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THE
Weekly Jeffersonian
A Newspaper Devoted to the Advocacy of the Jeffersonian
Theory of Government.
PUBLISHED BY
THOS. E. WATSON and J. D. WATSON
Editors and Proprietors
Austell Building, Atlanta, Ga.
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE - . ■s/ oo PER YEAR.
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A fflication made for entry at second class mail matterat Atlanta, Ga., Postoffice.
ATLANTA, GA., THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1907
In Honor of General Lee.
On Saturday last, the 19th of January, 1907.
the various Memorial Societies of the South
joined with the Veterans and the United Sons
of Confederate Veterans and the United
Daughters of the Confederacy in celebrating
the hundredth anniversary birthday of the
greatest man the Anglo-Saxon race has ever
produced.
When I say Anglo-Saxon race, I do not mean
these words to be taken very strictly; because
it is a misnomar to apply to any race of men
the distinctive title of Anglo-Saxon. Into that
strain of German blood, which the Angles and
the Saxons carried into the little island of
Britain have inter-mingled so many other cur
rents, that we have a race blend rather than a
pure Anglo-Saxon race.
Unto this blended people have been born
some of the most masterful men of all times.
Few greater law-givers and organizers of so
ciety have ever lived than Alfred the Great.
Not many authentic facts concerning him have
come down to us, but, like a gigantic shadow.,
his greatness as a statesman, his superlative
grandeur as a patriot, lingers over the history
of our race, as that of Charlemagne over the
history of continental Europe.
The First Edward was, also, a very great
man —great in war, great in peace, dominant
at the council board, irresistible on the battle
field. A supremely strong man was that dis
solute youth. Prince Hal, who, when responsi
bility fell upon his shoulders, opened out into
the greatness of Henry the Fifth. It is doubt
ful if any greater soldier than Marlborough
ever lived. What he could have done had he
been given independent command, absolute
freedom of action, and such resources as were
at the beck and call of Napoleon and Fred
erick the Great, it is, of course, impossible to
say; but what he did accomplish argues as
much military genius as that possessed by any
one of the four supremely great Captains of
history —Napoleon, Caesar, Hannibal. Alex
ander.
In one of his books, “The Life of Thomas H.
Benton,” Mr. Roosevelt says:
“The world has never seen better soldiers
than those who followed Lee; and their Lead
er will undoubtedly rank as without any excep
tion the very greatest of all the great captains
that the English-speaking peoples have
brought forth—and this, although the last and
chief of his antagonists may himself claim to
stand as the full equal of Marlborough and
Wellington.”
Thus, with a generosity for which he has
never received full credit. Mr. Roosevelt class-
THE WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN.
es Robert E. Lee higher than General U. S.
Grant, higher than the victor of Waterloo,
higher than the victor of Blenheim, higher
than the victor of Agincourt and Poictiers.
But it was not only as a soldier that Lee
was the flower of the Anglo-Saxon race. Like
Washington, he was an all-round man. Like
Washington, he was great in almost any as
pect of his character, and, like Washington,
his mere manhood dominated all of his mental
qualities. Like Washington, Lee was a per
fect specimen of physical manhood, a perfect
type of manly beauty, with nothing effemi
nate, nothing affected, nothing abnormal,
nothing lacking to make up that superb bal
ance of qualities which was the strongest
thing about George Washington. But in Lee
there was more approachableness than there
was in Washington. In the Father of his
Country, there was a slight touch of “The
Grand Seigneur.” 'There is something of au
sterity, a loftiness of port which held the av
erage man at arm’s length. There was some
thing lacking in ease, sociability, unreserve,
and frank meeting of mind to mind, the cordial
clasping of hand to hand. About Washington
there was always something of frigid formal
ity, something of the drawing of invisible
lines around himself, separating himself from
others. In exacting scrupulous respect, he
came dangerously near to chilling affection.
It is much easier to imagine that all those who
moved about Washington, serving with him
and serving for him, held him in profound
respect rather than in love. So much of a
stickler for form and ceremony was George
Washington, and so deliberately planned
were all of his words and actions, that he
sometimes makes one think him a huge piece
of irresistible machinery, rather than a man
with whom one could sit down and fold one’s
legs and have a quiet heart to heart talk.
