(lass 
 Bool' 
 
 l'l<ESEXTi:n BY ■' 
 
GEN. ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 NEW YORK SOUTHERN SOCIETY 
 
 ON THE 
 
 Anniversary of the Great Commander's Birth 
 January 19th, 1906 
 
 BY 
 
 Dr. JOHN A. WYETH. 
 
 (In the New York Sun of Sunday, January 21st, 1906, 
 
 which published the address, was given the 
 
 following notice.) 
 
 Night before last the Southerners in New York— their 
 name is legion, and a loyal legion they are— celebrated 
 General Robert E. Lee's birth. We print on 
 another page the address in which Dr. John A. Wyeth 
 attempted to measure, in the light of recent and 
 contemporaneous opinion, the steadily growing admir- 
 ation in which others than Southerners hold the memory 
 of this great Virginian and good man. The historical 
 estimate of Lee's character atid career, as distinguished 
 from either the passionate eulogy of fellow partisanship 
 or the prejudice of sectional hatred, is fast being 
 formulated. To this process Dr. Wyeth's sympathetic 
 addres<:, with its most interesting exhibits, is an 
 important contribution. 
 
GEN. ROBERT E. LEE. 
 
 COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESS 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 NEW YORK SOUTHERN SOCIETY 
 
 ON THE 
 
 Anniversary of the Great Commander's Birth 
 January 19th, 1906 
 
 BY 
 
 Dr. JOHN A. WYETH. 
 
 (In the New York Sun of Sunday, January 21st, 1906, 
 
 which published the address, was given tlie 
 
 following- notice.) 
 
 Night before last the Southerners in New York— their 
 name is legion, and a loyal legion they are— celebrated 
 General Robert E. Lee's birth. We print on 
 another page the address in which Dr. John A. Wyeth 
 attempted to measure, in the light of recent and 
 contemporaneous opinion, the steadily growing admir- 
 ation in which others than Southerners hold the memory 
 of this great Virginian and good man. The historical 
 estimate of Lee's character and career, as distinguished 
 from either the passionate eulogy of fellow partisanship 
 or the prejudice of sectional hatred, is fast being 
 formulated. To this process Dr. Wyeth's sympathetic 
 address, with its most interesting exhibits, is an 
 important contribution. 
 
L4W' 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 UHZ a. COMPANY, 
 
 2* BROADWAY, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 Gift 
 Author 
 (Person) 
 
 IT J '05 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE. 
 
 The South may claim with pardonable pride that 
 it furnished not only the President of each of the 
 divided sections in the struggle for the establishment 
 of a separate Confederacy, but the great central figure 
 of the civil war for the North as well as for the South. 
 History will accord that Abraham Lincoln was the 
 one conspicuous figure on the side of the Union, and 
 for the South none will challenge that claim for L,ee. 
 They were, moreover, representatives of the widely 
 divergent classes of our section, the plebeian and the 
 patrician. The story of Lincoln might well be classed 
 with 
 
 "The short and simple annals of the poor," 
 
 while Lee came straight from the cavaliers and their 
 descendants, the wealthy cultured aristocracy of 
 Virginia. "His father. Colonel Henry Lee, better 
 ' known as "Light Horse Harry" was the beati sabreur 
 of the American army in the War of Independence, 
 and it was he who proclaimed George Washington as 
 "First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of 
 his countrymen." 
 
 Upon his mother's side he claimed the lineage of 
 the Carters of Shirley. Born on January 19th, 1807, 
 his childhood and youth were passed in the cultivated 
 circles of the tidewater region of Virginia. At the 
 age of 18 he entered West Point and completing the 
 course of study without a single mark of demerit he 
 graduated second in a class of forty-six. For several 
 years he served in the Engineer Corps constructing 
 
4 GENERAI, ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 coast defenses, and for a part of this time in charge of 
 the astronomical department of the Government. In 
 1832 he married the daughter of George W. Parke 
 Custis, the adopted son of Gen. Washington, and later 
 was made Captain on the staff in the Mexican war. 
 
 Of all the brilliant reputations among the younger 
 group of officers which were won in that campaign 
 Lee's was the most conspicuous. Upon him the 
 Commander-in-Chief leaned as upon no other. At 
 Cerro Gordo he was brevetted Major for exceptional 
 gallantry. At Contreras and Cherubusco he was 
 officially proclaimed for meritorious conduct, and on 
 account of a wound received in the assault on 
 Chapultepec, September 13th, 1847, he was given his 
 promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel. It was at Contreras, 
 when the army was baffled, that the quick eye of Lee 
 discovered, by a daring reconnaissance, a line of 
 approach hidden from the enemy by which the position 
 might be taken. This the Commander in Chief of the 
 army characterized as ' 'the greatest feat of physical 
 and moral courage performed by any individual dur- 
 ing the entire campaign." 
 
