the heroic William Tecumseh Sherman, also tended to his foster mother and his wife in their dying illnesses as well.

Also, many millions of others who are not "great men in history" have taken care of their families.

Interesting coincidence...

When I was a kid, the first horse I owned, was a Quarterhorse named Traveler, minus one of the “L’s”...hehehe

Almost like a dog, that horse would follow me around, off lead, most of the time coming around to me on the correct side seeming to want me to hop up and go take a ride on my grandparents property...

I always wondered, until I found out later in school, why my great-grandfather (The Colonel) told me back then that the horse’s name was Traveler...

Whenever I do ride, I always remember the story, and tend to ride a little higher in the sadle knowing all that...

I often reflect upon which side of the argument folks had back then, what side I would have stood with...I had many years of conflict where I believe the north was right in doing what they did...But later on in my life, with more knowledge adn experience, I believe I would have sided differently...And not our of some southern romantacist notion either...

What happened yesterday has almost totally solidified my position...

Re: the revisionists. The amazing thing is that in a low and cynical age that breeds revisionists (some needed) at every turn, the debunkers have never laid a finger on Lee. Sure, one can second guess this or that tactical decision, and he made some mistakes, though fewer than his fair share, but I herewith list below every single discreditable thing that historians have discovered about the man’s character and personal behavior:

And if you try really hard to accentuate the negative, there is:

Washington is in this class as well, but Lee earned his pedestal.

Another great man in history, the heroic William Tecumseh Sherman

Sherman was neither great nor heroic. He was a common butcher killing, burning and raping women and children. He was the lowest form of filth this nation has ever brought forth.

HOW DARE YOU EVEN BRING UP HIS NAME IN THIS THREAD MUCH LESS COMPARE HIM LEE!

Another great man in history, the heroic William Tecumseh Sherman, also tended to his foster mother and his wife in their dying illnesses as well.

Sherman gave out of his own pocket to any destitute ex-soldier who knocked on his door for year following the war.

I understand the love southerners have for Lee, especially now. We see virtuous behavior among leaders almost as alien these days.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.