Remembering Robert E. Lee: American Patriot and Southern Hero

Huntington News ^ | January 12, 2015 | Calvin E. Johnson, Jr.

[BigReb555]

During Robert E. Lee's 100th birthday in 1907, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., a former Union Commander and grandson of US President John Quincy Adams, spoke in tribute to Robert E. Lee at Washington and Lee College's Lee Chapel in Lexington, Virginia. His speech was printed in both Northern and Southern newspapers and is said to had lifted Lee to a renewed respect among the American people.

[smoothsailing]

Thank you for the info. I found an excellent website that backs up your post.

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Presentation sword: slightly curved blade with quill back, etched with floral designs, stands of arms and trophies, ”Gen’l Robert E. Lee, from a marylander 1863” on obverse, ”Aide toi et Dieu t’aidera” (Help yourself and God will help you) and reverse, all decorations gilded; back of blade inscribed with the maker’s name, ”Devisme à Paris.” half-basket hilt of gilded brass bearing in high relief floral designs, draped figures, a snake intertwined throughout branches, and a shield bearing a Latin cross; lion’s head pommel with backstrap suggesting fur; ivory grip wound with 10 turns of 3 twist gilt wire. Blued metal scabbard (.1b) with ornamented gilded brass mounts.

Gen. Robert E. Lee owned this sword and scabbard during the war. It was a gift from an unnamed Maryland Confederate sympathizer in 1863 (one possibility is Samuel H. Tagart, of Baltimore, Maryland; Lee stopped at his home both before and after the war); it is believed Lee would not name the donor for fear of Federal reprisal upon him. This is the only known example of an edged weapon made exclusively for the South and which bears Confederate inscriptions from the maker (Devisme of Paris, France). Lee wore this sword to the surrender at Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865.

Source-The Museum of the Confederacy

[Partisan Gunslinger]

Thank you. I like my handle, "Nowhere Man" is my CB handle when I fire up the rig. I can't deny slavery was a part of the Civil War but it was not the only issue or even the main one.

The Declarations of Secession say it was the main cause.

[DoodleDawg]

"I think Ulysses S. Grant is vastly underrated as a man and as a general. I know people think this and that about his drinking habits, which I think have been exaggerated way out of line. The fact is, he never demanded more men or material from the war department, he took over an army that had a long history of retreating and losing. That army had no confidence in their fighting ability and Grant came in as a real outsider. He had so many disadvantages going into the 1864 campaign, now 100 years ago. But he met every test and rose to the occasion unlike I’ve ever seen in American history. He was a very tough yet very fair man and a great soldier. He’s not been given his due...Grant devised a strategy to end the war. He alone had the determination, foresight, and wisdom to do it. It was lucky that President Lincoln didn’t interfere or attempt to control Grant’s strategic line of thinking. Lincoln wisely left the war to Grant, at least in the concluding moves after he came east. Grant is very undervalued today, which is a shame, because he was one of the greatest American generals, if not the greatest." - Dwight Eisenhower to Walter Cronkite, June 1964

It would appear that Eisenhower admired other men from the war as well.

[Partisan Gunslinger]

Well we like the yankee touristas because they come, spend money and then thankfully leave. Its the ones that come down, stay then start voting to try to turn GA into the same Northern chithole they left behind that put a burr under our blanket. :-)

What puts a burr under my blanket is that the worst socialist president we've ever had pre-Obama/Clinton was FDR, and FDR never lost a southern state in his elections. So don't think the south is all that when it comes to conservatism. Even Alabama in the 80s sang about how great FDR was in "Song of the South".

[Partisan Gunslinger]

I often wonder how the War Between the States was taught in schools back 120 years ago, 100 years ago, or even 70 years ago.

I bet they taught the Declarations of Secession that mentioned slavery over and over and over.

[smoothsailing]

The Declarations of Secession say it was the main cause.

The Declarations of Secession were only offered by 4 of the 13 seceding states, so are a bit limited as a justification of the actions of all the states that seceded.

Far more instructive are the Ordinances of Secession, submitted individually by each of the seceding states. Their reason for secession was the same in each case. To retain and maintain their sovereignty.

They claimed the northern states and the federal government had broken it's compact and violated the constitution, consequently they were no longer bound to the Union. They were unanimous on this assertion.

Was slavery an issue? An underlying one most certainly, so far as it pertained to the over-riding necessity to protect state sovereignty from the unconstitutional actions, unlawful hostility, and outright aggression of the north.

[Partisan Gunslinger]

The Declarations of Secession were only offered by 4 of the 13 seceding states, so are a bit limited as a justification of the actions of all the states that seceded.

The Ordinances were just stating secession. The Declarations got more into the why, and the why was slavery, as they indeed declared. The big players put out the Declarations.

Far more instructive are the Ordinances of Secession, submitted individually by each of the seceding states. Their reason for secession was the same in each case. To retain and maintain their sovereignty.

Just stating secession, not so much into the why.

They claimed the northern states and the federal government had broken it's compact and violated the constitution, consequently they were no longer bound to the Union. They were unanimous on this assertion. Was slavery an issue? An underlying one most certainly, so far as it pertained to the over-riding necessity to protect state sovereignty from the unconstitutional actions, unlawful hostility, and outright aggression of the north.

Funny how it was always slavery that made these states suddenly push for state's rights. They didn't seem to mind losing state's rights under FDR, FDR never lost a southern state.

[sagar]

Defender of human slavery. Not American. Anti-American, actually. 19th Century ISIS!

Nuff Said, fire away!

