John Esten Cooke

“ If I am a stranger in Lexington, and my lot has been cast here only during the last three weeks, yet I am happy that my fellow-citizens here have paid me such great respect as to call on me, on such an occasion as the present, to testify to the greatness and glory of General Robert E. Lee. Some public calamity is required to bring us into one great brotherhood. 'One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.' Though you are all strangers to me, yet, in that common sympathy which we all feel, we are mourners together at the bier of departed worth. ”

“ Sir, we watched with the most profound and intense interest the triumphal march of the army led by General Scott, to which you were attached, from Vera Cruz to the capital of Mexico. We read of the sanguinary conflicts and the blood-stained fields, in all of which victory perched upon our own banners. We knew of the unfading lustre that was shed upon the American arms by that campaign, and we know, also, what your modesty has always disclaimed, that no small share of the glory of those achievements was due to your valor and your military genius. ”

“ Their broad and liberal views are worthy of the great and good man whose virtues and fame we seek to commemorate. He has passed away from earth, and our blame or censure is nothing to him now. The most eloquent eulogies that human lips can utter, and the loftiest monuments that human hands can build, cannot affect him now. But it is a satisfaction to us to know that expressions of the love for him which lives in every Southern heart—ay, in many a Northern heart—were heard long before his death, and that honor shed noble lustre around the last years of his life. ”

“ His soldiers adored him most, not in the glare of his brilliant victories, but in the hour of his deepest humiliation, when his last great battle had been fought and lost—when the government for which he had struggled was crumbling about him—when his staff, asking, in despair, 'What can now be done?' he gave that memorable reply, 'It were strange indeed if human virtue were not at least as strong as human calamity.' This is the key to his life—the belief that trials and strength, suffering and consolation, come alike from God. Obedience to duty was ever his ruling principle. ”

“ Resolved, That no people in the tide of time has been bereaved as we are bereaved; for no other people has had such a man to lose. Greece, rich in heroes; Rome, prolific mother of great citizens, so that the name of Roman is the synonyme of all that is noblest in citizenship—had no man coming up to the full measure of this great departed. On scores of battle-fields, consummate commander; everywhere, bravest soldier; in failure, sublimest hero; in disbanding his army, most pathetic of writers; in persecution, most patient of power's victims ”

“ Not only wherever the English language is spoken, but wherever civilization extends, the sorrow—a part at least of the sorrow—we feel will be felt, and more eloquent tongues than mine will tell the fame and recount the virtues of Robert E. Lee. We need not come to praise him. We come only to express our sympathy, our grief, our bereavement. We come not to mourn him, for we know that it is well with him. We come only to extend our sympathy to those who are bereaved. ”

“ How many men have ever displayed the perfect simplicity of nature, the utter absence of vanity or affectation, which belongs to the truest and purest greatness, in triumph or in defeat, as General Lee has done? When Commander-in-Chief of the Southern armies, he moved from point to point, as duty required, with less parade than a European general of division, wearing no sword, attended by no other staff than the immediate occasion demanded, and chatting with a comrade or a visitor with a simple courtesy which had in it no shade of condescension. ”

“ Such were the fates of the most successful captains and warriors of the world. For four long years Lee occupied a position not less prominent than that of the most distinguished among them. The eyes of the civilized world watched his every movement and scanned his every motive. His cause was lost. He was unsuccessful. Yet he lived to illustrate to the world how, despite failure and defeat, a soldier could command honor and love from those for whom he struggled, and admiration and respect from his foes, such as no success had ever before won for warrior, prince, or potentate. ”

“ I can give no better idea of the impression it made upon me than to say it inspired me with an ardent love of the man and a profound veneration of his character. It was so massive and noble, so grand in its proportions, that all men must admire its heroism and gallantry, yet so gentle and tender that a woman might adopt and claim it as her own. If the spirit which animates the assembly before me to-night shall become general and permeate the whole country, then may we say the wounds of the late war are truly healed. We ask for him only what we give to others. ”

“ The conquerors themselves, for their own glory, must confess that they were brave. Neither, my friends, do I come here to-night to speak of the military career of General Lee. I need not speak of it this evening. I believe that this is universally recognized, not only in the United States, but in Europe; it has made the circuit of the world. I come but to utter my tribute to him as a man and as a citizen. As a man he will be remembered in history as a man of the epoch. ”

