He was called “the great captain of his age”—“the great general of the South”—“a good knight, noble of heart and strong of purpose, and both a soldier and a gentleman.”
These beautiful words were said of him in a speech soon after his death:
“General Lee’s fame is not bounded by the limits of the South, nor by the continent. I rejoice that the South gave him birth. I rejoice that the South will hold his ashes. But his fame belongs to the human race. Washington, too, was born in the South and sleeps in the South, but his fame belongs to mankind. We place the name of Lee by that of Washington. They both belong to the world.
“There is one thing more I wish to say before I take my seat. General Lee’s fame ought to rest on its true foundation. He did not draw his sword in the cause of slavery—he did not seek to overthrow the Government of the United States. He drew it in the defense of constitutional liberty. That cause is not dead, but will live forever.”
General W. Preston spoke of him thus:
“I knew him first when he was a captain. * * At that time, General Scott had decided upon General Lee as a man who would make his mark if he were ever called upon to do great work. He never drank, he never swore an oath, but there was never a dispute among gentlemen in which his voice was not more potent than any other; his rare calmness and dignity were above all. When the war came on, he followed his native State, Virginia. * * Scott maintained that Lee was the greatest soldier in the army. * *
“I remember when Scott made use of these words: ‘I tell you one thing, if I were on my death-bed, and knew that a battle was to be fought for my country, and the President were to say to me, ‘Scott, who shall command?’ I tell you that, with my dying breath, I would say Robert Lee. Nobody but Robert Lee! Robert Lee, and nobody but Lee!”
These extracts would not be complete without this one, bearing upon his life as a teacher:
“And it is an honor for all the colleges of the South, and for all our schools, that this pure and bright name is joined by the will of him that bore it with the cause of education. We believe that, so long as the name of Lee is cherished by Southern teachers, they will grow stronger in their work. They will be encouraged to greater efforts when they remember that Lee was one of their number, and that his great heart, that had so bravely borne the fortunes of an empire, bore also, amid its latest aspirations, the interests and hopes of the teacher.”
A great public honor was paid to our hero when the bronze statue by Mercié (Mersea) was unveiled in Richmond.