intimate connection with the project to send General Grant on a mission
to Mexico and to place General Sherman in command at Washington, a
project of which I have spoken in another place.

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE

General Robert E. Lee was examined by the Committee on Reconstruction
the 17th day of February, 1866.

The inquiries related to the state of public sentiment in the South,
and especially in Virginia with regard to secession, to the treatment
of the negroes, to the public debts of the United States, and of the
Confederacy, and to the treatment of Northern soldiers in Southern
prisons.

General Lee was then in good health and in personal appearance he
commended himself without delay. He was large in frame, compactly
built, and he was furnished with all the flesh and muscle that could be
useful to a man who was passing the middle period of life. The
elasticity of spirits, the vigor of mind and body that are the wealth
of a successful man at sixty were wanting in General Lee. His
appearance commanded respect and it excited the sympathy even of those
who had condemned his abandonment of the Union in 1861.

The examination gave evidence of integrity and of entire freedom from
duplicity. Freedom from duplicity was a controlling feature in General
Grant's character and in that attribute of greatness Grant and Lee may
have been equals.

General Lee was free to disclose his own opinions, but he was cautious
in his statements when questioned as to the opinions and purposes of
the men and States that had been in the Rebellion. He was careful to
say at the beginning of the examination that he had no communication
with politicians and that he did not read the papers. What he said of
the South assumed that the people were in poverty and were so dejected
that they had no plans for the future, nor any hopes of restoration to
wealth, happiness and power in the affairs of the country. His
testimony as a whole might justify the opinion that there would be no
serious resistance to any form of government that might be set up. He
favored the governments which President Johnson had organized and he
expressed the opinion that they were acceptable to the people
generally. A comprehensive statement was this:

"I do not know of a single person who either feels or contemplates
any resistance to the government of the United States, or, indeed any
opposition to it." He gave this assurance to the committee: "The
people enti