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.

[MikefromOhio]

whoop de doo....still a traitor in my estimation.

[rockrr]

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

This coming from the klown who said, "I will give you the opportunity to have the last word so the tedious anti-liberty argument will have it's champion."

I can't figure if it is your lack of self-awareness or just an overamped case of hypocrisy that drives you.

Have a super day

[smoothsailing]

This coming from the klown who said, "I will give you the opportunity to have the last word so the tedious anti-liberty argument will have it's champion."

My statement is accurate, you embrace the anti-liberty statist position. The addition of juvenile insults is typical of such a mindset. Modern day Democrat politicians are well known practitioners. My friendly advice is that you strive to avoid the comparison.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

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.

But if we accept your premise that the southern states had left the union, as you say was their right, then there was no more compact for Lincoln to break. You can't renounce your place in the union and under the Constiution then complain that they no longer protected you.

[rockrr]

I still can’t figure if it is your lack of self-awareness or just an overamped case of hypocrisy that drives you. But I’m far less interested now than I was before.

[smoothsailing]

I would respectfully disagree. Lincoln's only available constitutional response to the lawful secession was to honor it and extend a hand of good will at the parting.

Instead he chose an unlawful war and relentless and abominable invasion to force the south to submission.

It was the act of a tyrant, a truth he and his accomplices ignored, all in the name of forcing by armed aggression the unlawful restoration of the Union, a right no just government would claim to possess or such action undertake.

They claimed a higher purpose, yet broke the compact and the law to achieve it. They were no longer a nation of laws, but no more than a mob, hellbent on vengeance and destruction.

They achieved their purpose and then proceeded to create court rulings(White v. Texas) and concoct other peculiarities in an attempt to justify their crimes. They inflicted Reconstruction on a wounded and weakened south to cause yet more pain and suffering.

Their desire for domination was insatiable and they instituted the arrogance and brute force of statism that has marched it's way through the years since and right into today's reality.

[smoothsailing]

But I’m far less interested now than I was before.

That's probably for the best. We were getting nowhere.

Take care.

[Partisan Gunslinger]

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

Exactly, not so much why.

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.

State sovereignty for slavery, as the Declarations say.

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.

Because as even you yourself just said, it was intent and action, not so much the why.

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.

It was enough of an issue that secession immediately followed the election of a president hostile to slavery.

[Partisan Gunslinger]

It was the act of a tyrant, a truth he and his accomplices ignored, all in the name of forcing by armed aggression the unlawful restoration of the Union, a right no just government would claim to possess or such action undertake.

You're forgetting the south fired the first shot. lol

[smoothsailing]

No, I haven’t forgotten. Don’t you neglect to remember that those shots were fired in response to Northern acts of war. :-)

,.......
The Southern states did not rush headlong into secession. They had enormous grievances against the North that were much greater than even Northern violations of the Constitution. The unfairness of taxation, which had been the huge issue of the Revolution, was worse for the antebellum South because three-fourths of the taxes were paid by the South, while three-fourths of the tax money was spent in the North. It had held down the development of Southern industry for a half-century and Southerners were tired of it. Southerners felt the North was already at war with them in many ways. They saw Northern emissaries sent South to encourage slave uprisings, murder and rapine, then being applauded in the North for their grisly successes, especially John Brown. Southerners saw Hinton Helper’s book, The Impending Crisis, which was full of errors on its economics, call for bloody slave revolt yet be enthusiastically adopted by the Republicans in Congress as a campaign document. With the election of Republican Lincoln, Southerners believed those same Republicans would now put into effect the principles of Helper’s book, and there was nothing they could do about it. For their own safety, Southern states began debating secession. They did so peacefully and with great intellectual vigor and in the end, the people of the South struck for independence and self-government, just as their fathers in the Revolution had.

The North, however, had become wealthy manufacturing, shipping, and financing for the captive Southern market, which was rich itself because of King Cotton. The North could not let the South go without a complete economic collapse that was well underway during the secession winter and spring of 1860-1861. All the noble rhetoric of the Horace Greeleys in 1860 about the “just powers” of the government coming from the “consent of the governed” was cast aside due to the specter of economic collapse and financial ruin, thus the war came. (Courtesy of unlawful Union aggression of course)

http://www.bonniebluepublishing.com/The%20Right%20of%20Secession.htm

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Lincoln's only available constitutional response to the lawful secession was to honor it and extend a hand of good will at the parting.

What clause of the Constitution is that?

It was the act of a tyrant, a truth he and his accomplices ignored, all in the name of forcing by armed aggression the unlawful restoration of the Union, a right no just government would claim to possess or such action undertake.

