When General Lee took the oath of allegiance to the United States, he remarked, in making abjuration of his former allegiance, that he was perfectly ready to abjure the king, but could not bring himself to abjure the Prince of Wales, at…
Henry Cabot Lodge
The Public Record
Henry Cabot Lodge was an American politician, historian, lawyer, and statesman from Massachusetts. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States Senate from 1893 to 1924 and is best known for his positions on foreign policy. He voted in favor of American entry into World War I and his successful crusade against Woodrow Wilson's Treaty of Versailles ensured that the United States never joined the League of Nations. His penned conditions against that treaty, known collectively as the Lodge Reservations, influenced the structure of the modern United Nations.
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We find in his letters here and there a good-natured raillery, and jesting, which show a sense of humor that goes beyond the limits of mere fun and horse-play.
There must have been something very impressive about a man who, with no pretensions to the art of the orator and with no touch of the charlatan, could so move and affect vast bodies of men by his presence alone.
But the people, with the keen eye of affection, looked beyond the mere outward nobility of form.
They saw the soldier who had given them victory, the great statesman who had led them out of confusion and faction to order and good government.
They loved, trusted and well-nigh worshiped Washington living, and they have honored and reverenced him with an unchanging fidelity since his death, nearly a century ago.
In truth, he had not only warm affections and a generous heart, but there was a strong vein of sentiment in his composition.
He saw facts, knew them, mastered and used them, and never gave much play to fancy; but as his business in life was with men and facts, this deficiency, if it was one, was of little moment.
He was also a man of the strongest passions in every way, but he dominated them; they never ruled him.
For many years I have studied minutely the career of Washington, and with every step the greatness of the man has grown upon me, for analysis has failed to discover the act of his life which, under the conditions of the time, I could…
I see in Washington a great soldier who fought a trying war to a successful end impossible without him; a great statesman who did more than all other men to lay the foundations of a republic which has endured in prosperity for more than a…
He flung aside the suggestion of supreme power, not simply as dishonorable and unpatriotic, but because such a result would have defeated the one great and noble object at which he aimed.