Re: Good Grief!!!
I was going to respond until I read..."since most liberal positions are by their very nature emotional instead of rational".......well, then why bother?
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by limner43
- By R. David Cox
being a leader in war to a leader of peace. As I found in examining his religious convictions, he became largely because of his faith the Souths
preeminent exponent of reconciliation. That, I believe, is why he needs to be remembered, but in a different way.
Just before surrendering, Lee began seeking peace. Some aides proposed fighting an ISIS-style guerrilla war. Lee had none of it.
The Confederacy has failed, he told them. As Christian men, we must consider only the effect which our actions will have upon the
country at large.
If his men could return home quietly and quickly they could plant crops & begin to repair the rages of the war. That is what I must
now try to bring about. Realistically, yet faithfully, he looked to the future.
Like many, Lee had believed the Confederacy could win only if God so willed. It lost. He connected the dots.
God has thought fit to afflict us most deeply & his chastening hand is not yet stayed, Lee, an active Episcopalian, wrote in May 1865,
to a priest in Petersburg. We have only to submit to his gracious will & pray for his healing mercy.
That meant seeking genuine peace, that the afflictions & interests of the country may be united and not a forced & hollow truce formed,
to be broken at the first convenient opportunity. To this end all good men should labour.
He discouraged anyone going into exile as some contemplated and as he was invited to do. It would be better for them and their country
if they remained at their homes and shared the fate of their respective States.
What, then, for him?
Publishers sought his memoirs, predicting profits of a best-seller. Businesses coveted his name, promising great reward. Major educational
institutions craved the leadership of one who had been an innovative West Point superintendent.
But a devastated little school in remote Lexington, Virginia, captured his imagination. Asked to be its president, Lee sought the advice of a
priest in Albemarle County. When he proposed more viable institutions, Lee argued that this door and not another was opened to him by
Providence and wanted reassurance that he could do the job such that his remaining years would be a comfort and a blessing to his
suffering country.
At that moment, the cleric recalled, Lees whole countenance glowed with animation. Robert E. Lee came to Washington College, to bind
the wounds of war and prepare for the future by guiding the young into practical, principled ways.
Genuine peace demanded prosperity, so Lee developed a curriculum aimed at attaining it: business, journalism, law, mining, engineering.
To traditional classical studies he added English, modern history, and sciences. By 1868, his little college had become the second-largest
academic institution in the South.
Reconciliation involved racial justice. Though Lee shared the prevailing white presumption of their own superiority, and could say so in ways
that make us cringe, his faith also held that each person was a child of God, whose rights warranted protection. In Lexington, his influence
helped dissipate one lynch mob aimed at a black man, and another directed at a white.
Reunion meant putting the war in the past. When officials at Gettysburg asked his help in placing monuments on the battlefield,
he declined, advising not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavoured to
obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.
On that basis, together with his innate humility, one wonders if he would want any monuments to him whatsoever.
Statues of General Lee on Traveller cant convey this part of his story, a story which challenges his stereotype. One who strove
to move beyond a cause he deemed lost makes a poor poster child for the Lost Cause.
Nor can I imagine that he who declined to run for Virginias governorship lest he arouse passions would approve of candidates
wrapping themselves in Confederate flags. For white supremacist protesters to invoke his name violates Lees most fundamental
convictions. And those who look on Lee only as military personage favorably or not would do well to recognize the telling
paradox of Lee, one of the very few generals defeated in a bitter civil war who then became the paramount advocate of peace.
R. David Cox, an Episcopal priest who was rector of R. E. Lee Memorial Church from 1987-2000, now teaches history at
Southern Virginia University and is author of The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee.
