The way duty pointed.
No one knew better than he the vast power and resources of the
North; none more fully comprehended the magnitude of the impending contest and the sacrifice which he would make in casting his fortunes with the
South; for
Arlington, with all its sweet and cherished memories, lay smiling in the beauty of the opening spring, and he had but to reach forth his hand and grasp the baton of supreme command in the grand army which
Lincoln was marshalling for the conflict; but he heeded not the voice of friendship nor the promptings of ambition; he heard not the pleadings of self-interest; he hesitated only long enough to decide which way duty pointed, and deciding that his first allegiance was due to his native State, promptly drew his sword in her defence.
And
Never hand waived sword from stain as free,
Nor purer sword led braver band,
Nor braver bled for a brighter land,
Nor brighter land had cause as grand,
Nor cause a chief like Lee.
And when after the most tremendous conflict the world has ever witnessed that brave band laid down its banners, heavy laden with the weight of glory and worn with fighting and weary with victory—yielded at last to hunger and want—and when that bright land was darkened with the black pall of despair and that grand cause crushed to earth by the weight of a host in arms well-nigh a million strong, he returned that sword to its scabbard as pure and stainless as when it first flashed in the face of the foe.
This is neither the time nor the occasion, were I competent for the task, by close analysis of his character and deeds, to approximate the place of
Lee in the Pantheon of the great.
As a soldier he must yield precedence to
Alexander, and
Caesar, and
Frederick, and
Napoleon; but he was nevertheless a great captain, and as an accomplished English critic has written, ‘In strategy mighty, in battle terrible, in adversity, as in prosperity, a hero, indeed.’
The bloody battles before
Richmond, when, like a lion springing from his lair, he took the offensive, and hurling his army like a thunder-bolt on the legion of
McClellan, he defeated him at Cold Harbor
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and drove him to refuge at
Harrison's Landing, proves the truth of this.
Sharpsburg proves it, and that brilliant campaign in which he outgeneralled
Pope and, shattering his forces at
second Manassas, compelled him to seek safety behind the fortifications of
Washington, proves it.
Fredericksburg and
Burnside bear witness to its truth.
Chancellorsville and
Hooker corroborate it, and
Gettysburg, immortal now by the charge of
Pickett's brave
Virginians, twin brothers in valor and renown with the heroes who died for their country at
Thermopylae, tells the same story.
The countless numbers of brave men who fell under the flag of
Grant from the
Wilderness to
Petersburg proclaim it from their soldier graves, and
Appomattox's trumpet tongue tells it to all the ages, for there, in that
Gethsemane of sorrow, he conquered fate itself, and plucking glory from defeat taught the world by his own example the truth of that august maxim which had been the guide of his life, that ‘human virtue could equal human calamity.’
