Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/73

 Ceremonies at Unveiling of Statue of General Lee. 67

mander, I would say with my dying breath, ' Let it be Robert E. Lee.'"

One of the name of Lee has defined happiness in the following homely but thoughtful words: "Peace of mind based on piety to Almighty God ; unconscious innocence of conduct, with good will to man ; health of body, health of mind and prosperity in our vocation ; a sweet, affectionate wife ; children devoted to truth, honor, right and utility, with love and respect to their parents ; and faithful, warm- hearted friends, in a country politically and religiously free — this is my definition of happiness."

I know not where a better can be found ; and if ever man enjoyed these blessings in bountiful measure, supplemented by a wealth of golden opinion in the minds of all his countrymen, it was Robert E. Lee, as the current of his life flowed peacefully through the years preceding the great civil war. Nothing disturbed the placidity of its course save the shadows, rapidly lengthening and thickening, cast by the dread events which were coming with the impending future.

Lee loved the Union. It was emphatically the Union of his fathers, whose cunning hands had wrought in its construction. It was the Union of Washington, the idol of his worship. It was his own Union for which he had fought, and in whose service the "dear- est action" of his life had been spent. The tenor of his way had removed him from the growing exacerbation of political strife. The bitterness of sectional hate had not entered his soul. He loved the whole Union, To his acute prevision, its threatened disruption meant chaos and inevitable, desperate war. He opposed secession. He lifted his voice against it in words of solemn warning and protes- tation.

In vain ! Who can lift his hand against fate, and, with feeble ges- ture, stay or divert its course? The inevitable swept on resistless, remorseless. Snapped, in quick succession, the cords which bound State after State to the Union; and, at last, with mighty effort, Vir- ginia tore asunder the " hoops of steel " which encircled her, and, standing in the solitude of her original sovereignty, with imperial voice, in her hour of peril, summoned all her children to her side. Lee she called by name, singled him out as chiefest of her sons, her Hector, the pillar of her house. Stern mother, as she was, she held out to him the bato?i of her armies and bade him take it and protect her honor, or die in its defence.

The crisis of his life had come. His known love for the Union,