Elementary school students coached to compare Robert E. Lee to Hilter

dvldog

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He should start a thread on the civil war or on key personalities involved. His insight is always appreciated.
 

formersoldier71

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Can't have such a person on a stained glass window. The Very Rev. Gary Hall, of the National Cathedral...
...wasn’t even aware of the Confederate images until he started receiving e-mails after the shootings, he says. What struck him was the absence of any mention of the “sin of slavery.”

The carved inscription under the Lee window, for example, reads: “a Christian soldier without fear and without reproach.”

“I’m not saying that Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson were not pious persons, but do we want to honor them in this space? The cause they fought for is wrong,” he said, after a sermon on July 4.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Societ...eighs-removing-images-of-Confederate-generals
They do have a carving of that noted Episcopalian Darth Vader on the Cathedral. Good thing he wasn't on the rebel side.
 

Tidewater

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Can't have such a person on a stained glass window. The Very Rev. Gary Hall, of the National Cathedral...

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Societ...eighs-removing-images-of-Confederate-generals
They do have a carving of that noted Episcopalian Darth Vader on the Cathedral. Good thing he wasn't on the rebel side.
The clergyman's attitude is odd.
Francis P. Blair said:
"In the beginning of the war Secretary Cameron asked me to sound General Robert E. Lee, to know whether his feelings would justify him in taking command of our army. His cousin, John Lee, sent him a note at my suggestion. Lee came. I told him what President Lincoln wanted him to do. He wanted him to take command of the army. Lee said that he was devoted to the Union. He said, among other things, that he would do everything in his power to save it, and that if he (Lee) owned all the negroes in the South, he would be willing to give them up and make the sacrifice of the value of every one of them to save the Union. We talked several hours on the political question in that vein. Lee said he did not know how he could draw his sword upon his native State.
Blair, for the record was a Republican and friend of Abraham Lincoln.

On another occasion, when Lee was talking with Bishop Joseph P. B. Wilmer, of Louisiana, Wilmer asked “Is it your expectation," I asked, “that the issue of this war will be to perpetuate the institution of slavery?” Lee replied, "The future is in the hands of Providence, but, if the slaves of the South were mine, I would surrender them all without a struggle, to avert this war.”

I would contrast this with the President of the United States who said he was willing to keep all the slaves in slavery (and to fight the war) in order to preserve the Union, while Lee stated that he was willing to let all the slaves go (if he could) to avoid the war.
 
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Tidewater

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One more quote from a letter by Lee to Captain James May, Rock Island, July 9, 1866.
R. E. Lee said:
"My conduct during the last five eventful years has been governed by my sense of duty. I had no other guide, nor had I any other object than the defense of those principles of American liberty upon which the constitutions of the several states were originally founded; and, unless they are strictly observed, I fear there will be an end to republican government in this country."
Reminiscences, page 197.

Lee just spoke a language of honor and duty that northerners then and leftists today simply do not understand. It is simply an incomprehensible foreign language to most people today.

I would guess that Lee himself would be appalled to have a school named after him, for exactly the reasons behind this controversy. He would not wish his name to lead to acrimony. After the war, when he could have sold his name to a lot of organizations for handsome sums of money, the only institution he was willing to lend his name to was Washington College in Lexington, and that, I would guess, only because it was an educational institution and it was named after his hero, George Washington.
 
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CullmanTide

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The clergyman's attitude is odd.
Blair, for the record was a Republican and friend of Abraham Lincoln.

On another occasion, when Lee was talking with Bishop Joseph P. B. Wilmer, of Louisiana, Wilmer asked “Is it your expectation," I asked, “that the issue of this war will be to perpetuate the institution of slavery?” Lee replied, "The future is in the hands of Providence, but, if the slaves of the South were mine, I would surrender them all without a struggle, to avert this war.”

I would contrast this with the President of the United States who said he was willing to keep all the slaves in slavery (and to fight the war) in order to preserve the Union, while Lee stated that we was willing to let all the slaves go (if he could) to avoid the war.

That says it all.
 

cbi1972

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One more quote from a letter by Lee to Captain James May, Rock Island, July 9, 1866.
Reminiscences, page 197.

Lee just spoke a language of honor and duty that northerners then and leftists today simply do not understand. It is simply an incomprehensible foreign language to most people today.

