This is for you History buffs, JO'Co, Whobe amongst others. Bet you didn't even know this was still going on and maybe even shocked that Jesse Jackson hasn't somehow put a stop to it. Jan 19th was Confederate Hero's day in Texas, Confederate Heroes Day combines the birthdays of Robert E. Lee (Jan. 19) and Jefferson Davis (June 3). It's on the offical state calendar and while the govt doesn't shut down for it like they do Martin Luther Kings Birthday, it's still a state holiday. There were of course a few articles written about it and not a lot of publicity. But it is an interesting anachronism of the past. Were these men hero's fighting for States Rights or Racists trying to continue the enslavement of the black man. I have often wondered how long it would be before Confederate statues of Lee, Jeff Davis, and others would be so offensive to the ACLU, NAACP, etc that they would be torn down, that all the Robt.E. Lee High Schools would be renamed. Most states have eliminated the confederate battle flag (also known as the Stars and Bars) from their state flag. I think So.Carolina still has it, maybe Georgia too I forget. I go to Hilton Head in April and we always stop in Savannah, a very old southern town, there are statues of Confederate generals everywhere. I often wonder if they'll be there in the future. It's a lovely old town, lots of old south, sweet tea, etc. But it is sort of an anachronism. I don't know for sure if other states have some sort of Confederate Hero's day, and in some ways it's odd that Texas would as we are west of the Mississippi and not really the "Old South", we sent soldiers to the war but I don't think it was all that many and I doubt we were all that important to the South, maybe I'm wrong. I'm sure that JO'Co or Whobe can fill me in on that. I'll post a couple of articles that are in Texas papers, but not on the front page. Terry
Even the Washington Post weighed in on the 200th Birthday of Lee. A statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee is located on the main floor of the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.
I'd be curious as to what JO'Co is allowed to teach in todays politically correct climate about men like Robt E. Lee? JO'Co? Terry
I really get discouraged when society starts getting into PC arguments like these...Lee was a remarkable man and truly an American hero.
I have to say I agree Stu. I mean Washington and Jefferson owned slaves, it was the times, they were good men. I'm not a history buff, nor a civil war buff, so I can't say that I know what Lee actually felt about Slavery. I could imagine that when it was clear that War was comming, that even if he didn't want to see slavery preserved, he probably couldn't fight against his family and friends. I don't have any problems with southern families honoring their ancestors like Lee, it doesn't mean that they condone slavery. Sometimes I think that the average person thinks that if the South had not lost the war that we'd still have slavery. I am going to guess that it would have died out on its own, that economics would have killed it along with the growing worldwide feeling that it was wrong. Terry
:idea: re: slavery Slavery would have died out on its own. In fact, that's exactly what happened in Brazil, where slavery died a natural death in the 1880's, just 20 years after the Civil War was fought here. Its a good example, because fewer than 4.6% of all African slaves were brought here to North America, while more than 90% went to Brazil. Beating people to force them to work is not a profitable way to run a business in an industrialized society. Remember, slavery almost died out in the United States before the Civil War. Both Washington and Jefferson freed their slaves upon their death and expected that the institution of slavery itself wouldn't last much longer. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin changed everything: it saved slavery. Cotton could suddenly be produced so cheaply/efficiently/profitably that all southern investors had to do to get rich was to buy more land and more slaves. It was like having a license to print money. Most of the agricultural land in the south was turned over to cotton cultivation and the people there would have starved without the ability to grow and sell cotton by the 1850's. Because of the cotton gin, slavery had become necessary to the southern economy by the time of the Civil War... re: Robert E. Lee I might be the wrong guy to ask about Lee or other southern traitors. He's actually one of my relatives on my mother's side. My great-grandfather was a Confederate cavalry officer named (Major) William Portis and his wife, my great-grandmother, was one of Robert E. Lee's cousins, Martha Rebecca Lee. Despite this relationship, I still feel that he should have been hanged after the war... There's no question that his decision to take his talents to the south instead of the north prolonged the war by at least 2 years. He's personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young men by extending a war that the south had no realistic chance of ever winning. How good was he? At Antietem