he government for which
he had struggled was crumbling about him--when his staff, asking, in
despair, 'What can now be done?' he gave that memorable reply, 'It
were strange indeed if human virtue were not at least as strong as
human calamity.' This is the key to his life--the belief that trials
and strength, suffering and consolation, come alike from God.
Obedience to duty was ever his ruling principle. Infallibility is not
claimed for him in the exercise of his judgment in deciding what duty
was. But what he believed duty to command, that he performed without
thought of how he would appear in the performance. In the judgment of
many he may have mistaken his duty when he decided that it did not
require him to draw his sword 'against his home, his kindred, and his
children.' But Lee was no casuist or politician; he was a soldier.
'All that he would do highly that would he do holily.' He taught the
world that the Christian and the gentleman could be united in the
warrior. It was not when in pomp and power--when he commanded
successful legions and led armies to victories--but when in sorrow
and privation he assumed the instruction and guidance of the youth of
Virginia, laying the only true foundation upon which a republic can
rest, the Christian education of its youth--that he reaped the rich
harvest of a people's love. Goodness was the chief attribute of Lee's
greatness. Uniting in himself the rigid piety of the Puritan with the
genial, generous impulses of the cavalier, he won the love of all with
whom he came in contact, from the thoughtless child, with whom it was
ever his delight to sport, to the great captain of the age, with whom
he fought all the hard-won battles of Mexico. Some may believe that
the world has given birth to warriors more renowned, to rulers more
skilled in statecraft, but all must concede that a purer, nobler man
never lived. What successful warrior or ruler, in ancient or modern
times, has descended to his grave amid such universal grief and
lamentation as our Lee? Caesar fell by the hands of his own beloved
Brutus, because, by his tyranny, he would have enslaved Rome.
Frederick the Great, the founder of an empire, became so hated of men,
and learned so to despise them, that he ordered his 'poor carcass,' as
he called it, to be buried with his favorite dogs at Potsdam. Napoleon
reached his giddy height by paths which Lee would have scorned to
tread, only to be hurled from his eminence by all the po