Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/140

 140 Southern Historical Society Papers.

and drove him to refuge at Harrison's Landing, proves the truth of this. Sharpsburg proves it, and that brilliant campaign in which he outgeneralled Pope and, shattering his forces at second Manassas, compelled him to seek safety behind the fortifications of Washington, proves it. Fredericksburg and Burnside bear witness to its truth. Chancellorsville and Hooker corroborate it, and Gettysburg, immortal now by the charge of Pickett's brave Virginians, twin brothers in valor and renown with the heroes who died for their country at Ther- mopylae, tells the same story. The countless numbers of brave men who fell under the flag of Grant from the Wilderness to Petersburg proclaim it from their soldier graves, and Appomattox's trumpet tongue tells it to all the ages, for there, in that Gethsemane of sorrow, he conquered fate itself, and plucking glory from defeat taught the world by his own example the truth of that august maxim which had been the guide of his life, that "human virtue could equal human calamity."

LEE AND NAPOLEON.

When we read the story of Napoleon fretting away his life at St. Helena, and railing in impotent rage at the reverses of his fortune, we can but wish sometimes that he had put himself at the head of the Old Guard whom Cambronne led to undying fame at Waterloo, and perished on that fateful field ; but where lives the man who does not feel that the world would have sustained an irreparable loss had Robert E. Lee ridden along his lines at Appomattox and put an end to his grand life and sorrow there, as in one single moment of par- donable weakness he suggested he could do ?

When Gordon sent his word that his old corps had by mere attri- tion been reduced to a "frazzle" he knew that the end he had long foreseen had come, and calling his staff officers around him prepared them for the last sad act in the saddest drama in modern times. " What," said one of them, " what will history say of our surrender ? " "That is not the question," Lee replied. "The question is whether it is right, and if it is righl> I take all the responsibility." There spoke the Christian hero! self-poised and self- sustained. As pros- perity had never obscured neither could adversity dim his clear per- ceptions of right nor cause him for one moment to falter in the line of duty. You all remember that when the tidings of the French Emperor's surrender reached Paris, Magenta and Solferino were forgotten, and his lovely wife compelled in the darkness of midnight to abandon her home and fly for her life under the escort of a foreign