Robert E Lee Quotes

Never do a wrong thing to make a friend--or to keep one.

I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

The education of a man is never completed until he dies.

I can only say that I am nothing but a poor sinner, trusting in Christ alone for salvation.

...out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body-my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.

In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength.

I like whiskey. I always did, and that is why I never drink it.

It is easier to make our wishes conform to our means than to make our means conform to our wishes.

Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end.

Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances

What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.

Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.

There is a true glory and a true honor: the glory of duty done--the honor of the integrity of principle.

All motion is relative. Perhaps it is you who have moved away-by standing still

My trust is in the mercy and wisdom of a kind Providence, who ordereth all things for our good.

It's the loneliest feeling in the world-to find yourself standing up when everybody else is sitting down. To have everybody look at you and say, 'What's the matter with him?' I know. I know what it feels like. Walking down an empty street, listening to the sound of your own footsteps. Shutters closed, blinds drawn, doors locked against you. And you aren't sure whether you're walking toward something, or if you're just walking away.

True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them the desire to do right is precisely the same.

The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it.

Go home all you boys who fought with me and help build up the shattered fortunes of our old state

My experiences of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor be indisposed to serve them: nor, in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.

Fanaticism and Ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.

I haven’t had the chance to look at too many men’s faces up close. And I noticed how his skin was thicker than mine, and a gorgeous shade of toast. The stiff blond hairs on his cheeks and chin seemed to be growing before my eyes. He smelled like starch. Like pine. His nose wasn’t so pointy afterall. …And out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body-my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.

I can not trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.

In her opinion, Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence Birdseye are the two greatest Americans that ever lived excluding Robert E. Lee. She believes we never lost the War Between the States, that General Lee thought General Grant was the butler and just naturally handed him his sword.

The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman. The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly--the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the men in a plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A true man of honor feels humbled when he cannot help humbling others.

On Lee as commander: "He had a cheerful dignity and could praise them (his men) without seeming to court their favor.

Cadets can neither be treated as schoolboys or soldiers.

We poor sinners need to come back from our wanderings to seek pardon through the all-sufficient merits of our Redeemer. And we need to pray earnestly for the power of the Holy Spirit to give us a precious revival in our hearts and among the unconverted.

It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it.

Saw the face of Robert Lee. Incredible eyes. An honest man, a simple man. Out of date. They all ride to glory, all the plumed knights.

He (recently-appointed and new-to-command Robert E Lee) will be timid in the irresolute in action.

I've been a soldier all my life. I've fought from the ranks on up, you know my service. But sir, I must tell you now, I believe this attack will fail. No 15,000 men ever made could take that ridge. It's a distance of more than a mile, over open ground. When the men come out of the trees, they will be under fire from Yankee artillery from all over the field. And those are Hancock's boys! And now, they have the stone wall like we did at Fredericksburg. - Lieutenant General James Longstreet to General Robert E. Lee after the initial Confederate victories on day one of the Battle of Gettysburg.

The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.

During the bloodiest war in American history, Lee and his comrades killed more U.S. Army soldiers than any other enemy, ever. And they did it for the worst reason possible: to create a nation dedicated to exploit enslaved men, women, and children, forever.

The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And, in a war that you cannot win, you don't want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don't want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can't, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end.

Racism is the virus in the American dirt, infecting everything and everyone. To combat racism, we must do more than acknowledge the long history of white supremacy. Policies must change. Yet, an understanding of history remains the foundation. The only way to prevent a racist future is to first understand our racist past.

We all thought Richmond, protected as it was by our splendid fortifications and defended by our army of veterans, could not be taken. Yet Grant turned his face to our Capital, and never turned it away until we had surrendered. Now, I have carefully searched the military records of both ancient and modern history, and have never found Grant's superior as a general. I doubt that his superior can be found in all history.

Shake off those gloomy feelings. Drive them away. Fix your mind and pleasures upon what is before you.All is bright if you will think it so. All is happy if you will make it so. Do not dream. It is too ideal, too imaginary. Dreaming by day, I mean. Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.

My words are not that powerful. I started saying in 1985 I don’t think we should have a music talking about ni**ers and b*tches and h*es. It had no impact. I’ve said it. I’ve repeated it. I still repeat it. To me, that’s more damaging than a statue of Robert E. Lee.

Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language. You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more. You should never wish to do less.

I have been up too congress, and they do not seem to do anything except eat peanuts and chew tobacco while my army is starving.....

When we identify our history, we can change the narrative.