“ Under forty years of age, with a slender figure, a heavily-bearded face, dark eyes, a composed and unassuming bearing, characterized when off duty by a quiet cordiality, he was personally popular with all who approached him, and greatly beloved, both as man and commander. His chief merit as a soldier was his dash and impetus in the charge. A braver heart never beat in human breast; throughout the war he retained the respect and admiration of the army and the country; and a strange fact in relation to this eminent soldier is, that his name was uttered by both Jackson and Lee as they expired. ”

“ 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 Washington. Well may old Virginia be proud of her twin sons! born almost a century apart, but shining like those binary stars which open their glory and shed their splendor on the darkness of the world. ”

“ 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 constitutional 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 constituted authorities of his country. ”

“ A battle there seemed impossible. Neither side could see its antagonist. Artillery could not move; cavalry could not operate; the very infantry had to flatten their bodies to glide between the stunted trees. That an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men should have chosen that spot to fight forty thousand, and not only chosen it, but made it a hundred times more impenetrable by felling trees, erecting breastworks, disposing artillery en masse to sweep every road and bridle-path which led to Chancellorsville—this fact seemed incredible. ”

“ The North, victorious and strong, could not forget what she owed to liberty and human rights. We may well swear now that as long as liberty is virtuous we will be brothers.
"Robert E. Lee is worthy of all praise. As a man, he was peerless; as a soldier, he had no equal and no superior; as a humane and Christian soldier, he towers high in the political horizon. You cannot imagine with what delight, when I had the honor to represent this country at the court of Great Britain, I heard the praises of his fame and character which came from soldiers and statesmen. ”

“ This is not the first time since the termination of the war I have expressed admiration and friendship for Robert E. Lee. When I heard that he was about to be prosecuted in a Virginia court for the alleged crime of treason, I wrote to him at once, and with all my heart, that if he believed I could be of any service to him, professionally, I was at his command. All the ability I possess, increased by more than fifty years of study and experience, would have been cheerfully exerted to have saved him, for in saving him I believe I would have been saving the honor of my country. ”

“ Lee had paused, and now listened attentively to the long roll of musketry from the woods, where Hill and Longstreet were engaged; then to the still more incessant and angry roar from the direction of Jackson's own troops, who had closed in upon the Federal forces.
"That fire is very heavy," said Lee. "Do you think your men can stand it?"
Jackson listened for a moment, with his head bent toward one shoulder, as was customary with him, for he was deaf, he said, in one ear, "and could not hear out of the other," and replied briefly:
"They can stand almost any thing! They can stand that!" ”

“ Napoleon reached his giddy height by paths which Lee would have scorned to tread, only to be hurled from his eminence by all the powers of Europe which his insatiate ambition had combined against him. Wellington, the conqueror of Napoleon, became the leader of a political party, and lived to need the protection of police from a mob. Even our own Washington, whose character was as high above that of the mere warrior and conqueror as is the blue vault of heaven above us to the low earth we tread beneath our feet, was libelled in life and slandered in death. ”

“ 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 massive 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 passed. Born from the general level of American society, blood of a noble ancestry flowed in his veins, and he was a type of the race from which he sprang. ”

“ At the battle of Gettysburg, after the attack on the cemetery, when his troops were repulsed and beaten, the men threw up their muskets and said, 'General, we have failed, and it is our fault.' 'No, my men,' said he, knowing the style of fighting of General Stonewall Jackson, 'you have done well; 'tis my fault; I am to blame, and no one but me.' What man is there that would not have gone to renewed death for such a leader? ”

“ What Confederate is there who would refuse to raise his cap as their funeral-train went by or hesitate to drop a flower upon their graves? Why? Because they were men of courage, honor, and nobility; because they were true to their convictions of right, and soldiers whose hands were unstained by cruelty or pillage.
"Those of us who were so fortunate as to know him, and who have appeared before this assemblage, composed of all shades of opinion, claim for him your veneration, because he was pure and noble, and it is because of this that we see the cities and towns of the South in mourning. ”

“ 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. ”