was when--a prisoner of war at Fort
Monroe, lying desperately wounded, with the threat of a retaliatory
death-sentence suspended over his head, in hourly expectation of its
execution--he heard of the fatal illness of his wife and two little
children but a few miles away. Earnestly his friends begged that he
might be allowed to go and say the last farewell to them on earth. A
devoted brother came, like Damon of old, and offered himself to die in
"Rooney's" place. War, inexorable war, always stern and cruel, could not
accept the substituted sacrifice, and while the sick wounded soldier,
under sentence of death, lay, himself almost dying, in the dungeon of
the Fort, his wife and children "passed over the river to rest under the
trees" and wait there his coming. Yet no word of reproach ever passed
his gentle lips. He accepted it all as the fortune of war.

In all the walks of life--as a student at college, as an officer in the
regular Army, as a planter on the Pamunkey, as a leader of cavalry in
the civil war, as a farmer struggling with the chaos and confusion that
beset him under the new order of things following the abolition of
slavery, as president of the Virginia Agricultural Society, as State
senator, and as a member of Congress--Gen. WILLIAM H.F. LEE met every
requirement, was equal to every emergency, and left a name for honor,
truth, and virtue which should be a blessed heritage and the inspiration
for a nobler and loftier life to all those who shall succeed him.

ADDRESS OF MR. HENDERSON, OF ILLINOIS.

Mr. SPEAKER: It is not my purpose at this time to make any extended
remarks upon the life and public services of the late Gen. WILLIAM H.F.
LEE. Other gentlemen of the House, more intimately acquainted with Gen.
LEE in his lifetime, are better prepared to do justice to his memory
than I am. But having enjoyed a very pleasant acquaintance with the
deceased during his four years' service as a member of this body, I
desire to express the great respect which I entertained for him as a
gentleman of high character and of noble, manly qualities. Descended
from one of the most highly honored families in the State in which he
had his birth, he was liberally educated, and at an early age entered
the Army as a second lieutenant and served as such until 1859, when he
resigned his commission and returned to the peaceful pursuits of civil
life. In 1861 he followed his illustrious father, and entered the
service of the