The only way to argue for slavery, then or now, is to believe that the enslaved weren’t real human beings.

United we stand, divided we fall Just watch us as we beat ya’ll. You say ‘brother against brother’? Well, my brother screwed your mother And she liked it! We’ll kick your shins and break your knee ’Cause all you got is Robert E. Lee. Farbs!

James Buchanan's niece: "He often worked just for work's sake.

They seemed so united that I loved them as one person." Lee wrote of his son and daughter-in-law on his daughter-in-law's death.

The education of a man ( or woman ) is never completed until he dies.

I am A man, not a sponge! If god wished a sponge to think, A SPONGE WOULD THINK!

obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character,” would

History is dangerous. It forms our identity, our shared story. If someone challenges a sacred myth, the reaction can be ferocious.

Nothing I could say would refute his upbringing, his feelings, and his history. Then I realized evidence didn't matter; he had chosen his own facts based on his culture.

It bears repeating. Georgia was a racial police state, not a democracy.

History is always changing. We link the past to our conception of the present and we always have.

When people have no political outlet nor means of changing a racist society, rioting is their only voice.

In the aftermath of the war, Virginia led the South in creating and maintaining a police state based on racial control.

Racism is not only morally wrong, but fiscally stupid.9

The only way to prevent our racist future is to understand our racist past.

I think [Robert E.] Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man, had a good character, and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm.

They rode for a while in silence, a tiny island in the smoky stream of marching men. Then Lee said slowly, in a strange, soft, slow tone of voice, "Soldiering has one great trap." Longstreet turned to see his face. Lee was riding slowly ahead, without expression. He spoke in that same slow voice. "To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. This is...a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men." Lee rarely lectured. Longstreet sensed a message beyond it. He waited. Lee said, "We don't fear our own deaths, you and I." He smiled slightly, then glanced away. "We protect ourselves out of military necessity, not do not protect yourself enough and must give thought to it. I need you. But the point is, we are afraid to die. We are prepared for our own deaths, and for the deaths of comrades. We learn that at the Point. But I have seen this happen: we are not prepared for as many deaths as we have to face, inevitably as the war goes on. There comes a time..." He paused. He had been gazing straight ahead, away from Longstreet. Now, black-eyed, he turned back, glanced once quickly into Longstreet's eyes, then looked away. "We are never prepared for so many to die. So you understand? No one is. We expect some chosen few. We expect an occasional empty chair, a toast to dear departed comrades. Victory celebrations for most of us, a hallowed death for a few. But the war goes on. And the men die. The price gets ever higher. Some officers...can pay no longer. We are prepared to lose some of us." He paused again. "But never ALL of us. Surely not all of us. But...that is the trap. You can hold nothing back when you attack. You must commit yourself totally. And yet ,if they all die, a man must ask himself, will it have been worth it?

Both men lost speech in their last days and hours. Both died at age sixty-three, Lee long since weary of life, and Grant ready to live it again. Their war made them national icons, and their war reputations dictated the balance of their lives, careers, and posterity.

It is good that war is so terrible, or we should become too fond of it.

Show me a shouter, and I'll show you an also-ran. A might-have-been, an almost-was.

Racism isn’t just morally wrong; it’s economically stupid.

Worse, Lee felt isolated. In Texas he skipped meals with others to avoid “uninteresting men,” wishing he was back by his campfire on the plains eating his meals alone.211 He avoided sharing quarters and found that he “would infinitely prefer my tent to my-self.”212 In a group he felt more alone than out on the prairie, and that “my pleasure is derived from my own thoughts.

Notwithstanding our boastful assertions to the world, for nearly a century, that our government was based on the consent of the people, it rests upon force, as much as any government that ever existed. - Robert E. Lee

Lee was a born pedagogue, never happier than when his children were learning to do something the right way. It is a testament to Lee's affection and patience that his children did not rebel. In fact, they appear to have thrived.

And in a war that you cannot win, you don't want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don't want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can't, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end.

I grew up with a series of lies that helped further white supremacy. That's uncomfortable. To see real agony, think about the millions of people who lived their entire lives enslaved, knowing that enslavement would be the future of their children and their children's children. Think of living with the violence of the Jim Crow era as an African American.

The Victorian era was an age of superlatives and larger-than-life characters, and as far as that goes, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse fit right in: what Victoria was to monarchs, Dickens to novelists, Burton to explorers, Robert E. Lee to generals, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse was to assholes. The only 19th-century figure who even comes close to him in this department is Custer.