[smoothsailing]

The Ordinances were all that mattered. They were the legal documents stating intent and action.

Any honest reading of them clearly reveals that the cause of maintaining and defending individual state sovereignty was the reason for them. The wording is clear, it’s meaning beyond doubt.

The interesting thing about the Ordinances is the fact that slavery is not even mentioned in most of them, and only fleetingly in the rest.

That’s because to the seceding states, slavery was a constitutionally protected institution, not an issue at all if only the Federal Union would honor it’s compact to the states and it’s sacred oath to the constitution.

But the Federal Union preferred to meddle in the affairs of the sovereign states, force it’s will upon them, and violate the very constitution it was sworn to uphold and defend.

Sound familiar? It should, since the liberty-smothering machinations of the central government oppress the states to this day.

[rockrr]

The interesting thing about the Ordinances is the fact that slavery is not even mentioned in most of them, and only fleetingly in the rest.

That is because the Ordinances declared what they were doing while the Declarations spelled out why they were doing what they were doing.

That’s because to the seceding states, slavery was a constitutionally protected institution, not an issue at all if only the Federal Union would honor it’s compact to the states and it’s sacred oath to the constitution.

But the federal union did honor its compact insofar as slavery was concerned. It wasn't until after the southern states rebelled and committed acts of insurrection against their fellow states did the union react.

[smoothsailing]

But the federal union did honor its compact insofar as slavery was concerned. It wasn't until after the southern states rebelled and committed acts of insurrection against their fellow states did the union react.

Such an assertion proceeds from a false premise. The secessionist states were acting constitutionally, not rebelliously. Consequently, there could be no insurrection on their part, only acts of self-defense.

It was northern aggression directed by the Federal Union in the person of Lincoln that acted to crush the secessionist states for seceding, something the states had every right to do. Lincoln by force of arms would compel the states to rejoin the Union, or they would be destroyed. There can be no doubt that the Federal Union broke the compact. The secessionist states wanted only to leave the Union in peace and go their own way, independent, sovereign, and free. As was their right.

The original Constitution as agreed to by the several states specifically enumerates the powers granted to the Union government and explicitly states that all powers not granted to the Union government are reserved to the states, or the people. Since the authority to remove a state from the Union is not granted to the government, (i.e. Congress can't remove Virginia) the authority is reserved to the states.

The 10th amendment was never more clear or pertinent. The ultimate authority of deciding if a state is to stay with or vacate the Union was not granted to the Union, thus it resided solely with the states.

That's it, that's all it ever was. Lincoln could not have cared less. He couldn't wait to violate the compact and ignore his oath of office. So he didn't.

[rockrr]

The ultimate authority of deciding if a state is to stay with or vacate the Union was not granted to the Union, thus it resided solely with the states.

Thank you for using the proper plural form. The only way to secede was to do so mutually - by the states. That wasn't how the cornfederates did it. They chose unilateral secession which wasn't recognized by anyone except themselves.

Lincoln honored his oath by putting down an insurrection.

[smoothsailing]

Mutuality and perpetual Union were peculiarities of The Articles of Confederation, which were replaced by the U.S. Constitution, so ignoring the 10th Amendment was a violation of Lincoln’s oath and an unlawful act. Lincoln was a lawyer, he knew that. It didn’t matter to him, he saw his loyalties as lying elsewhere.

Since further discussion will most certainly be circular, I will withdraw. It’s old history and hardly worth beating to death further.

I bid you a good day.

[rockrr]

Except that he didn’t ignore it. The slavers had no right to quit the union in the method they chose and Lincoln held them to their commitments.

Have a nice evening.

[smoothsailing]

SECESSION: IT'S CONSTITUTIONAL--- Walter E. Williams offers evidence from 18th and 19th century U.S. history

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. Jamees Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, rejected it, saying: “A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”

On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that said, “No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s my no-brainer question: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?

[smoothsailing]

The Right of Secession

[rockrr]

Those are both interesting opinion pieces but irrelevant.

If we accept the idea that the Constitution is a compact between equals, then it stands to reason that no one state has any powers denied another state. Likewise it would also stand to reason that the Constitution protects all states equally. But to believe that states may leave at will, without the consent of all the impacted parties, is to believe that only the seceding states have rights that are to be respected and that only the seceding states have any protections. They are free to take any action, regardless of how it may harm the remaining states, just by leaving and there is nothing that those states can do to prevent it. I doubt any of the Founding Fathers supported such a notion.

The south, knowing that they had no legal right to unilaterally secede, did so anyway. This was the source of a disagreement with the sitting president. Unfortunately although he said it was illegal he also claimed that he was powerless to stop it.

Eventually this disagreement took on the sharp edge of open hostilities. A war was waged and the south lost. An after effect of the civil War was a Supreme Court ruling that renders these to op-ed pieces irrelevant, That ruling is Texas v. White and still stands.

Secession - as practiced by the slavers in 1861 - is illegal.

[smoothsailing]

Those are both interesting opinion pieces but irrelevant.

Your post is an opinion piece. It too is irrelevant, accepted only by the like minded, who are wrong.

Secession was clearly both legal and constitutional. Those who denied that were driven by their own agendas, ignoring both facts and history. There's was a disservice to liberty and an affront to the founding documents. The shame of the unlawful war and mass murder they brought forth is theirs to bear for all eternity.

I will give you the opportunity to have the last word so the tedious anti-liberty argument will have it's champion.

Good day.

[rockrr]

How utterly cowardly of you.

[smoothsailing]

So now it’s insults. Can you go lower? Shame on you.