North
Carolina in 1892 made the birthdate of Robert E. Lee a legal holiday in
the State. Like Washington before him, he led Americans, including
North Carolinians, in battle in their second War of Independence in
defense of their homes, inalienable rights and liberty. He considered
his State of Virginia as his country, and the South as his home.
Explaining his actions in a postwar letter to R.S. McCulloch Lee wrote:
”Every
brave people who considered their rights attacked and their
constitutional liberties invaded,” it ran, “would have done as we did.
Our conduct was not caused by any insurrectional spirit, nor can it be
termed a rebellion; for our construction of the Constitution under which
we lived and acted was the same from its adoption, and for eighty years
we had been taught and educated by the founders of the Republic, and
their written declarations, which controlled our consciences and
actions. The epithets that have been heaped upon us of “rebels” and
“traitors” have no just meaning, nor are they believed in by those who
understand the subject, even at the North…”
General Dwight Eisenhower said of him in 1960:
“General
Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men
produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional
validity of his cause….he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers
and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and
personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or
obstacle.
Through
all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and
unfailing in his belief in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a
leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.
From deep conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber
would be unconquerable in spirit and soul.”
British Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley said of Lee:
“I
believe he will be regarded not only as the most prominent figure of
the Confederacy, but as the Great American of the nineteenth century,
whose statue is well worthy to stand on an equal pedestal with that of
Washington, and whose memory is equally worthy to be enshrined in the
hearts of all his countrymen.” This estimate is based upon a criticism
of his character as a man, a soldier, and a Christian citizen. As a
thinker and man of intellectual powers little has been said of him, and
yet, intellectual power, associated with moral purity, are the true
spring of greatness.”
After Virginia and other Southern States had made Lee’s birthday a legal holiday:
“The anniversary of the birth of Robert Edward Lee was again observed throughout Virginia on January 19th,
1892. In many of the cities and towns there were military parades, and
the banks and public offices in all were closed. The Confederate
Veterans Corps of the city of New York, and the Confederate Army and
Navy Association of Baltimore, Maryland, each commemorated the occasion
by a banquet with reverential exercises. The day is now by statute, a
legal holiday in the States of North Carolina and Georgia as well as
Virginia, and the day was observed in Raleigh and Atlanta, and doubtless
in other Southern cities…
Business
in the Richmond city offices was at a standstill yesterday and matters
at the Capitol yesterday were dull. Many wholesale houses closed their
establishments at noon
and the freight depots of the railroads were also closed after that
hour. The scholars of the public schools had half holiday, and the banks
were closed throughout the day. Although the intensely discomforting
weather materially interfered with the proposed open air demonstration,
it could not dampen the ardent regard in which the memory of the
glorious leader is held.
In Richmond, Mayor Ellyson spoke:
"Ladies,
Comrades, and Fellow-Citizens: We have met today under the auspices of
Lee and Pickett Camps to do honor to the memory of one of Virginia's
noble sons. Robert E. Lee is forever enshrined in the hearts of his
countrymen, and as we contemplate his virtues and heroism we are made
better and purer men, and I trust the time will never come when
Virginians shall fail on this, his natal day, to recount the valor and
patriotism of their greatest chieftain, whose noblest aspiration in life
found its completest realization in the doing of his duty to his God,
and his fellow man.
There
is no danger, comrades, that the men who wore the grey will ever prove
recreant to the principles that actuated them in time of war, but there
is danger that our children may, and so we wish on these recurring
anniversaries to tell of the chivalrous deeds of such leaders as Lee,
Jackson, Stuart and Pickett, and to teach coming generations that the
soldiers of the Southern Confederacy were not rebels, but were Americans
who loved liberty as something dearer than life itself."
