Happy Birthday Robert E. Lee

[Origanalist]

Robert E. Lee Quotes

Born 1 - 19 - 1807

Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whiskey - I like it, I always did, and that is the reason I never use it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My chief concern is to try to be an humble, earnest Christian.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty
of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind
to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.
I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense
of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services
may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword.

 

[Origanalist]

Secession or the threat of secession was always intended as a possible means of maintaining both the American union and constitutional government. The idea was that the central government would likely only propose constitutional laws if it understood that unconstitutional laws could lead to secession or nullification. Nullification and the threat thereof were intended to have the same effect. That is why the great British historian of liberty, Lord Acton, wrote the following letter to General Robert E. Lee on November 4, 1866, seventeen months after Lee's surrender at Appomattox:

I saw in States' rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic [i.e., the Confederate Constitution] have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly an wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

http://mises.org/daily/5883/

 

[Origanalist]

The politically correct historians who are the objects of Woods’s assault would here interpose an objection. Were not states’ rights the key to the defense of slavery? How without a strong central government could slavery have been ended?

Woods easily turns aside this counterargument. The Civil War—as he points out, not a genuine civil war since the South did not wish to replace the national government—was not fought to end slavery: Lincoln rather aimed to consolidate national power. In opposing Lincoln’s dictatorship, the South defended the cause of liberty, a fact that was not lost on the great classical liberal Lord Acton. In a letter of 1866 to Robert E. Lee, Acton said that he "saw in States’ rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy" (p. 74).

In the pursuit of their centralizing mission, the Northern armies shocked European historians by their assaults on civilians. Woods, illustrating his excellent command of the historical literature, cites in this connection the seldom-mentioned classic of F.J.P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism. He argued that the Northern forces "broke deliberately and dramatically from the European code of warfare that had developed since the seventeenth century and that had forbidden targeting the civilian population" (p. 71).

http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=268

 

[tod evans]

One of countless brave and noble men buried by this empire...

 

[heavenlyboy34]

R.I.P.

 

[Travlyr]

January 23, 1861
Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for “perpetual union,” so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution. . . . Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved, and the government disrupted, I shall return to my native state and share the miseries of my people; and, save in defense, will draw my sword on none.
- Robert E. Lee

http://almostchosenpeople.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/lee-on-secession/

 

[Occam's Banana]

Robert E. Lee Quotes

It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it.

If only ...

 

[Tywysog Cymru]

Not a huge fan of the CSA, but Lee was a great man who fought for his state.

 

[Origanalist]

Not a huge fan of the CSA, but Lee was a great man who fought for his state.

Well said, one does not have to be a fan of the CSA to admire Robert E. Lee.

 

[otherone]

Well said, one does not have to be a fan of the CSA to admire Robert E. Lee.

Lee wasn't a Confederate; he was a Virginian. He served his country....Virginia.

 

[Origanalist]

Lee wasn't a Confederate; he was a Virginian. He served his country....Virginia.

Though he ended up as commander of Confederate forces, there is no doubt that's how he considered it.

 

[klamath]

It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it.

people are to fond of war.... from the anarchists to the fascists they to turn to the war Gods all to readily....

 

[jmdrake]

After the civil war Robert E. Lee desegregated a church.

Edit: And I finally found a link to back up this story.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/09/0907_smithgenlee_2.html
Through victory an entirely new social order was to be established that would alter the relationship between the races forever. Unlike so many other Southerners, Lee embraced the new order. After peace had been achieved through unconditional surrender, the South became a vast, heavily occupied military zone with black Union soldiers seemingly everywhere.

One Sunday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, a well-dressed, lone black man, whom no one in the community—white or black—had ever seen before, had attended the service, sitting unnoticed in the last pew.

Just before communion was to be distributed, he rose and proudly walked down the center aisle through the middle of the church where all could see him and approached the communion rail, where he knelt. The priest and the congregation were completely aghast and in total shock.

No one knew what to do…except General Lee. He went to the communion rail and knelt beside the black man and they received communion together—and then a steady flow of other church members followed the example he had set.

After the service was over, the black man was never to be seen in Richmond again. It was as if he had been sent down from a higher place purposefully for that particular occasion.

 

[gwax23]

Wheres the quote where he said something along the lines of "If this war was about slavery Id go over an join the union" or something like that.

 

[NIU Students for Liberty]

people are to fond of war.... from the anarchists to the fascists they to turn to the war Gods all to readily....

 

[phill4paul]

The south will........be rewritten and forgotten.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?435980-The-drive-to-erase-the-remnants-of-the-South

 

[Travlyr]

Lee wasn't a Confederate; he was a Virginian. He served his country....Virginia.

Robert E. Lee was a States Rights advocate. He was a Virginian. Where Virginia went Robert E. Lee went.

 

[samforpaul]

After the civil war Robert E. Lee desegregated a church.

Edit: And I finally found a link to back up this story.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/09/0907_smithgenlee_2.html
Through victory an entirely new social order was to be established that would alter the relationship between the races forever. Unlike so many other Southerners, Lee embraced the new order. After peace had been achieved through unconditional surrender, the South became a vast, heavily occupied military zone with black Union soldiers seemingly everywhere.

One Sunday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, a well-dressed, lone black man, whom no one in the community—white or black—had ever seen before, had attended the service, sitting unnoticed in the last pew.

Just before communion was to be distributed, he rose and proudly walked down the center aisle through the middle of the church where all could see him and approached the communion rail, where he knelt. The priest and the congregation were completely aghast and in total shock.

No one knew what to do…except General Lee. He went to the communion rail and knelt beside the black man and they received communion together—and then a steady flow of other church members followed the example he had set.

After the service was over, the black man was never to be seen in Richmond again. It was as if he had been sent down from a higher place purposefully for that particular occasion.

A few years ago on a History Channel program Lee joining an African American man to receive communion was reenacted. I remember it well.

 

[Pericles]

“My experiences of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor be indisposed to serve them: nor, in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope. ”
― Robert E. Lee

 

[Carson]

I wonder what would have happened if their right to secede had been respected?

Never the less when you shake off some of things we've been told a small voice of reason can be heard to grow out of the darkness of their plight. Not that I hold with bullying fellow men just for their color or stature.

Now it seems we find we are all being bullied globally. Secession will be an option. New options will have to be tested to work our way out of our plight.

The cost may be dear but so has been the option of doing nothing.