Tears trickled down the wounded man’s pale cheeks as he listened to these kind words, and felt that his chief cared so much for him, a private soldier.
Near the close of the war, when meat had become quite scarce, an aide of President Davis’, being at headquarters, was asked to dine. The meal spread on the rough board was corn-bread, and a small piece of meat in a large mess of greens. The aid saw that the meat was not touched, though General Lee had asked all to take a piece of it. When the meal was over, the aide asked one of the men why the meat was not eaten. The reply was, that it had been loaned by a friend to cook with the greens, and had to be returned.
It was General Lee’s wish to fare just as his men did. When, during the siege of Petersburg, Mrs. Lee, fearing the great strain would be too much for him begged him to take more care of his health, he wrote: “But what care can a man give to himself in time of war?” He then went on to say that he lived in a tent in order to be near his men and the officers with whom he had to act; that he had been offered rooms by kind friends, but that he could not turn their homes into a camp.
An English officer wrote this account of Lee’s headquarters in 1862: “Lee’s headquarters I found were only seven or eight pole-tents, with their backs to a stake-fence, while a little stream of good water flowed close by. In front of the tents were three wagons, and a number of horses roamed over the fields. No guards were seen near, and no crowd of aids swarmed about. A large farm-house stood close by, which would have made a good home for the General, but Lee does not let his men rob or disturb the people, and likes to set them a good example.”
It was in this way that he gained the great love of his men.
A short time after the surrender, two ragged Confederates, just from prison in the North, waited upon the General and said that there were sixty other fellows around the corner who were too ragged to come. They had sent these two to offer their loved chief a home in the mountains of Virginia. “We will give you,” said one of them, “a good house and a fine farm. We boys will work for you and you shall never want.”
Tears came to the eyes of General Lee as he told them that he must decline their gift. The offer of these men was but the feeling of the whole South. Though poor themselves, they would have given him houses, lands and money had he let them.