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of Pompeii, could not be more silent than the refusal of these heroes to shout to Robert E. Lee's successor, “Vive le roi!”
The Angel of Peace would have appeared in the hour General Lee bid farewell to the Army of Northern Virginia and mounted Traveler to ride away, for the rapid termination of the war would have simplified the duties of “the younger and abler man.”
Traveler, the most distinguished of the general's war horses, was born near the Blue Sulphur Springs, in West Virginia, and was purchased by General Lee from Major Thomas L. Broun, who bought him from Captain James W. Johnston, the son of the gentleman who reared him. General Lee saw him first in West Virginia and afterward in South Carolina, and was greatly pleased with his appearance.
As soon as Major Broun ascertained that fact the horse was offered the general as a gift, but he declined, and Major Broun then sold him. He was four years old in the spring of 1861, and therefore only eight when the war closed.
He was “greatly admired for his rapid, springy walk, high spirit, bold carriage, and muscular strength.”
When a colt he took the first premium at the Greenbrier Fair, under the name of Jeff Davis.1 The general changed his name to Traveler.
He often rode him in Lexington after the war, and at his funeral Traveler followed the hearse.
He was appraised by a board in August, 1864, at $4,600 in Confederate currency.
Though Lee was ready to cover his face with his mantle and die like the Athenian, it would have broken his heart to have separated himself from troops who, with empty haversacks, shoeless feet, tattered uniforms, but full cartridge boxes and bright bayonets, had with such undaunted courage nobly supported him at all times.
And where would the Southern President have found an officer who was superior in vigorous strategy, fertility of resource, power of self-command, influence over others, patient endurance, or one more composed in victory or dignified in defeat?
An English officer described him in the Pennsylvania campaign as having courtly manners and being full of
1 General Grant also had a horse called Jeff Davis.
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