Late June 1857.

Camp Cooper, in the heart of Texas' Comanche Frontier.

Robert E. Lee respectfully ponders Father Shane's Tridentine Latin Mass...



This snippet is from pages 91 - 92 of Carl Coke Rister's classic Robert E. Lee in Texas. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946.


"The preceding day had been the second Fourth of July Lee had spent in Texas, and again his mind reverted to happy domestic scenes at [his home in] Arlington on other holidays.

"This second Fourth, however, was not so lonely as that spent on his Comanche reconnaissance [in 1856].

"Only a few days prior to the Fourth, Father Shane and Captain John M. Jones of Fort Belknap had visited Camp Cooper, and in a company kitchen a religious service was held, attended by only a small number of men.

"Lee could not understand the Latin part of the service, but he liked the priest's sermon on the text: What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world an doses his own soul.

"He wrote later he hoped the priest's words would sink deep into the hearts of the attentive soldiers ... "