William Lee

“ These considerations explain how Colonel Lee, certainly one of the most conscientious men who ever lived, felt bound in duty and honor to side with seceding Virginia, though he doubted the wisdom of her course.
Most striking among the characteristics of General Lee which made him so successful was his exalted and unmatched excellence as a man, his unselfishness, sweetness, gentleness, patience, love of justice, and general elevation of soul. Lee much loved to quote Sir William Hamilton's words: "On earth nothing great but man: in man nothing great but mind." ”

“ No man ever associated with Gen. Lee without feeling the better for it. To have been with him made you feel like one who had drawn a long deep inspiration of pure fresh air into his lungs after breathing the stifling atmosphere of a close room. ”

“ William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, second son of Gen. Robert Edward Lee, is dead. The bells here tolled late yesterday evening. A few hours before the general had crossed over the river and was at rest under his roof tree at Ravensworth, the southern sun lighted his deathbed and the autumn breeze sang his requiem. Afterlife's fitful fever he sleeps well. He was sick a long time, and as his disease was incurable, death was a relief. ”

“ The phrase of Lee has been worn threadbare with iteration since it was first uttered, but it always rings true of the high-minded, unfaltering soldier and honorable, simple gentleman whose genius in war and whose modesty in peace made the republic of America an enduring fact in history. Long after the great soldier and good man had been laid to rest an English poet did him justice, and no more than justice, by writing that "the first, the last, the best, the Cincinnatus of the West, whom envy dared not hate, bequeathed the name of Washington to make man blush there was but one." ”

“ The soldiers who were ranged under the standard of Lee, believing that their noble commander was equal to all emergencies, followed him with unwavering trust, and their survivors testify to the affection in which a spirit so gentle and yet so brave was held.
No higher eulogy can be pronounced upon any man than to say of him that which can be truly alleged of Gen. Lee, that he was an honored and trusted leader in that splendid Army of Northern Virginia, which only failed where success was impossible. ”

“ It is the boast of some of the old baronial families of England that their ancestors rode with William the Conqueror at Hastings. To a certain extent the pride of ancestry is an ennobling sentiment, and Virginians must be pardoned when tempted to refer to the illustrious names which their State in the past has furnished to the nation. The name of Lee has been a household word in Virginia for three generations of men. ”

“ Consequently she really ran wild. Until she reached her teens she could neither write nor spell, but nevertheless she composed verses. She declared later, speaking of her childish days, "I preferred washing a dog, or polishing a piece of Derbyshire spar, or breaking in a horse"—she was a fearless rider and could ride bareback—"to any accomplishment in the world."
When she was thirteen, William Lamb, who was then twenty, saw her at Brocket Hall, where she had accompanied her cousins on a visit to his mother, Lady Melbourne, and was greatly attracted to her. ”

“ William is absent from twelve to seven in the daytime, [6] and works hard all the time he is at home, but I am greatly relieved to be with him again, though it is a little dreary sometimes in the day. I have been reading Hook's Sermons, and I have finished Ten Thousand a Year [7] which, although vulgar, is clever and interesting. I sat an hour at his office at the Board of Trade.
"January 1, 1842.—A new year is always an awful thing. God give me grace to become better in the future! I feel acutely how little good I do—but to feel is not enough. ”

“ Gladstone drove in the park with her husband, and at 8 p.m. her little girl (Agnes) was born, "a fine healthy baby with pretty features, complexion nice and clear, never red."
Christmas was spent at Hawarden.
"December 29.—My dear William's birthday. God bless him! How every day that passes more and more impresses me with the treasure I am blessed with, but alas! how very far I am behind him.
"January 6, 1843.—Thirty-one to-day. Time passes so quickly, and in reviewing the past year how little I have done. May God enable me to act upon the resolutions I have formed. ”

“ William H.F. Lee raised a company of cavalry at the beginning of the war and surrendered as a major-general of cavalry at Appomattox. He fought his way to his rank and suffered all of war's vicissitudes save death. His men believed in him and followed him. He was wounded; he was twice a prisoner; he was held as a hostage in solitary confinement with death impending. His wife and his children died while he lay wounded and in prison. Whatever man may suffer he suffered to the uttermost. ”

“ In his shirt and a blanket coat, without a hat, he was tied on a spare troop-horse and hurried to the British camp through eighty miles of hostile country, whence he was sent to New York. The importance attached by the Americans to his capture is attested by their offer of six Hessian officers of rank in exchange. Sir William Howe [q. v.] rejected the offer, on the ground that Lee was a British deserter, a pretension he had to abandon under threat of reprisals. He was instructed from home to treat Lee as a prisoner of war, subject to exchange when convenient. ”

“ We know our own neighborhoods and their people, and we grow slowly into knowledge of other sections and their people. Local caste, prejudice, interest, and bias warp us and minify our usefulness. Gen. Lee was not of this kind. There was no sectionalism in his caste, no bigotry in his creeds. His strong local attachments, natural to a true nature, neither dwarfed his opinions, soured his reflections, nor darkened his vision. His was a ripe mind and his a generous nature. He understood men, because he understood mankind. He had respect for all men, because he respected manhood. ”

“ Lee.
Many of us doubtless can recall the evident pride of the little fellow who occasionally placed upon our desks the roses which his kindly patron brought by the basketful in the spring mornings from his Virginia home to brighten the sittings of the House. And this gentleness and modesty were the more attractive because they were the adornment of a sincere and manly character. How much came to him as the rich legacy of ancestral blood and how much was wrought into his nature by the training of his youth it is idle to speculate. In both respects he was lifted far above the common lot of men. ”

