Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/91

Rh gained knowledge of a public sentiment upon the question of the legality of the Thirty-ninth Congress—a question in which he had much interest in the autumn of 1866.

The project to increase the army around Washington and the project to proclaim the Thirty-ninth Congress an illegal body may have had an intimate connection with the project to send General Grant on a mission to Mexico and to place General Sherman in command at Washington, a project of which I have spoken in another place.

General Robert E. Lee was examined by the Committee on Reconstruction the 17th day of February, 1866.

The inquiries related to the state of public sentiment in the South, and especially in Virginia in regard to secession, to the treatment of the negroes, to the public debts of the United States, and of the Confederacy, and to the treatment of Northern soldiers in Southern prisons.

General Lee was then in good health and in personal appearance he commended himself without delay. He was large in frame, compactly built, and he was furnished with all the flesh and muscle that could be useful to a man who was passing the middle period of life. The elasticity of spirits, the vigor of mind and body that are the wealth of a successful man at sixty were wanting in General Lee. His appearance commanded respect and it excited the sympathy even of those who had condemned his abandonment of the Union in 1861.

The examination gave evidence of integrity and of entire freedom from duplicity. Freedom from duplicity was a controlling feature in General Grant’s character and in that attribute of greatness Grant and Lee may have been equals.

General Lee was free to disclose his own opinions, but he was cautious in his statements when questioned as to the