A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee Part 33

"As I said before, Mr. Chairman, I only rose to move the adoption of the resolutions; and if I have said more than I ought to have said, it is because I knew the ill.u.s.trious dead, because I loved him, and because I mourn his loss."

ADDRESS OF JUDGE HILLIARD.

"It is proper that the people should pay a public tribute to the memory of a great man when he dies. Not a ruler, not one who merely holds a great public position, but a great man, one who has served his day and generation. It cannot benefit the dead, but it is eminently profitable to the living. The consciousness than when we cease to live our memory will be cherished, is a n.o.ble incentive to live well. This great popular demonstration is due to General Lee's life and character. It is not ordered by the Government-the Government ignored him; but is rendered as a spontaneous tribute to the memory of an ill.u.s.trious man-good, true, and great. He held no place in the Government, and since the war has had no military rank; but he was a true man. After all, that is the n.o.blest tribute you can pay to any man, to say of him he was a true man.

"General Lee's character was eminently American. In Europe they have their ideas, their standards of merit, their rewards for great exploits. They cover one with decorations; they give him a great place in the government; they make him a marshal. Wellington began his career with humble rank. He was young Wellesley; he rose to be the Duke of Wellington. In our country we have no such rewards for great deeds. One must enjoy the patronage of the Government, or he must take the fortunes of private life.

"General Lee was educated at the great Military Academy, West Point. He entered the army; was promoted from time to time for brilliant services; in Mexico fought gallantly under the flag of the United States; and was still advancing in his military career in 1861, when Virginia became involved in the great contest that then grew up between the States. Virginia was his mother; she called him to her side to defend her, and, resigning his commission in the Army of the United States, not for a moment looking for advancement there, not counting the cost, not offering his sword to the service of power, nor yet laying it down at the feet of the Government-he unsheathed it and took his stand in defence of the great principles a.s.serted by Virginia in the Revolution, when she contended with Great Britain the right of every people to choose their own form of government. Lost or won, to him the cause was always the same-it was the cause of const.i.tutional liberty. He stood by it to the last. What must have been the convictions of a man like General Lee, when, mounted on the same horse that had borne him in battle, upon which he was seated when the lines of battle formed by his own heroic men wavered, and he seized the standard to lead the charge; but his soldiers rushed to him, and laying their hands on his bridle, said, 'General, we cannot fire a gun unless you retire?' What must have been his emotions as he rode, through his own lines at Appomattox, to the commander of the opposing army, and tendered his sword? Search the annals of history, ancient and modern; consult the lives of heroes; study the examples of greatness recorded in Greece leading the way on the triumphs of popular liberty, or in Rome in the best days of her imperial rule; take statesmen, generals, or men of patient thought who out.w.a.tched the stars in exploring knowledge, and I declare to you that I do not find anywhere a sublimer sentiment than General Lee uttered when he said, 'Human virtue ought to be equal to human calamity.' It will live forever.

"General Lee died at the right time. His sun did not go down in the strife of battle, in the midst of the thunder of cannon, dimmed by the lurid smoke of war. He survived all this: lived with so much dignity; silent, yet thoughtful; unseduced by the offers of gain or of advancement however tempting; disdaining to enter into contests for small objects, until the broad disk went down behind the Virginia hills, shedding its departing l.u.s.tre not only upon this country but upon the whole world. His memory is as much respected in England as it is here; and at the North as well as at the South true hearts honor it.

"There is one thing I wish to say before I take my seat. General Lee's fame ought to rest on the true base. He did not draw his sword to perpetuate human slavery, whatever may have been his opinions in regard to it; he did not seek to overthrow the Government of the United States. He drew it in defence of const.i.tutional liberty. That cause is not dead, but will live forever. The result of the war established the authority of the United States; the Union will stand-let it stand forever. The flag floats over the whole country from the Atlantic to the Pacific; let it increase in l.u.s.tre, and let the power of the Government grow; still the cause for which General Lee struck is not a lost cause. It is conceded that these States must continue united under a common government. We do not wish to sunder it, nor to disturb it. But the great principle that underlies the Government of the United States-the principle that the people have a right to choose their own form of government, and to have their liberties protected by the provisions of the Const.i.tution-is an indestructible principle. You cannot destroy it. Like Milton's angels, it is immortal; you may wound, but you cannot kill it. It is like the volcanic fires that flame in the depths of the earth; it will yet upheave the ocean and the land, and flame up to heaven.

