mparison. The
great Von Moltke, who now rides upon the whirlwind and commands the
storm of Prussian invasion, has recently declared that General Lee,
in all respects, was fully the equal of Wellington, and you may the
better appreciate this admission when you remember that Wellington was
the benefactor of Prussia, and probably Von Moltke's special idol. But
let us examine the arguments ourselves. France was already prostrate
when Wellington met Napoleon. That great emperor had seemed to make
war upon the very elements themselves, to have contended with Nature,
and to have almost defeated Providence itself. The enemies of the
North, more savage than Goth or Vandal, mounting the swift gales of a
Russian winter, had carried death, desolation, and ruin, to the very
gates of Paris. Wellington fought at Waterloo a bleeding and broken
nation--a nation electrified, it is true, to almost superhuman energy
by the genius of Napoleon, but a nation prostrate and bleeding
nevertheless. Compare this, my friends, the condition of France and
the condition of the United States, in the freshness of her strength,
in the luxuriance of her resources, in the lustihood of her gigantic
youth. Tell me whether to place the chaplet of military superiority
with him, or with Marlborough, or Wellington? Even the greatest
of captains, in his Italian campaigns, flashing fame in lightning
splendor over the world, even Bonaparte met and crushed in battle but
three or four (I think) Austrian armies; while our Lee, with one army
badly equipped, in time incredibly short, met and hurled back in
broken and shattered fragments five of the greatest prepared and most
magnificently appointed invasions. Yea, more! He discrowned, in rapid
succession, one after another of the United States' most, accomplished
and admirable commanders.

"Lee was never really defeated. Lee could not be defeated!
Overpowered, foiled in his efforts, he might be; but never defeated
until the props which supported him gave way. Never, until the
platform sank beneath him, did any enemy ever dare pursue. On that
melancholy occasion, the downfall of the Confederacy, no Leipsic, no
Waterloo, no Sedan, can ever be recorded.

"General Lee is known to the world as a military man; but it is easy
to divine from his history how mindful of all just authority, how
observant of all constitutional restriction, would have been his
career as a civilian. When, near the conclusion of the war, darkness
w