He Lost a War and Won Immortality
by Louis Redmond
Even among the free, it is not always easy to
live together. There came a time, less than a
hundred years ago, when the people of this
country disagreed so bitterly among themselves that some of them felt they could not
go on living with the rest.
A test of arms was made to decide whether
Americans should remain one nation or become two. The armies of those who believed
in two nations were led by a man named
Robert E. Lee.
What about Lee? What kind of man was he
who nearly split the history of the United
States down the middle and made two separate books of it?
They say you had to see him to believe that
a man so fine could exist. He was handsome.
He was clever. He was brave. He was gentle.
He was generous and charming, noble and
modst, admired and beloved. He had never
failed at anything in his upright soldier's life.
He was a born winner, this Robert E. Lee.
Except for once. In the greatest contest of his
life, in the war beween the South and the
North, Robert E. Lee lost.
Now there were men who came with
smouldering eyes to Lee and said: "Let's not
accept this result as final. Let's keep our
anger alive. Let's be grim and unconvinced,
and wear our bitterness like a medal. You can
be our leader in this."
But Lee shook his head at those men.
"Abandon your animosities," he said, "and
make your sons Americans."
And what did he do himself when his war
was lost? He took a job as president of a tiny
college, with forty students and four profes-
sors, at a salary of $1500 a year. He had
commanded thousands of young men in
battle. Now he wanted to prepare a few hun-
dred of them for the duties of peace. So the
countrymen of Robert E. Lee saw how a born
winner loses, and it seemed to them that in
defeat he won his most lasting victory.
There is an art of losing, and Robert E. Lee
is its finest teacher. In a democracy, where
opposing viewpoints regularly meet for a test
of ballots, it is good for all of us to know how
to lose occasionally, how to yield peacefully,
for the sake of freedom. Lee is our master in
this. The man who fought against the Union
showed us what unity means.
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