 In his official report Gen. Scott said: "I am 
 compelled to make special mention of Capt. R. E. 
 Lee, engineer. He greatly distinguished himself at 
 the siege of Vera Cruz, was indefatigable during these 
 operations in reconnaissances, as daring as laborious, 
 and of the utmost value. Nor was he less conspicuos 
 in planting batteries and in conducting columns to 
 their stations under the heavy fire of the enemy. ' ' He 
 further says: "Capt, Lee, so constantly distinguished, 
 also bore important orders from me, until he fainted 
 from a wound and the loss of two nights sleep at the 
 batteries." 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 5 
 
 After the Mexican war he was appointed, in 1852, 
 Superintendent of the Military Academy at West 
 Point, and in 1855 Lieutenant-Colonel of the Second 
 Cavalry, under Col. Albert Sidney Johnston. In 1859 
 he was directed by the President of the United States 
 to arrest John Brown and his followers in their 
 murderous invasion of Virginia, and on March loth, 
 1861, he was appointed Colonel in the United States 
 army . 
 
 When the Southern States were seceding and war 
 seemed inevitable, upon the recommendation of Gen. 
 Scott, then Commander in Chief, President Lincoln 
 offered Lee the command of the armies of the Union. 
 Virginia had not yet seceded, but Lee, looking into the 
 future and feeling assured that his native State would 
 upon any act of aggression make common cause with 
 the other Southern States, declined the tempting offer. 
 
 In a letter written April 20th, 1861, he made that 
 never to be forgotten declaration: "With all my de- 
 votion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and 
 duty as an American citizen, I have not been able to 
 make up my mind to raise my hand against my rela- 
 tives, my children, my home. Save in defence of my 
 native State, with the sincere hope that my poor 
 services may never be needed, I hope I may never be 
 called upon to draw my sword." 
 
 When at length hostilities began and Virginia 
 took her place in the Confederacy the people of the 
 Old Dominion with one voice turned to him as com- 
 mander of her army . Then : 
 
 "Forth from its scabbard, pure and bright, 
 
 Flashed the sword of Lee ! 
 Far in the front of the deadly fight, 
 
6 GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 High o'er the brave in the cause of Right, 
 Its stainless sheen, like a beacon light, 
 lycd on to victory. 
 
 Out of its scabbard! Never hand 
 
 Waved sword from stain as free. 
 Nor purer sword led braver band, 
 Nor braver bled for a brighter land, 
 Nor brighter land had a cause so grand. 
 
 Nor cause a chief like Lee! 
 
 The stor)^ of his military career is practically the 
 story of the Army of Northern Virginia, and it reads 
 more like romance than history. Through four years 
 of the bloodiest war known to history at that time 
 that army, composed of the flower of Southern man- 
 hood, under its matchless leader, made a record of 
 victories never surpassed in the annals of warfare, a 
 record which we of the South and our children's 
 children to the remotest ages should claim as our 
 proudest heritage. 
 
 He assumed command of this arm)^ in June, 1862, 
 when McClellan was immediately in front of Rich- 
 mond. On June 26th, with an army inferior in num- 
 bers and equipment, he attacked the forces of 
 McClellan in their intrenchments and for seven days 
 the bloody conflict raged, until McClellan took refuge 
 under the protection of his gunboats at Harrison's 
 Landing. This army defeated, Lee turned upon a 
 second larger than his own, marching upon Richmond 
 from another direction. 
 
 By one of the most brilliant and daring move- 
 ments in the history of wars Lee, with his able 
 Lieutenant, Jackson, routed Pope's army at Groveton 
 and Second Manassas and drove him for safety under 
 the protection of the fortifications at Washington. 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 7 
 
 McClellan had been removed for his defeat and Pope 
 followed in his train. Disregarding both of these de- 
 feated armies, Lee moved rapidly into Maryland, 
 captured Harper's Ferry and its large garrison on the 
 way and fought at Antietam on September 17th, 1862, 
 the bloodiest battle of the civil war. McClellan, who 
 after Pope's defeat had been reinstated in command, 
 was again removed for failing to inflict a crushing 
 defeat upon Lee, and Burnside was made Commander 
 in Chief of the Army of the Potomac. 
 