Right, because no country has ever put down a rebellion throughout all of history.

They inflicted Reconstruction on a wounded and weakened south to cause yet more pain and suffering.

Compared to the treatment of most defeated rebellions, Reconstruction was a model of charity.

Their desire for domination was insatiable and they instituted the arrogance and brute force of statism that has marched it's way through the years since and right into today's reality.

Sheesh. Hyperbolic much? I'll point out that if the US of today is such an intolerable tyranny, there are planes leaving every hour. Let us know what utopia of freedom you settle on. You also have the natural right of rebellion. Maybe it will work out for you. On the other hand, if it doesn't, we'll have to listen to you complaining about how unfair it was for another hundred and fifty years.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

The unfairness of taxation, which had been the huge issue of the Revolution, was worse for the antebellum South because three-fourths of the taxes were paid by the South, while three-fourths of the tax money was spent in the North.

Complete nonsense, a lie that's been told for 150 years. In 1860, the federal budget was $78 million. Of that, $29 million was spent on defense, $15 million was spent supporting the post office and $17 million payment on the national debt. You can find the complete Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for 1860 here. Feel free to read through it and demonstrate where three-quarters of the budget was being spent in the north.

The notion that the south was paying three-quarters of the taxes is equally absurd. The bulk of government revenue came from tariffs, and the south, with a fraction of the population, simply didn't consume that many imports. Tariff collection figures show that New York alone collected more than ten times as much as every port in the south put together.

Here's a graphic representation of the comparative amounts:

[smoothsailing]

We'll have to listen to you complaining about how unfair it was for another hundred and fifty years.

No you won't. You don't have to read my posts, or reply to them. Those decisions are yours to make, not mine. You're free to do as you please, and I'll defend your right to do it, as long as you aren't causing harm or breaking the law.

Which is a far cry from the behavior of Lincoln and his cronies and accomplices.

And if I've misstated anything, so be it. I'll stand corrected on sourced links or anything other than my defense of the sovereignty of the individual states. Secession was their right, and they exercised it lawfully. Lincoln and his cabal could have cared less, and proved it.

The Union was the instigator and aggressive party from the beginning.

Perhaps H.L. Menchen said it best...

The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech: “It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.” Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives “to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.” Mencken says: “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.” Source

Some, perhaps most of the northern soldiers, believed in the cause they fought for and I don't fault them for it. I see the southern boys the same way. It's always the soldier who pays the highest price, and we should honor his sacrifice.

Your insults are meaningless to me, and only reflect poorly on you.

That's it, we're done.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Your insults are meaningless to me, and only reflect poorly on you.

That's it, we're done.

[kiryandil]

Bubba-Spivey sneaks off into the weeds with Lee's reputation:

Click on the pic for the vid.

Bubba-Spivey sneaks off into the weeds with Lee's reputation:

[smoothsailing]

Lee could well have had the Spiveys of the world in mind when he had this to say:

[rockrr]

Your insults are meaningless to me, and only reflect poorly on you.

Hypocrite.

[smoothsailing]

It’s truly unfortunate how dense some people can be.

And quite sad how the people who attempt to impersonate low-rent bottom-feeders can become so successful at it.

Apparently it’s all in what they’re used to.

[rockrr]

Sorry - I should have said cowardly hypocrite.

[kiryandil]

LEE'S CENTENNIAL

AN ADDRESS BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, 1907

Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (May 27, 1835 – May 20, 1915) was a member of the prominent Adams family, and son of Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams). He served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

HAVING occasion once to refer in discussion to certain of the founders of our Massachusetts Commonwealth, I made the assertion that their force “lay in character;” and I added that in saying this I paid, and meant to pay, the highest tribute which in my judgment could be paid to a community or to its typical men. Quite a number of years have passed since I so expressed myself, and in those years I have grown older—materially older; but I now repeat even more confidently than I then uttered them, these other words—“The older I have grown and the more I have studied and seen, the greater in my esteem, as an element of strength in a people, has Character become, and the less in the conduct of human affairs have I thought of mere capacity or even genius. With Character a race will become great, even though as stupid and unassimilating as the Romans; without Character, any race will in the long run prove a failure, though it may number in it individuals having all the brilliancy of the Jews, crowned with the genius of Napoleon.” We are here to-day to commemorate the birth of Robert Edward Lee,—essentially a Man of Character. That he was such all I think recognize; for, having so impressed himself throughout life on his cotemporaries, he stands forth distinctly as a man of character on the page of the historian. Yet it is not easy to put in words exactly what is meant when we agree in attributing character to this man or to that, or withholding it from another;—conceding it, for instance, to Epaminondas, Cato and Wellington, but withholding it from Themistocles, Cæsar or Napoleon. Though we can illustrate what we mean by examples which all will accept, we cannot define. Emerson in his later years (1866) wrote a paper on “Character;” but in it he makes no effort at a definition. “Character,” he said, “denotes habitual self-possession, habitual regard to interior and constitutional motives, a balance not to be overset or easily disturbed by outward events and opinion, and by implication points to the source of right motive. We sometimes employ the word to express the strong and consistent will of men of mixed motive; but, when used with emphasis, it points to what no events can change, that is a will built of the reason of things.” The more matter-of-fact lexicographer defines Character as “the sum of the inherited and acquired ethical traits which give to a person his moral individuality.” To pursue further the definition of what is generally understood would be wearisome, so I will content myself with quoting this simile from a disciple of Emerson—“The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.”

