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to get Mr. Al Smith before the company. No, we talked about Robert E. Lee. I was the only Northerner present. Everybody else was Baltimore, Maryland, or Eastern Shore. Irene, although she was New York, as I was, was regarded as Virginia. The conversation was on Robert E. Lee. I tried my best to get it back on to Al Smith, but having declared themselves Democrats they thought there was nothing else to do but to talk about Robert E. Lee.

This was my first introduction to the fact that Robert E. Lee is the greatest man that America ever bred. I'd never known that before. I had known that he was a worthy Christian gentleman, but I hadn't known about his greatness. I was not politically sophisticated at that time, and I learned an awful lot on this trip. I learned a great deal about Robert E. Lee. I heard things I had never heard of before. I remember being violently disputed in regard to some casual remark that I made. I don't know what it was, but I said, “But after all he was a West Point graduate, and it always seemed to me very strange that a man of his character should have made the decision to go opposite the country that had educated him. I got illuminated on that! I had it laid on the line definitely that all his moral and intellectual obligations were to Virginia. It was Virginia that he was saving.