Not only is it true of him, as already intimated, that he uniformly acted from the highest motive presented to his soul— but so impressive and all-compelling was the majesty of his virtue that it is doubtful whether any one ever questioned aught of this. It is perhaps not too much to say that the common consensus of Christendom—friend and foe and neutral— ranks him as one of the greatest captains of the ages and attributes to him more of the noblest virtues and powers, with less of the ordinary selfishness and littleness of humanity, than to any other great soldier. This is what is meant by our dedication—that the world has come to view him very much as his ragged followers did in the grand days when they were helping him to make history.

Can you point to another representative man upon whom the light of modern day has been focussed with such intensity, of whom these supreme things may be said with so little strain; or rather, with acquiescence practically universal? For our part, we say emphatically—we know not where to look for the man.

The scheme of this book is a modest one. The author makes no pretense that he is qualified to write history or to discuss learnedly, from a professional standpoint, the battles and campaigns of armies; while of course an old veteran cannot be expected always and absolutely to refrain from saying how the thing looked to him. All that is really proposed—and the writer will be more than content if he acquit but rather to select and record such incidents, arranged of course in a general orderly sequence, as are deemed to be of himself fairly well of this limited design—is to state clearly and truthfully what he saw and experienced as a private soldier and subordinate officer in the military service of the Confederate States in Virginia from '61 to '65.

It is not proposed, however, to give a consecutive recital of all that occurred during these four years, even within the narrow range of the writer's observation and experience; inherent interest, or to shed light upon the portrait of the Confederate soldier, the personality of prominent actors in the war drama upon the Southern side, the salient points of the great conflict, or the general conditions of life in and behind the Confederate lines.

Again, such are the imperfections of human observation and such the irregularities and errors of human memory, especially in the record of events long past, that many may be disposed to question the value of such a book as this, written to-day, relating to our civil war. I can only reply that not a few of the incidents recorded were reduced to writing years ago, indeed soon after they occurred; while perhaps as much has been gained in perspective as has been lost in detail, by waiting. Certainly it can be better determined to-day what is worthy of preservation and publication than it could have been immediately after the war.

The slips and vagaries of memory, however, cannot be denied or excluded. It can only be said, “forewarned is forearmed.” I shall endeavor to exercise that conscientious care which the character of the work requires, but cannot hope to attain uniform and unerring accuracy in every detail. In the record of conversations, interviews, and speeches I shall sometimes adopt the form of direct quotation, even where not able to recall the precise words employed by the speakers and interlocutors—if I am satisfied this form of narrative will best convey the real spirit of the occasion.

And as the writer is, in the main, to relate what he saw and heard and did, he craves in advance charitable toleration of the first personal pronoun in the singular number.

There are features of my antecedent personal history calculated, perhaps, to impart a somewhat special interest to my experiences as a Confederate soldier. I was the eldest son of the Rev. Joseph C. Stiles, a Presbyterian minister, born in Georgia, where his ancestors had lived and died for generations, but who moved to the North and, from my boyhood, had lived in New York City and in New Haven, Conn. I was prepared for college in the schools of these two cities and was graduated at Yale in 1859. It so happened that I had never visited the South since the original removal of the family, which occurred when I was some twelve years of age; so that practically all my education, associations and friendships were Northern. True, I took position as a Southerner in all our college discussions and debates, but never as a “fire-eater” or secessionist. Indeed, I was a strong “Union man” and voted for Bell and Everett in 1860.

After my graduation in 1859 I passed the late summer and autumn in the Adirondack woods fishing and hunting with several classmates, and devoted the rest of the year to general reading and some little teaching, in New Haven; until, becoming deeply interested in the fierce struggle over the Speakership of the House of Representatives, I went to Washington, and from the galleries of the House and Senate eagerly overhung the great final debates. I had paid close attention to oratory during my college course and I doubt whether there was an onlooker in the Capitol more deeply absorbed than I. On more than one occasion the excitement and pressure of the crowd in the galleries of the House was fearful, and once at least persons were dragged out, more dead than alive, over the heads of others so densely packed that they could not move; but I never failed to secure a front seat.

I grew well acquainted—that is, by sight—with the party leaders, and recall, among others, Seward and Douglas and Breckenridge, Davis and Toombs and Benjamin, in the Senate; Sherman and Stevens, Logan and Vallandigham, Pryor and Keitt, Bocock and Barksdale, and Smith, of Virginia, in the House. It became intensely interesting to me to observe the part some of these men played later in the great drama: Seward as the leading figure of Lincoln's Cabinet; Davis as President of the Southern Confederacy; Benjamin, Toombs, and Breckenridge as members of his Cabinet, the two latter also as generals whom I have more than once seen commanding troops in battle; “Black Jack” Logan,—hottest of all the hotspurs of the extreme Southern wing of the Democratic party in the House in 1860,—we all know where he was from '61 to '65; and glorious old “Extra Billy” Smith, soldier and governor by turns; Barksdale, who fell at Gettysburg, was my general, commanding the infantry brigade I knew and loved best of all in Lee's army and which often supported our guns; and poor Keitt! I saw him fall at Cold Harbor in '64 and helped to rally his shattered command.

The Republican party had nominated John Sherman for Speaker, and he was resisted largely upon the ground of his endorsement of Hinton Rowan Helper's book, which was understood as inciting the negro slaves of the South to insurrection, fire, and blood. The John Brown raid had occurred recently, and Col. Robert E. Lee had led the party of United States Marines which captured the raiders and their leader. They had just been convicted and executed as murderers. The excitement was frightful and ominous, and scenes of the wildest disorder occurred in the House. One of these was in every way so remarkable that I ask leave to describe it somewhat fully.

The Republican leaders had become convinced they could not elect Sherman, and about the same time the Democrats, seeing there was no possibility of electing their original candidate, Thomas S. Bocock, of Virginia, had put up William N. H. Smith, of North Carolina, an old line Whig, or Southern American, and it seemed certain they would elect him. Indeed, he was elected and his election telegraphed all over the land; but before the result of the ballot could be announced, Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, and E. Joy Morris, of Pennsylvania, as I recollect, Northern Americans or Republicans, who had voted for Smith, changed their votes and everything was again at sea. It was then openly proposed to withdraw Sherman; and John Hickman, of Pennsylvania, who had been elected as an anti-Lecompton Democrat, but had gone over to the Republicans, took the floor to resist what he characterized as cowardice and treachery. Hickman had not voted for Sherman until the crisis was reached, but had been openly charged, on the floor of the House, with secretly desiring and plotting to elect him. Pryor and Keitt and other hotheaded Southerners had attacked Hickman fiercely, and leading Northern Democrats had upbraided him for his desertion. Under these taunts and thrusts he had become the bitterest man upon the floor.

In the gloom which seemed to overshadow the House, Hickman, as he rose, looked pale, repellent, ghastly, almost ghostly. Repeatedly during his harangue, which was really one of great power, he walked from his seat in the back part of the House, down the narrow aisle toward the Clerk's desk, his right arm lifted high above his head, his fist clinched and his whole frame trembling with passion, and as he reached the open space in front of the desk he would shriek out the climax of a paragraph, simultaneously smashing his fist wildly down upon a table that stood there.

The speech produced a profound, almost awful, impression. I remember the peroration as if it were yesterday, as he shouted, on his last stride down the aisle, glaring around upon his Republican associates: “I know not and I care not what others may do, but as for me and my house, we intend to vote for John Sherman—until Gabriel's last trump, the crack of doom, and the day of judgment.”

At the close of this, my first visit South, I turned Northward, filled with admiration and affection for the Southern people and feeling that I had found my future home. Notwithstanding the dark shadow that impended, I little fancied that I would so soon again see the fair city of my choice and under circumstances changed so sadly. I was young, and as I turned my back upon Virginia and the John Brown raid, which were then the points of greatest tension, my strained nerves relaxed, and what I had seen and heard of evil portent faded away like a disturbing dream when one awakes.

I found my dear ones well and the practical New Englanders, at least most of them, deeply immersed in business and finance. Like many wiser men, I felt reassured by the comforting conviction that the material interests of this rapidly developing country were too vast, too solid and priceless to be shattered and sacrificed in these superficial popular excitements.

In the quiet of the family circle we discussed my plans and determined that I should enter the Law School of Columbia College in the approaching fall. I do not remember where I went or what I did during the summer vacation, but in the early autumn I came back thoroughly quieted, rested and refreshed, went promptly to New York City and entered with enthusiasm upon the study of my chosen profession under that admirable teacher, Professor Theodore W. Dwight, of Columbia.

The exact dates of the personal movements and experiences thus far narrated cannot be determined. This is largely due to a habit of destroying family letters, and this to a weak dread of opening them, or even of looking upon them, after the lapse of years.

Up to this point the lack of such letters has signified little. It can make little difference just when I left New York for New Haven, or when we left New Haven for Richmond, or Richmond for Manassas. This book is not intended to be a rigid record of the daily succession and the precise dates of camp and march and battle; and yet there is no gainsaying the almost inestimable value of letters to a book of reminiscence, furnishing contemporaneous record and comment so much more vivid and accurate than memory. In the absence of these I shall have to rest largely, for the elements of time and date, upon the relation of what I may record to the general movement of the campaigns, which will, for the most part, prove sufficient for my purpose. For example, I know that Beers' funeral was just after the battle of Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863; that we arrived in Richmond a short time before the battle of Bethel, June 10, 1861; that we left Richmond almost immediately after the battle of Manassas, July 21, 1861.

It was not our fault that we did not leave earlier. My brother and I had volunteered in an infantry company called, after a favorite corps which had left the city for the front, “Junior Company F,” which was being drilled in awkward squads in a large basement room under the Spotswood Hotel. We felt that the Juniors were hanging fire too long. The city was crowded with troops from all over Virginia and the South, pressing to the front, and with swarms of gaily-dressed staff officers and military attachés and hangers-on, and we longed to be away, out of this martial show, and off to the real front. We grew daily more restless, especially after the affair at Bethel—sometimes spoken of as “Big Bethel,” “Great Bethel,” or “Bethel Church.” The main armies were facing each other in central Virginia, and as day after day and week after week passed, we began to feel that it would be a personal reflection upon us if another fight should occur without our being in it.

Suddenly the great battles of Manassas shocked the city and shook the continent, and we could stand it no longer. As I remember, it was but a day or two after the main fight of July 21 that my brother and I met two soldiers of the First Company, Richmond Howitzers, who were in the city on business for the company, and were to return next day. So without saying “by your leave” to any one, we boarded the cars next morning with these men. They undertook to conceal us on the train till it started and to secure our enrollment in the company when we arrived—undertakings skilfully and faithfully performed.

The ride to Manassas was certainly not a reassuring experience. The train was crowded almost to suffocation with troops from a far Southern State. They had been long on the way and were worn with travel in the heat of summer. Some of the men were sleepy and sprawling, others restless and noisy, and both men and cars were very dirty. It was a tedious trip, but it ended at last, and we were glad to make our escape. As we stepped from the train we were met by two or three more of the Howitzers, to one of whom was committed the duty of piloting us to the camp of the battery.

We were very much struck with our guide. Scarcely more than a half-formed country lad, he was yet a fellow of genuine, transparent nature, healthy and hearty and strong in body and mind; one of the sturdiest, manliest figures and faces I ever looked upon. He seemed to be exceptionally right-minded, broad-minded, and intelligent, was evidently glad to see us and “to tell us all about it”—the army and the battle and the service, as he saw them—and we heard much from him during our brief walk of just what we wanted to know.

Such he was then. For the next four years he was the equal of any soldier in that incomparable army. To-day, thank God! he still lives, is perhaps the best beloved and most trusted friend I have on earth, one of the best citizens and farmers in Virginia—a man whom everybody knows and trusts and looks up to and leans upon.

At last we were in “the army ;” and what was it after all? We walked perhaps a mile or more through the camps, and the prominent ideas borne in upon me were—multitude, overloading, lack of cohesion and of organization, absence of women and children, and a general sense of roughness and untidiness, of discomfort and confusion. Of course these impressions were soon to give way to others; but it was not alone my impressions that changed, it was the army itself. During the few months next ensuing it dispensed with useless baggage and equipment, acquired cohesion, organization, power and endurance, and men learned to do fairly well for themselves what women had theretofore invariably done for them. Under the discipline of the next twelve months, imperfect as it was, we trained down and trained up, just as the fighting men do, to a condition of bare, hard flesh; compact yet supple muscles; clean, clear lungs; sound, strong hearts; and perfect possession and control of all our fighting powers.

In connection with this process of training down to fighting weight, it occurs to me that the wagon train of the First Company, Richmond Howitzers, during the first nine months of the war was, I verily believe, quite as large as that of any infantry brigade in the army during the grand campaign of '64. Many of the private soldiers of the company had their trunks with them, and I remember part of the contents of one of them consisted of a dozen face and a smaller number of foot or bath towels; and when the order came for trunks to be sent back to Richmond or abandoned, the owner of this elaborate outfit, although but a “high private in the rear rank,” actually wrote and sent in to the captain an elegant note resigning his “position.” Yet this curled and scented gentleman became a superb soldier and used to laugh as heartily as any of us when, in after years, at some point of unusual want and stringency and discomfort, some impudent rascal would shout out, “Jim, old fellow, don't you think it's about time for you to resign again?”

As to the battle-field, if it showed marked traces of the conflict that had taken place I do not recall them. One scene and incident, however, I do recall, which made a very tender impression upon me. Not long after our arrival the battery was about to change its position, indeed I think the head of the column was already in motion, when some one said to me, “Captain ------ is lying in that house over yonder seriously, or it may be mortally, wounded; don't you want to go and see him a moment?” I did not want to go, but I knew the poor fellow's sisters and felt as if I ought to go, and I went. Few interviews have ever made deeper impression upon me. The heroic Christian man had been a prominent member of the Richmond bar and the mainstay and support of his sisters. He was now lying seriously wounded, in a deserted house, from which, as I remember, even the doors and windows had been carried off, and in which there seemed to be little or no furniture save the bed he occupied. The attendant who took care of him was not at the moment in the building. My comrade and I entered and I walked to the bedside, made myself known to the Captain and told him that I had seen his sisters within a day or two and that they were well, but very anxious about him. He did not seem to be suffering greatly at the time, but was evidently death-struck and I think fully aware of it. Yet there was no shrinking and no tremor. His voice was firm and clear and he was entirely self-possessed. I took his hand, or he took mine, and my recollection is that my comrade and I knelt by the bedside and we all prayed together for a few moments, and then we left him there in that desolate place to meet the last enemy; but I felt, and I am sure he did, that he would not meet him alone.

The writer having served almost exclusively with the artillery, what he has to tell must necessarily refer largely to that arm. Some general observations upon field artillery in the Army of Northern Virginia will therefore not be out of place.

With the exception of a couple of long-range Whitworth guns, run in from England through the blockade and which I never saw, the artillery of General Lee's army consisted of old-fashioned muzzle-loading pieces, for the most part 12-pounder brass Napoleons and 3-inch rifles. Batteries were usually composed of four guns. For the equipment and operation of such a battery about seventy-five officers and men were required and say fifty horses. Every old artilleryman will recall the difficulty we experienced in keeping up the supply of horses. After Gettysburg it was our habit, when a piece became engaged, to send the horses to the rear, to some place of safety, preferring to run the risk of losing a gun occasionally rather than the team that pulled it.

During the earlier stages of the war our artillery corps was very inadequately provided with clumsy ordnance and defective ammunition, manufactured for the most part within the Confederate lines; but, as the struggle went on, this branch of our service, as well as our infantry, was, to a constantly increasing degree, supplied with improved guns and ammunition captured from the armies opposed to us. We also learned to make better ammunition and more reliable fuses, but never approached the Federal artillery either in these respects or in general equipment.

During the first few days of wild hurrah, uncertainty, and drift which followed our victory at Manassas, the guns of our battery were marched and counter-marched on scouting expeditions, first with one brigade and then with another. Our most noteworthy experience was with Longstreet's, then known as the “Fourth Brigade,” in connection with which we were reviewed by Prince Napoleon at Centreville. The Prince did not strike me as an impressive man, but I recall the ease and confidence with which Longstreet handled both his artillery and infantry commands in the various maneuvers, and the riding of one of the young officers of his staff, who sat his beautiful thoroughbred superbly, dashing at full speed from point to point, leaping ditches and obstructions without being once jarred in his seat, though using a flat English saddle and that without stirrups. I remember, too, that it was so hot on the sun-scorched plain that the metal-covered tops of the ammunition chests actually burned us cannoneers, as we mounted and dismounted at command, in the battery drill.

The generals in the ranks, of whom there was, even at this early stage, an abundant supply, being still of the opinion that we ought to be and soon would be ordered to occupy Washington, regarded these several movements as in execution of or preparation for that grand objective—an objective which our commanding generals, for reasons doubtless satisfactory to themselves, seem to have soon given up—if indeed they ever seriously contemplated it. Within a short time all idea of a general offensive seeming to have been abandoned, even by the staff contingent in the ranks, we were, on the 11th of August, '61, ordered to Leesburg, under Brigadier-General N. G. Evans, of South Carolina, whose force consisted of the Thirteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Mississippi Regiments, the Eighth Virginia Infantry, our battery, and two companies of cavalry.

Leesburg, the county seat of Loudoun, was at this time, perhaps, the most desirable post in our lines, on account of the character both of the country and its people—the former beautiful and rich, full of everything needed by man and beast, and the latter whole-hearted and hospitable, ready to share with us all they had. If ever soldiers had a more ideal time than we enjoyed at Leesburg, then I cannot conceive when or where it was. During the war, in hunger and thirst, in want and weariness and blood, our thoughts would often turn fondly back to our bucolic Loudoun paradise. “When this cruel war was over” more than one of our boys went back there to get “the girl he left behind him” from '61 to '65, but would never leave again; and to-day many a grizzled, wrinkled, burdened man feels his heart grow young again and breaks into sunny smiles when a comrade of the long ago slaps him on the back and reminds him of the good times we had at Leesburg. It was here we buried the crow, with honors literary and military; nor was this by any means the only camp entertainment with which we returned the many civilities extended to us by our fair friends in the good little burg.

Of course, where there were so many brave knights all could not always succeed with the fair ladies. One of the defeated took this startling and original revenge upon his successful rival. “The captain with his whiskers” had repeatedly run him off from a new-found Dulcinea, and this same result happening once more, our hero returned to camp weary and disgusted and threw himself down to sleep. Owing to some abnormal condition of mind or body, he was at the time much given to talking in his sleep and, dreaming himself on guard and inquiry made as to the commanding officer of the force, he electrified his half-slumbering companions by shouting out:

We left Leesburg about the 7th of March, '62, for Culpeper C. H., which was the place of rendezvous of the army before taking up the line of march for the Peninsula, whither we were ordered to repair to meet McClellan. Only two things of interest occurred on the way—the reenlistment and reorganization of the battery and a hurried glimpse at our friends in Richmond. The former, as I remember, took place at or near Culpeper C. H., about the 15th of March, and deserves more than casual mention.

In the spring of 1862, throughout our service, the men reenlisting were allowed to elect their own officers; so that for weeks about this time the army, and that in the face of the enemy, was resolved—it is the highest proof of its patriotism and character that it was not also dissolved—into nominating caucuses and electioneering meetings. This compliment, by the way, is as well deserved by the men voluntarily reenlisting and electing their own officers, on the Federal side as the Confederate, if, as I presume, the same system was adopted by the Federals.

I do not say this is not the usual mode of organizing a volunteer army, at least in this country; nor do I deny that the result was better, on the average, than might have been anticipated, but it was bad enough. Our friend, Gen. D. H. Hill, in a report of a little later date, says, “The reorganization of the army, at Yorktown under the elective system, had thrown out of service many of our best officers and had much demoralized our army.”

I turn back a moment to the mud and the march up the Peninsula, in order to relate a reminiscence illustrative of several matters of interest, aside from the mud, such as the state of the currency, the semi-quizzical character and bearing of the Confederate soldier and his marked respect for private property, as well as the practical limitations to that respect.

The column had halted at New Kent Court House, a little hamlet in the great pine forest, then and now boasting not over a half dozen houses, in addition to the tavern and the temple of justice. The infantry had broken ranks and most of them were resting and chatting, seated or reclined upon the banks of the somewhat sunken road. On one side had been a large cabbage patch from which the heads had been cut the preceding fall, leaving the stalks in the ground, which under the genial spring suns and rains,—it was the middle of May,—had greened out into what I think are termed “collards” or “sprouts.” They were just what the soldiers longed for and required, and an enterprising fellow sauntered up to the fence and offered an old woman, who stood near by, “a dollar for one of them green things.”

The price was fixed not by the seller but by the purchaser and clearly under the combined influence of three considerations he thought so much of the sprout, and so little of the dollar, and then that dollar was probably the smallest money he had.

