Billy Sunday paid the following tribute to the Christian character of
General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate forces in the Civil
War:
“There is no man I so delight to honor as the man who is true. There is
no woman I so delight to honor as the woman who is true. There is no one
I so abhor as a man or woman whose words are untruth and whose promises
are as vapor. I may differ from a man in politics or religion, and if he
is living up to his highest ideals, even if I think those ideals wrong, I
respect him and I will do my best to clear up his errors and lead him to
the sunlit hills of God’s pardon.
“At the beginning of the Civil War General Robert E. Lee said to General
Scott that he was a Union man at heart, but that his native state of
Virginia had seceded and that as a loyal son he felt he must cast his
fortunes with the Confederacy. As the war proceeded, Lee saw the bright
hopes of the Confederacy fade, saw its government overturned and broken at
his feet. When the end came he was a prematurely old man, his health fled,
his fortune gone, his property at Arlington confiscated. At that time of
despair there came to him the officers of the Louisiana Lottery company,
offering to make him its president.
“‘But, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I don’t know anything about the lottery
business.’
“‘That makes no difference,’ they said, ‘we do. We want the use of your
name, and we will give you $10,000 a year.’
“General Lee buttoned his coat over his sunken breast, brushed back his
gray hair from his forehead, and said: ‘Gentlemen, my good name and my
self respect are all that is saved from the wreck, and they are not for
sale. You cannot buy Robert E. Lee.’
“My father was a Union soldier. I am a loyal American, but I say that
Robert E. Lee was one of the noblest Christian characters this country has
ever produced, and that Stonewall Jackson was another.”