Posted on 01/17/2013 2:16:28 AM PST by Kaslin
They introduce themselves politely in restaurants or diners, in a movie lobby or at some civic event, even in front of the Little Rock gate in Atlanta, which has become a kind of Arkansas crossroads. ("You don't know me, but . . .") Then they thank me for remembering Robert E. Lee every January 19th with a column on his birthday.
They don't tarry, and I may never see them again. Then they fade away, much like the Army of Northern Virginia (R.E. Lee, General). They have a look about them, or rather a manner. They come in different shapes and sizes, but they all have the same, diffident way about them -- as if they were used to dealing with people as persons, rather than en masse as customers or readers or voters or some other impersonal category. They know how to visit with others. It's a Southern thing, no matter where it happens.
Let's just say they have a shared understanding. They may be older, genteel white ladies or young military cadets. Sometimes they're aging black men, usually with roots in the Deep South, who mention that they had a grandfather or great-uncle named Robert E. Lee Johnson or Robert E. Lee Wilson, much like their white counterparts. Whatever the differences in their appearance, they share a distinctive quality that is never imposing but very much there.
Sometimes they'll let you know they don't make a habit of this sort of thing, that they're not interested in reliving the past or anything like that. They're the furthest thing from the bane of such discussions in these latitudes, the professional Southerner. ("I'm no Civil War buff or big Confederate or anything -- I do well to tell Gettysburg from Vicksburg -- but I just wanted to say . . .")
They're never intrusive. Indeed, they are concise almost to the point of being curt for Southerners, a voluble breed. It's clear they wish to make no display. It's as if they just wanted to . . . enroll. To go on record, that's all, and leave it at that. They know The War is over and, like Lee, they would let it be over.
The quality they have in common may be deference -- not only to others, and certainly not to the general himself, for deference would not in any way approach their feeling on that subject, but a deference to the human experience, with all its defeats and losses. Maybe that is why so many of them are middle-aged or older, as if they had encountered some defeats and losses of their own -- losses and defeats that can never be erased, that will always be a part of them, but that they carry almost with grace. The pain will always be there, but now it is covered by forbearance. They have learned that there are certain hurts that, in order to be overcome, must be gone through. Continually. Till it is part of their ongoing character.
The name for the kind of deference they exude, unmistakable for anything else, a deference to fact and to sacrifice, is maturity. They have discovered that duty is not only burden and obligation but deliverance. They would never claim to understand Lee, and they certainly would not presume to praise him overtly. They just want to indicate how they feel about the General, to let us know the bond is shared, and go on. For where Lee is concerned, there is a silence, a diffidence, that says more than words can. Or as Aristotle said of Plato, there are some men "whom it is blasphemy even to praise."
Ever hear a couple of Southerners just passing the time, perhaps in some petty political quarrel, for we can be a quarrelsome lot, when the name Lee is injected into the argument? The air is stilled. Suddenly both feel ashamed of themselves. For there are some names that shame rhetoric, and when we use them for effect, the cheapness of it, the tinniness of it, can be heard at once, like tinkling brass. And we fall silent, rightly rebuked by our better selves.
To invoke such a presence, to feel it like old music always new, invariably gives pause. The young officer in Stephen Vincent Benet's "John Brown's Body" pauses before he enters Lee's tent to deliver his dispatch. Looking at the shadow of the figure within bent over his papers, knowing that The War is inevitably winding down, the messenger can only wonder:
What keeps us going on? I wish I knew. Perhaps you see a man like that go on. And then you have to follow.
The Lost Cause still has its shrines and rituals, dogmas and debates. For four exhilarating, excruciating, terrible years, it had a flag of its own -- several, in fact -- and an army and even something of a government. But in the end all those proved only transient reflections of what endures: the South, the ever-fecund South.
What held that disparate, desperate concept called the South together, and holds it together still from generation to generation, from heartland to diaspora? After all our defeats and limitations, why do we yet endure, and, in Faulkner's words, even prevail? What keeps us going on? I wish I knew. Perhaps you see a man like that go on. And then you have to follow. If there is a single name, a single syllable for that shared bond and depth and grief and aspiration, it is: Lee.
. .
No brief outline of the general's career can explain the effect of that name still: After a shining start at West Point, our young officer spends 12 years of tedium on the Army treadmill, followed by brief renown in the Mexican War, then a two-year leave to attend to matters at home. Returning to the service to put down a fateful little insurrection at Harper's Ferry that cast a great shadow, he declines a field command in the U.S. Army as a far greater insurrection looms, one he will lead. He accepts command of the military of his native country -- Virginia. Then there comes a series of brilliant campaigns that defy all the odds, at the end of which he surrenders. Whereupon he applies for a pardon, becomes a teacher, and makes peace.
What is missing from such an abrupt summary of the general, his life and career, is everything -- everything inward that made the man Robert E. Lee. His wholeness. His integrity. His unbroken peace within. There was about him nothing abrupt but everything respectfully direct -- in his manners, in his leadership, in his life and, when he finally struck the tent, in his death.
