This article was originally published by The Epoch Times: The Two Reputations of Robert E. Lee
Within the preface to “Robert E. Lee: A Biography,” printed in 1995, professor and Civil Warfare historian Emory Thomas takes notice of his topic’s ever-changing standing within the eyes of others. When battle between the North and South erupted in April 1861, Gen. Winfield Scott revealed his deep admiration for his former workers officer by providing Col. Lee command of the military being shaped by Lincoln. Refusing to lift his sword in opposition to his beloved state of Virginia, Lee rejected this honor and the chance for fame. He resigned his fee.
For the remainder of his life, and all the way down to our current time, Lee’s deeds introduced each garlands and brickbats. As Mr. Thomas says, “Lee has been the patron saint of the American South,” but historic figures exterior of that area—Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, his cousin Franklin, and others—additionally lavished reward on Lee for his management expertise and character.
Others condemned Lee. Northerners throughout the Warfare thought of him a traitor to america. Extra not too long ago, as Mr. Emerson briefly mentions, late Twentieth-century revisionists assailed Lee’s stellar status. Right here Mr. Emerson particularly mentions Tom Connelly’s “The Marble Man: Robert E. Lee and His Picture in American Society,” writing that “Connelly argued that Lee’s picture was contrived and that Lee himself endured a life replete with frustration, self doubt, and a sense of failure. … He was really a troubled man, satisfied that he had failed as a prewar profession officer, mother or father, and ethical particular person.’”
Present-day radicals haven’t solely castigated Lee as a slaveholder and a traitor, however have additionally demanded that statues of him be faraway from public locations. In Charlottesville, Virginia, after rioting broke out over the destiny of Lee’s monument, the statue was faraway from a public park, after which secretly reduce to items and melted into “a sludge of glowing bronze.”
A Quest for Steadiness
“I’m properly conscious,” wrote Mr. Thomas in his Lee biography, “that the portrait of Lee in these pages might offend equally those that revere and those that revile the person. I can plead solely effort and honesty in protection of my understanding.”
To color that portrait, Mr. Thomas focuses extra on Lee himself than on his navy exploits throughout the Warfare. We meet him as a boy fighting the failures of his father, Mild-Horse Harry Lee, a Revolutionary Warfare hero who grew to become a debtor and an outcast who hardly ever noticed his son.
Mr. Thomas then describes Lee as a cadet at West Level—he would later function superintendent of the Academy—adopted by his 17 years as an officer and gifted builder within the Corps of Engineers. Whereas serving on Gen. Winfield Scott’s workers throughout the Mexican-American Warfare, he demonstrated his bravery and devotion to responsibility. At Harper’s Ferry in 1859, he aptly commanded the forces that freed John Brown’s hostages and captured Brown alive. After his give up of Accomplice troops at Appomattox in 1865, Lee grew to become identified for his work of reconciliation between South and North, and for his transient however influential time period as president of Washington School in Lexington, Virginia, now Washington and Lee College.
Mr. Thomas explains why Lee so often appears as a historical enigma. He was an Evangelical Christian and a stoic, with a fervent lifelong belief in the efficacy of duty and the practice of self-control. Unlike Ulysses Grant, he left no memoirs. He was a very private man, circumspect in his dealings with others and wary about sharing his innermost thoughts and emotions outside of his family circle.
Yet he was also an attentive father who found joy in the play and conversation of his children. Always faithful to his wife, he delighted in the company of and correspondence with attractive young women. Perhaps more than any other commander in American military history, his troops came to adore him almost to the point of idolatry. In short, he was a man much admired by nearly all who had contact with him.
The Conflicting Perspectives of Others
In Washington in 1866, Lee wrote to a friend, “I am considered now such a monster that I hesitate to darken with my shadow the doors of those I love lest I should bring upon them misfortune.”
Yet in October of 1865, Lee had signed his name to an Amnesty Oath, renewing his loyalty to the Constitution, and dispatched it to Washington. Secretary of State William Seward gave the signed oath to a friend as a souvenir, and the oath only reappeared in the national archives in 1970. As a result, unlike so many other Confederates who had received amnesty, Lee died without ever having been pardoned or regaining his rights as a citizen.
In 1975, a joint declaration of the U.S. Congress restored Lee’s full rights of citizenship. On the official ceremony, President Gerald Ford famous, “Basic Lee’s character has been an instance to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an occasion during which each American can take pleasure.”
Mr. Thomas additionally makes clear that Lee held typical Nineteenth-century views on freed slaves. On that 1866 trek to Washington, he appeared earlier than a Congressional committee to testify about enslaved individuals’s situations in Virginia. When requested what he considered the brand new freedmen, Lee answered, “I don’t assume that he’s as able to buying information because the white man is.”
Nevertheless, as Mr. Thomas tells us, quickly after returning to Richmond, Virginia from Appomattox, Lee was at a Sunday service at St. Paul’s Episcopalian Church when the pastor, Charles Minnegerode, invited parishioners to come back ahead and obtain communion. “A tall, well-dressed black man” rose, went to the entrance of the church, and knelt on the rail, surprising the congregation. The congregation sat motionless and surprised till one other man walked down the aisle and knelt on the rail close to the black man.
This was Robert E. Lee.
Uncommon Qualitie
Of all of the figures within the American story, Robert E. Lee greatest embodies what occurs once we are too ignorant or blind to acknowledge the nuances of historical past during which women and men in their very own time have their very own peculiar prejudices. Too many people take a chainsaw to the previous fairly than a scalpel. After we learn Mr. Thomas’s biography, we understand that Lee was neither a saint nor a sinner. He was a person of utmost self-discipline who was truthful and merciful in his relationships and who judged himself way more harshly than he did others.
In a 1960 speech, Dwight Eisenhower mentioned that he saved an image of Robert E. Lee in his workplace. A New York dentist, Leon Scott, wrote to ask the president why he emulated a person who devoted “his greatest efforts to the destruction of america Authorities.”
Eisenhower took time from his busy schedule to reply with a private letter. He identified to Dr. Scott that the query of succession was very a lot in play within the first half of the Nineteenth century, that Lee believed within the “Constitutional validity” of his trigger, and that he was a powerful chief who “remained selfless nearly to a fault and unfailing in his religion in God.” Eisenhower concluded, “Certainly, to the diploma that present-day American youth will try to emulate his uncommon qualities, together with his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to assist heal the Nation’s wounds as soon as the bitter wrestle was over, we, in our personal time of hazard in a divided world, can be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.”
Or as Mr. Thomas writes, “Lee was a terrific particular person, not a lot due to what he did (though his accomplishments have been extraordinary); he was nice due to the best way he lived, due to what he was.”
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