Robert E. Lee Online Memorial

Lee, the epitome of the image of the noble, chivalric cavalier, accepted the loss of the quest for Southern independence with extraordinary grace.
It's a warm spring Sunday at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond. As the minister is about to present Holy Communion, a tall well dressed black man sitting in the section reserved for African Americans unexpectedly advances to the communion rail; unexpectedly because this has never happened here before. The congregation freezes. Those that had been ready to go forward and kneel at the communion rail remain fixed in their pews. The minister stands in his place stunned and motionless. The black man slowly lowers his body, kneeling at the communion rail.
After what seems like an interminable amount of time, an older white man rises. His hair snowy white, head up, and eyes proud, he walks quietly up the aisle to the chancel rail.
So with silent dignity and self-possesion, the white man kneels down to take communion along the same rail with the black man.
Lee has said that he has rejoiced that slavery is dead. But this action indicates that these were not idle words meant to placate a northern audience. Here amongst his people he leads wordlessly through example. The other communicants slowly move forward to the altar with a mixture of reluctance and fear, hope and awkward expectation. In the end America would defy the cruel chain of history besetting nations torn apart by civil war.
"April 1865. The Month that Saved America." The History Channel, Copyright 2003.
Today, and deservingly so, Lee is honored throughout the country. Only Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln exceed him in monuments and memorials.
Unfortunately there are many people who claim to cherish Lee and revere the flag for which he so nobly fought but still harbor rabidly racist sentiments towards blacks and their long delayed social progress. Such people do not honor Lee, instead they disgrace him.
Lee absolutely never felt what these modern people continue to feel—and certainly he would not want them, of all people, serving as the self-annointed guardians of his memory. His lasting legacy, in his own words, is, "Before and during the War Between the States I was a Virginian. After the war I became an American." "
-Professor Edward C. Smith; Director of American Studies at American University, Washington, D.C.
Stratford Hall, place of birth and also the boyhood home of relatives Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee, the only brothers to sign the Declaration of Independence