The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-10-21

modestly to say so2 We see nothing in the
honors paid to the memory of Lee by his
late associates in a desperate, protraoted
struggle which should incite or would Justify
animadversion. And, as to the sub official
who undertook to display the United States
flag at half-mast on Federal custom-house
in sympathy with the feelings of those ssso-
ciates, he probably knew no better, and has
been sufficiently rebuked for his error.
But holding meetings in Northern cities to
honor the memory of the dead leader of the
Confederate hosts seems to us, to speak
softly, unwise and misohievous. It tends to
revive recollections that are happily fading
from the general mind, and to infame diffe-
repces that were better wholly effaced and
forgotten. No one need be told that General
Lees private life was exemplary, nor that
those who knew and loved him best esteemed
him living and honor him dead as a man and
q Christian. The public cannot help under
standing that the honors here paid to his
memory wouldnever have been proffered had
he closed his care er as he began it-a loyal,
faithful soldier of the Union Is it we'll to
incite such reflections? With great respect
for the attitude and bearing of General Lee
ever since as well as prior to his Confederate
career, we think not
AT all events, be careful that Truth is not
fouted in doing honor to the memory of one
whose renown has cost our country at least a
billion of national debt and the lives of one
hundred thousand Of her noblest sons.
writer in the Age Philadelphia), who
seems to be General Cad dwalader, after an
emphatic but not indiscriminate laudation of
General Lees military genius, says:-
SIT is not our aim to-day to critcise, to brJach
political questions but to pay our tribute OF respect
and honor to great man, who fought fairly and
nobly on the side he took, sincerely believing it to
be- according to his light, the side to which patriot
ism and honor summoned him. There are too
many men in the world who willfully go wrong from
base and venal and selfish motives Let us be
charitable 10 the brave and good who, if they err,
err because human judgment is fallible the circu
stances OF their position difficult, and the path Of
Duty which they wish to follow is not to their eyes,
clearly discernible."
Now, we will not say that Gen. Lee did
not feel obliged to obey the call of Virginia
in preference to that of the Union; but we do
surely know, from his own unequivocal testi-
moDy that he did not believe that Virginia or
her Southern sisters had adequate reason for
resisting and seeking to subvert the authority
of that Union. He obeyed her summons, be-
cause he thought she had paramount claim
to his allegiance, and not because he deemed
her constrained by intolerable wrongs to
break away from that Union to which he
owed SO much He said this in substance,
In letter to his sister, long since published.
General Lee was educated for a soldier a,
the expense, not of Virginia, but the Union.
He could not have been SO educated without
taking stringent onth of unqualified fidelity
to that Union-an oath of perpetual obliga
tion. Had he presented himself at West Point
and said, when the oath was rendered, 81
take this with the distinct understanding that
if Virginia shall ever call me to fight against
the Union, shall hold myself not only al
liberty but under obligation to do So, his
proffer must have been reje ,ted and he turned
away uninstructed. But he took the oath as
it was propounded, without avowed reserva
ton, and afterward, as official head of the
Military Academy, administered or caused il
to be administered to others. That he should
have felt constrained thereafter in defance
of his own conviction that she should not
have seeded, to follow Virginia into the
bloody abyss of secession and treason, seems
to us mournful instance of human imper
fection and frailty, which no loyal soldier OF
the Union) which Gen. Cadwallader, we pre-
sume, claims to be) should have brought into
public view without deeply lamenting if mo-
pointedly reproving it.