“Now let’s ask ourselves who knew the war and aftermath better....the magnanimous victors a generation or two after the war including those who fought in it”
What’s curious to me is how hard it is to find a copy of Charles Francis Adams Jr.’s essay “Shall Cromwell Have A Statue?”.
It’s really about Robert E Lee and secession. I suspect it’s ignored and not readily available because Adams concludes that secession wasn’t un-Constitutional, and that Lee was heroic and deserving of a statue.
This is anathema to the south haters of today.
Adams by contrast admired the South. He had been a Union Army officer and personally experienced Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at Antietam. In addition to being an historian he was the grandson and g-grandson of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. About as strong a Yankee pedigree as anyone ever had.
C F Adams, Jr. is a really interesting individual. He was the only one of his brothers to actually serve in combat in the war. He was offered staff positions because of his distinguished family and he declined and served as a regimental officer in a Union cavalry regiment through the war. He was invited to be the keynote speaker at the dedication of the Lee statue in Lee Chapel at W & L. Now the craven administrators at that school insist that the chapel doors be closed anytime there is an event such as commencement. The snowflakes might melt to glimpse a statue of the noble Lee.