General Robert E. Lee’s Last Days

 

 Wonderful book.

“The end was now drawing near, yet the General uttered no complaint. He was meeting the last enemy as he had met Grant at Appomattox, without parade or ostentation.  

An incident of these last days should be preserved. It was related by Mrs. Tabb Bolling Lee. This former Petersburg belle had been in the habit of rising at a late hour, anywhere perhaps from ten to noon.  Now, on her first visit to her husband’s people, she was horrified to learn that breakfast would be ready at seven o’clock and each member of the household was expected at family prayers promptly at 6:45. The first morning, the new arrival jumped into her clothes and hastened down to the parlor to find that the General had finished the “lesson” and was well into the “prayers.”  As she slipped in and knelt by his side she felt his arm about her. Without interruption the prayer went on and was concluded. 

Next morning the new daughter did not get down to prayers at all, but did manage to be on hand at breakfast. After the meal the General approached and quietly remarked that no day should be lived unless it was begun with a prayer of thankfulness and an intercession for guidance.  “And now, my child,” he softly concluded, “unless you get down to morning prayers your old father will give you no more kisses.” The punishment was adequate. Thereafter the new daughter was on time for prayers.

The evening of September 28 was raw, damp and unseasonably cold. At that unpropitious hour the vestry of Grace Church met in the unheated building.  After presiding at an extended session the General walked up the hill to his home. Tea awaited him. Slowly moving to his pace at the head of the table, he stood, as was his custom, to ask the blessing. His tongue failed to function. The summons had come. From the couch, in the recess window of the dining room, where they laid him, he did not again move. 

The physicians treated him for venous congestion of the brain, and, at first, held out hope for recovery. The symptoms were favorable. He was not paralyzed and could move his arms, legs and body, though with pain. He was entirely conscious. Sometimes he spoke. He answered questions, but in monosyllables. His mind was clear and seemed independent of his body. One day the doctor, seeking to cheer him, referred to Traveler. The General must make haste and get well; Traveler was lonely and was looking for him. The sick man shook his head and closed his eyes.

During the final days there was no death-bed scene, no posing, no sadness of farewell. Silence filled the sorrowing chamber. Toward the end chilliness set in. Powerful restoratives were then administered. The intellect was dimmed. The poise and self-restraint of a life-time vanished. The dying man was on the battle field again, astride his war-horse. “Strike the tent!” he exclaimed, as a great storm swept the valley. “Tell Hill he must come up!” 

At nine o’clock on the morning of October 12 the heart ceased to beat, and a great gentleman, please God, was dead.” 

(Robert E. Lee, A Biography, Robert W. Winston, William Morrow & Company, 1934, pp. 411-413)

Two from Wrench

Excellent: On Anniversary of Che Killing, CIA's Felix Rodriguez Remembers

 

Former CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who participated in the historic manhunt to capture Ernesto "Che" Guevara, says the Marxist revolutionary was little more than a criminal and devoted killer who deserves to be demystified.

"I believe that eventually people will see what he really was. He was an assassin," said Rodriguez, who spoke to Newsmax about Guevara in advance of the 46th anniversary of his death on Oct. 9, 1967, at age 39. "He was an individual with very little regard for life. He enjoyed killing people."

In the interview with Newsmax, Rodriguez gives a detailed first-hand account of the capture and execution of the man whose image is still being appropriated as a counterculture fashion statement. 

More with video @ Newsmax

Girl raped after judge sends her to sex offender's home

 

Charges are being considered against a Texas judge who sent a minor back into the home of a guardian who was living with a sex offender who later murdered the guardian and raped the juvenile, according to a lawsuit.

Also, three Texas teachers were indicted for failing to tell authorities about the student’s report of threats from the sex offender, the suit notes.

The consequences of the judge’s decision and the actions by the teachers were severe: The student was tied up and raped by the sex offender, who also murdered her guardian in front of the student, according to the lawsuit in Caldwell, Texas.

The Texas Center for Defense of Life late Tuesday filed the action on behalf of the juvenile, identified only with the initials S.R.L. The case seeks a court ruling that the teachers and judge “breached their duty” to the juvenile and compensation.

The defendants in the case are teachers Bliss Bednar, Vance Skidmore and Bradley Vestal as well as the Caldwell Independent School District and a retired judge, Terry Flenniken.