"Young Emmett said, 'Let no man write my epitaph until my country is free, and takes her place among the nations of the earth.' But you may write General Lee's epitaph now. The principle for which he fought will survive him. His evening was in perfect harmony with his life. He had time to think, to recall the past, to prepare for the future. An offer, originating in Georgia, and I believe in this very city, was made to him to place an immense sum of money at his disposal if he would consent to reside in the city of New York and represent Southern commerce. Millions would have flowed to him. But he declined. He said: 'No; I am grateful, but I have a self-imposed task which I must accomplish. I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in life.' And he did. It was beautiful to see him in that glorious valley where Lexington stands, the lofty mountains throwing their protecting shadows over its quiet home. General Lee's fame is not bounded by the limits of the South, nor by the continent. I rejoice that the South gave him birth; I rejoice that the South will hold his ashes. But his fame belongs to the human race. Was.h.i.+ngton, too, was born in the South and sleeps in the South. But his great fame is not to be appropriated by this country; it is the inheritance of mankind. We place the name of Lee by that of Was.h.i.+ngton. They both belong to the world."

NEW ORLEANS.

A meeting was held in the St. Charles Theatre, as the largest building in the city. The Hon. W.M. Burwell delivered an eloquent address, of which we regret that we have been able to obtain no report. The meeting was then addressed by the

HON. THOMAS J. SEMMES.

"Robert E. Lee is dead. The Potomac, overlooked by the home of the hero, once dividing contending peoples, but now no longer a boundary, conveys to the ocean a nation's tears. South of the Potomac is mourning; profound grief pervades every heart, lamentation is heard from every hearth, for Lee sleeps among the slain whose memory is so dear to us. In the language of Moina:

'They were slain for us, And their blood flowed out in a rain for us, Red, rich, and pure, on the plain for us; And years may go, But our tears shall flow O'er the dead who have died in vain for us.'

"North of the Potomac not only sympathizes with its widowed sister, but, with respectful homage, the brave and generous, cl.u.s.tering around the corpse of the great Virginian, with one accord exclaim:

'This earth that bears thee dead, Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.'

"Sympathetic nations, to whom our lamentations have been transmitted on the wings of lightning, will with pious jealousy envy our grief, because Robert E. Lee was an American. Seven cities claimed the honor of having given birth to the great pagan poet; but all Christian nations, while revering America as the mother of Robert E. Lee, will claim for the nineteenth century the honor of his birth. There was but one Lee, the great Christian captain, and his fame justly belongs to Christendom. The nineteenth century has attacked every thing-it has attacked G.o.d, the soul, reason, morals, society, the distinction between good and evil. Christianity is vindicated by the virtues of Lee. He is the most brilliant and cogent argument in favor of a system ill.u.s.trated by such a man; he is the type of the reign of law in the moral order-that reign of law which the philosophic Duke of Argyll has so recently and so ably discussed as pervading the natural as well as the supernatural world. One of the chief characteristics of the Christian is duty. Throughout a checkered life the conscientious performance of duty seems to have been the mainspring of the actions of General Lee. In his relations of father, son, husband, soldier, citizen, duty s.h.i.+nes conspicuous in all his acts. His agency as he advanced to more elevated stations attracts more attention, and surrounds him with a brighter halo of glory; but he is unchanged; from first to last it is Robert E. Lee.

"The most momentous act of his life was the selection of sides at the commencement of the political troubles which immediately preceded the recent conflict. High in military rank, caressed by General Scott, courted by those possessed of influence and authority, no politician, happy in his domestic relations, and in the enjoyment of competent fortune, consisting in the main of property situated on the borders of Virginia-nevertheless impelled by a sense of duty, as he himself testified before a Congressional committee since the war, General Lee determined to risk all and unite his fortunes with those of his native State, whose ordinances as one of her citizens he considered himself bound to obey.

