"Save yo' Confederate money, boys. The South gonna rise again!"
What my daughter has to do with General Lee.
This afternoon my wife, daughter and I went to Rippavilla mansion, an large antebellum home dating from 1851. It was built by the Cheairs family (pronounced, "chairs"). The home is located in Spring Hill, Tennessee, where Confederate General John Bell Hood's army failed to stop Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield's army from slipping away to the north on the night of Nov. 29, 1864. Schofield took up strong defensive positions the next day in Franklin, on the south side of the Harpeth river.

The guide at Rippavilla described what happened the next morning. Hood, furious at Schofield's escape, was hardly able to eat the breakfast Mrs. Cheairs served him and his staff in Rippavilla's dining room. Absorbing Hood's unbridled fury and accusations of dereliction, incompetence and even drunkenness was Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the only American general ever to have a price put in his head by his enemy (by Union Gen. William T. Sherman, who offered a bounty of $10,000 for Forrest).

Also present was a corps commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee, no relation to Robert E. Lee. It was S.D. Lee who had ordered South Carolina batteries to open fire on Fort Sumter, the opening shots of the Civil War.

My wife and I gave the name Lee to our daughter as her middle name. It was my grandmother's middle name; she was named after her uncle, whose first name was Lee. He was born during the closing weeks of the Civil War. His father, my great-great-great uncle, had served with Gen. S.D. Lee throughout the war. He named his son Lee in the general's honor.

I explained this lineage to my daughter, and pointed out that she was standing in the room where her distant namesake had received his orders to pursue Schofield's army. Hood's Army of Tennessee attacked the Yankees at Franklin late that afternoon. The Battle of Franklin was a catastrophe for the Confederacy. Hood's army suffered thousands of casualties in just five hours, more than either side had suffered in two days' battle at Shiloh. The Confederate dead was greater than the number of dead Grant had lost at the infamous battle of Cold Harbor. Two weeks later the Army of Tennessee was annihilated at the Battle of Nashville and the Civil War in the west was over.

Gen. Lee was wounded at Franklin. After the war, he was a member of Mississippi legislature and the first president of the Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College. He was an early campaigner for women's rights. He died in 1908.

But for a few moments this afternoon, Lee was right there with us.

A postscript: My wife's maiden name was Stephens. Her great-great-great uncle was Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy. My great-great grandfather and his two brothers fought as members of the 11th Tennessee Regiment; one brother was killed at the Battle of Murfreesboro. Another g2-grandfather was a Union officer in the 16th Pennsylvania who had a leg shot off at Chancellorsville, where Union General "Fighting Joe" Hooker didn't live up to his nickname.

Yet another g2-grandfather was a CSA soldier who was captured by the Union and imprisoned in Nashville. He may be the only American POW whose wife busted him out of prison. She, in turn, was sexually assaulted in her own kitchen by a Yankee soldier. A proper Southern lady, she defended her virtue with great vigor by taking a very large, oak rolling pin and slamming him on the head. He dropped like a rock. As he fell, she shoved him out her back door onto the porch. Later, two of his buddies took him away, whether dead or alive Grandma never learned.

My mother still has the rolling pin. Grandma smashed that Yankee so hard the rolling pin cracked from one end to the other. It is a treasured heirloom