In Defense Of Robert E Lee

[mrclose]

I ran across this tidbit, in an article about Robert E. Lee and thought I'd share it.

One Sunday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, a well-dressed, lone black man, whom no one in the community—white or black—had ever seen before, had attended the service, sitting unnoticed in the last pew.

Just before communion was to be distributed, he rose and proudly walked down the center aisle through the middle of the church where all could see him and approached the communion rail, where he knelt. The priest and the congregation were completely aghast and in total shock.

No one knew what to do…except General Lee. He went to the communion rail and knelt beside the black man and they received communion together—and then a steady flow of other church members followed the example he had set.

After the service was over, the black man was never to be seen in Richmond again. It was as if he had been sent down from a higher place purposefully for that particular occasion.

Today, and deservingly so, Lee is honored throughout the country. Only Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln exceed him in monuments and memorials.

 Professor Edward C. Smith is the director of American Studies at American University, Washington, D.C., and co-director of The Civil War Institute. He is a regular columnist for National Geographic News and speaker in the National Geographic Society lecture program. He also leads interpretative tours of Civil War sites and other historic locations.


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/09/0907_smithgenlee_2.html

[Emjay]

Robert E. Lee is one of the finest men in history.

None of his statues should be defaced.

No statues should be destroyed or defaced.

Book burning is next.

[Mad Max]

Robert E. Lee is one of the finest men in history.

None of his statues should be defaced.

No statues should be destroyed or defaced.

Book burning is next.

I agree Robert E. Lee is probably one of the greatest military generals in history.  Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy in 1829.He was an great engineer and tactician during the the Mexican-American War.He served honorably in the United States Army for 30 years. He served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. When Virginia broke from the Union in 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. While the Confederates did suffer severe shortages by mid-war, they never lost a battle because of a lack of guns, ammunition or other supplies. They did lose battles because of a lack of men, and a broken-down railway system made it difficult to move troops and materials to critical points. If England fully helped the Confederacy, the South would likely would have won the war.Lee and the other generals in the South deserve to have their statues.At West Point, Lee was greatly influenced by the tactician Jomini. The military thinking of the day was influenced by Napoleon. These lessons learned from the "Great Corsican" were relayed through the writings of Jomini..At West Point the first book Lee ever checked out was a study of Napoleons campaigns, one which he became very familiar with while at the academy which were based on Jomini. Dennis Mahan based much of his theories on Jomini at West Point.His son would be Alfred Thayer Mahan, the great naval tactician. Dennis Mahan would later commit suicide by jumping off a steamer ship on the Hudson River. He jumped on the paddlewheel end of the ship

https://books.google.com/books?id=AqLvCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT116&lpg=PT116&dq=Jomini+and+Robert+E+Lee&source=bl&ots=MKmVcmWhSa&sig=Ax9WqMpRmBvvg8xfYGIK6zhzRYU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj566nmsezVAhUXwGMKHZU2C9o4ChDoAQhMMAg#v=onepage&q=Jomini%20and%20Robert%20E%20Lee&f=false
https://www.military-history.org/blog/it-was-british-arms-that-sustained-the-confederacy-during-the-american-civil-war-peter-tsouras.htm
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a222308.pdf
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/civilwar/articles/militarytheory.aspx

[Suppressed]

While the Confederates did suffer severe shortages by mid-war, they never lost a battle because of a lack of guns, ammunition or other supplies.

Technically, perhaps, but it was being noted by 1863 that only about 1 in 9 Confederate artillery shells were detonating properly.

And sometimes the Confederates had plenty of men, but they had a guy like Braxton Bragg.

[Mad Max]

Technically, perhaps, but it was being noted by 1863 that only about 1 in 9 Confederate artillery shells were detonating properly.

And sometimes the Confederates had plenty of men, but they had a guy like Braxton Bragg.

Historians  point out that the collapse of the Army of Northern Virginia, which in 1865 was virtually all that remained of the Confederacy, followed soon after the loss of Wilmington to the Union. The timing was not merely coincidental. Furthermore, the defeat of its armies was not the only way the South lost. The purpose of the Union blockade was not only to capture the ships that attempted to evade it, but also to discourage others. The blockade runners may have been numerous, but they were built for speed rather than the ability to carry cargo. The more conventional cargo vessels, and their spacious holds, went elsewhere. Unable to sell goods (particularly cotton) on the world market, the Confederate government was already strained financially as early as 1862. As its economy steadily degenerated, it suffered from a general loss of confidence on the part of its citizens.The blockade almost totally choked off Southern cotton exports, which the Confederacy depended on for hard currency. Cotton exports fell 95%, from 10 million bales in the three years prior to the war to just 500,000 bales during the blockade period. The blockade also largely reduced imports of food, medicine, war materials, manufactured goods, and luxury items, resulting in severe shortages and inflation. Shortages of bread led to occasional bread riots in Richmond and other cities, showing that patriotism was not sufficient to satisfy the daily demands of the people. Land routes remained open for cattle drovers, but after the Union seized control of the Mississippi River in summer 1863, it became impossible to ship horses, cattle and swine from Texas and Arkansas to the eastern Confederacy. The blockade was a triumph of the Union Navy and a major factor in winning the war.However, from 1861-1863 the blockade did encounter some difficulty.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_blockade
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1861-1865/blockade
http://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/the-union-blockade-of-the-southern-states.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington,_North_Carolina_in_the_American_Civil_War

[Emjay]

Robert E. Lee song
Robert E. Lee was a wonderful man,
And he hated slavery,
He didn’t want war but he said he would fight
To Keep Virginia Free

After it all was over and done, he rode into the dawn,
Where in the world is another man like him now that Lee is gone.
We will see him up in Heaven with a hundred thousand men,
He’ll be riding on old Traveler when we see Lee again.

