Posted on 10/17/2006 5:18:26 PM PDT by bushpilot1
Eisenhower letter regarding Robert E. Lee
President Dwight Eisenhower wrote the following letter in response to one he received dated August 1, 1960, from Leon W. Scott, a dentist in New Rochelle, New York. Scott’s letter reads:
“Dear Mr. President:
“At the Republican Convention I heard you mention that you have the pictures of four (4) great Americans in your office, and that included in these is a picture of Robert E. Lee.
“I do not understand how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be emulated, and why the President of the United States of America should do so is certainly beyond me.
“The most outstanding thing that Robert E. Lee did was to devote his best efforts to the destruction of the United States Government, and I am sure that you do not say that a person who tries to destroy our Government is worthy of being hailed as one of our heroes.
“Will you please tell me just why you hold him in such high esteem?
Sincerely yours,
“Leon W. Scott”
Eisenhower's response, written on White House letterhead on August 9, 1960 reads as follows:
August 9, 1960
Dear Dr. Scott:
Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War Between the States the issue of Secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.
General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his belief in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.
From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.
Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.
Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Davis was what we would today call a control freak. He tried to micro-manage everything. It's hard to believe he would be anything but a control freak.
Methinks thou dost protest too much! And here for your consumption and digestion are the articles that the South seceded under -
Amendment IX - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X- The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or the people.
So the Constitutional scholars and the Founders recognized that these two Amendments gave a state the right to secede, but your type seems to blithely ignore them. Like I said before, your Constitution is written in pencil for ease of revision.
Hardly. And nowhere does the Constitution give states the right to trample on the interests of other states or to secede without consent of all the parties involved. As many Constitutional scholars and Founders have said.
Proof that Gen. Lee was a patriot and a Virginian. Gen. Lee was, and is still today, revered and respected as a warrior, a statesman, a gentleman, a patriot and a model of what a man should be by men and women all over this nation.
And why would he? Wasn't Georgia a sovereign state? Even though Davis did what he could to destroy the concept of states rights there was a limit to what he could get away with.
He did not do as Lincoln did and and raise an army for the purpose of invading to force at the point of the bayonet compliance.
On the other hand, if Brown had declared secession and bombarded a confederate garrison at For Pulaski or somewhere like that how far do you think he would have gotten?
One of the things that irritates Southern or's the most is folks from Connecticut moving to the south and then begin tell us how they did it up north. If'n you want it the way it is up there don't come down here.
And I can guarantee you that I cannot think of anything in this world that could ever make me move down south, so you can unload your shotgun and relax. This is one Yankee you will never have as a neighbor.
Time to raise the BS flag! Where did the secession of the Southern States "trample upon the interests" of the Northern States? Oh, gee I'm sorry, I guess those interests must lie in how much money they could make off of them, and how much malcontention they could stir up among the slaves of that time. As to your contention that they had to go to all states (or Congress)to get a quorum as to whether they could secede or not is horsecrap! Amendment 10 says they didn't! The plural "states" means each state. I guess by your assertions then you believe the Soviet Union was justified in invading both Hungary and Chekoslovakia when they tried to break away. After all they didn't ask permission either.
Actually I'm heading out for barbecue for dinner tonight. Ribs, burnt ends, potato salad, beans, and Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat Beer. They make a very good coleslaw, or so I'm told. I've never been a fan of that particular dish. And some cheesey corn will be a nice addition to the meal as well.
It's been flapping in the breeze since your first post.
Where did the secession of the Southern States "trample upon the interests" of the Northern States?
Seizing property belonging to all states without compensation. Walking away from the debt built up by the nation while they were a part. Abandoning treaties the United States had been complying with.
As to your contention that they had to go to all states (or Congress)to get a quorum as to whether they could secede or not is horsecrap! Amendment 10 says they didn't!
Actually it did, according to the Supreme Court. Oh gee, I'm sorry, I keep forgetting that any Supreme Court decision you disagree with is invalid.
I guess by your assertions then you believe the Soviet Union was justified in invading both Hungary and Chekoslovakia when they tried to break away. After all they didn't ask permission either.
No, Hungary and Czechkoslovakia were sovereign nations, Mississippi and Alabama were not.
That seems to be the strategy: pick something to get indignant about and harp on it for a long time. Then you convince yourself that you're really on to something, that you've somehow uncovered the fatal flaw in someone's argument or character, when really you're just being a pain.
If you can put someone else on the defensive and wax on and on about some supposed deception, you figure you've "won" in some way. All the better if you get someone else to melt down, or if you simply label their responses "meltdowns." It's all a very familiar game by now.
I can't help noticing that there's no real substance to your remarks. You aren't arguing the question of the importance of slavery to the Charleston Mercury, you're just coming down with a lot of indignation.
It's a kind of "metacommentary": you're not discussing the issues involved. You aren't contributing anything to the argument. You're just trying to sidetrack people with allegations of wrongdoing. It's all part of the same misdirection, the same stupid scam.