"Having joined the Confederate army, he complained not that he was a.s.signed to the obscure duty of constructing coast-defences for South Carolina and Georgia, nor that he was subsequently relegated to unambitious commands in Western Virginia. The accidental circ.u.mstance that General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at the battle of Seven Pines in May, 1862, placed Lee in command of the Army of Northern Virginia. As commander of that army he achieved world-wide reputation, without giving occasion during a period of three years to any complaint on the part of officers, men, or citizens, or enemies, that he had been guilty of any act, illegal, oppressive, unjust, or inhuman in its character. This is the highest tribute possible to the wisdom and virtue of General Lee; for, as a general rule, law was degraded; officers, whether justly or unjustly, were constantly the subject of complaint and discord, and jealousy prevailed in camp and in the Senate-chamber. There was a fraction of our people represented by an unavailing minority in Congress, who either felt, or professed to feel, a jealousy whose theory was just, but whose application, at such a time, was unsound. They wished to give as little power as possible because they dreaded a military despotism, and thus desired to send our armies forth with half a s.h.i.+eld and broken swords to protect the government from its enemies, lest, if the bucklers were entire and the swords perfect, they might be tempted, in the heyday of victory, to smite their employers. But this want of confidence never manifested itself toward General Lee, whose conduct satisfied the most suspicious that his ambition was not of glory but of the performance of duty. The army always felt this: the fact that he sacrificed no ma.s.ses of human beings in desperate charges that he might gather laurels from the spot enriched by their gore. A year or more before he was appointed commander-in-chief of all the Confederate forces, a bill pa.s.sed Congress creating that office. It failed to become a law, the President having withheld his approval. Lee made no complaints; his friends solicited no votes to counteract the veto. When a bill for the same purpose was pa.s.sed at a subsequent period, it was whispered about that he could not accept the position. To a committee of Virginians who had called on him to ascertain the truth, his reply was, that he felt bound to accept any post the duties of which his country believed him competent to perform. After the battle of Gettysburg he tendered his resignation to President Davis, because he was apprehensive his failure, the responsibility for which he did not pretend to throw on his troops or officers, would produce distrust of his abilities and destroy his usefulness. I am informed the President, in a beautiful and touching letter, declined to listen to such a proposition. During the whole period of the war he steadily declined all presents, and when, on one occasion, a gentleman sent him several dozen of wine, he turned it over to the hospitals in Richmond, saying the wounded and sick needed it more than he. He was extremely simple and unostentatious in his habits, and shared with his soldiers their privations as well as their dangers. Toward the close of the war, meat was very scarce within the Confederate lines in the neighborhood of the contending armies. An aide of the President, having occasion to visit General Lee en official business in the field, was invited to dinner. The meal spread on the table consisted of corn-bread and a small piece of bacon buried in a large dish of greens. The quick-eyed aide discovered that none of the company, which was composed of the general's personal staff, partook of the meat, though requested to do so in the most urbane manner by the general, who presided; he, therefore, also declined, and noticed that the meat was carried off untouched. After the meal was over, he inquired of one of the officers present what was the reason for this extraordinary conduct. His reply was, 'We had borrowed the meat for the occasion, and promised to return it.'

"Duty alone induced this great soldier to submit to such privation, for the slightest intimation given to friends in Richmond would have filled his tent with all the luxuries that blockade-runners and speculators had introduced for the favored few able to purchase.

"This performance of duty was accompanied by no harsh manner or cynical expressions; for the man whose soul is enn.o.bled by true heroism, possesses a heart as tender as it is firm. His calmness under the most trying circ.u.mstances, and his uniform sweetness of manner, were almost poetical. They manifested 'the most sustained tenderness of soul that ever caressed the chords of a lyre.' In council he was temperate and patient, and his words fell softly and evenly as snow-flakes, like the sentences that fell from the lips of Ulysses.

"On the termination of the war, his conduct until his death has challenged the admiration of friends and foes; he honestly acquiesced in the inevitable result of the struggle; no discontent, sourness, or complaint, has marred his tranquil life at Was.h.i.+ngton College, where death found him at his post of duty, engaged in fitting the young men of his country, by proper discipline and education, for the performance of the varied duties of life. It is somewhat singular that both Lee and his great lieutenant, Jackson, should in their last moments have referred to Hill. It is reported that General Lee said, 'Let my tent be struck; send for Hill;' while the lamented Jackson in his delirium cried out, 'Let A.P. Hill prepare for action; march the infantry rapidly to the front. Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.' Both heroes died with commands for military movements on their lips; both the n.o.blest specimens of the Christian soldier produced by any country or any age; both now rest under the shade of the trees of heaven."

REV. DR. PALMER

Then spoke as follows:

"Ladies and Gentlemen: I should have been better pleased had I been permitted to sit a simple listener to the eloquent tribute paid to the immortal chieftain who now reposes in death, by the speaker who has just taken his seat. The nature of my calling so far separates me from public life that I am scarcely competent for the office of alluding to the elements which naturally gather around his career. When informed that other artists would draw the picture of the warrior and the hero, I yielded a cheerful compliance, in the belief that nothing was left but to describe the Christian and the man. You are entirely familiar with the early life of him over whose grave you this night shed tears; with his grave and sedate boyhood giving promise of the reserved force of mature manhood; with his academic career at West Point, where he received the highest honors of a cla.s.s brilliant with such names as General Joseph E. Johnston; his seizure of the highest honors of a long apprentices.h.i.+p in that inst.i.tution, and his abrupt ascension in the Mexican War from obscurity to fame-all are too firmly stamped in the minds of his admirers to require even an allusion. You are too familiar to need a repet.i.tion from my lips of that great mental and spiritual struggle pa.s.sed, not one night, but many, when, abandoning the service in which he had gathered so much of honor and reputation, he determined to lay his heart upon the altar of his native State, and swear to live or die in her defence.

