Posted on 01/19/2009 6:54:00 AM PST by Iron Munro
It was 1807 — 202 years ago — that the Lee family in Virginia welcomed a baby boy and named him Robert Edward. Monday is the birthday of that great American, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and is also a state holiday.
Robert E. Lee never came to Mississippi, but other than the many men from here who fought under his command during the War Between the States, he may have had an unusual Vicksburg connection.
Was he wearing boots, a gift from two Vicksburg sisters, when he met with Gen. U.S. Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865? That is a good possibility.
In January 1865, for his 58th birthday, the general received a package from two Vicksburg sisters, Sallie and Lucy Marshall, daughters of the Rev. and Mrs. Charles K. Marshall.
Lee wrote the following thank you: “I have rec’d the overboots sent me by your father and had the opportunity yesterday of testing their value. It was one of the most tempestuous days of the winter, hail, rain, and sleet. By their means through out all day I was comfortable. Please accept my grateful thanks for your birthday kindness and believe me with great respect, R.E. Lee.”
The boots had been paid for with money carefully saved by Sallie Marshall who had covered gold pieces with cloth and used them as buttons to keep them from being stolen. She had used some of those buttons to pay for the boots.
When Lee prepared to meet Grant to discuss surrender, he put on his best apparel — a handsome new uniform, his dress sword and his deep-red sash, for he expected to become a prisoner of war. He commented, “I must make my best appearance.”
His uniform immaculate, his boots well-polished — what a contrast he was to Grant when they met, for the Union commander wore a crumpled uniform and mud-spattered boots. A witness to the meeting described Lee as “6 feet tall, hair and beard of silver gray, a handsome uniform of Confederate gray buttoned to the throat with three stars on each side of the turned-down collar, fine topboots and handsome spurs and a splendid sword.”
Those fine boots — were they from the Vicksburg sisters? There’s probably no way of knowing, but it is entirely possible. The girls, by the way, were the granddaughters of the Rev. Newit Vick, the city’s founder. Their mother was Amanda Vick.
Another Vicksburg connection with Lee was a very remote one: his brother, Sidney Smith Lee, was married to a sister of Elbeck Mason who, with his wife, Virginia, lived for a time in the Cobb House in the Southern Cultural Heritage Center complex and then bought the castle that stood on the hill behind Price’s Glass and Mirror and was demolished by the Union army of occupation.
There was always a portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee in the office of Dwight D. Eisenhower, even when he was president of the United States, and in 1960 a New York dentist took him to task, citing the fact that Lee gave his best efforts to defeat the nation from 1861-1865.
In his reply on Aug. 1, 1960, Eisenhower pointed out that secession was at that time an unresolved question and had been debated for 70 years. Lee, the president said, believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of the Southern cause.
Of Lee personally, he wrote that “he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingen-ious, unrelenting, and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his belief in God.”
Eisenhower saw Lee “noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.”
He felt that the youth of America would do well to emulate his qualities, including his painstaking efforts to help heal the nation’s wounds once the war was over.
“From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s calibre would be unconquerable in spirit and soul,” Eisenhower stated and concluded, “I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.”
The late Sen. Ben Hill of Georgia many years ago capsuled the qualities that make Lee loved and admired:
He was a foe without hate
A friend without treachery
A soldier without cruelty,
And a victim without murmuring.
He was a public official without vices
A private citizen without wrong
A neighbor without reproach
A Christian without hypocrisy,
and a man without guile.
He was Caesar without ambition
Frederick without tyranny,
Napoleon without selfishness,
and Washington without his reward.
There’s a concerted effort in our nation to erase the name of Robert E. Lee from schools named for him, an effort spearheaded by bigots more interested in rewriting history than in supporting education.
Those who seek to defame him aren’t worthy to polish his Vicksburg boots.
My great great grandfather, William Woody Herring was the only son of 5 brothers to live through civil war. He actually had to witness the horror of seeing his own brother, John Wesley have his head blown of by a union cannon ball. My g.g.grandfather told these things to my grandmother who was lucky enough to have been able to actually sit on his lap and listen to real life accounts of the War of Northern Aggression.