“There is no excuse for Judge Flenniken’s poor decision,” said TCDL attorney Greg Terra. “He knew exactly what the minor was dealing with in her home situation and that she lived with Edward Clinton Lee, a registered sex offender, and yet still sent her back to live with him and her guardian instead of granting the petition to release her to her biological mother.”

More @ WND

Lee In The Mountains, By Donald Davidson

 Re-post NamSouth 2008

I thought of my friend Bazz and decided to post  again.  I sent it to him once and he replied that every time he read this, tears would come.  Gone way too young.

 Basil Dwayne "Bazz" Childress R.I.P.

Bazz, his wife Rachel and Dixie at General Pender's grave at Calvary Episcopal church in Tarboro when they were our house guests some years ago.

 

 **************************************

 

Walking into the shadows, walking alone
Where the sun falls through the ruined boughs of locust
Up to the president's office. . . .Hearing the voices
Whisper, Hush, it is General Lee! And strangely
Hearing my own voice say, Good morning, boys.
(Don't get up. You are early. It is long
Before the bell. You will have long to wait
On these cold steps. . . .)
The young have time to wait

But soldiers' faces under their tossing flags
Lift no more by any road or field,
And I am spent with old wars and new sorrow.
Walking the rocky path, where steps decay
And the paint cracks and grass eats on the stone.
It is not General Lee, young men. . .
It is Robert Lee in a dark civilian suit who walks,
An outlaw fumbling for the latch, a voice
Commanding in a dream where no flag flies.

My father's house is taken and his hearth
Left to the candle-drippings where the ashes
Whirl at a chimney-breath on the cold stone.
I can hardly remember my father's look, I cannot
Answer his voice as he calls farewell in the misty
Mounting where riders gather at gates.
He was old then--I was a child--his hand
Held out for mine, some daybreak snatched away,
And he rode out, a broken man. Now let
His lone grave keep, surer than cypress roots,
The vow I made beside him. God too late
Unseals to certain eyes the drift
Of time and the hopes of men and a sacred cause.
The fortune of the Lees goes with the land
Whose sons will keep it still. My mother
Told me much. She sat among the candles,
Fingering the Memoirs, now so long unread.
And as my pen moves on across the page
Her voice comes back, a murmuring distillation
Of old Virginia times now faint and gone,
The hurt of all that was and cannot be.

Why did my father write? I know he saw
History clutched as a wraith out of blowing mist
Where tongues are loud, and a glut of little souls
Laps at the too much blood and the burning house.
He would have his say, but I shall not have mine.

What I do is only a son's devoir
To a lost father. Let him only speak.
The rest must pass to men who never knew
(But on a written page) the strike of armies,
And never heard the long Confederate cry
Charge through the muzzling smoke or saw the bright
Eyes of the beardless boys go up to death.
It is Robert Lee who writes with his father's hand--
The rest must go unsaid and the lips be locked.

If all were told, as it cannot be told--
If all the dread opinion of the heart
Now could speak, now in the shame and torment
Lashing the bound and trampled States--

If a word were said, as it cannot be said--
I see clear waters run in Virginia's Valley
And in the house the weeping of young women
Rises no more. The waves of grain begin.
The Shenandoah is golden with a new grain.
The Blue Ridge, crowned with a haze of light,
Thunders no more. The horse is at plough. The rifle
Returns to the chimney crotch and the hunter's hand.
And nothing else than this? Was it for this
That on an April day we stacked our arms
Obedient to a soldier's trust? To lie
Ground by heels of little men,

Forever maimed, defeated, lost, impugned?
And was I then betrayed? Did I betray?
If it were said, as it still might be said--
If it were said, and a word should run like fire,
Like living fire into the roots of grass,
The sunken flag would kindle on wild hills,
The brooding hearts would waken, and the dream
Stir like a crippled phantom under the pines,
And this torn earth would quicken into shouting
Beneath the feet of the ragged bands—

The pen
Turns to the waiting page, the sword
Bows to the rust that cankers and the silence.

Among these boys whose eyes lift up to mine
Within gray walls where droning wasps repeat
A hollow reveille, I still must face,
Day after day, the courier with his summons
Once more to surrender, now to surrender all.
Without arms or men I stand, but with knowledge only
I face what long I saw, before others knew,
When Pickett's men streamed back, and I heard the tangled
Cry of the Wilderness wounded, bloody with doom.

