Hey, maybe I'll use that as my new tagline!
BTW, I like your new tagline. It's like a spotlight on your trolling inclinations.
Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (May 27, 1835 – May 20, 1915) was a member of the prominent Adams family, and son of Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams). He served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
http://leearchive.wlu.edu/reference/misc/centennial/adams.html
...Realizing this, when the time was ripe, Lee rose to the full height of the great occasion. The value of Character made itself felt. The service Lee now rendered to the common country, the obligation under which he placed us whether of the North or South, has not, I think, been always appreciated; and to overstate it would be difficult. Again to put on record my estimate of it brings me here to-day.
That the situation was to the last degree critical is matter of history. Further organized resistance on the part of the Confederacy was impossible. The means for it did not exist; could not be had. Cut off completely from the outer world, the South was consuming itself,—feeding on its own vitals. The single alternative to surrender was disbandment and irregular warfare. As General Johnston afterwards wrote, “without the means of purchasing supplies of any kind, or procuring or repairing arms, we could continue the war only as robbers or guerrillas.” But that it should be so continued was wholly possible; nay more, it was in the line of precedent,—it had been done before, and, more than once, it has since been done, notably in South Africa. It was, moreover, the course advocated by many southern participants in the struggle as that proper to be pursued; and that it would be pursued was accepted as of course by all foreign observers, and by the organ of the Confederacy in London. “A strenuous resistance and not surrender,” it was there declared, “was the unalterable determination of the Confederate authorities.” Lee's own son, then in the Army of Northern Virginia, but by chance not included in the surrender, has since described how surprised and incredulous he was when news of it first reached him; and, “not believing for an instant that our struggle was over,” he made his way at once to Jefferson Davis, at Greensboro. At the time of his capture Davis himself, wholly unsubdued in spirit, was moving in the direction of the Mississippi intent on organizing resistance in Texas,—a resistance which the writers of the Index confidently predicted would “be fierce, ferocious and of long duration,”—“a successful or at least a protracted resistance.”
Indeed, had the veil over the immediate future then been lifted, and the outrages, and humiliations worse than outrage, of the period of so-called reconstruction, but actual servile domination, now to ensue revealed itself, no room for doubt exists that the dread alternative would have been adopted. Even as it was, the scales hung trembling. Anything or everything was possible; even that mad pistol shot of the theatrical fool which five days later so irretrievably complicated a delicate and dangerous situation. None the less, what Lee and Grant had done at Appomattox on April 9 could not be wholly un done even by the deed in Ford's theatre of April 14; much had been secured. Of Appomattox, and what there occurred, I do not care here to speak. I feel I could not speak adequately, or in words sufficiently simple; for, in my judgment, there is not in our whole history as a people any incident so creditable to our manhood,—so indicative of our racial possession of Character. Marked throughout by a straightforward dignity of personal bearing and propriety in action, it was marred by no touch of the theatrical, no effort at posturing. I know not to which of the two leaders, there face to face, preference should be given. They were thoroughly typical, the one of Illinois and the New West, the other of Virginia and the Old Dominion. Grant was considerate and magnanimous,—restrained in victory; Lee, dignified in defeat, carried himself with that sense of absolute fitness which compelled respect. Verily!—“he that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city!”
The lead that day given by Lee proved decisive of the course to be pursued by his fellows with arms in their hands. At first, and for a brief space, there was in the Confederate councils much diversity of opinion as to what should or could be done. Calm and dignified in presence of overwhelming disaster, the voice of Jefferson Davis was that of Milton's “scepter d king#8221;:—“My sentence is for open war!” Lee was not there; none the less, Lee, absent, prevailed over Davis. The sober second thought satisfied all but the most extreme that what he had done they best might do. Thus the die was cast. And now, forty years and more after the event, it is appalling to reflect what in all human probability would have resulted had the choice then been other than it was,—had Lee's personality and character not intervened. The struggle had lasted four full years; the assassination of Lincoln was as oil on the Union fire. With a million men, inured to war, on the national muster rolls, men impatient of further resistance, accustomed to license and now educated up to a belief that war was Hell, and that the best way to bring it to a close was to intensify Hell,—with such a force as this to reckon with, made more reckless in brutality by the assassin's senseless shot, the Confederacy need have looked for no consideration, no mercy. Visited by the besom of destruction, it would have been harried out of existence. Fire and sword sweeping over it, what the sword spared the fire would have consumed. Whether such an outcome of a prolonged conflict—what was recently witnessed in South Africa—would in its result have been more morally injurious to the North than it would have been physically destructive to the South, is not now to be considered. It would, however, assuredly have come about.
From that crown of sorrows Lee saved the common country. He was the one man in the Confederacy who could exercise decisive influence. It was the night of the 8th of April, lacking ten days only of exactly four full years,—years very full for us who lived through them—since that not dissimilar night when Lee had paced the floor at Arlington, communing with himself over the fateful issue, a decision on which was then forced upon him. A decision of even greater import was now to be reached, and reached by him. A commander of the usual cast would under such circumstances have sought advice—perhaps support; at least, a divided responsibility. Even though himself by nature and habit a masterful man and one accustomed to direct, he would have called a council, and harkened to those composing it. This Lee did not do. A singularly self-poised man, he sought no external aid. Sitting before his bivouac fire at Appomattox he reviewed the situation. Doing so, as before at Arlington, he reached his own conclusion. That conclusion he himself at the time expressed in words, brief, indeed, but vibrating with moral triumph:—“ The question is, is it right to surrender this army? If it is right, then I will take all the responsibility.” The conclusion reached at Arlington in the April night of 1861 to some seems to have been wrong—inexcusable even; all concur in that reached before the Appomattox camp-fire in the April vigils of 1865. He then a second time decided; and he decided right.
His work was done; but from failure he plucked triumph. Thenceforth Lee wore defeat as ’t were a laurel crown. A few days later a small group of horsemen appeared in the morning hours on the further side of the Richmond pontoons across the James. By some strange intuition it became known that General Lee was of the party; and, silent and uncovered, a crowd—Virginians all—gathered along the route the horsemen would take. “There was no excitement, no hurrahing; but as the great chief passed, a deep, loving murmur, greater than these, rose from the very hearts of the crowd. Taking off his hat, and simply bowing his head, the man great in adversity passed silently to his own door; it closed upon him; and his people had seen him for the last time in his battle harness.”
From the day that he affixed his signature to the terms of surrender submitted to him by Grant at Appomattox to the day when he drew a dying breath at Lexington, Lee's subsequent course was consistent. In his case there was no vacillation, no regretful glances backward thrown. When, four months after the last hostile shot was fired, he was invited to assume the presidency of this college, though then under indictment, in flagrant disregard of the immunity assured him when he gave his parole, he briefly set forth his views. “I think it,” he wrote, “the duty of every citizen, in the present condition of the country, to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony, and in no way to oppose the policy of the State or General Governments directed to that object.” And, four days later, writing to the Confederate Governor of Virginia, he said—“The duty of [Virginian] citizens appears to me too plain to admit of doubt. All should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and to restore the blessings of peace. They should remain if possible in the country; promote harmony and good feeling; qualify themselves to vote, and elect to the State and general legislatures wise and patriotic men, who will devote their abilities to the healing of all dissensions. I have,” he added, “invariably recommended this course since the cessation of hostilities, and have endeavored to practice it myself.” Here was a complete exposition of duty, combined with abnegation of self; the purest patriotism, it was also the concentrated essence of statesmanship. He counselled with a wisdom not less profound because unconscious; and what he said evinced that underlying common sense which in politics avails more than genius...
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