Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1900-02-22
ROBERT {. LEE.

At the request of our Leetown read
ers we publish the following paper writ
ten by Miss Mary d. Trussell, Historian
of the Leetown Chapter of the United
Daughters of the Confederacy, and read
at the recent celebration of General
Lees birthday
Robert Z. Lee! The very repetl-
ton Of the name thrills every Southern
heart And what a privilege to cele-
brate his birth-the beginning Of a
life, not how long, but how well-liyed
"a life, indeed, in the highest sense
of the word.
January 19, 1872, at the second
anniversary of General Lees birthday,
Lieutenaut-General J. A. Early made
an address before Washington and Lee
University from which some Of the
following quotations and comparisons
are taken. In this address Lee s
movements are traced from the seces-
sion of Virginia to the surrender at
Appomattox.
1.-The secession Of his native State
found him Colonel in the I. S. Army,
with character and reputation which
would have insured him the highest
military honors within the gift Of the
U. S. Government In fact, it has been
said that the command of the army
intended for the invasion Of the South
was rendered him"
And of the surrender he says: "Fi-
nally from mere exhaustion, less than
eight thousand men with arms in their
hands, of the noblest army that had
ever fought in the tide Of times, were
surrendered at Appomattox to an
army of one hundred and fifty thou
sand men the sword of Robert E..
Lee, without a blemish on it, was
8heathed forever; and the flag, to
which he had added such lustre, was
furled, to be henceforth embalmed in
the afectionate remembrance Of those
who had remained faithful during all
our trials, and will DO so to the end. ~
"Who is it that stands out the
grandest figure in that last sad drama ?
Is it the victor? Victor over what ?
Can it be possible that any adherent
to the cause Of our enemies can recur
to that scene at Appomattoz Court
House without blushing? On that
occasion, the vast superiority of the
Confederate commander over his an
tagonist, in all the qualities Of a great
captain, and Of the Confederate soldier
over the Northern, was made most
manifest to the dullest comprehension !;
and none were made more sensible
Of it than our adversaries. General
Lee had not been conquered in battle,
but surrendered because he had no
longer an army with which to give
battle. What he surrendered was the
skeleton, the mere ghost of the Army
of Northern Virginia, which had been
gradually worn down by the combined
agencies Of numbers, ,steam-power, rail-
roads and mechanism, and all the re-
sources Of physical science. 1t had, in
fact, been engaged in a struggle, not
only against the mere brute power Of
man, but against all the elements Of
fire, air, earth and water ....
After drawing parallels between
Lee and Alexander, Cesar, Narlbor-
ough, Wellington and others, Early
called attention to the fact that none
of these renowned chieftains Of the
Old World had to contend against the
new elements in the art Of war which
were brought to bear against our arm
les and their commanders. Then,
Coming to this side Of the water, We
may draw parallel between General
Lee and our great Washington in many
respects for, in their great selt-oom-
mand, in their purity and unseldsh-
ness of character, there was a great
similarity; but the military operations
of General Lee were on so much
grander a scale than those of Wash
ington, and the physical changes in
the character of the country, wrought
by the adaptation OF steam-pOwer, and
the invention Of railroads and the TEL
sgrapb, were SO great, that there cease
to be any points Of comparison be-
tween them as soldiers"
In speaking Of Lee and jackson he
said, "Let US be thankful that our
cause had two such champions, and
that in their characters We can furnish
the world at large the best assurance
of the rightfulness Of the principle for
which they (and we) fought. " Jack
son once said, General Lee is phe-
nomenon. He is the only man I would