Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/214

 364 SOLDIERS AND SAILORS General Lee came from the class of landed gentry that has furnished England at all times with her most able and distinguished leaders. The first of his family who went to America was Richard Lee, who, in 1641, became Colonial Secretary to the Governor of Virginia. The family settled in Westmoreland, one of the most lovely counties in that historic State, and members of it from time to time held high positions in the government. Several of the family distinguished them- selves during the War of Independence, among whom was Henry, the father of General Robert E. Lee. He raised a mounted corps known as " Lee's Legion," in command of which he obtained the reputation of being an able and gallant sol- dier. He was nicknamed by his comrades "Light-Horse Harry." He was three times Governor of his native State. To him is attributed the authorship of the eulogy on General Washington, in which occurs the so-often quoted sentence, " First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," praise that with equal truth might have been subsequently applied to his own distin- guished son. , The subject of this slight sketch, Robert Edmund Lee, was born January 9, 1807, at the family place of Stratford, in the county of Westmoreland, State of Virginia. When only a few years old, his parents moved to the small town of Alexandria, which is on the right bank of the Potomac River, nearly opposite Washington, but a little below it. He was but a boy of eleven when his father died, leaving his family in strait- ened circumstances. Like many other great commanders, he was in consequence brought up in comparative poverty, a condition which has been pronounced by the greatest of them as the best training for soldiers. During his early years he attended a day-school near his home in Alexandria. He was thus able in his leis- ure hours to help his invalid mother in all her household concerns, and to afford her that watchful care which, owing to her very delicate health, she so much needed. She was a clever, highly gifted woman, and by her fond care his charac- ter was formed and stamped with honest truthfulness. By her he was taught never to forget that he was well born, and that, as a gentleman, honor must be his guiding star through life. It was from her lips he learned his Bible, from her teaching he drank in the sincere belief in revealed religion which he never lost. It was she who imbued her great son with an ineradicable belief in the efficacy of prayer, and in the reality of God's interposition in the every-day affairs of the true believer. No son ever returned a mother's love with more heartfelt intensity. She was his idol, and he worshipped her with the deep-seated inborn love which is known only to the son in whom filial affection is strengthened by respect and per- sonal admiration for the woman who bore him. He was her all in all, or, as she described it, he was both son and daughter to her. He watched over her in weary hours of pain, and served her with all that soft tenderness which was such a marked trait in the character of this great, stern leader of men. He seems to have been throughout his boyhood and early youth perfect in disposition, in bearing, and in conduct a model of all that was noble, honorable, and manly. Of the early life of very few great men can this be said. Many who