I have said nothing as yet about Malvern Hill. No Confederate cares to say anything about it. If McClellan had done nothing else in the seven days to stamp him as a general, and his army nothing else to stamp them as soldiers, beyond the selection of this position, the disposition and handling of his artillery, and the stubborn and successful stand there made, after and in spite of the experiences of the six days preceding—the reputation, both of general and of soldiers, might well be rested on this basis alone. If it had been a single, isolated battle, it would have gone down into history simply and squarely as a defeat for the Confederates, and even when viewed in its historic connection, it must yet be admitted that all our assaults were repulsed and our pursuit so staggered that the Federal general was allowed to withdraw his army without being closely pressed.

Upon our side there was not a single relieving feature in the picture. In the first place, the battle ought never to have been fought where it was. If the orders of Lee had been carried out, it would not have been, for McClellan would never have reached this position. The “third line,” of which Lee and Jackson spoke in the interview described in the preceding chapter, was never drawn. The understanding in the army at the time was that Huger and Holmes were to have drawn it, but that their commands lost their way in the almost trackless forest. In an address on “The Campaigns of Gen. Robert E. Lee,” delivered at Washington and Lee University in 1872, on January 19th, Lee's birthday, Gen. Jubal A. Early says: “* * * Holmes' command, over six thousand strong, did not actually engage in any of the battles.” But Col. Walter H. Taylor, in his “Four Years with General Lee,” published in 1877, already referred to, repeats three times—on pages 51, 53, and 54—that Holmes' command numbered ten thousand or more; and it is obvious, upon a comparison of the two statements, that Early's figures, “over six thousand,” did not include Ransom's brigade, which numbered thirty-six hundred.

It seems incredible, yet it appears to be true, that General Holmes was very deaf; so deaf that, when heaven and earth were shuddering with the thunder of artillery and the faces of his own men were blanched with the strain, he placed his hand behind his car, and turning to a member of his staff, said, “I think I hear guns.” The story was told by one of his own brigadiers, and if anything approximating to it was true, then a great responsibility rests upon some one for putting an officer so far disabled in charge of troops,—especially at such a crisis and for such a service,—whatever his other qualifications may have been.

As before stated, General Lee left but twenty-eight thousand men on the Richmond side of the Chickahominy when he crossed to the other side to attack McClellan, and of course looked to these fresh troops, when his victorious but decimated and worn-out soldiers had driven the enemy into their arms, to fall upon the Federal general and gather the fruits of victory. But here are more than one-third of these fresh troops, and the very ones Lee had arranged should cut off the retreat of his gallant foe, that never got into action at all, and McClellan was permitted to reach and occupy the strong position which saved his army and cost the lives of thousands of ours. And even this was not all. Magruder, a most vigorous officer, to whose command we were attached, lost his way and thus delayed the attack and gave McClellan further time for his dispositions. And when at last we did attack, it was in a disconnected and desultory fashion, which even to a private soldier seemed to promise no good result. But I cannot give a fairer or better idea of our view of the battle than by quoting from pages 48, 49 of Colonel Taylor's admirable book:

I have characterized the foregoing as a fair statement, as it certainly is, and yet even this fails to convey an adequate impression of the stunning and temporarily depressing effect of this battle upon our army. As to my own experience and feelings, the revelation I am about to make may be a damaging one, yet I have no desire to sail under false colors, and then, too, my own case may serve to confirm and in part to explain the remarkable statements below made as to the sudden and fearful deterioration in the condition of our army which this battle, for the time, effected.

Three of the guns of the old battery were put in action against McClellan's majestic aggregation of batteries, by way of at least making a diversion in favor of our assaulting infantry, a diversion which I presume we to some extent accomplished; for I never conceived anything approximating the shower and storm of projectiles and the overwhelming cataclysm of destruction which were at once turned upon our pitiful little popguns. In the short time they existed as effective pieces they were several times fired by fragments of Federal shell striking them after the lanyard was stretched and before it was pulled; and in almost less time than it takes to tell it the carriages were completely crushed, smashed, and splintered and the guns themselves so injured and defaced that we were compelled to send them to Richmond, after the battle, to be remoulded.

We were put in action, too, after a long, hot run. I was as sound and strong as human flesh could well be, and yet my lungs seemed to be pumped out, my brain reeled and my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, which was burnt so dry that I experienced great difficulty in swallowing. Nevertheless, I managed to do my part in serving my gun, until, in a few moments, it was completely disabled, when I fell to the earth, a horror of great darkness came upon me, and the only distinct impression I can recall is that I felt I would be glad to compromise on annihilation.

When I roused myself from this semi-stupor or swoon the detachment seemed to have disappeared, but in a few moments I found most of the men. I remember catching by the collar one who had dropped down, “all in a heap,” in an unnecessarily exposed position on the projecting root of a large tree, and jerking him up; when on the instant a shell tore to pieces the root upon which he had been seated, and yet he sank down again but a step or two from the spot. It was the first battle in which members of the company had been killed outright. The wonder is that any survived who were working these three pieces; but I suppose it is to be accounted for by the fact that the guns were quickly disabled and put out of action.

According to his own report of June 20, 1862, McClellan had three hundred and forty pieces of field artillery. I see no reason for doubting that a very large proportion of these were massed upon Malvern Hill. Nothing human can long withstand the fire of such a mass of artillery concentrated, as the Federal guns at Malvern Hill were, upon very short attacking lines of infantry. Colonel Taylor says divisions were marched forward at different times, each attacking independently and each in turn repulsed. I think it was even worse than this, and that in some cases single brigades advanced to the attack and were almost literally swept backward by what seemed to be the fire of a continuous line of battle of artillery.

The effect of these repeated bloody repulses can hardly be conceived. One fearful feature was the sudden and awful revulsion of feeling among our soldiers, inspired by six days of constant victory and relentless pursuit of a retreating foe. The demoralization was great and the evidences of it palpable everywhere. The roads and forests were full of stragglers; commands were inextricably confused, some, for the time, having actually disappeared. Those who retained sufficient self-respect and sense of responsibility to think of the future were filled with the deepest apprehension. I know that this was the state of mind of some of our strongest and best officers; in fact, I do not know of any general officer in the army, save one, who did not entertain the gloomiest forebodings, and I recall hearing at the time, or rather a day or so afterwards, substantially the same story of that one which within the last few years and a short time before his own death was related by Dr. Hunter McGuire, Jackson's medical director, a man whom of all men he loved and trusted next after his great chief, Robert Lee. I quote from an address first delivered by Doctor McGuire at Lexington, but repeated several times afterwards by special request:

The Hill here referred to is probably not our old friend “D. H.,” but A. P. Hill, a more brilliant soldier, yet, perhaps, not so peculiarly distinguished for imperturbable grit. The story illustrates two of the greatest and most distinguishing traits and powers of Jackson as a general: he did not know what demoralization meant, and he never failed to know just what his adversary thought and felt and proposed to do. In the present instance, not only did all that Jackson said and implied turn out to be true, that McClellan was thinking only of escape, and never dreamed of viewing the battle of Malvern Hill in any other aspect, but in an incredibly short time our army had recovered its tone and had come to take the same view of the matter. Indeed, as I believe, nothing but another untoward accident prevented McClellan's surrendering his entire army to Lee, notwithstanding his successful defense at Malvern Hill. The matter will be found circumstantially set out in Colonel Taylor's book, pages 41-44, substantiated and confirmed by a full extract from General Stuart's manuscript of “Reports and Notes on the War,” and also by extracts from the report of the “Committee on the Conduct of the War,” and is in outline as follows:

Stuart, Lee's chief of cavalry, following up McClellan's movements after Malvern Hill, from the heights above West over, overlooked the entire Federal army huddled together in the river bottoms of and adjacent to Westover plantation, apparently in a state of utter disorganization and unpreparedness, and he could not resist the temptation of dropping a few shells among them, which produced a perfect stampede among the troops and wagons, but at the same time had the effect of calling the attention of the Federal commanders to the fact that the position of their army was utterly untenable without command of the heights from which these shells had been fired, and they immediately sent a heavy force to take possession of them. Stuart at once informed General Lee and received word that Jackson and Longstreet were en route to support him; but again the guides proved incompetent, and Longstreet was led six or seven miles out of the way, and Stuart, after resisting as long as he could, was compelled to yield possession of the heights, which were promptly occupied and fortified by an adequate Federal force, and McClellan's army was, for the first time, safe from successful attack.

After having for the third time traced the failure of the plans of the Confederates to the incompetence or to the delinquency of guides,— in the misleading of Holmes and Huger, of Magruder, and now of Longstreet,—it seems proper to remark that the entire region which was the theatre of the Seven Days' battles is, for the most part, covered by heavy pine forests and cypress swamps, and these traversed by many wood roads, or paths rather, undistinguishable the one from the other. The confusing character of the country is well illustrated by the fact that the last time I went there, with a party of survivors of our old battery, with the view, if possible, of identifying certain positions occupied by our guns in the campaign of '64, we had two guides born and reared in the neighborhood and who professed to be perfectly familiar with the country and with the positions we desired to find; and yet these men insisted upon leading us astray, and would have done so, but that my recollection and my instinct of locality were so opposed to their views that I simply refused to be misled. Unassisted and unaccompanied I found the first position sought, the rest of the party, with the guides, wandering around for hours and finally working around to me. But it should be remembered that the generals who were misled by guides, to the disarrangement and defeat of General Lee's perfectly-arranged plans, so far at least as I have reason to believe, had never been in the region before.

Yet, once more. “Stuart, glorious Stuart,” as Colonel Taylor justly calls him, while his boyish indiscretion in firing into the huddled masses of the enemy from Evelington heights, before informing General Lee of the situation, was apparently the cause of the loss of another great opportunity—yet it should not be forgotten, in this connection, that the great plan of the Seven Days battles owed its inspiration, or at least its completion and perfection, to the information derived from Stuart's marvelous ride around McClellan's entire army just in advance of Lee's attack, more than to any other source outside the imperial intellect of the Commander-in-Chief himself. Stuart was a splendidly endowed cavalry leader, his only fault being a tendency to indulge too far his fondness for achievements that savored of the startling, the marvelous, and the romantic.

One more general reflection: Whatever effect the Seven Days' battles may have had upon other reputations, Federal or Confederate— and there were upon our side generals whose names stood high upon the roster of our main army when these operations began, but never again appeared upon it after they closed—yet there is one name and fame which these seven days gave to history and to glory, as to which the entire world stands agreed, and all the after chances and changes of the war but expanded the world's verdict. When we contemplate Lee's great plan and the qualities of leadership which these operations revealed in him, we know not which most to admire— the brilliance, the comprehensiveness, or the almost reckless audacity of the scheme and of the man. It is a singular fact, and one which seems to demand explanation, that the prominent impression which Lee invariably seems to make is that of roundness, balance, perfection; and yet unquestionably his leading characteristic as a general is aggressive audacity. Take for example his leaving but 28,000 of 80,000 men between McClellan and Richmond, and with the other 52,000 crossing a generally impassable stream and attacking McClellan's 105,000 in entrenched positions. Mayhap old Jubal Early, who knew Lee and knew war as well as any other man on either side, has the right of it and suggests the true explanation when he says, speaking of this very operation: “Timid minds might regard this as rashness, but it was the very perfection of a profound and daring strategy.”

And when we attempt to measure the effect of these Seven Days' battles—when we note that within less than one month from the day he took command of an army with which he had had no previous personal connection, Lee had completely secured its confidence and correctly estimated its capabilities, had conceived and perfected his great plan and every detail essential to its successful execution, had begun to put it into operation and actually delivered his first great blow; when we note further that within a week after that blow was struck Richmond was entirely relieved and within a few weeks more Washington was in serious peril, and the United States Government had called for three hundred thousand more men; when, we say, all this is considered, we may well ask when did the weight of one great Captain's sword, only this and nothing more, cause the scales of war to dip with such a determined, downward sag?

One of the most important features of these seven days of battle was that it was the first prolonged wrestle of the Army of Northern Virginia, the struggle that really gave birth to that army; that gave it experience of its own powers, cohesion, character, confidence in itself and in its great commander—proper estimate of its great opponent, the Army of the Potomac, and its commander. Then, too, these days of continuous battle tested the individual men, and especially the officers of the army, winnowing the chaff from the wheat and getting rid of some high in command who did not catch the essential spirit of the army or assimilate well with it, or bid fair to add anything of value to it; at the same time this week of continuous battle brought to the front men who had in them stuff out of which heroes are made and who were destined to make names and niches for themselves in the pantheon of this immortal army.

Among those in my own branch of the service who came prominently to the front, besides Tom Carter, who never lost the place he made for himself at Seven Pines in the affectionate admiration of the artillery and of the army, were the boy artillerists Pegram and Pelham, both yielding their glorious young lives in the struggle—Pegram at the very end, Pelham but eight months after Malvern Hill. The latter, an Alabamian, was commander of Stuart's horse artillery, devotedly loved and admired by his commanding general, the pride of the cavalry corps, one of the most dashing and brilliant soldiers in the service, though but twenty-two years of age when he fell. He was knighted by Lee himself in official report as “the gallant Pelham.”

The other, Pegram, was a more serious and a more powerful man, who came of a family of soldiers who had rendered distinguished service, both in the army and navy, prior to the war; an elder brother, a graduate of West Point and a singularly attractive man, rising to the rank of major-general in the Confederate service, and also losing his life in battle. The younger brother, the artillerist, a student when the war began, enlisted as a private soldier in a battery raised in the City of Richmond, which he commanded when the Seven Days' battles opened, rendering with it signal and distinguished service. Eventually he rose to the rank and command of colonel of artillery, and was recommended for appointment as brigadier-general of infantry, General Lee saying he would find a brigade for him just as soon as he could be spared from the artillery; but meanwhile he fell in battle at Five Forks in the spring of '65, even then hardly more than a stripling in years.

He had always been such a modest, self-contained and almost shrinking youth that his most intimate friends were astonished at his rapid development and promotion; but it was one of those strongly-marked cases where war seemed to be the needed and almost the native air of a young man. He was, in some respects, of the type of Stonewall Jackson, and like him combined the strongest Christian faith and the deepest spirituality with the most intense spirit of fight.

As commander of an artillery battalion he built up a reputation second to none for effective handling of his guns, his favorite method, where practicable, being to rush to close quarters with the enemy and open at the shortest possible range. He admitted that it seemed deadly, but insisted that it saved life in the end. When stricken down he lived enough to express his views and feelings, briefly but clearly, with regard to both worlds, and there never was a death more soldierly or more Christian.

Another, a very different and very racy character, who was a good deal talked about after and in connection with the fighting around Richmond in '62, was old “Extra Billy,” ex-Governor William Smith, of Virginia, whom I mentioned as a prominent among the Southern members in the Congress of '59-'60. He was one of the best specimens of the political general, rising ultimately to the rank of major-general; a born politician, twice Governor of the Commonwealth,— once before and once after this date,—already beyond the military age, yet one of the most devoted and enthusiastic soldiers in the service. As a soldier he was equally distinguished for personal intrepidity and contempt for what he called “tactics” and for educated and trained soldiers, whom he was wont to speak of as “those West P'int fellows.”

It is said he used to drill his regiment at Manassas, sitting cross-legged on the top of an old Virginia snake fence, with a blue cotton umbrella over his head and reading the orders from a book. On one occasion he was roused by the laughing outcry, “Colonel, you've run us bang up against the fence!” “Well, then, boys,” said the old Governor, looking up and nothing daunted; “well, then, of course you'll have to turn around or climb the fence.”

In '62 this story was current about him,—though I do not vouch for the truth either of this or of that just related,— that he was ordered to carry a work and to take his command through the abattis in front of it, reserving their fire. The regiment started in, the old Governor intrepidly riding in advance. The abattis swarmed with sharpshooters and his men were falling all about him, but they followed on heroically. At last they appealed to him, “Colonel, we can't stand this, these Yankees will kill us all before we get in a shot.” It was all the old hero wanted and he blazed forth: “Of course you can't stand it, boys; it's all this infernal tactics and West P'int tomfoolery. Damn it, fire! and flush the game!” And they did, and drove out the sharpshooters and carried the work.

My own dear father is one of the prominent figures in my recollections of that summer about Richmond. He was fond of horses, an excellent judge of them, and used to ride or drive the very best that could be found. I say “ride or drive.” He was then between sixty-five and seventy years of age and, though vigorous and enthusiastic, found it very comfortable to drive sometimes; but his selected vehicle was at once the most unclerical and unmilitary that could well be imagined—a regulation skeleton “trotting sulky.” He kept his saddle at our battery and his habit was, when we were not actually fighting or on the move, to return to Richmond at night, coming down in the morning with a big market basket strapped under his sulky full of bread and good things. His approach was generally heralded by the shouts of the soldiers who followed; when, looking up the road, we would see him, often standing on the shafts, scattering biscuit and reading aloud the latest telegrams. Hundreds of men would sometimes follow him to our camp, and then he would have prayers with them and make a brief religious address.

Coming in this way one morning he did not find us; the battle was on and we had gone to the front. As he could not get his saddle, he kept right on in his sulky, hoping to overtake us. In some way he managed to pass through and get ahead of the second line and went on, actually between the first and second lines of battle, until his further progress was obstructed by a line of works which had been captured by the first line, when he was forced to turn back, amidst a storm of ridicule from the second line:

“That's right, old man; this ain't no place for you, nor for me neither, if I could only git my colonel to think so!”

“Say, mister, won't your buggy carry double?”

“Haven't you got a place for me?”

“Oh, please, sir, take me with you! I ain't feeling so mighty well this morning. I'm powerful weak, right now.”

Father always followed the Scripture rule of “answering a fool according to his folly,” and so he jeered back at them, telling them “good-by,” but saying he'd be back in a minute—as he actually was, riding, bareback and blind bridle, and passing right ahead with the troops. I have heard of following a fox hunt in one of these sulkies, but I venture to say this is the very first time a man ever entered battle in one.

It will at once occur to the reader as remarkable that father was not arrested. He was, a few days later, at Malvern Hill, by order of Gen. Rans. Wright, of Georgia, and a staff officer, as I recollect, of General Armistead, told me that he was directed to arrest him on one of the earlier battle-fields of the Seven Days, and made the attempt; that up to that time he had regarded himself as a pretty daring rider and scout, but that father, whom he did not then know, led him such a chase as he had never before had, and that he returned to his general and reported that he didn't believe there was any harm in that old fellow, though he was certainly a crank, and if he got killed it would be his own fault; but that, unless positively so ordered, he didn't propose to get a bullet through his brain following that old fool right tip to the Yankee skirmish line.

It must be remembered that my father was a Christian minister, devoted to the soldiers, and a sort of chaplain-general among them. He was ready to whisper the consolations of religion in the ear of a dying man, to help the litter bearers, or to carry a wounded man off on his horse. Then, too, he was well known to many of our generals, to whom, by the way, he carried a vast amount of information gathered on his daring scouts ahead even of our skirmishers. I myself heard two or three of the most prominent generals say that it was their belief my father had seen more of the fighting of the Seven Days, from start to finish, than any other one man in or out of the army. I was of course deeply anxious about him, but he could not be controlled, and my belief was then, and is now, that the Federal skirmishers often refrained from firing upon him simply because they did not care at the time to expose their position.

Many of our soldiers knew him, especially the Georgians, Virginians and Mississippians. Georgia was his native State. In his early days he had done a great deal of evangelistic work in all parts of it, and many young men and boys in the army had heard their parents speak of him. I remember one evening, after a most impressive sermon to Cobb's or Cummings' brigade, overhearing a lot of soldiers talking at a spring, when one of them, anxious to appear a little more familiarly acquainted with the preacher than the rest, said, “I've heard my mother talk of the old Doctor many a time. I reckon the old fellow's given me many a dose of physic for croup.”

An incident occurred, on or near the Nine-Mile road, some time before the week of battle opened, which is strongly illustrative at once of my father's faith and of the childlike simplicity of the great bulk of our soldiery. Two companies, I think from South Carolina, were supporting a section of our battery in an advanced and somewhat isolated position. About the middle of the afternoon father drove down from Richmond, and after he had distributed his provisions and talked with us a while, proposed to have prayers, which was readily acceded to. Quite a number of men from the neighboring commands gathered, and just as we knelt and my father began his petitions the batteries across the way sent two or three shells entirely too close to our heads to be comfortable— I presume just by way of determining the object of this concourse.

