Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1870-11-01
The Death of General Lee.
C0mments Of Ae Mortkern lPsess
From The New York world.


as human judgment may be passed upon him
at all, by the tenor of the motives to which
the main current of his days has responded
Judged by this standard, the career of Robert
Lee must command the deliberate admiration
even of those who most earnestly condemn
the course upon which he decided in the most
solemn and imperative crisis of his life OF
his genius military commander we do not
now speak. To that the unanimous voice of
all the true and gallant men who fought our
long battle out with him and his untiriug
army has borne abudant witness. The events
which evoked it are still too near to us, too
many melancholy memories still cluster about
the names of those prodigious battle fields of
Virginia to make it natural or possible for
Northern pen to dwell with complacency upon
the strategic resources the inexhaustible pa
tience, the calm determination, of our most
illustriOus antagonist.
But If the testimony of all honorable men
who contendei against the great Southern
General agrees with the verdict of all compe-
tent foreign critics in awarding to him place
among the most eminent soldiers of history
the concord is not less absolute of all who
know the man in the private and personal as
poets of his life, as TO his gentleness, his love
of justice, his truth and his elevation of soul.
Born of family identified with the traditions
of the oldest of American Commonwealths,
trained to believe that loyalty to Virginia
could not possibly in the end be disloyalty to
the republic which Virginia has done and
suffered so much to found-Robert L. Lee
shrank with sincere and unfeigned horror
from the prospect of civil war opened to the
country by the secession of the extreme
Southern States DOR is there any reason to
doubt that, when at the command of Virginia,
be finally and regretfully drew his sword
against what he, in common with hundreds of
thousands more of upright and honest Amer,
lean citizens, regarded as the unconstitutional
attempt of the Federal government to arrest
secession by force of arms, he sincerely and
sadly believed himself to be doing his duty to
the principles Of American liberty and of
American law. There was nothing in him of |
the couspirator, nothing of the fanatic. He |
fought neither for slavery nor for empire |
The men at the South who fought for either
or for both distrusted and disiked him from
the first moment~of the war; and to the last |
they yielded an unwilling homage only to his |
skill as q commander, not to his motives as a !
citizen. To Robert Lee the dreadful ordeal |
of battle was indeed as supreme arbitrament
between tTo vast and maddened sections of a
common cOuntry-an abitrament thrust upon |
him, not invited by him !; accepted and not
desired. The steruest censor of his action,
being just as we'll as stern, must acquit him
Of all participation in the proceedings which !
brought US to this awful arbitrament, as the
general sense of the whole reunited people of
the Union acquits him of any act done
word uttered to protect for single hour be-
yOnd the closing of the dread account at Ap- |
pomattox the passions and the perturbations
of the strife.
I'll. h. Al, L.,
been manifold and bitter-addressed by reck- |
less and unscrupulous partisans to the sore and
humiliated South, the broken sword-the ST. !
lent dguity-of Robert Lee have pleaded |
more elOquently than words with the people, |
who had learned to trust him as their head
and hand and eye, for patience and self.com-
mand. Neither. Withdrawing himself from |
the daily life and conversation of the commu- |
nifty in which he lived, nor thrusting himself
upon the public affairs of the nation, he has
earned an enduring title TO something more
than admiration from the one, to something
more than forgiveness from tho other.
FROM the New York Sun.
= = 1t is not necessary to trace Gen.
Lees career through the four years war, to
which this was the prelude, and in which it is
but just to say that he displayed military
ability and genius of the very highest order,
and won a reputation that will live in history
for all time. 1t is but recently, and in the
light Of the great conflicts now deluging
France with blood, that a British authority
pronounced General Lee the greatest General |
of the age: Tho passions aroused by the des-
perate struggle in which he performed so con-
spicuOus part are not yet sufficiently allayed |
in this country to enable Americans to judge |
impartially as TO his merits in comparison with |
those of the prominent actors on the Union
side but while there is no dissent to his title
to rank among the greatest of them in mill
tary ability, there is also no dispute to his |
superiority over all who served in the Southern !
cause.
His death will awaken most profound and |
honest manifestations of grief throughout the |
entire South, and very many people in the |
North will forget political differences beside !
the open grave of the dead chieftain, and drop |
a tear of sorrow on his bier. And whatever !
may be the verdict as to his career in public
life, the universal expression will be that in
General Lee an able soldier, a sincere Chris
tian, and an honest man has Just been taken
from earth.
From the Richmond State Journal (Radfcal.)
Our morning contemporaries appear in deep
mourning for the death of General Robert f.
Lee. 1t is right that they should do So A
great and good man of their own State has
fallen, whom they especially delighted to
honor, and whom all the world at least re-
spected. 1t is not for us, while the funeral
bells are tolling in our ears, and while the dead
soldier still lies unburied, to undertake re-
view of the life of this eminent Virginian.
Though born in the North, we have ever
admired him as great soldier, and kind
and generous man. When the day arrives,
which is still distant that tho calm history of
these disjointed times may be written by an
impartial and unprejudiced pen, then justice
will be done to all who took part in the great
struggle, and each will receive his due share
of historic honors We think that in coming
tina a rna-ica and Amo-;cans all oyer this