village, and hamlet of this land which he loved so well,
and among those people who loved and honored and venerated him so
profoundly, every true heart in the stricken South will feel that the
country has lost its pride and glory, and that the citizens of that
country have lost a father. I dare not venture to speak of him as I
feel. Nor do we come to eulogize him. Not only wherever the English
language is spoken, but wherever civilization extends, the sorrow--a
part at least of the sorrow--we feel will be felt, and more eloquent
tongues than mine will tell the fame and recount the virtues of Robert
E. Lee. We need not come to praise him. We come only to express our
sympathy, our grief, our bereavement. We come not to mourn him, for we
know that it is well with him. We come only to extend our sympathy to
those who are bereaved.

"Now that he is fallen, I may mention what I have never spoken of
before, to show you not only what were the feelings that actuated him
in the duty to which his beloved countrymen called him, but what noble
sentiments inspired him when he saw the cause for which he had been
fighting so long about to perish. Just before the surrender, after a
night devoted to the most arduous duties, as one of his staff came
in to see him in the morning, he found him worn and weary and
disheartened, and the general said to him, 'How easily I could get rid
of this and be at rest! I have only to ride along the line, and
all will be over. But,' said he--and there spoke the Christian
patriot--'it is our duty to _live_, for what will become of the women
and children of the South if we are not here to protect them?' That
same spirit of duty which had actuated him through all the perils and
all the hardships of that unequalled conflict which he had waged so
heroically, that same high spirit of duty told him that he must live
to show that he was great--greater, if that were possible, in peace
than in war; live to teach the people whom he had before led to
victory how to bear defeat; live to show what a great and good man can
accomplish; live to set an example to his people for all time; live to
bear, if nothing else, his share of the sorrows, and the afflictions,
and the troubles, which had come upon his people. He is now at rest;
and surely we of the South can say of him, as we say of his great
exemplar, the 'Father of his Country,' that 'he was first in war,
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.'"