A graduate of Harvard at twenty, he was appointed a second lieutenant in the regular Army.  Often I have heard him tell of the wearisome march across the plains to California with his regiment, long in advance of civilization and railroads, when most of that journey through the desert was made perilous by roving bands of hostile Indians.  Retiring from the Army, he married and settled at the historic White House, in lower Virginia.  There he was the typical Southern country gentleman of refinement and culture, taking an active interest in agriculture and the public affairs of his community.  When the war between the States summoned Virginia’s sons to her defense he again became a soldier.

Throughout the struggle he discharged every duty and was equal to every responsibility placed upon him.  His soldiers loved and trusted him as a father, for they knew he would sacrifice no life for empty glory.  The saddest chapter in all his life was when—­a prisoner of war at Fort Monroe, lying desperately wounded, with the threat of a retaliatory death-sentence suspended over his head, in hourly expectation of its execution—­he heard of the fatal illness of his wife and two little children but a few miles away.  Earnestly his friends begged that he might be allowed to go and say the last farewell to them on earth.  A devoted brother came, like Damon of old, and offered himself to die in “Rooney’s” place.  War, inexorable war, always stern and cruel, could not accept the substituted sacrifice, and while the sick wounded soldier, under sentence of death, lay, himself almost dying, in the dungeon of the Fort, his wife and children “passed over the river to rest under the trees” and wait there his coming.  Yet no word of reproach ever passed his gentle lips.  He accepted it all as the fortune of war.

In all the walks of life—­as a student at college, as an officer in the regular Army, as a planter on the Pamunkey, as a leader of cavalry in the civil war, as a farmer struggling with the chaos and confusion that beset him under the new order of things following the abolition of slavery, as president of the Virginia Agricultural Society, as State senator, and as a member of Congress—­Gen. WILLIAM H.F.  LEE met every requirement, was equal to every emergency, and left a name for honor, truth, and virtue which should be a blessed heritage and the inspiration for a nobler and loftier life to all those who shall succeed him.

ADDRESS OF MR. HENDERSON, OF ILLINOIS.

Mr. SPEAKER:  It is not my purpose at this time to make any extended remarks upon the life and public services of the late Gen. WILLIAM H.F.  LEE.  Other gentlemen of the House, more intimately acquainted with Gen. LEE in his lifetime, are better prepared to do justice to his memory than I am.  But having enjoyed a very pleasant acquaintance with the deceased during his four years’ service as a member of this body, I desire to express the great respect which