I shall attempt no extended biographical sketch; that has already been
well done by others. Yet I can not refrain from saying that in every
stage of his career Gen. LEE did his whole duty, actuated entirely and
solely by the loftiest motives.

A graduate of Harvard at twenty, he was appointed a second lieutenant in
the regular Army. Often I have heard him tell of the wearisome march
across the plains to California with his regiment, long in advance of
civilization and railroads, when most of that journey through the desert
was made perilous by roving bands of hostile Indians. Retiring from the
Army, he married and settled at the historic White House, in lower
Virginia. There he was the typical Southern country gentleman of
refinement and culture, taking an active interest in agriculture and the
public affairs of his community. When the war between the States
summoned Virginia's sons to her defense he again became a soldier.

Throughout the struggle he discharged every duty and was equal to every
responsibility placed upon him. His soldiers loved and trusted him as a
father, for they knew he would sacrifice no life for empty glory. The
saddest chapter in all his life was when--a prisoner of war at Fort
Monroe, lying desperately wounded, with the threat of a retaliatory
death-sentence suspended over his head, in hourly expectation of its
execution--he heard of the fatal illness of his wife and two little
children but a few miles away. Earnestly his friends begged that he
might be allowed to go and say the last farewell to them on earth. A
devoted brother came, like Damon of old, and offered himself to die in
"Rooney's" place. War, inexorable war, always stern and cruel, could not
accept the substituted sacrifice, and while the sick wounded soldier,
under sentence of death, lay, himself almost dying, in the dungeon of
the Fort, his wife and children "passed over the river to rest under the