I confess my faith and devotion were not strong enough to prevent my opening my eyes and glancing around. The scene that met them was almost too much for my reverence and came near being fatal to my decorum. Our Carolina supports, like the rest of us, had knelt and closed their eyes at my father's invocation and, simple-hearted fellows that they were, felt that it would be little less than sacrilege to rise or to open them until the prayer should be completed; and yet their faith was not quite equal to assuring them of God's protection, or at least they felt it would be wise and well to supplement the protection of heaven by the trees and stumps of earth, if they could find them, and so they were actually groping for them with arms wide extended but eyes tight closed, and still on their knees.

I hardly know what might have been the effect upon me of this almost impossibly ludicrous scene had I not glanced toward my father. As was his habit in public prayer, he was standing; his tall, majestic figure erect and his worshipful, reverent face upturned to Heaven. Not a nerve trembled, not a note quavered. In a single sentence he committed us all to God's special keeping while we worshipped; and then, evidently, he did worship and supplicate the Divine Being without the slightest further consciousness of the bursting shells, which in a few moments ceased shrieking above or about us, and our little service closed without further interruption. And then it was beautiful to observe how these simple-hearted boys gazed at my father, as if indeed he had been one of the ancient prophets; but I heard some of them say they liked that old preacher mighty well, but they didn't just feel certain whether they wanted him around having prayers so close under the Yankee guns; that he “didn't seem to pay hardly enough attention to them things.”

Colonel Brandon, father of my Yale classmate of that name, who was a captain in the regiment, was lieutenant-colonel of the Twenty-first Mississippi. He was a dignified, majestic-looking officer and a rigid disciplinarian, but an old man and very stout and heavy. I do not recollect whether Colonel Humphreys was present at Malvern Hill, but Brandon certainly went in with his regiment when the brigade, as I remember unsupported, made repeated quixotic efforts to capture the Federal guns massed on the hill. They were exposed to the fire I have already described, and of course suffered bloody repulse. Colonel Brandon had his ankle shattered while the regiment was advancing in the first charge. On the way back his men proposed to carry him with them to the rear, but he refused. He was sitting up and pluckily applying his handkerchief as a tourniquet above the wound, and he simply said: “Tell the Twenty-first they can't get me till they take those guns!”

When the line passed him on the second charge, Brandon put his hat on his sword, held it up and waved it, cheering the regiment on, but in a few moments the bleeding remnant staggered to the rear again, and again they came for their colonel, insisting that they must carry him with them. The old soldier actually drew his revolver, declaring that he would shoot down any man who laid hands upon him, and he repeated his former message: “Tell the Twenty-first they can't get their colonel till they take those guns!”

Again the charge swept by the prostrate old man, who waved his sword and his hat, urging his men up the awful slope; but when again they returned to the rear utterly broken and shattered, the old hero had fainted and the litter bearers bore him off the field.

I saw him in Richmond a few days later. His leg had been amputated below the knee. He was doing wondrous well physically, but was full of deep dissatisfaction, mortification and rage about the battle. I admitted the gross mismanagement and was saying something in extenuation, when the old fellow broke in:

“Oh! it is not mismanagement that hurts me, sir; it is cowardice— the disgraceful cowardice of our officers and men.”

I was astounded, and protested that I saw nothing of this, when he broke out again:

“Saw nothing of this, sir? Why, I saw nothing else! There is General ---,” mentioning a man I never heard mentioned on any other occasion save with admiration for his courage and devotion. “Why, sir, with my own eyes I saw him perceptibly quicken his pace under fire and that right before the men. And I saw him visibly incline his head, sir, and that right in the presence of the men. He ought to be shot to death for cowardice.”

I confess I was utterly confounded. I had myself seen General --- repeatedly passing and repassing a knoll more fearfully torn by artillery fire perhaps than any other spot of earth I ever looked upon. His men were behind it— he passed over it and in front of them. My recollection is that officers were not mounted. Of course he quickened his pace, partly because his presence was required first at one end of the line and then at the other; but the marvel to me was that he lived at all. As to the inclination of his head, all I saw was that instinctive inclination, equally natural under a heavy fire and a heavy rain. When I recalled the scene and the heroic conduct of General ---, I remember saying to myself,

“What is the true standard of courage?”

There were a number of Yale men in the Twenty-first Mississippi, among others two brothers, Jud. and Carey Smith. We used to call Jud. “Indian Smith” at Yale. I think it was at Savage Station, when the Seventeenth and Twenty-first Mississippi were put into the woods at nightfall and directed to lie down, that Carey Smith, the younger brother, putting his hand in his bosom, found it covered with blood, when he withdrew it, and saying: “What does this mean?” instantly died. He had been mortally wounded without knowing when.

I was not with the Army of Northern Virginia from the time it left Richmond moving north after the Seven Days' battles until it returned to Virginia after the invasion of Maryland; thus I missed the campaign against Pope and the first Maryland campaign, the great battles of second Manassas and Sharpsburg, or Antietam. No soldier can expect to be present for duty in all the battles of a protracted war—sickness, wounds, and capture will naturally prevent. But the fact is, I was that exceptionally fortunate soldier who never experienced either disabling sickness or wounds or captivity until the very end of the struggle, and my absence from the active front is to be accounted for on other grounds.

It will be remembered that at Malvern Hill several of the guns of our battery, my gun among them, were so roughly handled by the concentrated fire of the Federal artillery that we were compelled to send them to Richmond to be recast and remounted. This could not be done in time to enable the battery to move with the army when it marched against Pope. One section was equipped a little later and caught up in time to take part in the battle of Sharpsburg. But this was not my section, and the captain would not permit me to leave with the section first ready. Therefore I saw nothing of the campaigns against Pope in Virginia and McClellan in Maryland, and if I am to keep to the general line of reminiscence I must simply omit the late summer and early autumn of '62, for of course nothing of general interest occurred while we were hanging about Richmond waiting for a new equipment. We had not yet, to any great extent, equipped our artillery, as we did later, especially in the Manassas and Maryland campaigns, by captures from the armies opposed to us.

I have said nothing worth recording occurred during our stay around Richmond. The statement should be modified so far as to say that one of the noticeable features of the general condition was the heartrending affliction of my friends, almost every family having lost a relative, or some intimate associate, during the week of bloody battle. It had not, however, yet come to pass, as it did later, that black became the recognized dress for woman in Richmond, and that she actually appeared flippant and worldly and unfeeling if she wore any color. In the second Punic war, when Hannibal was investing Rome, the tribune Oppius had a law enacted forbidding women to wear colors during the public distress. But in our great conflict no such enactment was necessary for the devoted women of our seven-hilled city; dark death had entered every home and his sombre garb was everywhere.

Of course, too, the hospitals were crowded just at this time, and in the homes of citizens many wounded soldiers were cared for; so that it seemed the one fitting province of women, young and old, to serve as nurses and attendants upon the wounded and the dying. I think, too, though I am not sure, that the churches had already begun to give their bells to be moulded into cannon. Certainly, long before the end of the war, the people of Richmond went to church through silent streets, and ceased to hear that heavenliest of all earthly sounds, which runs like a holy refrain through the sweetest poetry and the tenderest memories of English-speaking peoples.

To me these weeks around Richmond meant more than I can express in welding the links that bound me to these dear people. I had dedicated my life to them—I was theirs and they were mine. I felt it; they felt it. Yes, these people were my friends, this city was my home. Our mother and sisters had not yet been able to get South, but the faithful people of my father's former pastoral charge assured me that they stood ready to receive and care for them with open hearts in open homes, and, until they arrived, noble women stood ready, in case my brother or I should need such ministrations, to do, as far as possible, a mother's and a sister's part by us.

While I have of course no personal reminiscence to relate either of the Manassas or the Maryland campaign of '62, yet an account was given me of the very crisis and climax of the former, in its essential character and all its surroundings so striking, that I feel called upon to make record of it. I actually did so, indeed, while a prisoner at Johnson's Island in 1865, and now use the memorandum then made.

One of the most promising of the younger officers of the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of '64 was Col. Edward Willis, of the Twelfth Georgia Regiment. I saw him but once and under the following circumstances: Our battery passed the winter of '63-'64, not in the great artillery camp on the Central Railroad, but with the advanced line of infantry guarding the middle fords of the Rapidan River. Battalion headquarters were in a pine thicket between Raccoon and Morton's fords. One beautiful day in the early spring I was seated in our headquarters' tent at work on one of the battalion reports, which it was my duty, as adjutant, to make to Artillery Headquarters, when a very striking-looking head intruded itself in the tent door and, in a very nonchalant, familiar tone, the owner of the head asked, “Is Gibbes about?”

We were not very punctilious about such matters in the Confederate service, perhaps not enough so; but the intruder and interlocutor was obviously, I thought, a private soldier and a specially untidy looking one at that—his hat unquestionably “a slouch,” his hair long and unkempt, his long overcoat, of whatever original ground color, now by long usage the color of the ground, and ending in a fringe of tatter, around the skirt; under it no sign of a coat or of anything save a gray flannel shirt, no badge or insignia of rank anywhere visible, nor even an appropriate place for any, and his badly-worn pants turned up around his very small feet shod in very rough shoes. I say it did stir me a little unpleasantly that just this man should ask, in just these words and just this tone, for Major Wade Hampton Gibbes, of South Carolina, a young West Pointer, who had recently been assigned to duty with us. I might have answered differently had not a second glance revealed a face of such commanding intellect and personal force that I said, “If you will wait a moment, I'll see,” and a moment later the very effusive meeting between Gibbes and himself, and Gibbes' introduction, to Colonel Cabell and myself, of “Col. Edward Willis, of the Twelfth Georgia,” made me very glad I had answered as I had. They had been at West Point together, I think, when the war broke out. Gibbes seated himself, tailor fashion, at one end of a large box of clothing for one of the batteries, which had not yet been opened, and Willis stretched out on the box and put his head in Gibbes' lap, who began running his fingers through the long, tangled, tawny hair which hung almost to Willis' shoulders. It would have been greatly to the advantage of the hair if Gibbes had used a comb instead of his fingers.

They began talking of their West Point classmates and comrades. I was going on with my work and not listening closely, yet I could not help being struck with the vigor and the trenchant quality of Willis' characterization of the men. But in a few moments he began telling of Jackson, and then I dropped my pen and hung eagerly on his words. I knew he had been on Jackson's staff and hoped he would tell, as he did, how he came to leave it.

He said that after Second Manassas, perhaps after Sharpsburg, Jackson sent for him and said: “Captain Willis, you have earned your promotion, sir. You may take your choice between continued service on my staff, with the rank of major, and a majority in an infantry regiment.”

To which Willis, without hesitation, replied: “I'll take the infantry regiment, General.”

A reply which revealed the mettle of the man, as Jackson indicated by saying: “Sorry to lose you, sir; but you've made a soldier's choice; you'll be assigned to duty with the Twelfth Georgia.”

Ere long he became colonel of the regiment, and at the time of which I write it was well understood throughout the army that no one commanded a better regiment and no regiment had a better commanding officer than the Twelfth Georgia.

Soon Willis began to talk of the campaign against Pope, which he regarded as Jackson's masterpiece, and as he had been closely with Jackson through it all, I considered what he said of value, as it certainly was of surpassing interest. He first expatiated at some length upon the masterly—I had almost said dastardly—way in which Jackson managed to find out all Pope's plans and purposes, and yet to elude and delude and deceive and defraud him in the most heartless and malignant fashion as to his own movements and designs. Part of the time, while waiting for Lee and Longstreet, Jackson was in extreme peril, dodging between and against the huge Federal Army corps, rushing blindly like avalanches to crush him. On one or two occasions, I think Willis said, he even went so far as to sacrifice his skirmish line, that is, arrange to have them captured by Pope's troops in a particular position, from which even the skirmishers themselves, as well as their captors, would naturally infer that “Old Jack” was marching in a certain direction and about a certain time would be about a certain place, when quite the reverse was the actual truth. In short, it must be admitted that all of Jackson's dealings with Pope, about this time, were disingenuous in the extreme. Some one, not Willis, has said substantially that they embodied a continuous, tortuous, twisted, aggravated, protracted lie—over fifty miles long.

But at last, as Willis said, all these tactics of deception were exhausted! Jackson was straight in front, in the famous position in the railroad cut, and Pope's whole army moved upon him. They advanced in imposing array, with several lines of battle—bands playing, flags flying, and their artillery, following the second line, slowly firing as they approached. Just as his dispositions—the best he could make for resisting such an onslaught—were complete, Jackson heard from Longstreet, who promised him aid in two hours. The shock could be delayed, however, only a few moments, and Jackson, feeling the imminence of the crisis, started down his lines to communicate to his troops, worn with fatigue and suspense, his own heaven-born faith and fire and Longstreet's assurance of help. I understood from Willis that he rode along the line with him, and that all he said was:

“Two hours, men, only two hours; in two hours you will have help. You must stand it two hours.”

It was the crisis of the campaign, and both sides fully appreciated it. The enemy came right on until within two hundred yards, and then broke into the rush of the charge. The officer commanding the leading centre brigade, and who was riding a powerful coal-black charger, carried the colors in his hand and rested the staff on the toe of his boot. Striking his spurs deep into the flanks of his horse, at the same time reining him in, Willis said he came on, with great plunges, the standard flapping about him and the standard bearer, cap in hand, yelling at his side. The whole line thus gallantly led, rushed upon Jackson's men with the enthusiasm of assured victory.

A hundred yards nearer and the full fire from Jackson's line burst upon them, but from the inclination of the musket barrels it looked as if the gallant fellow on the black horse would be the only man to fall. On the contrary, while many fell and the line wavered, he was miraculously unhurt, and his men rallied and pressed on after him. For a moment it looked as if he would actually leap into the cut upon his foes, but the next moment the great horse reared wildly and fell backward, but his heroic rider jammed the color staff into the earth as he went down, only ten yards from the muzzles of Jackson's muskets. The spell that held them together was broken, the advancing lines halted and wavered throughout their length—a moment more and the whole magnificent array had melted into a mass of fugitives.

Again Jackson rode down his lines: “Half an hour men, only half an hour; can you stand it half an hour?”

No account of my experience as a Confederate soldier would be complete if it failed to refer to the religious life of the army. This was an element of importance in all our armies, from the outset to the end, and was recognized and fostered as such by our leading generals, many of whom attended the religious services held among the men of their commands, some of them taking loving direction of these services.

I remember on one occasion, when my father was preaching to Tom Cobb's brigade, on the lines about Richmond in '62, that the service was interrupted by sharp firing in front and the command marched off into the woods. It proved a false alarm, however; the troops soon returned and the service was resumed. But the men were preoccupied, nervous, and widely scattered, and everything dragged, until the general, rising, begged my father to wait a moment, and called out: “Men, get up close together here in front, till your shoulders meet. You can't make a fire if the sticks don't touch.” They “closed up” and the meeting proceeded with great power.

Volumes have been written on this general theme by chaplains and others, and I have already made brief incidental reference to it; but more than this is required. Not that I propose to condense into this chapter every fact or incident within my knowledge illustrative of this phase of life in the Confederate armies. On the contrary, I shall, in the main, throughout this book, allow the religious element to mingle with others that gave character to our soldier life, and to crop out here and there, as it actually did in our every-day experiences; for, with a Confederate soldier especially, religion was not a mere Sunday matter, to be put on and off with his Sunday clothes, even if he had any such.

But as the revival at Fredericksburg in the winter of '62-'63 concerned especially the infantry brigade with which I was longest and most closely associated, I may be pardoned for giving a brief sketch of what was probably the most marked religious movement in our war and, as I believe, rarely paralleled anywhere or at any time.

The religious interest among Barksdale's men began about the time of, or soon after, the battle of Fredericksburg, which was about the middle of December, '62, and continued with unabated fervor up to and through the battle of Chancellorsville and even to Gettysburg. In addition to the labors of the regimental chaplains, the ablest and most distinguished ministers in Virginia, of all denominations, delighted to come up and speak to the men. My father, who was nearly seventy years old, came over from Jackson's corps late in February and remained for many weeks. The fraternal spirit of the Christian workers is thus portrayed in a letter by Rev. William J. Hoge, D. D., of the Presbyterian Church, written from Fredericksburg in the spring of 1863. Says Dr. Hoge:

The Baptist church had been so injured during the bombardment that it could not be used. The meetings were first held in the Presbyterian church and then in the Methodist, and finally were transferred to the Episcopal church, St. George's, which was the largest in the city, and accommodated, I should say, packed as it invariably was, from a thousand to twelve hundred men. I have never seen such eagerness to hear the Word of God, nor greater simplicity, directness and earnestness in religious services. Long before the hour appointed the men would begin to gather, intent on getting into the church and securing a seat. Thereafter every moment was occupied with some act of worship of uncommon intensity and power. The singing, in which every one joined, was hearty and impressive; the prayers, offered generally by the men themselves, were soul-moving “cries unto God;” the preacher was sometimes a distinguished divine from Richmond, sometimes one of the army chaplains, sometimes a private soldier from the ranks, but whoever he might be, he preached the gospel and the gospel only. The following is an extract from a letter written by my father just after he reached Fredericksburg:

To this graphic picture may I add a few touches. There was a soldier in a red blanket overcoat who had a voice like the sound of many waters, and who almost invariably sat or stood on the pulpit steps and led the singing. I remember, too, the many marks of cannon balls upon and in and through the building, and that it added to the thrill of the services to realize that we were gathered under the frowning batteries upon Stafford Heights. And while I greatly enjoyed the many powerful sermons we heard from distinguished ministers, yet I was still more impressed by the simple song and prayer and experience meetings of the men, which were generally held for at least an hour before the regular service began.

Many of the “talks” delivered by the private soldiers in these preparatory services were thrilling beyond expression. Let me attempt to reproduce two or three of these, promising that if I cannot be sure of the precise words employed by the speakers, I at least will not fail to reproduce the substance and the spirit of their addresses:

I remember that one of these private soldiers, in illustrating and enforcing the folly of living in this world as if we were to live in it forever, asked his comrades what they would think of the good sense or even the sanity of one of their number who should to-morrow morning send to Richmond for an elegant wrapper, velvet smoking cap and slippers, and when they came, throwing away his blanket and stout shoes and clothes, should insist upon arraying himself in “these butterfly things” in the face of the fact that the next moment the long roll might turn him out into the deep snow or the guns of the enemy batter down his cantonment over his head.

Another, speaking of the trivial things to which a man gives his heart and for which he may lose his soul, speculated with the finest fancy as to what it was, and how very a trifle it may have been, that turned the heart and the gaze of Lot's wife back toward Sodom and turned her breathing body into a dead pillar of salt.

And still another—a great, broad-shouldered, double-jointed son of Anak, with a head like the Farnese Jove and a face and frame indicative of tremendous power, alike of character and of muscle—delivered himself of his “experience” in one of the most graphic and moving talks I ever listened to. He said in substance:

“Brethren, I want you to know what a merciful, forgiving being the Lord is, and to do that I've got to tell you what a mean-spirited liar I am. You remember that tight place the brigade got into, down yonder at - - -, and you know the life I lived up to that day. Well, as soon as ever the Minies began a-singing and the shell a-bursting around me, I up and told the Lord that I was sorry and ashamed of myself, and if He'd cover my head this time we'd settle the thing as soon as I got out. Then I got to fighting and forgot all about it, and never thought of my promise no more at all till we got into that other place, up yonder at - - -; you remember it, tighter than the first one. Then, when the bullets begun a-hissing like rain and the shell was fairly tearing the woods to pieces, my broken promise come back to me. Brethren, my coward heart stopped beating and I pretty nigh fainted. I tried to pray and at first I couldn't; but I just said, ‘Look here, Lord, if you will look: I feel I have lied to you and that you won't believe me again, and may be you oughtn't to; but I don't want to go to hell, and I'm serious and honest this time, and if you do hear me now, we'll meet just as soon as I get out safe, and we certainly will settle things.’

“Well, brethren, He did all I asked of Him, the Lord did; and what did I do? Brethren, I'm ashamed to say it, but I lied again, and never thought one thing about it at all till one day we was shoved into the very worst place any of us ever was in. Hell gaped for me, and here come the two lies I had told and sat right down upon my heart and my tongue. Of course I couldn't pray, but at last I managed to say, ‘Lord! Lord! I deserve it all if I do go there, right now, and I can't pray and I won't lie any more. You can do as you please, Lord; but if you do—. But, no, I won't lie any more, and I won't promise, for fear I should lie. It's all in your hands, Lord—hell or mercy. I've got no time to talk any more about it. I've got to go to killing Yankees. But, O Lord! O Lord!—no, I daresn't, I daresn't; for I won't lie any more; I won't go down there with a fresh lie on my lips; but, O Lord! Lord!’

“And so it was, brethren, all through that dreadful day; fighting, fighting, and not daring to pray.

