Robert E. Lee: The Father

19. “There was no surrender at Appomattox, and no withdrawal from the field which committed our people and their children to a heritage of shame and dishonor. No cowardice on any battlefield could be as base and shameful as the silent acquiescence in the scheme which was teaching the children in their homes and schools that the commercial value of slavery was the cause of the war, that prisoners of war held in the South were starved and treated with a barbarous inhumanity, that Jefferson Davis and Robert E  Lee were traitors to their country and false to their oaths, that the young men who left everything to resist invasion, and climbed the slopes of Gettysburg and died willingly on a hundred fields were rebels against a righteous government.”

The Rev. James Power Smith, last surviving member of Jackson’s staff, 1907

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Continued from Part I.

“He [Lee] was a superb specimen of manly grace and elegance…There was about him a stately dignity, calm poise, absolute self-possession, entire absence of self-consciousness, and gracious consideration for all about him that made a combination of character not to be surpassed…His devotion to his invalid wife, who for many years was a martyr to rheumatic gout, was pathetic to see…His tenderness to his children, especially his daughters, was mingled with a delicate courtesy which belonged to an older day than ours – a courtesy which recalls the preux chevalier of knightlier times.”[1] – Margaret J. Preston.