US military leader, Confederate commander in the
American Civil War, and military strategist. In 1859 he suppressed John Brown's
raid on Harper's Ferry. Lee had freed his own slaves long before the war began,
and he was opposed to secession, however his devotion to his native Virginia led
him to join the Confederacy. At the outbreak of war he became military adviser
to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, and in 1862 commander of the
Army of Northern Virginia. Lee actually had been offered command of the Union
armies, but he resigned his commission to return to Virginia. During 1862-63 he
made several raids into Northern territory but after his defeat at Gettysburg
was compelled to take the defensive; he surrendered 1865 at Appomattox.
Lee graduated from West Point and distinguished himself in the Mexican
War 1846-48. In 1861 he joined the army of the Confederacy of Southern states;
in 1862 he received the command of the Army of Northern Virginia and won the
Seven Days' Battle defending Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital,
against General McClellan's Union forces. In 1863 Lee won victories at
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, both in Virginia, and in 1864 at Cold
Harbor, Virginia, but was besieged in Petersburg, Virginia, June 1864-April
1865. He surrendered to General Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox
Courthouse. Following the war he was paroled and served as president of
Washington College (now Washington and Lee University). His home had been seized
by Union forces and now is part of Arlington National Cemetery.
by Louis
Redmond
Even among the free, it is not always
easy to live together. There came a time, less than a hundred years ago, when
the people of this country disagreed so bitterly among themselves that some of
them felt they could not go on living with the rest.
A test of arms was
made to decide whether Americans should remain one nation or become two. The
armies of those who believed in two nations were led by a man named Robert E.
Lee.
What about Lee? What kind of man was he who nearly split the history
of the United States down the middle and made two separate books of
it?
They say you had to see him to believe that a man so fine could
exist. He was handsome. He was clever. He was brave. He was gentle. He was
generous and charming, noble and modst, admired and beloved. He had never failed
at anything in his upright soldier's life. He was a born winner, this Robert E.
Lee. Except for once. In the greatest contest of his life, in the war beween the
South and the North, Robert E. Lee lost.
Now there were men who came with
smouldering eyes to Lee and said: "Let's not accept this result as final. Let's
keep our anger alive. Let's be grim and unconvinced, and wear our bitterness
like a medal. You can be our leader in this."
But Lee shook his head at
those men. "Abandon your animosities," he said, "and make your sons Americans."
And what did he do himself when his war was lost? He took a job as
president of a tiny college, with forty students and four profes- sors, at a
salary of $1500 a year. He had commanded thousands of young men in battle. Now
he wanted to prepare a few hun- dred of them for the duties of peace. So the
countrymen of Robert E. Lee saw how a born winner loses, and it seemed to them
that in defeat he won his most lasting victory.
There is an art of
losing, and Robert E. Lee is its finest teacher. In a democracy, where opposing
viewpoints regularly meet for a test of ballots, it is good for all of us to
know how to lose occasionally, how to yield peacefully, for the sake of freedom.
Lee is our master in this. The man who fought against the Union showed us what
unity means.