Posted on 04/25/2007 10:11:37 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
Winston Churchill called him "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived," and Theodore Roosevelt called him "the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth." But has political correctness turned Robert E. Lee into a villain? That will be the question explored by six historians this weekend at a symposium commemorating the bicentennial of the Confederate commander's birth. "We were afraid that Lee would not receive the honors he should get because of the prevailing political correctness," says Brag Bowling, a Richmond resident who helped organize Saturday's event at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel in Arlington. The symposium will be the largest event of its kind this year honoring Lee, who was born Jan. 19, 1807.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Man, that post pegged the bogometer.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
I say this as a son of Maine who tried to convince his wife to name our son after Joshua Chamberlain: You should read Lincoln's second inaugural address over and over agin until you stop having idiotic thoughts like this one you've posted.
He also would not let any Southerner disparage Grant in his presence. I think that may also have extended to Sherman, but I'm not sure. The respect between Sherman and Johnston and Lee and Grant should be a model for all of us who speak on this subject.
Trying a guy who brought a brutal war to a swift end while killing as few Southerners as possible...sounds like a real hum-dinger of an idea.
I don’t think you are. Tragic, but I think he would love what his home is today, the home of American honor. I bet he wouldn’t even mind that John Schofield is buried there.
Lee was the commander of the force that captured John Brown at Harper’s Ferry in 1859.
Sherman did for the Civil War what the atomic bomb did for World War II.
Yes. Have you ever read about the type of treatment slaves were subjected to behind rebel lines?
Of course. I'll alert the media.
Allow me:
Fellow-Countrymen:
AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
W.T. Sherman is rightfully despised by the south for his tactics of murder rape, and pillage. There are many highly documented cases of where he winkingly cast a blind eye to the atrocities committed by his army during the March through Georgia. I am just waiting for the first northern sympathizer to state how much honorable a man he was than Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, others.
One wonders how much different this war would have been if Lee would have taken that approach through Pa. early in 1863. An unpopular war (read the NYT last half of 1862) may have been even less supported.
You’re most welcome.
Really? Highly documented. Show us some.
That's the myth of the Sherman the bloody vandal that's been fed to southerners so long that the myth has become accepted truth. The reality at the time wasn't quite as conventional southern wisdom now holds.
A quote from the diary of Illinois soldier Charles Partridge on the entrance of Sherman's army into Red Clay, Georgia in 1864.
"...the Union citizens were quite demonstrative, some of them bringing out flags, which had doubtless been hidden for at least three years. Women swung their bonnets and men hurrahed for the Yankees and the Union, manifesting great delight. One man who claimed to be ninety-eight years old and to have been a captain in the War of 1812 was almost frantic in his ejaculations when the Old Flag came into sight."
No wonder the good people of Red Clay were ecstatic. Imagine if a gang of the Taliban had taken over an American community and banned the waving of the Stars and Stripes for three years.
To many southerners, both black and white, Sherman and his army were liberators.
“Lee was the commander of the force that captured John Brown at Harper’s Ferry in 1859.”
One example of the hundreds of ‘ironies’ you find in that era. I believe JEB Stewart was also with Lee.
Really? Highly documented. Show us some.
I think it helps to understand Confederate logic which appears to have filtered down to our time.
Nathan Bedford Forrest's men butchering surrendered black soldiers is merely the natural results of a hard war.
The whipping of a slave is merely the stern discipline which will eventually uplift.
But let some slaveowning matron have her mirror broken by a Union soldier-THAT'S AN ATROCITY!!!!
Behold the spirit of the Confederacy:
Thanks!
You are waisting your time here with the Blue belly's ( I use the old term with relish)Someone above asked what crimes the monster committed. Let’s see, Murder,rape,kidnapping,arson,theft,for example. The winner writes the history books as someone once said. But the funny thing about books and history. Someone may come along one day and write a new chapter or Two.
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