Longstreet, sturdy and sedate, his "old
war-horse" as Lee affectionately called him, bore on his broad
shoulders the weight of twenty years' service in the old army. Hill's
slight figure and delicate features, instinct with life and energy,
were a marked contrast to the heavier frame and rugged lineaments of
his older colleague.
Already they were distinguished. In the hottest of the fight they had
won the respect that soldiers so readily accord to valour; yet it is
not on these stubborn fighters, not on their companion, less popular,
but hardly less capable, that the eye of imagination rests. Were some
great painter, gifted with the sense of historic fitness, to place on
his canvas the council in the Virginia homestead, two figures only
would occupy the foreground: the one weary with travel, white with
the dust of many leagues, and bearing on his frayed habiliments the
traces of rough bivouacs and mountain roads; the other, tall,
straight, and stately; still, for all his fifty years, remarkable for
his personal beauty, and endowed with all the simple dignity of a
noble character and commanding intellect. In that humble chamber,
where the only refreshment the Commander-in-Chief could offer was a
glass of milk, Lee and Jackson met for the first time since the war
had begun.
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