Originally posted by Bob July 16th, 2008 – http://www.whitakeronline.org/blog/2008/07/16/lee-surrendered-nations-never-surrender/

Lee was CONVINCED he was defeated, so he surrendered. At Appomattox a brigadier general from South Carolina (where else?) told Lee that, instead of surrendering, what was left of the Confederate Army should drop what few weapons it had left and run for the mountains for a guerrilla war.

He said Lee should advise other Southerners to continue the resistance.

Lee ignored this fanatic.

Under the Union government he accepted by his surrender, Lee had no more freedom of speech than we have today. His citizenship was taken away and he had to be silent about everything he really thought to stay in the US.

But it is clear that he regretted his decision on April 9, 1865 to the end of his days.

Let us go back to the theme I set out in “Defeatism is the ONLY Enemy.” Lee decided he had lost a war, fair and square.

Which means he never saw the South as a NATION.

Nations NEVER surrender.

In the oceans of ink spilled over the Civil War, a major portion is criticism of Jefferson Davis for always appointing Lee as Commander and Chief subject to himself. Only in the final emergency did Davis give Lee full powers as Commander in Chief.

Lee did only one thing with that total command, and he regretted it until his dying day. Lee not only did not allow his forces to head for the hills, but he surrendered ALL Confederate forces everywhere.

Which left the South totally at the mercy and good will of the North.

Fifty years before Lee made his one Great Political Decision, Russia made the opposite one.

Napoleon had conquered Moscow, Russia’s Richmond. Napoleon had defeated every Russian army and Russia was simply prostrate. But Russia was a NATION.

Lee ordered every Southerner to accept that the South was not a nation.

We were a movement that had lost fair and square.

Could the North have done all that to us if we had had a military core as guerrilla force in the mountains? Could the North have done all that to us if each army had to decide for itself what to do next?

The Union Army occupied the South in exactly the same way that Napoleon occupied Russia in 1812 and Britain occupied America in 1780. Napoleon occupied the land his army STOOD on. Britain occupied the part of America it STOOD on. Yankee armies occupied the Southern land they STOOD on.

The one difference was that Lee SURRENDERED.

Nations NEVER surrender