Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1866-09-18
High Tribute to the Character of Gen.
r. E. Lee.

In long editorial article calling for a sub
scription of 100000 to Washington College
by the friends and admirers of Cen Lee in
England, the London STANDARD Of August
18th, speaks of him as follows
g There is no living hero-there are f9+7,
if any, among those whose names shine with
the purest lustre in histOry-9yhose character
has commanded so high tribute of affection
and admiration from their friends, Of respect
and honor from their foes, as that of 6 en-.
Lee. No life more perfectly heroic, no rep
utation more untarnished even by the minor
blemlshes which are not uncommon!y found
in union with the highest heroism, has ever
been connected with great national struggle.
No shade of vanity or egotism, nothing of the
selt-wlll or Petulance so offer characteristic
OF conscious genius, no tinge of affectation,
no faint even of the pride almost inseparable
from ordinary greatness Of mind, which can
endure everything but humiliation, and re-
CARDS submission as disgrace, alloy the simple
grandeur OF the Virginian soldiers nature
A plety without the shadow of Pharisaism a
sense OF duty to which the sacrifice of every
personal feeling and interest appears a matter
OF course, having marked his whole course
aud guided his every public act, whether as
a soldier or as citizen. A family connec-
ton and the nearest living representative of
the great champion of American Indepen-
dence, General Lee has been the Washington
OF the Confederate war +; like Washington, a
man whom envy dared hate" but without
even the one dark stain of doubt, if not of
dishonor, which the death of Major Andre
has left on the memory of his prototype
No more = seltess man and stainless gentle
man " ever lived no soldior ever set more
10 aYO Of fbo ~, Il
honor, chiValrc generosity and manly sim
plicityj no great man ever retired into OBJ
security, after Witnessing alike the ruin of his
ceuse and the destruction of his private for
tune, with more Of Christian patience and
unshaken fortitude.
vi his military achievements, we need not
speak. 1t is enough to say that nearly all his
victories were won against enormous odds. and
that his four years defcuce of Virginia has
few parallels in history as an example of great
results accomplished with small means and at
fearful disadvantage. What is now more in
teresting to remember is the personal charac-
ter OF the man, as displayed in the various
exigencies of that trying struggle; the sim
pie honesty and kindly feeling which prompt
ed him to console his soldiers as they recoil
ed from the cannon-crowned heights of G ct
tysburg, with the assurance, 'sIt is all my
pronounced, when Stonewail jackson fell.
81 would wish, for the sake of our cause, that
l had been disabled rather than you;" the
Christian chivalry, which no outrage could
provoke to retaliation, which, after Virginia
had been rendered a desert, withheld the
army that invaded Pennsylvania from infict-
ing the most trivial injury on person or pro-
perty, which, when his own estates had been
plundered ravaged and confscatcd, took care
to protect the houses and property of his ene-
mics the horrors of useless bloodshed which
withstood the cry for retribution excited by
the murder of Southern prisoners in cold
blood, and supported the resolve of the
President that unless the actual murderers
were taken no blood should be shed but on
the field of battle; the touching unselfshness
of his last words to his disbanding army on
the sorrowful 9th of April, Il have done my
best for ou:"-But It was when all was over
when the chief of a great and long victorious
army was private man and paroled prison>
er-that the peculiar gsefatpess of Gen. Lees
natnre shines out with uneqtialled bright
ness"