Part 33 (2/2)

”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.”

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