What a magnificent horse.
Both were the best of America.
Posted on 01/18/2005 5:57:53 PM PST by wagglebee
General Lee's family used to own Virginia Gentleman (the whiskey company); however, I believed they sold it.
Thanks ... wow, lots of good stuff there that all my kids would probably like!
What's your favorite book on General Lee?
My take on that has always been that he did it because his army was just about done from the years of defense. He saw that he was running out of men, and the invasion was the last gasp effort for victory.
Thanks. She's reading this over my shoulder.
Happy birthday to you, as well!
Freeman died in 1953.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0819603.html
Lee was a very admirable man. Didn't the South attack the North first though. The slave thing. The North tried to make it an ideological war instead of the percieved attacking war. Note that the slaves in Union border states weren't freed.
This one I've seen at home school conventions, and considered buying, but we're always pinching pennies ... and not exactly a complete biography.
Opinion, Mr. Devereaux, on the best biography of General Lee, extra points for a living author?
Instead we remember him as the guy who got whooped by the North at Gettysburg
--time to duck---
:-)
This whole post is stated perfectly.
Thank you!
Our Country has suffered from not acknowledging his stature. Along with others in our not too distant past.
Not to mention that his home became Arlington Cemetary
Having read other Burke Davis works, his "Gray Fox: Robert E. Lee and the Civil War" might be worth checking out, but I have always accepted Freeman as the authority on Lee.
What a magnificent horse.
Both were the best of America.
Lee had just won the Second Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) in 1862 when he went north into Maryland and fought to a draw at Antietam in mid-September of 1862. Antietam was a bloodbath for both sides; however, it was a bid demoralizer for the South. All of the major battles up to that point had gone to Lee. Gettysburg was the "last gasp" you are talking about.
Lee ranks up with Rommel and Hannibal (to me) as a great strategist.
The war really began when Lincoln called for volunteers. There was no other purpose for this than to force the South back into the Union.
The first shots were fired at Fort Pickens, but the real start was when the North decided to resupply Ft. Sumter.
This fort blocked the major port of the South.
Some of us KNOW he fought on the right side!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GENERAL LEE, SIR!
You should also consider the fact that only a very small proportion of white Southerners of the Civil War period owned slaves ... but a very large percentage fought against the invaders. (And black Southerners included not only slaves, but free black slave-owners, and both slave and free black Confederate soldiers!)
Real history is always more complicated than sound-bite ideology. The nobility of General Lee is beyond the details of history. He was a truly saintly man, and I say that as a Catholic :-). We consider General Lee and General Jackson the "patron saints" of our home school, and we firmly believe they are in Heaven praying for us.
Where I come from, we still remember him as General Lee, he was ultimately forced to surrender to an ungentlemanly slob who became a drunken disgrace whose presidency was mired in scandal and incompetence.
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