Therefore, when the Father of his Country died, Robert E. Lee’s father was chosen by Congress to deliver the great oration in his memory. It was in this brilliant address that Colonel Henry Lee used the now familiar words describing Washington as “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
Like George Washington, Robert Lee was born in Virginia, near the Potomac River, in a huge brick house which looked like a mansion, a castle, and a fort, all in one. When Robert was four, his father moved to Alexandria, near the new city of Washington, to send the boy, with his brothers and sisters, to school.
The next year the War of 1812, often called the Second War for Independence, was declared. The father’s rank was raised at once from Colonel to General Henry Lee. But General Lee was badly hurt while defending a friend from a mob in Baltimore. It was very hard for a brave man like “Light-Horse Harry” to be sent away for his health instead of leading in another fight for his country’s liberties. The general did not become better and, after five years of absence and longing, he started home to die. But the end came while he was on his way, and the Lee children were told, one sad day, that they would never see the dear father’s face again.
Robert was now eleven, the same age as George Washington when he lost his father. Mrs. Lee was not left so poor as Washington’s mother, but she was an invalid.
The oldest Lee son was in Harvard College, and the next was a midshipman in the Naval Academy at Annapolis. So Robert was left at home to take care of his mother. He nursed her
“With a hand as gentle as woman’s,”
yet in his strong, manly arms he carried her out to the family coach, when she was well enough to go for a drive. No mother ever had more reason to be proud of her tall, handsome son than the widow of Henry Lee. Feeling that his mother could not afford to send him to college, young Robert studied hard to enter West Point Military Academy. Because the country was still new and settlers had to defend their homes and lives from Indians, and also because the nations were always at war, such boys as George Washington and Robert Lee said to themselves, “When I’m a man I’ll be a soldier.”
When Robert was eighteen he became a West Point cadet. After he left home his brave little mother exclaimed, “How can I do without Robert? He is both son and daughter to me!”
Cadet Lee’s life was without doubt the bravest any young man ever led at West Point. Young Jefferson Davis, who was there at the same time, fell off a cliff and nearly lost his life while breaking the rules of the Academy. Young Ulysses Grant wrote home ten years later that it was impossible to get through at West Point without demerits. But Robert E. Lee went through the whole four years without a single “black mark”! More than this, he did