CHAPTER IV.

HIS MODEST HUMILITY, SIMPLICITY, AND GENTLENESS.

If ever there lived a man who might of right be proud, it was General Lee! Descended from a long line of illustrious ancestors-allied by marriage to the family of George Washington-of manly beauty, rarely equaled-with honors constantly clustering around his brow, until his fame was coextensive with two continents-it would surely have been excusable had he exhibited, if not a haughty spirit, at least a consciousness of his superiority and his fame.

But modest humility, simplicity, and gentleness, were most conspicuous in his daily life.

Scrupulously neat in his dress, he was always simply attired, and carefully avoided the gold-lace and feathers in which others delighted. During the war, he usually wore a suit of gray, without ornament, and with no insignia of rank save three stars on his collar, which every Confederate colonel was entitled to wear. But he always kept a handsomer (though equally simple) uniform, which he wore upon occasions of ceremony. General W. N. Pendleton-chief of artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia-relates that on the morning of the surrender he found him before daybreak dressed in his neatest style, and that to his inquiries he pleasantly replied: "If I am to be General Grant's prisoner to-day, I intend to make my best appearance."

There was a smaller number of attendants about General

Lee's headquarters, and less display of "the pomp and circumstance of war," than about the quarters of many officers of inferior rank. He was frequently seen riding alone among the troops, or attended by a single courier; more than half the time with hat lifted in response to loving salutations or enthusiastic cheers from his ragged soldiers.

An intelligent gentleman at whose house Major-General John Pope once had his headquarters-on that famous campain in 1862, during which Stonewall Jackson rudely broke. in upon his dream of victory and compelled him, despite his general orders, to look to his "lines of retreat"-gave the writer a vivid contrast between the regal splendor in which this officer moved, and the modest simplicity observed at the headquarters of the great Confederate leader.

One of his brigadiers asked him one day, "Why is it, general, that you do not wear the full insignia of your rank, but content yourself with the stars of a colonel?" 'Oh,' replied the modest chieftain, 'I do not care for display. And the truth is, that the rank of colonel is about as high as I ought ever to have gotten; or, perhaps, I might manage a good cavalry brigade if I had the right kind of subordi nates.'

No name (certainly no name of like rank) appears so conspicuously in General Scott's reports of his Mexican campaign as that of the young engineer-officer, R. E. Lee. At Cerro Gordo, General Scott wrote: I am compelled to make special mention of Captain R. E. Lee, engineer. This officer greatly distinguished himself at the siege of Vera Cruz; was again indefatigable during these operations in reconnoissances, as daring as laborious, and of the utmost value. Nor was he less conspicuous in planting batteries, and in conducting columns to their stations under the heavy fire of the enemy.' General Scott says of him at Chapultepec, that he was 'as distinguished for felicitous execution as for science and daring.' Again: 'Captain Lee, so constantly distinguished, also bore important orders from me, until he fainted from a

wound and the loss of two nights' sleep at the batteries." This distinguished service made him a name among his comrades, and famous throughout the country.

In 1869 I heard General Lee, in conversing with a visiting minister, who had the day before fainted in the pulpit, allude to the incident which General Scott speaks of in such high praise. But he spoke of 'going up to the gates of the city,' and having a 'tedious season,' and 'a slight wound' which brought on a 'fainting-spell,' in such quiet, modest phrase that no one unacquainted with the facts would have supposed for a moment that he was then winning the brightest laurels and laying deep the foundations of his imperishable fame.

Indeed, he rarely alluded at all to his own exploits, and never spoke of them except in the most modest, becoming

manner.

I cannot better illustrate these points further than by giving an extract from the eloquent address of Colonel Charles Marshall-the accomplished military secretary of General Lee-delivered at the Soldiers' Memorial Meeting in Baltimore:

"We recall him as he appeared in the hour of victory, grand, imposing, awe-inspiring, yet self-forgetful and humble. We recall the great scenes of his triumph, when we hailed him victor on many a bloody field, and when above the pæans of victory we listened with reverence to his voice as he ascribed 'all glory to the Lord of hosts, from whom all glories are.' We remember that grand magnanimity that never stooped to pluck the meaner things that grow nearest the earth upon the tree of victory, but which, with eyes turned to the stars, and hands raised toward heaven, gathered golden fruits of mercy, pity, and holy charity, that ripen on its topmost bough beneath the approving smile of the great God of battles.

"We remember the sublime self-abnegation of Chancellorsville, when, in the midst of his victorious legions, who,