Mississippian William Faulkner once famously said that the past is never really dead; it is not even past. Two men hover over America's past, making it not even past, Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. Without Lincoln, there would not have been an American Civil War; without Lee, Lincoln would have won the war in less than a year; without Lincoln, Lee would have won the war in two years. The 700,000 Civil War American dead are a direct result of the deadly Lincoln-Lee historical placement in the same time and place.
General Lee is not dead; he is not even past. We know that from the frenzied fetish the current protesters have shown in trashing, vandalizing and tearing down his statues.
The protesters validate their vendetta against stone replicas of Lee because they call him a traitor. He was; he thought so himself. When he arrived at Appomattox to surrender to the Union General Grant, he wore his best uniform because he thought he would be arrested for treason. He thought it fitting to look good for his arrest. He was not arrested; Lincoln, at his last strategic meeting with Generals Grant and Sherman had told them to let the Confederates up easy, so Grant did.
In his First Inaugural, Lincoln offered the South, a 13th Amendment, the Corwin Amendment, which would have perpetuated slavery in the South for the entire history of the Republic, for it would have been an Amendment which could not have been repealed. The South rejected the offer, and went to war. They went to war for one reason only-THEY THOUGHT THEY COULD WIN IT. That is the same dumb, existentialist reason that Southerner LBJ got America into the Vietnam War, and Southerner George W. Bush got America into the Iraq Debacle- they thought they could win the war, and no other reason.
In 1860, because of slavery and cotton, Mississippi was the richest place in the world;Mississippi was the Qatar of the world; New Orleans was Dubai. Nathan Bedford Forrest, “The Wizard of the Saddle” became a millionaire just by buying and selling slaves, a poor boy who made good by slave trading. With the Corwin Amendment ,The Southern Rebellion, the War Between the States, the War of Northern Aggression would not have been necessary,as Southern slave-owners could have continued unfettered accumulation of wealth by selling and trading human beings.
The protesters validate their vendetta against stone replicas of Lee because they call him a traitor. He was; he thought so himself. When he arrived at Appomattox to surrender to the Union General Grant, he wore his best uniform because he thought he would be arrested for treason. He thought it fitting to look good for his arrest. He was not arrested; Lincoln, at his last strategic meeting with Generals Grant and Sherman had told them to let the Confederates up easy, so Grant did.
In his First Inaugural, Lincoln offered the South, a 13th Amendment, the Corwin Amendment, which would have perpetuated slavery in the South for the entire history of the Republic, for it would have been an Amendment which could not have been repealed. The South rejected the offer, and went to war. They went to war for one reason only-THEY THOUGHT THEY COULD WIN IT. That is the same dumb, existentialist reason that Southerner LBJ got America into the Vietnam War, and Southerner George W. Bush got America into the Iraq Debacle- they thought they could win the war, and no other reason.
In 1860, because of slavery and cotton, Mississippi was the richest place in the world;Mississippi was the Qatar of the world; New Orleans was Dubai. Nathan Bedford Forrest, “The Wizard of the Saddle” became a millionaire just by buying and selling slaves, a poor boy who made good by slave trading. With the Corwin Amendment ,The Southern Rebellion, the War Between the States, the War of Northern Aggression would not have been necessary,as Southern slave-owners could have continued unfettered accumulation of wealth by selling and trading human beings.
The Southern Rebellion would have, should have, passed into history as analogous to those periodical French Royalist rebellions against the French Revolution; the Southern Cause should have been treated with the same contempt, by History, given to the defeated Czarists of the White Russian adventure or the defeated rich Mexicans who backed Emperor Maximilian Hapsburg.
One man transformed the Southern Rebellion, the insurrection of rich men who owned other men, of rich men defending Slavery into the Lost Cause; that man was the very Christian Robert E. Lee.
It was Robert E. Lee who turned the Confederacy into the Camelot of Lost Causes; it is Lee who turned the War Between the States into a struggle, between chivalrous Southern knights defending their heraldic way of life against barbaric Northern hordes, hordes of Abolitionists, Mercenaries, Jayhawkers, Lovers of Miscegenation, German Immigrants and Irish freebooters.
