Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/324

320

The Chicago Times-Herald says that Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, president of Brown University, proclaimed Gen. Robert E. Lee the most valiant and most heroic military genius of modern times from the stage of Central Music Hall in a lecture the night of December 6th. "He did not discredit the bravery and valor of the leaders under whom he himself fought," says the Times-Herald. "He gave the head of the Confederate army more glory because he had to face killing problems in addition to the ordinary puzzles of the severest fight that history knows. The oration was one of masterful eloquence, delivered by a man built for an orator, with a rolling voice and the presence of a giant. He spoke with the air of powerful and firmest conviction. There were many in the audience who saw readily how he stood before the trustees of his institution last summer and told them he would recall his resignation and become president again, with the understanding that he was to think and act as he had thought and acted or might think or act in the future on matters of public interest. The trustees agreed.

"Dr. Andrews talked in Evanston in the afternoon. His theme there was General William Tecumseh Sherman. He took occasion to give the man who was called crazy at the beginning of the war the honor of executing its culminating features the march to the sea. He praised General Lee in equal terms at the night lecture, pictured the great intellect of the lost cause as one of the most powerful of all American history. He thought the General carried out the instinct which was born with him the love for the art of war and the heart to carry on war inherited from an ancestry which could be traced to one of the fiercest of the companions of William, who sailed away from the shores of Normandy and conquered England.

"General Lee joined the Confederacy because Virginia asked him to,' said the doctor. 'He was a Virginian. The call of Virginia to any of her sons is the voice of law and duty.