First
Amendment defense is honored today via the acts of Robert E. Lee’s father, Revolutionary
War officer Henry Lee III. The Ew Publishing summer series War Cry Heal Union
(WCHU) notes that more than 200 hundred years ago today, 27 July 1812, Henry
Lee took a beating for freedom of speech.
Hosted
on the Bryan William Brickner Blog, the sixth installment of the WCHU series, War of 1812: American Exceptionalism, Free Speech and Henry Lee III, highlights evidence of American
exceptionalism via the Lee family, immigration and our Constitution.
“The
Lee family is a founding American family,” opened Bryan W. Brickner; “perhaps
even ‘the’ founding family ~ and thereby part of what makes us exceptional.”
“The first Lee in the colonies was Richard
Lee I,” Brickner continued, “and he’s known as The Immigrant.”
“Richard Lee was an early American immigrant
success story,” followed Brickner, “one of the founders of the colonies; his
great-great grandson, Henry Lee III, did likewise and worked to build the
United States.”
“Henry
Lee suffered a beating in Baltimore,” closed Brickner, “and never fully
recovered; what he did though, honoring his revolutionary arts in peace as well
as war, is recoverable: it’s an American experience and evidence of exception ~
even the not so pretty kind.”
Brickner has a 1997 political
science doctorate from Purdue University and is the author of several political
theory books, to include The Promise Keepers: Politics and Promises (1999) and
The Book of the Is: A book on bridges (2013). The Bryan William Brickner Blog is an ongoing resource for the political science of constitutions and the
biological science of receptors.
Next up is the seventh essay in the War Cry Heal Union series: Monday 11 August and the 150th anniversary of a Civil War day in Georgia, 1864 ~ Johnny Reb and Gus Kotka discuss Robert E. Lee.
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