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But Mr. Jost’s speech was relatively light, even supportive of Mr. Biden. He ended it by noting that his grandfather, who recently died, had voted for Mr. Biden in the last election. Ms. O’Donnell also said the association had wanted to choose both a writer and a comedian when it came to their host this year. Colin Jost, the co-anchor of “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live” — and a former reporter for the Staten Island Advance — spent roughly 23 minutes poking fun at the president. Inside the hotel ballroom, many journalists wore pins reading “Free Evan” to raise awareness of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia since March 2023 — wrongfully, according to the U.S. government. You might call it ‘stormy’ weather,” Mr. Biden said, an oblique reference to Stormy Daniels, a porn actress who claims to have had sex with Mr. Trump in 2006 and received a hush-money payment in the days before the 2016 election, a deal at the center of his New York trial.
Robert E. Lee’s Former Home Reopens With Renewed Focus on the Enslaved
A furious Meigs, who detested Lee once his former friend turned on the United States for the Confederacy, said he was “grimly satisfied” as the tombstones started to fill the hill surrounding the house. Charles Syphax was an enslaved resident of one of the cramped living areas prior to the Civil War. He oversaw the dining room at Arlington House and married Maria Carter, an enslaved woman whose mother was raped by George Washington Parke Custis, the original owner of the home who was the step-grandson of George Washington. Charles married Maria in the mansion's parlor, in the same spot where Maria's half-sister, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, would marry Robert E. Lee a decade later.
Recent history
Archivists were able to trace some of the enslaved inhabitants, and their names are written on plastic sheets preserving the walls. Some people are known only by the work they performed, such as "Gardener," or by their relation to another, such as "Mary's Child." Many names have been lost forever. Finding a way to memorialize Robert E. Lee while acknowledging his role in leading the Confederacy and upholding slavery is not an easy line to walk. Since 1983, Arlington House has served as the official symbol of Arlington, Va.
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The Nation Memorializes LeeArlington House is the nation’s memorial to Robert E. Lee. For generations, Americans have struggled over how to remember this complicated soldier, father, slaveholder, and educator. After the Civil War, Southern groups fought to preserve Arlington House, then under control of the US Army. Their goal was to present Lee as a man who fought for honor and home, not slavery. Lee proved to be a gifted strategist, thwarting Union efforts to capture the Southern capital of Richmond again and again. As bad as it is, they have fought for it with a gallantry worthy of a better.”–Union Army Commander Ulysses S. Grant, 1864The Greatest MistakeWhen Virginia seceded in April 1861, Lee went to see his commanding officer, General Winfield Scott.
The Robert E. Lee Memorial
After the war, an estimated 2,111 unknown bodies were exhumed from battlefields and reburied in a mass grave deliberately placed in Mrs. Lee’s rose garden. This Tomb of the Civil War Unknowns, dedicated in September 1866, was intended to further mark the Lee property with the grim reality of war, Dodge says. The Lees would never return to live at Arlington Estate, which was completed in 1818. But federal troops, under orders from Georgia-born Brigadier General Montgomery Meigs, made the property difficult to return to by burying the bodies of Union soldiers near the house.

Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail
Although Moore and Kantor's novels relegate him to a set of passing references, Lee is more of a main character in Turtledove's Guns. He is also the prime character of Turtledove's "Lee at the Alamo".[215] Turtledove's "War Between the Provinces" series is an allegory of the Civil War told in the language of fairy tales, with Lee appearing as a knight named "Duke Edward of Arlington". Lee is also a knight in "The Charge of Lee's Brigade" in Alternate Generals volume 1, written by Turtledove's friend S. M. Stirling and featuring Lee, whose Virginia is still a loyal British colony, fighting for the Crown against the Russians in Crimea.
By the end of his life he had become a potent symbol of regional pride and dignity in defeat, and has remained an icon of the Lost Cause. After Virginia seceded from the United States on May 24, 1861, the Lees left Arlington House, never to return. The U.S. Army then occupied their estate, located on strategic high ground across from the nation's capital, as a camp and headquarters. U.S. troops constructed forts on the property, including Fort Whipple (now Fort Myer) and Fort McPherson (now Section 11). Because Mrs. Lee failed to pay taxes in person, as then required by law, the federal government confiscated the estate, purchasing it on January 11, "for Government use, for war, military, charitable, and educational purposes."
Robert E Lee’s home on market for $5.9m – but listing fails to mention him - The Guardian US
Robert E Lee’s home on market for $5.9m – but listing fails to mention him.
Posted: Sun, 31 Oct 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Hutchinson and civil rights leaders announced their campaign to change the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary in Long Beach through Change.org, an online platform supporting social, economic and environment movements. Most of the attention on Confederate symbols after the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church has fallen on the flag. Photos of the suspect, 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof — who authorities believe wanted to start a race war — show him posing with the battle flag of the Confederacy. But increasing scrutiny has been heaped on the names of schools and monuments connected to the losing side of the Civil War. Susan Ogle, director of the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum in Wilmington, a military post built by the Union at the start of the Civil War, said it’s no surprise to see the general’s name on a school.
"Our efforts are to illuminate those layers of history to the best of our ability,” he said. The American Civil War is one of the most studied and dissected events in our history. Arlington National Cemetery’s panoramic view of the nation’s capital and beautiful environment, along with its history, made it a prime place of burial a few generations after its founding. Dodge says that Meigs probably wouldn’t be surprised at what Arlington National Cemetery became, even though it initially was referred to as a potter’s field—a burial ground for poor soldiers whose families couldn’t afford to bring them home. He believes the restored mansion is now a place where people can talk about those legacies.
He served across the United States, distinguished himself extensively during the Mexican–American War, and was Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He married Mary Anna Custis, great-granddaughter of George Washington's wife Martha. While he opposed slavery from a philosophical perspective, he supported its legality and held hundreds of slaves. When Virginia declared its secession from the Union in 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command.
He realized his wife and children would have to leave the plantation, sacrificing their home and livelihood. In the months leading up to the war, Lee said that he could not raise arms against the United States. “I will follow my native State with my sword,” he declared, “and, if need be, with my life.”A Federalist FamilyRobert E. Lee hailed from one of the nation’s founding families. Lee’s father fought alongside George Washington and shared Washington’s nationalist beliefs. Lee’s in-laws, the Custises, descended from Martha Washington and upheld the family’s nation-building principles.
They took too much time to assemble, and launched repeated failed assaults against the Union left flank over difficult terrain. Lee's decision on the third day, going against the advice of his best corps commander, Gen. James Longstreet, to launch a massive frontal assault on the center of the Union line, was disastrous. It was carried out over a wide field, and has come to be known commonly as Pickett's Charge.
This time the Confederates faced a Union contingent a third again its size, under General Ambrose E. Burnside. Concentrating his forces, and establishing positions that took full advantage of the weaponry of the day, Lee allowed the Northern men to fruitlessly attack his defensive strongholds on Marye’s Heights, slaughtering thousands. The Union army survived by escaping across the Rappahannock River, but the defeat badly strained Northern morale. Critics complained that Lee took too many risks on the campaign, that luck and Pope’s ineptitude rather than Confederate skill held it together, and that the days had again been shockingly “sanguinary.” Yet the boldness of his actions had given Lee the momentum. In the coming months his agility and elusiveness continually “baffled” superior Union forces, often turning their offensive drives into desperate defensive stands. In peacetime Henry Lee steadily lost money and reputation because of unwise land speculation.
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