“ Robert E. Lee, the son of Henry Lee, an officer of engineers upon his staff. He was four times brevetted for gallant conduct and came back famous. When Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston led the Utah expedition in 1858 there marched on foot in his columns Lieut. William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, the son of Robert E. Lee. He was not a soldier by education, but by instinct. A graduate of Harvard College and the stroke oar of his class, he was well prepared for military life, and the third of his line to bear arms for the United States. ”

“ He never spoke in parliament, but steadily supported by his vote the principles of the revolution. For this he would never give any but the humorous reason that he came in with King William (meaning that he was born in the year of that monarch 8 accession) , and so was Dound to be a good whig.
Lee married twice : first, Anne, daughter of John Goodwin of Bury St. Edmunds, who died in 1729; secondly, on 12 May 1738, Margaret, daughter or Roger Drake, and widow of James Melmoth, described as 'an agreeable young lady of 25,000l. fortune.' She died in May 1752, and was buried in Hartwell Church". ”

“ With the same noble spirit which had actuated his father, the elder Lee, he threw aside his discouragement and took up the duties of life and citizenship anew. He had made himself famous as a soldier; he now began in earnest to cultivate the arts of peace. It was no easy task, for the era of reconstruction immediately succeeded the war, and only those who were actually under its ban can realize the burdens and hardships it [84] entailed upon an unfortunate people emerging from a disastrous conflict.
He rebuilt and reëstablished his home at the White House plantation. ”

“ The growth of race ascendency and the expanse of race domination are unceasing. The picture is unique and the nation one, however the theater enlarges, however the scenes shift, however the actors differ in the drama. Gen. Lee was a representative democrat or republican, for I use the words in their generic sense. His grandfather was that young American Capt. Henry Lee, the ardent youth of nineteen, who at the head of his company of Virginia horse reported to Washington for duty when the first army of Continentals were ranging themselves upon the plains of Boston. ”

“ Oke slowly, playing mechanically with a fork, and picking out the pattern of the tablecloth. "That is just the extraordinary circumstance, that, so far as any one knows, nothing ever did happen there; and yet that room has an evil reputation. No member of our family, they say, can bear to sit there alone for more than a minute. You see, William evidently cannot."
"Have you ever seen or heard anything strange there?" I asked of my host. ”

“ The doctor presently came up and took a seat beside her.
“Wha—what do you think, doctor?” she sobbed.
“Well, I think it's tarnation hot operating with a big kerosene lamp six inches from your haid,” he said, as he mopped his forehead.
“I mean—will he—get well?”
Lee snorted. “Well, I'd be ashamed of him if he didn't. If he lets a nice, clean, flesh wound put him out of business he don't deserve to live. Don't worry any about him, young lady. Say, I wish I had zwei beer right now, Arlie.” ”

“ On the twenty-first half of Grant's army marched south while half stood threatening Lee, in order to give their friends a start toward Richmond. This move was so well staffed and screened that perhaps Lee could not have seen his chance quite soon enough in any case. But when he did learn what had happened even his calm self-control gave way to the exceeding bitter cry: "We must strike them! We must never let them pass us again!" ”

“ April 1841.—Lord Lyndhurst52 was on the platform at Twyford station. I saw him look at Baby, and the nurse said he noticed his intelligence, and having asked whose child he was, said, ‘Will you ever be as clever a man as your papa?’
“Sir Robert Peel desired William to introduce me to him at Lady Jersey’s; he talked of his daughter’s approaching marriage to Lord Villiers.53 He seemed in great force, which the events of the past few weeks would account for. Lady Peel said to William, ‘Has not he done it well? ”

“ Warren was not only a good commander of the engineers but a good all-round general, as he showed by seizing, on his own initiative, the Little Round Top, without which the left flank could never have been held.
Finally, there is the great vexed question of what Lee should or should not have done. First, it seems clear that (like Farragut and unlike Grant and Jackson) he lacked the ruthless power of making every subordinate bend or break in every time of crisis: otherwise he would have bent or broken Longstreet. ”

“ With a marvelous insight into the characters of his opponents, a consummate knowledge of the science and art of war, and—quite as important—an exact appreciation of the risks worth running, Lee actually divided his 55,000 men in face of Pope's 80,000, of 20,000 more at Washington and Aquia, and of 50,000 available reinforcements. ”

“ When Lee read over the draft he flushed slightly on coming to this generous proviso Page 391 and gratefully said: "This will have a very happy effect upon my army." Grant then asked him if he had any suggestions to make; whereupon he said that the mounted Confederates, unlike the Federals, owned their horses. Before he had time to ask a favor Grant said that as these horses would be invaluable for men returning to civil life they could all be taken home after full proof of ownership. Lee again flushed and gratefully replied: "This will have the best possible effect upon the men. ”

“ Lee than by soldiers who fought against him, and I respond to them with honor and praise. The production of men who may maintain the rights their fathers won, and ever grow in liberal thought, noble character, and worthy achievement is the highest mission of republican institutions. From Hastings, A.D. 1066, to Boston in 1776, the name of Lee was blended with the glories of our fatherland. But from Boston to Appomattox it grew the more illustrious with grander opportunities. ”

“ They challenged the respect and admiration of the world, and of their great captain it has been said that "a country which has given birth to men like him and those who followed him may look the chivalry of Europe in the face without shame, for the fatherlands of Sidney and Bayard never produced a nobler soldier, gentleman, and Christian than Robert E. Lee." ”

“ O'er the dead who have died in vain for us.
After the cessation of hostilities Gen. Lee resumed the occupations of a farmer on the old plantation which he had left in 1861. The implements of warfare were exchanged for those of the husbandman, and following the plow on the furrows he commenced the work of repairing the losses he had sustained. In 1868 he married Miss Mary Tabb Bolling, the daughter of Col. George W. Bolling, of Petersburg, and they continued their residence at the White House until 1874, when they removed to Ravensworth, in the county of Fairfax, where he died. ”