In one of those coincidences that history seems to love, the two greatest generals the United States has produced\u2014Robert E. Lee and Douglas MacArthur\u2014both came to the end of their long and distinguished careers this week\u2026 separated by almost a century.<\/p>\n
On April 9, 1865, the not-so Civil War ended at Appomattox, Va., as Confederate General Lee surrendered his sword and the 28,000 men under his command to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. The two generals agreed that all Confederate soldiers were to be pardoned. After being given a generous portion of rations, the Southern soldiers were permitted to mount their horses and return to their homes.<\/p>\n
With that meeting the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history was over. At least the official fighting had come to an end. In the former Confederacy there\u2019s still a huge market for \u201cThe South Shall Rise Again,\u201d \u201cForget, Hell!\u201d and other mementos of the War of Northern Aggression, as it\u2019s frequently referred to below the Mason-Dixon Line.<\/p>\n
Four score and nine years later, on April 11, 1951, General Douglas MacArthur was removed from his position as commander of United Nations forces in Korea by then-President Harry S Truman. MacArthur\u2019s firing followed his public disclosure that the president refused him permission to bomb the bases and supply lines in Manchuria. It was from these lines that Communist China was supplying our enemies in North Korea.<\/p>\n
Upon his return to these shores MacArthur enjoyed a hero\u2019s welcome in San Francisco and New York. The following week he addressed a joint session of Congress, concluding his remarks by saying, \u201cOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.\u201d And that\u2019s basically what Generals Lee and MacArthur\u2014two of the most honorable men to ever put on the uniform of their country\u2014both did.<\/p>\n
\u2014Chip Wood<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In one of those coincidences that history seems to love, the two greatest generals the United States has produced\u2014Robert E. Lee and Douglas MacArthur\u2014both came to the end of their long and distinguished careers this week\u2026 separated by almost a century. On April 9, 1865, the not-so Civil War ended at Appomattox, Va., as Confederate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}