and you know I love you as a friend. No man, in the progress of the
campaign, had equal merit with yourself." The officer who wrote those
lines was not a courtier nor a diplomatist, but a blunt and honest
soldier who had seen Lee's bearing in the most arduous straits,
and was capable of appreciating military ability. Add Washington's
expression of his "love and thanks," in a letter written in 1789,
and the light in which he was regarded by his contemporaries will be
understood.

His "Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department" is a valuable
military history and a very interesting book. The movements of Greene
in face of Cornwallis are described with a precision which renders the
narrative valuable to military students, and a picturesqueness which
rivets the attention of the general reader. From these memoirs a
very clear conception of the writer's character may be derived, and
everywhere in them is felt the presence of a cool and dashing nature,
a man gifted with the _mens aequa in arduis_, whom no reverse of
fortune could cast down. The fairness and courtesy of the writer
toward his opponents is an attractive characteristic of the work,[1]
which is written with a simplicity and directness of style highly
agreeable to readers of judgment.[2]

[Footnote 1: See his observations upon the source of his successes
over Tarleton, full of the generous spirit of a great soldier. He
attributes them in no degree to his own military ability, but to the
superior character of his large, thorough-bred horses, which rode over
Tarleton's inferior stock. He does not state that the famous "Legion"
numbered only two hundred and fifty men, and that Tarleton commanded a
much larger force of the best cavalry of the British army.]