TUCKER], a
sentiment as grand and noble as was ever written upon any Roman tablet
or carved upon any column of enduring marble that was ever reared in the
flood light of glory:
Duty is the sublimest word in our language.
Yes, Mr. Speaker, thus spoke Robert Edward Lee, the soldier, hero,
Christian, and philanthropist: and when we come to study the life and
character of WILLIAM HENRY FITZHUGH LEE we are impressed with the fact
that he took duty as his talismanic word, that it was the star that
guided him, and that he followed it as faithfully as the "wise men"
followed the Star from "the East" to Jerusalem and thence to Bethlehem.
We believe that in his youth, on the heights of Arlington, where his
eyes first opened upon the light, he learned at his father's knee and by
his father's daily walk and conversation the great lesson of duty which
steered his course and pointed out his pathway in life.
He was born, as has been said, on the 31st day of May, 1837. In 1857 he
was appointed a second lieutenant in the Sixth Regiment of United States
Infantry, and served in 1858 in the then far West under Albert Sidney
Johnston, whose fame Shiloh echoes and reechoes along the banks of the
Tennessee.
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