Washington and Lee University was named for President George Washington and Confederate General Robert E. Lee who was the President of the university until his deatrh in 1870. Lee is buried in  a crypt beneath the landmark chapel.

The Civil War began on April 12, 1861 and ended when Robert E. Lee, Confederate General of the Army of Northern Virginia, surrendeed to Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House. Between 640,000 and 700,000 soldiers died in the Civil War, including over 360,000 Union soldiers and 260,000 Confederate soldiers.

It is this writer's opinion that the Civil War ended too soon. It ended before the South was truly defeated.  As a result, the premature ending of the war the South that comprised 11 Southern States that seceded from the Union and four states, namely, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri that were also slave states wtih loyalty to the Confederacy but did not secede from the Union racists for generations thereafter passed black codes, laws designed to deny African Americans their constitutional rights, emboldened the Ku Klux Klan, chief promoters of  lynching and discfranchisement of African Americans until the U.S. Congress enacted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Not only should the Civil War have last longer but when it ended Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America from Februaty 18, 1861 to May 10, 1865, Robert E. Lee and other top generals of the Confederate Army should have been put on trial and received their just due. On March 4, 1865, just a few days over a month before the war ended, during his Second Inaugruration Address President Abraham Lincoln said, "With malice toward none... let us strive on to finish the work we are in." This was interpreted  by many, if not most, that evidenced itself in reality that Confederate War criminals Jefferson and Lee would not be prosecuted for their crimes against humanity. 

My paternal Grandfather Benjamin Franklin Fields, Sr.,  the man who had the greatest impact on my life, was born on April 10, 1862, three years before the a year Civil War ended. On June 17, 1894 he received a Homstead Claim that granted him 119 and 90/100ths acres of land, apparently with the signature of President Grover Cleveland and the seal of the General Land Office. This land is located in the hamlet of Sunflower, in Washington County, Alabama. My Grandfather, his three sons and their wives, consisting of myself, my fourteen siblings and my thirteen first cousins. All of whom were born and reared on this land. My Grandfather donated a part of the land for the Fields School that was established in 1933 and closed in 1949. The frist eight years of my schooling was at that one-teacher school.

Before presenting the poem I wrote and asked my sister to read for my Grandfather, not long before his death, I feel compelled to say a word more about Robert E. Lee, but not about the replica Confederate flags that have been removed from the chapel at Washington and Lee University. I have a word to say about the Robert E. Lee statue placed in Lee Park, Charlottesville, Virginia where I am currently a resident.

In Lee Park, also referred to as a garden, located in the heart of Charlottesville, where many events are held, including the Alzheimer's Walk and Ceremony that I participated in, held there in October of this year, there is the brazen, heroic-sized bronze statue of Lee on a horse, Traveler, atop an oval-shaped granite pedestal surrounded with plantings. Every time I visit Lee Park I am reminded of the role Lee had in bringing suffering, death and causing African Americans to perpetually struggle. It reminds me that Lee's past is my present, and that for many others, who share my common heritage.

I will now close with the tribute I wrote for my Grandfather shortrly before his death while serving in the United  States Army during the Korean War. My Grandfather died at the age of 88 on December 15, 1950.

*To love the earh you know for
greater knowing;
To lose the life you have for,
full life;
To leave the friends you love for
heavenly loving and angelic fellowship:
To find a land more sweet than home
and more awesome than earth.
Behold! A wind is rising and rivers"
are flowing;
Your soul too is rising and flowing:
You are communing with the wind
and rivers.
You, the wind and the rivers are one.

Farewell Grandpa!
Your Grandson,

Uriah
(*From "Garndpa Benjamin" by Urah J. Fields, p 151)

Copyright 2014 by Uriah J. Fields

P.S. Wherever any physical manifestation of the Confederacy exists let everyone who believes slavery was evil and that justice should be for all people act according to his/her ability to abolish or remove every vestige of it from human view.