Abraham said come and take the command of the men that I will arm
But Robert E. Lee said he couldn’t do that if it brought Virginia harm.

From the time he went home and the cannons began
Till his strength was at an end,
He gallantly fought though he knew it would end with tears for Johnny Reb.

So on his horse in the thick of the fight through the smoke and shell and grim
Men who were shot would say,”turn me , so I can see him one more time.”

Day after day it went steadily on as the houses burned at night
Till finally Lee, with an ache in his heart said I must end this fight.

Then when the smoke had gone drifting away with the food so bare and scant
Robert E. Lee in his very best gray went out to call on Grant.
They met on the porch of a little white house with the fighting at a halt,
Lee looked at his men and with tears in his eyes, he said, “It’s all my fault,”

We will see him up in Heaven with a hundred thousand men,
He’ll be riding on old Traveler when we see Lee again.

[TomSea]

Some question this event: http://civilwarmonitor.com/front-line/fantasizing-lee-as-a-civil-rights-pioneer

Apparently there's a lot of doubt surrounding the truth of this event; I'm agnostic on whether it really happened or not. What's genuinely telling is how, in recent years, the same basic elements of the anecdote have been twisted to make Lee some sort of early exemplar of racial harmony. But Colonel Broun sure didn't see it that way, and the Confederate Veteran—by its masthead, the official publication of the United Confederate Veterans, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans—didn't either. They viewed Lee's actions as a quiet act of defiance, a refusal to acknowledge the racial and cultural upheaval brought about by the end of the war.

It should not be a surprise that Lee would refuse to acknowledge the black man's presence, or would find the man's actions to be "provoking and irritating," as Lee's own words corroborate Broun's interpretation of the scene. Several years before Lee had written his wife, Mary, a letter in which he inveighed abolitionist agitators who would "Create angry feelings in the Master," an "evil Course" that would ultimately work to the detriment of those enslaved. As for the "peculiar institution" itself, Lee found it to be an unpleasant burden on both blacks and whites, but nonetheless a practice established as part of God's unknowable plan. "How long their subjugation may be necessary," Lee wrote, "is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence." Lee himself saw no end to the practice of chattel bondage, as unpleasant as it was, nor any proper role for mere human institutions to interfere with it:

Some accounts of the "Battle of the Crater"/ Battle of Peterburg say Lee's army massacred black Union soldiers after they surrendered.
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/crater_battle_of_the#start_entry
http://wikivisually.com/wiki/Battle_of_Petersburg

[Mad Max]

The interesting story is about Arlington House and how it was acquired by the American Government.The government acquired Arlington at a tax sale in 1864 for $26,800, equal to $410,000 today.Mrs. Lee had not appeared in person but rather had sent an agent, attempting to pay the $92.07 in property taxes (equal to $1,400 today) assessed on the estate in a timely manner.The government turned away her agent, refusing to accept the payment. In 1874, Custis Lee, heir under his grandfather's will passing the estate in trust to his mother, sued the United States claiming ownership of Arlington. On December 9, 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Lee's favor in United States v. Lee, deciding that Arlington had been confiscated without due process.After that decision, Congress returned the estate to him, and on March 3, 1883, Custis Lee sold it back to the government for $150,000 (equal to $3,271,364 in 2017) at a signing ceremony with Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160117100524/http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/History/Arlington-House

[Smokin Joe]

The interesting story is about Arlington House and how it was acquired by the American Government.The government acquired Arlington at a tax sale in 1864 for $26,800, equal to $410,000 today.Mrs. Lee had not appeared in person but rather had sent an agent, attempting to pay the $92.07 in property taxes (equal to $1,400 today) assessed on the estate in a timely manner.The government turned away her agent, refusing to accept the payment. In 1874, Custis Lee, heir under his grandfather's will passing the estate in trust to his mother, sued the United States claiming ownership of Arlington. On December 9, 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Lee's favor in United States v. Lee, deciding that Arlington had been confiscated without due process.After that decision, Congress returned the estate to him, and on March 3, 1883, Custis Lee sold it back to the government for $150,000 (equal to $3,271,364 in 2017) at a signing ceremony with Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160117100524/http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/History/Arlington-House

Well, they got the house back. The rest of the property is known as Arlington National Cemetary.

[Mad Max]

Well, they got the house back. The rest of the property is known as Arlington National Cemetary.

I thought that I add that in.It was underhanded by the American Government how they managed to seize the property without due process. What is also interesting that Robert Todd Lincoln  was the first son of President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln died in 1926 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.