The mountains, once I said, in the little room
At Richmond, by the huddled fire, but still
The President shook his head. The mountains wait,

I said, in the long beat and rattle of siege
At cratered Petersburg. Too late
We sought the mountains and those people came.
And Lee is in the mountains now, beyond Appomatox,
Listening long for voices that will never speak
Again; hearing the hoofbeats that come and go and fade
Without a stop, without a brown hand lifting
The tent-flap, or a bugle call at dawn,
Or ever on the long white road the flag
Of Jackson's quick brigades. I am alone,
Trapped, consenting, taken at last in mountains.

It is not the bugle now, or the long roll beating.
The simple stroke of a chapel bell forbids
The hurtling dream, recalls the lonely mind.
Young men, the God of your fathers is a just
And merciful God Who in this blood once shed
On your green altars measures out all days,
And measures out the grace
Whereby alone we live;
And in His might He waits,
Brooding within the certitude of time,
To bring this lost forsaken valor
And the fierce faith undying
And the love quenchless
To flower among the hills to which we cleave,
To fruit upon the mountains whither we flee,
Never forsaking, never denying
His children and His children's children forever
Unto all generations of the faithful heart.

 Lee In The Mountains, By Donald Davidson

Shadow Government

Tommy Robinson: Sold the Brits out for 30 pieces of silver? Quits English Defence League to Work for Muslim Organization with Known Terrorist Ties

Extremely dangerous times and he better watch his back.

This is one of those times that I have an important story that many Americans will not understand or care about. A lot of people on this side of the Atlantic do not know who the English Defence League is, or simply do not care. But without a world view you can not look ahead. What is happening in Britain may as well be knocking on our door. Will we let it in?

A number of high profile figures have left the English Defence League citing that the organization has been taken over by far right factions including those who are anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and run of the mill racists. Frequent contributor Pamela Geller is one of those who has broken ties and had this to say yesterday on her blog, Atlas Shrugs:

More @ Freedom Outpost

Why I Am A Southerner

The Fugitives

    In the winter of 1781–82, Thomas Jefferson wrote,

"Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God …, in whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue."

In 1930, this Jeffersonian strategy was invoked for one last time by a group of twelve Southern Americans whose essays were compiled in a book entitled, "I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition." One of the book's contributors, Donald Davidson, said their work described, "the cause of civilized society against the new barbarism of science and technology controlled and directed by the modern power state." (Otherwise known as Yankees and other miscreants.

Of the twelve Southerners who wrote these essays, four had been members of a group of student and teacher poets at Vanderbilt University; Donald Davidson, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. They subsequently became known as "The Fugitives" through the magazine by that name which they published from 1922 to 1925. They espoused the principle that, "a society operating by agrarian standards was in every way superior to the industrial culture that prevailed in the United States."

As we look around us today; Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, is there any doubt?

More @ Freedom Outpost 

US Sends Marines to Italy as Libya Tensions Mount. US ambassador hauled in over al-Libi raid

 

The US' capture of Abu Anas al-Libi is turning into a full-blown diplomatic incident. Libya's government has summoned the US ambassador for questioning over what it terms the "kidnapping" of the alleged al-Qaeda operative, CNN reports. The US, meanwhile, sees the situation as perilous enough that it has moved 200 marines from Spain to Italy, so they'll be ready to respond should the US diplomatic mission in Libya come under fire.

More @ Newser

The Myth of the “Otherwise Law-Abiding” Illegal Alien

Via Mike

 

For years advocates of amnesty and high levels of immigration have described the illegal alien population as one made up of "otherwise law-abiding" people who have committed no violation other than the simple act of crossing a border illegally or overstaying a visa.¹ Journalists routinely invoke this language when writing about amnesty, conspicuously avoiding any discussion of the various crimes the average working illegal alien commits. Many politicians have also embraced the myth of the otherwise law-abiding illegal alien in an effort to promote amnesty, arguing that illegal aliens are no threat to the United States.²

But the average illegal alien violates numerous statutes, often creating real victims.

This Backgrounder details the many statutes the average illegal alien who is simply "here to work" may be violating. The violations include laws involving the entry, presence, and travel of illegal aliens as well as laws related to employment such as perjury and identity theft. Examples of oft-violated but under-enforced laws include:

More @ Center For Immigration Studies