“But, brethren, He did it, He did it; and the moment the thing was over I wouldn't give myself time to lie again, so I just took out and ran as hard as ever I could into the deep, dark woods, where God and me was alone together, and I threw my musket down on the ground and I went right down myself, too, on my knees, and cried out, ‘Thank you, Lord; thank you, Lord! but I'm not going to get up off my knees until everything's settled between us;’ and neither I didn't, brethren. The Lord never held it over me at all, and we settled it right there.”

It is said that more than five hundred men professed conversion in these Fredericksburg meetings, and this statement is based upon careful figures made by the regimental chaplains, and particularly by Rev. William Owen, who really began these meetings, and was practically in charge of them. Some of the chaplains were very uncommon men. My father, who was in the ministry more than fifty years and had a very wide experience with men, expressed the highest estimate of them.

Easily the most marked man among them, however, was the Rev. William Benton Owen, chaplain of the Seventeenth Mississippi Regiment. My recollection is that he had been a private soldier and was commissioned chaplain, because he was already doing the work of one—yes, of half a dozen—without the commission. Of all the men I ever knew, I think he was the most consecrated, the most unselfish, and the most energetic, and that he accomplished more that was really worthy of grateful recognition and commendation than any other man I ever knew, of his ability. By this I do not mean to imply that his ability was small, but simply that I do not include in this statement a few men I have known, of extraordinary abilities and opportunities.

“Brother William,” as we used to call him, was also a man of the sweetest, loveliest spirit, but of the most unflinching courage as well. After he became chaplain he never felt it right or fitting that he should attempt to kill or wound a man, so he never fired another shot, yet he was seldom back of the actual line of battle. It may give some faint idea of his exalted Christian heroism to say that his regular habit was to take charge of the litter-bearers in battle, and first to see to the removal of the wounded, Federal as well as Confederate, when the former fell into our hands; and then to attend to the burial of the dead of both sides, when we held the field and the enemy did not ask leave to bury their own dead.

It will be remembered by Federal soldiers that the American Tract or Bible Society published Testaments with the United States flag on the fly leaf, and, on the folds of the banner, the printed words, “If I should fall, send this to - - -,” space being left for his home address, which each soldier was supposed to write in the appropriate place. Dear Brother William could not always burden himself with all these Testaments taken from the dead soldiers' pockets; but because that was not possible, he used to carry a little blank book in which he would copy the home addresses of the dead soldiers and would afterwards write to their friends, telling them where they were buried, and, if possible, how their bodies might be identified.

After one of the bloody repulses of the enemy at Spottsylvania in 1864, Brother William was, as usual, out in front of our works, utterly unconscious of his own heroism or his own peril. He had removed the wounded of both sides and taken note of our dead, and was making his memoranda of the home addresses of the Federal dead, when a Minie ball struck his left elbow, shattering it dreadfully. He was at once carried to the field hospital, and some of Barksdale's (now Humphreys') men sent word down the line to me. As soon as our guns were disengaged I galloped to the hospital to see him; but when I arrived he was under the knife, his elbow being in process of resection, and, of course, was unconscious. My recollection is that I saw him but for a moment only. Much as I would have given for even so little as one word from him, I could not possibly wait, but was obliged to return to my post.

I never saw him again. As usual, after one of these death grapples of '64, Grant slipped off to his left and we to our right, this time too far for me to get back. In a few days we heard that Mr. Owen was in Richmond and then that he had been sent home, and our hopes grew bright that he would ultimately recover. But no; he was never really a strong man; indeed he was one of the few small and slight men I remember in the entire brigade, and, besides, he was worn and wasted with his ceaseless labors. He never really rallied, but in a short time sank and passed away. Few servants of God and man as noble and consecrated, as useful and beloved, as William Owen have lived in this world or left it for Heaven.

I have referred incidentally to two special friends of mine in the company,—whom we will now identify as Allan and Billy,— and in a later chapter will refer again to the sincerity and candor of the intercourse, especially the religious intercourse, of soldiers with each other. If now I can, by a touch here and there, reveal something of what passed between me and each of these noble boys as they were led into the higher life, I will have done more than I could do in any other way to put before you the every-day religious life of the army.

Both my friends were younger than I, both were high, moral men, but neither was a Christian; Allan and I were law students when the war interrupted our studies—he at the University of Virginia, I at Columbia College, New York. It was he who, having been previously a pronounced Union man, left the University before breakfast the morning President Lincoln's call for troops was published and joined a military company in Richmond before going to his father's house. Billy was the guide who met us at the train the day we joined the battery, and conducted us to the Howitzer camp. We were all in the same detachment, that is, attached to the same gun, so I readily could and actually did pass much of my waking life first with one and then with the other, and I generally laid down by one or the other at night. Our religious conferences were seldom all three together, for the other two differed in nature and did not have the same temptations or difficulties to overcome. I began earnest effort with both of them as far back as Leesburg, and when I was promoted and left the battery, just after Chancellorsville, both had become Christians.

It may seem almost grotesque in such a connection to remark that one of the most difficult things for a soldier to do is to keep his person and his scant clothing reasonably clean, and that one of the large memories of my soldier life is a record of “divers washings.” I cannot recall ever having bathed or washed, while with the company, with any one other than my two dear friends, and it is singular how vividly I do recall standing waist deep in a pool or stream of water with Billy or with Allan, each of us scrubbing away at his only shirt, or at one of his two shirts, as the case might be, meanwhile earnestly discussing some aspect of the one great matter.

Both my dear friends were exceptionally strong men intellectually, but Billy had the simpler nature, with less tendency to self-analysis and introspection, stronger physical life and higher animal spirits; so that with him it was a clear and a clearly-confessed case of light-hearted content and happiness as he was, and consequent light-hearted indifference to any great change. But he was growing more thoughtful, more tender, more perfect in his moral life.

He was wounded seriously at Malvern Hill and threatened with the loss of an eye, and was at home in the country with his mothers and sisters for some months. Meanwhile his father died, and he began to realize that if he lived through the war he would have a great burden to carry with his “seven women,” as he afterwards called them when nobly bearing them on his great shoulders. “Seven women taking hold of the skirt of one man, and that the skirt of a round-about jacket,” as Billy used to say. He returned to us just before Chancellorsville to find the great revival at Fredericksburg in progress and a general condition of thoughtfulness throughout the army, including our battery. He attended some of these wonderful services and we were together as much as possible. I felt the greatest yearning and the strongest hope for him.

Suddenly Chancellorsville burst upon us, and as Hooker's really great plan was disclosed we all felt that the next few days were indeed big with fate. Hooker had crossed an immense force at the upper fords of the Rappahannock and Sedgwick was crossing in front of Fredericksburg. All of us were deeply stirred; and when night fell and our lines began to grow still, I proposed to Billy that we should walk out to the point of the hill overlooking the wide river bottom and hear, if we could not see, the Federal army getting into position. We did so, and no previous hour of our lives had ever proved as impressive as that which followed. We passed beyond our pickets and continued to walk until we got where the murmur of our lines could no longer be heard, while every movement of Sedgwick's great host was plainly audible. We heard the commands of the officers, the tramp of the men, the nimble of the artillery carriages, the shouts and curses of the drivers. We thought of the great meetings in Fredericksburg violently brought to a close, and of the great audience of worshipers to-night manning the lines with us. We thought of the morrow and then of our dear ones praying for us, while I found my arms gradually embracing my friend and drawing him closer to my bosom; and then, taking off our hats, we prayed,—oh, so quietly, yet so earnestly!—committing us and ours to God's merciful keeping, for the night, for the morrow, forever. I do not remember that we spoke after the prayer ceased, but I felt a new answering pressure in Billy's arms which now closely enfolded me, and the sense of a new brotherhood between us. We walked silently back to the guns, but with a new strength, a deep trust and peace in our souls, and we lay down with our arms about each other and slept as quietly as little children—as indeed we were, God's dear soldier children, who had felt His gentle assurance that all was and would be well.

The facts relating to Allan's conversion and death are so remarkable that I would scarcely dare record them were it not that I have before me a written memorandum of them prepared while I was a prisoner at Johnson's Island in the spring of 1865. Allan was, as before intimated, rather prone to introspection, but his mental processes were so definite and his verbal expression of them so clear that one experienced no difficulty in understanding him and always felt assured that he thoroughly understood himself.

A few days before Billy's return, Allan and I were washing our clothes, and I, as usual, talking, when he abruptly and almost impatiently interrupted me, saying substantially that, while I evidently thought I was speaking sensibly and appositely, yet what I was saying had in fact no sort of application to his case.

“No doubt,” said he, “it is enough if a man believe on the Lord Christ; but this direction is given to one who has, in all sincerity and earnestness, asked, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Now I feel that I have never sincerely and seriously asked that question, and I am not asking it now. The fact is, the whole current of my being sets toward the fulfilment of my earthly purpose; though just now the immediate pursuit of it is kept in abeyance by the war. It is not worth while to attempt to deceive myself or you; what I really desire and am absorbed in, my dear Bob, is not eternal life, but the life which now is. Now then, what should, what can a man do, who is in my condition? Tell me what you really think; and speak quietly and practically, so there will be no mistaking your meaning.”

I knew he was honest and hoped he was more earnest than he realized at the moment, so I begged for light and guidance before answering, and then I said:

“Allan, do you intellectually and firmly believe the New Testament records and the main outline of the Christian system; and if you do, have you any feeling at all connected with them and their bearing upon your life?”

“Yes,” he said, “my intellectual belief is definite and decided, and I probably, yes, certainly, have some desire to accept the truth in the fuller, Christian sense.”

“Then,” said I, “your present duty is clear and it is to pray to God to help you to accept in this fuller sense. Tell Him of your full intellectual faith and your feeble heart faith. Utter sincerely that prayer of prayers for a man in such a world and such a life as this, ‘Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!‘ Do this sincerely, and I feel satisfied the heart or soul part of your faith will grow.”

He protested that the best prayer he could offer would be but half-hearted and an insult to God. I combatted this idea, contending that it would be a greater neglect and insult not to attempt to pray at all, and he finally promised he would try. When I next saw him alone I think we were on the march for Chancellorsville. He was evidently unhappy, and when I asked him if he had prayed, he said he had not, that he had been upon his knees, but could not pray, and added that his nature must be more paralyzed and things even worse with him than he had supposed. I saw that another Teacher and Physician had taken the case out of my hands. He rather clung to me, but I thought best to leave him with his new Teacher, and I did.

Two of our comrades were killed and horribly mangled by solid shot or whole shell in our Chancellorsville fights, and we buried one of them at night in a thicket. Returning there after the burying party had withdrawn, I saw a man on his knees at the graveside. It was Allan, and at my approach he rose and advanced to meet me, saying:

“Bob, I am a mystery to myself. I don't see how I am to go up to the gun in to-morrow's fight and face temporal and eternal death; and yet I presume I shall be able to do my duty.”

I said decidedly:

“You have no business, Allan, and no need, to face eternal death. That is not before you, unless you will have it so.”

We said a few words to each other, a few more to God, went back and joined the sad circle around the camp fire a short while, and then lay down together. I think I told him about Billy, and then we slept.

The next day, after evening roll call, we each put an arm around the other's waist and walked off into the woods, and as soon as we got out of earshot of others I began:

“Well, Allan, to go back where we left off—”

He put his other hand in mine, and I felt a thrill as he did so, while, with the sweetest smile, he said:

“No, Bob, I don't think we will go back there. I've gotten beyond that point, and I don't like going back. I have found the Lord Jesus Christ, or, rather, He has found me and taken hold of me.”

It was the largest, the most thrilling moment of my life. Never before had I been conscious of such overpowering spiritual joy. We were for the moment two disembodied human souls alone with God. The earth with its trappings had disappeared.

It was my last word with him. It must have been the next day that I received my first promotion and left for Richmond, for Beers was killed at Chancellorsville and I buried him at Richmond. When I returned to the army it was to Early's division of the Second Corps. True, we did not begin the advance into Pennsylvania for almost a full month after Chancellorsville, and what became of this month to me I cannot say, except that I went where I was ordered, and do not recall meeting the Howitzers again until after Gettysburg.

On his way to his last battle this splendid youth wrote to his family a brief note, in which he said:

“In the hurry of the march I have little time for thought, but whenever my eternal interests do occur to me, I feel entire assurance of full and free pardon through Jesus Christ, and if called upon to die this moment I think I could do so cheerfully.”

These were the last words he ever wrote.

After Gettysburg I rode over to the old battery and they told me this story. On the last day, worn with that tremendous fight, two of our guns had taken up their last position. All thought the struggle over. Allan had just seen a friend on the staff who promised to, and did, send word home of his safety at the close of the battle. Suddenly a terrific fire burst thundering, flashing, crashing upon them and No. 1, while ramming home the shot, had the sponge-staff shattered in his hands. No. 1 was Billy; Allan was gunner, and stooped to unkey the other sponge. A frightful explosion, the piece is dismounted and most of the detachment hurled violently to the earth!

The sergeant, a quiet, phlegmatic man, looked about him in horror. The lieutenant, running up, demanded:

“Why don't you change that wheel?”

“I haven't men enough left, sir; we've used up the super-numeraries.”

“Where's Allan?”

In the four or five months between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, that is to say, between the middle of December, '62, and the first of May, '63, several things occurred of special interest to me personally, as well as several others of more general and public significance. It is not possible now to relate these events in their exact sequence, nor even to be confident that every incident referred to as belonging to this period actually happened between the dates mentioned; but neither of these considerations is important.

To my next younger brother, Randolph, and myself the one event of transcendent interest about this time was the long-deferred arrival in Richmond of our mother and sisters, whom we had left behind in New Haven in the spring of '61. Neither of us had heretofore asked anything in the nature of a furlough, or leave of absence, feeling that our comrades who, by such leave, would be enabled to see father and mother, sisters and home, should be entitled to the preference; and now, when it became known that our dear people were in Richmond, every one stood back for us and urged our claims. Not only did the captain approve our application, but the first lieutenant offered me his thoroughbred horse, “Rebel,” by the aid of whose fleet limbs it was thought I might be able to get around to the necessary headquarters in a day, and also, perhaps, have a chance to say a word in behalf of my brother and myself, instead of waiting the slow process and the somewhat uncertain result of the papers working their own way through “the regular channels.” My recollection is that all this happened about Christmas time, so that the goodness of our comrades in standing back for us was the more praiseworthy.

I did succeed in making “the grand rounds” in a day, but might not have done so but for the combined intelligence and stubbornest of little Rebel. It was almost dark when I left the last headquarters I had to visit, and started for camp, which was a long distance off, and the latter part of the way almost a labyrinth of undistinguishable army tracks. The road was yet, however, distinct, and my horse not at all fatigued and making good speed; but just as I was felicitating myself that all was working well, the road turned sharply to the left, to avoid an apparently impassable swamp, but the little horse absolutely refused to turn with it, insisting upon going directly forward into the swamp.

I fought him for ten or fifteen minutes to no purpose. He only balked and wheeled and reared and plunged, until finally, utterly worn out, I gave him his head and he took and kept his course, as the crow flies, into and through the swamp, over and past fence and ditch, on through brush and brake and briar and thicket, I making no effort to guide or control him; indeed, after a short time, utterly unable even to see where he was going and only attempting to lie as close as possible to his back and as far as possible to protect my face and eyes. I never took another such ride, before or since, and had no idea when or where it would end, until at last—yet in an incredibly short time—the little fellow pushed his determined front through the fringe of low pines that protected our battery horse shelters and—we were at home. I was bruised and scratched, tired and cold, wet and hungry, but I made the plucky little horse comfortable before doing anything for myself, and next morning satisfied myself that he had never before been over the tract of country we had traversed together, and that it was a clear case of unerring instinct for locality and direction. I had all the required endorsements, and that very day “Randy” and I took the train for Richmond, the two happiest boys among all Marse Robert's ragged thousands.

When it is recalled that it had been nearly two years since we left our mother and sisters in the North; that during all this time we had only irregular, illegal, and very infrequent communication with them, and consequently had now all the vivid experiences of two such years to interchange, the intense interest and bliss of those furlough days in Richmond may be faintly imagined. My memory is not absolutely clear, but I am almost positive that Mrs. Beers and her little girls had come on with our mother and sisters and that Beers had also gotten a furlough to meet them and was in Richmond with us. If so, it was the last time I ever saw the noble fellow alive. It will be remembered he fell at Chancellorsville.

One matter of very great importance which took shape between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville was the organization of our (Cabell's) battalion of artillery. It was made up of four batteries—ours, the First Company, Richmond Howitzers, of Virginia; Manly's Battery, of North Carolina; the Troupe Artillery and Frazier's Battery, of Georgia; and it included, at different times, from sixteen to eighteen guns, mostly brass Napoleons. Its commanding officer was Col. H. C. Cabell, a member of the historic and illustrious Virginia family of that name and a man every way worthy of his lineage.

For eighteen months of the hottest part of the war I was the adjutant of Colonel Cabell, fighting by his side by day and sleeping by his side by night, eating and drinking often out of the same tin cup, lying upon the same oil cloth and covered with the same blanket—side by side, heart to heart soul to soul. If ever I knew a man through and through, I knew him; and a cleaner, sweeter, more loyal soul I never knew. His essential characteristics were pure and unselfish nature, tender and affectionate heart, gentle and unfailing courtesy, single-hearted and devoted patriotism, quiet but indomitable courage. I never knew him to fail to be at the point of peril along the front of his battalion, nor there nor anywhere to fail to measure up to the full standard of a battalion commander's duty and responsibility. I never knew him to shrink from any hardship or any duty or any sacrifice for the cause to which we had devoted our lives. I never knew him to fail to treat a private soldier with a consideration which was grateful to him, and yet never knew this courtesy to interfere with the maintenance of discipline. I never knew him to wound intentionally the feelings of a human being, or fail to repair the wrong if committed inadvertently. He was a man of intellect and culture, as well as character; as a friend ever faithful, as a companion always agreeable, as an officer enjoying the unqualified confidence and approval of his superiors, and the universal respect and affection of his subordinates.

I am well aware that all this should have resulted in even more, but he who never did injustice to others never did full justice to himself. He lacked self-assertion and aggression; to some extent, too, he lacked the manner and bearing of a soldier, and he never maneuvered for position for himself or his battalion.

He was not, however, lacking in proper soldierly ambition. He already enjoyed distinguished position; for the officer who attains and reputably maintains the rank of full colonel of artillery fills a position of great honor and responsibility. But he was much pleased to learn late in the war that certain of his friends, as they announced themselves, were planning to secure for him the exceptional rank of brigadier-general of artillery. He was interested and gratified until he accidentally discovered that it was involved in the plan that he should be retired to the permanent defenses of Richmond, and another officer should take his battalion in the field. When this feature was developed, for once he flamed into ungovernable rage. It was the only time I ever heard him swear. “Stiles,” said he, “what do these people take me for? Have I given men any reason to consider me a damned sneak and coward and fool?”

I cannot forbear a trifling incident, revealing in a flash the simplicity and beauty of his nature and of our relations and intercourse. It occurred at the left base of the Bloody Angle at Spottsylvania in 1864, where one or two of his batteries had been ordered to take the place of some of our artillery which had been captured, and to stay the rout. The guns were in column back of the lines, awaiting our return, we having ridden into that gloomy pit of defeat and demoralization to determine exactly where they should be placed. As we came out, before riding back to bring up the guns, we dismounted in a place of comparative security, just to stretch our limbs and unbend a moment from the awful tension. Leaving his horse, Colonel Cabell walked up to me, color mounting his face and tears filling his eyes, and threw his arms about me, saying, in a voice husky with feeling, exactly these words: “Stiles, if you should dare to get killed, I'd never forgive you.”

Such was the commanding officer of our battalion. Either at the organization or soon after, Major S. P. Hamilton, of South Carolina, was assigned to duty with the command, and at a later period Major W. H. Gibbes, of the same State, was with us for a few weeks or months. I am not certain as to the date of my first service with the battalion as adjutant. Some of my comrades insist that it was from the inception; but I am sure this is not true, unless, as is possible, I may have been detailed by Colonel Cabell to aid temporarily in arranging matters and getting the new organization in working order. I could not have been regularly even “acting adjutant,” for I held no commission until after Chancellorsville, a battle in which we were fought as a battalion, though in two divisions, while I distinctly remember I fought as a private soldier, in the old battery, in my usual position at my own gun.

Soon after the battle of Gettysburg, whether on the Virginia or Maryland side of the river I do not now remember, Colonel Cabell met me and asked what I was doing, and learning that I was at the time a sort of free lance, with one of the artillery battalions of the Second Corps, urged me to get the informal permission of General Early, with whose headquarters I kept up some sort of connection, and go back with him to the First Corps and act as adjutant of his battalion, which I did; he promising to get a regular order assigning me to this duty. Upon reflection, I think the first order of detail for duty at his headquarters, by Colonel Cabell himself, prior to Chancellorsville, as above suggested, is very probable, as I do not otherwise see how the Colonel would have known me or had reason to suppose I would be satisfactory to him in the position.

