Mr. PRESIDENT: It is a difficult and delicate task to draw with justice
and propriety the character of a public man. Fulsome panegyrics have
often been pronounced upon the character of the dead either out of
flattery to the deceased or to gratify the ambitious desires of the
living.
In paying a tribute to WILLIAM H.F. LEE I am not influenced by any such
questionable views. To do honor to his memory I need only say what
justice and truth dictate. There is little danger, in speaking of him,
of committing the offense of exaggerated eulogy. There is more danger of
doing the injustice of understatement in commemorating a character so
rounded and symmetrical.
As a son, Gen. LEE's filial piety was so marked as to make him an
example worthy of all imitation by the youth of his country. In every
post of honor or trust to which he was called--and they were many and
exalted ones--he met his engagements with such fidelity and courage as
never to incur censure and seldom provoke criticism.
His bearing as a private citizen was of such dignity and benevolence as
to secure the love, while it evoked the admiration, of all who knew him.
His character was made up of blended chivalry and courtesy and adorned
with the mild luster of a religious faith.
He was frank and open, plain and sincere, speaking only what he thought
without reserve, and promising only what he designed to perform.
As he was plain and sincere, so he was firm and steady in his purposes;
courteous and affable, he was not influenced by servile compliance to
his company, approving or condemning as might be most agreeable to them.
He was a man of courage and constancy, qualities which, after all, are
the ornaments and defense of a man.
He had in the highest degree the air, manners, and address of a man of
quality; politeness with ease, dignity without pride, and firmness
without the least alloy of roughness. He loved refined society, but he
had great respect and sympathy for those who had been reared in simple
habits and the toils of life.
He possessed an even and equal temper of mind. Those who best knew him
can testify of him what has often been asserted of his great father,
that they never heard an acrimonious speech fall from his lips; that his
whole temper was so controlled by justice and generosity that he was
never known to disparage with an envious breath the fame of another or
to withhold due praise of another's worth.
Mr. President, the friends of Gen. LEE do not claim for him brilliant
talents and the gifts of genius. It is doubtless a beneficent ordination
of Providence that the best interests of society are not solely
dependent on what in common parlance is called genius. Fortunately for
the good of mankind, great gifts and powers of mind are not
indispensable to our happiness or to a safe and salutary development of
social conditions.
Patient industry and impregnable virtue are the essential cardinal
qualities that make the man, in the vast majority of cases, worthy of
love and honor, and which conserve the best interests of the world.
That man who in his career and relations to society has gone on from day
to day and from trust to trust, never disappointing but always realizing
every just expectation, it seems to me is the character who deserves of
his fellow-men the highest meed of praise, and gives in his person and
example the surest guaranty that the world will be all the better for
his agency in shaping its affairs.
The friends of Gen. LEE enjoy the perfect assurance that in every walk
of life, on every occasion when duty called him, his responses were ever
marked by a dignified and intelligent performance of the tasks assigned
him.
What higher honor can we ask for him than this: that weighty as were the
responsibilities that devolved upon him by inheritance and high as the
expectations which were the natural implications of this inheritance, he
fully and nobly met them. Much as was expected of him, he more than
realized the claims and obligations of a noble lineage. His
fellow-citizens and his contemporaries regard his career as an honor and
his companionship as a delight and a resource that adds poignancy to
their grief in the loss of so loved and valued a friend.
I might refer to the incidents of his military career to illustrate his
courage and fidelity, but it may not be considered appropriate to the
time and the occasion. It is cheering, however, to believe that in this
exalted body there is not to be found that spirit of truculent
uncharitableness which refuses any credit to an honorable adversary.
Time, which touches all things with mellowing hand, has softened the
recollections of past contests, and they who looked upon him as a foe
now only remember the glory of the fight, and would join hands with us
to weave the garland of his fame.
Securely may the friends and admirers of this noble character rest in
the belief that his name for generations to come will be enrolled in the
glorious list of worthies that has for all time made the name of
Virginia illustrious and among the foremost of all the commonwealths of
the ages past.