table darkness coming on, they shared in the
general awe and terror. It was supposed by many that the last day--the
day of judgment--had come. Some one, in the consternation of the hour,
moved an adjournment. Then there arose an old Puritan legislator,
Davenport, of Stamford, and said that, if the last day had come, he
desired to be found at his place doing his duty, and, therefore, moved
that candles be brought in, so that the House could proceed with
its duty. There was quietness in that man's mind, the quietness of
heavenly wisdom and inflexible willingness to obey present duty. Duty,
then, is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all
things, like the old Puritan. You cannot do more, you should never
wish to do less. Never let me and your mother wear one gray hair for
any lack of duty on your part."

The maxims of this letter indicate the noble and conscientious
character of the man who wrote it. "Frankness is the child of honesty
and courage." "Say just what you mean to do on every occasion." "Never
do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one." "Duty is the sublimest
word in our language ... do your duty in all things ... you cannot do
more." That he lived up to these great maxims, amid all the troubled
scenes and hot passions of a stormy epoch, is Lee's greatest glory.
His fame as a soldier, great as it is, yields to the true glory of
having placed duty before his eyes always as the supreme object of
life. He resigned his commission from a sense of duty to his native
State; made this same duty his sole aim in every portion of his
subsequent career; and, when all had failed, and the cause he had
fought for was overthrown, it was the consciousness of having
performed conscientiously, and to his utmost, his whole duty, which
took the sting from defeat, and gave him that noble calmness which the
whole world saw and admired. "Human virtue should be equal to human
calamity," were his august words when all was lost, and men's minds
were sinking under the accumulated agony of defeat and despair.
Those words could only have been uttered by a man who made duty the
paramount object of living--the performance of it, the true glory and
crown of virtuous manhood. It may be objected by some critics that
he mistook his duty in espousing the Southern cause. Doubtless many
persons will urge that objection, and declare that the words here
written are senseless panegyric. But that will not affect the truth or
detract