"If in all recorded warfare there is a deed of arms, the name and memory of which the descendants of those who participated therein should not wish to see obliterated from any record, be it historian's page or battle flag, it was the advance of Pickett's Virginian Division across the wide valley of death in front of Cemetery Ridge. I know in all recorded warfare of no finer, no more sustained and deadly feat of arms."[[199]]
CHARACTER OF LEE AND HIS SOLDIERS
What of the Cadets at the Battle of New Market? Were those young heroes the sons of "slave breeders" and nurtured in homes darkened by such a debasing practice? What of the spirit and bearing of the great body of Virginia soldiers who followed Lee, and what place shall they and their commander take in the estimation of the world's best thought and conscience? President Roosevelt says:
"The world has never seen better soldiers than those who followed Lee, and their leader will undoubtedly rank as, without any exception, the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth."[[200]]
What of Lee's character as a man, aside from his genius as a soldier? Lord Wolseley says:
"I have met many of the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man who was cast in a grander mould, and made of different and of finer metal than all other men. He is stamped upon my memory as a being apart and superior to all others in every way; a man with whom none I ever knew, and very few of whom I have read, are worthy to be classed. I have met but two men who realized my ideas of what a true hero should be; my friend, Charles Gordon was one, General Lee was the other."[[201]]
James Ford Rhodes says:
"A careful survey of his (Lee's) 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 stately Arlington house, his eyes glancing across the river at the flag of his country waving over 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."[[202]]
If such were the character of the Virginians of the Civil War period, is it reasonable to speak of their "degeneracy" under the debasing influence of "slave breeding" and "the slave trade?" "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?"