 In December of that year this same army of Lee 
 signally defeated the army of Burnside at Fredericks- 
 burg. Burnside was removed and Gen. Hooker placed 
 in command. In May, 1863, Hooker marched on 
 Richmond, having issued a general order in which he 
 said that the Confederate army must "either inglori- 
 ously fly or come out from behind its intrenchments, 
 where certain destruction awaited it." A few days 
 after this announcement was made, Hooker's army 
 was surprised and attacked by Lee and Jackson 
 simultaneously in front and rear at Chancellorsville 
 and overwhelmed, fleeing in the greatest disorder from 
 the field. Lee then invaded Pennsylvania, where at 
 Gettysburg after three days of bloody conflict, unable 
 to carry the Federal position, he remained twenty -four 
 hours in line of battle with his army in their imme- 
 diate front inviting attack and then withdrew without 
 interruption to Virginia. 
 
 It was in 1864, in the campaign from the Wilder- 
 ness to Petersburg, that the star of Lee reached its 
 zenith. Under his leadership the Army of Northern 
 Virginia up to this time in offensive warfare had held 
 every battlefield upon which it had fought with the 
 exception of Gettysburg and Sharpsburg or Antietam, 
 
8 GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 and upon these fields, although it failed to beat the 
 army pitted against it, it stood in battle array on each 
 occasion for twenty-four hours, was not attacked and 
 marched away unmolested. 
 
 He was now to show that in defensive fighting he 
 was a greater master of the art of war than in his 
 offensive operations. Grant, with the largest army 
 ever marshalled upon this continent under a single 
 commander, with unlimited resources of men and 
 money, with the world to draw upon for all that was 
 most useful in destructive warfare, advanced upon 
 this army of Lee wanting in everything but valor, and 
 so decimated that as Grant expressed it "it had robbed 
 the cradle and the grave" to fill the gaps between the 
 veterans that still survived. There follow^ed from 
 May 5th, 1864, in the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania 
 Court House, at Cold Harbor and the North Anna a 
 series of conflicts so frightful in their havoc that the 
 history of this campaign might well be written in 
 blood. 
 
 The most recent, and in my opinion the most 
 reliable histor}'- of the United States, written by James 
 Ford Rhodes of Boston, a conscientious student, a 
 capable analyvSt and just recorder, says: "Grant's 
 loss from May 4th to June 12th in the campaign from 
 the Rapidan to the James was 54,929, a number 
 nearly equal to Lee's whole army at the commencement 
 of the Union advance. The confidence in Grant of 
 many officers and men had been shaken." 
 
 At Spottsylvania Nicolay and Hay, authors of 
 the Life of Lincoln, say "Grant was completely 
 checkmated." 
 
 That this is true is evident from the fact that 
 turning aside from the direct route to Richmond, with 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 9 
 
 Lee's army in front of him, which army he announced 
 in the beginning of the campaign as his objective, he 
 marched toward the James River, which he crossed in 
 the effort to capture Petersburg by surprise. 
 
 The army of Lee was, however, at Petersburg in 
 time, and there held Grant at bay for nine months of 
 the summer and winter of '64 and '65. 
 
 As far as the Confederates were concerned, the 
 annals of the siege of Petersburg might well be termed 
 the annals of starvation, exposure and misery. True 
 to its colors, the army of Lee was starving to death. 
 The Commissary General reported that "the Army of 
 Northern Virginia was living literally from hand to 
 mouth." Beef sold for $6 per pound and flour at 
 $1,000 a barrel. At one time, pleading with his 
 Government for food, Lee said that for three days his 
 men had been in line of battle and had not tasted 
 meat. 
 
 In the early spring of 1865, after nine months of 
 persistent effort Grant with 113,000 men, well fed, 
 clad and armed, broke through the lines defended by 
 Lee's force of 49,000 veterans, half starved, ragged 
 and most of them shoeless. 
 
 Then came the end at Appomattox, where on 
 April 9th, 1865, the remnant of this once magnificent 
 army, now numbering less than 28,000 (of which only 
 15,000 were carrying arms) surrendered, and the 
 Confederacy was no more. 
 
 Upon this world's stage no more pathetic scene, 
 no more heroic incident has ever been witnessed. 
 With what pride the generations yet unborn shall 
 claim descent from those who, true to their sense of 
 duty, which Lee himself said was "the sublimest word 
 in the English language," fought under the banner of 
 
lO GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 this immortal soldier and died on those victorious 
 fields, or surviving, stood true to his colors at 
 Appomattox. 
 