In many of his conversations with her he always told her that the war was never really about the right to own slaves, because the majority of White Southerners never owned a slave in their lives . Southerners joined the cause because they saw that their very lives and independence were being threatened by the North. Many believe that Slavery would have ended on it’s own anyway as many in the South couldn’t stomach the idea of claiming to own another human being. The North just used “slavery” as it’s reason to attack another sovereign nation for financial gain.
I am proud that my g.g.grandfather, under the command of General Robert E. Lee, fought for his country the CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA and his way of life that NEVER included owning a slave.
What disgusts me the most though, is how the Confederate Flag has been highjacked by ignorant racists who have no clue of it’s true symbolism and how because of that, liberals want to tell me that I must be ashamed of my heritage and the flag that my family fought and died under. That very ignorance is exactly what many a Southerner feared would happen.
So on this day of the great General Lee’s Birthday I will proudly fly my “rebel” flag in honor of their courage and spirit. Heritage NOT hate.
You make some good points in your post.
Regarding the above though, you may be overlooking two things:
1. The Battle in 1863 was intended to take the war to the north and help to influence public opinion against the war. There was a significant anti war movement in the north at the time and a victory at Gettysburg would have greatly added to that cause. This was a strong consideration of Lee's.
2. Virginia was devastated by this time. It is probable that a victory at Gettysburg would have led to a significant amount of pillaging in the north to help resupply an army that was already stretched in terms of their resupply capabilities. Such pillaging (not on the scale of Sherman) would have greatly added to point one above.
Lee was smart enough to know that the war would not be won in one battle.
You should do more research. Robert E. Lee and the Confederates were fighting for American ideals, namely the rights of the States.
‘1. The Battle in 1863 was intended to take the war to the north and help to influence public opinion against the war. There was a significant anti war movement in the north at the time and a victory at Gettysburg would have greatly added to that cause. This was a strong consideration of Lee’s.’
Actually, these are secondary arguments made by Lee to Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. The primary argument Lee brought forth was relieving the pressure on Vicksburg.
Lee hoped Lincoln would do as he did every time CSA forces went up the Shenandoah Valley and thereby threatened Washington DC. After Chancellorsville, given the loss of confidence in Hooker (by Hooker himself as well as the Lincoln administration) Lee hoped that Lincoln would in fact panic once more as he had done three times before, and order Grant to withdraw northward.
Remember, at the same time of Lee’s ‘second invasion of the north’ you had ‘The Great Raid’ coming out of Kentucky into Indiana, and raging across Ohio, actually passing through the outskirts of Cincinnati and then straight across the southern half of Ohio.
Longstreet had approached members of Jefferson Davis’s administration with a suggestion his entire corps be transferred to the Trans Mississippi to keep Grant from taking Vicksburg, and thereby not just opening up the Mississippi from mouth to the sea, but also to prevent the CSA from being cut in two. He understood that once Vicksburg fell, there was no way the CSA could hope to stop what eventually happened....Sherman gutting the Deep South.
What you point out is accurate...but they were not the primary reason(s) for the second move northward.
You are exactly right. I’m tired of them tryin’ to make every White Southerner responsible for slavery when in fact slaves were captured and sold by other AFRICAN TRIBES!! Furthermore slavery STILL exists among many African and Arab tribes.
Mine, too.
I am not descended from General Lee, but he was a 5th cousin to my grandmother. That branch of the family was connected through the Carters.
I understand what you are saying here, and yep, only a small percentage of people in the South actually owned slaves.
That said, it was about Slavery. The entire political world in America for the previous two decades had been torn up over Slavery, North and South.
Its one of the many great irony’s of the Civil War, and of the CSA that its own Constituion (The South’s) contained the very seeds of its own destruction.
Recodifying Slavery in the CSA Constitution was a HUGE mistake....the second HUGE mistake was taking the concept of ‘States Rights’ to such an extreme that in April, 1865 the Army of Northern Virginia was 1)Starving...2)Without proper clothing...3) Without proper footgear...but the Governor of Georgia alone had 50,000 complete sets of uniforms with accrouterments and shoes that he would not make available, citing...States Rights.
I can make the argument, from EITHER SIDE, that the war shouldn’t have lasted more than 18 months tops.
From the Northern viewpoint, inept Generals prolonged it to almost five years, beginning with McDowell, and continuing under the George ‘Army of the Potomac is my personal Bodyguard’ McClellan, to the unbelievably inept Burnside, the bi polar nature of Hooker, to the inscrutable George ‘Lets call it a draw’ Meade who should have crushed Lee against the Potomac in the wake of the Gettysburg retreat.
