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Symposium to honor Lee, villain or 'the noblest ever' ?
Washington Times ^ | April 25, 2007 | Robert Stacy McCain

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: bragbowling; civilwar; confederacy; confederate; dixie; north; robertelee; south
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To: miss marmelstein

Arlington..............absolutely beautiful view..........and the neighbors are quiet.........


241 posted on 04/30/2007 5:28:07 AM PDT by Red Badger (My gerund got caught in my diphthong, and now I have a dangling participle...............)
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To: rustbucket; Ditto

To The Pennsylvania Abolition Society: A Memorial by Dr. Benjamin Rush
Philadelphia, November 14, 1788

There is now in this city a black man of the name of James Derham, a practitioner of physic, belonging to the Spanish settlement of New Orleans on the Mississippi. This man was born (into slavery, about 1762) in a family in this city(and) When a boy, he was transferred by his master to the late Dr. John Kearsley, Jr. of this city, who employed him occasionally to compound medicines and to perform some of the more humble acts of attention to his patients.

Upon the passing of Dr. Kearsley, he became (after passing through several hands) the property of Dr. George West, surgeon to the Sixteenth British regiment, under whom during the late war in America, he performed many of the menial tasks of our profession.

At the close of the war he was sold to Dr. Robert Dove of New Orleans who employed him as an assistant in his business, in which capacity he gained so much of his confidence and friendship that he consented to liberate him From Dr. Derham’s numerous opportunities of improving in medicine, he became so well acquainted with the healing art as to commence (as a medical) practitioner at New Orleans under the patronage of his last master. He is now about 26 years of age, has a wife but no children, and does business to the amount of $3000 a year.

I have conversed with him upon most of the acute and epidemic diseases of the country where he lives, and was pleased to find him perfectly acquainted with the modern simple mode of practice in those diseases. He speaks French fluently and has some knowledge of the Spanish language.

(International Library of Negro Life and History, Herbert M. Morais, Publishers Company, Inc, 1969, pp: 8-9)

On Black Doctors in the Northern Army:

The high casualty rate suffered by Negro troops during the war was due in no small measure to the reluctance of the War Department to assign a sufficient number of white doctors to Negro regiments. (The vast majority of black troops died of disease in camp), and Negro losses amounted to 37,300, the mortality rate of colored troops being 35% greater than among other troops, despite the fact that they were not enrolled until 18 months after the (war) began.

The War Department (was unwilling) to commission Negro practitioners during the Civil War was reflected in the fact that only eight colored physicians were appointed to the Army Medical Corps. Seven of the eight were attached to hospitals in Washington, DC.

During the critical years of the Reconstruction era, Negro doctors, eager to improve themselves professionally, sought admission into medical societies. On June 9, 1869, Dr. Alexander T. Augusta and Dr. Charles B. Purvis, two of the seven Negro physicians then practicing in Washington, DC, were proposed for membership in the American Medical Association (AMA). On June 23, Dr. A.W. Tucker, another eminently qualified Negro physician was similarly proposed for membership in the Medical Society of the District of Columbia. Although all three Negro doctors were reported eligible for admission, their applications were rejected.

About a month later, the Society’s leaders, in a published Appeal To Congress, answered (Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner’s condemnation) by saying that the question of membership in the medical body was a personal and social matter. Senator Sumner responded by introducing a bill in the Senate on February 8, 1870, to repeal the society’s charter. But the Senate refused to act on the bill.

On January 3, 1870, Dr. Howard Reyburn, faculty member of Howard Medical School and surgeon-in-chief of the Freedmen’s Hospital, introduced a resolution (to the Society), that no physician (who is otherwise eligible) should be excluded from membership in this Society on account of his race or color. By a vote of 26 to 10, the Society refused to consider Dr. Reybern’s resolution. On February 9, 1870, Dr. Joseph Borrows nominated Dr.s Augusta, Purvis and Tucker for membership, but the nominations were declared out of order because they were not made at a stated meeting as required by the regulations.

(International Library of Negro Life and History, Herbert M. Morais, Publishers Company, Inc, 1969, pp: 36-54)


242 posted on 04/30/2007 5:51:53 AM PDT by swmobuffalo (The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.)
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To: Non-Sequitur

Of course, since YOU don’t like Lee anyway, it wouldn’t matter who was there.....


243 posted on 04/30/2007 5:57:38 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.......)
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To: ConservativeDude

Not at all. I believe some of the reasons the South chose to fight were correct. But slavery wasn’t a valid reason.


244 posted on 04/30/2007 5:59:01 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.......)
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To: ConservativeDude

I detest Lincoln, but we will leave that for another time:

Lee saw the war as “a continuation of the battle between the Hamiltonian consolidationists and the Jeffersonian decentralists,” says Mr. DiLorenzo, referring to the “remarkable correspondence” between Lee and British statesman Lord John Acton in 1866.
In a letter to Acton, Lee referred to the writings of Jefferson and Washington and warned that “the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded.”
Lee’s letter was “a very eloquent expression of the Jeffersonian philosophy of the Constitution ... and I think it tells us a lot about why he believed he was fighting this war,” Mr. DiLorenzo says.


245 posted on 04/30/2007 6:01:30 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.......)
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To: Non-Sequitur

And explain exactly WHY I should honor people that ravaged my homeland, burned and pillaged, caused emnity between the races that STILL goes on today, and forced my homeland into a Union against their will?


246 posted on 04/30/2007 6:07:26 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.......)
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To: G-Bear

Wrong. You should be hung for IGNORANCE.