 In his farewell address to his army he said: ' ' You 
 will take with you the satisfactton that proceeds from 
 the consciousness of duty faithfully performed; and I 
 earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you 
 His blessing and protection. With an unceasing 
 admiration of your constancy and devotion to your 
 country and a grateful remembrance of your kind and 
 generous consideration of myself, I bid you an affec- 
 tionate farewell." 
 
 Soon after the surrender he accepted the presi- 
 dency of Washington College at Lexington, Va. He 
 had refused large profi"ers of money for his services or 
 the use of his name for various enterprises. He de- 
 clined them all, saying he felt it his duty to live with 
 his people and to endeavor in educating the j^outh of 
 the South to do all in his power to aid in the restora- 
 tion of peace and harmony and the acceptance of the 
 policy of the State or general Government. 
 
 Though war in all ages and with all people 
 arouses that which is worst in human nature, and 
 though bloodiest and bitterest is internecine war, it 
 still seems difficult to believe even after the lapse of so 
 short a time as forty years that for the part this noble 
 man took in obedience to his conviction of duty 
 Andrew Johnson, then President of the United States, 
 obtained his indictment for treason. Against this un- 
 warranted and ignoble act the great soldier Grant 
 arose and stayed the hand of malice and persecution. 
 It seems equally incredible to conceive that within 
 two months of the death of Lee, which took place on 
 October 12th, 1870, speaking to a resolution which 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE II 
 
 had for its object the return of the estate of Arlington 
 to the family of Lee, Charles Sumner said in his place 
 in the Senate: "Eloquent Senators have already 
 characterized the proposition and the traitor it seeks 
 to commemorate. I am not disposed to speak of Gen. 
 Lee. It is enough to say that he stands high in the 
 catalogue of those who have imbrued their hands in 
 their country's blood. I hand him over to the 
 avenging pen of history. 
 
 As man and soldier "the avenging pen of history' ' 
 has already written this of Lee: In nobility of 
 character, in moral grandeur, attested by his human- 
 ity, he lived "the model for all future times." In the 
 annals of war his place is with the greatest. 
 
 What of this charge of treason and what kind of 
 traitor was Lee? A distinguished soldier and citizen 
 of Massachusetts, Charles Francis Adams, reared in 
 the New England school of politics, himself through- 
 out the war in the army which confronted Lee, son of 
 that Charles Francis Adams who as United States 
 Minister to England during the civil war probably 
 did as much as any other one man to defeat the cause 
 of the Confederacy, grandson of John Quincy Adams 
 and great-grandson cf that elder Adams who suc- 
 ceeded Washington as President of the United States, 
 a man who so differed from Lee in his interpretation 
 of the duty an American citizen owes as between his 
 State and the central Government that he declared he 
 would go against Massachusetts for the Union, has 
 written this for history: 
 
 If Robert E. Lee was a traitor, so also and indis- 
 putably was George Washington. Washington fur- 
 nishes a precedent at every point. A Virginian, like 
 Lee, he was also a British subject; he had fought 
 
12 GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 under the British flag, as I^ee had fought under that 
 of the United States; when, in 1776, Virginia, seceded 
 from the British Empire he went with his State, just 
 as L,ee went eighty-five years later; subsequently 
 Washington commanded armies in the field designated 
 by those opposed to them as "rebels" and whose 
 descendants now glorify them as "the rebels of '76," 
 much as Lee later commanded and at last surrendered 
 much larger armies, also designated "rebels" by those 
 they confronted. Except in their otitcome the cases 
 were, therefore, precisely alike; and logic is logic. It 
 consequently appears to follow that if Lee was a traitor 
 Washington was also. 
 
 He further says: 
 
 In him there are exemplified- those lofty elements 
 of personal character which, typifying Virginia at her 
 highest, made Washington possible. Essentially a 
 soldier, Robert E. L,ee was a many sided man. I 
 might speak of him as a strategist, but of this aspect 
 of the man enough has perhaps been said. I might 
 refer to the respect, the confidence and love with 
 which he inspired those under his command. I 
 might dilate on his restraint in victory; his patient 
 endurance in the face of adverse fortune; the serene 
 dignity with which he in the end triumphed over defeat. 
 But, passing over all these well worn themes, I shall 
 confine myself to that one attribute of his which, 
 recognized in a soldier by an opponent, I cannot but 
 regard as his surest and loftiest title to enduring fame. 
 I refer to his humanity in arms and his scrupulous 
 regard for the most advanced rules of modern warfare. 
 