"It would be a somewhat singular subject of speculation to discover how it is that national character so often remarkably expresses itself in single individuals who are born as representatives of a cla.s.s. It is wonderful, for it has been the remark of ages, how the great are born in cl.u.s.ters; sometimes, indeed, one star s.h.i.+ning with solitary splendor in the firmament above, but generally gathered in grand constellations, filling the sky with glory. What is that combination of influences, partly physical, partly intellectual, but somewhat more moral, which should make a particular country productive of men great over all others on earth and to all ages of time? Ancient Greece, with her indented coast, inviting to maritime adventures, from her earliest period was the mother of heroes in war, of poets in song, of sculptors and artists, and stands up after the lapse of centuries the educator of mankind, living in the grandeur of her works and in the immortal productions of minds which modern civilization with all its cultivation and refinement and science never surpa.s.sed and scarcely equalled. And why in the three hundred years of American history it should be given to the Old Dominion to be the grand mother, not only of States, but of the men by whom States and empires are formed, it might be curious were it possible for us to inquire. Unquestionably, Mr. President, there is in this problem the element of race; for he is blind to all the truths of history, to all the revelations of the past, who does not recognize a select race as we recognize a select individual of a race, to make all history; but pretermitting all speculation of that sort, when Virginia unfolds the scroll of her immortal sons-not because ill.u.s.trious men did not precede him gathering in constellations and cl.u.s.ters, but because the name s.h.i.+nes out through those constellations and cl.u.s.ters in all its peerless grandeur-we read the name of George Was.h.i.+ngton. And then, Mr. President, after the interval of three-quarters of a century, when your jealous eye has ranged down the record and traced the names that history will never let die, you come to the name-the only name in all the annals of history that can be named in the perilous connection-of Robert E. Lee, the second Was.h.i.+ngton. Well may old Virginia be proud of her twin sons! born almost a century apart, but s.h.i.+ning like those binary stars which open their glory and shed their splendor on the darkness of the world.

"Sir, it is not an artifice of rhetoric which suggests this parallel between two great names in American history; for the suggestion springs spontaneously to every mind, and men scarcely speak of Lee without thinking of a mysterious connection that binds the two together. They were alike in the presage of their early history-the history of their boyhood. Both earnest, grave, studious; both alike in that peculiar purity which belongs only to a n.o.ble boy, and which makes him a brave and n.o.ble man, filling the page of a history spotless until closed in death; alike in that commanding presence which seems to be the signature of Heaven sometimes placed on a great soul when to that soul is given a fit dwelling-place; alike in that n.o.ble carriage and commanding dignity, exercising a mesmeric influence and a hidden power which could not be repressed, upon all who came within its charm; alike in the remarkable combination and symmetry of their intellectual attributes, all brought up to the same equal level, no faculty of the mind overlapping any other-all so equal, so well developed, the judgment, the reason, the memory, the fancy, that you are almost disposed to deny them greatness, because no single attribute of the mind was projected upon itself, just as objects appear sometimes smaller to the eye from the exact symmetry and beauty of their proportions; alike, above all, in that soul-greatness, that Christian virtue to which so beautiful a tribute has been rendered by my friend whose high privilege it was to be a compeer and comrade with the immortal dead, although in another department and sphere; and yet alike, Mr. President, in their external fortune, so strangely dissimilar-the one the representative and the agent of a stupendous revolution which it pleased Heaven to bless and give birth to one of the mightiest nations on the globe; the other the representative and agent of a similar revolution, upon which it pleased high Heaven to throw the darkness of its frown; so that, bearing upon his generous heart the weight of this crushed cause, he was at length overwhelmed; and the nation whom he led in battle gathers with spontaneity of grief over all this land which is ploughed with graves and reddened with blood, and the tears of a widowed nation in her bereavement are shed over his honored grave.