Yes, he would fight what has been called the most nearly perfect battle executed by an American commander at Chancellorsville, defeating an army two and a half times the size of his own and better equipped in every respect.
Even in retreat, he remained victorious. One single, terrible tally may say it better than all the ornate speeches ever delivered on all the dim Confederate Memorial Days that have passed since: In one single, terrible month, from May 12th to June 12th of 1864, from after The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, Grant's casualties on the other side would total 60,000 -- the same size as Lee's whole, remaining Army of Northern Virginia, poor devils.
In the end, it is not the Lee of Chancellorsville or of Appomattox who speaks to us, who quiets and assures us. It is not even the Lee of Fredericksburg and his passionate dispassion atop Marye's Heights as he watches the trapped federals below, poor devils, being destroyed. He was no stranger to pity. ("It is well that war is so terrible," he murmured, looking down at the carnage he had engineered, "or we should grow too fond of it.")
It is not even the Lee of Gettysburg who speaks to us, the Lee who would meet Pickett after it was over -- all over -- and say only: "All this has been my fault." And then submit his resignation as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. Jefferson Davis may not have had much sense, but he had more sense than to accept that resignation.
In the end, it is the Lee who saw through all victory as clearly as he did all defeat who elevates and releases us, like one of the old Greek plays. It is the Lee who, for all his legend, could not command events but who was always in command of his response to them. Just to think on him now is catharsis. That is why his undying presence, just the mention of his name, was enough to lift men's gaze and send them forth again and again. It still does.
So it is true that the entire world is conspiring against you. That must be frightful to endure. Bless your little heart.
“Go fly a kite Bozo. I don’t hate Southerners. I have no use for morons like you. You’d flatter yourself thinking I waste the effort to hate you.”
lol. It’s amazing how you lack the ability to see yourself as you are. But maybe alcohol is involved.
You seek out threads having to do with the South solely so that you can spew your vitriol and insult the posters who have an interest in the subject. That’s been your MO for as long as I’ve seen you post at FR.
Not that you’re much different from the other neo-yankee haters who routinely show up to disrupt southern threads. But to then protest that you’re not a hater... that’s rich. Self delusion is an amazing thing.
Everyone knows that Lee was the executor of his father in law’s estate. Arlington House belonged to George Washington Parke Custis, George Washington’s heir.
But that isn’t what you said. You claimed that Lee was a slaveowner and an overseer.
Interestingly enough that description does fit George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and most every other early President besides the Adams, but neo-yankees are notably silent on that issue. Neo-yankee moralizing seems to begin only at 1860.
When I first read your post that I suspected that you were attempting to twist Lee’s role as executor of the Arlington estate into something that would suit your agenda. You’re predictable in your lack of truthfulness when it comes to the south.
“Ring any bells yet?”
Yes, and it was a warning bell that you were engaged in twisting history.
You tried to pass off the claim that Lee was a slaveowner and a slave overseer.
In truth he was acting as executor of his father in law’s will, which you conveniently left out of your initial post.
No surprise there, donny. Your style is to just leave out what doesn’t suit your agenda.
“Except that Lee was a slave owner, and a person who served as slave overseer for a slave plantation...One that the worshipers at the alter of Lee pretend didn’t happen...”
Not sure what your point is. Many of the founders had slaves. Does that forever nullify other, more positive aspects of their personalities? I stated the man had character worthy of admirition, I didn’t say he was perfect. Nor did I express any veneration for him. I am no Lee/Southern worshiper, but neither am I a Lee/Southern hater. These are our brothers and sisters we are talking about...and talking to.
Why is it so hard to be generous to an old foe, long dead and buried? The fact that he was an honorable, if flawed, man seems to really stick in your craw.
Maybe President Lincoln’s words will help ease your anger towards our Southern friends:
“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”
And, the more familiar:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
I see myself just fine chum. If you’d been to as many Hells as I’ve been because of a once self -destructive life style and only by bearing my soul in inventory
humility and by the grace of God did I find my way back to be a human being.Alcohol is not a problem for me today. In fact next month will be twenty-three years that it hasn’t.How is it for you? I spew out ‘’vitriol’’? God it AMAZES me just how ironic you can be .Don’t you know I’m one of the ‘’Lincoln Coven’’ the neo-Yankee’’and a ‘’Lincoln boot licker’’ I had one Johnny Reb here actually say he wanted to kill me. I go to threads on The Civil War because it interests me historically , all history does and because, on behalf of my ancestors(Army of the Potomac) I come to these threads so that there be a counter argument to you Confederates. And again, I don’t hate Southerners. But you and your ilk can certainly muster up the piss and vinegar for us Northerners.
“Alcohol is not a problem for me today.”
That could be. I had a customer once who was just as filled with vitriol and just as deluded about how she was acting. A dry drunk with a nasty disposition and no brakes on expressing it. Always managed to justify her rudeness. I guess it’s not just the alcohol, it’s a whole set of psychological issues that go along with drinking.
