(ATLANTA - January 20, 2014) In commemoration of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's birthday, Georgia's annual "Robert E. Lee Celebration" was held this past Saturday, January 18, at Georgia's wartime capitol in Milledgeville.
Several hundred participants marched in a parade from the old governor's mansion in Milledgeville to the antebellum state capitol which is today on the grounds of Georgia Military College. Following the parade, nearly 200 individuals from every age range continued the celebration by filing into the former legislative chamber of the General Assembly in which Georgia declared secession in 1861. Jack Marlar of South Carolina was the distinguished guest speaker and spoke of Lee's victories, particularly the Battle of Chancellorsville, where Union General Hooker's entire Army of the Potomac was routed and forced into a panic-stricken retreat back to the streets of Washington, D.C.
Robert E. Lee has been honoured for the last 150 years all across America as both a Christian gentleman and perhaps America's greatest military leader of all time. Like most Southern states, Georgia still officially observes the birthday of Robert E. Lee as a state holiday, and similar celebrations to the one in Georgia are scheduled in every Southern state this weekend. As the organization founded by actual Confederate veterans and their real sons in 1896, the Sons of Confederate Veterans again led Georgia's event.
Following the program inside the Capitol building, those present returned outside on the grounds where reenactors presented the colours of the South and fired both a musket volley and cannon volley in honour of the South's greatest general.
For more information about this year's Robert E. Lee Celebration, please contact Jack Bridwell, Division Commander for the Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans at 1-866-SCV-in-GA or online at
www.GeorgiaSCV.org