247 posted on 04/30/2007 6:08:43 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.......)
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To: Virginia Ridgerunner; G-Bear

This person is aware of the truth, and “TROLLING” to cause trouble.


248 posted on 04/30/2007 6:12:33 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.......)
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To: ConservativeDude

I have said so before, and will say so again, slavery was wrong by today’s standards. It wasn’t by the standards of 1860, and it was perfectly LEGAL.


249 posted on 04/30/2007 6:17:11 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.......)
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To: TexConfederate1861
And explain exactly WHY I should honor people that ravaged my homeland, burned and pillaged, caused emnity between the races that STILL goes on today, and forced my homeland into a Union against their will?

You forgot to blame Lincoln for rainy days and boll weevils.

250 posted on 04/30/2007 6:34:30 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
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To: Colonel Kangaroo
They later held a rubber stamp election in June, the validity of which was very doubtful with the state in the iron grip of the reb army and Confederate state.

104,471 for secession to 47,183 against; I can see how you are doubtful---not.
251 posted on 04/30/2007 6:52:14 AM PDT by smug (Tanstaafl)
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To: Red Badger

LOL! I live across the street from a cemetary myself so I know about quiet neighbors!


252 posted on 04/30/2007 7:24:24 AM PDT by miss marmelstein
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To: smug
104,471 for secession to 47,183 against; I can see how you are doubtful---not.

Regardless of the results they were after the politicians illegaly took Tennessee out of the Union.

I'm not sure that the June elction returns are that impressive. Many questioned the fairness of that election with the state overrun with reb armies plus the reports that in many counties, the polling was tainted with Confederate intimidation. The fact is that the political class would stop at nothing to take Tennessee out of the USA. The slavery fanatics never accepted the voice of the people against secession as indicated by this quote after the February secession defeat that was recorded by Hurlburt in 1866:

"This election is a disgrace to the State, and Tennessee is disgracing herself by longer remaining in the Union. We will see Governor Harris and he shall call an extra session of the Legislature, and damn the State we will put her out at all hazards."

There's your Confederate concern for local self-rule. Judge Souter himself has no more contempt for the legally expressed voice of the people.

Was Tennessee a Confederate state? Certainly in some ways, but I'm not sure that Tennessee was truly a Confederate state in sentiment except in the minds of latter-day Tennesseans ignorant of the sordid Tennessee Confederate progress of 1861.

Naturally I didn't learn these facts by my "hooray for Dixie" publik skool education. I had to find them out for myself by researching what men actually said and did in the 1860s.

Hooray for private education and hooray for the party of Sumner, Stevens, Lincoln and Reagan.

253 posted on 04/30/2007 10:48:03 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
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To: Non-Sequitur

I know that some of you guys THINK Lincoln is God, but he isn’t. :) Hence, He had no control over the weather, weevils, etc. :)


254 posted on 04/30/2007 10:57:53 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.......)
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To: Colonel Kangaroo

I believe Preston Brooks of South Carolina fixed Sumner’s “hash”.......(he should have just shot him in a duel, but that would have been beneath him, as Sumner was no Gentleman.)

As for Thaddeus Stevens, he just needed killing. What a pity someone didn’t do it.


255 posted on 04/30/2007 11:02:36 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861 (Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy.......)
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To: TexConfederate1861
Sumner was a principled man in a rough age. Somebody needed to tear down the powerful pretensions of the slavery owning class and Sumner did it well.

As for Stevens, his supposedly harsh hate for the South was based on justice and was really only harsh to the slaveowners. Since a large number of Confederate soldiers were poor dirt farmers, Stevens' "harshness" would have little ill-effect for them in the short run.

Stevens envisioned a South of free labor and a natural alliance of the white yeomen with newly freed black yeomen. But conflict and oppression were in the continued economic interest of the Democratic "better class" of Dixie. It was a sad day for the South when Stevens and the Radicals failed to fully suppressed this so-called better class.

Had Stevens been allowed to have his way, the South would have been a more harmonious and prosperous region. The economic revitalization that has occurred in recent decases would have probably been effected before 1900.

256 posted on 04/30/2007 11:21:06 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
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To: TexConfederate1861
I know that some of you guys THINK Lincoln is God, but he isn’t. :) Hence, He had no control over the weather, weevils, etc. :)

No, no, no. He just belongs on the Mount Rushmore of the GOP. :)


257 posted on 04/30/2007 11:28:10 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
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To: Badeye
Shelby Foote, I think, said in the Ken Burns "Civil War" mini series, that Lee always was careful to march out of step with the cadets as president of Washington College as he had left his life of a soldier in the past.

I am reminded of Lee's "Definition of a Gentleman" where he stated that a gentleman could "let the past be but the past" and forget slights or injuries inflicted upon him by others.

In urging his fellow Southerners to rejoin the union and be good citizens of the United States of America, I believe he was living out this definition of a gentleman.

258 posted on 04/30/2007 11:35:54 AM PDT by Volunteer (Just so you know, I am ashamed the Dixie Chicks make records in Nashville.)
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To: TexConfederate1861
Hence, He had no control over the weather, weevils, etc. :)

He had no control over Southern stupidity and head-long rush for war but you still insist on blaming it on him.

259 posted on 04/30/2007 1:56:10 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
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To: TexConfederate1861
I believe Preston Brooks of South Carolina fixed Sumner’s “hash”.......(he should have just shot him in a duel, but that would have been beneath him, as Sumner was no Gentleman.)

So in the South it's the gentlemanly thing to sneak up behind an older, unarmed opponent and club him half to death? No wonder you all honor John Booth.

260 posted on 04/30/2007 1:58:29 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
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