"But these crude suggestions, which fall almost impromptu from my lips, suggest that which I desire to offer before this audience to-night. I accept Robert E. Lee as the true type of the American man and the Southern gentleman. A brilliant English writer has well remarked, with a touch of sound philosophy, that when a nation has rushed upon its fate, the whole force of the national life will sometimes shoot up in one grand character, like the aloe which blooms at the end of a hundred years, shooting up in one single spike of glory, and then expires. And wherever philosophy, refinement, and culture, have gone upon the globe, it is possible to place the finger upon individual men who are the exemplars of a nation's character, those typical forms under which others less n.o.ble, less expanded, have manifested themselves. That gentle, that perfect moderation, that self-command which enabled him to be so self-possessed amid the most trying difficulties of his public career, a refinement almost such as that which marks the character of the purest woman, were blended in him with that ma.s.sive strength, that mighty endurance, that consistency and power which gave him and the people whom he led such momentum under the disadvantages of the struggle through which he pa.s.sed. Born from the general level of American society, blood of a n.o.ble ancestry flowed in his veins, and he was a type of the race from which he sprang. Such was the grandeur and urbaneness of his manner, the dignity and majesty of his carriage, that his only peer in social life could be found in courts and among those educated amid the refinements of courts and thrones. In that regard there was something beautiful and appropriate that he should become, in the later years of his life, the educator of the young. Sir, it is a cause for mourning before high Heaven to-night that he was not spared thirty years to educate a generation for the time that is to come; for, as in the days when the red banner streamed over the land, the South sent her sons to fight under his flag and beneath the wave of his sword, these sons have been sent again to sit at his feet when he was the disciple of the Muses and the teacher of philosophy. Oh, that he might have brought his more than regal character, his majestic fame, all his intellectual and moral endowments, to the task of fitting those that should come in the crisis of the future to take the mantle that had fallen from his shoulders and bear it to the generations that are unborn!

"General Lee I accept as the representative of his people, and of the temper with which this whole Southland entered into that gigantic, that prolonged, and that disastrous struggle which has closed, but closed as to us in grief. Sir, they wrong us who say that the South was ever impatient to rupture the bonds of the American Union. The war of 1776, which, sir, has no more yet a written history than has the war of 1861 to 1865, tells us that it was this Southland that wrought the Revolution of 1776. We were the heirs of all the glory of that immortal struggle. It was purchased with our blood, with the blood of our fathers which yet flows in these veins, and which we desire to transmit, pure and consecrated, to the sons that are born to our loins. The traditions of the past sixty years were a portion of our heritage, and it never was easy for any great heart and reflective mind even to seem to part with that heritage to enter upon the perilous effort of establis.h.i.+ng a new nationality.

"Mr. President, it was my privilege once to be thrilled in a short speech, uttered by one of the n.o.blest names cl.u.s.tering upon the roll of South Carolina; for, sir, South Carolina was Virginia's sister, and South Carolina stood by Virginia in the old struggle, as Virginia stood by South Carolina in the new, and the little State, small as Greece, barren in resources but great only in the grandeur of the men, in their gigantic proportions, whom she, like Virginia, was permitted to produce-I heard, sir, one of South Carolina's n.o.blest sons speak once thus: 'I walked through the Tower of London, that grand repository where are gathered the memorials of England's martial prowess; and when the guide, in the pride of his English heart, pointed to the spoils of war collected through centuries of the past,' said this speaker, lifting himself upon tiptoe that he might reach to his greatest height, 'I said, "You cannot point to one single trophy from my people, or my country, though England engaged in two disastrous wars with her."' Sir, this was the sentiment. We loved every inch of American soil, and loved every part of that canvas [pointing to the Stars and Stripes above him], which, as a symbol of power and authority, floated from the spires and from the mast-head of our vessels; and it was after the anguish of a woman in birth that this land, that now lies in her sorrow and ruin, took upon herself that great peril; but it is all emblematized in the regret experienced by him whose praises are upon our lips, and who, like the English Nelson, recognized duty engraved in letters of light as the only ensign he could follow, and who, tearing away from all the a.s.sociations of his early life, and, abandoning the reputation gained in the old service, made up his mind to embark in the new, and, with that modesty and that firmness belonging only to the truly great, expressed his willingness to live and die in the position a.s.signed to him.

"And I accept this n.o.ble chieftain equally as the representative of this Southland in the spirit of his retirement from struggle. It could not escape any speaker upon this platform to allude to the dignity of that retirement; how, from the moment he surrendered he withdrew from observation, holding aloof from all political complications, and devoting his entire energies to the great work he had undertaken to discharge. In this he represents-an the true att.i.tude of the South since the close of the war att.i.tude of quiet submission to the conquering power and of obedience to all exactions; but without resiling from those great principles which were embalmed in the struggle, and which, as the convictions of a lifetime, no honest mind could release.