Among matters worthy of note occurring prior to Chancellorsville, it may not be out of place to mention the very active commerce or interchange of commodities, carried on by tiny sailing vessels, between the north and south banks of the Rappahannock River, at and below Fredericksburg, both before and after that battle. The communication was almost constant and the vessels many of them really beautiful little craft, with shapely hulls nicely painted, elaborate rigging, trim sails, closed decks, and perfect steering apparatus. The cargoes, besides the newspapers of the two sides, usually consisted on our side of tobacco and on the Federal side of coffee and sugar, yet the trade was by no means confined to these articles, and on a sunny, pleasant day the waters were fairly dotted with the fairy fleet. Many a weary hour of picket duty was thus relieved and lightened, and most of the officers seemed to wink at the infraction of military law, if such it was. A few rigidly interdicted it, but it never really ceased.

Another institutional amusement of the army in the winter of '62-3, which tended greatly to relieve the almost unendurable tedium of camp life, was the snow-ball battle. These contests were unique in many respects. In the first place here was sport, or friendly combat, on the grandest scale, perhaps, known in modern times. Entire Brigades lined up against each other for the fight. And not the masses of men only, but the organized military bodies—the line and field officers, the bands and the banners, the generals and their staffs, mounted as for genuine battle. There was the formal demand for the surrender of the camp, and the refusal, the charge, and the repulse; the front, the flank, the rear attack. And there was intense earnestness in the struggle— sometimes limbs were broken and eyes, at least temporarily, put out, and the camp equipment of the vanquished was regarded as fair booty to the victors.

I recall a visit paid in company with my father, not long after the battle of Fredericksburg, to the camp of my uncle mentioned in a former chapter as having been in command of Lawton's brigade in that fight. He was still in command of it. My father asked the cause of several very heavy bruises on his face. I never saw my uncle more deeply embarrassed, as he related, blushing like a girl, what he called his “preposterous experience” in leading his brigade the day before in a snow battle with Hoke's, which lasted several hours—and as the really laughable picture was developed, its strong coloring heightened by my uncle's embarrassed blushes, I never saw my father more heartily amused. It seemed that my uncle at one point in the conflict had been dragged from his horse and captured by Hoke's men, but later had been recaptured by his own command, and on both occasions had been pretty roughly handled. One would have supposed these veteran troops had seen too much of the real thing to seek amusement in playing at battle.

I had now been in the army for nearly two years and was still a private soldier, yet quite content as such. My mental attitude in this regard was perhaps rather unusual. I had originally volunteered exclusively from sense of duty, regarding the war, so far as it affected me personally, as an interruption to my purposes and ambitions in connection with the law; but I was never one of those who considered the conflict to be a matter of sixty or ninety days or a year, and soon came to look upon it as of indefinite duration and likely to prove an absorbing business to me for a long time to come. Gradually I became interested in military life and began to contemplate it as perhaps my life work, and from this time my interest in it grew apace. Still, I had thought little of promotion except in the aspect of making myself deserving of it. True, General Hill had, at quite an early period, said something of a commission, but none had come, and I had continued to look upon the position, even of a corporal, as requiring a certain amount of military aptitude, not to say talent and training, which I was not confident I had.

I recall but one or two features of the march to Chancellorsville. We were with McLaws' division, and of the 14,000 (Anderson's and McLaws' commands) with which General Lee undertook to hold, and did hold, the front of Hooker's 92,000, while Jackson, with the balance of our forces, swung around his right flank and rear.

Two of our batteries, the Howitzers and Manly's, left Fredericksburg at midnight, April 30th, 1863, and early on the morning of May 1st were drawn up in column on the side of the Old Turnpike, head toward Chancellorsville, to allow the “Light Division,” as Gen. A. P. Hill's command was called, to pass. Jackson, as we understood, was somewhere ahead, and Hill's superb troops seemed to be resolved that he should not be compelled to wait even a moment for them. They were in light marching order, and I thought I had never seen anything equal to the swinging, silent stride with which they fairly devoured the ground. The men were magnified in the morning mist which overhung the low flat-lands they were traversing, and at the same time imparted a ghostly indistinctness of outline, which added to the impressiveness of the scene. All was silent as the grave, save the muffled and almost synchronous tread of the thousands of feet in the soft road, and the low clatter or jingle of accoutrements.

The Engineer Troops—Jubal Early—His Ability and Devotion—His Caustic Tongue—Lee a Master of the “Offensive Defensive”—His Army Organized into Three Corps—He Turns Northward and Maneuvers Hooker Out of His Position on the Rappahannock—The Battle of Winchester—Fine Work—Large Captures—Scenes and Incidents of the Battle.

It is singular that I cannot recall with distinctness anything that occurred during this visit to Richmond, save the burial of poor Beers; and as to that I remember only what I have related. I do not recall much enthusiasm or elation of spirit about my promotion; indeed I felt little, for it severed the strong ties that bound me to my old comrades; it removed me from a branch of the service which I loved and in which I felt competent to do efficient work, and transferred me to another for which I possessed neither taste nor training.

My orders were to report to Major-General Early, in the field, and in connection with the other officers of my company to organize a company of engineer troops from men to be furnished us from his division. I do not remember where General Early was, but somewhere in the northern or central portion of the State, and I reported promptly at his headquarters, meeting there for the first time Captain Williamson, the commanding officer of our prospective company, who proved to be a gentleman of character, a competent engineer and thorough soldier, though, unfortunately, somewhat deaf. I do not think he heard all that was said by the General during our conference, or that he observed him quite as closely as I did.

After the conference was over I saw Captain Williamson privately and asked him how much aid and co-operation he expected from the General in getting up his company. He said he hardly knew, and asked my views, which were quite decided and decidedly expressed—to the effect that General Early had no idea of losing a musket from his division if he could avoid it; that he would aid us just so far as he was compelled to do so and no further; that our orders were somewhat defective, or at least not framed to meet such a case; that I did not mean to imply that the General was not right in the position he had taken, but that right or wrong he had clearly taken it; and as he was evidently a man of uncommon intelligence and determination, I felt satisfied he would carry his point.

In the course of two or three days the situation became clearly defined, the General taking little or no pains to conceal it, and I had another talk with Captain Williamson, who felt that nothing more could be done just now in the way of organizing the company, adding that General Early had asked him, for the present, to act as engineer officer on his staff. He had made no such suggestion or request in my case, and Captain Williamson seemed to feel badly on my account; but I begged him to think no more about it, assuring him that I had sense enough to see that any such action in my case was out of the question, as I was not an engineer. I omitted to say that my orders entitled me to a horse to be furnished and fed, as I remember, by the quartermaster of the division, and the General was very kind and prompt in seeing that these requirements were complied with; but I saw clearly that I was neither needed nor desired on the division staff and that, if I remained, the best I could expect would be the position and duty of a sort of upper courier, which I was not willing to assume.

I therefore went directly to General Early and had a full talk with him. I did most of the talking, but he heartily acquiesced, and when I was through I felt sure we thoroughly understood each other, and I thought he liked me. I told him I saw clearly that, for the present, no company of engineer troops was to be organized from his division; that indeed I rather thought the division pioneer corps, under command of Lieutenant, or Sergeant, Flood, was all the engineer company he cared to have. Flood was a New Orleans stevedore, a rough but very efficient man, who, among his many admirable qualifications, possessed this highly acceptable one, that he had no sort of objection to Old Jube's airing his choice vocabulary of profane rhetoric about him, or his work, or his men whenever he might happen to need relief in that direction.

I said further to the General that I thought the pioneer corps might perhaps be regarded as the nucleus of the future company of engineer troops, and while I had no idea of meddling with Flood's work, which he was vastly better qualified to manage than I was, yet I could help him about his requisitions, reports, etc.; but that as we were evidently going into an active and aggressive campaign I thought I would, in action, fight in some battery of Col. Hilary Jones' Battalion, if he thought he could make use of me—standing ready, however, at all times, to report back to Division Headquarters for staff duty or for anything I could at any time do for the General.

This arrangement seemed to be entirely satisfactory to General Early, as it was also to Colonel Jones, in one or other of whose batteries—usually with the Charlottesville Artillery, a corps that reminded me somewhat of our old battery—I fought, whenever they were engaged, throughout the campaign, notably at Winchester and Gettysburg; sometimes in charge of one or more pieces, and again fighting as a private soldier at a gun, or in any position where they were weakest and most needed help. I said the arrangement seemed to be entirely satisfactory to General Early, and yet in connection with it there occurred a series of awkward and amusing incidents which admirably illustrate some of the General's strongly-marked traits.

Soon after Gettysburg my brother and I passed and missed each other, I riding over to the First Corps to learn what had befallen my friends of the old battery, while he came over to Early's division of the Second to inquire for me. His description of the old General was so characteristic and vivid that to this day I am prone to imagine that I saw and heard instead of my brother. He said the sun was shining after the rain, and at Early's headquarters he saw a man rather above middle age, heavily built, with stooping shoulders, a splendid head and a full gray-brown beard, sitting in his shirt sleeves on a camp stool, with one leg thrown over the other, his hands and apparently his every thought employed in combing out and smoothing a somewhat bedraggled black ostrich feather. My brother had no idea who this figure was, but he passed beyond him to inquire of some less absorbed person as to my welfare and whereabouts. The person addressed, probably some courier, did not happen to know anything of me, and the feather dresser piped in a whining, querulous voice:

“Who are you looking for—Stiles? I can't tell you where he is, but I can tell you where he ain't. He ain't with the division pioneer corps, where he belongs; I reckon your best chance to find him would be lying around with some battery.”

When my brother told me this, as he did when we next met, I was at once irritated and amused. It was after I had, with General Early's approval, gone back to the old battalion to serve as its adjutant, under Colonel Cabell. I did not happen to meet the General for some time, and meanwhile fortune had smiled upon me in many ways. I was located to my entire satisfaction, had a fine horse, was better dressed and equipped every way, and was feeling generally satisfied, independent, and happy. We had gotten back to the sacred soil of Old Virginia, and, under Clark's Mountain, riding alone, I overtook and passed the General accompanied by only a single courier. My horse had the better action and movement, and I merely saluted as I rode rapidly by. I had gotten perhaps a hundred yards or more ahead, when the General called after me:

“Hold on, Stiles;” and as he drew near, “you're a little offish this morning.”

“No, General, I think not.”

“Well, what the devil's the matter?”

“Nothing in the world, sir, except that I didn't suppose you'd care for the company of a man of whom the best you could say was that you felt sure he wasn't where he ought to be.”

I do not remember where I overtook Ewell's corps, but think I entered Pennsylvania with them. General Lee had issued stringent orders against plundering and, certainly in the main, the men carefully observed these orders. I was constantly told by the inhabitants that they suffered less from our troops than from their own, and that if compelled to have either, they preferred having “the rebels” camped upon their lands. I saw no plundering whatever, except that once or twice I did see branches laden with fruit broken from cherry trees.

Of course, it goes without saying, that the quartermasters, especially of artillery battalions, were, confessedly and of malice aforethought, horse thieves. It was, perhaps, adding insult to injury to offer to pay for the horses, as we did, in Confederate money; yet occasionally the owners took it, as “better than nothing”—how better it would be difficult to say. I felt sorry for the farmers, some of whom actually concealed their horses in their dwelling houses, or, rather, attempted to conceal them, for we became veritable sleuth-hounds in running down a horse, and were up to all the tricks and dodges devised to throw us off the track.

After all, we gained very little by our horse stealing. The impressed animals were, for the most part, great, clumsy, flabby Percherons or Conestogas, which required more than twice the feed our compact, hard-muscled little Virginia horses required, and yet could not do half the work they did, nor stand half the hardship and exposure. It was pitiable, later, to, see these great brutes suffer when, compelled to dash off at full gallop with a gun, after pasturing on dry broom sedge and eating a quarter of a feed of weevil-eaten corn. They seemed to pine for the slow draft and full feed of their Pennsylvania homes.

To me this campaign of invasion was of somewhat peculiar interest. Not only did I have a wide general acquaintance with the North, but two or three of my Yale classmates were from the very section of country we were traversing, and I therefore felt somewhat acquainted and connected with the people and the region. I was struck, too, with the resemblance, both of the country and its inhabitants, to the Valley of Virginia. I noted the same two great stocks and races as making up the population,—the Dutch and the Scotch-Irish,—and to a great extent they had laid out their smaller towns and arranged their buildings, orchards, wells, —everything, in short,—upon their farms, very much after the familiar Valley pattern.

One bright day toward the end of June, our column was passing through the main street of such a town, when, being very thirsty, I rode up to the front fence of a house which, with its yard and surroundings, might have been set down in the main street of any one of a half-dozen Valley of Virginia towns without being in any respect out of place, and asked an elderly lady sitting in the porch if I might get a drink of water from the well. She courteously gave permission and I entered the yard, got a delicious drink of water, thanked her, and was in the act of leaving, when the old lady—who looked like the typical Valley gran'ma—very pleasantly asked if I wouldn't take a seat and rest a little. I thanked her, stepped up on the porch and sat down, and we soon got into a friendly and pleasant conversation, in the course of which she asked me of myself, family, and surroundings, and seemed much interested to know that I had a sister in New Haven, Conn. She gladly consented to mail a letter for me, and had a table, pen, ink, paper and stamps brought that I might write it. This letter was faithfully mailed by the old lady, and was the only communication my sister received from me for a year or more.

As I finished writing a young married woman, evidently the daughter of my kindly hostess, came to the door, saying that her little son, naming him, was missing. In a few moments they brought the child, a boy of five or six years, to the front porch, pale and trembling violently. They had found him between the mattress and feather bed in an upstairs room, where he had hidden for fear of the rebels, of whose ferocious cruelty, blood-curdling tales had been told him. In a few moments he was in my lap, and we were the best of friends.

Just as he was beginning to warm into his nest his mother announced that she had not seen anything of her elder son for some time, when, on the instant, a bright boy of ten or twelve summers burst into the gate, breathless with excitement, and gasped out, “Mother, mother! may I go to camp with the rebels? They are the nicest men I ever saw in my life. They are going to camp right out here in the woods, and they are going to have a dance, too!”

Harry Hayes' Louisiana brigade was passing at the moment, and in the open gate stood the lad's companion, waiting for him —a bowing, smiling, grimacing, shoulder-shrugging Frenchman, who promised, in rather broken English, that he would take the best possible care of him. The mother hesitated, but a glance at her youngest, whose arm had now stolen around my neck, decided her, and off went her eldest with his Creole comrade; and if the brigade did have the dance, then the lad saw what was really worth seeing, for if there was anything Hayes' Creoles did and loved to do better than to fight, it was to dance; and their camp stag dances, sandwiched in between a big march and a big battle, were said to be the most “utterly utter” performances in the way of faun-like pranks, that grown and sane men ever indulged in.

Before I left the old lady asked me if I had ever seen Stonewall Jackson, and upon my responding that I had, she said quietly, but with the deepest feeling, that she expected to see him soon, for if any one had ever left this earth who had gone straight to Heaven it was he.

This was almost too much, and I said to her, “Madam, who on earth are you and where did you come from?” She said she was born in the Valley of Virginia and had been brought to this country when a girl. I could not forbear kissing her hand as I departed, and told her I felt sure she would get There, and I hoped we would meet in that blessed country where there would be no more wars nor separations between God's dear children.

By this time the reader has doubtless learned that things were not likely to be dull when our old friend “Extra Billy” was about; that in fact there was apt to be “music in the air” whenever he was in charge. On the occasion below described, the old Governor seemed to be rather specially concerned about the musical part of the performance.

We were about entering the beautiful Pennsylvania town of York, General Smith's brigade in the lead. Under these conditions, feeling sure there was likely to be a breeze stirring about the head of the column, I rode forward so as to be near the General and not to miss the fun. As we approached, the population seemed to be very generally in the streets, and I saw at a glance that the old Governor had blood in his eye. Turning to Fred, his aide,—who was also his son, and about the strongest marked case of second edition I ever saw,—he told him to “Go back and look up those tooting fellows,” as he called the brigade band, “and tell them first to be sure their drums and horns are all right, and then to come up here to the front and march into town tooting ‘Yankee Doodle’ in their very best style.”

Fred was off in a jiffy, and soon here came the band, their instruments looking bright and smart and glistening, in the June sunlight—playing, however, not “Yankee Doodle,” but “Dixie,” the musicians appearing to think it important to be entirely impartial in rendering these national airs, and therefore giving us “Dixie” by way of prelude to “Yankee Doodle.”

When they got to the head of the column, and struck up “Yankee Doodle,” and the Governor, riding alone and bare-headed in front of his staff, began bowing and saluting first one side and then the other, and especially every pretty girl he saw, with that manly, hearty smile which no man or woman ever doubted or resisted—the Yorkers seemed at first astounded, then pleased, and finally, by the time we reached the public square, they had reached the point of ebullition, and broke into enthusiastic cheers as they crowded about the head of the column, actually embarrassing its progress, till the old Governor,—the “Governor-General,” we might call him,—nothing loth, acceded to the half suggestion and called a halt, his brigade stacking arms, and constituting, if not formally organizing, themselves and the people of York into a political meeting.

It was a rare scene—the vanguard of an invading army and the invaded and hostile population hobnobbing on the public green in an enthusiastic public gathering. The General did not dismount, but from the saddle he made a rattling, humorous speech, which both the Pennsylvanians and his own brigade applauded to the echo. He said substantially:

“My friends, how do you like this way of coming back into the Union? I hope you like it; I have been in favor of it for a good while. But don't misunderstand us. We are not here with any hostile intent— unless the conduct of your side shall render hostilities unavoidable. You can see for yourselves we are not conducting ourselves like enemies today. We are not burning your houses or butchering your children. On the contrary, we are behaving ourselves like Christian gentlemen, as we are.

“You see, it was getting a little warm down our way. We needed a summer outing and thought we would take it at the North, instead of patronizing the Virginia springs, as we generally do. We are sorry, and apologize that we are not in better guise for a visit of courtesy, but we regret to say our trunks haven't gotten up yet; we were in such a hurry to see you that we could not wait for them. You must really excuse us.

“What we all need, on both sides, is to mingle more with each other, so that we shall learn to know and appreciate each other. Now here's my brigade—I wish you knew them as I do. They are such a hospitable, whole-hearted, fascinating lot of gentlemen. Why, just think of it—of course this part of Pennsylvania is ours to-day; we've got it, we hold it, we can destroy it, or do what we please with it. Yet we sincerely and heartily invite you to stay. You are quite welcome to remain here and to make yourselves entirely at home—so long as you behave yourselves pleasantly and agreeably as you are doing now. Are we not a fine set of fellows? You must admit that we are.”

At this point my attention was called to a volley of very heated profanity poured forth in a piping, querulous treble, coming up from the rear, and being mounted and located where I commanded a view of the road, I saw that the second brigade in column, which had been some distance in the rear, had caught up, and was now held up by our public meeting, which filled and obstructed the entire street, and that Old Jube, who had ridden forward to ascertain the cause of the dead-lock, was fairly blistering the air about him and making furious but for the time futile efforts to get at Extra Billy, who in plain sight, and not far off, yet blissfully unconscious of the presence of the major-general and of his agreeable observations and comments, was still holding forth with great fluency and acceptability.

The jam was solid and impervious. As D. H. Hill's report phrased it, “Not a dog, no, not even a sneaking exempt, could have made his way through”—and at first and for some time, Old Jube couldn't do it, and no one would help him. But at last officers and men were compelled to recognize the division commander, and he made his way so far that, by leaning forward, a long stretch, and a frantic grab he managed to catch General Smith by the back of his coat collar. Even Jube did not dare curse the old General in an offensive way, but he did jerk him back and around pretty vigorously and half screamed:

“General Smith, what the devil are you about! stopping the head of this column in this cursed town?”

Gettysburg, generally regarded as the pivotal battle of our great civil war, has been more studied and discussed than any other, and much unpleasant feeling between prominent actors in the drama on the Confederate side and their adherents and partisans has been brought out in the discussion. The writer has his own opinions upon most or all of the disputed points; but, while resting upon grounds satisfactory to himself, these opinions are not based upon such a thorough study of the battle as would alone justify the effort to influence the views of others, if indeed such an effort could be regarded as properly within the scope of such a work as this.

