It was in this supreme kind of boldness that Robert Lee pre-eminently excelled. Cautious always, he still took risks and responsibilities which common generals would not have dared to take; and when he had assumed these, his mighty will forbade him to sink under the load. The braying of bitter critics, the obloquy of men who should have supported him, the shots from behind, dismayed him no more than did Burnside's cannon at Fredericksburg. On he pressed, stout as a Titan, relentless as fate. What time bravest hearts failed at victory's delay, this Dreadnaught rose to his best, and furnished courage for the whole Confederacy.
Lee's campaigns and battles "exhibit the triumph of profound intelligence, of calculation, and of well-employed force over numbers and disunited counsels."
Lee always manoeuvred; he never merely "pitched in." As he right-flanked McClellan, so both at Manassas and at Chantilly he right-flanked Pope,--all three times using for the work Jackson, the tireless and the terrible. At Second Bull Run, to show that he was no slave to one form of strategy, he muffled up Pope's left instead of his right, here using Longstreet. His tactics were as masterful as his strategy. At Second Bull Run, fearfully hammered by the noble Fifth Corps, that had fought like so many tigers at Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill, even Stonewall Jackson cried to Lee for aid. Aid came, but not in men. Longstreet's cannon, cunningly planted to enfilade the Fifth Corps' front, shattered the Federals' attacking column and placed Stonewall at his ease.
Considering everything, his paucity of men and means, the necessity always upon him of reckoning with political as well as with military situations, and his success in holding even Grant at bay so long, Lee's masterful campaigns of 1862, 1863, 1864, and 1865 not only constitute him the foremost military virtuoso of his own land, but write his name high on the scroll of the greatest captains of history, beside those of Gustavus Adolphus, William of Orange, Tilly, Frederic the Great, Prince Eugene, Napoleon, Wellington, and Von Moltke.
In a sense, of course, the cause for which Lee fought was "lost;" yet a very great part of what he and his confrères sought, the war actually secured and assured. His cause was not "lost" as Hannibal's was, whose country, with its institutions, spite of his genius and devotion, utterly perished from the earth. Yet Hannibal is remembered more widely than Scipio. Were Lee in the same case with Hannibal, men would magnify his name as long as history is read. "Of illustrious men," says Thucydides, "the whole earth is the sepulchre. They are immortalized not alone by columns and inscriptions in their own lands; memorials to them rise in foreign countries as well,--not of stone, it may be, but unwritten, in the thoughts of posterity."
Lee's case resembles Cromwell's much more than Hannibal's. The régime against which Cromwell warred returned in spite of him; but it returned modified, involving all the reforms for which the chieftain had bled. So the best of what Lee drew sword for is here in our actual America, and, please God, shall remain here forever.
Decisions of the United States Supreme Court since Secession give a sweep and a certainty to the rights of States and limit the central power in this Republic as had never been done before. The wild doctrines of Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens on these points are not our law. If the Union is perpetual, equally so is each State. The Republic is "an indestructible Union of indestructible States." If this part of our law had in 1861 received its present definition and emphasis, and if the Southern States had then been sure, come what might, of the freedom they actually now enjoy each to govern itself in its own way, even South Carolina might never have voted secession. And inasmuch as the war, better than aught else could have done, forced this phase of the Constitution out into clear expression, General Lee did not fight in vain. The essential good he wished has come, while the Republic, with its priceless benedictions to us all, remains intact. All Americans thus have part in Robert Lee, not only as a peerless man and soldier, but as the sturdy miner, sledge-hammering the rock of our liberties till it gave forth its gold. None are prouder of his record than those who fought against him, who, while recognizing the purity of his motive, thought him in error in going from under the Stars and Stripes. It is likely that more American hearts day by day think lovingly of Lee than of any other Civil War celebrity, save Lincoln alone. And his praise will increase.
It was thoroughly characteristic of Lee that he would not after the war leave the country, as a few eminent Confederates did, and also that he refused all mere titular positions with high salaries, several of which were urged on him out of consideration for his character and fame. He was, however, persuaded to accept in 1865 the presidency of Washington College, at Lexington, Va., an institution founded on gifts made by Washington, and at present known as Washington and Lee University. In this position the great man spent his remaining years, joining refinement and dignity to usefulness, and revered by all who came within the charmed circle of his influence. Since 1863 he had suffered more or less with rheumatism of the heart, and from the middle of 1869 was never quite strong. Spite of this, with the exception of brief holidays, he performed all his duties till Sept. 28, 1870, when, at his family tea-table as he stood to say grace;--it was his wont to say grace before meat and to stand in doing so,--he was stricken, had to sit, then be helped to his bed. He never rose, though languishing a number of days. He died at nine in the morning, Oct. 12, 1870. Ave, pia anima!
AUTHORITIES.
E. Lee Child, "Life and Campaigns of Robert Edward Lee." London, 1875.