Would Lee Have Been Confused?

"I am seriously glad to be here tonight at the annual Alfalfa dinner. I know that many you are aware that this dinner began almost one hundred years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the general would be 202 years old. And very confused."  President Obama at the Alfalfa Dinner

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As a writer I have spent a lot of time contemplating Lee and his contemporaries and I would make the following observations:

- I doubt that Lee would have been very confused.  Barack Obama is an intelligent, well-spoken man.  A few minutes of listening to the president speak would have eliminated any confusion on the part of Lee, Jefferson, Washington and any number of other "time-travelers" who are so easily mocked.  Those who think otherwise of Lee should take the time to learn something of him.  Start here.

- The comments appended to the blog entry cited above are revelatory in the depth of animosity so easily uncovered with regard to this long gone war.  These comments contain such assertions as; "the South is a conquered nation," and that display of the Confederate flag should be made a federal crime.

- The old assertion is also made in these coments that Lee and people like him were "traitors" who should have been hanged after the war, and that Lee "deserted his post" as an army officer.

-  In fact, Lee resigned his commission as a US Army officer, and the resignation was accepted by the US Secretary of War BEFORE Lee took service with post-secession Virginia.  He could not desert a post he no longer held.

-  Lee's oath to the United States was legal, not sacramental.  It was binding only so long as he remained a US Army officer.  Acceptance of his resignation ended that.  The oaths that military and civil officials of the United States take are the same today.  They are not binding for life.  They are binding for so long as the relationship between the oath taker and the government persists.

- "Treason" is the only crime defined in the US Constitution.  The crime so defined can only be committed by a citizen of the United States.  Foreign soldiers, for example, can not commit treason to the United States.   Lee and all the other Confederates believed that the states had the right to secede, and had effectively left the Union.  They believed that they were no longer citizens of the United States.  Intent to commit a crime is a necessary ingredient for commission of a crime.  Since they did not believe that they were US citizens they could not intend to commit the crime of treason.  None of the Confederate leaders were tried for treason after the end of the war.  Why is that?  Christian or some other form of charity?  I doubt that Thaddeus Stevens, Sumner and their like felt much of that.  No.  It seems clear that the Confederates were not tried for treason because the federal government knew that their defense in court would be conducted on the basis of the legality of secession and the federal government did not want to face that issue.  Even today there is nothing in the US Constitution that says that the Union is, or was, indissoluble.  The Declaration of Independence practically encourages secession.  Read it, all of it.  Reconstruction required the re-admission of each of the Confederate States to the Union.  Why did the states have to be re-admitted if they had not actually left the Union?  None of these issues were things that the US government wanted to face in court, and so people like Lee and Jefferson Davis were never tried. 

- Now, if by "treason" is meant some feeling of loss or betrayal not founded in law but rather in nationalism, then the assertion of "treason" on the part of the Confederates becomes more comprehensible.

pl

 

Comments

[Sidney O. Smith III]

Godspeed on these viewpoints.

It’s all speculation, of course, but my guess is that a considerable number who fought for the South would applaud the election of Barack Obama (and, back before 9-11, the election of Colin Powell).

One question that will not be answered until the time all questions are answered is the following: would the election of an African American as US President have occurred sooner in history if the WBS had not taken place? It’s a reasonable question to ask because the wound of the war runs deep. It’s a grievous national scar that worsened race relations considerably, particularly during Reconstruction and, later, at the turn of the 19th century. And the tragedy of the war engendered regional misunderstanding as well as animosities, the effects of which still resonant strongly today, as witnessed by the Alfalfa dinner comments.

I am placing my bet that the answer to the eternal question posed above is a solid “yes”. And very reasonable odds exist such an candidate would have carried the South.

[Sidney O. Smith III]

One aspect of Lincoln’s life has left me very confused, and I have concluded it is an aspect that would leave many Southerners and Northerners, both then and now, perplexed. At least to me, stumbling across this event in his life was a stunning preliminary find.

How stunning? It seems to me that a historian or dramatist would do well to start the Lincoln narrative with this event. In my opinion (subject to change of course) it is the equivalent of hearing the words “Rose Bud” at the opening of Citizen Kane.

But before I describe this aspect of his life, it is obvious that all sides of the political spectrum are trying to expropriate Lincoln to promote their own agenda. It is difficult for me to believe that Kagan’s Lincoln is the same as Weiss’ Lincoln is the same as DiLorenzo’s Lincoln.

Right now, at this stage of my inquiry, which admittedly remains in the initial stages, Shelby Foote does a very good job of humanizing Lincoln (crying after the loss of Sen. Baker at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff) but also pointing out he was a ardent nationalist.

Plus, I see a tremendous character transition between Lincoln in 1860 and 1865. Just check out how many times Lincoln used the word “God” in his second inauguration speech in 1865 and contrast that to how many times the word was mentioned in first inauguration speech. (word cloud analysis of the two speeches gives the answer). Lincoln in 1860 was not the same as Lincoln in 1865.

Yet, I always keep coming back to this event in Lincoln’s life. It occurred in 1851 and seems to reflect much about the inner and outer dynamics of the man.

Lincoln did not attend the funeral of his father in 1851. And from what I can tell so far, he elected not to attend the funeral.

Post-modern Freudians can sugar coat that aspect of his life all they want, but, in my view, it appears highly significant. Odds certainly exist that his decision to not attend the funeral suggests he was still mired in a family dynamic. And it just seems to me that this decision indicates that some type of inner turmoil continued to torment the heart and soul of Lincoln.

Those who want to depict Lincoln as a secular saint downplay this aspect of his life and try to justify it. And, granted, it’s all speculation but odds seems greater that a man of peace in 1851 would attend his father’s funeral, no matter the circumstances of his upbringing. (And I am willing to bet that had his father died in 1865, he would have attended the funeral).

As a juxtaposition, Lee’s father did not leave him with much. And didn’t Devereaux once mention that he suffered a minor crucifixion, no? But from what I can tell, both would have honored their father at the appropriate time.

Questions arise. What was the intent underlying Lincoln’s decision not to attend the funeral in 1851? And did this intent play out on a grander scale ten years later? After all, to not attend a funeral is almost tantamount to ignoring and breaking a religious law that is part of tradition.

And Lincoln’s father was born a Southerner.

[Sidney O. Smith III]

You can add former President Jimmy Carter to the list of people who reject the idea of Lincoln as a secular saint.

According to Jack Hunter, President Carter while critiquing a new book on Lincoln wrote that Lincoln “ignores the fact that the tragic combat might have been avoided altogether, and that the leaders of both sides, overwhelmingly Christian, were violating a basic premise of their belief as followers of the Prince of Peace.”

Predictably, the neoconservatives jumped all over Carter’s stance and -- even more importantly -- went on to invoked Lincoln to justify an attack on Iran. And it is this invocation of Lincoln to justify pre-emptive attacks on other nations that makes the Lincoln debate relevant.

Here’s neocon Ira Stroll writing in the Daily News:

“The Obama administration is going to be faced with policy decisions on negotiating with Hamas, Iran, North Korea and others whose hands are stained with crimes akin to slavery. It may help President Obama structure the internal discussions if he considers whether he wants to perceive America's conflicts in the fashion of Lincoln, his fellow Illinois politician, or in the manner of Carter, waiting around for a peaceful termination while today's victims and slaves suffer beatings and are deprived of their freedoms.”

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