With General Lee it was very different.
During the whole course of his life, it is
doubtful if anyone ever treated him with dis
respect; and yet he was perfectly approacha
ble. There were no icy barriers built up be
tween himself and his fellow man. He moved
among them like a superior being, and yet
there was not one of the thousands who mov
ed around him and who felt that he was a su
perior being who would have hesitated to
have lifted his cap and spoken to General
Lee as man to man, with absolute confidence
that he would be treated with courtesy. Con
sequently, the feeling inspired by General
Lee was not at all like that inspired by Marl
borough, Wellington and Washington. Marl
borough's troops followed him on the battle
field with supreme confidence that they would
win a victory, but in their hearts they despised
him as a man, because they knew he was to
tally lacking in honesty, and that he was
amassing a filthy fortune by robbing his own
soldiers in the commissariat. Wellington’s
troops would give him implicit obedience and
follow him blindly anywhere, for they knew
his capacity as a military leader; but it is
doubtful if Wellington had a friend in the
English army. A more unsympathetic, wood
en, stolid, thoroughly unlovable man than
Wellington it would be difficult to name.
In Washington’s character there was a cu
rious vein of hardness and exaction which
made it impossible for him to have friends.
Admirers he could have, and did have men
who would have died to win his smile, men
who would have gone to death at his orders
as the bridegroom rushes to the arms of his
bride—but I really do not think that George
Washington ever had a friend. To me, he
seems to stand out in almost pathetic loneli
ness, condemned thereto by his own ideas of
dignity, formality and rigid propriety. When
he rejected the toll which his old companion in
arms, General Stone, had paid in crossing the
Potomac at Mt. Vernon, he revealed that cu
rious trait to which I allude. When he wrote
to his manager during the war, not to sell his
wheat for Continental Currency, but to exact
gold and silver, he exhibited the trait to which
I refer. When he would higgle and haggle in
a horse-trade, endeavoring to beat down the
price in such away that this well-known trait
of his became a subject about which Light
horse Harry Lee use to make jocular refer
ence at Washington’s own table—therebv call
ing forth peals of laughter from Mrs. Martha
Washington and a dry remark from George,
“Lee, you are a funny fellow” —the reader
will understand what I mean.
When I see George Washington quietly
buying up, for a mere song, the landscript of
the soldiers who had followed him through
the Revolutionary War, and who were then
without money, almost without clothing and
food —thereby trading on the necessities of
his own companions in arms and amassing
that enormous amount of real estate which
made him a millionaire of his day —you will
understand what I mean by the difference be
tween Washington and Robert E. Lee.
Tn the character of Lee there was none of
those hard, exacting, money-seeking traits
that were companions in the make-up of Wash
ington. After the war was over, General Lee
declined, without hesitation, each and every
proposition which looked to the exploitation
of his name and reputation for commercial
purposes. Vainly did insurance companies
offer him $50,000 per year for the use of his
name; vainly did English admirers offer to
lend him any amount of money that he needed.
With grand simplicity, he said, “They are of
fering me everything except that which I
want; namely, a chance to make an honest
living for my wife and children.” And so he
turned his back upon glittering temptations
to take his way into the modest school-room
at Lexington. There, the latter years of his
life were spent in trying to make good men of
the boys of the South.
Year before last I happened to be in that
portion of Virginia, and could not resist the
impulse to visit the scenes of the last labors
of our Hero. Very reverently I looked upon
him where he sleeps in marble in the midst of
the silent church, not far from where his daily
work was done. The room which was his
own office as President of the College, is also
shown to the visitor. Everything, so they
told me, is just as he left it. The very furni
ture of the room speaks of the simplicity of
the soldier. Not a single article is there that
was not necessary to his work. The paper
upon which he was writing, the last day that
he was at his post of duty, lies upon the table,
just as he left it. He was making out a report
on the standing of one of the boys in the col
lege, and, somehow, I got the impression that
the Great Soldier was making the report just
as favorable as he could to the boy.