A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee

by John Esten Cooke

THE SATURDAY REVIEW.

This journal, after some remarks on the death of Admiral Farragut, continues:

"A still more famous leader in the war has lately closed a blameless life. There may be a difference of opinion on the military qualities of the generals who fought on either side in the civil war; but it is no disparagement to the capacity of Grant or of Sherman to say that they had no opportunity of rivalling the achievements of General Lee. Assuming the chief command in the Confederate army in the second campaign of the war, he repelled three or four invasions of Virginia, winning as many pitched battles over an enemy of enormously superior resources. After driving McClellan from the Peninsula, he inflicted on Burnside and Pope defeats which would have been ruinous if the belligerents had been on equal terms; but twenty millions of men, with the absolute command of the sea and the rivers, eventually overpowered a third of their number. The drawn battle of Gettysburg proved that the invasion of the Northern States was a blunder; and in 1863 it became evident that the fall of the Confederacy could not be much longer delayed. Nevertheless General Lee kept Grant's swarming legions at bay for the whole summer and autumn, and the loss of the Northern armies in the final campaign exceeded the entire strength of the gallant defenders of Richmond. When General Lee, outnumbered, cut off from his communications, and almost surrounded by his enemies, surrendered at Appomattox Court-House, he might console himself with the thought that he had only failed where success was impossible. From that moment he used his unequalled and merited authority to reconcile the Southern people to the new order of affairs. He had originally dissented from the policy of secession; and he followed the banner of his State exclusively from a sense of duty, in disregard of his professional and private interests. He might at pleasure have been Commander-in-Chief of the Northern army, for he was second in rank to General Scott. His ancient home and his ample estate on the Potomac were ravaged by the enemy; but he never expressed a regret for the sacrifice of his fortune. There can be no doubt that he was often thwarted by political superiors and by incompetent subordinates, but his equable temper and lofty nature never inclined him to complaint. The regret for his loss which is felt throughout the vast regions of the South is a just tribute to one of the greatest and purest characters in American history."

It will not be inappropriate to reproduce here the tribute which appeared in the London Standard, on the receipt of the news of General Lee's illness:

THE STANDARD.

"The announcement that General R.E. Lee has been struck down by paralysis and is not expected to recover, will be received, even at this crisis, with universal interest, and will everywhere excite a sympathy and regret which testify to the deep impression made on the world at large by his character and achievements. Few are the generals who have earned, since history began, a greater military reputation; still fewer are the men of similar eminence, civil or military, whose personal qualities would bear comparison with his. The bitterest enemies of his country hardly dared to whisper a word against the character of her most distinguished general, while neutrals regarded him with an admiration for his deeds and a respect for his lofty and unselfish nature which almost grew into veneration, and his own countrymen learned to look up to him with as much confidence and esteem as they ever felt for Washington, and with an affection which the cold demeanor and austere temper of Washington could never inspire. The death of such a man, even at a moment so exciting as the present, when all thoughts are absorbed by a nearer and present conflict, would be felt as a misfortune by all who still retain any recollection of the interest with which they watched the Virginian campaigns, and by thousands who have almost forgotten the names of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. By the South it would be recognized as a national calamity—as the loss of a man not only inexpressibly dear to an unfortunate people by his intimate association with their fallen hopes and their proudest recollections, but still able to render services such as no other man could perform, and to give counsel whose value is enhanced tenfold by the source from which it comes. We hope, even yet, that a life so honorable and so useful, so pure and noble in itself, so valuable to a country that has much need of men like him, may be spared and prolonged for further enjoyment of domestic peace and comfort, for further service to his country; we cannot bear to think of a career so singularly admirable and so singularly unfortunate, should close so soon and so sadly. By the tens of thousands who will feel as we do when they read the news that now lies before us, may be measured the impressions made upon the world by the life and the deeds of the great chief of the Army of Virginia.

"Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the merits of the generals against whom he had to contend, and especially of the antagonist by whom he was at last overcome, no one pretending to understand in the least either the general principles of military science or the particular conditions of the American War, doubts that General Lee gave higher proofs of military genius and soldiership than any of his opponents. He was outnumbered from first to last; and all his victories were gained against greatly superior forces, and with troops greatly deficient in every necessary of war except courage and discipline. Never, perhaps, was so much achieved against odds so terrible. The Southern soldiers—'that incomparable Southern infantry' to which a late Northern writer renders due tribute of respect—were no doubt as splendid troops as a general could desire; but the different fortune of the East and the West proves that the Virginian army owed something of its excellence to its chief. Always outnumbered, always opposed to a foe abundantly supplied with food, transport, ammunition, clothing, all that was wanting to his own men, he was always able to make courage and skill supply the deficiency of strength and of supplies; and from the day when he assumed the command after the battle of Seven Pines, where General Joseph Johnston was disabled, to the morning of the final surrender at Appomattox Court-House, he was almost invariably victorious in the field. At Gettysburg only he was defeated in a pitched battle; on the offensive at the Chickahominy, at Centreville, and at Chancellorsville, on the defensive at Antietam, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, and Spottsylvania, he was still successful. But no success could avail him any thing from the moment that General Grant brought to bear upon the Virginian army the inexhaustible population of the North, and, employing Sherman to cut them off from the rest of the Confederacy, set himself to work to wear them out by the simple process of exchanging two lives for one. From that moment the fate of Richmond and of the South was sealed. When General Lee commenced the campaign of the Wilderness he had, we believe, about fifty thousand men; his adversary had thrice that number at hand, and a still larger force in reserve. When the army of Virginia marched out of Richmond it still numbered some twenty-six thousand men; after a retreat of six days, in the face of an overwhelming enemy, with a crushing artillery—a retreat impeded by constant fighting, and harassed by countless hordes of cavalry—eight thousand were given up by the capitulation of Appomattox Court-House. Brilliant as were General Lee's earlier triumphs, we believe that he gave higher proofs of genius in his last campaign, and that hardly any of his victories were so honorable to himself and his army as that six-days' retreat.

"There have, however, been other generals of genius as brilliant, of courage and endurance hardly less distinguished. How many men have ever displayed the perfect simplicity of nature, the utter absence of vanity or affectation, which belongs to the truest and purest greatness, in triumph or in defeat, as General Lee has done? When Commander-in-Chief of the Southern armies, he moved from point to point, as duty required, with less parade than a European general of division, wearing no sword, attended by no other staff than the immediate occasion demanded, and chatting with a comrade or a visitor with a simple courtesy which had in it no shade of condescension. Only on one occasion does he seem to have, been accoutred with the slightest regard to military display or personal dignity; and that, characteristically, was the last occasion on which he wore the Confederate uniform—the occasion of his interview with General Grant on April 9, 1865. After the war he retired without a word into privacy and obscurity. Ruined by the seizure and destruction of his property, which McClellan protected, and which his successors gave up to ravage and pillage, the late Commander-in-Chief of the Southern armies accepted the presidency of a Virginia college, and devoted himself as simply and earnestly to its duties as if he had never filled a higher station or performed more exciting functions. Well aware of the jealous temper of the party dominant in the North, and anxious, above all things, to avoid exasperating that temper against his conquered countrymen, he carefully abstained from appearing in any public ceremony or taking any overt part in political questions. His influence has been exerted, quietly but steadily, in one direction, with a single view to restore harmony and good-will between the two sections, and to reconcile the oppressed Southerners to the Union from which he fought so gallantly to free them. He has discountenanced all regretful longings after the lost visions of Southern independence; all demonstrations in honor of the 'conquered banner;' and has encouraged the South to seek the restoration of her material prosperity and the satisfaction of her national feelings in a frank acceptance of the result of the war, and a loyal adhesion to the Federal bond. It was characteristic and worthy of the man that he was among the first to sue for a formal pardon from President Johnson; not for any advantage which he personally could obtain thence, but to set the example of submission to his comrades-in-arms, and to reconcile them to a humiliation without which the conquerors refused them that restitution to civil rights necessary to any effort to retrieve their own or their country's fortunes. Truer greatness, a loftier nature, a spirit more unselfish, a character purer, more chivalrous, the world has rarely, if ever known. Of stainless life and deep religious feeling, yet free from all taint of cant and fanaticism, and as dear and congenial to the Cavalier Stuart as to the Puritan Stonewall Jackson; unambitious, but ready to sacrifice all at the call of duty; devoted to his cause, yet never moved by his feelings beyond the line prescribed by his judgment; never provoked by just resentment to punish wanton cruelty by reprisals which would have given a character of needless savagery to the war—both North and South owe a deep debt of gratitude to him, and the time will come when both will be equally proud of him. And well they may, for his character and his life afford a complete answer to the reproaches commonly cast on money-grubbing, mechanical America. A country which has given birth to men like him, and those who followed him, may look the chivalry of Europe in the face without shame; for the fatherlands of Sidney and of Bayard never produced a nobler soldier, gentleman, and Christian, than General Robert E. Lee."

