Tea at Trianon: What Lee Said About Monuments in 1869

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, September 17, 2020

What Lee Said About Monuments in 1869

From the Abbeville Institute:

A frequent argument against Confederate monuments is a “sound bite” of a quote from General Robert E. Lee in 1869 in some variation to “I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war.” The time of the event and the Monument Movement is significant. Understanding this connection changes the meaning of the “sound bite” entirety. Here’s the context.

The letter cited is Lee’s decline to attend a reunion of Gettysburg veterans from the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association. The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association was chartered by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on 13 April 1864, to preserve the Gettysburg Battlefield.^[1] David M^cConaughy was the president.^[2]

Lee wrote on 4 August 1869 his reply to David M^cConaughy’s invitation to participate in the “reunion of Gettysburg veterans, who identified specific, historic battlefield sites, and offered personal accounts of the engagement.”^[3] Many letters in the Gettysburg College, Gett Digital collection of these letters are responses to David M^cConaughy’s invitation. They declined to attend for a variety of reasons, some even naming others to consider inviting for the desired information.^[4] Lee was not alone in his absence from the event. The entirely of Lee’s letter is:

“Absence from Lexington has prevented my receiving until to-day your letter of the 26th [July 1869], inclosing (sic) an invitation from the Gettysburg Battle-field (sic) Memorial Association, to attend a meeting of the officers engaged in that battle at Gettysburg, for the purpose of marking upon the ground by enduring memorials of granite the positions and movements of the armies on the field. My engagements will not permit me to be present. I believe if there, I could not add anything material to the information existing on the subject. I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”^[5]
(Read more.)

julygirl said...: Sadly his home at Arlington was confiscated by the Federal Government and turned into a cemetery leaving him homeless. Even at that, his kind and generous spirit shone through. (And, by the way, he is accused of being a war criminal but the Constitution allows a State to secede.); September 17, 2020 at 11:55:00 AM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Interesting! Thanks!; September 17, 2020 at 4:25:00 PM EDT