To appreciate his cat-like agility, one must remember that Lee was the oldest general made famous by the war.  It is thought that years accounted for Napoleon’s refusal to fight the Old Guard at Borodino, as his ablest generals urged.  Napoleon was then forty-three, eleven years younger than Lee was when our war began.  It is to young Napoleon we must turn to find parallels for Lee’s celerity.  Second Bull Run and Chancellorsville may fitly be compared to Arcola and Rivoli.  It has been observed that, like Napoleon, Lee avoided passive defence, seeming the assailant even when on the defensive.  Like him, he was swift and terrible in availing himself of an enemy’s mistakes.  It can hardly be doubted that Lee’s campaigns furnished more or less inspiration and direction for Von Moltke’s immortal movements in 1866 and in 1870-71.

That Lee was brave need not be said.  He was not as rash as Hood and Cleburne sometimes were.  He knew the value of his life to the great cause, and, usually at least, did not expose himself needlessly.  Prudence he had, but no fear.  His resolution to lead the charge at the Bloody Angle—­rashness for once—­shows fearlessness.  Tender-hearted as he was, Lee felt battle frenzy as hardly another great commander ever did.  From him it spread like magnetism to his officers and men, thrilling all as if the chief himself were close by in the fray, shouting, “Now fight, my good fellows, fight!” Yet such was Lee’s self-command that this dreadful ardor never carried him too far.  Once, namely, at Fredericksburg, recovery from the fighting mood perhaps occurred too promptly.  Some have thought this, suggesting that had the leash not been applied to the dogs of war so early, Burnside’s retreat might have been made a rout.

But Lee possessed another order of courage infinitely higher and rarer than this,—­the sort so often lacking even in generals who have served with utmost distinction in high subordinate places, when they are called to the sole and decisive direction of armies:  he had that royal mettle, that preternatural decision of character, ever tempered with caution and wisdom, which leads a great commander, when true occasion arises, resolutely to give general battle, or to swing out away from his base upon a precarious but promising campaign.  Here you have moral heroism; ordinary valor is more impulsive.  A weaker man, albeit total stranger to fear, ready to lead his division or his corps into the very mouth of hell, if commanded, being set himself to direct an army, will be either rash or else too timid, or fidget from one extreme to the other, losing all.

Hooker began bravely at Chancellorsville, but soon grew faint and afraid.  Hood says that Hardee’s timidity lost him a great victory at Decatur, Ga., the day the Union General McPherson fell; and that Cheatham’s, at Spring Hill, during his northward pursuit of Thomas, lost him another.  Yet Hooker, Hardee, and Cheatham were men to whom personal fear was a meaningless phrase.  Stonewall Jackson was personally no braver than they; it was his bravery of the higher sort that set him as a general so incomparably above them.  The same high quality belonged to Grant and Sherman, and to Washington and Greene in the Revolutionary War.