Ooooooooh,” Orla crowed, galloping down the hall, stork-like. She traded her Henrietta accent for a gloriously snotty version of Old South. “Someone’s been hanging out with Richard Campbell Gansey the third too much. ‘My sense of self-worth isn’t tied into my occupation.’” This last bit was said with the most exaggerated rendition of Gansey’s accent possible. She sounded like a drunk Robert E. Lee.

Then the Union forces burned the University of Alabama.' Uncle Wiggens opened and closed his fists, wriggling his fingers. I think they were supposed to be the flames, licking at the buildings. 'The Yankees didn't want you to have no education. If it hadn't been for General Lee, that's Robert E. Lee, mind you, none of you would be here today!

In the writings of many contemporary psychics and mystics (e.g., Gopi Krishna, Shri Rajneesh, Frannie Steiger, John White, Hal Lindsay, and several dozen others whose names I have mercifully forgotten) there is a repeated prediction that the Earth is about to be afflicted with unprecedented calamities, including every possible type of natural catastrophe from Earthquakes to pole shifts. Most of humanity will be destroyed, these seers inform us cheerfully. This cataclysm is referred to, by many of them, as "the Great Purification" or "the Great Cleansing," and is supposed to be a punishment for our sins. I find the morality and theology of this Doomsday Brigade highly questionable. A large part of the Native American population was exterminated in the 19th century; I cannot regard that as a "Great Cleansing" or believe that the Indians were being punished for their sins. Nor can I think of Hitler's death camps, or Hiroshima or Nagasaki, as "Great Purifications." And I can't make myself believe that the millions killed by plagues, cancers, natural catastrophes, etc., throughout history were all singled out by some Cosmic Intelligence for punishment, while the survivors were preserved due to their virtues. To accept the idea of "God" implicit in such views is logically to hold that everybody hit by a car deserved it, and we should not try to get him to a hospital and save his life, since "God" wants him dead. I don't know who are the worst sinners on this planet, but I am quite sure that if a Higher Intelligence wanted to exterminate them, It would find a very precise method of locating each one separately. After all, even Lee Harvey Oswald -- assuming the official version of the Kennedy assassination -- only hit one innocent bystander while aiming at JFK. To assume that Divinity would employ earthquakes and pole shifts to "get" (say) Richard Nixon, carelessly murdering millions of innocent children and harmless old ladies and dogs and cats in the process, is absolutely and ineluctably to state that your idea of God is of a cosmic imbecile.

The Southern sense of honor in place is also seen in Robert E. Lee; he opposed Southern secession, even made some ambiguous statements that could be viewed as opposed to slavery. Yet when offered the command of the Union Army by Lincoln, Lee wrote, “I wish to live under no other government and there is no sacrifice I am not ready to make for the preservation of the Union save that of honor.” When Virginia chose secession, he regretfully fulfilled his sense of honor to his home and led the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.

Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, two of the. noblest men ever born on the American continent.

Few choices are more fraught for people than who decides which stories are told to children—or to college students.

Lee made small greetings to the others, saw the sour expression of Jubal Early, Ewell’s division commander,

In all my perplexities and distresses, the Bible has never failed to give me light and strength. Robert E. Lee

Encouraging Robert E. Lee to take a job as college president, "You might be presenting to the world in such a position an example of quiet usefulness and gentle patriotism.

This was a people's war. All the people had a stake in it. All the people had an obligation to put their hearts and wealth and blood into it. All would find their futures indelibly shaped by it.

In such revisions of history lay the roots of the noble Lost Cause—the belief that the South didn’t lose, so much as it was simply overwhelmed by superior numbers; that General Robert E. Lee was a contemporary King Arthur; that slavery, to be sure a benevolent institution, was never central to the South’s true designs. Historical lies aside, the Lost Cause presented to the North an attractive compromise. Having preserved the Union and saved white workers from competing with slave labor, the North could magnanimously acquiesce to such Confederate meretriciousness and the concomitant irrelevance of the country’s blacks. That interpretation served the North too, for it elided uncomfortable questions about the profits reaped by the North from Southern cotton, as well as the North’s long strategy of appeasement and compromise, stretching from the Fugitive Slave Act back to the Constitution itself.

Officers like Braxton Bragg and Jefferson Davis left the army to seek their fortunes with enslaved labor farms, but Lee was the only senior officer who was actually in charge of hundreds of enslaved workers and in the U.S. Army in 1861. By the time he chose succession, Lee identified far more with the southern slaveholding class than he did with his fellow officers. He certainly spent more time managing enslaved workers than he did leading soldiers.