 Denying the contention that war must be made 
 hell, holding up to execration the authors of the 
 bloodiest deeds in history, this generous foe and great 
 American said: 
 
 I rejoice that no such hatred attaches to the name 
 of Lee. Reckless of life to attain the legitimate ends 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 1 3 
 
 of war, he sought to mitigate its horrors. Opposed to 
 him at Gettysburg, 1, here forty years later, do him 
 justice. No more creditable order ever issued from a 
 commanding General than that formulated and signed 
 at Chambersburg by Robert E. Lee, as toward the 
 close of June , 1 863 , he advanced on a war of invasion . 
 "No greater disgrace," he then declared, "can befall 
 the army, and through it our whole people, than the 
 perpetration of barbarous outrages upon the innocent 
 and defenceless. Such proceedings not only disgrace 
 the perpetrators and all connected with them, but are 
 subversive of the discipline and efficiency of the army, 
 and destructive of the ends of our movement. It 
 must be remembered that we make war only on armed 
 men . ' ' 
 
 In scope and spirit L,ee's order was observed, and 
 I doubt if a hostile force ever advanced into an 
 enemy's country or fell back from it in retreat leaving;- 
 behind less cause of hate and bitterness than did the 
 Army of Northern Virginia in that memorable cam- 
 paign which culminated at Gettysburg. 
 
 In dwelling on this theme, in contrast to L,ee's 
 humanity may not "the avenging pen of history" 
 quote from "Ohio in the War" by the Hon. Whitelaw 
 Reid, at this time Ambassador of the United States at 
 the Court of St. James's, who in speaking of the 
 burning of Columbia wrote: 
 
 It was the most monstrous barbarity of this bar- 
 barous march. Before his movement began Gen. 
 Sherman begged permission to turn his army loose in 
 South Carolina and devastate it. He used this per- 
 mission to the full. He protested that he did not 
 wage war upon women and children. But, under the 
 operations of his orders, the last morsel of food was 
 taken from hundreds of destitute families that his 
 soldiers might feast in needless and riotous abundance. 
 Before his eyes rose, day after day, the mournful 
 clouds of smoke on every side that told of old people 
 
14 GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 and their grandchildren driven, in midwinter, from 
 the only roofs there were to shelter them, by the flames 
 which the wantonness of his soldiers had kindled. 
 Yet, if a single soldier was punished for a single 
 outrage or theft during that entire movement we have 
 found no mention of it in all the voluminous records 
 of the march. 
 
 May not this avenging pen of history which 
 Sumner invoked, record that order of Gen. Halleck, 
 chief of staff and military adviser to President Lincoln, 
 which said to Gen. Sherman: "Should you capture 
 Charleston I hope that by some accident the place 
 may be destroyed, and if a little salt should be sown 
 upon its site it may prevent the growth of future crops 
 of nullification and seccession," and Sherman's reply 
 in his despatch of December 24th, 1864, "I will bear 
 in mind your hint as to Charleston, and don't think 
 salt will be necessary. When I move, the Fifteenth 
 Corps will be on the right of the right wing, and their 
 position will bring them, naturally, into Charleston 
 first; and if you have watched the history of that corps, 
 you will have remarked that they generally do their 
 work up pretty well. The truth is the whole army is 
 burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance 
 upon South Carolina." 
 
 And may it not transcribe upon its pages that 
 other order to his efficient L,ieut. Hunter: "He 
 [Grant] further says that he wants your troops to eat 
 out Virginia clear and clean, as far as they go, so 
 that crows flying over it for the balance of the season 
 will have to carry their provender with them. 
 
 Of L,ee as a General, President Roosevelt, in his 
 life of Thomas H. Benton, says: 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 15 
 
 The world has never seen better soldiers than 
 those who followed I^ee, and their leader will un- 
 doubtedly rank as, without any exception, the very 
 greatest of all the great captains that the English- 
 speaking peoples have brought forth— and this, al- 
 though the last and chief of his antagonists may him- 
 self claim to stand as the full equal of Marlborough 
 and Wellington. 
 
 From no more capable source could higher praise 
 be given. 
 
