Part 33 (1/2)

”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.