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Title: Robert E Lee himself was opposed to Confederate Monuments
Source:
Business Insider
URL Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/robe ... d-confederate-monuments-2017-8
Published: Aug 16, 2017
Author: Daniel Brown
Post Date: 2017-08-16 18:30:42 by Willie Green
Keywords: None
Views: 4379
Comments: 26
The violence that erupted in Charlottesville over the weekend, which left one woman killed and dozens more injured, stemmed from a white nationalist and alt-right protest over the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Debates about the removal of Confederate statues have been ongoing for many years, and opponents of removing the monuments often decry such attempts as an attempt to erase history. In light of all this, it's probably best to remember one relevant historical fact: Robert E. Lee was opposed to Confederate monuments. “It’s often forgotten that Lee himself, after the Civil War, opposed monuments, specifically Confederate war monuments,” Jonathan Horn, a Lee biographer, told PBS. After the Civil War, Lee received a number of letters requesting support for the erection of Confederate memorials, according to Horn. In June 1866, he wrote that he couldn't support a monument of one of his best generals, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, saying it wasn't "feasible at this time." "As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated," Lee wrote in December 1866 about another proposed Confederate monument, "my conviction is, that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the attempt in the present condition of the Country, would have the effect of retarding, instead of accelerating its accomplishment; [and] of continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under which the Southern people labour." Not only was Lee opposed to Confederate memorials, "he favored erasing battlefields from the landscape altogether," Horn wrote. He even supported getting rid of the Confederate flag after the Civil War ended, and didn't want them them flying above Washington College, which he was president of after the war. "Lee did not want such divisive symbols following him to the grave," Horn wrote. "At his funeral in 1870, flags were notably absent from the procession. Former Confederate soldiers marching did not don their old military uniforms, and neither did the body they buried." “His Confederate uniform would have been ‘treason’ perhaps!” Lee’s daughter wrote, according to Horn. "Lee believed countries that erased visible signs of civil war recovered from conflicts quicker,” Horn told PBS. “He was worried that by keeping these symbols alive, it would keep the divisions alive." Poster Comment: It's understandable that he didn't want any shameful reminders that he was a LOSER.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 9.
#5. To: Willie Green (#0)
(Edited)
A LOSER? That is as uncharitable as it is untrue. Robert E. Lee justly deserves the warm regard in which he has been held for nearly a century and a half by citizens on both sides of the old Mason-Dixon line. He was a man of principle who did what he did out of a deep sense of duty. He was the most effective commanding general of the war on either side. He made errors, of course - all commanders do - but the errors he made were in daring great things, to try and win what was essentially an unwinnable war. The South was overwhelmed in the end by the superior manpower, industrial power and economic power of the North, and by its own intrinsic contradictions, but none of that can be laid at the feet of Robert E. Lee. He did as well as any American general could under the circumstances he was presented, and bested every Union commander thrown at him until Grant. In defeat, Lee made the wise choice for all of the people of America - to NOT continue the war as a guerrilla, to accept that it was over and lay down arms peacefully in surrender, and then to seek to repair the country to the extent that it could be done. Robert E. Lee was no loser. He was the embodiment of the greatest and noblest aspects of the American character. His Cause was wrong, but he believed it his duty to fight for his country. Lee does not deserve to be vilified and insulted any more than Grant does. They were military men, doing their duty, and because they were both very good at it, unfortunately the war was prolonged and the bloodshed was terrible. Neither was the cause of the war, neither wanted the war, neither enjoyed fighting it, both thought - correctly - that it was an utter tragedy. Each did his duty. Each did what he believed he had to do. Each did it well. And they both deserve the honor that is due to American fighting men who do their duty in the face of death and destruction. Lee's character is one of the key reasons that the Civil War is in the history books, finished in 1865. If Lee had been an aggressive, fanatical, mean-spirited bastard he COULD HAVE done what Bedford Forrest sought to do - break up his army and fight an ongoing guerrilla war. Then there would have never been peace, just as there was no peace in Ireland for centuries. BECAUSE Lee was a man of honor, that didn't happen. He saw that the war could not be won, he surrendered with dignity to spare his men, and he spent the rest of his life holding the stance that the peace must be respected and restored. That "loser", as you call him, is a key reason that the fight was really OVER in 1865, and we haven't had the misery of ongoing low-level civil war ever since. Character matters, and the character of Lee mattered a great deal - probably more than any other single man - for the ultimately peaceful post-war settlement. He COULD have poured oil on the fire and prolonged the agony for years. Instead, he retired and urged peace and reconciliation. If only the whole country were filled with such "losers", what a great country we would have. I am so Northern that I should live on a glacier, but even I have the greatest respect for General Robert E. Lee, because he EARNED it. You should not call him a loser. It's not right. There were plenty of other Confederate generals, and even more Union generals, who deserve that title. Lee does not. I can understand why blacks will always oppose Confederate monuments. That is their right. Statues to Bedford Forrest and the Ku Klux Klan are not honorable. But it is not honorable either to pull down statues of Robert E. Lee. He WAS honorable, and we all would do very well to emulate him. No, I don't like it at all when people pick on Robert E. Lee. I don't look up to many men. I DO look up to him, and that's saying something given my "Burn them to the ground" attitude about slavery.
