Posted on 01/17/2015 2:31:16 PM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at huntingtonnews.net ...
Interesting. You’ll respond to a question with an insult, but not with a straight answer. Given your overall behavior on head these threads, I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s either the same insults of another chunk of the only thing you seem to have ever read on the Civil War.
You may be thinking of Preston Brooks who tried to kill Charles Sumner on the floor of the senate.
Perhaps, but not in this passage from his 1907 Address:
Charles Adams wrote: "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."
Sumner would have arced out hearing Adams' Lee Address, and history has forgotten the vile Sumner, but remembered with fondness the peerless Robert E. Lee - to the extent that gibbering foamers make post after post after post assailing the Character which Charles Adams so ably defends, brushing aside their childish insults like so many gnats.
Adams had too much class to do the Spivey with Sumner's reputation, but his Lee Address does it for him.
You forget that I've dealt with and bested many of your betters in the trolling game.
No sale, troll. :)
Yes indeed, and can be seen as an initiating or retaliating act, depending on your assessment of what preceded it.
This is a good demonstration of the way an unjust mind thinks. You, as a southern secessionist supporter, see nothing wrong with a congressman using physical violence on the floor of Congress, and actually goes as far as showing a bloodlust for murder on the floor of Congress. So, if you see nothing wrong with this action, then what could be wrong with slavery?
Of course, Charles Francis Adams Jr. repudiated the behavior of his fellow Massachusetts politician in the address that is the subject of this thread. It should be noted that Adams fought in the Civil War, as a Union colonel, and that Sumner fought by sliming with his mouth.
So Sumner, being a member of Congress, should never have expressed his opinions? Do you also agree with the Paris cartoonist killers?
I don't know and I don't care. There's the concept of letting idiotic statements fall on their own.
Yes, thanks!
I'm not on the record as a supporter of secession.
I just know that Sumner was a scumbag, and Robert E. Lee was not a scumbag.
So it's okay to murder those you disagree with because they are "scumbags".
Retaliating for what? What hostile act had the Sumter garrison performed prior to the bombardment? Other than not surrendering?
And yet here we are discussing him, brought into the conversation by...you.
It is a question I've asked many a Lost Causer, and most try to dodge the issue. It goes to a fundamental understanding of those natural rights you were talking about. If a state has a right to secession, why not a county, a town, a city block, an individual? What makes the state the magical molecule of sovereignty?
You forget that I've dealt with and bested many of your betters in the trolling game.
Yes, your posts here leave little doubt to your experience in being a troll.
And neither you nor Partisan Gunslinger knew of the man's name.
I think that speaks of history's judgment on Scumner. :)
Nice of you to admit you were trolling, as I so clearly called it.
Do you understand that I'm not interested in the trolling of lightweights like yourself?
Scumner was trolling the Southerners, and got what he deserved. Brooks wanted to challenge him to a duel, but was counseled to treat him like a drunkard, instead.
Hence, the caning. Imposing your 21st century values on a 19th century incident speaks volumes...
And yet, here I am discussing the attack on Sumner in Congress almost eight years ago:
Symposium to honor Lee, villain or 'the noblest ever' ?As I said before, you're really not very good at this.Wrong, he got his attention first, then beat hell out of him. Which he deserved.
Sumner was at his desk in the chamber when Brooks came up to him and said, "Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." Sumner started to stand up, but Brooks began beating him with the gold-headed cane. Sumner was trapped by the desk, which was bolted to the floor until he tore it out. Several other senators tried to come to Sumner's aid, but Lawrence Keitt pulled a pistol and held them at bay. Sumner fell to the floor unconscious and Brooks continued to beat him until the cane broke. Only then did he turn and walk out of the chamber.
Southern "honor" in action, I suppose. The one good thing that came out of it was to show the north just what kind of people the southerners were and did much to galvanize the new Republican party.
264 posted on April 30, 2007 at 5:27:25 PM PDT by Bubba Ho-Tep
It’s not trolling to ask your opponent about the fundamental principles of his argument. See, what I think is that you’re afraid to answer the question, because you recognize that your answer is certain to be self-contradictory.
So in what year exactly was it that it was no longer considered proper to beat your political opponent on the floor of the House of Representatives?
See, what I think is that you’ve admitted to trolling the Free Republic Southerner contingent since at least 2007.
I usually don't get involved in these things, but a number of you Spiveys appeared to need a caning over the Lee issue.
You really need to get a girlfriend - perhaps it would lessen your "needs" for trolling the Southerners.
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