General Robert E. Lee's Hair for Sale: Guess How Much?

Confederate general's hair, letter and knife, on display at Arlington House for 20 years, go on the auction block day after "Lee-Jackson Day" holiday.
http://fallschurch.patch.com/groups/business-news/p/lock-of-hair-from-robert-e-lee-to-be-auctioned-in-falls-church

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — A lock of hair, letter and pen knife that belonged to Confederate General Robert E. Lee will be auctioned off Saturday at a Falls Church auction house.

The letter has been on loan and display at Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial located at Arlington National Cemetery, for more than 20 years, according to a description of the item on liveauctioneers.com.

Quinn's Auction Galleries, 360 S. Washington St. in the City of Falls Church, will hold the auction Saturday at 11 a.m. The gallery is open Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The memorabilia is Lot #172, one of more than 600 items unrelated to Lee to be auctioned that morning.

Lee originally sent the letter, knife and lock of hair to a woman in Baltimore who requested the items to raise funds for an orphanage, according to a 1907 Baltimore Sun article that accompanies the items.

The sale takes place Saturday, one day after Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday in Virginia that remembers Lee, commander of the Confederate Army in the Civil War, and Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.

In its auction catalogue, the auctioneers estimate bids for Lee's lock of hair, letter and knife at between $20,000 to $30,000. A suggested starting bid on liveauctioneers.com is listed at $10,000.

Lee died at age 63 in 1870 in Lexington, where he is buried at Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University. The anniversary of his birthday, Jan. 19, 1807, is Sunday. Lee was president of the institution from 1865 until his death, when it was called Washington College.

Lee grew up in Virginia, including in Alexandria at 607 Oronoco St., now a private home, and at Ravensworth, a relative's plantation near Annandale in Fairfax County. After he married, he lived at Arlington House before the Civil War; the house is now a memorial to Lee operated by the National Park Service at Arlington National Cemetery.

The following is a description of the auction item:

The autographed letter is signed, dated January 28 1867, at Lexington, VA, with lock of hair: and autographed note initialed with pen knife. c.1867. Letter written on lined paper

Letter:

“Lexington, VA 28 Jan 1867
Mrs. J. C. Thompson
I recd today your letter if the 24th inst: and send the article you request.
Your generous efforts to relieve the wants of the infant orphans will I am sure be successful, for a cause so benevolent cannot fail to receive support in a city so distinguished for it’s charity & liberality as Baltimore.
Very respty your obb svnt
RE Lee
Note:

“I must apologize for the condition of this knife by stating that it was my companion during the war. REL”

Lock of silver gray hair affixed to the letter, ivory pen knife inset at bottom of note with cut out.

Included in lot is a 1907 Baltimore Sun article about the relics and Lee’s life.
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He was a nice man, regardless of what side he was on, He did his job and if the truth be told about why there really was a civil war so much bitterness and hate would go away.

They should take the hair and clone him back to life so he can lead an Army against the current President of the Socialist states of America!

I find him to be an extremely interesting figure and a compelling biographical subject.

Much is said about how Lee viewed slavery and secession and how he came to resign his commission and join first the Virginia forces and then the Confederate army. Much of that commentary in the past has been preoccupied either with crafting a Lee in terms to make him an admirable hero worthy of worship, a fine and fitting representative of “the South,” or in undermining that quest. In the latter endeavor the intensity I have seen displayed should in my estimation be directed at people other than Lee himself. Too often the debate over Lee is really a debate between Lee’s admirers and critics that is at least as much about themselves as it is about Lee … I’d say more so.

What’s odd about all this is Lee’s own thinking on these matters is rather accessible, especially through his correspondence. Take his views on slavery. Lee’s views were not terribly unusual for his time. They were a mixture of the “necessary evil” argument (which tended to emphasize the burdens slavery placed on white people) and the “positive good” argument (which tended to suggest that being enslaved benefited the enslaved). He did not believe in black equality, but he was not a passionate defender of the peculiar institution. He did not develop an elaborate philosophy to support his position. He had no qualms about owning slaves or disciplining them, but neither did he develop some detailed justification for enslavement based upon black inferiority: however, he obviously found bothersome acting as the executor of his father-in-law’s will, especially in its provisions concerning the emancipation of his slaves (“an unpleasant legacy,” as he once said). As he observed in an oft-quoted letter:

“In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.”