As usual with great battles, it was not the plan or purpose of either side to fight this one when and where it was fought. Meade, who had succeeded Hooker, had selected a position on Pipe Clay Creek, where he would have concentrated his army—but for the capture of President Davis' message to General Lee, revealing the fact that he feared to uncover Richmond by detaching Beauregard to threaten Washington as Lee had advised—and Lee had ordered the concentration of his army at Cashtown; but there was this great difference between the circumstances of the two armies. The battle was brought on by the advance of the Federal cavalry, in the discharge of its legitimate work of developing our forces and positions and gathering information for the Federal commander. The Confederate leader, on the other hand, was, in great measure, without his cavalry; no information whatever had been received by him, since crossing the Potomac, of or from General Stuart or his troopers. His army was, therefore, in the condition of a blind man surrounded by enemies endowed with vision and making full use of it.

It is fair to Stuart to say that it had been left to his discretion when and where he should cross the river—whether east of the mountains, or in the track of the infantry at the mouth of the Valley; but Colonel Taylor says: “He was expected to maintain communication with the main column, and especially directed to keep the commanding general informed of the movements of the Federal army.” Did his one besetting weakness betray him again? Was he too much absorbed and infatuated with the fun of seeing how near his eastern sweep could approach the fortifications of Washington, or how far his bursting shell could terrorize the Federal capital?

On the eve of Gettysburg the Army of Northern Virginia, with the exception of the cavalry, was well in hand and in the finest possible plight. Of course its equipment was not perfect, though better, I think, than I remember to have seen it at any other time, while the physical condition and the spirit of the men could not have been finer. The way in which the army took the death of Jackson was a striking test of its high mettle. I do not recall having talked with a man who seemed to be depressed by it, while the common soldiers spoke of it in wondrous fashion. They seemed to have imbibed, to a great extent, the spirit of Lee's order announcing Jackson's death. They said they felt that his spirit was with us and would be throughout the campaign. It seemed to be their idea that God would let his warrior soul leave for a time the tamer bliss of Heaven that it might revel once more in the fierce joy of battle.

The Third Corps, A. P. Hill's, the last to leave the line of the Rappahannock, was the first to become engaged in the great fight.

On the 29th of June, Hill, who was at Fayetteville, between Chambersburg and Gettysburg, under general orders to co-operate with Ewell in menacing the communications of Harrisburg with Philadelphia, sent Heth's division to Cashtown, following it on the 30th with Pender's, and on the 1st of July with Anderson's division. On the 1st, Heth sent forward Pettygrew's brigade toward Gettysburg, where it encountered a considerable Federal force, how considerable Pettygrew could not determine; but it consisted in part at least of cavalry, and this information was at once sent, through Heth and Hill, to the commanding general, who directed Heth to ascertain if possible what force was at Gettysburg, and if he found infantry to report at once, but not to force an engagement. He did find infantry, a large body of it, and finding himself unable to draw away from it, soon became hotly engaged. The sound of artillery hurried Hill to the front and he put in Pender's division in support of Heth. Anderson did not get up in time to take part in this fight.

But the Second Corps, Ewell's, to which I was attached, or rather two divisions of it, Early's and Rodes', which were already en route for Cashtown, hearing at Middletown that Hill was concentrating at Gettysburg, turned toward that point, and Rodes, who was in the advance, gathering from the cannonading that a sharp engagement was in progress, hurried forward and made his dispositions for battle. But before he could form his lines so as to most effectively aid Hill's two divisions, he found fresh Federal troops deploying in his own front and soon became engaged with these. Meanwhile, our division (Early's) was subjected to one of the most straining of the experiences of the soldier—approaching a field of battle, invisible as yet, and played upon by the cadence and the swell of the fire. I well recall the scene as, about three o'clock in the afternoon, our column left the road and deployed out into line upon an elevated plateau, from which we had a full view of the field and of the drawn battle trembling in the balance in our front.

Every experienced soldier, particularly if he is a man of sensitive nature and pictorial memory, will appreciate my saying that two strongly contrasted figures are almost equally prominent in my recollections of this scene. One is Old Jube, as with consuming earnestness he connected his right with Rodes' left and gave the order to advance—his glossy black ostrich feather, in beautiful condition, seeming to glisten and gleam and tremble upon the wide brim of his gray-brown felt hat, like a thing of life; and the other, a dwarfish, dumpy little fellow, of the division pioneer corps, who at this moment came running up to his command, just as I was leaving it to take my place with the artillery, carrying under each arm a great, round Dutch loaf of bread about the size of a cart wheel, giving him, upon a side view, such as I had of him, the appearance of rolling in on wheels.

Early's attack was one of great impetuosity, especially that of Gordon's brigade, and while, even after his two brigades —Hayes' and Gordon's—entered the fight, the preponderance in numbers was still with the Federal side, yet they broke almost immediately, in front of Early; whereupon our entire line—the two divisions of our corps and the two of Hill's—made a simultaneous advance, and the whole Federal force, consisting of the First and Eleventh Corps, of three divisions each, and Buford's cavalry, gave way in utter rout. The Charlottesville battery followed immediately in rear of Gordon, and I was in charge of one of their pieces. We drove the enemy pell-mell over rolling wheat fields, through a grove across a creek, up a little slope and into the town itself. The pursuit was so close and hot that, though my gun came into battery several times, yet I could not get in a shot.

Gordon was the most glorious and inspiring thing I ever looked upon. He was riding a beautiful coal-black stallion, captured at Winchester, that had belonged to one of the Federal generals in Milroy's army—a majestic animal, * whose “neck was clothed with thunder.” From his grand joy in

*In Scribner's for June, 1903, General Gordon mentions this horse, describing him very much as I have done. He adds that he only rode him in one battle; that he behaved well at first under artillery fire, but later, encountering a fierce fire of musketry, he turned tail and bolted to the rear a hundred yards or more.

I am glad I did not witness this disgraceful fall. Nothing could have been more superb than his bearing so long as he was under my eye.

I confess I have not read current war literature very closely, but certainly I have never seen, in any publication, any allusion to what is related below; indeed I cannot recall any mention of it even in conversation with comrades—and yet my recollection of what transpired is clear and vivid.

Much has been said, and justly, of the unshaken condition of the Army of Northern Virginia when it retired from the Federal front at Gettysburg; and yet it is equally true that army had been through a most trying experience, and as it was still in hostile territory and a swollen and at the time impassable river flowed between it and the friendly soil of Old Virginia, Lee had great cause for anxiety, and it behooved him to be thoroughly informed and certified as to the real condition and spirit of his troops. With this view he directed his generals, particularly his generals of division, to make prompt and thorough investigation in this regard, and to report results to him. McLaws, our division general, made a special tour around the camp fires of his men one evening, while we were in line of battle at Hagerstown, Md., waiting for Meade to attack, or for the Potomac to fall, so that we might in safety cross it, and I was at special pains to follow, and to see and hear what I could.

McLaws was rather a peculiar personality. He certainly could not be called an intellectual man, nor was he a brilliant and aggressive soldier; but he was regarded as one of the most dogged defensive fighters in the army. His entire make-up, physical, mental and moral, was solid, even stolid. In figure he was short, stout, square-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-limbed; in complexion, dark and swarthy, with coal-black eyes and black, thick, close-curling hair and beard. Of his type, he was a handsome man, but the type was that of the Roman centurion; say that centurion who stood at his post in Herculaneum until the lava ran over him. It should be mentioned in his honor that when General Lee, with scant 14,000 muskets, held the front of Hooker's 92,000 at Chancellorsville, McLaws commanded one of the two divisions he had with him.

He was a Georgian, and his division, consisting of two Georgia brigades, one from South Carolina and one from Mississippi, was as stalwart and reliable as any in the service. Nothing of course could repress our Mississippians, but the general effect and influence of the man upon his command was clearly manifest in the general tenor of the responses he elicited. His men were respectful, but not enthusiastic on this occasion. For the most part they kept right on with what they happened to be doing when the General arrived—cooking, cleaning their arms and accoutrements, or whatever else it might be. He was on horseback, riding, as I remember, a small, white, pony-built horse, and as he rode up into the circle of flickering light of camp fire after camp fire to talk with the men, he made quite a marked and notable figure. The conversation ran somewhat in this line:

“Well, boys, how are you?”

“We are all right, General!”

“They say there are lots of those fellows over the way there.”

“Well, they can stay there; we ain't offerin' to disturb 'em. We've had all the fighting we want just now; but if they ain't satisfied and want any more, all they've got to do is to come over and get their bellies full.”

“Suppose they do come, sure enough, boys. What are you going to do with them?”

“Why, just make the ground blue with 'em, that's all; just manure this here man's land with 'em. We ain't asking anything of them, but if they want anything of us, why, just let 'em come after it, and they can get all they want; but they'll wish they hadn't come.”

“Well, now, I can rely upon that, can I?”

“You just bet your life you can, General. If we're asleep when they come, you just have us waked up, and we'll receive 'em in good style.”

“Well, good-night, boys. I'm satisfied.”

McLaws' “boys” had no occasion upon that field to vindicate their own account of themselves. The enemy did not attack, the river did fall, and we returned to our own side of the Potomac, but not until the 13th of July. The day we got there, or perhaps the day following, “Tuck,” the redoubtable wagon driver of the old battery, had a memorable experience which he never tired of telling.

Tuck was a unique character. Up to the date of his enlistment his horizon had been perhaps more contracted and his opportunities fewer and lower than those of any other man among us. Naturally he gravitated to the wagon; but the man made the position. He was so quiet and steady and perfect in the discharge of its humble duties, that I question whether there was another private soldier in the battery as useful, or one more universally liked and respected, and he was as loyal and devoted to the company and his comrades as they were to him. He had a fine pair of mules, and his affection for them amounted almost to a passion. Indeed, his entire outfit—mules, harness and wagon—was always in better condition than any other I ever saw in the army, and if there was forage or food, for man or beast, to be had anywhere, Tuck was sure to get at least our share for us.

As above said, it was the very day we reached the soil of old Virginia, or the day after, that Tuck, or Tucker,—I believe the latter was really his name,—was dragging along with his wagon, through the mud and mist, considerably in rear of the battery, grieving that his two faithful mules had gone supperless to bed the last night and taken breakfastless to the road that morning, when, glancing to the left, his eye lit upon a luxuriant field of grass he was just passing, and there, right abreast of the wagon, was an enticing set of draw-bars.

On the instant he turned out to the side of the road, unhitched the mules, and taking them by their long, strong halter reins—the best I ever saw upon the harness of an army team—let down the bars and led them into the field, and was enjoying their breakfast as much perhaps as the mules were, when a fine-looking officer, with a rubber cape over his shoulders, rode up to the fence and said in a kindly, pleasant voice:

“My man, I like that. I am glad to see you taking such good care of your mules, and they like it, too. What a fine breakfast they are making! They are fine mules, too!”

Tuck's eyes and thoughts were on his mules. He did not look up at his interlocutor, but answered sharply:

“What, my mules? You bet they are fine! Marse Robert ain't got no better mules in his army than these two.”

“What are their names?”

“This here gray one, he's named Dragon, and that 'ere black one, his name's Logan. Dragon, he's a leetle the best of the two, but either one of 'em's good enough.”

“Yes, indeed, I can well believe that and I am glad to see you taking such good care of this man's property, too; keeping your mules in hand with the lines. I wish all the drivers in the army were as careful of their teams and of other people's property as you are. Now this is all right, but I wouldn't stay here too long. There are some gentlemen in blue, back here on the road a little way; and—”

“What's that! the damn Yankees coming? Come, Dragon, come, Logan, we must git out o' this!”

“Oh, I wouldn't be in quite such a hurry. There is no danger yet awhile. Let them finish their breakfast. I only meant—”

Without recanting the statement that Chancellorsville is the most brilliant of Lee's single battles, I do not hesitate to say that in my opinion—that is, if and so far as I am entitled to an opinion on the subject—the campaign of 1864, from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, inclusive, is the greatest of all Lee's campaigns—incomparably the greatest exhibition of generalship and soldiership ever given by the great leader and his devoted followers.

Manifestly, one of the indispensable elements in any estimate of this campaign is the man now, for the first time, opposed to us. I do not propose to enter upon any extended discussion or analysis of General Grant's powers. In common with the majority of the more intelligent soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, I thought and think well of him as a soldier, both as to character and capacity. We all felt that he behaved handsomely, both to General Lee and to his men, at Appomattox, and that, later, in standing between Lee and his leading officers and the threatened prosecutions for treason, he exhibited strong manhood and sense of right. Many of us, too, have heard of other instances in his career of a rough chivalry always attractive to men.

Just before the surrender, on my way to Petersburg as a prisoner of war, I was standing on the roadside near General Custis Lee when he was shocked by a report of the death of his mother. I reminded him that, at such times, the wildest rumors were apt to be in circulation, and suggested his applying, by field telegraph, to Grant for leave to go to Richmond to ascertain the truth. He did so, and at once received leave, with transportation to Richmond. Upon finding there was nothing in the rumor, he reported promptly at the office of the provost marshal, but was there told that orders had been sent by General Grant that General Custis Lee should not be received as a prisoner of war, and he never succeeded in getting back into prison or any sort of captivity, though he made earnest efforts to do so.

As to Grant's grit and determination, all his predecessors together did not possess as much of these manly qualities, and we used to hear fine tales, too, of his imperturbability; for instance, that soon after he crossed the Rapidan in '64, when some one dashed up to his headquarters and announced with great excitement the capture of his pontoons, every one else seemed to be shattered; but Grant deliberately removed his cigar from his mouth, blew a very fine smoke wreath or ring, and said quietly, “If I beat General Lee I sha'n't want any pontoons; and if General Lee beats me I can take all the men I intend to take back across the river on a log.”

As to his capacity and our estimate of it, we did not think much of him as a strategist, but we did credit him with the vigor and trenchancy of mind that cut right through to the only plan upon which, as I believe, we ever could have been overcome—and the nerve to adhere to that plan relentlessly, remorsely to the very end, in spite of all the suffering and shrinking and weeping of the people. That plan was the simple but terrible one of attrition. As Colonel Taylor says:

At Spottsylvania Court House, when the artillery and infantry arrived and took the place of the gallant cavalrymen, who had saved the day and the place for us, the guns of our battalion, as I remember, were the first to reach the field. As adjutant, I had ridden with the old battery to its selected position, and, these guns in place, had returned to the column and was aiding in locating another of the batteries, when the fire upon the Howitzer position became so heavy that I galloped back to see how they were faring and if they needed anything. As I rode rapidly in rear of the first gun of the battery, at which my youngest brother, Eugene, had been made a driver, I noted that the fire had slackened considerably, but that one of his horses had been killed; that he had very practically pulled the dead horse around into proper position, and he and the driver of the other team were fast constructing quite a passable earthwork over and about him. Just as I observed this, “Genie” caught sight of me, and springing up, shouted after me, in fine voice and good old Georgia nursery phrase:

“Bubba, Bubba, I wasn't scared a bit—not a bit!”

A line of stalwart veteran infantry was lying down behind the guns, and as the plucky, but uninitiated, boy shouted this reassuring greeting, several of these seasoned old fellows raised up partly and looked around, and one of them called out, “Where's that fellow that wasn't scared a bit? He must be some greenhorn or fool!” And then there was a burst of laughter at the lad's expense. But I shouted back to him that he musn't mind them; that they were just guying him, and were glad enough to be behind his gun and his dead horse, too.

At one of the positions the Howitzers took on these lines I witnessed a striking scene, or rather the climax of it—the rest was told me shortly after I reached the guns.

There was a tall, black-haired, pale-faced boy in the company, named Cary Eggleston, a cousin, I think, of George Cary Eggleston, whom he strongly resembled. He was No. 1 at the third gun; said to be the best No. 1 in the battery, and even before his heroic end, known to be a fellow of most gallant spirit. He was one of that small class of men who really love a fight for its own sake. He was not yet fully developed, and ordinarily appeared rather gangling and loose-jointed, but it required only the thrill of action to inspire him and to make his movements as graceful as they were powerful and effective. His “manual of the piece” was really superb when his gun was hotly engaged.

At the very height of a fierce flurry his left arm was nearly severed from his body by a fragment of shell. At that moment a comrade, who had returned while on furlough and had walked in all nearly forty miles to, reach us, came running up to his gun. The disabled No. 1 handed him the rammer, saying:

“Here, Johnny, take it! You haven't had any fun yet.” When he had thus surrendered his scepter and appointed his own successor, he had a crude tourniquet applied to his arm; but insisted upon walking to the field hospital, refusing a litter or even a man to accompany him.

I had been with another of the batteries of the battalion, but hearing the rapid firing about the Howitzer position, was galloping down there, when I saw Eggleston walking out. He had his unwounded side toward me, and I called to him to know where and why he was going. He answered by turning his other side and holding up the stump, from which his shattered arm hung by ragged shirt sleeve and torn tendon, and then he shook the clenched fist of his sound arm toward the Federal lines, shouting to me that he would soon be back to fight them with that. The unconquerable boy died the following evening.

I have spoken several times of the “Howitzer position” in the Spottsylvania lines. Up to the 12th of May I think only two of their guns were on the main or front line, and even on the 12th the four were not together. Prior to the 12th two rifles of this battery and two of the Troupe Artillery were some distance back upon a hill, having been so placed with a view of engaging certain of the enemy's batteries to the relief of our front line, and of having a wider range and sweep of the attacking lines and columns.

One evening, about the 9th of May, I was riding into the position of some of our guns on the front line and passing through a little copse of woods, there being at the time quite a sharp musketry fire on the lines, and bullets clinking against the resinous boles of the pine trees about me, when suddenly my horse, Mickey Free, was shot, the ball making a loud slap when it struck. He sprang aside, but settled right down again to his course, and it was some little time before I could find any trace of the shot. I soon discovered, however, that the ball had cut into one of my saddle pockets, but not through it, and there it was, inside. A moment later he was struck again, and this time reared and plunged violently. Glancing around I saw that the ball had entered back of my legs about the mid line of his body one side and had come out about opposite on the other, and, as he persisted in lying down and rolling, I concluded that the poor fellow was mortally hurt, and sprang off, endeavoring to remove saddle and bridle, which I finally accomplished, with some difficulty and at some peril of being kicked or rolled upon. I looked at him a few moments in great distress, but the fire becoming really heavy, I threw saddle and bridle across my shoulder and toddled into the works on foot.

My recollection is that when the attack had been repulsed I went back to see if Mickey was dead, or if I could do anything for him, but that he had disappeared; that I could not track him far and soon gave it up, concluding I would never see him again. I certainly laid down that night one of “Lee's Miserables,” as we used to term ourselves, after reading Victor Hugo's great novel—a soldier edition of his works in Confederate “sheep's wool paper” having been distributed largely throughout the army the preceding winter. Judge of my surprise and delight at learning, early in the morning, that Mickey had in some mysterious way found our headquarters wagon and was being cared for there, and that he did not seem to be contemplating immediate death, but on the contrary had drunk copiously and eaten sparingly, as was a Confederate artillery horse's duty to do. As soon as I could get off I went back to see the dear old fellow, and there he was, as good as ever, except that a rope appeared to have been drawn around the lower part of his body, just under the skin, and a little back of the proper line of the saddle girth. The Minie bullet had of course been deflected, and had passed beneath the skin, half around his body, without penetrating the cavity.

My dear friend, Willy Dame, in his reminiscences already quoted, says some very pleasant and complimentary things of “our old adjutant.” These things I do not pretend to gainsay or deny. It would be easy to deny and not hard, perhaps, to disprove them; but motive is lacking. Why should I? The fact is, I shouldn't and I won't. But there are other things, or at least there is one other thing he says, and says elaborately, with date and circumstance,—the date is the 10th of May—calculated to bring my gray hair into ridicule and contempt, which, of course, I deny, even if I cannot disprove. The difficulty of proving a negative is well understood. I certainly go as far as this—I have no recollection whatever of such occurrence or utterance as he mentions, barring the nasty performances of those twenty-pounder Parrott shells. I recollect a good many of these quite similar to what Willy describes. But here is what he says:

If the foregoing was not written with malicious intent to expose me to the scorn of all sensible and practical people, then my belief is that Willy Dame dreamed the absurd story; but if Barnes and I did speak under the circumstances mentioned, and both are correctly quoted, then I admit the redoubtable “Beau” had decidedly the best of it, and I apologize humbly.

The 10th of May, '64, was preeminently a day of battle with the Army of Northern Virginia. I know, of course, that the 12th is commonly regarded as the pivotal day, the great day, and the Bloody Angle as the pivotal place, the great place, of the Spottsylvania fights, and that for an hour or so, along the sides and base of that angle, the musketry fire is said to have been heavier than it ever was at any other place in all the world, or for any other hour in all the tide of time. But for frequency and pertinacity of attack, and repetition and constancy of repulse, I question if the left of General Lee's line on the 10th of May, 1864, has ever been surpassed. I cannot pretend to identify the separate attacks or to distinguish between them, but should think there must have been at least a dozen of them. One marked feature was that, while fresh troops poured to almost every charge the same muskets in the hands of the same men met the first attack in the morning and the last at night; and so it was that the men who in the early morning were so full of fight and fun that they leaped upon the breastworks and shouted to the retiring Federals to come a little closer the next time, as they did not care to go so far after the clothes and shoes and muskets—were so weary and worn and heavy at night that they could scarcely be roused to meet the charging enemy.

