It is said that General Lee was offered estates in England and in Ireland; also the post of commercial agent of the South at New York, and many other tenders of a home or livelihood. All of these he declined and accepted the presidency of Washington College, at Lexington. Founded in 1789 under the name of “Augusta Academy,” the name was changed in 1782 to “Liberty Hall Academy,” from which was sent a company of students into the Revolution. Washington, who had accepted from the new State of Virginia 100 shares of the James River Company only on condition that he might give them to some school, chose this academy for beneficiary, and the name was changed in 1798 to “Washington College.” The buildings, library and apparatus had been sacked during the Federal occupancy, and the country was able to furnish only forty students at the opening of the term of ’65-’66. Nothing daunted, the new president gathered around him an able faculty, raised the standard of scholarship, renovated the old buildings and secured funds for new ones. He introduced the “honor system” and knew every student’s name, as well as his class and deportment record. Asked, at a faculty meeting, for a plan to induce students to attend the chapel, he advised: “The best way that I know of is to set them the example,” which he invariably did. This gives the keynote to his remarkable influence. The effect of his principles was all-powerful. It is doubtful if any other college in the world could show such a high average of morals and scholarship which obtained at Washington College during Lee’s presidency of five years. I cannot resist relating an anecdote given by another of our soldier-authors, John Esten Cooke:[10] Coming upon the chieftain conversing cordially with an humbly clad man, he supposed that it was, of course, an old Confederate, the more so as the general, looking after the retreating figure, said kindly: “That is one of our old soldiers who is in necessitous circumstances.” Questioned, however, he admitted that the soldier had fought on “the other side, but we must not think of that,” was his verdict.