THE LIFE AND CHARACTER

OF

ROBERT EDWARD LEE.

An Address Delivered Before A. P. Hill Camp Confederate Veterans,

Not unmindful of the magnitude of the task your partial judgment has assigned to me-diffident of my power to clothe your love and reverence for Robert Lee in adequate phrase-I have yet accepted your invitation as a command, to which neither inclination nor duty could remain irresponsive; and I throw myself upon your generous indulgence as in sober speech I try to portray to you "The man he was who held a nation's heart in thrall.”

Robert E. Lee was born in the purple of an illustrious lineage, at a time when the recent death of the Cincinnatus of the West had flooded the name of Washington with a sunset's glory. He was reared upon the soil and among the traditions which had nurtured the Father of our Country. The wooded aisles of Mount Vernon were the frequent scenes of his boyhood's rambles; that Mecca of liberty, with its sacred associations and eloquent lessons, was the goal of his youthful pilgrimages; his earliest prayers were lisped within the grey walls of the old church in Alexandria, in which the conqueror of a king was wont each Sunday to bow before the Monarch of heaven and of earth; and I love to think that from an early period of life this Robert, "who was always good, and thoughtful beyond his years," sought his model in that great Virginian patriot, soldier, wise statesman and Christian gentleman, to whom the most

gifted Englishmen of that age supplied unstinted praise as "greatest, wisest, best," and above whose bier, amid the tearful approbation of a mourning country, the young Lee's father, the "Light Horse Harry" of the brave days of old, had pronounced that eulogium, as immortal as the character which it epitomized: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

Separated from that father at a tender age, nourished when yet at his mother's knee by those beautiful and pathetic letters in which the death-stricken parent solaced the years of pain and exile by pouring out his loving admonitions to the children he was never more to see on earth, the susceptible heart of the boy imbibed for his absent sire a devotion which grew with his growth and which contributed in large degree to shape his own career in life. Later the lonely grave in Georgia appealed to his imagination, and the influence of its silent occupant was more potent than that of most living parents upon their sons. The faded letters from the Indies became sacred precepts to the lad. They are still a cherished heir-loom with the Lees, and none could ask a more precious legacy for budding minds than those yellow sheets contain-serious in meaning, tenderly playful in tone, couched in language as purely classic and simply lucid as though ladled from the well of English undefiled.

Then, too, the daily pabulum of this thoughtful boy was found in the record of his father's distinguished career as a soldier of the revolution, the honorable mention in orders from the commanding general, the flattering resolutions of Congress applauding his gallantry and skill in arms, the correspondence of Washington and Greene conveying their confidence and gratitude for brilliant services, and the speeches of Light Horse Harry himself in the State Legislature, in Congress and in the Convention which adopted the Federal Constitution that superb but well-balanced oratory which satisfied the reason while taking captive the imagination, in which loftiness of thought and beauty of expression were as well attuned as sun and beam; and in which there breathed a love of country and a desire for union which was not held in those days to be inconsistent with a passionate jealousy for the rights of the States. And while studying thus the thoughts and deeds of the dead father, never known in life, the youth absorbed the reverent affection which permeated every word and act of that father towards Washington.

It is not too much to assume that the idolized leader of the sire became thus the ideal hero of the scion; and that the son of that

orator, who embalmed the virtues of Washington in words as deathless, was led by paternal influences-none the less strong because speaking from the grave-to consciously mould himself upon the almost faultless pattern so faultlessly portrayed.

At all events, there were striking points of resemblance, not alone in character and endowments, but also in temperament between Lee and that predecessor who is only rival in the hearts of this people. Nor up to a certain point were the currents of their lives divergent,

Both were left fatherless while of plastic minds, and both were trained to scarcely realize that partial orphanage by mothers to whom widowhood was but a trusteeship of love and care for the offspring of a departed consort.

Of Anne Carter, the mother of Robert Lee, no less than of Mary, the mother of Washington, it may be said that from her prayers and precepts came that white flower of a blameless life which sweetened our day and generation with its fair example. 'Twas she who guided the young Aeneas to filial piety, and taught him veneration of all that was best and noblest in the father's creed. 'Twas she that developed natural excellences of disposition and worthiness of aspiration into the fixedness of habit and the substance of resolve. 'Twas she who trained the sprouting tendrils to twine around the sturdy oaks of honor and of truth. Aye, but for these pious Virginia women, consecrated to widowhood and maternal duty, it may well be doubted whether even the nobility of nature which came from God, would have ever grown into that roundest symmetry of mind and soul which stamped their sons as kings among men.

