et; but all Christian
nations, while revering America as the mother of Robert E. Lee, will
claim for the nineteenth century the honor of his birth. There was but
one Lee, the great Christian captain, and his fame justly belongs to
Christendom. The nineteenth century has attacked every thing--it has
attacked God, the soul, reason, morals, society, the distinction
between good and evil. Christianity is vindicated by the virtues of
Lee. He is the most brilliant and cogent argument in favor of a system
illustrated by such a man; he is the type of the reign of law in the
moral order--that reign of law which the philosophic Duke of Argyll
has so recently and so ably discussed as pervading the natural as well
as the supernatural world. One of the chief characteristics of the
Christian is duty. Throughout a checkered life the conscientious
performance of duty seems to have been the mainspring of the actions
of General Lee. In his relations of father, son, husband, soldier,
citizen, duty shines conspicuous in all his acts. His agency as he
advanced to more elevated stations attracts more attention, and
surrounds him with a brighter halo of glory; but he is unchanged; from
first to last it is Robert E. Lee.

"The most momentous act of his life was the selection of sides at the
commencement of the political troubles which immediately preceded the
recent conflict. High in military rank, caressed by General Scott,
courted by those possessed of influence and authority, no politician,
happy in his domestic relations, and in the enjoyment of competent
fortune, consisting in the main of property situated on the borders
of Virginia--nevertheless impelled by a sense of duty, as he himself
testified before a Congressional committee since the war, General Lee
determined to risk all and unite his fortunes with those of his native
State, whose ordinances as one of her citizens he considered himself
bound to obey.

"Having joined the Confederate army, he complained not that he was
assigned to the obscure duty of constructing coast-defences for South
Carolina and Georgia, nor that he was subsequently relegated to
unambitious commands in Western Virginia. The accidental circumstance
that General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at the battle of Seven
Pines in May, 1862, placed Lee in command of the Army of Northern
Virginia. As commander of that army he achieved world-wide reputation,
without giving occasion during a period of three years to any