It is Lee, the great Christian, who defended Slavery because his friends and relatives liked Slavery. Above all men, it was his persona that uplifted the Southern Cause from an insurrection to maintain profit making slavery and easy access to black women into a myth of defeated Confederate Knights of Arthurian Chivalry.
Lee is Hector to Lincoln’s Achilles; Lee is Hannibal to Lincoln’s Scipio Africanus; Lee is Pompey the Great to Lincoln’s Julius Caesar. It is Lee’s nobility that takes a greedy viewpoint and uplifts it into the Lost Cause of the Antebellum South.
By and large, Southern historians consider “Massa Robert” the finest soldier ever produced on American soil. This Blogger disputes that; this Blogger believes Winfield Scott was the best American General ever. However, the Southern historians are correct in this:Lee is infinitely more interesting than Scott ever was.
Lee’s father and uncle were Revolutionary War heroes; and he married into George Washington’s immediate family.
He was the proto-American soldier, a devout Christian, and a prolific killer.
His beloved Army, The Army of Northern Virginia, only mustered on its rolls a quarter of the Confederate forces during the War; it was responsible for half of the Union casualties during the Civil War. It was a deadly force,adept at punching up.
Lee was so devout in his Christianity that none of his daughters married. They all were engaged, some more than once, but they could never find any man who could match up to the nobility in spirit, and Christian ideal of their slave- owning father.
All his sons were soldiers of honor and courage.
All his children, both spinsters and soldiers, survived the Civil War.
At the beginning of the War, Lincoln and Lee’s mentor, Winfield Scott ( who by then was too fat to sit a horse) offered him total command of the Union Army.
Lee refused it.
Lee chose his secessionist state of Virginia and its greedy class of slave-owners, over his loyalty to the Union.
But he knew.
"They do not know what they say. If it came to a
conflict of arms, the war will last at least four years.
Northern politicians will not appreciate the
determination and pluck of the South, and Southern
politicians do not appreciate the numbers, resources
and patient perseverance of the North. Both sides
forget that we are all Americans. I foresee that our
country will pass through a terrible ordeal, a
necessary expiation, perhaps, for our national sins."
Robert E. Lee
May 5, 1861
But he knew.
"They do not know what they say. If it came to a
conflict of arms, the war will last at least four years.
Northern politicians will not appreciate the
determination and pluck of the South, and Southern
politicians do not appreciate the numbers, resources
and patient perseverance of the North. Both sides
forget that we are all Americans. I foresee that our
country will pass through a terrible ordeal, a
necessary expiation, perhaps, for our national sins."
Robert E. Lee
May 5, 1861
It is one of the great tragedies of American history that Lee went out with his state. If he had assumed command of the Federal armies, the Civil War would have lasted no more than a year; but with him casting his brilliance and charisma with the Confederacy, the bloody struggle became evenly matched and devolved into a war of attrition.
The great Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had been wounded in fighting for the Union, wanted only one man hanged as a traitor at the end of the war. That man was Robert E. Lee. Holmes’ logic was this-this is nothing worse than a good man who fights for a bad cause, and those men should be punished above all.
Lee was a magnificent man and soldier, but he was not a sentimentalist. Near the end of the war, he pushed the Confederacy to enlist black men, slaves themselves, as Confederate soldiers with the promise of freedom if the South won the war.
The Army of Northern Virginia was one of the finest armies in history, ranking along side the Macedonian Army which invaded the Persian Empire under Alexander the Great, and the Roman Army which defeated the Gauls under Julius Caesar.
Yet they lost, why?
They lost because of a force majeure, an act of God.
Lee had General Thomas Stonewall Jackson, the blue eyed Presbyterian killer to carry out his orders. There was a short-hand between them. Jackson is undoubtedly the greatest attack soldier in American history, better than Benedict Arnold or George Patton. The Army of Northern Virginia had two of the greatest soldiers in American history, in history, in tandem, Lee and Jackson.
Together they were unbeatable; they defeated everyone. Even when the Union Army had a good General, McClellan, who knew in advance their battle plans, they fought the Federals to a draw, at Antietam.
Then, after the greatest Confederate victory, after the greatest single military victory on American soil, after the American Cannae, after Chancellorsville, Jackson was killed by a force majeure. He was shot down, by accident, by his own men.
