Mr. President: The resolutions just read were passed by the House of Representatives on the 6th day of February last in respect to the memory of William H.F. Lee, deceased, late a member of that body from the Eighth Congressional district of Virginia.
Before asking the Senate to adopt the resolutions it is incumbent upon me, as one of the Senators from Virginia, as it is in harmony with my own personal feelings, to submit some remarks in explanation of their purpose and object; a sad and mournful duty to be performed on my part.
Gen. Lee was my immediate successor in the House of Representatives, and served with ability and efficiency in both the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Congresses. He was reëlected to the present Congress, but his career was arrested by that higher and supreme Power to which we must all yield, and on the 15th of October, 1891, he departed this life at his home in the county of Fairfax, and in the midst of his family and friends.
I do not consider it necessary in this presence or on this occasion to go into much detail touching the life and character of the deceased.
The full and eloquent tributes paid to his memory in the House of Representatives show the high appreciation in which he was held by his associates in that body, and express in far more fitting terms than I could employ their estimate of his character, services, and virtues.
Gen. Lee came from a distinguished lineage. Two of the family signed our Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, and another was Attorney-General under Gen. Washington.
On the paternal side he could refer to his distinguished grandfather, Gen. Henry Lee, of the Revolutionary army, who was known as Light-Horse Harry, the commandant of Lee's Legion, so conspicuous in the annals of that period. His maternal grandfather was the late G.W. Parke Custis, of Arlington, the stepson of Gen. Washington, and familiarly called in his day the child of Mount Vernon.
His father, Gen. R.E. Lee, the chief military figure on his side in the late civil war, was too well known for comment at my hands. It is the boast of some of the old baronial families of England that their ancestors rode with William the Conqueror at Hastings. To a certain extent the pride of ancestry is an ennobling sentiment, and Virginians must be pardoned when tempted to refer to the illustrious names which their State in the past has furnished to the nation. The name of Lee has been a household word in Virginia for three generations of men. In the death of Gen. William H.F. Lee the State has lost one of her truest and worthiest sons and the Federal Government a faithful and patriotic Representative.
Although acquainted personally with Gen. Lee for many years, it was only within a year or two before his death that I had the opportunity to appreciate fully the high personal qualities of the man and to understand the real nobility of his nature. The more I saw of him the higher became my respect and admiration. He grew upon me with closer contact and more intimate association.
I was greatly impressed with his invariable courtesy of manner and great amiability and kindness of heart, to which was added a knightly bearing and cordiality of greeting which, combined, made Gen. Lee with all classes of society an imposing and attractive figure.