The remarks made in the preface to the volume on "American Founders" are
applicable also to this volume on "American Leaders." The lecture on
Daniel Webster has been taken from its original position in "Warriors
and Statesmen" (a volume the lectures of which are now distributed for
the new edition in more appropriate groupings), and finds its natural
neighborhood in this volume with the paper on Clay and Calhoun.
Since the intense era of the Civil War has passed away, and Northerners
and Southerners are becoming more and more able to take dispassionate
views of the controversies of that time, finding honorable reasons for
the differences of opinion and of resultant conduct on both sides, it
has been thought well to include among "American Leaders" a man who
stands before all Americans as the chief embodiment of the "cause" for
which so many gallant soldiers died--Robert E. Lee. His personal
character was so lofty, his military genius so eminent, that North and
South alike looked up to him while living and mourned him dead. His
career is depicted by one who has given it careful study, and who,
himself a wounded veteran officer of the Union army, and regarding the
Southern cause as one well "lost," as to its chief aims of Secession and
protection to Slavery, in the interest of civilization and of the South
itself, yet holds a high appreciation of the noble man who is its chief
representative. The paper on "Robert E. Lee: The Southern Confederacy,"
is from the pen of Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, Chancellor of the University
of Nebraska.
NEW YORK, September, 1902.