Yet it is also important to recall what he wrote in 1865:

“Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would depreciate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both.”

These words are carefully chosen. To make Lee into some sort of antislavery advocate does violence to the historical record, as does an argument that reduces him to Arlington’s Simon Legree.

Lee in his correspondence held abolitionists and antislavery critics primarily responsible for the troubling debate over slavery and the escalation of the sectional crisis. He reserved his harshest words for them, and had relatively little to say about the role of fire-eaters or proslavery forces, although he complained about the behavior of Deep South secessionists in 1860-61, including their “selfish, dictatorial bearing.” On the other hand, he had little patience with the elaborate intellectual schemes hatched by secessionists, simply acknowledging that “secession is nothing but revolution.” That said, however, he laid primary responsibility of the troubles upon the North, observing: “The South, in my opinion, has been aggrieved by the acts of the North.”

If he dismissed the theory of secession as nonsense, however, Lee took the sectional crisis quite seriously. As much as he might dread the disruption of the republic, however, he admitted that “a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me.” That statement is essential to understanding what some folks don’t understand: Robert E. Lee never would have worn a blue uniform in a war against the South, regardless of what Virginia did. As he put it, “If the Union is dissolved, and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and save in defence will draw my sword on none” (emphasis added).

Lee would never have fought against Virginia: that much is clear. But Lee also made it clear that he would not fight in a war of coercion against the South. He was willing to stay in the service (and in fact accept his colonel’s commission) in the absence of war, at a time when Virginia remained in the Union. According to his account of his meeting with Francis P. Blair, Sr., in Washington on April 18 (the day after Virginia’s convention voted for secession; it is not clear whether Lee knew that as of the time of the meeting) he said (as he later recalled) that “though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern states.” Much had been made of the alacrity with which Lee moved to cast his lot with Virginia once he had penned his resignation (and before it was accepted); much more has been made (with justice) of his less than candid recollection of the sequence of events and his state of mind in an 1868 letter describing the events of mid-April (although his statement about not drawing his sword against the South is consistent with what he said at the time). I make less of his making a mess of the actual process of resignation and more of his lack of candor in 1868 than do others.

What this means, of course, is that the notion of Lee riding southward at the head of a United States military force to quell the rebellion in 1861 is simple fantasy. Lee had already rejected that option long before the events of April 1861. Lee seems to have been a Virginian first, but being a southerner came in a close second. It may not have been the answer Lee was born to make, but it was the choice he was bound to make.

Alan Nolan made many of these points in his 1991 book, Lee Considered: General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History, but many readers found Nolan’s aggressive argument (just like the lawyer he was, arguing a brief for the prosecution) off-putting. However, if one simply sets forth these propositions and turns to Lee’s correspondence for support, one discovers a Lee whose thoughts and actions should be as understandable to us as they apparently were to him. That doesn’t mean that acting upon his decision came easily to him–it did not–but it does suggest that he had already thought through his options.

It’s time to try to understand Lee as he was and to gain some insight into how he understood himself and the world around him. That would be the best way to honor him, by viewing him as the man he was rather than the icon some need him to be.

The South needs to rise again and reclaim Northern Virginia from all the carpet bagging liberal faggots.

[From the Richmond (Va.) Dispatch, February 16, 1896.]
http://www.gdg.org/Research/SHSP/shjones.html


THE LONGSTREET-GETTYSBURG CONTROVERSY

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WHO COMMENCED IT.

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The Whole Matter Reviewed by J. William Jones, D. D.

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To the Editor of the Dispatch:

You are unquestionably right in the very courteous little difference with the Times as who begun the Longstreet-Gettysburg controversy, but you do not put its origin quite far enough back, and omit some very important points in the history of the controversy.