Washington freed his slaves on his death. Jefferson, faced with the state making it illegal to free his slaves, paid them a salary, which practice was partly responsible for his dying in debt.
Lee owned slaves himself personally, not just administering his father in law’s estate.
“Washington freed his slaves on his death.”
Proving that while he lived Washington was both “a slaveowner and a slave overseer”, the substance of your accusation against Lee?
What is interesting is how neo-yankees either ignore the inconvenient fact of Washington’s slaves, or seek to exempt Washington from their usual heavy handed moralizing and condemnation by offering up “but he freed them after he died”.
But even that is misleading and untrue, which I’m sure that you know. Washington freed less than half of his slaves.
The majority, which he had acquired upon marrying Martha, passed on to his step-grandson George Washington Parke Custis.
Their descendents were among the very slaves that were Robert E Lee’s responsibility when he was executor of the Custis estate. The same ones that you tried to enlist in your claim that Lee was “a slaveowner and a slave overseer” when in fact he was the executor of the Custis estate.
“Lee owned slaves himself personally, not just administering his father in law’s estate.”
That must be why, when challenged to produce evidence, you produced a link to Lee being the executor of the Custis estate and nothing more. Oops.
Just keep adjusting your story, donny. Then to amuse ourselves we can go back and compare your original version to the final product.
I don’t recall being pressured to provide evidence. which post was that?
The evidence is in Lee’s will which is available on line.
In 1846, just before he left Arlington to join General Scott’s Army of Invasion, in Mexico, Lee wrote a will which identified Nancy among his property. The will was probated in Rockbridge County courthouse shortly after Lee’s death in 1870. Here it must be said, that Lee’s manumitting Nancy as part of his action as executor as the Custis estate is curious. According to his will, Lee wished “Nancy and her children” “to be liberated as soon as it can be done to their advantage.” But apparently not before his death. Yet, in the midst of war he decided to include Nancy—apparently his property, not Custis’s—in the emancipation of the Custis slaves. Perhaps, he just wanted to be done with it.
My post 108 where I question your claim and your post 113 where you link to Freeman’s chapter on Lee being the executor of GWP Custis’s estate.
I will say good things about Lee. Lee applied for pardon for his role in the insurrection, which is, itself an admission of error. Grant protected him from prosecution when that was considered, as Lee had kept the terms of his parole, and thus should not have been prosecuted.
He certainly worked to transform Washington (and Lee) College, and was successful. He also seems to have sought to do his part in the reunification of the country.
Certainly his prior service with the US Army was honorable, at least, and in some instances valiant and brilliant.
I didn’t read your 108 post as pressure to provide evidence, and certainly you requested no evidence of his owning slaves. Rather I read it as falsely or incorrectly asserting that Lee could not have acted as a planter and overseer because of his military duties.
Of course he could and did act as a planter and overseer when he asked for and was granted his leaves of absence from 1857 to 1859, but his stints as a planter were interrupted by orders to perform various services or duties.
“In 1846, just before he left Arlington to join General Scott’s Army of Invasion, in Mexico, Lee wrote a will which identified Nancy among his property.”
Lee had no property when he married, a fact that displeased GWP Custis.
Nancy and the other slaves at the White House Plantation listed in his 1846 will were his wife’s property. Husbands had charge of their wife’s property in that era.
“Here it must be said, that Lee’s manumitting Nancy as part of his action as executor as the Custis estate is curious. According to his will, Lee wished “Nancy and her children” “to be liberated as soon as it can be done to their advantage.” But apparently not before his death. “
It isn’t curious at all, and it is spelled out in the Freeman chapter that you linked to.
GWP Custis’ will was a contradictory mess, in one section stating that the slaves were to be freed within 5 years while in another stating that they were not to be freed until Custis’ substantial debts were paid off. Lee had to turn the will over to the courts for the legal system to determine what should be done.
“Yet, in the midst of war he decided to include Nancy—apparently his property, not Custis’s—in the emancipation of the Custis slaves. Perhaps, he just wanted to be done with it.”
Nancy came to be Lee’s responsibility through marriage. She was his wife’s property, but he was responsible for Nancy just as George Washington was for the slaves that Martha brought into their marriage.
My understanding is that he came to own Nancy through inheritance from his mother. The 4 children of Nancy have been reported as Lee’s children by some, but at this divide, I don’t think that can be sustained or denied with evidence other than hearsay testimony by persons long dead.
In your post 108 you did not pressure for evidence.
Accordingly it is you who are changing your story.
Projection. Look it up.
Off topic, but lentulusgracchus identified something else early on (that even Rush hasn't caught on to yet) - Obamacare was a foregone conclusion regardless of what Americans wanted.
Yes, you do -- a desperate, desolate need to vilify men whose boots you couldn't even reach to shine. With metaphors like "he rolled around in it," you directly equate Robert E. Lee to dogs and pigs. Your language is vile, your intention unjust, cruel, and utterly, utterly small.
Get a life, Smeagol.
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