In the first place, it is essentially military ... it rings true upon the elemental basis of military life—unquestioning and unlimited obedience.... There never could have been a second “Marse Robert,” and but for the unparalleled elevation and majesty of his character and bearing, there would never have been the first. He was of all men most attractive to us, yet by no means most approachable. We loved him much, but we revered him more. We never criticised, never doubted him; never attributed to him either moral error or mental weakness; no, not even in our secret hearts or most audacious thoughts. I really believe it would have strained and blurred our strongest and clearest conceptions of the distinction between right and wrong to have entertained, even for a moment, the thought that he had ever acted from any other than the purest and loftiest motive.... The proviso with which a ragged rebel accepted the doctrine of evolution, that “the rest of us may have descended or ascended from monkeys, but it took a God to make ‘Marse Robert,’” had more than mere humor in it.... We never compared him with other men, either friend or foe. He was in a superlative and absolute class by himself. Beyond a vague suggestion, after the death of Jackson, as to what might have been if he had lived, I cannot recall even an approach to a comparative estimate of Lee.
VALENTINE’S RECUMBENT LEE STATUE
At Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia
Lee’s devotion to his soldiers and theirs to him are referred to by one of Pickett’s captains[7]:
Many of those who had been wounded in the battle of the first day went into the great charge on the third day with bandages on their heads or arms, at sight of which the imperturbable Lee shed tears.... Here was a devotion of which the Romans of old had never dreamed; here was a holocaust of sacrificial victims such as Greece had never known! The men who at Marathon and Leuctra bled were not greater heroes than those who fell at Gettysburg.
In a small volume of War Sketches, issued shortly after the war, I found the following anecdote contributed to a Washington paper by Miss Woolsey, a nurse sent to Gettysburg with the Sanitary Commission:
One of the Gettysburg farmers came creeping into our camp three weeks after the battle. He lived five miles only from the town and had “never seen a Rebel.” He heard we had some of them, and came down to see them. “Boys, here’s a man who never saw a Rebel in his life, and wants to look at you.” There he stood, with his mouth wide open, and there they lay in rows, laughing at him. “And why haven’t you seen a Rebel?” Mrs. ⸺ asked. “Why didn’t you take your gun and help to drive them out of your town?” “A feller might er got hit,” which reply was quite too much for the Rebels; they roared with laughter up and down the tents.
After the surrender at Appomattox General Lee joined his family at Richmond for a short period of rest before taking up the “burdens of life again.” “There was,” writes General Long,[8] “a continuous stream of callers at the residence ... upon every hand manifestations of respect were shown him.” General Long gives some touching incidents: