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As we get further and further removed from the blinding passions that clouded our judgment, and as the soothing hand of time quiets our wrath, engendered by a deadly conflict, there is one name that rises higher and brighter, not only at home but throughout Europe, as that of the greatest military leader of time, and that is the name of Robert E. Lee. Gathering up an army from a country that had no other resource than the brave hearts of its doomed people, poorly armed and worse equipped, to march without pay, sleep without shelter and fight without food, through the long years of that terrible conflict, he rode on from victory to victory over superior numbers, marking the boundary line of his country with death and disaster to the enemy, until his devoted army, wasted through sickness and fatigue, fell from sheer exhaustion.A great struggle like that which ended at our Bentonville must some day be regarded in its true light by all men, no matter what their predilections for the contending parties, and not from the standpoint of passion and prejudice. A proper sense of self respect and a right estimate of the unanimous action of a whole people, must banish the opprobrious terms which it seems good to many to employ when speaking of the war between the States, and of those who took part in it. Men who fought to maintain the Union, without yielding in any degree their own convictions, or a natural pride in their success in upholding them, will in time freely accord to their opponents equal honesty and earnestness, and will recognize the absurdity of the vulgar cant about ‘rebels’ and ‘treason.’ Each party to the strife should willingly allow to the other what it claims for itself. No sentiment is more worthy of condemnation than that feeling of faction, that petty spirit of party, that wilfully excludes from view everything that is not within the direct range of its own narrow vision. In spite of the boasted liberalism of this land of popular education, intolerance is a marked defect in our national character; one that it is our duty to correct, to the end that prejudice may fade away and give place to that large-mindedness that going hand in hand with large-heartedness makes up the perfect man. Resting in the rectitude of our past, honoring our dead, and fulfilling every present obligation, we are content to await the coming of that day of justice and reconciliation. And should some uncorighteous brother denounce us as ‘rebels’ and brand as ‘treason’ political belief and acts older than our government itself, we may