As I have been in a position to know all of the facts, have read and preserved everything of interest that has been published concerning these matters (although I have not until quite recently printed anything myself), and as there seems to be a constantly recurring question as to "who fired the first gun," and who is continuing the firing, I ask space for a summary statement of the whole question.

There was in army circles after the battle of Gettysburg a good deal of talk as to the causes of our failure, and it seemed to be very generally understood that the fault was not Lee's, but that his orders had been disobeyed, in that the heights were not carried on the evening of the first day, the attack was not made until the afternoon of the second day, and the troops making the assault on the third day were not properly supported.

But, as Lee, moving among his shattered battalions at Gettysburg, had shown the same superb magnanimity as when at Chancellorsville he had given the glory of the victory to Stonewall Jackson, and had declared, "This is all my fault; I have lost this battle, and you must help me out of it the best you can," no one was disposed to publish any criticisms of his subordinates. And so after the war there seemed to be a general disposition on the part of leading Confederates to let the Federal generals do the quarreling, and to preserve among themselves the harmony and good-will counseled by their great commander, and of which he gave so conspicuous an example.

The first publication made in reference to the cause of our defeat at Gettysburg by any Confederate who participated in the battle, so far as I have been able to ascertain, was made by General Longstreet in Swinton's. "Army of the Potomac," which was published in the spring of 1866.

In this book (page 340) Swinton says, and gives Longstreet as his authority for the statement: "Indeed, in entering upon this campaign, General Lee expressly promised his corps-commanders that he would not assume a tactical offensive, but force his antagonist to attack him. Having, however, gotten a taste of blood in the considerable success of the first day, the Confederate commander seems to have lost that equipoise in which his faculties commonly moved, and he determined to give battle."

Swinton then proceeds to criticize Lee very severely for not "manoeuvring Meade out of the Gettysburg position," and says: "This operation General Longstreet, who forboded the worst from an attack on the army in position, and was anxious to hold General Lee to his promise, begged in vain to be allowed to execute." (Ibid, p.341). He quotes General Longstreet as his authority for this, as also for the further criticisms of General Lee which he makes, and the very language of which bears a most remarkable resemblance to what General Longstreet has since printed over his own signature.



NOT REPLIED TO.



These criticisms of Longstreet on Lee were not replied to by the latter, though it is within my personal knowledge that he had Swinton's book and read at least a portion of it, and none of Lee's subordinates thought proper to make answer.

A short time after General Lee's death General Longstreet gave out for publication the private letter which he wrote his uncle from Culpeper Courthouse, on July 24, 1863, and in which he distinctly claimed that we lost Gettysburg because Lee refused to take his advice; and fought the battle against his judgment; that, if his (Longstreet's) plans had been adopted, "great results would have been obtained;" and, "so far as is given to man the ability to judge, we may say with confidence that we should have destroyed the Federal army, marched into Washington, and dictated our terms; or, at least, held Washington, and marched over as much of Pennsylvania as we cared to."

It will be thus clearly seen that General Longstreet first began this controversy by his criticisms of General Lee, and his claim that we lost Gettysburg because the Napoleonic genius of General James Longstreet could not overcome the obstinate stupidity of Robert Edward Lee.

As a matter of course, these criticisms of Longstreet against the idolized commander of the Army of Northern Virginia met with reply.

January 19, 1872, General J. A. Early delivered the address at Washington and Lee University on the occasion of the anniversary celebration of General Lee's birth. He discussed "Lee, the Soldier," with that ability, accurate knowledge of the subject, and real loyalty to the name and fame of his old commander which so preeminently characterized that sturdy old patriot, Jubal A. Early, and in the course of his address gave an outline of the Gettysburg campaign and battle, and defended General Lee from the charge that he failed by his own blunders or mistakes.



HIS CRITICISM OF LONGSTREET.



