Mr. SPEAKER: I never had the pleasure of Gen. LEE's acquaintance, so far
as I could recall, until he entered this House as a Representative of
the district which lies just across the river; but there were many
things in common between us which soon caused a kindliness of feeling
much warmer than the frequency of our association would indicate. It
happened that we were almost of the same age, born within a few weeks of
each other, and that on all great questions of the day we were
singularly alike in our opinions, and, if I may use such an expression,
even in our prejudices.
Amid all the trials of life we two found we had adhered to simple
beliefs of those Southern homes in which we were the reared; that no
advance in civilization, no pretense of progress, had ever obscured our
views as to the olden beliefs and the simpler truths which had been
inwrought into our being by the venerable fathers and beloved mothers
with whom we had been blessed. The substratum of our beliefs was
precisely the same. And we found that we were not ashamed of that
substratum, that we were not given to apologizing for adhering to
so-called "obsolete" traditions or to creeds "that were passing out of
fashion."
We also found that on the political questions of the day we were
similarly in accord. We believed in the same political principles. And
so it was a very rare occurrence that when the roll was called in this
House we were not found voting, even on what seemed to be trivial
matters, upon the same side. It was not strange that with these
coincidences of belief and with our having both served in the
Confederate army and the local accident of the nearness of our seats
which threw us together, there grew up a regard greater than was
indicated by our association outside of this Hall.
If I were to select in my acquaintance him who, as much as any other,
deserved the title, I would say of Gen. LEE that he was a gentleman. All
that had concurred in producing him was of the best. The blood which
gave him life, the soil out of which he grew, the kindly influences
which always surrounded him, the molding powers to which he had been
subjected--all were of the noblest. A son of such houses, reared at such
knees, influenced by such powers, he passed early under the influences
of Harvard. Later he took his young experience as a soldier under Albert
Sidney Johnston. He began his civil life in a delicious home, with the
love of an exquisite young wife. And in the Confederate service he was
associated with the best and the bravest volunteers of the Old Dominion
herself.
It was not strange that the product of such influences should be a
gentleman. All that was courageous, all that was loyal to truth, all
that was courteous to those with whom he came in contact, all that was
gentle and kindly was not only the heritage which he received with his
name and his blood, but it was developed by all the environments which
he was so fortunate as to have surround him. If I were to select a
character of which it might be said that it was round, without angles,
even without salient points, it would be his--not because he was weak,
but because the calmness, the serenity, and the magnificence (if I may
use a word that seems to be hyperbolic) of the equipoise of his
qualities made each of them seem less important than it would have
seemed if other qualities had been less.
It would not be extravagant to apply to him the paraphrase of the
apostolic description of a Christian gentleman--loving without
dissimulation; abhorring the evil; cleaving to the honorable; preferring
to confer honor rather than to receive it; earnest in the work of life,
and careful of time and opportunity to labor; hopeful of all good;
patient in tribulation; forbearing to resent trespass; charitable in
thought and word, as in deed; given to hospitality; at peace with his
own conscience and with God.
We live, Mr. Speaker, in a heroic age. I constantly hear of this being
an age of materialism, of the worship of the "almighty dollar." I
challenge all the past, in all the endeavors of man, to reach a higher
level, to equal the heroism of the age in which we have been called to
perform our part--the devotion to duty, the readiness to make
sacrifices, the willingness to give all for the truth which have marked
our generation--the era in which we have to act our part.
This simple, kindly, unaffected, modest gentleman; this man, with his
sweet calm smile, who met us every day, passing in and out with a
certain reticence of modesty, was himself but the type of the age in
which he lived and of the people from whom he sprang. All modest as he
was, he had given up everything at the call of duty. All simple and
kindly as he seemed to be, he had at the head of charging squadrons
captured cannon, and with more heroic endurance had lain without
complaint in the cell of solitary confinement. He carried about with him
in the simple modesty of his everyday life the heart that at a moment's
notice was ready to still its beating at the call of duty; and with the
same simplicity, with the same freedom from ostentation, with the same
delicious smile, he would have walked into the jaws of death if it had
become him as a gentleman to do so.
To live in such an age, to be associated with such men--and, thank God,
they are not uncommon amongst us--the bar at which I practice, the
tables at which I sit in the kindliness of social intercourse, the men
with whom I have been blessed enough to be called into contact, the very
strangers who call on business at my house, rank among them men just
like unto him. I say to live in such an age, to be associated with such
men, to play a part, however obscure, in such drama, make life worth the
living; make the hereafter nobler for him who has been so blessed.
Mr. Speaker, to-day, in the midst of this the ending of the nineteenth
century, we who will soon pass away, we who are but the remnants of a
generation of war, can proudly hand over to those who shall come after
us the example of lives that in war feared nothing but God, in peace
strove for nothing but the good of the people.