One morning an Irishman who had gone through the war in the Federal ranks appeared at the door with a basket well filled with provisions, and insisted upon seeing General Lee.... The general came from an adjoining room and was greeted with profuse terms of admiration. “Sure, sir, you’re a great soldier, and it’s I that know it. I’ve been fighting against you all these years, an’ many a hard knock we’ve had. But, general, I honor you for it; and now they tell me you’re poor an’ in want, an’ I’ve brought this basket an’ beg you to take it from a soldier.”

Two Confederate soldiers, in tattered garments and with bodies emaciated by prison confinement, called upon General Lee and told him they were delegated by sixty other fellows around the corner “too ragged to come themselves.” They tendered their beloved general a home in the mountains, promising him a comfortable house and a good farm.

“Great and star-like as was the warrior,” says Dr. Shepherd, “the man is greater.”[9]

It is said that General Lee was offered estates in England and in Ireland; also the post of commercial agent of the South at New York, and many other tenders of a home or livelihood. All of these he declined and accepted the presidency of Washington College, at Lexington.

Founded in 1789 under the name of “Augusta Academy,” the name was changed in 1782 to “Liberty Hall Academy,” from which was sent a company of students into the Revolution. Washington, who had accepted from the new State of Virginia 100 shares of the James River Company only on condition that he might give them to some school, chose this academy for beneficiary, and the name was changed in 1798 to “Washington College.” The buildings, library and apparatus had been sacked during the Federal occupancy, and the country was able to furnish only forty students at the opening of the term of ’65-’66. Nothing daunted, the new president gathered around him an able faculty, raised the standard of scholarship, renovated the old buildings and secured funds for new ones. He introduced the “honor system” and knew every student’s name, as well as his class and deportment record. Asked, at a faculty meeting, for a plan to induce students to attend the chapel, he advised: “The best way that I know of is to set them the example,” which he invariably did. This gives the keynote to his remarkable influence.

The effect of his principles was all-powerful. It is doubtful if any other college in the world could show such a high average of morals and scholarship which obtained at Washington College during Lee’s presidency of five years.

I cannot resist relating an anecdote given by another of our soldier-authors, John Esten Cooke:[10]

Coming upon the chieftain conversing cordially with an humbly clad man, he supposed that it was, of course, an old Confederate, the more so as the general, looking after the retreating figure, said kindly:

“That is one of our old soldiers who is in necessitous circumstances.” Questioned, however, he admitted that the soldier had fought on “the other side, but we must not think of that,” was his verdict.

The death of General Lee, on October 12, 1870, brought forth more encomiums from the press, personages of exalted rank, and from the people generally than has ever been accorded any man who died in private life since Washington. “I do not exaggerate,” says Dr. Jones, “when I say that many volumes would not contain the eulogies that were pronounced, for I undertook to make a partial collection of them and have a trunk full now.” In the cemetery near him at Lexington bivouacs his great lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson. They were born in the same month, the one on the nineteenth and the other on the thirty-first of January. It is fitting that they should lie near together. “I know not,” further and most fittingly continues Mr. Jones, who was chaplain of the University, “how more appropriately the tomb of Lee could be placed. The blue mountains of his loved Virginia sentinel his grave. Young men from every section throng the classic shades of Washington and Lee University, and delight to keep ward and watch at his tomb.”