Given the controversy concerning the Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University, what do you think of how the WLU administration chose to address the issue of the display of flags in the chapel and the museum next to the Lee family crypt?
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The problem with these polls is that they can be used by trollers to skew the results. I don’t believe that daily readers of this blog would vote for the status quo as evidenced by the results so far.
Oh, I know that the various heritage sites are rushing over here to vote. Of course, then they also see the post on Lilly Baumann. Sometimes you have to provide an inducement for people to visit.
Your reply tests human nature…they dont like you…. they won’t believe you are accurate… they won’t do anything you recommend… they wont like being manipulated even to save a child whose mom opposes getting the kid normal childhood vaccinations… they wont check facts such as the FBI website because they do not like you..
Given that Lee was fighting for his ‘country’, by which he meant Virginia, I think a display of state flags may be in order…
Leave the flag’s be,those flags belong to our beloved Gen. Lee and no one else.
Legally speaking, the dead have no rights and cannot own property… just saying
Utter nonsense. Just keep theories logical, not emotional. The question was never whether Lee or Grant, or Washington had rights after they were dead. Think!
huh?
You don’t know what you are talking about. There was an agreement when Lee died, look it up!
John M.
Wouldn’t it be better to provide a link to the agreement? When you tell someone to look it up, but you don’t provide the document’s location or, in this era of virtual documents, a link to the document in question, you don’t really advance the discussion and you open yourself to the charge of being full of malarkey.
We wholeheartedly agree to leave the flags alone!!! WLU probably would not still be there if Gen. Lee had not save it!
Hands off all flags.
..because a piece of cloth made in China is like a real person, and idolatry is what being a true patriot is….
AGREE!
Why would a guy like Lee want fake anything? He’d want the real thing. He’d want the thing worth the most $$$ (no matter whose back was broken so he could get and keep it.)
More drivel from Rosemary, the legal and ethical genius.
Goodness, I see you know nothing of Robert E. Lee or much about anything else.for that matter. He was never rich as his father had squandered the family fortune and the US military never paid very much either. Arlington house was owned by his wife as were the slaves there. While in the military, both CS and US he never was one to carry a bunch of possessions and lived very simply.The school is Washington and LEE University and the least they can do is leave that chapel alone . If students don’t like the flags, go to another school where they can be as politically correct as they please.
Women could not own property during the time of the Civil War…
Wrong!
1878: women in virginia granted control/right to manage property listed in their names…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women's_rights_(other_than_voting)#1860.E2.80.931899
……I’m done here. Thread vexed with trolls.
clarification: married women, as in Mary Lee
Glad to see you desided to do a little research to back up you alligator mouth.
Mr. Hernandez,
I am encouraged and comforted by your display of uncommon good sense. Just when did defaming the dead become commonplace in America, let alone academia? Cease and Desist ! I pray, Let the dead rest in peace, including flags and granite memorials. The man is dead, his entire generation have long since passed from this earthly realm. Political Correctness has infected every realm of our culture and is now defaming the memory of our dead. Enough!
Thank you Mr. Hernandez.
AMEN!
Reblogged this on The Lynler Report and commented:
Vote your conscience, not political correctness….
This is history, not an exercise in political correct one-upmanship. I urge a cease and desist, permit General Lee to rest in peace. In June of 1865, when General Lee was tried for treason by the United States Grand Jury in Norfolk Virginia where some friends of the General voiced their indignation, General Lee calmly responded, “I have fought against the people of the north because I believe they were seeking to wrest from the south their dearest rights. But I have never cherished toward them bitter or vindictive feelings, and they have never seen the day when I did not pray for them.” May I propose that this unnecessary and needless argument b e put to rest by honoring the example of his leadership and compassion. Cease and desist in this nonsense and permit the General to rest under the flag that he so honored.
A grand jury indicted Lee for treason, but he was never tried, thanks to Ulysses S. Grant.
One could offer the advice of letting Lee rest in peace to many people, including the people who have appropriated him as a symbol of what they believe. The door swings both ways.
Thank you Mr. Simpson for your great insight and for offering me the benefit of such great edification. We are approaching a moral hazard in our culture and one that you casually dismiss. Might one consider the perception of the necessity of what has prompted this nonsense?
