have left his great soul calm, resigned, and untroubled by the least rancor.  While others, not more devoted to the South, permitted passion and sectional animosity to master them, and dictate acts and expressions full of bitterness toward the North, General Lee refrained systematically from every thing of that description; and by simple force of greatness, one would have said, rose above all prejudices and hatreds of the hour, counselling, and giving in his own person to all who approached him the example of moderation and Christian charity.  He aimed to keep alive the old Southern traditions of honor and virtue; but not that sectional hatred which could produce only evil.  To a lady who had lost her husband in the war, and, on bringing her two sons to the college, indulged in expressions of great bitterness toward the North, General Lee said, gently:  “Madam, do not train up your children in hostility to the Government of the United States.  Remember that we are one country now.  Dismiss from your mind all sectional feeling, and bring them up to be Americans.”

A still more suggestive exhibition of his freedom from rancor was presented in an interview which is thus described: 

“One day last autumn the writer saw General Lee standing at his gate, talking pleasantly to an humbly-clad man, who seemed very much pleased at the cordial courtesy of the great chieftain, and turned off, evidently delighted, as we came up.  After exchanging salutations, the general said, pointing to the retreating form, ’That is one of our old soldiers, who is in necessitous circumstances.’  I took it for granted that it was some veteran Confederate, when the noble-hearted chieftain quietly added, ‘He fought on the other side, but we must not think of that.’  I afterward ascertained—­not from General Lee, for he never alluded to his charities—­that he had not only spoken kindly to this ’old soldier’ who had ‘fought on the other side,’ but had sent him on his way rejoicing in a liberal contribution to his necessities.”

Of the extent of this Christian moderation another proof was given by the soldier, at a moment when he might not unreasonably have been supposed to labor under emotions of the extremest bitterness.  Soon after his return to Richmond, in April, 1865, when the immedicabile vulnus of surrender was still open and bleeding, a gentleman was requested by the Federal commander in the city to communicate to General Lee the fact that he was about to be indicted in the United States courts for treason.[1] In acquitting himself of his commission, the gentleman expressed sentiments of violent indignation at such a proceeding.  But these feelings General Lee did not seem to share.  The threat of arraigning him as a traitor produced no other effect upon him than to bring a smile to his lips; and, taking the hand of his friend, as the latter rose to go, he said, in his mildest tones:  “We must forgive our enemies.  I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them.”