That America has been rich in these men of superior virtues before whom the virtues of the common man have bent, is matter of history. It has also been our making as a community. Such in New England was John Winthrop, whose lofty example still influences the community whose infancy he fathered. Such in New York was John Jay. Such, further south, was John Caldwell Calhoun, essentially a man of exalted character and representative of his community, quite irrespective of his teachings and their outcome. Such unquestionably in Virginia were George Washington and John Marshall; and, more recently, Robert Edward Lee. A stock, of which those three were the consummate flower, by its fruits is known.

Here to commemorate the centennial of the birth of Lee, I do not propose to enter into any eulogium of the man, to recount the well-known events of his career, or to estimate the final place to be assigned him among great military characters. All this has been sufficiently done by others far better qualified for the task. Eschewing superlatives also, I shall institute no comparisons. One of a community which then looked upon Lee as a renegade from the flag he had sworn to serve, and a traitor to the Nation which had nurtured him, in my subordinate place I directly confronted Lee throughout the larger portion of the War of Secession. During all those years there was not a day in which my heart would not have been gladdened had I heard that his also had been the fate which at Chancellorsville befell his great lieutenant; and yet more glad had it been the fortune of the command in which I served to visit that fate upon him. Forty more years have since gone. Their close finds me here to-day—certainly a much older, and, in my own belief at least, a wiser man. Nay, more! A distinguished representative of Massachusetts, speaking in the Senate of the United States shortly after Lee's death upon the question of a return to Lee's family of the ancestral estate of Arlington, used these words: “Eloquent Senators have already characterized the proposition and the traitor it seeks to commemorate. I am not disposed to speak of General Lee. It is enough to say he stands high in the catalogue of those who have imbrued their hands in their country's blood. I hand him over to the avenging pen of History.” It so chances that not only am I also from the State of Massachusetts, but, for more than a dozen years, I have been the chosen head of its typical historical society,—the society chartered under the name and seal of the Commonwealth considerably more than a century ago,—the parent of all similar societies. By no means would I on that account seem to ascribe to myself any representative character as respects the employment of History's pen, whether avenging or otherwise;[note] nor do I appear here as representative of the Massachusetts Historical Society: but, a whole generation having passed away since Charles Sumner uttered the words I have quoted, I do, on your invitation, chance to stand here to-day, as I have said, both a Massachusetts man and the head of the Massachusetts Historical Society, to pass judgment upon General Lee. The situation is thus to a degree dramatic.

[note] Possibly, and more properly, this attribute might be considered as pertaining rather to James Ford Rhodes, also a member of the Society referred to, and at present a Vice-President of it. Mr. Rhodes characterization of General Lee, and consequent verdict on the course pursued by him at the time under discussion, can be found on reference to his History of the United States (vol. iii, p. 413).

Though, in what I am about to say I shall confine myself to a few points only, to them I have given no little study, and on them have much reflected. Let me, however, once for all, and with emphasis, in advance say I am not here to instruct Virginians either in the history of their State or the principles of Constitutional Law; nor do I make any pretence to profundity whether of thought or insight. On the contrary I shall attempt nothing more than the elaboration of what has already been said by others as well as by me, such value or novelty as may belong to my share in the occasion being attributable solely to the point of view of the speaker. In that respect, I submit, the situation is not without novelty; for, so far as I am aware, never until now has one born and nurtured in Massachusetts—a typical bred-in-the-bone Yankee, if you please—addressed at its invitation a Virginian audience, on topics relating to the War of Secession and its foremost Confederate military character.

Coming directly to my subject, my own observation tells me that the charge still most commonly made against Lee in that section of the common country to which I belong and with which I sympathize is that, in plain language, he was false to his flag,—educated at the national academy, an officer of the United States Army, he abjured his allegiance and bore arms against the government he had sworn to uphold. In other words he was a military traitor. I state the charge in the tersest language possible; and the facts are as stated. Having done so, and admitting the facts, I add as the result of much patient study and most mature reflection, that under similar conditions I would myself have done exactly what Lee did. In fact, I do not see how I, placed as he was placed, could have done otherwise.

