Robert E. Lee, standing on the fateful and historic field of Appomattox, amid the gathering gloom of that awful hour of defeat and disaster, with his arms about James Longstreet, while his majestic frame shook with uncontrollable grief, was a scene worthy to have been limned by genius on immortal canvas.
The tears of Robert E. Lee falling upon the symbol and insignia of Longstreet’s rank converted it then and there into a badge of honor, grander than the guerdon of a king.
It is known to countless thousands that only a few years before he passed away Jefferson Davis moved out from the midst of a mighty throng, which was acclaiming him with every manifestation of earthly honor, to greet with open arms General Longstreet. Turning aside for a time from the thousands who pressed about him in a very frenzy of love and enthusiasm, he advanced and folded the great soldier to his bosom, thus testifying before God and a multitude of witnesses to his faith in the fidelity to conviction and to duty of the old hero.
Davis! Lee! Johnston! Immortal triumvirate of heroes! Glorious sons of a glorious land! Fortunate indeed is that man who by such as they is avouched unto posterity. When Lee and Davis laid their hands in blessing and benediction upon James Longstreet, he was then and there given passport unto immortality.
The brevity of the time properly allotted me wherein to perform my part in the exercises of this occasion makes impossible any discussion or analysis of the campaigns of General Longstreet, even if such discussion were necessary, which it is not. His fame is securely fixed, and the faithful historian of the future will assign him to his due and fitting place in the annals of his age. The history of that great struggle, in which he was so majestic and forceful a figure, which does not bear tribute to his fidelity, skill, and valor will be manifestly and unjustly incomplete; and if any page thereof be not lighted with the lines of glory reflected by his heroic deeds, it will be because the truth has not been thereon written.
In the galaxy of the glorious and the great, James Longstreet will stand through all the ages enshrined with his great companions in arms in the pantheon of the immortals.
Over such a life as his, bravely, nobly lived on lofty levels, death has no dominion. More than fourscore years were upon him, and his kingly form was somewhat bowed, but the dauntless and indomitable spirit which had never quailed before danger, however imminent or dire, shrank not before the coming of that conqueror to whom the lofty and the lowly alike must yield, but, soothed and sustained by the holy faith of the mother church, he passed to his eternal rest—
“While Christ, his Lord, wide open held the door.”
To those who loved and honored him the thought is comforting that after all the battles and trials and hardships of his arduous and eventful life he has found that rest reserved for the faithful in the realm of eternal reunion.
We can believe that when, clothed with the added dignity and majesty of immortality, he drew near to that eternal bivouac where are pitched the tents of the comrades who preceded him to rest eternal, two, conspicuous for kingly grace, even in that immortal throng, advanced to meet him and clasp him once again to their bosoms, and that as he stood in their arms enfolded there fell upon his ears the voice of the Master saying,—