he had only 40,000 soldiers. His opponent, George McClellan, had nearly 90,000, as well as a copy of the Confederate battle plan and Lee fought him to a draw. By the end of the war, he was defeated by Grant in the only way that he could have been defeated by such inferior strategists: a war of attrition that concluded with 10 months of trench warfare at the siege of Petersburg, VA. In other words; he fought until he finally ran out of men. If he had simply stayed loyal and accepted Lincoln's offer to be the Union commander, the war would have been over before 1863... I don't see any Confederate war heroes and I don't teach that they exist. They may have been brave and fought heroically, but that's not good enough. Benedict Arnold was a war hero too. John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald both showed great poise under pressure. Jay Gould demonstrated great skill in crashing the stock market and Denny McLain was a 30-game winner...so what? The Confederates shot on the starry flag and betrayed their country. What was their cause? To protect what Jefferson Davis called "our indefeasable rights?" Here's what they were really fighting for... Mr. Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd, grew up in a slave holding family in Kentucky. When she was a young girl, her father took her to her first slave auction. A young white girl her age was being sold off. When the auctioneer didn't hear the price that he wanted, he lifted up the girl's skirt to show her naked body and said, "Come on gentlemen!" "Surely this is worth more than that!" Women in the audience screamed, cried and fainted. Most had never seen a slave auction before and the reality of what slavery was all about was suddenly and brutally made clear to them. The white slave girl, who was Mary Todd's age, was 1/16th negro. In other words, one of her 16 great-great grandparents had been a negro slave, therefore, she was a legal sexual target for any man who had the money to purchase her and there was no doubt regarding the functions that she would perform for her new master. THAT and the easy money that comes from stealing the results of other men's labor is what the Confederates were all about. What kind of men were these? Even Jefferson knew that two of his white slaves were his own sons and he freed them on their 21st birthday's so that they could leave home and blend into white society. What kind of men enslave their own sons? re: Texas Texas was one of the major players of the Civil War. Although most of the major battles were fought outside of the state, Texas was a huge source of soldiers, money and food for the southern cause. Gen. John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade fought in nearly every major Civil War battle, including Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga etc. Robert E. Lee himself was heard to say in one battle, "Texans always move them." The Texas fighters were a Confederate legend. Only Virginia and Georgia provided more soldiers, money and food to the Confederate cause than Texas... re: me I'm a Yankee from Rhode Island who was raised in another Union state, California. I don't understand or appreciate anything that the Confederates did. As U.S. Grant said, "It was one of the worst causes for which men ever fought." That's what I think and that's what I teach. If I could burn every Confederate flag, I would. That's also what makes civil wars the worst kind of war. If I had been alive then, I would have fought against parts of my own family; just as so many others did. .................JO'Co
Another powerful account. One of the things I would like to do is to travel to to Jim's house, Wild Turkey and glasses in hand, sit outside and just listen. Nobody says it better.
mmmm powerfull stuff Phantom. I knew you'd give a good account of yourself...not that I agree with your statement that Lee was a traitor that should have been hanged though. The Civil War did one thing, it firmly established that the Union was a club from which you could not remove yourself from, no matter what. That the Federal Govt was supreme, and it's been getting more supreme every year since then. I can't imagine what would have been the response if Lincoln had hanged Lee, Jefferson, and any Southern officer who survived the war. It would have been ugly.
Wow! A masterpiece that I will save and show to my children and grandchildren. Thanks, Jim. I was going to stay out of this topic, but Jim's treatise has fortified me to express my opinion, so here goes. Lee obviously was a great leader and military man, but he was a traitor to his country and a loser. I don't want to be redundant when Jim expressed my thoughts accurately, so I'll stop there as far as my depiction of Lee and all the other leaders of the confederacy. If people want to honor them with statues and museums, that's their business. It's geographically and culturally limited, and for better or worse it's a part of the heritage of that specific region, like Indian culture is to the southwest. This is a great and free country, and I can think of worse ways to express these precious freedoms of ours.