The fact is McClellan should have destroyed Lee’s army at Sharpsburg/Antietam in 1862, utterly and completely.
‘Lee was smart enough to know that the war would not be won in one battle. ‘
btw, he only realized this AFTER Pickett’s Charge. The day he ordered it, he clearly stated he wanted it to be ‘the final battle’.
I don’t think that anyone is trying to make slavery moral. that is pure lunacy. But how ever “we” are tired of being told that the fault of Slavery lies squarely on the Souths shoulders, when in fact it was BLACK AFRICANS who captured and sold their OWN PEOPLE INTO SLAVERY and many of them CONTINUE to do it to this very day!!!
Say what? "Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both. I should therefore prefer to rely upon our white population to preserve the ratio between our forces and those of the enemy, which experience has shown to be safe." That was Robert Lee in January 1865.
Upon inheriting slaves from his deceased father-in-law, Lee immediately freed them.
No. George Washington Parke Custis died in October 1857. Under the terms of his will his slaves were to be freed once the legacies of his estate were paid, but in any event no later that 5 years after his death. Lee signed the emancipation documents on December 31, 1862.
There are a lot of facts to admire about Lee without resorting to myths. And one fact is that Lee's opposition to slavery was tepid at best.
And by the same token you can say that the U.S. invaded Germany and Japan in World War II. Was that wrong?
Your claim would probably garner more respect if it weren't for the fact that tariffs are applied to imports, not exports.
History books may be revised, but the truth is burned into every Southerner’s heart. Veritas vos Liberabit.
Yes nobody clings to their myths tighter than you Lost Causers.
That's strange- I was driving through Pennsylvania a while back and I could have sworn Gettysburg was in that State.....
Personally, I don't take joy in seeing any Americans die, but I see that you feel differently.
There was a good reason that the U.S. government never put on trial the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. He was held as a prisoner of war for 2 years but never went on trial. I think the prosecution finally figured out that they would lose in a trial because the South (or any state) did have the right to leave the Union.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Davis
Imprisonment and retirement
On May 19, 1865, Davis was imprisoned in a casemate at Fortress Monroe, on the coast of Virginia. He was placed in irons for three days. Davis was indicted for treason a year later. .....
After two years of imprisonment, he was released on bail which was posted by prominent citizens of both northern and southern states, including Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Gerrit Smith (Smith, a former member of the Secret Six, had supported John Brown). Davis visited Canada, Cuba and Europe. In December 1868, the court rejected a motion to nullify the indictment, but the prosecution dropped the case in February 1869.
There were actually 6 men in the class of 1829 alone who graduated without a single demerit. In his biography of Lee, Douglas Southall Freemen lists the others as James Barnes, Cadet Burbank, William Harford, Cadet Kennedy, and Charles Mason.
Lee’s “country” was Virginia. This was his first allegiance, just as it was for the earlier “traitors” George Washington, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. As clearly indicated by their writings and letters, all owed their first allegiance to the state of Virginia. Perhaps if Great Britain had won the American Revolution, they all would have been hanged, and been treated with revulsion by the post-modernists.
By the way, according to your logic, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Erwin Rommel, and William Wallace were also “traitors”.
Thanks for sharing your family story!
My g-g-grandfather participated in the western theatre of battle. He fought throughout Arkansas, La and Missouri. He was at the battle of Helena, Arkansas and lived through it. This coincided with Vicksburg’s fall. I don’t know when but he was taken as a POW in La and paroled after the war without money or the means to make it back to Missouri. It was told that he had to rob and steal his way home.
He fought for the south because he disliked the north and having his way of life imposed upon by a bunch of arrogant elitests who thought they knew better! No, he did not own slaves. Good grief, he was dirt farmer poor. And after the war it was worse thanks to reconstruction.
So, I enjoyed your sharing and hope you enjoyed my story too.
BTW, I still believe in States Rights.
Not to jump in on your discussion regarding Lee and Gettysbury, i.e. Picket’s Charge. It was my impression that Gettysburg was for the south hopeful of two things:
1. Inflame the antiwar sentiment in the North
2. Bring England and France in for the South
Am I off base on this? I read this in a text somewhere and it made sense to me. thanks!!
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