It was in this supreme kind of boldness that Robert Lee preëminently excelled. Cautious always, he still took risks and responsibilities which common generals would not have dared to take, and when he had assumed these, his mighty will forbade him to sink under the load. The braying of bitter critics, the obloquy of men who should have supported him, the shots from behind, dismayed him no more than did Burnside's cannon at Fredericksburg. On he pressed, stout as a Titan, relentless as fate. What time bravest hearts failed at victory's delay, this Dreadnaught rose to his best, and furnished courage for the whole Confederacy.
In a sense, of course, the cause for which Lee fought was "lost"; yet a very great part of what he and his _confreres_ sought, the war actually secured and assured. His cause was not "lost" as Hannibal's was, whose country, with its institutions, spite of his genius and devotion, utterly perished from the earth. Yet Hannibal is remembered more widely than Scipio. Were Lee in the same case with Hannibal, men would magnify his name as long as history is read. "Of illustrious men," says Thucydides, "the whole earth is the sepulcher. They are immortalized not alone by columns and inscriptions in their own lands; memorials to them rise in foreign countries as well--not of stone, it may be, but unwritten, in the thoughts of posterity."
Lee's case resembles Cromwell's much more than Hannibal's. The _regime_ against which Cromwell warred returned in spite of him; but it returned modified, involving all the reforms for which the chieftain had bled. So the best of what Lee drew sword for is here in our actual America, and, please God, shall remain here forever.
Decisions of the United States Supreme Court since Secession gave a sweep and a certainty to the rights of states and limit the central power in this republic as had never been done before. The wild doctrines of Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens on these points are not our law. If the Union is perpetual, equally so is each state. The republic is "an indestructible Union of indestructible states." If this part of our law had in 1861 received its present definition and emphasis, and if the Southern States had then been sure, come what might, of the freedom they actually now enjoy each to govern itself in its own way, even South Carolina might never have voted secession. And inasmuch as the war, better than aught else could have done, forced this phase of the Constitution out into clear expression, General Lee did not fight in vain. The essential good he wished has come, while the republic with its priceless benedictions to us all remains intact. All Americans thus have part in Robert Lee, not only as a peerless man and soldier, but as the sturdy miner, sledge-hammering the rock of our liberties till it give forth its gold. None are prouder of his record than those who fought against him, who, while recognizing the purity of his motive, thought him in error in going from under the stars and stripes. It is likely that more American hearts day by day think lovingly of Lee than of any other Civil War celebrity save Lincoln alone. And his praise will increase.