The troops supporting the two Napoleon guns of the Howitzers were, as I remember, the Seventh (or Eighth) Georgia and the First Texas. Toward the close of the day everything seemed to have quieted down, in a sort of implied truce. There was absolutely no fire, either of musketry or cannon. Our weary, hungry infantry stacked arms and were cooking their mean and meagre little rations. Someone rose up, and looking over the works—it was shading down a little toward the dark—cried out: “Hello! What's this? Why, here come our men on a run, from—no, by Heavens! it's the Yankees!” and before any one could realize the situation, or even start toward the stacked muskets, the Federal column broke over the little work, between our troops and their arms, bayonetted or shot two or three who were asleep before they could even awake, and dashed upon the men crouched over their low fires—with cooking utensils instead of weapons in their hands. Of course they ran. What else could they do?

The Howitzers—only the left, or Napoleon section, was there— sprang to their guns, swinging them around to bear inside our lines, double-shotted them with canister and fairly spouted it into the Federals, whose formation had been broken in the rush and the plunge over the works, and who seemed to be somewhat massed and huddled and hesitating, but only a few rods away. Quicker almost than I can tell it, our infantry supports, than whom there were not two better regiments in the army, had rallied and gotten to their arms, and then they opened out into a V-shape, and fairly tore the head of the Federal column to pieces. In an incredibly short time those who were able to do so turned to fly and our infantry were following them over the intrenchments; but it is doubtful whether this would have been the result had it not been for the prompt and gallant action of the artillery.

After feeling our lines, feinting several times, and making, on the 18th, what might perhaps be termed a genuine attack, Grant, on the evening of the 20th, slid off toward Bowling Green; but although he got a little the start of Lee, yet, when he reached his immediate objective, Lee was in line of battle at Hanover Junction, directly across the line of further progress. It is the belief of many intelligent Confederate officers that if Lee had not been attacked by disabling disease, the movements of the two armies about the North Anna would have had a very different termination. Grant ran great risk in taking his army to the southern bank of the river with Lee on the stream between his two wings; it is fair to add that he seems to have realized his peril and to have withdrawn in good time.

General Lee's indisposition, about this time, was really serious. Some of us will never forget how shocked and alarmed we were at seeing him in an ambulance. General Early, in his address before mentioned, says of this matter:

It was about this date that General Lee, as I remember a second time, broached the idea that he might be compelled to retire—an idea which no one else could contemplate with any sort of composure; happily, as soon as the disease was checked his superb physical powers came to his aid, and he soon rallied and regained his customary vigor and spirits.

Perhaps no other position of equal labor and responsibility can be mentioned, nor one which makes such drafts upon human strength and endurance, as the command of a great army in a time of active service. I recall during the Gettysburg campaign being equally impressed with the force of this general proposition, and with the almost incredible physical powers of General Lee. On two occasions, just before and just after we recrossed the Potomac, I was sent upon an errand which required my visiting army, corps, and division headquarters, and, so far as practicable, seeing the respective commanding officers in person. On the first round I did not find General Lee at his quarters, and was told that he had ridden down the road to the lines. When I reached the lines I heard he had passed out in front. Following him up, I found him in the rain with a single piece of horse artillery, feeling the enemy. My second ride was made largely at night, and, as I remember, every officer I desired to see was asleep, except at Army Headquarters, where I found Colonel Taylor in his tent on his knees, with his prayer-book open before him, and General Lee in his tent, wide-awake, poring over a map stretched upon a temporary table of rough plank, with a tallow candle stuck in a bottle for a light. I remember saying to myself, as I delivered my message and withdrew, “Does he never, never sleep?”

Again General Grant slid to the east, and we moved off upon a parallel line. I think it was during this detour—or it may have been an earlier or a later one—that I was sent ahead, upon a road which led through a tract of country which had not been desolated by the encampments or the battles of armies, to select a night's resting place for the battalion. Forests were standing untouched, farm lands were protected by fences, crops were green and untrampled, birds were singing, flowers blooming—Eden everywhere. Even my horse seemed to feel the change from the crowded roads, the deadly lines, the dust, the dirt, the mud, the blood, the horror. We were passing through a quiet wood at a brisk walk, when suddenly he roused himself and quickened his gait, breaking of his own accord into a long trot, his beautiful, sensitive ears playing back and forth in the unmistakable way which, in a fine horse, indicates that he catches sounds interesting and agreeable to him. It was, perhaps, several hundred yards before we swung around out of the forest into the open land where stood a comfortable farm house, and there in a sweet and sunny corner were several chubby little children chatting and singing at their play. Mickey, dear old Mickey, trotted right up to the little people, with low whinnies of recognition and delight, and rubbed his head against them. They did not seem at all afraid, but pulled nice tufts of grass for him, which he ate with evident relish and gratitude.

If I remember correctly, it was the evening of the same day, after Mickey and I had kissed and left the children, and I had found a beautiful camping ground for the battalion—a succession of little swells of land crowned with pine copses and covered with broomsedge, with a clear, cool stream flowing between the hills; and after the batteries were all up and located in this soldier paradise—guns parked, horses watered and fed and all work done—I say, I think it was after all this, that the bugles of each of the batteries blew such sweet and happy notes as I never heard from any one of them before, and then, while I was lying on the broomsedge, bathing my soul in this peace, and Mickey was browsing near-by, over across the stream, the Howitzer Glee Club launched out into a song, the first they had sung since we broke camp at Morton's Ford, three weeks before.

As the song ceased and the day was fading into the twilight, I caught, up the road, the low murmur of conversation and the rattle of canteens, and following the sound with my eye, saw two infantrymen, from a command that had followed us and camped further back from the stream, wending their way to water. Just as they came fully within sight and hearing, two of the Howitzer Club struck up “What are the Wild Waves Saying?”—one of them, in a fine falsetto, taking the sister's part. As the clear, sweet female voice floated out on the still evening air my two infantrymen stood transfixed, one putting his hand upon the other's arm and saying with suppressed excitement, “Stop, man; there's a woman!” They were absolutely silent during the singing of the sister's part, but when the brother took up the song they openly wondered whether she would sing again. “Yes, there she is; listen, listen!”

And so, until the song was done, and they had waited, and it had become evident she would sing no more—and then a deep sigh from both the spell-bound auditors, and one of them, making use of the strongest figure he could command, exclaimed, from the bottom of a full heart, “Well, it beats a furlough hollow!”

We almost began to hope that Grant had gotten enough. Even his apparent, yes, real, success at the Salient did not embolden him to attack again at Spottsylvania. He had retired without any serious fighting at Hanover Junction or North Anna, and after feeling our position about Atlee's, he had once more slipped away from our front. Where was he going? What did he intend to do? Any one of his predecessors would have retired and given it up long ago. Was he about to do so?

The fact is, Grant was waiting for reinforcements. He had been heavily reinforced at Spottsylvania after the 12th of May, but not up to the measure of his desires, or of his needs, either; for he really needed more men—and more, and more. He needed them, he asked for them, and he got them. He had a right to all he wanted. His original contract so provided; it covered all necessary drafts. He wanted especially Baldy Smith and his men from the transports, and they were coming. They were stretching out hands to each other. When they clasped hands, then Grant would attack once more; would make his great final effort. When and where would it be?

There were two battles at Cold Harbor, one in '62 and one in '64. In '62 the Confederates attacked and drove the Federals from their position; in '64 the Federals attacked, but were repulsed with frightful slaughter. It is undisputed that both McClellan's army and Grant's outnumbered Lee's,—Grant's overwhelmingly,—and it is asserted that the position occupied by the Federals in '62 and the Confederates in '64 was substantially the same.

We were in line of battle at Cold Harbor of '64 from the 1st to the 12th of June—say twelve days; the battle proper did not last perhaps that many minutes. In some respects, at least, it was one of the notable battles of history—certainly in its brevity measured in time, and its length measured in slaughter—as also in the disproportion of the losses. A fair epitome of it in these respects would be that in a few moments more than thirteen thousand men were killed and wounded on the Federal side and less than thirteen hundred on the Confederate. As to the time consumed in the conflict, the longest duration assigned is sixty minutes and the shortest less than eight. For my own part, I could scarcely say whether it lasted eight or sixty minutes, or eight or sixty hours—to such a degree were all my powers concentrated upon the one point of keeping the guns fully supplied with ammunition.

The effect of the fighting was not at all appreciated on the Confederate side at the time. Why we did not at least suspect it, when the truce was asked and granted to allow the removal of the Federal dead and wounded, I cannot say, although I went myself with the officers on our side, detailed to accompany them, on account of my familiarity with the lines. I presume the ignorance, and even incredulity, of our side as to the overwhelming magnitude of the Federal losses resulted from two causes mainly—our own loss was so trivial, so utterly out of proportion, and the one characteristic feature of the fight on the Federal side was not then generally known or appreciated by us, namely, that Grant had attacked in column, in phalanx, or in mass. The record of the Official Diary of our corps (Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. VII., p. 503), under date of June 3, 1864, is very peculiar and is in part in these words: “Meantime the enemy is heavily massed in front of Kershaw's salient. Anderson's, Law's, and Gregg's brigades are there to support Kershaw. Assault after assault is made, and each time repulsed with severe loss to the enemy. At eight o'clock A. M., fourteen had been made and repulsed (this means, I suppose, fourteen lines advanced).”

This is obviously a hurried field note by one officer, corrected later by another, in accordance with the facts known to the writer, that is, to the officer who made the later note, but not generally known at the time to the public. We suppose, however, it will to-day be admitted by all that there was but one attack upon Kershaw up to eight A. M., and that at that hour the order was issued to the Federal troops to renew the attack, but they failed to advance; that this order was repeated in the afternoon, when the troops again refused to obey, and that at least some of Grant's corps generals approved of this refusal of their men to repeat the useless sacrifice.

Here, then, is the secret of the otherwise inexplicable and incredible butchery. A little after daylight on June 3, 1864, along the lines of Kershaw's salient, his infantry discharged their bullets and his artillery fired case-shot and double-shotted canister, at very short range, into a mass of men twenty-eight (28) deep, who could neither advance nor retreat, and the most of whom could not even discharge their muskets at us. We do not suppose that the general outline of these facts will be denied to-day, but it may be as well to confirm the essential statements by a brief extract from Swinton's “Army of the Potomac,” p. 487:

To like effect, as to the amount and the disproportion of the carnage, is the statement of Colonel Taylor, on page 135 of his book, that:

So much for the amount, the disproportion, and the cause of the slaughter. A word now as to the effect of it upon the Federal leaders and the Northern people. Is it too much to say that even Grant's iron nerve was for the time shattered? Not that he would not have fought again if his men would, but they would not. Is it not true that he so informed President Lincoln; that he asked for another army; that, not getting it, or not getting it at once, he changed his plan of campaign from a fighting to a digging one? Is it reasonable to suppose that when he attacked at the Bloody Angle or at Cold Harbor, he really contemplated the siege of Petersburg and regarded those operations as merely preparatory? Is it not true that, years later, Grant said—looking back over his long career of bloody fights—that Cold Harbor was the only battle he ever fought that he would not fight over again under the same circumstances? Is it not true that when first urged, as President, to remove a certain Democratic officeholder in California, and later, when urged to give a reason for his refusal, he replied that the man had been a standard-bearer in the Army of the Potomac, and that he would—allow something very unpleasant to happen to him—before he would remove the only man in his army who even attempted to obey his order to attack a second time at Cold Harbor? Is it not true that General Meade said the Confederacy came nearer to winning recognition at Cold Harbor than at any other period during the war? Is it not true that, after Grant's telegram, the Federal Cabinet resolved at least upon an armistice, and that Mr. Seward was selected to draft the necessary papers, and Mr. Swinton to prepare the public mind for the change? And finally, even if none of these things be true, exactly as propounded—yet is it not true, that Cold Harbor shocked and depressed the Federal Government and the Northern public more than any other single battle of the war?

A few words as to some of the prominent features, physical and otherwise, of fighting in “the lines,” as we began regularly to do in this campaign of '64, particularly at Cold Harbor. Something of this is necessary to a proper understanding and appreciation of some of the incidents that occurred there. And first, as to “the works” of which I have so often spoken. What were they? I cannot answer in any other way one-half so well as by the following vivid quotation from my friend Willy Dame's “Reminiscences,” already referred to. Says Mr. Dame:

The original intent of such “works” is to afford protection against regular attack by the full line of battle of the opposite side, advancing out of their works to attack yours. This, of course, every one understands. But this is only an occasional and comparatively rare thing. The constant and wearing feature of “the lines” is the sharpshooting, which never ceases as long as there is light enough to see how to shoot; unless the skirmishers or sharpshooters of the two sides proclaim, or in some way begin, a temporary truce, as I have known them to do. I have also known them to give explicit warning of the expiration of such a truce.

Sharpshooting, at best, however, is a fearful thing. The regular sharpshooter often seemed to me little better than a human tiger lying in wait for blood. His rifle is frequently trained and made fast bearing upon a particular spot,—for example, where the head of a gunner must of necessity appear when sighting his piece,—and the instant that object appears and, as it were, “darkens the hole,” crash goes a bullet through his brain.

The consequence of the sharpshooting is the “covered-way,” which, when applied to these rough and ready temporary lines, means any sort of protection—trenches, ditches, traverses, piles of earth, here and there, at what have proved to be the danger points, designed and placed so as to protect as far as possible against the sharpshooters. Only in regular and elaborate lines of “siege,” such as we had later about Petersburg, is seen the more perfect protection of regularly covered galleries and ways for passing from one part of the line to another inside; just as, outside and on the face toward the enemy, such elaborate and permanent lines of works are protected by ditches, abattis or felled trees, friezes or sharpened stakes, to make the “works” more difficult of approach, of access, and of capture.

One can readily understand, now, the supreme discomfort and even suffering of “the lines.” Thousands of men cramped up in a narrow trench, unable to go out, or to get up, or to stretch or to stand, without danger to life and limb; unable to lie down, or to sleep, for lack of room and pressure of peril; night alarms, day attacks, hunger, thirst, supreme weariness, squalor, vermin, filth, disgusting odors everywhere; the weary night succeeded by the yet more weary day; the first glance over the way, at day dawn, bringing the sharpshooter's bullet singing past your ear or smashing through your skull, a man's life often exacted as the price of a cup of water from the spring. But I will not specify or elaborate further; only, upon the canvas thus stretched, let me paint for you two or three life and death pictures of Cold Harbor of '64.

The reader may recall our “Old Doctor,” the chief of our ambulance corps, who helped to rally the Texans and Georgians on the 10th of May at Spottsylvania, first exhorting them as “gentlemen,” then berating and belaboring them as “cowards.” No man who was ever in the Howitzers but will appreciate the grim absurdity of this man's feeling a lack of confidence in his own nerve and courage; but he did feel it. When the war broke out he was in Europe enjoying himself, but returned to his native State, serving first in some, as he considered it, “non-combatant” position, until that became unendurable to him, and then he joined the Howitzers as a private soldier; and that final flurry of the 10th of May was the first real fight he ever got into. Hearing some one say just as it was over that it had been “pretty hot work,” he asked with the greatest earnestness whether the speaker really meant what he said, and when assured that he did, he asked two or three others of his comrades, whom he regarded as experienced soldiers, whether they concurred in this view of the matter, and on their expressing emphatic concurrence, he expressed intense satisfaction at having at last a standard in his mind, and a relieving standard at that; saying that he had feared he would disgrace his family by exhibiting a lack of courage; but if this was really “hot work,” he felt that he would be able to maintain himself and do his duty. The story is almost too much for belief, but it is the sober truth and vouched for by gentlemen of the highest character.

I think it was the evening after the big fight at Cold Harbor that I was sitting in the works, with one of the Howitzer detachments, when the Doctor announced his intention of going to the spring for water. I reminded him that it was not quite dark and the sharpshooters would be apt to pay their respects to him; but he said he must have some water, and offered to take down and fill as many canteens as he could carry. His captain was present and I said no more. He was soon loaded up and started off, stepping right up out of the trench on the level ground. I could not help urging him to take the “covered way,” but he replied, “I can't do it, Adjutant. It is dirty; a gentleman can't walk in it, sir.”

Away he went, walking bolt upright and with entire nonchalance, down the hill; to my great relief reaching the spring in safety, where he was pretty well protected. In due time he started back, loaded with the full canteens and having a tin cup full of water in his right hand. I heard the sharp report of a rifle and saw the Doctor start forward or stumble, and sprang up to go to his relief, but he steadied himself and came right on up the hill without further attention from the sharpshooters, and stepped down into the work. As he did so he handed the captain the cup of water, in the quietest manner apologizing for having spilled part of it, adding that he had met with a trivial accident. The upper joint of his thumb had been shot away, yet he had not dropped the cup. Then he turned to me and asked my pardon for his disregard of my warning and his imprudence in getting shot, protesting still, however, that it was very hard indeed for a gentleman to walk in those filthy, abominable covered ways.

The spring was perhaps the point of greatest power and pathos in all the weird drama of “The Lines.” About this date, or very soon after, a few of us were sitting in the part of the trenches occupied by the Twenty-first Mississippi, of our old brigade,—Barksdale's, now Humphreys',—which was supporting our guns. There had been a number of Yale men in the Twenty-first—the Sims, Smiths, Brandon, Scott, and perhaps others. A good many were “gone,” and those of us who were left were talking of them and of good times at Old Yale, when some one said, “Scott, isn't it your turn to go to the spring?” “Yes,” said Scott, submissively, “I believe it is. Pass up your canteens,” and he loaded up and started out. There was a particularly exposed spot on the way to water, which we had tried in vain to protect more perfectly, and we heard, as usual, two or three rifle shots as Scott passed that point. In due time we heard them again as he returned, and one of the fellows said, “Ha! they are waking up old Scott, again, on the home stretch.”

The smile had not died upon our faces when a head appeared above the traverse and a business-like voice called: “Hello, Company I; man of yours dead out here!” We ran around the angle of the work, and there lay poor Scott, prone in the ditch and almost covered with canteens. We picked him up and bore him tenderly into the trench, and, as we laid him down and composed his limbs, manly tears dropped upon his still face. Each man disengaged and took his own canteen from the slumbering water-carrier. We did not “pour the water out unto the Lord,” as David did when the “three mightiest brake through the host of the Philistines and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate”—albeit, in a truer sense than David spoke, this water was the very “blood of this man.”

It was about six o'clock in the evening of one of the days that followed close upon the great fight that there befell the company the very saddest loss it had yet experienced. An order had come to Captain McCarthy, from General Alexander, commanding the artillery corps, directing that the effect of the fire of several howitzers, which were operating as mortars, from a position immediately back of the Howitzer guns, should be carefully observed and reported to him.

The captain, appreciating at once the responsibility and the peril of the work, with characteristic chivalry, determined to divide it between himself and one of the most competent and careful men in the company. He was not the man to shrink, or slur over, or postpone his own part in any duty, and immediately stationed himself where he could thoroughly discharge it. He had taken his stand but a few moments when he fell back among his men, his brain pierced by a sharpshooter's bullet. The detachment sprang to his aid, but too late even to prevent his fall. His broad breast heaved once or twice as they knelt about him, and it was all over. The men broke down utterly and sobbed like children.

We never found his hat. While his boys were still gazing at him through their tears a Mississippi soldier came working his way along the lines, from a point a hundred feet or more to the right, holding in his hand a little piece of brass, and as he approached the group said: “This here thing has just fell at my feet. I reckon it belongs to some of you artillery fellows;” and then, looking at the noble figure stretched upon the ground, he asked in the dry, matter-of-fact soldier style, “Who's that's dead?” When we told him Captain McCarthy, of the Howitzers, he said musingly: “McCarthy, McCarthy; why, that's the name of the folks that took care o' me, when I was wounded so bad last year. Well, here's the cannons from his hat.” And so it was; his hat, as we suppose, had gone over the works, and his badge of cross cannon, dislodged from it by the shock, had fallen at the feet of a man who had been nursed back to life by his mother and sisters in his boyhood's home.

In a few moments his men bore him to where he could be placed in an ambulance, and then all, save his cousin, Dan, afterwards Lieutenant McCarthy, who went into Richmond with his body, turned back to the lines with such choking of grief and heaviness of heart as they had never before felt.