That single act shows us all that God wanted the North to win the war.
Could the Populares party have won the Roman Civil War if Caesar had been killed? By mistake, by his own archers? Could the Roundheads have won the English Civil War if Cromwell had been killed? By mistake, by his own musketeers? Could the Bolsheviks have won the Russian Civil War if Trotsky had been killed? By mistake, by his own commissars?
Jackson’s death sealed the doom of the Confederacy, and Jackson’s death was a force majeure, an act of God.
Looking at the record, dispassionately, can anyone come to any other conclusion but this, that if Lee had had Jackson with him at Gettysburg, to carry out his orders, they would have achieved victory over the Union by cutting the Baltimore Turnpike on the first day of battle, at Cemetery Ridge? Or by flanking the Federals on Little Round Top the second day?
“Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me.” General Thomas Stonewall Jackson, CSA.”
God fixed the date of Jackson’s death before Gettysburg, so the Union could win the war.
Without Jackson, Lee went on the defensive, and held his own against General Grant, the Union butcher, who pitted his men against the Confederacy’s supply of bullets. Grant was a World War I General in all aspects.
Finally, Grant stripped Washington D.C. of all garrison troops, and applied them with the weight of the Army of the Potomac, and the Army of the James against Lee.
Lee ordered a breakout.
It was achieved, by Confederate troops under General Gordon, but as the Confederate troops came to the top of a rise, all that they could see below , to the far horizon, were the massed ranks of the Army of the Shenandoah, under the Irishman, Phil Sheridan. There was no way out.
That is when Lee determined he had done all that honor demanded, and surrendered.
After the war, he became President of Washington College (now Washington and Lee). His former home was turned into Arlington National Cemetery.
Living below frugality, he was offered a vast amount of money to endorse an insurance policy by an insurance company based in New York. He declined.
“ On April 9, 1865, Grant formalized the surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia,…..
After agreeing upon terms of the surrender, the generals each selected three officers to oversee the surrender and parole of Lee's army. Later that day, Lee and six of his staff signed a document granting their parole.
On May 29, 1865, President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to persons who had participated in the rebellion against the United States. There were fourteen excepted classes, though, and members of those classes had to make special application to the President.
Lee sent an application to Grant and wrote to President Johnson on June 13, 1865:
“Being excluded from the provisions of amnesty & pardon contained in the proclamation of the 29th Ulto; I hereby apply for the benefits, & full restoration of all rights & privileges extended to those included in its terms. I graduated at the Mil. Academy at West Point in June 1829. Resigned from the U.S. Army April '61. Was a General in the Confederate Army, & included in the surrender of the Army of N. Va. 9 April '65. “
Lee signed his Amnesty Oath on October 2, 1865, but was not restored to full citizenship in his lifetime. (General Records of the Department of State, RG 59)
On October 2, 1865, the same day that Lee was inaugurated as president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, he signed his Amnesty Oath, thereby complying fully with the provision of Johnson's proclamation. But Lee was not pardoned, nor was his citizenship restored. And the fact that he had submitted an amnesty oath at all was soon lost to history.
More than a hundred years later, in 1970, an archivist at the National Archives discovered Lee's Amnesty Oath among State Department records (reported in Prologue, Winter 1970). Apparently Secretary of State William H. Seward had given Lee's application to a friend as a souvenir, and the State Department had pigeonholed the oath.
In 1975, Lee's full rights of citizenship were posthumously restored by a joint congressional resolution effective June 13, 1865.”
Up to 700,000 Americans lost their lives during the Civil War; in 2020 terms, on a per capita basis, that is as if 6 million Americans were killed in civil conflict.
In his Second Inaugural, Lincoln posits a Biblical equation for all the war’s bloodshed; that every drop of blood shed by the whip must be paid for by blood shed by the sword. Lincoln’s Old Testament’s equation is not only revelatory of God’s cosmology toward the war itself, it is a significant insight into the Psychology of God.
Tearing down General Lee's statues upsets, perhaps even invalidates Lincoln's Cosmological Equation, as laid out in the Second Inaugural; that is not wise.
General Robert E. Lee
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