fault. Mainly it was the
military counterpart of the rope-of-sand infirmity inherent in a
Confederacy which in every possible way deified the individual State and
snubbed the central power. Without jeopardizing the Confederacy, Lee
could not at Gettysburg deal with Longstreet as Grant did with Warren at
Five Forks, or as Sherman did with Palmer in North Carolina. It seems
that Lee's orders to his main subordinates were habitually of the nature
of requests. Yet what obedience was not accorded him in spite of this!

Most striking among the characteristics of General Lee which made him so
successful was his exalted and unmatched excellence as a man, his
unselfishness, sweetness, gentleness, patience, love of justice, and
general elevation of soul. Lee much loved to quote Sir William
Hamilton's words: "On earth nothing great but man: in man nothing great
but mind." He always added, however: "In mind nothing great save
devotion to truth and duty." Though a soldier, and at last very eminent
as a soldier, he retained from the beginning to the end of his career
the entire temper and character of an ideal civilian. He did not sink
the man in the military man. He had all a soldier's virtues, the
"chevalier without fear and without reproach," but he was glorified by a
whole galaxy of excellences which soldiers too often lack. He was pure
of speech and of habit, never intemperate, never obscene, never profane,
never irreverent. In domestic life he was an absolute model. Lofty
command did not make him vain.

The Southern army had one prominent officer with a high ecclesiastical
title, the Rt. Rev. Lieutenant-General Leonidas Polk, D.D., LL.D.,
Bishop of Louisiana, commanding a corps in Bragg's army. He was killed
in battle at Pine Mountain, Ga., during Sherman's advance on Atlanta.
Stonewall Jackson was so famed for his rather obtrusive though awfully
real piety that men named him the Havelock of the army. But none who
knew the three will call Lee less a Christian than either of the others.
He prayed daily for his enemies in arms, and no word of hate toward the
North ever escaped his tongue or his pen. He had the faith and devotion
of a true crusader. His letters breathe the spirit of a better earth
than this. Collected into a volume, they would make an invaluable book
of devotional literature. No wonder officers and men passionately loved
such a commander, glad, at his bidding, to crowd where the fight was
thickest and death the s