By JUDE DOUGHERTY
Hamilton Reed Armstrong is one of the Western world’s foremost sculptors, with remarkable pieces that are to be found in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and throughout North America. Not to mention Zambia. A major example of his work graces a town square in Malaga. The sculptor of heads of state and other notables, Armstrong has most recently completed a bust of Robert E. Lee.
Apart from an online photograph, you are not likely to see Lee’s image where you might expect to find it, that is, at the Richmond Art Gallery, the President’s Office at Washington and Lee University, or even at the Custis-Lee Mansion in Arlington, Va.
Political correctness has taken its toll. Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, and others are denigrated because, like others of their and previous generations, they owned slaves or were associated in some way with slavery. Whether they condoned slavery or not does not make a difference to the revisionists, who like ISIS want to destroy the past for political gain.
In addition to Jefferson and Washington, virtually all the great leaders of the Southern states were owners of slaves, including Madison, Monroe, Rutledge, Randolph, and all who served in the creation of the American republic in the years of the Revolutionary War.
In the case of Robert E. Lee, never mind that that he did not approve of slavery and was against resolving political conflict on the battlefield. Lee was born at Stratford, Va., in 1807, the son of Harry Lee and Anne Hill Carter. Both sides of the family were part of the state’s ruling class that determined Virginia’s colonial destiny and contributed leadership to the American Revolution.
Although Lee’s father was the famed Light Horse Harry Lee, his father was not financially provident, and Robert did not have the means to enroll in the university. Instead, Lee gained admission to the Military Academy at West Point. By all accounts he excelled and at graduation accepted appointment to the prestigious Corps of Engineers, later transferring to calvary.
While on leave in Arlington, he was ordered to quell a disturbance at Harper’s Ferry where John Brown was leading an insurrection. Lee quelled that in one hour, but his experience in Harpers Ferry led him to foreboding about the future. Apparently it was clear to him that slavery could not be sustained.
Lee was in Texas when that state became the seventh to secede. As a Union officer he lost his command. He returned to Arlington to determine what Virginia would do. After an on again, off again debate, Virginia decided to secede as well. Lincoln had offered Lee command of the Union forces, but his loyalty would not allow him to bear arms against his native Virginia, and he declined Lincoln’s offer. Lee took command of the Confederate Army, whose fortunes are minutely documented.
After some initially successes against superior Union forces, Lee could not replace casualties lost in battle. The climax came with the battle at Gettysburg. Lee was prepared to fight on, but was eventually forced to surrender his Army of Northern Virginia to Lt. Gen. Ulysses Grant at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
At the war’s end, Lee was 58 years of age and without a source of income. When the trustees of Washington College offered him the presidency of the college, he accepted the offer from what was later to become Washington and Lee University. The former superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point was a perfect fit, and Lee quickly advanced the fortunes of the college, both financially and academically.
It is to be remembered that the Civil War was not about slavery. Slavery existed in both the North and South. Lee was not fighting to perpetuate slavery. In his person, Lee carried his impressive stature with dignity, kindness, sympathy, and good humor. He was respected in both the North and the South.
Although he and other great men of the early American republic are currently victims of the insane political correctness movement, given its maliciousness, it can’t last. Only the ignorant can hope to sustain the misplaced moral posturing of the present generation. Any nation is obliged to accept its cultural heritage, good and bad. To borrow a phrase from the title of a novel by Graham Greene: After all, Colonial America made me.
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