What moral hazard?
My take on this matter is that a group of students complained about various aspects of their educational environment, complete with demands. The university administration through the president responded to those complaints. Many people say the president caved in, but there’s only one significant concession. Then people objected to that, saying that the future of Confederate heritage depended upon the display of flags around Edward Valentine’s sculpture.
WLU’s a private university. Normally that should be the end of this. But Lee Chapel serves different functions for different people, and therein lies the discussion.
Frankly, I did not react as these students did to signs of a Confederate presence at places where I went to school or where I worked. For example, when I was at Wofford College, the college had a building that displayed the 1869 painting The Last Meeting for some time (it is now at the Museum of the Confederacy). I didn’t particularly care for some of the things said at the unveiling of the painting at Wofford, although I also thought they were funny. But I offered no protest, because I didn’t let the painting’s presence bother me. These students feel differently … and it is their school, not yours or mine.
If the students take exception to history and heritage of this institution, why trouble themselves to be offended, the freedom of choice extends to academic institutions. Vote with their feet and the checks in payment for their education. May I offer a quote from some years ago made by a popular musician upon the death of what many would term, his antagonist. “The Man is Dead” The gentlemen in question displayed unusual good judgment and thus avoided the conflict of what many would term, a moral hazard. I am as equally prepared to pursue this matter with you for as long as it may take. Obviously you will not alter my perception of then matter. I fear that my defense of General Lee is as lost on you as the true origins of that conflict are lost to the majority today. Thanking you again for your comment.
Rubbish. The flags around Lee’s resting place(which is in a lower level from the statue in the chapel) where not put there until long after his death. So this talk of letting him rest in peace is just silly.
Funny, but there’s a whiff of Caldwell here.
Mr. Simpson,
While Grant was gracious, it was not he that kept Lee, Davis, and other high ranking officers and gov’t officials from being tried for treason. The real reason was because if brought before the courts, by the laws in place, they would have been vindicated and Lincoln and his administration would have been seen, as they truly were, as the aggressors and invaders.
I’m sure you believe that, but the record suggests a different story.
Thank you Mr. Ursrey, While General Lee, at least up until this instance, has not been a controversial character like Lincoln, Sherman, or even Grant. like all great men, he made mistakes. However his character and military expertise are admired. Winston Churchill said he was “one of the greatest captains known in the annals of war” I do not recall any such statements made about any of the Northern Generals.
Unfortunately after the passage of so much time facts become distorted, history perverted, and the main reasons for almost all wars, territory, resources, and power, are usually masked over with some sort of moral or social objective. When no good reason can be found, a bad one will do. Unfortunately it is in this manner that so many today have little or no idea of the true causes of this unnecessary and savage war. In this, the War for Southern Independence, was decided by military might even though a basic constitutional question was in issue. I am somewhat dismayed by the question previously posed. What moral hazard? The nonsense used as propaganda during the last two years of this war continues to prevail even after the passage of so many years. Again, thank you for your thoughtful comment.
I suppose next someone is going to gripe to change the name Washington Monument or Jefferson Memorial. Lee was as AMERICAN as Lincoln or anyone present or past, North or South. Leave his good name alone! The flags represent the heritage of AMERICA like it or not! It’s not up to 3 or 4 people to decide what AMERICAN HISTORY is!
Thank you for pointing this out, The tyranny of the Civil War era should serve as a sobering lesson, not to be lost or brushed aside as so many today are wont to do. Unless we focus on what happened, not the revisionist version, and make sure it does not happen again, another national crisis may produce a dictatorial executive who might overpower the other branches of government, even the Constitution itself, and we may end up as Benjamin Franklin is reported to have predicted about the Constitution in 1787. “That it might last for ages, involve one quarter of the globe, and probably terminate in despotism.” It is beginning to appear that our history, law, culture are more and more becoming subject to not only revisionism but despotism itself. The changes that have been wrought to the values of this nation are the very example of revisions of law and history. This example of revisionism as is being promoted by W&L today reeks of the current adherence to politically correct dogma.
God bless Robert E. Lee and DIXIE!!!!!