on of armies: he had that royal mettle,
that preternatural decision of character, ever tempered with caution and
wisdom, which leads a great commander, when true occasion arises,
resolutely to give general battle, or a swing out away from his base
upon a precarious but promising campaign. Here you have moral heroism;
ordinary valor is more impulsive. A weaker man, albeit total stranger to
fear, ready to lead his division or his corps into the very mouth of
hell, if commanded, being set himself to direct an army, will be either
rash or else too timid, or fidget from one extreme to the other, losing
all.

It was in this supreme kind of boldness that Robert Lee preeminently
excelled. Cautious always, he still took risks and responsibilities
which common generals would not have dared to take, and when he had
assumed these, his mighty will forbade him to sink under the load. The
braying of bitter critics, the obloquy of men who should have supported
him, the shots from behind, dismayed him no more than did Burnside's
cannon at Fredericksburg. On he pressed, stout as a Titan, relentless as
fate. What time bravest hearts failed at victory's delay, this
Dreadnaught rose to his best, and furnished courage for the whole
Confederacy.

In a sense, of course, the cause for which Lee fought was "lost"; yet a
very great part of what he and his _confreres_ sought, the war actually
secured and assured. His cause was not "lost" as Hannibal's was, whose
country, with its institutions, spite of his genius and devotion,
utterly perished from the earth. Yet Hannibal is remembered more widely
than Scipio. Were Lee in the same case with Hannibal, men would magnify
his name as long as history is read. "Of illustrious men," says
Thucydides, "the whole earth is the sepulcher. They are immortalized not
alone by columns and inscriptions in their own lands; memorials to them
rise in foreign countries as well--not of stone, it may be, but
unwritten, in the thoughts of posterity."

Lee's case resembles Cromwell's much more than Hannibal's. The _regime_
against which Cromwell warred returned in spite of him; but it returned
modified, involving all the reforms for which the chieftain had bled. So
the best of what Lee drew sword for is here in our actual America, and,
please God, shall remain here forever.

Decisions of the United States Supreme Court since Secession gave a
sweep and a certainty to the rights of states and limit the central
power in