Very well written! I could almost ask if you copied it from somewhere else.
#19. To: Pinguinite (#9)
No. I wrote it myself. And I'd amend one remark in it if I could. Bedford Forrest was himself a really brilliant general, and he, too, did the honorable thing at the end of the war - surrendering rather than fighting a guerilla. The guerilla came later, when he headed up a branch of the KKK. This was despicable. BUT - and this is important - Forrest himself eventually came to see things in a different light, and ultimately agreed that Blacks should be treated equally, standing for grad school admissions for black men. Is that not precisely the sort of evolution that Christians want to see in people? We're all bad, we all sin. If we're looking for sinless men we have to look to novels. Men sin. Men make bad decisions. And many of the bad decisions that men make are not themselves sins - the motivation for the decision is everything. The grandees of the Confederacy were indeed about preserving and expanding slavery. But Lee and Jackson and Longstreet, and Forrest, were about defending their nation. We can, likewise, recognize the honor of men like Erwin Rommel or the Baron von Richtofen EVEN THOUGH they fought for the other side. Some of the French officers who fought to help free America had fought alongside the Indians against the same American colonists during the preceding French and Indian war. Men who do their duty deserve some degree of honor, even if their cause is wrong. Now, returning to Forrest - he fought to protect his country. He lost. He called, as did Lee, for men to lay down their arms and cooperate with the government rather than continue the bloodshed. Later, contaminated by the racial beliefs of the time, he led a part of the Klan, but longer experience in life caused him to change his mind. That's all we can ask of any man - that he do his duty as he understands it, and that, if he has made a mistake, when his eyes and mind clear on the issue, that he correct it. Forrest did just exactly that - his statues should also stay up. Is that not, after all, what we WANT of men when we complain about racism, or sexism, or greed, or immoral conduct? Don't we complain because we want them to act right and stop doing the wrong thing? Don't want want repentance and reformation? It appears that the alt-Left does not want that. Rather, they want what they call "Justice", not for themselves and their own sins, but for anybody they disagree with. Their approach to "justice" looks a whole lot more like revenge, and that is not a good thing - IF one is hoping for a civil society that moves forward in peace. In that regard, I retract my statement about Forrest. He did his duty too. He made some really bad political decisions later in life. But in the end he came to his senses. And THAT is the moral and lesson of the Civil War. Don't pull down the statues. Instead, put longer plaques on them that not only say what they did in the war, but also what they did AFTERWARDS. Lee didn't have to redeem himself. Forrest fell, but he did redeem himself. Jackson, of course, never got the chance to redeem himself. And the boys in grey, and in blue, who were splattered all over the fields of the Eastern USA deserve their little monument. Having it there, with the proper plaque that gives perspective, means that what they did and why can stand as an example both of duty and of folly - and if presented right, can teach us all to become like Bedford Forrest and "get it". Pull down these statues, erase the history because the motivations of many men were bad - this is not good. At any rate I don't like it. If we were talking about conquered barbarians and heathens, like the Nazi Germans, then yes, victor's justice permits the complete wiping out of Nazi symbology, and laws that establish, by terror, that the German will not be PERMITTED to think Nazi thoughts and organize himself socially in that way again. After two world wars, Americans and French, and others, have the RIGHT to put a collar around the neck of Germany and set the limits as to what those people may do with their self-government. But the Confederates were not self-worshiping German nihilists. They didn't crater the world. And their enemies were not foreign peoples liberally slaughtered by them, twice in as many decades. The Confederates were Americans. Our system itself was broken from the beginning, incorporating the slavery of the British Empire into the fabric of a nation founded on the principle of individual liberty. In the end liberty won out, but it could not do so without destroying the old fabric of a society built on slavery. The war destroyed that fabric. Slavery was not restored. There was no "second act" in which Lee and Longstreet, or Forrest, sought to return to slavery by force of arms. They surrendered to restore the peace, and two of them kept it. One didn't, for a time, but came to regret that. We cannot expect more from men than that. The Alt-Left DEMANDS more from the world than that, and they do it by their own hypocritical standard of "Justice". But there is no justice in their "justice". It's arbitrary and brutal, and it should be opposed. Leave the statues up. Put an additional plaque on them detailing how those men contributed to the peace, how they ultimately redeemed themselves in the eyes of any Left wing Christian: repentance and contrition, a change of heart. That's why those monuments must stay up. Look at America now. We HAVE changed. We DID learn. If we let the Alt-Left simply tear down the past, the "justice" we're getting is the justice of the Taliban, and this country never was and is not even remotely a Muslim country, so that sort of absolutist Muslim "justice" has no place here.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestIt's understandable that he didn't want any shameful reminders that he was a LOSER.
#9. To: Vicomte13 (#5)
Replies to Comment # 9. Very well written! I could almost ask if you copied it from somewhere else.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 9.
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