I would guess that Lee himself would be appalled to have a school named after him, for exactly the reasons behind this controversy. He would not wish his name to lead to acrimony. After the war, when he could have sold his name to a lot of organizations for handsome sums of money, the only institution he was willing to lend his name to was Washington College in Lexington, and that, I would guess, only because it was and educational institution and it was named after his hero, George Washington.
Speaking of Lee, honor, and Washington College, the college is now Washington and Lee University (my alma mater).
The honor code there is entirely student-run, and violations come with but one remedy: expulsion.
When I was there, dorm room doors were left wide open, bags were left unattended, and students would take exams out of the classroom, and return later with them completed.

W&L: The Honor System
The Honor System is one of Washington and Lee University’s most important traditions and traces its roots to the mid-1840s at Washington College (W&L's name from 1813-1870).

During Robert E. Lee’s presidency (1865-1870) the Honor System under which students live today took form. Lee placed tremendous trust in the students by transferring the System’s primary administrative duties from the faculty to the student body. Even more important, he did away with the former written rules and regulations and established one central idea: that each student "conduct himself as a gentleman." (W&L has an equal number of gentlewomen on campus today.) As a result, today’s understanding of the Honor System has one central tenet, that breaches of the community’s trust will not be tolerated. Examples of such violations include but are not limited to lying, cheating and stealing.

Around 1905 administration of the Honor System was invested in the all-student Executive Committee, which holds that responsibility to this day. The Honor System is remarkable for its strength and its student-run nature. Each generation of W&L students takes responsibility for maintaining the standards of civility and integrity so visible around campus. Importantly, students are trusted – by professors, deans, W&L’s president – to ensure the System’s efficacy and to enjoy its benefits on a daily basis.

Trust, safety, student autonomy- just a few more reasons that W&L is such an unusual place.

VMI, right next door, has a similar tradition. Stonewall Jackson taught philosophy and artillery there.
 

TideEngineer08

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The clergyman's attitude is odd.
Blair, for the record was a Republican and friend of Abraham Lincoln.

On another occasion, when Lee was talking with Bishop Joseph P. B. Wilmer, of Louisiana, Wilmer asked “Is it your expectation," I asked, “that the issue of this war will be to perpetuate the institution of slavery?” Lee replied, "The future is in the hands of Providence, but, if the slaves of the South were mine, I would surrender them all without a struggle, to avert this war.”

I would contrast this with the President of the United States who said he was willing to keep all the slaves in slavery (and to fight the war) in order to preserve the Union, while Lee stated that he was willing to let all the slaves go (if he could) to avoid the war.
This is why you don't fly off the handle and attempt to eradicate history. As you've said so many times, these people were very complex people and those events were very complex events. To distill them down to racism is to be intellectually dishonest and lazy.
 

dvldog

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This is why you don't fly off the handle and attempt to eradicate history. As you've said so many times, these people were very complex people and those events were very complex events. To distill them down to racism is to be intellectually dishonest and lazy.
Unfortunately, that never stopped anyone. [emoji19]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Tidewater

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Speaking of Lee, honor, and Washington College, the college is now Washington and Lee University (my alma mater).
The honor code there is entirely student-run, and violations come with but one remedy: expulsion.
When I was there, dorm room doors were left wide open, bags were left unattended, and students would take exams out of the classroom, and return later with them completed.

W&L: The Honor System

VMI, right next door, has a similar tradition. Stonewall Jackson taught philosophy and artillery there.
Did not know you were a Dubyanell alum.
I was talking to a W&L student and comparing him to VMI cadets. I told him, "You're from Athens. They are from Sparta."
 

Tidewater

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I found this today in a letter from a southerner about remembrance.
Irish poet Thomas Moore wrote this some time before 1845.
These portions seem appropriate today, sadly.

Oh! Blame not the Bard.

But alas for his country!—her pride is gone by,
And that spirit is broken which never would bend;
O'er the ruin her children in secret must sigh,
For 'tis treason to love her, and death to defend!
Unprized are her sons, till they've learned to betray;
Undistinguished they live, if they shame not their sires;
And the torch that would light them through dignity's way,
Must be caught from the pile where their country expires!

But though glory be gone, and though hope fade away,
Thy name, loved Erin! shall live in his songs;
Not e'en in the hour when his heart is most gay.
Will he lose the remembrance of thee and thy wrongs.
The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains;
The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o'er the deep,
Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy chains,
Shall pause at the song of their captive, and weep!
THOMAS MOORE.
 

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