Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 29.djvu/104

 88 Southern Historical Society Papers.

affection which later grew into worship. He had none of the arts by which lovers of popularity seek to ingratiate themselves with their subordinates. In his intercourse with soldiers of whatever rank, so far as my knowledge goes, General Lee never unbent from the some- what formal courtesy habitual to him. The magnetism was there though, if not perceptible, and it wrought devotion and implicit con- fidence in the hearts of the coldest.

Even before we met the enemy under the direction of that steady eye, he was all in all to us. After the first trial, when McClellan had been driven to the plains of Berkeley, the army of Virginia pinned its faith to him with a tenacity which no subsequent disaster was able to shake. And that mere corporal's guard of us who still survive, our ranks growing thinner hour by hour, despite the fact that the mechanic grasp of fate denied the victor's laurel to that brow, we who gloried the more in his initial triumphs because they were his, who felt the sting of final disaster more keenly because it pierced so cruelly that great heart, we believe in him still.

Purest, truest, greatest, there was none like him, none ! "What- ever record leaps to light, his never shall be shamed !

Truth walked beside him always, From his childhood's early years, Honor followed as his shadow, Valor lightened all his cares; And he rode that grand Virginian Last of all the Cavaliers !

To resume for a moment the parallel previously drawn, I think that in the qualities of their military genius, Washington and Lee I name them in the order of time had many points in common. Fabius was not more adroit in defense than either, nor more dex- terous in the husbanding of a small force against preponderent num- bers. But the characteristic of both was pugnacity, and the campaigns of Lee in Virginia, as those of Washington in the Jerseys, were superb examples of what is technically known as the offensive-defen- sive. The vigilance of both was sleepless; both were acute in pen- etrating the designs and anticipating the movements of the enemy; neither ever willingly neglected an opportunity to take the initiative.

From the swoop upon McClellan' s right, through the campaigns against Pope, in the battles of 1863, in his manner of meeting Grant's