 In the "Story of a Soldier's I^ife." Field Marshal 
 Viscount Wolseley, Commander-in-Chief of the British 
 Army, speaking of the Seven Days battle, says: 
 
 Gen. McClellan's splendidly equipped army had 
 been driven from the peninsula and Gen. Pope had 
 been made short work of on the Rappahannock . They 
 were unable to cope with Gen. Lee's armv, though it 
 was far inferior in strength. In fact, the Confederates 
 had won all along the line, thanks to the ably con- 
 ceived and well calculated strategy of the great 
 Virginian leader and the brilliant tactics of Stonewall 
 Jackson and other capable soldiers and to the superior 
 fighting qualities of their splendid and patriotic rank 
 and file. 
 
 That campaign was a masterpiece; both in con- 
 ception and execution and did high honor to the 
 soldierlike spirit and patriotism of the ill shod, over- 
 worked, badly clothed regimental officers and men of 
 the Southern army. 
 
 According to my notion of military historv there 
 is as much instruction both in strategy and in tactics 
 to be gleaned from Gen. Lee's operations of 1862 as 
 there is to be found in Napoleon's campaigns of 1796. 
 Though badly found in weapons, ammunition, military 
 equipment, &c., his army had nevertheless achieved 
 great things. His men were so badly shod (indeed, a 
 considerable portion had no boots or shoes) that at 
 the battle of Antietam Gen. Lee assured me he never 
 
1 6 GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 had more than 35,000 men with him. The remainder 
 of his army, shoeless and footsore, were straggling 
 along the roads in the rear trying in vain to reach 
 him in time for the battle. 
 
 Of this visit to I^ee Gen. Wolseley says: 
 
 As I waited outside of Gen. Lee's tent while his 
 aide-de-camp entered to tell him who I was and to 
 deliver him a letter from the Confederate Secretary of 
 War, I remarked it had the name of a Colonel of some 
 New Jersey regiment printed upon it. Subsequently 
 I referred to the fact in my conversation with him. 
 He laughed and said: "You will find every tent, 
 gun, even our blankets, accoutrements and all the 
 military equipment we possess stamped with the 
 United States initials." Every incident in that visit 
 is indelibly stamped on my memory. All he said to 
 me then and during subsequent conversations is still 
 fresh in my recollection. It is natural it should be so, 
 for he was the ablest General and to me seemed the 
 greatest man I ever conversed with, and yet I have 
 had the privilege of meeting Von Moltke and Prince 
 Bismarck. 
 
 Gen. Lee was one of the few men who ever seri- 
 ously impressed and awed me with their inherent 
 greatness. Forty years has come and gone since our 
 meeting and 5^et the majesty of his manly bearing, the 
 genial winning grace, the sweetness of his smile and 
 the impressive dignity of his old fashioned style of 
 dress come back to me among the most cherished of 
 my recollections. His greatness made me humble 
 and I never felt my own insignificance more keenly 
 than I did in his presence. He was then about 50 
 years of age, with hair and beard nearly white. Tall, 
 extremely handsome and strongly built, verj^ soldier- 
 like in bearing, he looked a thoroughbred gentleman. 
 Care had, however, already wrinkled his brow and 
 there came at moments a look of sadness into his 
 clear, honest and speaking dark brown eyes that indi- 
 cated how much his overwhelming national responsi- 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 17 
 
 bilities had already told upon him. He was indeed a 
 beautiful character and of him it might truthfully be 
 written "in righteousness did he judge and make 
 war." 
 
 Lieut. -Col. G. F. R. Henderson, professor of mili- 
 tary art and history in the Staff College of the British 
 army, in his life of Stonewall Jackson, says: 
 
 If the names of the great captains, soldiers and 
 sailors be recalled, it will be seen that it is to the 
 breadth of their strategical conceptions rather than to 
 their tactical skill that they owe their fame. We 
 have the strategist, a Hannibal, a Napoleon or a Lee, 
 triumphing with inferior numbers over adversaries 
 who are tacticians and nothing more. 
 
 In speaking of Lee's audacity in attacking with 
 a force inferior in numbers and equipment McClellan's 
 thoroughly organized army in their entrenchments in 
 the Seven Days battle, he says: 
 
 From Hannibal to Moltke there has been no great 
 captain who has neglected to study the character of 
 his opponent and who did not trade on the knowledge 
 thus acquired, and it was this knowledge which 
 justified Lee's audacity. He was no hare brained 
 leader, but a profound thinker, following the highest 
 principles of the military art. That he had weighed 
 the disconcerting effect which the sudden appearance 
 of the victorious Jackson, with an army of unkown 
 strength, would produce upon McClellan goes without 
 saying. 
 