"All over this land of ours there are men like Lee-not as great, not as symmetrical in the development of character, not as grand in the proportions which they have reached, but who, like him, are sleeping upon memories that are holy as death, and who, amid all reproach, appeal to the future, and to the tribunal of History, when she shall render her final verdict in reference to the struggle closed, for the vindication of the people embarked in that struggle. We are silent, resigned, obedient, and thoughtful, sleeping upon solemn memories, Mr. President; but, as said by the poet-preacher in the Good Book, 'I sleep, but my heart waketh,' looking upon the future that is to come, and powerless in every thing except to pray to Almighty G.o.d, who rules the destinies of nations, that those who have the power may at least have the grace given them to preserve the const.i.tutional principles which we have endeavored to maintain. And, sir, were it my privilege to speak in the hearing of the entire nation, I would utter with the profoundest emphasis this pregnant truth: that no people ever traversed those moral ideas which underlie its character, its const.i.tution, its inst.i.tutions, and its laws, that did not in the end perish in disaster, in shame, and in dishonor. Whatever be the glory, the material civilization, of which such a nation may boast, it still holds true that the truth is immortal, and that ideas rule the world.

"And now I have but a single word to say, and that is, that the grave of this n.o.ble hero is bedewed with the most tender and sacred tears ever shed upon a human tomb. I was thinking in my study this afternoon, striving to strike out something I might utter on this platform, and this parallel between the first Was.h.i.+ngton and the second occurred to me. I asked my own heart the question, 'Would you not accept the fame and the glory and the career of Robert E. Lee just as soon as accept the glory and career of the immortal man who was his predecessor?' Sir, there is a pathos in fallen fortunes which stirs the sensibilities, and touches the very fountain of human feeling. I am not sure that at this moment Napoleon, the enforced guest of the Prussian king, is not grander than when he ascended the throne of France. There is a grandeur in misfortune when that misfortune is borne by a n.o.ble heart, with the strength of will to endure, and endure without complaining or breaking. Perhaps I slip easily into this train of remarks, for it is my peculiar office to speak of that chastening with which a gracious Providence visits men on this earth, and by which He prepares them for heaven hereafter; and what is true of individuals in a state of adversity, is true of nations when clothed in sorrow. Sir, the men in these galleries that once wore the gray are here to-night that they may bend the knee in reverence at the grave of him whose voice and hand they obeyed amid the storms of battle: the young widow, who but as yesterday leaned upon the arm of her soldier-husband, but now clasps wildly to her breast the young child that never beheld its father's face, comes here to shed her tears over this grave to-night; and the aged matron, with the tears streaming from her eyes as she recalls her unforgotten dead, lying on the plains of Gettysburg, or on the heights of Fredericksburg, now, to-night, joins in our dirge over him who was that son's chieftain and counsellor and friend. A whole nation has risen up in the spontaneity of its grief to render the tribute of its love. Sir, there is a unity in the grapes when they grow together in the cl.u.s.ters upon the vine, and holding the bunch in your hand you speak of it as one; but there is another unity when you throw these grapes into the wine-press, and the feet of those that bruise these grapes trample them almost profanely beneath their feet together in the communion of pure wine; and such is the union and communion of hearts that have been fused by tribulation and sorrow, and that meet together in the true feeling of an honest grief to express the homage of their affection, as well as to render a tribute of praise to him upon whose face we shall never look until on that immortal day when we shall behold it transfigured before the throne of G.o.d."

The meeting then adopted the following preamble and resolutions:

"Whereas, Like orphans at the grave of a parent untimely s.n.a.t.c.hed away, our hearts have lingered and brooded, with a grief that no cunning of speech could interpret, over the thought that Robert Edward Lee exists no more, in bodily life, in sensible form, in visible presence, for our love and veneration, for our edification and guidance, for our comfort and solace; and-

"Whereas, We have invoked all mute funeral emblems to aid us with their utmost eloquence of woe, and we cannot content ourselves with contemplating, from the depth and the gloom of our bereavement, the exalted and radiant virtues of the dead:

"Resolved, That we, the people of New Orleans, have come together under one common impulse to render united homage to the memory which holds mastery in our minds, whether we turn with bitter regard to the past, or with prayerful and chastened aspirations to the future.

"Resolved, That as Louisianians, as Southerners, as Americans, we proudly claim our share in the fame of Lee as an inheritance rightfully belonging to us, and endowed with which we shall piously cherish, though all calamities should rain upon us, true poverty-the poverty indeed that abases and starves the spirit can never approach us with its noisome breath and withering look.

"Resolved, That it is infinitely more bitter to have to mourn the loss of our Lee, than not to have learned to prize him as the n.o.blest gift which could have been allotted to a people and an epoch; a grand man, rounded to the symmetry of equal moral and intellectual powers, graces, and accomplishments; a man whose masterly and heroic energy left nothing undone in defending a just cause while there was a possibility of striking for it a rational and hopeful blow, and whose sublime resignation when the last blow was struck in vain, and when human virtue was challenged to match itself with the consummation of human adversity, taught wiser, more convincing, more rea.s.suring, more soul-sustaining lessons than were to be found in all the philosophies of all books.

