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Rh life to preserve that of his leader. I remember well the effect of this order upon the army; they knew what he did was right, but I am sure I am in the bounds of truth when I say that it not only commanded the approval, but excited the pride of the army, and there was not one heart that did not inwardly feel that he was as good as he was great. It was obeyed almost literally; each man felt that his personal honor and the good name of Lee and his country were involved in it, and the public sentiment of the army frowned down any effort at disobedience.

But in contemplation of Lee I forgot myself and my task. I cannot paint the portrait, I must leave that to other and better artists. It has been done and will be done again. I have seen him in the storm of battle, in the hour of victory, when a nation sung his praises, and in the day of defeat, when no man blamed. I have seen him in the last days of the Confederacy when his grand army, the victors in so many battles, diminished in numbers, despondent in spirits and almost without hope, was in a steady and constant process of disintegration, night after night, hundreds of the best men would desert because they believed the cause was hopeless, and I have conferred with him as to the remedy. In all this he was the same quiet, dignified, lofty imperturbable self sacrificing soldier, without an enemy, without a rival. In all that illustrious army of Confederate officers—who in love of country and proud ambition carved their names in deathless deeds upon the escutcheon of the Confederacy—there was not one that envied Lee, not one that would have detracted the tithe of a hair from his fame. Whoever was second in this war, Robert E. Lee was and is and ever will be, by universal consent of soldiers, civilians at home and abroad, without a peer.

The same order, as we have seen, that removed McClellan appointed Gen'l Burnside commander of the Army of the Potomac. He had the greatest admiration for McClellan, and assumed a command which he had before declined with reluctance and distrust of his abilities. He was a good man, a good soldier, but without genius. His plan of the coming campaign, in his own