"Conservative" David Brooks on Gen Lee

New York Times ^ | 6/26/15 | David Brooks

[ghost of stonewall jackson]

The harder call concerns Robert E. Lee. Should schools and other facilities be named after the great Confederate general, or should his name be removed and replaced?

The case against Lee begins with the fact that he betrayed his oath to serve the United States. He didn’t need to do it. The late historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor demonstrated that 40 percent of Virginia officers decided to remain with the Union forces, including members of Lee’s family.

As the historian Allen Guelzo emailed me, “He withdrew from the Army and took up arms in a rebellion against the United States.” He could have at least sat out the war. But, Guelzo continues, “he raised his hand against the flag and government he had sworn to defend. This more than fulfills the constitutional definition of treason.”

More germane, while Lee may have opposed slavery in theory he did nothing to eliminate or reduce it in practice. On the contrary, if he’d been successful in the central task of his life, he would have preserved and prolonged it.

Like Lincoln he did not believe African-Americans were yet capable of equality. Unlike Lincoln he accepted the bondage of other human beings with bland complaisance. His wife inherited 196 slaves from her father. Her father’s will (somewhat impractically) said they were to be freed, but Lee didn’t free them.

[grania]

This whole thing is about manipulating grief over a horrific tragedy to assault states’ rights. The goal is to erase historical and cultural memory of the complex nature and traditions of the United States.

[Moonman62]

U.S Grant, on the other hand, accumulated numerous demerits and finished in the bottom third of his class. And within six weeks of launching his Overland Campaign, he had Lee under siege in Petersburg, after which Lee was simply delaying the inevitable.

...

Not just Grant, but a lot of top officers didn’t do that well at West Point.

And to be fair, Grant had a lot more resources than Lee at that point of the war.

OTOH, at the start of the war, Grant was a practical nobody working as a clerk in his father’s store.

[oldvirginian]

Exactly!

People forget that at the time of the Civil War, most Americans described themselves as Americans *secondly*, their identities came from the state they resided in.

Virginians were first and foremost Virginians.
The same with North Carolinians, Texans, Georgians, New Yorkers, Indianans and so forth.

Even in the north, people claimed state residence before national residence.
They may have been more comfortable with a strong central government, but they still claimed state residence first.

Oddly, here in the south, most of the older generations claim statehood before nationhood.
It’s less pronounced in the younger generation, and less still in the youngest generation.

It must have something to do with the heavy concentration of Scotts in the early settlers in the south.

[DoodleDawg]

“In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country.”

And Lee continued:

"I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race...The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race..."

So if Lee thought that blacks were better off here, in slavery, and that slavery was necessary to prepare them for better things some time in the far distant future then how can you say Lee was opposed to slavery?

[KGeorge]

Lee freed his own slaves a good 10 years before the war began. Many of them continued to live with him long after the war ended & all slaves had been freed.

People on all sides try to frame that era according to modern times’ society, but it’s comparing apples & oranges. It’s sad & frustrating that people are so incurious, stubborn, self righteous, & willfully ignorant. Few people (it seems) can even fathom a time they haven’t experienced.
They should just stay out of it if they can’t do any better than that. (Sorry if that’s blunt.)

[mojito]

Brooks brings out “Stalin's airbrush” for General Lee.

It's important to remember that Brooks isn't writing for any real conservatives, as no real conservative consults the NYSlimes for meaningful commentary. A real conservative will experience mild nausea or retching if exposed to the Slimes’ editorial pages for more than a few minutes.

Rather, Brooks see himself as functioning as a soundboard for progressivism's loopier ideas, and if he thinks they will pass muster in the general culture, he wholeheartedly endorses them.

So Brooks just signaled to the lunatics that they are free to go after Gen. Lee, as the time is seen as ripe to demonize whites, and especially southern whites and strip them of their pride in their past.

We'll see how this turns out. I think Brooks just opened a hornet's nest.

[Twinkie]

Tennessee Southerner born & bred; still live in TN. These people insist on rewriting history & gloating over how “smart” they are. - Lee honored states’ rights & worshipped God - he did not worship the Union.

[miss marmelstein]

You are NOT an objective source.

[Augustinian monk]

Good luck explaining to self-loathing metrosexuals what is to be loyal to one’s home state.

[DoodleDawg]

People on all sides try to frame that era according to modern times’ society, but it’s comparing apples & oranges.

And that is true. All to often people try and judge people from the Civil War by today's standards of racism. In that then there isn't a person from the period who could pass muster.

Lee was only mildly opposed to slavery. So what? Even at that level that set him apart from most of the people in the South who thought slavery was the pillar of Southern society and would be around for generations. Lee's views on slavery or blacks do not make him a bad person or a vile racist. They make him a man of his times, no worse and in many ways better than his peers. He should be judged by those standards.

[DoodleDawg]

You are NOT an objective source.

Neither are you. Lee's own words on slavery show he wasn't overly opposed to it, and there is no evidence he ever suggested to Davis that it be ended.

[central_va]

The fact is the constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers.

U. S. Grant

[Bobby_Taxpayer]

As a descendant of a LONG line of Lee’s from King George County, VA, Brooks can go to hell.

[Dick Bachert]

10 CAUSES OF WAR BETWEEN THE STATES
Long but fascinating read.
Yes, the history books ARE written by the victors. It’s also true that truth, crushed to earth, will rise!
Golly, here’s some now...
http://www.confederateamericanpride.com/10causes.html

[Servant of the Cross]

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address dedicated, consecrated and honored all of the brave American men, living and dead at the time, who struggled in that great civil war. His address absolutely positively includes General Robert E. Lee.