"Resolved, That worthily to show our veneration for this majestic and beautiful character, we must revolve it habitually in our thoughts, and try to appropriate it to the purification and elevation of our lives, and so educate our children that they shall, if possible, grow up into its likeness.

"Resolved, That while it is honorable for a people to deeply lament the death of such a man, it would be glorious for a generation to mould itself after his model; for it would be a generation fraught with all high manly qualities, tempered with all gentle and Christian virtues; for truth, love, goodness, health, strength, would be with it, and consequently victory, liberty, majesty, and beauty.

"Resolved, That we would hail the erection of the proposed monument as well adapted to the purpose of preserving this admirable and most precious memory as a vital and beneficent influence for all time to come, and we will therefore cordially aid in promoting the Lee Monument which has just been inaugurated."

ATLANTA, GA.

A crowded meeting a.s.sembled in this city on October 15th. After an impressive prayer from the Rev. Dr. Brantly, the meeting was addressed by

GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON.

"My Friends: We have met to weep, to mingle our tears, and give vent to our bursting hearts. The sorrowing South, already clad in mourners' weeds, bows her head afresh to-day in a heart-stricken orphanage; and if I could have been permitted to indulge the sensibilities of my heart, I would have fled this most honorable task, and in solitude and silence have wept the loss of the great and good man whose death we so deplore. I loved General Lee; for it was my proud privilege to know him well. I loved him with a profound and all-filial love, with a sincere and unfaded affection. I say I would have retired from this flattering task which your kindness has imposed, but remembering that his words, his deeds, his great example, has taught us that duty was the most commanding obligation, I yield this morning to your wishes.

"We have met to honor General Lee, to honor him dead whom we loved while living. Honor General Lee! How utterly vain, what a mockery of language do these words seem! Honor Lee! Why, my countrymen, his deeds have honored him! The very trump of Fame itself is proud to honor him! Europe and the civilized world have united to honor him supremely, and History itself has caught the echo and made it immortal. Honor Lee! Why, sir, as the sad news of his death is with the speed of thought communicated to the world, it will carry a pang even to the hearts of marshals and of monarchs; and I can easily fancy that, amid the din and clash and carnage of war, the cannon itself, in mute pause at the whispering news, will briefly cease its roar around the walls of Paris. The task is not without pain, while yet his manly frame lies stretched upon his bier, to attempt to a.n.a.lyze the elements that made him truly great. It has been my fortune in life from circ.u.mstances to have come in contact with some whom the world p.r.o.nounced great-some of the earth's celebrated and distinguished; but I declare it here to-day that, of any mortal man whom it has ever been my privilege to approach, he was the greatest; and I a.s.sert here that, grand as might be your conceptions of the man before, he arose in incomparable majesty on more familiar acquaintance. This can be affirmed of few men who have ever lived or died, and of no other man whom it has ever been my fortune to approach. Like Niagara, the more you gazed the more his grandeur grew upon you, the more his majesty expanded and filled your spirit with a full satisfaction that left a perfect delight without the slightest feeling of oppression. Grandly majestic and dignified in all his deportment, he was genial as the sunlight of this beautiful day, and not a ray of that cordial, social intercourse but brought warmth to the heart as it did light to the understanding.

