General Lee gave freely of his small means to his church and to the poor. At a vestry meeting which took place the evening of his illness, the sum of fifty-five dollars was needed for the pay of the Rector. Though he had before given his share, General Lee said in a low voice, “I will give the sum.” These were the last words he spoke to the vestry, and this giving was his last public act.
His love for his wife and children is shown by the tender, loving letters he wrote when away from them. During the Civil War his anxiety for them was great.
Just before the Northern army crossed the Potomac, in 1861, Mrs. Lee left her beautiful home, Arlington, and came South. Arlington was at once seized by the Northern Government, and the grounds were taken for a burial-place for the Northern soldiers.
Mrs. Lee and her daughters then sought a home at the “White House,” on the Pamunkey river, where Washington married the “Widow Custis,” and which had been left by Mr. Custis to one of General Lee’s sons. Mrs. Lee and her daughters were soon driven from there by the hosts of McClellan, and the house was burned to the ground. At last, they found a home in Richmond, where they lived until the close of the war.
[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF GENERAL LEE IN RICHMOND.]
Mrs. Lee’s health had failed, but a large part of her time was spent in knitting socks for the poor bare-footed soldiers of the South. Her brave daughters, also, knit socks, and nursed the sick and wounded soldiers.
Those were sad times, and the Lee family suffered most heavily.
The death of her noble husband was a great shock to Mrs. Lee, who was then not able to walk without aid. She did not survive him many years, and now rests beside him in the College chapel at Lexington, Virginia. Their daughter Agnes, who died shortly after her father, is buried in the same place.
Close by is the grave of Stonewall Jackson. How meet that these two friends and heroes should rest so near each other!
The blue mountains of their loved Virginia keep “watch and ward” over their graves; and each year, pilgrims from every part of the land come to visit their tombs and place fresh flowers and green wreaths upon them.
General Custis Lee was made President of the College in his father’s place. The College is now called the “Washington and Lee University,” after Washington and Lee, the two great names in the history of our country.