For whatever it's worth, I do spend less time on these threads than I once did. I try to get sidetracked into futile controversies again. If I have 15 minutes, I can make an off-the-cuff comment. It may be valuable or it may not. That's all part of the learning process.
But if I have an hour or two, I can get a lot of information. So now I found the texts of the editorials in question, and discussion ought to involve what those texts say, not on personal recriminations.
A lot of what we find on the net is likely to have been excerpted or selected. I thank PeaRidge for pointing out to me that this was the case. The question now concerns what the full document actually says and means, and so far he and you haven't proved me wrong about that.
I don't think I've used the word "peer-reviewed" for a long time. Maybe I never have, or maybe I did once. This "peer-reviewed" talk is part of the scam. We consider all kinds of articles, essays, and posts here. It's only if you don't have a real argument that you start to squawk about what's "peer-reviewed" and what isn't.
An article may just be bad. It may be poorly reasoned. There may not be any evidence for its contentions, or the evidence may be flawed. Those are all good grounds for calling a piece into question. But if you just keep repeating "it's not peer-reviewed," it looks like you don't have any real grounds for rejecting the article or its conclusions.
As Texas Senator Wigfall said in February, 1861:
How will it be with New England? Where will their revenue come from? From your custom-houses? What do you export? You have been telling us here for the last quarter of a century, that you cannot manufacture even for the home market under the tariffs which we have given you. When this tariff ceases to operate in your favor, and you have to pay for coming into our market, what will you expect to export?
Then there was Thomas Prentice Kettell who argued in 1860 that the summer crop of Massachusetts was granite and the winter crop was ice. Sounds facetious, but Massachusetts did export ice to the South in ships.
From the Memphis Daily Appeal of April 9, 1861:
The Vessel fired into at Charleston
From the Savannah Republican, April 5
Since copying the article from the Charleston Courier, the vessel fired into from the forts at Morris Island has arrived in our port, and we are enabled to give full particulars of the affair.
The schooner is the H. R. Shannon, Capt. Ments, of Boston, and she was bound for this city with a cargo of ice, consigned to A. Haywood. ...
Darned if Kettle wasn't right.
Even Gustavus Fox encountered an ice schooner on his Fort Sumter mission:
However, the Powhatan and tugs not coming, Captain Rowan seized an ice schooner and offered her to me, which I accepted ...
Those poor ice schooner captains. One of them blunders into the wrong port by mistake, runs up the wrong flag, and gets shot at by the South. A few days later another one has his ship pirated away from him by the North.
A couple of problems with your scenario. If imported goods were paid almost exclusively with exports then by rights imports should have dried up to almost nothing during the rebellion. After all, Southern agricultural goods did make up the overwhelming majority of exports, the rebellion certainly cut off that trade, and if precious metals were the only alternative, as you claim, then the North should have run out of that in fairly short order. But instead of trade drying up the opposite happened. Tariff income in the year prior to the rebellion was in the neighborhood of $60 million. Tariff revenue for FY1864 was well over $110 million. Factor in inflation and tariff increases and you still result in considerable increase in imports. And then when the rebellion ended and the Southern agricultural industry was devestated imports continued to increase. So either imports were not as closely tied to exports as you claim, or imports were paid for with cash on both sides of the ocean before, during , and after the rebellion.
The schooner was actually the Rhoda H. Shannon. A Google search will show that. And while it really makes no difference, after getting hauled over the coals on O.A. Tyler vs A.O. Tyler I just couldn't resist.
Was this the ice schooner you used to call the "Rhoda A. Shannon?" Link
Who's twisting words now? I never said I regretted slavery was ended or that the south lost the war. Personally I believe that slavery & the Civil War were both abominations that shouldn't have occurred.
Jesus forgave a petty thief who was beside him on the cross. He did not forgive a mass murderer, so it remains unknown and unknowable whether there are crimes that are unforgivable, no matter your view of Jesus as Lord and Messiah. Most denominations believe that faith alone is enough, but not all. I don't profess to know the answer to that one but personally, I hope that child molesters, mass murderers, Islamofascists and the guy who cooked his girlfriend don't get to go to heaven by making a profession of faith. I'll do my best in this life and hope I come out all right.
Well the only sin Jesus says is unforgivable is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It's up to God to judge men's hearts and to avenge sin, a notion you seem to have a problem with. I don't like the sins you mentioned either, but I'll let God take care of them. We're saved by the grace of God, which is a good thing since no one is worthy of it or can save himself.
I think we can agree that otherwise honorable men can make mistakes. I have never read anything that stated that Lee joined the fight to defend slavery, which would've been strange since he didn't own any slaves.
It's arguable. But Ike didn't have simultaneous command of both the operations up the Italian Peninsula and the post-Normandy operations in Europe, even though he was nominally the CO, Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces Europe. But for the Normandy *Overlord* operation in itself, Ike can be certainly be thought of as a great military leader.
Contrasted to MacArthur's operations across multiple Pacific islands, the Japanese Home Islands, the Gobi Desert and the associated C-B-I campaign, Ike's operations were more a study inpolitics and logistics. Which, with four stars, it pretty much is anyway.
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