ach State had its way. The secession of
Virginia had consequences even more important than the loss to the
Union of a powerful State. General Robert E. Lee, a Virginian, then in
Washington, was esteemed by General Scott to be the ablest officer in
the service. Lincoln and his Secretary of War desired to confer on him
the command of the Army. Lee's decision was made with much reluctance
and, it seems, hesitation. He was not only opposed to the policy of
secession, but denied the right of a State to secede; yet he believed
that his absolute allegiance was due to Virginia. He resigned his
commission in the United States Army, went to Richmond, and, in
accordance with what Wolseley describes as the prevailing principle
that had influenced most of the soldiers he met in the South, placed
his sword at the disposal of his own State. The same loyalty to
Virginia governed another great soldier, Thomas J. Jackson, whose
historic nickname, "Stonewall," fails to convey the dashing celerity of
his movements. While they both lived these two men were to be linked
together in the closest comradeship and mutual trust. They sprang from
different social conditions and were of contrasting types. The epithet
Cavalier has been fitly enough applied to Lee, and Jackson, after
conversion from the wild courses of his youth, was an austere Puritan.
To quote again from a soldier's memoirs, Wolseley calls Lee "one of the
few men who ever seriously impressed and awed me with their natural,
their inherent, greatness"; he speaks of his "majesty," and of the
"beauty," of his character, and of the "sweetness of his smile and the
impressive dignity of the old-fashioned style of his address"; "his
greatness," he says, "made me humble." "There was nothing," he tells
us, "of these refined characteristics in Stonewall Jackson," a man with
"huge hands and feet." But he possessed "an assured self-confidence,
the outcome of his sure trust in God. How simple, how humble-minded a
man. As his impressive eyes met yours unflinchingly, you knew that his
was an honest heart." To this he adds touches less to be expected
concerning a Puritan warrior, whose Puritanism was in fact inclined to
ferocity--how Jackson's "remarkable eyes lit up for the moment with a
look of real enthusiasm as he recalled the architectural beauty of the
seven lancet windows in York Minster," how "intense" was the
"benignity" of his expression, and how in him it seemed that "great