watched the Virginian
campaigns, and by thousands who have almost forgotten the names of
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and Spottsylvania.
By the South it would be recognized as a national calamity--as the
loss of a man not only inexpressibly dear to an unfortunate people by
his intimate association with their fallen hopes and their proudest
recollections, but still able to render services such as no other man
could perform, and to give counsel whose value is enhanced tenfold
by the source from which it comes. We hope, even yet, that a life so
honorable and so useful, so pure and noble in itself, so valuable to
a country that has much need of men like him, may be spared and
prolonged for further enjoyment of domestic peace and comfort, for
further service to his country; we cannot bear to think of a career so
singularly admirable and so singularly unfortunate, should close so
soon and so sadly. By the tens of thousands who will feel as we do
when they read the news that now lies before us, may be measured the
impressions made upon the world by the life and the deeds of the great
chief of the Army of Virginia.

"Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the merits of the
generals against whom he had to contend, and especially of the
antagonist by whom he was at last overcome, no one pretending to
understand in the least either the general principles of military
science or the particular conditions of the American War, doubts that
General Lee gave higher proofs of military genius and soldiership than
any of his opponents. He was outnumbered from first to last; and all
his victories were gained against greatly superior forces, and with
troops greatly deficient in every necessary of war except courage
and discipline. Never, perhaps, was so much achieved against odds so
terrible. The Southern soldiers--'that incomparable Southern infantry'
to which a late Northern writer renders due tribute of respect--were
no doubt as splendid troops as a general could desire; but the
different fortune of the East and the West proves that the Virginian
army owed something of its excellence to its chief. Always
outnumbered, always opposed to a foe abundantly supplied with food,
transport, ammunition, clothing, all that was wanting to his own men,
he was always able to make courage and skill supply the deficiency of
strength and of supplies; and from the day when he assumed the command
after the battle of Seven Pi