Wow, strong and interesting stuff Phantom. Like Terry the place I would disagree would be hanging Lee. I also didn't know that Brazil had far more slaves than the United States. But thanks for the History lesson from a person who is obviously an master on the subject. Gator Bill
I still would place Lee in the category of being a great and loyal man. My understanding: The patriotism and love for our country that we have today is similar to what many men had for their states in those days...the concept of loyalty to the country itself that we all fervently believe in is actually one of the outgrowths of that horrible struggle. As far as dragging the war on in the trenches of Petersburg, at a cost of many thousands of lives in a hopeless cause...it looks like that now, but at the time Lincoln was in a huge struggle with re-election. McLellan was running against him on a platform of negotiating a settlement with the south. It was very nip and tuck, and Lee and Davis were hoping to last it out until folks in the north got tired of the war and elected McLellen or somebody like him, thus paving the way for a settlement rather than a defeat. Strange how history always repeats itself, isnt' it?
Thanks guys. For the record, Mr. Lincoln agreed with you. Just weeks before the end, when the outcome was obvious, he finally held a council of war with his greatest commanders onboard a Navy ship. Both Grant and Sherman were there, along with the Navy and they all asked him how they should treat the defeated Confederate people and their leaders. He laughed and said, "let em up easy...yup...let em up easy." He also let it be known that if all of the leaders, including Jefferson Davis, were to escape to Canada, that wouldn't bother him one bit either. Remember, Lincoln himself was a southerner, born in Kentucky just a few miles from the birthplace of Jefferson Davis. One of the Confederate leaders, former Vice-President and General John C. Breckenridge, was Mary Lincoln's cousin and most of her family had fought for the South and several of them had been killed. Lincoln was not a revenge seeker by nature and commuted nearly every death sentence that found its way to his desk. (So did Jefferson Davis.) The great tragedy of Mr. Lincoln's assassination was that he was the best guarantee that the Southerners had of fair post-war treatment. His murder changed everything and injected a poisonous spirit among some Americans that lingers to this day and I admit that I'm one of those so infected... ...........JO'Co
One other small point...Benedict Arnold might have been a great general...but comparing Lee to him is probably not fair...IMHO He was unhappy with Washington and the Continental Congress for passing him over for promotion, and also because he felt he wasn't given enough credit for his contributions to the victories at Ticonderoga and Saratoga. He was facing financial difficulties because of spending personal $ on the war effort, he was facing corruption charges, and he was under pressure from his wife who was a Crown Loyalist. He was angry and disaffected, and turned on his country, his friends, and his own army. Hardly what I would term a war hero. BTW, my own ancestors were Crown Loyalists...fled after the Revolution to the Hamilton area of Ontario, Canada where the phone book now has more Ryckmans than Smiths or Jonses...but my great, great grandaddy snuck back in during the 1800's.
We spent 8 years in Virginia....in Virginia, its called Lee-Jackson-King Day. Don't think that wasn't the cause of a host of heated debates between this Yankee and his southern friends. In Richmond, they have Monument Avenue, upon which there are many large statues dedicated to their confederate heroes. Tennessee, no different.....down there, I discovered that it's not the Civil War as we know it, it's called the War of Northern Aggression....! :roll:
Stu, My Dad's family is from the Hamilton area. The fled Ireland to Canada during the 1870's. Dad was actually born in small railroad town called Welland. After his father died young, the family moved to Hamilton and his mother sold brassieres and taught piano to feed the family. Ergo my fascination with..........not the piano. Terry
re: Arnold I wasn't comparing Benedict Arnold's military record with Lee's. There are few historical matches for Lee's abilities in all the armies of history. But Arnold was indeed a hero for a time. If he had died of his wounds at Saratoga, he would have won a place in the very first rank of American military heroes... re: Arnold's wife was a Crown Loyalist She was a LOT more than that! Peggy Shippen was the greatest, most important and highest paid British spy of the Revolutionary War. The beautiful young Pennsylvania girl who slept with everyone she needed to was later decorated by the Queen herself... http://www.amrevonline.org/museum2/index.cgi2?a=pageview&page_id=19 re: me again Female spies is one of my favorite subjects. The woman who teaches Language Arts in the classroom next to mine asked me the other day why I had used her as an example of a modern spy. I replied, "Because you were an Air Force officer, who worked for the NSA and speaks Russian." She just laughed and said, "Wow...you got it right..." .........JO'Co