By both of these Virginia boys there was the same earnest use of the seed-time in preparation for the harvest season; they both evinced on the threshold of life a calm superiority to those frivolities which distract the mind and sap the energies. The same gracious gravity of demeanor and dignity of deportment gave early presage in both of powers beyond the common heritage and of destinies beyond the common lot. Each entered young upon stern and exigent responsibilities, and both were thus unwittingly equipped to lead embattled hosts against the government to which their first allegiance had been given. Both debated long and earnestly with conscience before arriving at a decision which changed the whole current of their lives. Both were entrusted with the highest command without having sought or desired it; both entered upon exalted duties with the fullest sense of the dangers and uncertainties involved;

and both cast behind them the most dazzling prospects of power and preferment to accept a leadership which brought with it no material or resources commensurate with the strength against which they were arrayed. In the midst of difficulties for which there was no human remedy both displayed a patient fortitude almost superhuman. Both were of constant minds, of patient courage; neither elated by success nor depressed by failure.

The parallel might be continued almost indefinitely. Indeed, one who saw Robert Lee in the ripe maturity of his powers, under cirstances strongly if superficially suggestive of the earlier days of the American revolution, might not unnaturally have said: The mantle of Elijah hath fallen upon Elisha.

Reproduced as exactly as though recreated, were the poise and balance of moral and mental elements-the same harmonious completeness of practical talents-the same predominant traits of temperament under the same stern control-the same hand of steel under the glove of velvet-the same patient devotion to duty for its own high sake the same fine sense of honor-the same inflexible love of truth-the same dignity of bearing, purity of conduct, loftiness of purpose and superiority to the cares of mere ambition.

Seldom has it been given to a State to give birth to two sons with such claims to immortality! And that their gifts of genius and graces of character displayed so much of the kinship of resemblance, is but another illustration of the fact that true greatness has but one sure foundation and bears but one core in every age. It may wear a different form, but beneath the fashion of the day are the identical elements. The differences are apparent; the similarities are real. Methods of expression change; principles and rules of conduct are immutable. The Cid may never come again, nor Douglas, "in the same likeness that he wore"; but honor, patriotism, valor, never die-or but to speedy resurrection.

When the thoughtful boy in the widow's home at Alexandria came to that age when the fledgling longs to try his wings, his choice of a profession had perhaps been formed already by a process of which even he was unconscious. The diet upon which his mind was fed at a period when impressions are most easily made, was largely of a sort to turn his ardent heart towards a soldier's life. By this time we may be sure that he knew line upon line the story of those battles in which the power of Britain had been broken and the free

dom of his country gained. And did not the proud mother give into his careful hands ere this, those "Memoirs of the War of Seventy-Six," written by his father, telling in graphic style of the campaigns in the South, of Greene, of Marion, Sumter, and in too modest brevity of the chances of service which came to and were improved by one nearer and dearer. More potent still to fix his path was the silent appeal of a sword which hung above the lofty mantel-the sword which Light Horse Harry had flashed so often in the headlong charge-the sword presented to him by Congress for “Warlike skill and prowess." Can you not see before you now the mother "tearful yet rejoicing" in her recollections, while the son, with pious touch, draws førth the stainless blade and answers to her questioning face:

"My father's sword-and mine!"

And so he started forth upon that course which brought him to the call of Virginia in 1861, a veteran already in war, master of its theories, ripe in its practice, in the flush of health in mind and body. He was the centre of expectancy and of confidence. In the old army he had won a reputation second to none. Scott, his old commander, had declared of him, in his stilted but sincere way, that he was the "the greatest military genius in America, the best soldier I ever saw in the field; and if opportunity should offer he will show himself the foremost captain of his time." It was through the influence of this Virginian, then at the head of the United States army, that President Lincoln was induced to offer that high command to Colonel Lee. This tender so calculated to gratify an ordinary pride, and great enough to satisfy any ambition, came to a man who was controlled in every act of his existence by his desire to do the right. In all that memorable career there is not an act nor utterance which suggests a motive less noble than a sense of duty. From the day when Magruder describes him immured in the study of plans and maps in the halls of Montezuma, aloof from the gaities of a splendid capital, to that on which he answered adsum to the summons of the Great Captain of us all, the rigid rule by which his existence was ordered, never varied. His answer to the overture was a courteous negative, and forthwith he saw that the time had come to leave the service of the Union.

That his resignation from the United States army was a step taken in sorrow and after severe conflict of mind is not to be doubted by