 Again he writes: 
 
 Lee, with his extraordinary insight into character, 
 had played on Pope (at Second Manassas) and his 
 strategy was justified by success. In the space of 
 three weeks he had carried the war from the James to 
 the Potomac. With an army that at no time exceeded 
 
18 GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 55,000, he had driven 80,000 into the fortifications of 
 Washington. He had captured 30 guns, 7,000 
 prisoners and 20,000 rifles. He had killed or wounded 
 13,500 Federals, destroying supplies and materials of 
 enormous value and all this with a loss to the Confed- 
 erates of 10,000 officers and men. 
 
 "If, as Moltke avers, the junction of two armies 
 on the field of battle is the highest achievement of 
 military genius, the campaign against Pope has seldom 
 been surpassed; and the great counter stroke at 
 Manassas is sufficient in itself to make Lee's reputation 
 as a tactician. Tried by this test alone Lee stands 
 out as one of the greatest soldiers of all times. Not 
 only against Pope, but against McClellan at Gaines's 
 Mill, against Burnside at Fredericksburg and against 
 Hooker at Chancellorsville, he succeeded in carrying 
 out the operation of which Moltke speaks; and in each 
 case with the same result of surprising his adversary. 
 None knew better how to apply that great principle of 
 strategy to march divided, but to fight concentrated." 
 
 "In this action Lee violated both of the maxims of 
 Napoleon — never to divide an army into two columns 
 unable to communicate, or to attempt a junction in 
 the presence of a concentrated enemy, but Lee knew 
 his men. He violated the last section of this maxim 
 because he knew Pope, and the first because he knew 
 Jackson . It is rare indeed that such strategy succeeds. 
 Hasdrubal, divided from Hannibal by many miles and 
 a Consular army, fell back to the Metaurus, and 
 Rome was saved. Two thousand years later Prince 
 Frederick Charles, divided by a few marches and two 
 Austrian army corps from the Crown Prince, lingered 
 so long upon the Iser that the supremacy of Prussia 
 trembled in the balance. It has been remarked that 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 19 
 
 after Jackson's death Lee never again attempted those 
 great turning movements which had achieved his 
 most brilliant victories. Never again did he divide 
 his army to reunite it on the field of battle. The 
 reason is not far to see. There was now no General 
 in the Confederate army to whom he dared confide 
 the charge of the detached wing, and in possessing 
 one such general he had been more fortunate than 
 Napoleon." 
 
 "It is noteworthy that Moltke once, at Konig- 
 gratz, carried out the operation referred to: Welling- 
 ton, twice, at Victoria and Toulouse: Napoleon, 
 although he several times attempted it, never, except 
 at Ulm, with complete success." 
 
 In his "History of the American War," Lieut. - 
 Col. Fletcher of England, says: 
 
 The armies ^of Grant and Lee were still in the 
 vicinity of Spottsylvania Court House. The former, 
 notwithstanding his vastly preponderating strength, 
 was waiting reenforcements. The latter, with only 
 a small and overworked army to rely on, was expecting 
 the arrival of troops from the Shenandoah. 
 
 It must ever remain a marvel how this small 
 force, ill-supplied, overworked and harassed by con- 
 tinual fighting and marching by night and by day, 
 could hold its ground against the almost innumerable 
 host m Grant's command. That it did so, inflicting 
 losses far heavier than it sustained and creating a 
 belief in the mind of the enemy of numbers far larger 
 than it contained, has been already shown. 
 
 Two of the three armies of 'Sigel, Meade and 
 Butler had been forced to seek shelter behind fortified 
 lines, the third had been brought to a halt to await 
 reenforcements and the arteries which supplied life to 
 the capital of the Confederacy had been preserved. 
 
20 GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Of the movement to the North Anna River in the 
 Wilderness campaign he says: "Here L,ee by the 
 exercise of consummate generalship foiled his op- 
 ponent." And of the final end of Grant's endeavor 
 to crush Lee in the campaign he says: "After many 
 battles and losses of which few wars can afford a 
 parallel and which surpassed in number the whole 
 strength of the enemy's force, Gen. Grant had brought 
 his army to a position which McClellan had reached 
 with far greater ease and far less expenditure of life 
 two years previously." 
 
