The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-07-14
THE LOYALTY OF LEE.
The Impression Made BY Judge
Speer's Emory College Address.

The Impression Made BY Judge
speer's Emory College Address.
The following editorial in The Out
look of July II will indicate the i'm
preston made on the liberal thought
of the country by Judge Speer's EN-
DRY College address on Gen. Lee:
The Loyalty of Robert E. Lee.
"At the commencement exercises of
Emory College, at oxford, Ga, Judge
Emory Speer made an eloquent plea
for the honoring of Robert E. Lee, the
commander of the Confederate armies,
as a national hero. After a brief ac-
count of Gen. Lees ancestry and edu-
cation and an explanation of the mo-
tives which determined his decision
to support the Confederate cause in
spite of his dread and hatred of dis
union Judge Speer sketched in warm
and vivid Southern phrase his career
and compartment during the war, and,
recounting incidents and estimates
throwing light on his character, at
once spiritual and human, chiValrous
and practical, aggressive and unseltsh,
brave and mild, humble and dignif1ed,
concluded with an appeal to the ma
ton to accept Lee among the great
patriots of America.
We call attention to this speech of
Judge Speer's, not simply because of
the honor it offers to a man who was
worthy of admiration equally for his
consummate military genius his gentle
courtliness and his high Christian
character, but more especially
because of the explanation which
it offers for the course of
a man of these qualities in leading
hic country
flag.
Robert f. Lee was never an adVo-
cate of secession. He was a devoted
supporter of the constitution and an
earnest believer in the Union. When
the acts of secession were passed and
the union was menaced, he was dis
tressed and dismayed as truly as any
Northerner. In a letter to his wife
in January, 1861, from (which Judge
Speer quotes, he says of Washington:
How his spirit would be grieved could
he see the wreck of his mighty labors!
will not. however, permit myself to
believe, until all grounds of hope are
gone that the fruit of his noble deeds
will be destroyed and his precious adj
vice and virtuous example will so soon
be forgotten" And again, writing on
the same day. he says of the dissolu-
ton of the Union that it would be the
SIGdIGSI Ol CdldIilllGSs all dtNuAlQAeb-
ton of all the evils we complain of,
and nothing but revolution" Judge
Speer, himself a Southern man, sums
up Lees attitude with these words:
He new that so soon as the cohesive
influence of present danger was with
drawn, the states to compose the Con-
federacy might again separate. He
clearly saw that instead of a proud
ana united nation, which was winning
4. j. II - IL,
respect of the world, the American
states, North and South, might soon
present a shameful spectacle, the de-
spair of the friends of popular gov
eminent everywhere, snarl of wrang
ling communities. He might have
seen the soil of the opposing republics
in war after war drenched in fra tricidal
blood and the genius of American
freedom perish by the folly and fury
of those who once worshipped at her
shrine
For a man with such devotion for
the Union and such dread of anything
that might destroy it to give himself
to the cause which aimed at it's de-
struction would have been absolutely
impossible except for the strongest
conceivable motive. Robert E. Lee
found that motive in his loyalty to
his convictions. No motive of self
move him even when coupled with his
belief in the prime Importance of the
Union He was offered the command
of the armies of the Union in which
he believed pasSionately; but he an
swered the messenger from President
Lincoln with the exclamation: Mr..
Blair, l look upon secession as anarchy.
If l owned the 4,O00 900 slaves in the
South, 1 would sacrifice them all to
the Union; but how can l draw my
sword upon Virginia, my native state?"
To him duty meant duty to his state;
honor meant going with his state TO
victory or defeat. We can well re-
lieve that he inflicted upon his own
sensitive soul wounds which never
wholly healed when he took up the
cause of disunion which ne dreaded,
the cause of anarchy which he de-
nounced, for the sake of the state to
which he felt himself in highest duty
bound to cleave.
1t is hardly possible that any man