ADDRESS OF MR. BRECKINRIDGE, OF KENTUCKY.

Mr. SPEAKER:  I never had the pleasure of Gen. LEE’s acquaintance, so far as I could recall, until he entered this House as a Representative of the district which lies just across the river; but there were many things in common between us which soon caused a kindliness of feeling much warmer than the frequency of our association would indicate.  It happened that we were almost of the same age, born within a few weeks of each other, and that on all great questions of the day we were singularly alike in our opinions, and, if I may use such an expression, even in our prejudices.

Amid all the trials of life we two found we had adhered to simple beliefs of those Southern homes in which we were the reared; that no advance in civilization, no pretense of progress, had ever obscured our views as to the olden beliefs and the simpler truths which had been inwrought into our being by the venerable fathers and beloved mothers with whom we had been blessed.  The substratum of our beliefs was precisely the same.  And we found that we were not ashamed of that substratum, that we were not given to apologizing for adhering to so-called “obsolete” traditions or to creeds “that were passing out of fashion.”

We also found that on the political questions of the day we were similarly in accord.  We believed in the same political principles.  And so it was a very rare occurrence that when the roll was called in this House we were not found voting, even on what seemed to be trivial matters, upon the same side.  It was not strange that with these coincidences of belief and with our having both served in the Confederate army and the local accident of the nearness of our seats which threw us together, there grew up a regard greater than was indicated by our association outside of this Hall.

If I were to select in my acquaintance him who, as much as any other, deserved the title, I would say of Gen. LEE that he was a gentleman.  All that had concurred in producing him was of the best.  The blood which gave him life, the soil out of which he grew, the kindly influences which always surrounded him, the molding powers to which he had been subjected—­all were of the noblest.  A son of such houses, reared at such knees, influenced by such powers, he passed early under the influences of Harvard.  Later he took his young experience as a soldier under Albert Sidney Johnston.  He began his civil life in a delicious home, with the love of an exquisite young wife.  And in the Confederate service he was associated with the best and the bravest volunteers of the Old Dominion herself.