In the heated atmosphere after the Lincoln assassination, quite a few northerners compared Lee to the infamous John Brown, the abolitionist who was captured, tried, and hanged for the Harper's Ferry raid in 1859. Brown had been found guilty of treason against the state of Virginia after a jury deliberated for only forty-five minutes...Coincidentally, it had been Colonel Robert E. Lee of the US Army that eventually put down John Brown's short-lived rebellion at Harper's Ferry.

Grant was forty-two and Lee fifty-seven, Grant at the peak of health and energy, while Lee feared his weakening body and lagging faculties. Each was defending his notion of home. Grant by now was the most popular man in the Union, arguably more so even than Lincoln. Lee was easily the most important man in the Confederacy, his popularity and influence, had he chosen to use it, far outstripping Davis’s. Unquestionably, they were at this moment the preeminent military figures in America, and arguably the world.

But this attitude could not persist. Under the supervision of “oldtimers” like Joseph Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, and Thomas Jackson, complaisant officers were gradually weeded out and West Point ideas of discipline were adopted in the Southern armies. Before the campaigns of 1862 Johnny Reb was for the most part a changed man. He had shed most of his surplus equipment, and, of much greater importance, he had abandoned the idea that military life was “all fun and frolic.” In short, the volunteer had become a soldier.

Three of its greatest leaders and their horses have been carved into the north face. Jefferson Davis and his horse, Blackjack. Robert E. Lee and Traveller. Stonewall Jackson and Little Sorrel. Riding across the craggy granite, the immense figures are breathtaking. On

The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end.

The mythology serves purposes darker than sentiment, nothing more so than the currently popular, and arrantly nonsensical, assertion that Lee freed his inherited slaves in 1862 before the war was over, while Grant kept his until the Thirteenth Amendment freed them in 1865. The subtext is transparent. If Southerner Lee freed his slaves while Northerner Grant kept his, then secession and the war that followed can hardly have had anything to do with slavery and must instead have been over the tariff or state rights, or some other handy pretext invented to cloak slavery’s pivotal role.

With the number of accusations of harassment and assault leveled at Washington College men, Lee used a light disciplinary touch around racial intimidation, attacks, and sexual violence, even though he was known for a heavy hand in less serious incidents. Lee did not consider African Americans worthy of protection.

Every time I returned home I would drive on streets named for those who thought of me as chattel. “Go straight for two miles on Robert E. Lee.” “Take a left on Jefferson Davis.” “Make the first right on Claiborne.” Translation: “Go straight for two miles on the general whose troops slaughtered hundreds of Black soldiers who were trying to surrender.” “Take a left on the president of the Confederacy, who understood the torture of Black bodies as the cornerstone of their new nation.” “Make the first right on the man who allowed the heads of rebelling slaves to be mounted on stakes in order to prevent other slaves from getting any ideas.

The extraordinary outpouring of bipartisan concern blotted out the scandals of Grant’s presidency and restored him to his rightful niche in the American pantheon. Hundreds of sympathetic messages piled up at the Grant residence, including telegrams from Jefferson Davis and the sons of Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston.

The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.” —ROBERT E. LEE

These reconnoissances were made under the supervision of Captain Robert E. Lee, assisted by Lieutenants P. G. T. Beauregard, Isaac I. Stevens, Z. B. Tower, G. W. Smith, George B. McClellan, and J. G. Foster, of the corps of engineers, all officers who attained rank and fame, on one side or the other, in the great conflict for the preservation of the unity of the nation.

This regiment included some of the most famous army officers of the era, including Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, then–Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee, Major George H. Thomas, Captains Edmund Kirby Smith and Earl Van Dorn, then-Lieutenant Fitzhugh Lee, and Lieutenant John Bell Hood—all of whom became general officers during the Civil War and five of whom commanded armies.

Someday, if we won, if humanity survived, we'd be in the history books. Me and Jake and Rachel and Cassie and Tobias and Ax. They'd be household names, like generals from World War II or the Civil War. Patton and Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee. Kids would study us in school. Bored, probably. And then the teacher would tell the story of Marco. I'd be a part of history. What I was about to do. Some kid would laugh. Some kid would say, "Cold, man. That was really cold." I had to do it, kid. It was a war. It's the whole point, you stupid, smug, smirking little jerk! Don't you get it? It was the whole point. We hurt the innocent in order to stop the evil. Innocent Hork-Bajir. Innocent Taxxons. Innocent human-Controllers. How else to stop the Yeerks? How else to win? No choice, you punk. We did what we had to do. "Cold, man. The Marco dude? He was just cold.