We may add to these the following just remarks upon the occupation to which General Lee devoted himself at the close of his military career, from

THE OLD DOMINION.

"Surely it should be a cause of thankfulness and encouragement for those who are teachers, that their profession has received this reflection of glory and honor from this choice of his, from this life, and from this death. And it is enduring honor for all the colleges of the South, and for all our schools—an honor in which all may share alike without jealousy—that this pure and bright name is inseparably connected by the will of him that bore it with the cause of education, and is blended now with that of Washington in the name of one of our own institutions of learning. We think that so long as the name of Lee is honored and loved among us, our Southern teachers may rejoice and grow stronger in their work, when they remember that he was one of their number, and that his great heart, that had so bravely borne the fortunes of a great empire, bore also, amid its latest aspirations, the interests, the anxieties, and the hopes of the unpretending but noble profession of teaching.

"To leave this out of the account would be, indeed, to do sad injustice to General Lee's own memory. And that, not only because his position in this profession was of his own choice, and was steadily maintained with unchanging purpose to the end of his life, but also because the acknowledgment of his service here is necessary to the completeness of his fame. In no position of his life did he more signally develop the great qualities of his character than in this; and it may truly be said that some of the greatest can only be fully understood in the light of the serene patience and of the simple and quiet self-consecration of his latest years. It was then that, far from the tumult of arms and from the great passions of public life, with no great ambition to nerve his heart, nor any great events to obscure the public criticism of his conduct, he displayed in calm and steady light the grandest features of his character, and by this crucial test, added certain confirmation to the highest estimate that could have been formed of his character and of his abilities. It was indeed a 'crucial test' for such a man; and that he sustained it as he did is not among the smallest of his claims to the admiration of his countrymen. No tribute to his memory can be just that does not take this last great service into the account; and no history of his life can be fairly written that shall not place in the strongest light his career and influence as President of Washington College."

And we may appropriately close with the following thoughtful words from the pen of

HON. ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.

"In the darkest hour of our trials, in the very midst of our deepest affliction, mourning over the loss of the noble Lee, Heaven sends to us as consolation the best sign of the times vouchsafed in many a day. It addresses the heart, rent as it is in surveying the desolations around us, as the rainbow upon the breast of the receding storm-cloud when its power and fury are over.

"That sign is the unmistakable estimation in which the real merits and worth of this illustrious chieftain of the cause of the Southern States is held by all classes of persons, not only in the South, but in the North.

"Partisans and leaders, aiming at the overthrow of our institutions, may, while temporarily in high places, by fraud and usurpation, keep up the false cry of rebel and traitor; but these irrepressible outburstings of popular sentiment, regarding no restraints on great-occasions which cause Nature to speak, show clearly how this cry and charge are regarded and looked upon by the masses of the people everywhere.

"Everywhere Lee is honored; not only as a hero, but as a patriot. This is but the foreshadowing of the general judgment of the people of the whole United States, and of the world, not only upon Lee, but upon all of his associates who fought, bled, and died in that glorious cause in which he won his immortality. That cause was the sovereign right of local self-government by the people of the several States of this continent. That cause is not dead! Let it never be abandoned; but let its friends rally to its standard in the forum of reason and justice, with the renewed hope and energy from this soul-inspiriting sign that it lies deeply impressed upon the hearts of the great majority of the people in all sections of this country.

"In these popular manifestations of respect and veneration for the man who won all his glory in maintaining this cause, present usurpers should read their doom, and all friends of constitutional liberty should take fresh courage in all political conflicts, never to lower their standard of principles."

THE END

[Illustration: Portion of the VALLEY OF VIRGINIA]

End of Project Gutenberg's A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee, by John Esten Cooke