And now fairly entered on the first phase of my theme, I must hurry on; for I have much ground to traverse, and scant time in which to cover it. I must be concise, but must not fail to be explicit. And first as to the right or wrong of secession, this theoretically; then practically, as to what secession in the year of grace 1861 necessarily involved.

If ever a subject had been thoroughly thrashed out,—so thrashed out in fact as to offer no possible gleaning of novelty,—it might be inferred that this was that subject. Yet I venture the opinion that such is not altogether the case. I do so moreover not without weighing words. The difficulty with the discussion has to my mind been that through out it has in essence been too abstract, legal and technical, and not sufficiently historical, sociological and human. It has turned on the wording of instruments, in themselves not explicit, and has paid far too little regard to traditions and local ties. As matter of fact, however, actual men as they live, move and have their being in this world, caring little for parchments or theory, are the creatures of heredity and local attachments. Coming directly to the point, I maintain that every man in the eleven States seceding from the Union had in 1861, whether he would or no, to decide for himself whether to adhere to his State or to the Nation; and I finally assert that, whichever way he decided, if only he decided honestly, putting self-interest behind him, he decided right.

Paradoxical as it sounds, I contend, moreover, that this was indisputably so. It was a question of Sovereignty—State or National; and from a decision of that question there was in a seceded State escape for no man. Yet when the national Constitution was framed and adopted that question was confessedly left undecided; and intentionally so left. More than this, even: the Federal Constitution was theoretically and avowedly based on the idea of a divided sovereignty, in utter disregard of the fact that, when a final issue is presented, sovereignty does not admit of division.

Yet even this last proposition, basic as it is, I have heard denied. I have frequently had it replied that, as matter of fact, sovereignty is frequently divided,—divided in domestic life,—divided in the apportionment of the functions of government. Those thus arguing, however, do so confusedly. They confound sovereignty with an agreed, but artificial, modus vivendi. The original constitution of the United States was, in fact, in this important respect just that,—a modus vivendi: under the circumstances a most happy and ingenious expedient for overcoming an obstacle in the way of nationality, otherwise insurmountable. To accomplish the end they had in view, the framers had recourse to a metaphysical abstraction, under which it was left to time and the individual to decide, when the final issue should arise, if it ever did arise—as they all devoutly hoped it never would arise—where sovereignty lay. There is nothing in connection with the history of our development more interesting from the historical point of view than the growth, the gradual development of the spirit of nationality, carrying with it sovereignty. It has usually been treated as a purely legal question to be settled on the verbal construction of the instruments,—“We, the People,” etc. Webster so treated it. In all confidence I maintain that it is not a legal question; it is purely an historical question. As such, furthermore, it has been decided, and correctly decided, both ways at different times in different sections, and at different times in opposite ways in the same section.

And this was necessarily and naturally so; for, as development progressed along various lines and in different localities, the sense of allegiance shifted. Two whole generations passed away between the adoption of the Federal Constitution and the War of Secession. When that war broke out in 1861 the last of the framers had been a score of years in his grave; but evidence is conclusive that until the decennium between 1830 and 1840 the belief was nearly universal that in case of a final, unavoidable issue, sovereignty resided in the State, and to it allegiance was due. The law was so laid down in the Kentucky resolves of 1798; and to the law as thus laid down Webster assented. Chancellor Rawle so propounded the law; and such was the understanding of so unprejudiced and acute a foreign observer as De Tocqueville.[note]

[note] See Appendix.

The technical argument—the logic of the proposition—seems plain and, to my thought, unanswerable. The original sovereignty was indisputably in the State; in order to establish a nationality certain attributes of sovereignty were ceded by the States to a common central organization; all attributes not thus specifically conceded were reserved to the States, and no attributes of moment were to be construed as conceded by implication. There is no attribute of sovereignty so important as allegiance,—citizenship. So far all is elementary. Now we come to the crux of the proposition. Not only was allegiance—the right to define and establish citizenship—not among the attributes specifically conceded by the several States to the central nationality, but, on the contrary, it was explicitly reserved, the instrument declaring that “the citizens of each State” should be entitled to “all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” Ultimate allegiance was, therefore, due to the State which defined and created citizenship, and not to the central organization which accepted as citizens whomever the States pronounced to be such.[note]...

Read the rest @ http://leearchive.wlu.edu/reference/misc/centennial/adams.html

(We'll post pickchurs fer the Spiveys, since they have trouble with the written word...)