In perhaps the strangest statement published on the issue of arming slaves, the Mercury charged Robert E. Lee (who had not yet made his views public but was privately known to be a supporter) with being a Federalist-like Alexander Hamilton-someone who had always evidenced a "profound disbelief in the institution of slavery." This comparison was drawn in contrast to South Carolina's great Democratic/states' rights standard-bearer John C. Calhoun, and the paper put the question starkly as "JOHN C. CALHOUN VS. DANIEL WEBSTER and ROBERT E. LEE.

Trump was hardly in office when Democrats and their media allies began tarring him and his top aides as “white nationalists.” There were no facts to support the charge, only innuendo, and tortured interpretations of the word “nationalism” and of presidential rhetoric. One of the worst examples was the Charlottesville, Virginia, historical monument controversy. In that city, leftist protesters demanded the removal of “Confederate” monuments and memorials. The term “Confederate” in their usage extended even to statues of Thomas Jefferson and explorers Lewis and Clark (for being “white colonists”). This sparked a protest by conservatives who objected to the statue removals—not because they were racists, but because they didn’t want to see the removal of these reminders of America’s history. A “Unite the Right” rally was planned for August 11–12, 2017, to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Unfortunately, the rally attracted extremist groups, including neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, and the KKK. During the rally, a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of leftist protestors, killing a woman. In response, Trump made a series of statements condemning the Klan, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and racism in general. In one of those speeches, he added, “You also had some very fine people on both sides.”115 Even though he had just condemned racism in his previous breath, many Democrats and pundits condemned Trump for calling racists “fine people.” This was not only absurd but dishonest. The “fine people on both sides” to whom he referred were those who wanted to remove the statues because they were reminders of slavery and those who wanted to preserve the statues because they were reminders of history. Trump never praised racists as “fine people”—he condemned them in no uncertain terms. But to the

The most powerful speaker, I thought, was a Lakeview resident, Richard Westmoreland, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, who said that Robert E. Lee was a great general, but compared him to Erwin Rommel, the World War II German tank commander. There are no statues of Rommel in Germany, he continued. "They are ashamed. The question is, why aren't we?" Westmoreland said. "Make no mistake, slavery was the great sin of this nation." In a letter to the New Orleans Advocate, Westmoreland wrote: "The "heritage" argument doesn't stand the test of time. These men were traitors. We are the United States before we are the South. How can anyone begin to think that these remembrances aren't offensive and disrespectful to African Americans? They are offensive to me as a retired military officer. They are offensive to me as a citizen; our tax money maintains these sites. Their existence is offensive to me as a human being; the monuments to the Confederacy on our public lands are disrespectful at best. They are subtle, government-sanctioned racism. There is nothing about our "heritage" with the Confederacy worthy of embracing. We are not who we once were. We should be proud of that. We are our brother's keeper. I am white, by the way, a fact that shouldn't be relevant in this argument, but we know it still is.

On April 1, 1865, in Virginia, Pickett was defending an intersection known as Five Forks, six miles south of the Appomattox River and a good bit closer to the Southside Railroad, the last remaining supply line to Richmond. While thirty thousand Union troops led by Little Phil Sheridan approached from the southeast, Pickett’s twelve thousand, spread two miles wide behind fences and in ditches, braced to meet them. Pickett’s supreme commander, Robert E. Lee, was headquartered ten miles away, near Petersburg. Should Pickett fall to Sheridan, Lee would be forced from Petersburg, the Federals would capture Richmond, and the Confederate cause would be lost. Someone mentioned shad. The spring spawning run was in full penetration of the continent. The fish were in the rivers. Tom Rosser, another Confederate general, had caught some, and on the morning of April 1st ordered them baked for his midday dinner, near Hatcher’s Run, several miles from Five Forks. He invited Pickett and Major General Fitzhugh Lee, nephew of Robert E. Lee, to join him. Pickett readily accepted, and rode off from his battle station with Lee. The historian Shelby Foote continues the narrative (“The Civil War,” vol. 3, p. 870): “Neither told any subordinate where he was going or why, perhaps to keep from dividing the succulent fish too many ways; with the result that when the attack exploded—damped from their hearing, as it was, by a heavy stand of pines along Hatcher’s Run—no one knew where to find them. Pickett only made it back to his division after half its members had been shot or captured, a sad last act for a man who gave his name to the most famous charge in a war whose end was hastened by his threehour absence at a shad bake.