"But as one of the great captains will General Lee first pa.s.s review and inspection before the criticism of history. We will not compare him with Was.h.i.+ngton. The mind will halt instinctively at the comparison of two such men, so equally and gloriously great. But with modest, yet calm and unflinching confidence we place him by the side of the Marlboroughs and Wellingtons who take high niches in the pantheon of immortality. Let us dwell for a moment, my friends, on this thought. Marlborough never met defeat, it is true. Victory marked every step of his triumphant march; but when, where, and whom did Marlborough fight? The ambitious and vain but able Louis XIV. But he had already exhausted the resources of his kingdom before Marlborough stepped upon the stage. The great marshals Turenne and Conde were no more, and Luxembourg the beloved had vanished from the scene. Marlborough, preeminently great as he certainly was, nevertheless led the combined forces of England and of Holland, in the freshness of their strength and the fulness of their financial ability, against prostrate France, with a treasury depleted, a people worn out, discouraged, and dejected. But let us turn to another comparison. 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 l.u.s.tihood 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, flas.h.i.+ng 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 const.i.tutional restriction, would have been his career as a civilian. When, near the conclusion of the war, darkness was thickening about the falling fortunes of the Confederacy, when its very life was in the sword of Lee, it was my proud privilege to know with a special admiration the modest demeanor, the manly decorum, respectful homage, which marked all his dealings with the const.i.tuted authorities of his country. Clothed with all power, he hid its very symbol behind a genial modesty, and refused ever to exert it save in obedience to law. And even in his triumphant entry into the territory of the enemy, so regardful was he of civilized warfare, that the observance of his general orders as to private property and private rights left the line of his march marked and marred by no devastated fields, charred ruins, or desolated homes. But it is in his private character, or rather I should say his personal emotion and virtue, which his countrymen will most delight to consider and dwell upon. His magnanimity, transcending all historic precedent, seemed to form a new chapter in the book of humanity. Witness that letter to Jackson, after his wounds at Chancellorsville, in which he said: 'I am praying for you with more fervor than I have ever prayed for myself;' and that other, more disinterested and pathetic: 'I could, for the good of my country, wish that the wounds which you have received had been inflicted upon my own body;' or that of the latter message, saying to General Jackson that 'his wounds were not so severe as mine, for he loses but his left arm, while I, in my loss, lose my right;' or that other expression of unequalled magnanimity which enabled him to ascribe the glory of their joint victory to the sole credit of the dying hero. Did I say unequalled? Yes, that was an avowal of unequalled magnanimity, until it met its parallel in his own grander self-negation in a.s.suming the sole responsibility for the defeat at Gettysburg. Ay, my countrymen, Alexander had his Arbela, Caesar his Pharsalia, Napoleon his Austerlitz; but it was reserved for Lee to grow grander and more ill.u.s.trious in defeat than even in victory-grander, because in defeat he showed a spirit greater than in the heroism of battles or all the achievements of war, a spirit which crowns him with a chaplet grander far than ever mighty conqueror wore.

"I turn me now to that last closing scene at Appomattox, and I will draw thence a picture of that man as he laid aside the sword, the unrivalled soldier, to become the most exemplary of citizens.

"I can never forget the deferential homage paid this great citizen by even the Federal soldiers, as with uncovered heads they contemplated in mute admiration this now captive hero as he rode through their ranks. Impressed forever, daguerreotyped on my heart is that last parting scene with that handful of heroes still crowding around him. Few indeed were the words then spoken, but the quivering lip and the tearful eye told of the love they bore him, in symphonies more eloquent than any language can describe. Can I ever forget? No, never can I forget the words which fell from his lips as I rode beside him amid the defeated, dejected, and weeping soldiery, when, turning to me, he said, 'I could wish that I was numbered among the fallen in the last battle;' but oh! as he thought of the loss of the cause-of the many dead scattered over so many fields, who, sleeping neglected, with no governmental arms to gather up their remains-sleeping neglected, isolated, and alone, beneath the weeping stars, with naught but their soldiers' blankets about them!-oh! as these emotions swept over his great soul, he felt that he would have laid him down to rest in the same grave where lay buried the common hope of his people. But Providence willed it otherwise. He rests now forever, my countrymen, his spirit in the bosom of that Father whom he so faithfully served, his body beside the river whose banks are forever memorable, and whose waters are vocal with the glories of his triumphs. No sound shall ever wake him to martial glory again; no more shall he lead his invincible lines to victory; no more shall we gaze upon him and draw from his quiet demeanor lessons of life. But oh! it is a sweet consolation to us, my countrymen, who loved him, that no more shall his bright spirit be bowed down to earth with the burdens of the people's wrongs. It is sweet consolation to us that his last victory, through faith in his crucified Redeemer, is the most transcendently glorious of all his triumphs. At this very hour, while we mourn here, kind friends are consigning the last that remains of our hero to his quiet sleeping-place, surrounded by the mountains of his native State-mountains the autumnal glory of whose magnificent forests to-day seem but habiliments of mourning. In the Valley, the pearly dew-drops seem but tears of sadness upon the gra.s.ses and flowers. Let him rest! And now as he has gone from us, and as we regard him in all the aspects of his career and character and attainments as a great captain, ranking among the first of any age; as a patriot, whose sacrificing devotion to his country ranks him with Was.h.i.+ngton; as a Christian, like Havelock, recognizing his duty to his G.o.d above every other earthly consideration, with a native modesty that refused to appropriate the glory of his own, and which surrounds now his entire character and career with a halo of unfading light; with an integrity of life and a sacred regard for truth which no man dare a.s.sail; with a fidelity to principle which no misfortune could shake-he must ever stand peerless among men in the estimation of Christendom, this representative son of the South, Robert E. Lee, of Virginia."