What he said in criticism of General Longstreet was contained in the following sentences. After speaking of a conference General Lee had with Rodes, Ewell, and himself, held on the evening of the first day, General Early says: "General Lee then determined to make the attack from our right on the enemy's left, and left us for the purpose of ordering up Longstreet's Corps in time to begin the attack at dawn the next morning. That corps was not in readiness to make the attack until 4 o'clock in the afternoon of the next day. By that time Meade's whole army had arrived on the field, and taken its position. Had the attack been made at daylight, as contemplated, it must have resulted in a brilliant and decisive victory, as all of Meade's army had not then arrived, and a very small portion of it was in position. A considerable portion of his army did not get up until after sunrise, one corps not arriving until 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and a prompt advance to the attack must have resulted in his defeat in detail. The position which Longstreet attacked at 4 was not occupied by the enemy until late in the afternoon, and Round Top Hill, which commanded the enemy's position, could have been taken in the morning without a struggle."

Speaking of the fight the next day, of the impossibility of General Lee's doing "the actual marching and fighting of his army," and the necessity of the prompt and cheerful execution of his orders by his subordinates, General Early said: "If Mr. Swinton has told the truth in repeating in his book what is alleged to have been said to him by General Longstreet, there was at least one of General Lee's corps commanders at Gettysburg who did not enter upon the execution of his plans with that confidence and faith necessary to success, and hence, perhaps, it was that it was not achieved."

These were all of General Early's criticisms upon General Longstreet, and it is obvious that, under the provocation of General Longstreet's previously published criticisms of General Lee, they were very mild for General Early.



GENERAL PENDLETON'S SPEECH.



The next year, January 19, 1893(sic 1873), General W. N. Pendleton, General Lee's chief of artillery and his beloved friend and pastor during his residence in Lexington, made the anniversary address, in which he made the statement about General Lee's orders for the early attack which you have published, and in which, while pointing out his tardiness and its result, he spoke of General Longstreet in very complimentary terms as a brave and sturdy soldier.

This address General Pendleton repeated at a number of points in the South, and then published in the Southern Magazine, Baltimore.

General Longstreet next published in the New Orleans Republican of February 27th, 1876, a very bitter attack on General Fitz. Lee (whose offence was that he had respectfully asked him to publish the whole of a letter from General R. E. Lee, from which he had published a single sentence), General Pendleton, and General Early, but was especially bitter against General Early.

Of course "Old Jubal" replied, there were several papers from each, and General Early used him up so badly that General Longstreet's warmest friends very much regretted that he had gone into the papers.



THE NEXT PHASE.



The next phase of the controversy was the publication of General Longstreet's paper in the Philadelphia Times of November 3, 1877, a very full account of the campaign and battle of Gettysburg, in which he criticized General Lee more severely than ever, and undertakes to show nine distinct mistakes which Lee made, and he (Longstreet) saw, pointed out, and remonstrated with Lee against at the time. This called forth the scathing rejoinder of General Dick Taylor, "That any subject involving the possession and exercise of intellect should be clear to Longstreet and concealed from Lee is a startling proposition to those possessing knowledge of the two men. We have biblical authority for the story that the angel in the path was visible to the ass, though invisible to the seer, his master. But suppose that instead of smiting the honest, stupid animal, Balaam had caressed him and then been kicked by him, how would the story read?"

Especial indignation was excited against General Longstreet because in a letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Times, accompanying this paper, he charged that General Lee had altered his original official report, written under the generous spirit in which he had assumed all the blame of the defeat at Gettysburg, and had afterwards "written a detailed and somewhat critical account of the battle," from which Longstreet's critics had gotten all of their points against him. In other words, he charged General Lee with altering his original report in order to injure him.

