militaryhistory

On a solemn day in April of 1865, an older gray distinguished man mounted his horse and rode out to a small house owned by a man named Wilmer McClean. The house was at a place called Appomattox Virginian. Waiting for his were a group of Union Officers. One of which was Ulysess S Grant. The older man was Robert E Lee, the Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia.

This was one of two days which would forever become the foundation for the southern cause. The first was July 4th, 1863 at Gettysburg Pennsylvania. It was on that day that Lee had sent approximately one third of the Army of Northern Virginia to its death as part of “Picketts Charge”. This event would later be refered to as the Confedrerate high water mark, and in the famous  words of Edwin Bearss aNational Parks Civil War Historian, “And the Confederate tide, rolled back”.

But out of the surrender and defeat rose the “Confederate Cause”. The cause would live on for generations in the hearts and minds of southerners. An idea that in many ways still permeates southern culture today through symbolism, thought and learning, that has been passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation. In the north, the southern cause is an abstract idea, read about in history books, hashed out on the silver screen and made up of men in white sheets and burning crosses. But in reality, the southern cause evolved into something more complicated and viceral to the southerner and emotional to those who are touched by it.

In  a novel by William Faulkner “Intruder in the Dust”, Faulkner states;

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain…… In this eloquent paragraph, Faulkner sums up what is in the heart of a southerner, in the heart of a young south, so ready to stand on her own. And yet that moment in history does take place on that long and open killing ground.

Out of the ashes of Gettysburg, also rose a central figure to the cause. A man who isthe most beloved in the southern experience, a name that still hangs on the tounges of both southerner and northerner alike. The man, was non other than Robert E. Lee.

Lee, was later refered to as the marble man. This is because he had been firmly placed on a pedestal by southerners and and greatly admired by many northerners as well. When it comes to Lee it is indeed very difficult to seperate the man from his myth. Even now, as I write this paragragh, I myself feel a great connection To Robert E. Lee.

As a young man in eigth grade I visited Washington DC with my class prior to graduation. I visited Arlington National Cemetary, I saw the overwhelming multitude of graves, I saw from a distance Lee’s Mansion. It was a white gleeming ediface of beauty to my eyes. But at the time I had no idea that it was a focal point of anger during the civil war, and that Lee had sacraficed his home, his commission in the Union Army and his entire life for what he believed.

Many years later as an adult, I visited Washington Lee University where Lee’s tomb is located. As I stood at his tomb, I remember being completed and utterly overwhelmed by the power of being in Lees presence. It mattered not that he had already been deceased for generations. As an adult I knew what sacrafice meant. I had been in the military, saw my commrades die in the execution of their duties, I had made my own sacrafices and clearly understood what most people never come to understand, that duty and service commands all in the life of those that choose a military career, and it did with Lee, and so many that had served under in him in the “cause”.