The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1870-10-20
From the New York WorId.l
General Lee.

country. High as the tribute IS, it is not too
high. There are many things in the history
of our recent unhappy civil strife upon which
our children's children, calm from our pas
sons, if not wiser in their own day may look
back with chagrin and shame But to the
latest moment Of our national existence it
will be remembered with pride and satisfac-
ton Of the northern people, who fought thro'
to its triumphant end the great war for the
Union, that they paused in the darkest and bit
tercst season of the awful conflict to honor the
high sculed valor and the stainless, though,
as they judged it, the sadly mistaken, zeal
Of g Stonewall Jackson. The devoted fol-
lowers who bore that rugged and religious
Virginian leader to his rest had no need to
fear for him what the poet dreaded for the
hero of Corrunna, that the foemen, marching
past his soldiers grave, would
"O'er his cold ashes uphraid him. &
A great people proved their greatness in
his case by justice to magnificent qualities,
even when arrayed against the cause which
they held to be their own and the cause of
right
What it might we'll have seemed hard even
for American Freemen to do for the lion
hearted lieutenant of the confcderatcd South
in the time Of our greatest danger, it will be
comparatively easy to do for the steadfast
captain of the confederated South in the time
of our success For, if the brave and gifted
man who now has passed away, more than all
others who fought against us, delayed our in
evitable triumph by his constancy and conduct
while hope of victory still glimmered about
his banner, more than all others also who had
fought against u.s. more, too. than many 9th
ers who had fought with US, did he contrib
ute, when the voice Of fate had uttered its
final verdict, to make our triumph complete,
and assured. 1t is poor and base standard
of moral judgment in public or private affairs
which elect this or that act of mans life,
no matter how grave in itself or how wide
reaching in its relations, as the decisive test
of his claims upon the respect of his fellows.
Every man is to be Judged SO far 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 condemned the
course upon which he decided in the most sol
emn and imperative crisis of his life. Of his
genius as 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 untiring army has
borne abundant witness The events which
evoked it are still too near to us, to many
melancholy memories still cluster about the
names of those prodigious battie-felds Of Vir-
ginia, to make it natural or possible for
Northern pen to dwell with complacency upon
the stragetc resources the inexhaustible pa
tience, the calm determination, Of our most
ilustrous antagonist. But if the testimony
of all honorable men who contended against
the great Southern General agrees with the
verdict of all competent foreign critics in
awarding to him place among the most en-
ipent soldiers of history the concord is not
the less absolute of all who knew the man in
the private and personal aspects of his life,
as to his gentleness, his love of justice, his
truth, his elevation of soul. Born Of fami-
| ly identified with the traditions of the oldest
of American Commonwealth, trained to be-
leve that loyalty to Virginia could not posi-
bly, in the end be disloyalty to the republic
which Virginia had done and suffered so much
to iound-RoBERT LEE shraak with sincere
and unfcigned horror from the prospect OF
civil war opened to the country by the seces-
sion of the extreme Southern States; nor is
there any reason to doubt that, when at the
command of Virginia, he finally and regret
fully drew his sword against what he, in com
mon with hundreds Of thousands more of up
right and honest American citizens, regarded
as the unconstitutional attempt of the FEEDER
al Government to arrest secession by force of
arms. he sincerely and sadly believed himself
to be doing his duty to the principles of Amer
lean liberty and Of American law There
was nothing in him Of the conspirator- moth
ing 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 dislikcd him from the first moment Of the
war; and to the last they yielded an unwil-
ling homage only to his skill as command
er, not to his motives as citizen To Rob
ERT LEE the dreadful ordeal of battle was in
deed supreme arbtrament between two vast
and maddened sections Of common country
an arbitrament thrust upon him. not invi-
ted by him; accepted, and not desired The
sternest censor of his action, being just as
we'll as stern, must acqut him of all partici-
patton in the proceedings which brought us
to this awful arbirament, as the general sense
of the whole reunited people of the Union
acquits him of any act done or word uttered
to protract fora single hour beyond the clos
ing of the dread account at Appomattox the
passions and the perturbatons of the strife
Under all the provocations- and they have
been manifold and bitter-addressed by reck-
less and INSCRIPTIONS partizans to the sore and
Inundated South, the broken sword, the 81.
lent dignity, 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 for self
command. Neither Withdrawing himself from
the daily life ano 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 the other. It
was the hope of our fathers when they found
ed the Republic that they had secured for US
through all time an exemption from those
cruel commissions Of civil strife through which
all other nations had been condemned to pass
That hope was vain. But it is still permitted
us to believe, despite the follies and the crimes
IF yoxuar rarnatratan Anrino no .,ost five