Years after it first appeared, this family portrait continues to intrigue me. More than a thousand words worth ...
Oddly enough, the future 45th president is the least interesting part of the image.
How many of you played with toy limos as a child? More than one?
And who would name their son after the fake name they used to try to fool journalists?
Were the windows open? Quite a breeze there behind Melania.
Why such a distance between parents and child?
Where can you get a stuffed toy lion like that, and why would you?
Someone really should embark on a 21st century version of a pictorial history of the 45th president that would have an online component so that we can fully recapture some of the highlights of those years.
Flowing hair ... descending ramps ... use two hands to drink your water!
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Debates over whether Robert E. Lee was a great strategist or a successful strategist blur the lines between strategy, the operational art, and the battlefield proper.
Lee's challenge was to covert his success on the battlefield in Virginia from June 1862 to May 1863 to lasting Confederate advantage.
That record was mixed.
In the Seven Days against McClellan Lee relieved the immediate threat against Richmond, but it was the US high command's decision to shift McClellan from the James River to northern Virginia that had more lasting consequences.
You say you love Robert E. Lee because he "stood up" for what he believed in and was loyal to his home.
Do you love the terrorists of 9-11? Do you love the Nazis? Because they "stood up" for what they believed in and they were loyal to their home.
So what's the difference? None, given your formulation of the issue.
After all, all three made war against the United States: Lee was responsible for fighting battles that killed US military personnel. Do you celebrate that? Do you honor that?
So, to answer my own question posed yesterday: Robert E. Lee had more impact on the outcome of the American Civil War than did any other Confederate military leader.
I'm sure you're wondering why I think that.
1. Lee's overlooked work on the South Atlantic coastal defenses brought to a halt already hesitant US efforts to exploit the landings of November 1861. Imagine the implications of a more active front along the coast into the interior.
2. Lee's support of Stonewall Jackson's Valley campaign in 1862 proved a sufficient deterrent to US efforts to unite on Richmond. Lee got Jackson to live rent-free in Yankee heads.
So many answers to my query yesterday were Gettysburg-centric that it is worth reminding people that the notion that Gettysburg was the turning point of the war is a romantic exercise and reflects interesting assumptions about the Confederacy.
For one thing, Union victory at Gettysburg simply preserved the strategic stalemate in the Eastern theater. Both sides were winning on home turf. That would change during the decidedly unromantic Overland Campaign.
Second, we keep on asking how Lee lost at Gettysburg. I think George G. Meade and the Army of the Potomac won the battle.
I am tired of people who have spent most or all of their life on the West Coast telling me about what's East Coast.
Especially when what they really mean is LA versus NY. Even then they aren't right.
Somehow they forget the East Coast includes New England, Florida, and the Carolinas (for starters), and that the West Coast includes the Pacific NW (no word on Alaska and Hawaii).
Where's Arizona's coast? Yuma? Silence.
This came up with the term BBQ/barbecue/barbeque.
I said the words (as spoken) could mean a number of things, including nouns and verbs.
Oh no, said the self-pronounced authorities hailing from the West Coast, at least in their imagination.
Ulysses S. Grant, May 6, 1864, in the Wilderness, Virginia, upon hearing an excited officer declare that he knew what Lee would do next after the Confederates launched an attack at dusk:
It had been a rough two days for the general-in-chief. One of his West Point classmates, Alexander Hays, had been killed on May 5. Grant was shaken when he heard the news.
Hays had graduated a year after Grant. Here is an image of the two men (Hays is in the foreground):
Hays's death meant that there was one less friendly face for Grant in the Army of the Potomac, and there were not many (although he knew Winfield Scott Hancock, among others).
Hancock had opened the fighting on May 6 by attacking Lee's right. The attack was initially successful.