do your duty in all things ...

you cannot do more." That he lived up to these great maxims, amid all the troubled scenes and hot passions of a stormy epoch, is Lee's greatest glory.
His fame as a soldier, great as it is, yields to the true glory of having placed duty before his eyes always as the supreme object of life.

He resigned his commission from a sense of duty to his native State; made this same duty his sole aim in every portion of his subsequent career; and, when all had failed, and the cause he had fought for was overthrown, it was the consciousness of having performed conscientiously, and to his utmost, his whole duty, which took the sting from defeat, and gave him that noble calmness which the whole world saw and admired.

"Human virtue should be equal to human calamity," were his august words when all was lost, and men's minds were sinking under the accumulated agony of defeat and despair.
Those words could only have been uttered by a man who made duty the paramount object of living--the performance of it, the true glory and crown of virtuous manhood.

It may be objected by some critics that he mistook his duty in espousing the Southern cause.