“He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbor without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.”
Benjamin Harvey Hill on Robert E. Lee
H,W. Crocker III, if you haven’t read his history of the Church, Triumph, do yourself a favor and get a copy, has a barn burner of a post on Marse Robert at The Catholic Thing:
While Lee is now a subject of leftist disparagement, he is, actually, the perfect antidote to the anomie and alienation of today’s young people. In a world of self-centeredness (so self-centered that young people invent “gender identities” and demand that society affirm them), Lee is the great counterexample.
When a young mother asked Robert E. Lee what she should teach her infant son, he said: “Teach him to deny himself.” Not “teach him self-expression” or “teach him self-esteem” or “teach him that good boys don’t make history.” No, “teach him to deny himself” – and to take on his duty to serve others.
For young people who are depressed or anxious (or eager to claim some sort of victim status), Lee offers the advice of a Christian realist: “Shake off those gloomy feelings. Drive them away. . . .Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.” He believed that God would, in the fullness of time, turn all things right. Our duty, in the meantime, was to do the best we could.
To his daughter Mildred, Lee wrote, “The struggle which you describe you experience between doing what you ought and what you desire is common to all. You have only always to do what is right. It will become easier by practice, and you will enjoy in the midst of your trials the pleasure of an approving conscience. That will be worth everything else.”
All the strange social contagions of our time – tattooing and piercing and dying one’s hair green or pink, becoming an alphabet person, and all the rest – are all about expressing one’s alleged self by conforming to what everyone else is doing. That’s why nearly 40 percent of Brown University’s students now claim to be in the grip of some sort of sexual perversity (which also, of course, raises their social standing in a tacitly anti-Christian society). It’s what drives the Left’s war on free political speech. It’s why the Left will never leave conservatives alone. Because the Left is about conformity.
That’s why we need young people to be true rebels again – to recognize that they need to be in rebellion against the world, the flesh, and the devil; to raise the rebel flag in favor of faith, family, and God.
Years ago, I was summoned by a trio of nuns to visit them at their monastery. I assumed they wanted to talk to me about my recently published history of the Catholic Church, Triumph. I was wrong. One of them said, “Oh, yes, of course, we all love Triumph, but what we really wanted to talk to you about was your book Robert E. Lee on Leadership.”
“Lee,” I reminded them, “was an Episcopalian, not a Catholic.”
“Well,” one of them said, “he’s a Catholic now.”
Go here to read the rest. Crocker is a good deal more sympathetic to the Confederate cause than I, The Union Forever!, am, but the demonization of Lee and all other Confederates by the contemporary Left sickens me. Their target is the USA, and not the Confederacy, dead for almost 160 years.
In part I blame Hollywood’s obsession with WWII that has primed too many to treat all opponents as Hitler and all opposition as Nazi. There was a time when people could respect at least the talent and character of their enemies or an enemy leader, if not the cause. Wellington fought Napoleon but treated him as a man, not a demon of Hell. I’m not aware Washington or Cornwallis had bad things to say about each other.
Despite all the tributes to Lee’s character, if he could not draw his sword against his home state, he could have taken the more courageous approach of Gov. Sam Houston in Texas.
Different men. I think both courses were honorable in that nightmarish time.
Lee was a gentleman born at Stratford Hall into the upper eschelons of planter society, but because of his father’s scandalous behavior did not receive an upbringing commensurate with the Lee name. He was 11 years old when his father died.
A strong student Lee did very well at West Point. He was known for building the fortifications at Ft. Monroe and military tactics used in the wars he fought in.
Lee’s mother and wife were devout Episcopalians though he had Catholic ancestors in the Calverts and royal Stuarts.
Houston lost his father as a young boy of 7. His familywas often of the move, living in many places in many states and territories. He was a military man in his early years but enjoyed the political life more..
The most interesting part to me of Houston’s bio is of the times lived with the Cherokee Indians. He was fluent in Cherokee and was treated by wealthy Cherokee planter John Jolly as a son. ( There were many Cherokee planters’ They owned slaves and their culture is a story in itself.) Throughout his life Houston advocated for the Native Americans. Of Houston’s three wives one was a Cherokee related to Jolly’s family. As an aside Houston, 14 years older than Mary Anna Custis was one of her suitors before she married Robert E. Lee.
The Houston family was Presbyrterian but Sam chaffed at the strictness and preferred the Indian spirituality. He was baptized Catholic in order to own land in Mexico. Later became a Baptist to please his third wife.
A nuclear powered fleet balistic missile submarine was named after this great man: the USS Robert E. Lee SSBN-601.
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/r/robert-e-lee-ssbn-601.html
She was commissioned in 1960 and decommissioned a mere 23 years later in 1983, a year after my submarine got out of the shipyard. She was the victim of being outpaced by technology. Her nuclear propulsion system couldn’t compete with the natural circulation reactor in newer fleet ballistic missle submarines, and her 16 missiles were too short ranged for the planet-spanning ones in the new boats. Originally intended to carry 16 Polaris nuclear missiles, I don’t know that she was ever upgraded for the Poseidon missiles, and I don’t think she was capable of carrying today’s Trident missiles (from which there is no escape once launched). The Ohio class ballistic missile submarines with their super-quiet and twice as powerful nuclear propulsion system replaced all those old boats. I am sad that I never had the chance to serve aboard her, and no boat in the future is likely to take up her name: USS Robert E Lee.
TV Trivia: the fictional USS Seaview on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea carried the same Polaris nuclear missiles as the Robert E. Lee.
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