"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war ... testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated ... can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate ... we cannot consecrate ... we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ... and that government of the people ... by the people ... for the people ... shall not perish from the earth. "

That pantywaist girly man David Brooks would dare to challenge any remembrance of General Lee is completely disgusting.

[palmer]

"The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race...

(Lee continues)

... and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist!"

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

I’ve always thought Lee’s reputation was very fortunate in his selection of opposing generals. I can’t remember the exact quote, but I think Lee knew the game was up when Grant didn’t retreat after The Wilderness.

[miss marmelstein]

I’m not sourcing anything at the moment, thank you. I’m asking someone who actually admires Lee to search his memory bank and see if anything comes up.

[palmer]

Lee's own words on slavery show he wasn't overly opposed to it

Not the words you selected, no.

[nathanbedford]

David Brooks superficially tries to strike an evenhanded pose in his treatment of Robert E Lee. He even cautions against passing 21st-century judgment against a 19th-century man. But let us not forget the Brooks himself is hardly culturally in tune with a 19th-century Virginia, a Tidewater aristocrat at that, a Christian, a believing Christian at that, a military man, a committed and heroic military man of great physical as well as moral courage. Rather, David Brooks is a 21st century Jew, a secular Jew at that, who writes for (gasp) The New York Times.

Much of what he writes is deceptive. For example, Lee was not charged as executor of his father-in-law's estate to manumet his wife's inherited slaves until five years passed and the war intervened. Brooks does not tell us these relevant facts.

Brooks suggests that Lee committed treason against his country but the contemporary culture of Virginia was to the effect that his country was Virginia.

Brooks limits the meaning of the Confederate flag to southern heritage which he implies must give way because it is also associated with racism. But the flag also represents federalism, a real and legitimate interpretation of the Constitution which, one might add, impelled Robert E Lee to decline the offer to lead the Yankee armies and to stay true to this interpretation of the Constitution. According to this interpretation, codified in the ninth and 10th amendments, Robert E Lee would have committed treason had he drawn his sword against his native state.

Lee's conduct after the surrender is impeccable and he sought by personal example to effect reconciliation to the union.

Much of the racism associated with the Confederate battle flag has been engrafted onto this flag in the 20th and 21st century by merchants of victimhood who seek a villain and a symbol the destruction of which can be equated with their obtaining power, power to destroy federalism, power to distort the Constitution, power to substitute their judgment for the will of the majority of the people, power to rewrite history. It is not for David Brooks or the left, whom he represents by the way, to tell those who support the flag what their motives are, rather decency if not logic demands that those who support the flag have the right to express their motivations on their own.

As to the character of Robert E Lee and his inspiring biography, I have expressed my feelings a number of times in replies that follow:

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As to the observation that Lee, "would have done better to have kept his oath and remained true to the US government", that is a judgment that is made after a century and a half of perspective. It is clear that all his life Lee regarded his choice to have been the moral choice. I think that we have to judge historical characters upon the knowledge that they had or which was reasonably available to them. Judging by this standard, I will not substitute my judgment for his when he declined the union' s offer of command of their forces and to retire to his home state and not to draw his sword except in the defense of Virginia.

If I recall correctly, there were two "Lee to the rear" incidents where he exposed himself to peril in front of his troops to rally them in the dark days of 1864 when the weight of numbers was simply debriding his forces through a pitilessly imposed attrition. The quoted words were of his troops promising they would plug the hole if he would personally withdraw to the rear and get out of harm's way. These incidents lead me to believe that he was wholly committed to the cause during the war.

Although he behaved as a model citizen of the Union after the war, his reticence about the war was rarely broken, but a couple of remarks seem to indicate a deep regret that the cause was lost. Certainly he remained nostalgically fond of his officers and men to the end of his life.

Was it immoral for Lee to have decided that the larger moral commitment was to his state rather than his country? Clearly, within his culture his choice was the statistically normal one and a fully rational one.

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The Confederates were so poor that half of them were wearing captured Yankee uniforms. The idea of Confederate gray is largely a misnomer, many of them had butternut as a result of home weaving. General Lee put on his best uniform which he rarely wore to maintain the dignity of his army while he alone underwent the indignity of the surrender, an unavoidable but honorable act forced upon them by circumstance which all the efforts of duty and honor could not avoid. Upon learning that he was surrounded with no hope of reinforcements, that his military situation was hopeless, Lee remarked, "Then there is nothing for it but I must go to General Grant and surrender and I would rather die a thousand deaths." With that action he performed his last duty as a soldier and picked up his duties as a citizen of the Federal Republic which he served faithfully until his death.

Yes he took a staff, I think of two, but he did not take an entourage. Rather, he took responsibility.

Equally, he took responsibility in declining his subordinates suggestion to filter his men out through Yankee lines to begin to wage a guerilla. I have described this in my about page to emphasize the moral character of the man about whom I often assert, "the noblest and sublimest American of them all." When we came out of the McLean house having executed the articles of surrender as he waited for Traveler to be brought to him he was alone as he clapped his hands together and exclaimed, "too bad, too bad, oh too bad." None of these actions were consistent with a vainglorious, splendidly uniformed commander.

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Perhaps the noblest and sublimest American of them all, Robert Edward Lee embodied the virtues praised in his father's eulogy to the man who inspired the economium, "first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." Whether George Washington equaled the sublimity of Robert E. Lee or Lee the nobility of character of his hero, George Washington, is a question whose contemplation delights and edifies the soul.