In the meantime, I, as secretary of the Southern Historical Society, received a letter from the Count of Paris, propounding a series of questions as to "the causes of Lee's defeat at Gettysburg," and asking that I secure replies from leading Confederate officers, who were in position to know. I sent copies of this letter to prominent men in every corps, division, and arm of the service, with a personal letter requesting a reply. The result was a series of papers on Gettysburg from such men as Generals J. A. Early, A. L. Long, Fitz. Lee, E. B. Alexander, Cadmus Wilcox, J. B. Hood, H. Heth, L. McLaws, R. L. Walker, James H. Lane, and B. D. Fry, Colonels William H. Taylor, William Allen, J. B. Walton, J. R. Winston, and W. C. Oates, Major Scheibert, of the Prussian Engineer Corps, Captain R. H. McKim, and the Count of Paris. General Longstreet did not send me a paper, as I requested him to do, but published a second paper in the Philadelphia Times, in which he undertook to reply to his critics, who had handled his first article pretty roughly. It is clear that I was, according to the rule among editors, under not the slightest obligation to copy his papers from the Times, and yet I was so anxious to do him the fullest justice, and to have our "Gettysburg series" as complete as possible, that I republished both of his articles. I also published all of the Confederate official reports of Gettysburg that I could procure, including General Longstreet's report, which had never before been in print, and which he contradicted five times in his papers in the Times.

This series of papers excited wide interest among Northern and European military critics, as well as among our own people.

As I did not, personally, write either of the papers, but published all that reached me without note or comment of my own, I may say that most of them were able, clear, and of rare historic value, showing deep research and a thorough knowledge of the subject, and that the series (which may be found in Volumes IV, V, and VI of Southern Historical Society Papers), thoroughly established these points:



POINTS ESTABLISHED.



1. General Lee made no mistake in invading Pennsylvania.

2.After the brilliant victory of the first day, the Confederates ought to have pressed forward and occupied the Gettysburg heights, and General Lee ordered General Ewell to do so, but excused him when he afterwards explained that he was prevented by a report that the enemy were advancing on his flank and rear.

3.We would have won a great and decisive victory on the second day had Longstreet obeyed the orders which there is overwhelming proof General Lee gave him, to attack early in the morning, or, had he carried out the orders which he admits he received to attack at 11 o'clock that morning, but which he managed to put off until 4 o'clock that afternoon.

4.With the great results to be attained, and the confident expectation of winning, General Lee made no mistake in attacking on the third day.

5.We should have pierced Meade's centre, divided his army, smashed to pieces his wings before they could have reunited, and captured Washington and Baltimore, had Longstreet obeyed orders on the third day, and made the attack at daybreak simultaneously with that of Ewell; or made it, as ordered, with his whole corps, supported by A. P. Hill, instead of with a bare 14,000 men against Meade's whole army, while the rest of our army looked on, admired, and wondered while this "forlorn hope" marched to immortal glory, fame, and death.

But I did not mean to go into any discussion of these points, and will only add, as completing the history of the controversy, that Longstreet afterwards continued the fight by publishing in the Century several articles, in which he bitterly criticizes General Lee, ridicules Stonewall Jackson as a soldier, belittles A. P. Hill, and makes light of nearly every other Confederate soldier, except--General James Longstreet; who "knew it all," and virtually did it all that he submitted to several newspaper interviews, in which he said many unlovely things, and that he has now published his book, which has so fully shown the philosophy of the proverb, "Oh, that mine enemy would write a book!"

It will thus be seen that instead of being the meek martyr whom his critics have persecuted and goaded into saying some ugly things, General Longstreet began the controversy, and kept it up--that his attacks upon General Lee have been as unjust as they have been unseemly and ungrateful; and that the only thing "politics" has had to do with the controversy has been that ever since Longstreet became a Republican, a partisan Republican press, has labored to make him the great general on the Confederate side, and to exalt him at Lee's expense.

So far as I am personally concerned, while I would not pluck a single leaf that belongs to the laurel crown of the brave leader, the indomitable fighter, the courageous soldier who commanded his old brigade, his old division, his old corps of heroes on so many glorious fields of victory, yet I shall not stand idly by and see him or his partisans criticize and belittle our grand old chief, Robert Edward Lee--the peerless soldier of the centuries--without raising my humble voice or using my feeble pen in indignant burning protest.



J. William Jones,

The Miller School, Crozet, Va.

Fuck You Crackers!!!
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