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Memoirs of Lee, "Eulogy on Washington", Dec. 26, 1799, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). First presented in a slightly modified form as: "To the memory of the Man, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-citizens", Resolutions presented to the United States' House of Representatives, on the Death of Washington, December, 1799. The eulogy was delivered a week later. Marshall, in his Life of Washington, volume v. page 767, says in a note that these resolutions were prepared by Colonel Henry Lee, who was then not in his place to read them. General Robert E. Lee, in the Life of his father (1869), prefixed to the Report of his father's Memoirs of the War of the Revolution, gives (p. 5) the expression "fellow-citizens"; but on p. 52 he says: "But there is a line, a single line, in the Works of Lee which would hand him over to immortality, though he had never written another: 'First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen' will last while language lasts. (en) |
