Year: 1874

as he demonstrated at Charlottesville, where
he took Stonewall Jacksons place and led an
army corps in very severe engagement; but
his special fitness was for cavalry service. His
tastes were those of horseman. Perpetual
activity was necessity of his existence, and
he enjoyed nothing so much as danger. Au-
dacity, his greatest virtue as cavalry COM
mander, would have been his besetting sin in
any other position. Inasmuch as it is the
business of the cavalry to live as constantly
as possible within gunshot of the enemy, his
recklessness stood him in excellent stead as
general of horse, but it is at least questionable
whether his want Of caution would not have
led to disaster if his command had been Of
less mobile sort. His critics say he was vain,
and he was so, as boy is. He liked to win
the applause of his friends, and he liked still
better to astonish the enemy, glorying in the
thought that his foemen must admire his "in,-
pudence," as he called it, while they dreaded
its manifestation. He was continually doing
things of an extravagantly audacioussort, with
no other purpose, seemingly, than that of ma
king people stretch their eyes in wonder. He
enjoyed the admiration of the enemy far more,
I think, than he did that of his friends. This
fact was evident in the care he took to make
himself conspicuous parsonage in every
place of danger. He would ride at some dis
tance from his men in skirmish, and in every
possible way attract dangerous attention to
himself. His slouch hat and long plume
marked him in every battle, and made him
target for the rihemen to shoot at. In all
this there was some vanity, if we choose to
call it so, but it was an excellent sort of vanity
for cavalry chief to cultivate. I cannot
learn that he ever boasted of any achievement,
or that his vanity was ever satisfied with the
things already done. His audacity was due
I think, to hissense of humor, not less than to
his love of applause. He would laugh uproar-
iously over the astonishment he imagined the
Federal officers must feel after one of his Pc
culiarly daring or sublimely impudent per-
formances. When, after capturing large
number of horses and mules on one of his
raids, he seized telegraph station and sent a
despatch to General Meigs, then quartermas
ter general of the United States Army, COM
planning that he could not afford to come after
animals of so poor quality, and urging that
officer to provide better ones for capture in
future, he enjoyed the joke quite as heartily
as he did the success which made it possible.


GENERAL LEE.


General Lee had sententious way Of say
ing things which made all his utterances Pc
culiarly forceful. His language was always
happily chosen, and single sentence from his
lips often left nothing more to be said. As
good an example of this as any, perhaps, was
his comment upon the military genius Of Gen.
Meade Not very long after that officer took
command of the Army of the Potomac, a skir-
mish occurred, and none of General Lees staff
officers being present, an acquaintance of mine
was detailed as his personal aid for the day,
and I am indebted to him for the anecdote
Some one asked our chief what he thought Of
the new leader on the other side, and in re-
ply Lee said, General Meade will commit no
blunder in my front, and if commit one he
will make haste to take advantage of it." tits
difficult to see what more he could have said
on the subject.


saw him for the last time during the war;
at Amelia Court House, in the midst Of the
final retreat, and I shall never forget the
heart-broken expression his face wore, or the
still sadder tones of his voice as he gave me
the instruction had come to ask. The army
was in utter confusion. 1t was already evi-
dent that we were being beaten back upon
James river, and could never hope to reach
the Roanoke, ON which stream alone there
might be possibility of making stand.
General Sheridan was harrassing our broken
columns at every step, and destroying US by
piece-meal. Worse than all, General Lee had
been deserted by the terrified Government in
the moment of his supreme need, and the
food had been snatched from the mouths Of
the famished troops Gas is more fully explain
ed in another chapter,) that the flight of the
president and his followers might be hastened
The load put thus upon Lees shoulders was a
very heavy one for 80 conscientious man as
he to bear and knowing, as every Southerner
does his habit of taking upon himself all
wonder that he was sinking under the burden
His face was still calm, as it always was, but
his carriage was no longer erect, as his soldiers
had been used to see it. The troubles of those
last days had already ploughed great furrows
in his forehead. His eyes were red as if with
weeping; his cheeks sunken and haggard ; his
face colorless. No one who looked upon him
then, as he stood there in full view of tie dis
astrous end, can ever forget the intense agony
written upon his features And yet he was
calm, self:possessed, and deliberate. Failure
and the sufferings of his men grieved him
sorely, but they could not daunt him, and his
moral greatness was never more manifest than
during those last terrible days. Even in the
final correspondence with General Grant,
Lees manlness and courage and ability to
endure lie on the surface, and it is not the
least honorable thing in General Grants his
tory that he showed himself capable of appre-
ciating the character of this manly foeman,


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