 From the History of the United States by the 
 distinguished writer, Mr. James Ford Rhodes of 
 Boston, I quote this concerning Lee: 
 
 The Confederates had an advantage in that 
 Robert E. Lee espoused their cause; to some extent 
 appreciated at the time, this in reality was an advan- 
 tage beyond computation. Had he followed the ex- 
 ample of Scott and Thomas and remained in service 
 under the old flag in active command of the Army of 
 the Potomac, how differently might not events have 
 turned out. 
 
 Lee, now 54 years old, his face exhibiting the 
 ruddy glow of health, was physically and morally a 
 splendid example of manhood. Able to trace his 
 lineage far back into the mother countr}^ the best 
 blood of Virginia flowed in his veins. Drawing from 
 a knightly race all their virtues, he had inherited none 
 of their vices. Honest, sincere, simple, magnanimous, 
 forbearing, refined, courteous yet dignified and proud, 
 never lacking self command, he was in all respects a 
 true man. Graduating from West Point his life had 
 been exclusively that of a soldier, yet he had none of 
 the soldier's bad habits. He used neither liquor nor 
 tobacco and indulged rarely in a social glass of wine, 
 and cared nothing for the pleasures of the table. He 
 
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 21 
 
 was a good engineer and under Gen. Scott had won 
 distinction in Mexico. The work that had fallen to 
 his lot he had performed in a systematic manner and 
 with conscientious care. "Duty is the sublimest word 
 in our language," he wrote to his son. Sincerely 
 religious, Providence to him was a verity, and it may 
 be truly said he walked with God. 
 
 A serious man, he anxiously watched from his 
 station in Texas the progress of events since Lincoln's 
 election . ' 'Thinking slavery as an institution a moral 
 and political evil," having a soldier's devotion to his 
 flag and a warm attachment to Gen. Scott, he loved 
 the Union and it was especially dear to him as the 
 fruit of the mighty labors of Washington. Although 
 believing that the South had just grievances due to 
 the aggression of the North, he did not think these 
 evils great enough to resort to the remedy of revolution 
 and to him secession was nothing less. "Still," he 
 wrote in January, 1861, "a union that can only be 
 maintained by swords and bayonets and in which 
 strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly 
 love and kindness has no charm for me. If the Union 
 is dissolved and the Government disrupted I shall 
 return to my native State and share the miseries of 
 my people and save in defence vvdll draw my sword on 
 none." Summoned to Washington by his chief, Lee 
 had arrived there a few days before the inauguration 
 of Lincoln, and he had to make the decision after the 
 bombardment of Sumter and the President's call for 
 troops whether he should serve the national Govern- 
 ment or Virginia. The active command of the Federal 
 army with the succession to the chief place was 
 virtually offered to him, but with his notion of States 
 rights and his allegiance to Virginia his decision, 
 though it cost him pain to make it, could have been 
 no other than it v/as. He could not lead an army of 
 invasion into his native State and after the ordinance 
 of secession had been passed by the Virginia conven- 
 tion he resigned his commis.sion and accepted the 
 command of the Virginia forces. 
 
22 GENERAIv ROBERT E. LEE 
 
 Northern men may regret that Lee did not see his 
 duty in the same light as did two other Virginians, 
 Scott and Thomas, but censure's voice upon the 
 action of such a noble soiil is hushed. A careful sur- 
 vey of his character and life must lead the student of 
 men and affairs to see that the course he took was 
 from his point of view and judged by his inexorable 
 and pure conscience the path of duty to which a high 
 sense of honor called him. Could we share the 
 thoughts of that high-minded man as he paced the 
 broad pillared veranda of his noble Arlington house, 
 his eyes glancing across the river at the flag of his 
 country, waving above the dome of the Capitol and 
 then resting on the soil of his native Virginia, we 
 should be willing now to recognize in him one of the 
 finest products of American life. For surely as the 
 years go on we shall see that such a life can be judged 
 by no partison measure, and we shall come to look 
 upon him as the English of our day regard Washington, 
 whom little more than a century ago they delighted 
 to call a rebel. Indeed in all essential characteristics 
 Lee resembled Washington, and had the great work 
 of his life been crowned with success, or had he chosen 
 the winning side, the world would have acknowledged 
 that Virginia could in a century produce two men who 
 were the embodiment of public and private virtue. 
 
 "The avenging pen of history" has placed the 
 name of Lee side by side with Washington. So writes 
 the historian of to-day and so will the future historian 
 prolong the noble record. The fame of Robert Lee is 
 secure in that last appeal to: 
 
 Time the beautifier of the dead. 
 
 Time the corrector where our judgements err. 
 
 The test of Truth.