It is seldom a man is so beloved or so deserves to be. I can truly say I never heard him utter an evil word concerning any one, and never heard from any one either adverse criticism or complaint of him. A day or two before, on that very spot, he had shown what a true hero he was. Just after the great repulse, and while a fearful fire was pouring upon us from the Federal batteries and such of their assaulting infantry as had succeeded in reaching their own works, a poor wretch, who had fallen just outside our works, was shrieking for help. The Captain, deeply stirred, cried: “Boys, I can't stand this. I don't order any of you to accompany me; but, as I can't well manage him alone, I call for one volunteer to go with me and bring in that poor fellow.” Several volunteered, but Sergeant, afterwards Lieutenant, Moncure said, “You can't go, boys; I am chief of this piece,” and he and the Captain went right over the works, and, picking up the man, brought him back inside, but be was dead before they laid him down. He had been killed by the fire of his own friends.

Such was death upon the lines; but let me show what all this meant to the people at home. General Kershaw very willingly furnished Dan an ambulance and a man from his old brigade to drive it, and the two started on their melancholy journey. Counting the necessary turn-outs in the road, which was badly cut up by army wagons, they had some twelve or thirteen miles to travel, and it must have been after seven o'clock before they started. Meanwhile, at the Captain's father's home, in the northern part of the city, were his mothers and sisters, his father, an aged man, suffering from a disease which had robbed him of the power of speech and forced him to breathe through a tube, and a younger brother, under military age, who was his father's constant attendant and nurse, and who slept with him at night. This brother was roused that night from his first nap by loud shouts on the street and a rough, startling, disagreeable noise made, as he thought, by running a stout stick backwards and forwards across the wooden palings of the front fence. Going to the window the lad hesitated for a moment to throw up the sash, the streets of a beleaguered city at night being, of course, not entirely free from prowlers and disorder. What he saw was a man holding a horse, from which he had evidently just dismounted, and who had been making these noises for the purpose of rousing the people in the house. As the sash went up the man said: “Captain McCarthy was killed on the lines a while ago. If you want his body you had better send for it to-night, or he may be buried on the field.” As he said this, he remounted and was gone.

The house was instantly in a turmoil, but the inmates soon recovered reasonable balance, and in a short time the lad was off after a horse and wagon for the sad errand. At first he could not think where he might get one, but it soon occurred to him that he had seen upon the streets within a few days a new wagon of “John and George Gibson, Builders,” and he went to Mr. George Gibson's house and waked him. Upon hearing the sad news, Mr. Gibson kindly consented not only to let him have the wagon, but to go with him to the lines. He added, however, that the horse and vehicle were kept at a considerable distance from his house and that, as the night threatened to be stormy, young McCarthy had better go home and get some proper wraps and protections and meet him at an appointed place and time. As the boy reached home, or soon after, an ambulance drove up to the door and his Cousin Dan and the South Carolina soldier bore the Captain's body into the house. As soon as they had deposited it and helped the family to arrange it as they desired, Dan kissed his uncle, aunt, and cousins, and was bidding them good-by, when the old gentleman made signs for him to remain a moment and asked for pencil and paper. When these were given him he wrote just these words and handed them to Dan—“Since it was God's will to take him, I am glad he died at his post.”

Dan was back at his post by daylight, and sent word to the Captain's two brothers, who were in another corps, when he would be buried. These young men walked into town, attended the funeral, and walked out again to their posts the same night, and in a very short time the lad who had been his father's nurse was regularly mustered into the company to which his elder brothers belonged. Such was death, and also life, in the devoted city back of the lines.

My younger brother was a great favorite in the company. As before stated, he had been a sailor, and as we had come from New England to Virginia, he was nicknamed “Skipper.” He had a beautiful tenor voice and a unique repertoire of songs from almost every clime and country. Whenever “Skipper” deigned to sing, “the Professor,” the trainer of the Glee Club, would enforce absolute silence throughout the camp, under penalty of a heavy battery of maledictions.

The day after Captain McCarthy's death, my brother, being in almost the exact position the Captain occupied when killed, was shot in the left temple, and fell just where the captain had fallen. I was not present at the moment, but the boys reported that as they bent over him, thinking him dead, he raised his head and said, “If you fellows will stand back and give me some air, I'll get up!”— which he not only did, but walked out to the hospital camp, refusing a litter. He also refused to take chloroform, and directed the surgeons in exploring the track of the ball, which had crushed up his temple and the under half of the socket of his eye, and lodged somewhere in behind his nose. After they had extracted the ball and a great deal of crushed bone, he declared there was something else in his head which must come out. The surgeons told him it was more crushed bone which would come away of itself after awhile; but he insisted it was something that did not belong there, and that they must take it away immediately. They remonstrated, but he would not be satisfied, and finally they probed further and drew out a piece of his hat brim, cut just the width of the ball and jammed like a wad into his head; after that he was much easier. I omitted to say we never found his hat, either.

He was blind in the left eye from the moment the ball struck him, and became for a time blind in the other eye also. While in utter darkness he sang most of the time, and I remember our dear mother was troubled by a fancy that, like a mocking bird she once had that went blind in a railroad train, he might sing himself to death. But he recovered the sight of his right eye after a time, and the marvel is that the left eye did not shrink away and was not even discolored. The bony formation of the under-socket of the eye grew up and rectified itself almost entirely, and a lock of his curly hair covered the desperate-looking wound in the temple. It was a wonderful recovery.

There was a gunner in Calloway's battery named Allen Moore, a backwoods Georgian and a simple-hearted fellow, but a noble, enthusiastic man and soldier. The only other living member of Moore's family was with him, a lad of not more than twelve or thirteen years; and the devotion of the elder brother to the younger was tender as a mother's. The little fellow was a strange, sad, prematurely old child, who seldom talked and never smiled. He used to wear a red zouave fez that ill-befitted the peculiar, sallow-pallid complexion of the piney-woods Georgian; but he was a perfect hero in a fight.

After the great repulse it looked for a time as if Grant had some idea of digging up to or mining our position. We had all day been shelling a suspicious-looking working party of the enemy, and about sunset I was visiting the batteries to see that the guns were properly arranged for night firing. As I approached Calloway's position the sharpshooting had almost ceased, and down the line I could see the figures of the cannoneers standing out boldly against the sky. Moore was at the trail adjusting his piece for the night's work. His gunnery had been superb during the evening and his blood was up.

I descended into a little valley and lost sight of the group, but heard Calloway's stern voice: “Sit down, Moore! Your gun is well enough; the sharpshooting is not over yet. Get down!” I rose the hill. “One moment, Captain! My trail's a hair's breadth too much to the right,” and the gunner bent eagerly over the hand-spike. A sharp report and that unmistakable crash of a bullet against a man's head. It was the last rifle shot on the lines that night.

The rushing together of the detachment obstructed my view; but as I came up the sergeant stepped aside and said, “See there, Adjutant!” Moore had fallen on the trail, the blood flowing from his wound all over his face. His little brother was at his side instantly. No wildness, no tumult of grief. He knelt on the earth, and, lifting Allen's head on his knees, wiped the blood from his forehead with the cuff of his own tattered shirt-sleeve and kissed the pale face again and again, but very quietly. Moore was evidently dead, and none of us cared to disturb the child.

Presently he rose,—quiet still, tearless still,—gazed down at his dead brother, then around at us, and breathing the saddest sigh I ever heard, said: “Well, I am alone in the world!”

The preacher-captain sprang to his side, and placing his hand on the poor lad's shoulder, said confidently: “No, my child; you are not alone, for the Bible says: ‘When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up;’ and Allen was both father and mother to you; besides, I am going to take you up, too; you shall sleep under my blanket to-night.”

There was not a dry eye in the group; and when, months afterwards, the whole battalion gathered on a quiet Sabbath evening, on the banks of Swift Creek, to witness a baptism, and Calloway, at the water's edge, tenderly handed this child to the officiating minister, and receiving him again when the ceremony was over, threw a blanket about the little shivering form, carried him into a thicket, changed his clothing, and then reappeared, carrying the bundle of wet clothes, and he and the child walked away, hand in hand, to camp— then there were more tears, manly, ennobling tears, and the sergeant laid his hand on my shoulder and said, “Faith, Adjutant, the Captain has fulfilled his pledge to that boy!”

In one of the regiments of Kershaw's old brigade, which was supporting our guns at Cold Harbor, were three young men, brothers, whose cool daring in battle attracted our special admiration. We did not know the names of these gallant fellows, but had christened them “Tom, Dick, and Harry.” A day or two after the great fight a fourth and youngest, a mere lad, who had been wounded at the Wilderness, came on his crutches to visit his brothers, and they had a hard time getting him safely into the trench. We noticed they called him “Fred.” He was going home on what the soldiers called “a wounded furlough;” that is, a furlough granted because of a wound, to last until the man should be fit for service again; and as the lines were quiet in the sultry noon, except, of course, the spiteful sputter of the sharpshooters, all the men from his neighborhood were soon busy painfully scribbling on scraps of paper and in the cramped trenches, letters for Fred to carry home.

Meanwhile, “Tom, Dick, and Harry” surrounded their pet, as he evidently was; and indeed he was a lovely thing. We had not specially noted that the other young men were gentlemen. In fact, that did not so specially appear through the dirt and rags. We had readily seen they were “men,” and that was what counted in those days.

But Fred—all the dirt was off of him, and the rags, too, and the sunburn, and the squalor—they were all gone. The Richmond ladies who had attended to his wounds in the hospital had seen to his toilet as well, which was simple and strictly military, but of the best material and fitted perfectly his perfect figure. His thin skin, his blue veins, his small, finely-formed hands and feet, his beautiful manners—everything, in fact—indicated that he was the scion of a noble house, the flower of South Carolina chivalry. In short, he was the most thoroughbred and aristocratic-looking thing any of us had seen for many a day. Compared with the rest of us and in the midst of our surroundings, he glowed like a fair seraph.

After a while he warned the writers that the mail was about to close and they must bring in their letters; that his “old leg” was hurting him and he must be off. The men gathered around. His haversack was filled with the priceless letters, head and heart crowded to confusion with trite messages, inestimably precious to those at home. He rose with a smile of weariness and pain, yet bright anticipation, and, as he did so, said, “Well, let me take a good look at those rascals over the way; for it will be a long time before I get another chance.”

“Look out, Fred!”

Too late! The sharp shock of the bullet against the skull—he sprang up wildly, his cap flew off and his brothers caught him in their arms and laid him gently down. The home letters tumbled out of the full haversack and were dabbled with the blood of the postman; his brothers knelt about him, in a silent grief awful to look upon, and heavy-hearted comrades gathered up each his blood-stained package and gazed vacantly at it.

During the great gathering of Confederate soldiers at the dedication of the Lee Monument, in Richmond, I told this story of his Cold Harbor lines and his old brigade to General Kershaw, when Gen. Joseph E. Johnston happened to be sitting near. It was too much for General Johnston. Tears started to his eyes and he reproved me sharply for telling a story that had in it only dead, unrelieved pain. He added that he must “take the taste of that thing out of our mouths as quickly as possible;” and, as sharpshooting seemed to be the theme, he would repeat to us a practical lecture on that subject which he once heard delivered by an expert to a novice.

He said it was during the Atlanta campaign that he was sitting in a clump of laurel on the north face of a mountain, out beyond the bounds of his own lines, sweeping with a glass the lines and camps of Sherman's army, which were spread out before him upon the plain below. He had been deeply absorbed and was suddenly startled by hearing conversation in a low tone comparatively near him. He sat absolutely still and peered about, until, to his great relief, he saw two gray-brown figures stretched out side by side on the leaves but a little distance in front of him. One was a grizzled, fire-seamed veteran, and the other a beardless youth, and the elder addressed the younger, in substance, as follows:

“Now, Charley, when you ain't in a fight, but just shootin' so; of course you ought to get a fellow off by himself, before you let fly. Then the next thing is to see what you need most of anything. If it's clothes, why, of course, you choose a fellow of your own size; but if it's shoes you want, you just pick out the very littlest weevil-eaten chap you can find. Your feet would slide 'round in the shoes of a Yankee as big as you are like they was in flat-boats. Why, no longer ago than last evening I had drawed a bead on a fine, great big buck of a fellow, but just as I was about to drop him I looked around and found I didn't have no shoes. So I let him pass, and pretty soon here come along a little cuss of an officer, and”—raising his right foot, as the old general did his, by way of vivid recital and illustration— “there's the boots.”

A word or two as to the volume, intensity, and effect of the fire at Cold Harbor. So far as the Confederate fire is concerned, nothing can be needed to supplement the fearful record of the slaughter upon the Federal side. But now as to the Federal fire, and first, of artillery. I think the barn just back of the positions of Manly's guns and two of the Howitzers' was Ellyson's. It was cut down, cut up and scattered, and the very ground so torn and ploughed by artillery fire that it was really difficult, after the battle was over, to say just where the barn had stood. Just back of this barn trees were so constantly felled across the road opened for the purpose of bringing in ammunition that it was necessary to have axe-men constantly at hand, and they were chopping almost continuously. Once or twice the falling trees and limbs actually drove the division pioneer corps from the work and I was forced to get a detail from the Howitzers to do the necessary chopping.

The repulse at Cold Harbor marked a crisis in the campaign. If Richmond was to continue to be Grant's immediate objective, there was but one thing for him to do, and that was to fight,—to renew his attack upon Lee's lines. He was as close to Richmond as he could get by the old process of sliding southward and eastward. Every foot of further progress in that direction would be progress away from the goal. He must decide, then, between another effort to force his men to the imminent deadly breach and the abandonment of Richmond as his immediate objective. It took him nine days to decide, and then he folded his tents, like the Arabs, and silently stole away—at night, the night of June 12th.

He was just in time. It was not Lee's habit to give his adversary the choice of moves, especially if he took long to choose. He seldom abandoned the initiative—that is, where at all practicable for him to retain it. He had only seemed to abandon it this time. It would have been, even for him, an astounding piece of audacity, with his worn and wasted little army, to march out from his intrenchments and attack Grant's overwhelming numbers, yet he had determined to do this very thing. On page 37 of his address, so often quoted, General Early says:

Not many weeks later, on Sunday, the 2d of April, I stood almost all day on our works overhanging the river, listening to the fire about Petersburg, and noting its peculiar character and progression. I made up my mind what it meant, and had time and space out there alone with God and upon His day to commit myself and mine to Him, and to anticipate and prepare for the immediate future. Late in the afternoon I walked back to my quarters, and soon after, George Cary Eggleston, who was then in a command that held a part of the line near us, dropped in. He tells me now that I asked him then what effect he thought it would have upon our cause if our lines should be broken and we compelled to give up Petersburg and Richmond; and that he declined to answer the question because, as he said, the supposed facts were out of the plane of the practical, and would not and could not happen. Now, years afterwards, recalling the peculiar expression and manner with which I propounded this interrogatory, he asks whether I had then received any official information, and I answer in the negative—no, none whatever. Up to the time Eggleston left my camp for his I knew nothing beyond what my tell-tale ears and prescient soul had told me.

Indeed, we went into our meeting that night without any other information; but I had directed the acting-adjutant to remain in his office and to bring at once to me, in the church, any orders that might come to hand. Our service was one of unusual power and interest. I read with the men the “Soldier Psalm,” the ninety-first, and exhorted them, in any special pressure that might come upon us in the near future—the “terror by night” or the “destruction * * * at noon-day”— to abide with entire confidence in that “Stronghold,” to appropriate that “Strength.”

As I uttered these words, I noticed a well-grown, fine-looking country lad named Blount, who was leaning forward, and gazing at me with eager interest, while tears of sympathy and appreciation were brimming his eyes. The door opened and the adjutant appeared. I told him to stand a moment where he was, and as quietly as possible told the men what I was satisfied was the purport of the paper he held in his hand, and why I was so satisfied. And then we prayed for the realization of what David had expressed in that Psalm—for faith, for strength, for protection. After the prayer I called for the paper and read it over, first silently and then aloud, gave brief directions to the men and dismissed them—first calling upon such officers and noncommissioned officers as had special duties to perform in connection with the magazines, etc., to remain a few moments. The men were ordered to rendezvous at a given hour, and to fall in by companies on the parade, and the company officers were ordered to see that they brought with them, only what was absolutely necessary, and a brief approximate list was given of the proper campaign outfit. But the poor fellows had been many months in garrison, and it was maddening work, within a short and fixed time, to select from their motley accumulations what was really necessary in the changed conditions ahead of us.

The orders were, in general, that the men of the fleet and of the James River defenses should leave the river about midnight of the 2d of April, exploding magazines and ironclads, and join the Army of Northern Virginia in its retreat. Orders such as these were enough to try the mettle even of the best troops, in the highest condition, but for my poor little battalion they were overwhelming, well-nigh stupefying. The marvel is that they held together at all and left the Bluff, as they did, in pretty fair condition. A few months earlier I question whether they would have been equal to it.

I said they left in pretty fair condition, and so they did, except that they had more baggage piled upon their backs than any one brigade, perhaps I might say division, in General Lee's army was bearing at the same moment. I could hardly blame them, and there was no time to correct the folly; besides, I knew it would correct and adjust itself, as it had done pretty well by morning.

The explosions began just as we got across the river. When the magazines at Chaffin's and Drury's Bluffs went off, the solid earth shuddered convulsively; but as the ironclads—one after another— exploded, it seemed as if the very dome of heaven would be shattered down upon us. Earth and air and the black sky glared in the lurid light. Columns and towers and pinnacles of flame shot upward to an amazing height, from which, on all sides, the ignited shells flew on arcs of fire and burst as if bombarding heaven. I distinctly remember feeling that after this I could nevermore be startled—no, not by the catastrophes of the last great day.

I walked in rear of the battalion to prevent straggling and, as the successive flashes illumined the darkness, the blanched faces and staring eyes turned backward upon me spoke volumes of nervous demoralization. I felt that a hare might shatter the column.

We halted at daylight at a country cross-road in Chesterfield to allow other bodies of troops to pass, the bulk of my men lying down and falling asleep in a grove; but seeing others about a well in the yard of a farm house over the way, I deemed it best to go there to see that nothing, was unnecessarily disturbed.

I sat in the porch, where were also sitting an old couple, evidently the joint bead of the establishment, and a young woman dressed in black, apparently their daughter, and, as I soon learned, a soldier's widow. My coat was badly torn, and the young woman kindly offering to mend it, I thanked her and, taking it off, handed it to her. While we were chatting, and groups of men sitting on the steps and lying about the yard, the door of the house opened and another young woman appeared. She was almost beautiful, was plainly but neatly dressed, and had her hat on. She had evidently been weeping and her face was deadly pale. Turning to the old woman, as she came out, she said, cutting her words off short, “Mother, tell him if he passes here he is no husband of mine,” and turned again to leave the porch. I rose, and placing myself directly in front of her, extended my arm to prevent her escape. She drew back with surprise and indignation. The men were alert on the instant, and battle was joined.

“What do you mean, sir?” she cried.

“I mean, madam,” I replied, “that you are sending your husband word to desert, and that I cannot permit you to do this in the presence of my men.”

“Indeed! and who asked your permission, sir? And pray, sir, is he your husband or mine?”

“He is your husband, madam, but these are my soldiers. They and I belong to the same army with your husband, and I cannot suffer you, or any one, unchallenged, to send such a demoralizing message in their hearing.”

“Army! do you call this mob of retreating cowards an army? Soldiers! if you are soldiers, why don't you stand and fight the savage wolves that are coming upon us defenseless women and children?”

“We don't stand and fight, madam, because we are soldiers, and have to obey orders, but if the enemy should appear on that hill this moment I think you would find that these men are soldiers, and willing to die in defense of women and children.”

“Quite a fine speech, sir, but rather cheap to utter, since you very well know the Yankees are not here, and won't be, till you've had time to get your precious carcasses out of the way. Besides, sir, this thing is over, and has been for some time. The Government has now actually run off, bag and baggage,— the Lord knows where,—and there is no longer any Government or any country for my husband to owe allegiance to. He does owe allegiance to me and to his starving children, and if he doesn't observe this allegiance now, when I need him, he needn't attempt it hereafter when he wants me.”

The woman was quick as a flash and cold as steel. She was getting the better of me. She saw it, I felt it, and, worst of all, the men saw and felt it, too, and had gathered thick and pressed up close all round the porch. There must have been a hundred or more of them, all eagerly listening, and evidently leaning strongly to the woman's side.

This would never do.

I tried every avenue of approach to that woman's heart. It was congealed by suffering, or else it was encased in adamant. She had parried every thrust, repelled every advance, and was now standing defiant, with her arms folded across her breast, rather courting further attack. I was desperate, and with the nonchalance of pure desperation—no stroke of genius—I asked the soldier-question:

“What command does your husband belong to?”

She started a little, and there was a slight tinge of color in her face as she replied, with a slight tone of pride in her voice:

“He belongs to the Stonewall Brigade, sir.”

I felt, rather than thought it—but, had I really found her heart? We would see.

“When did he join it?”

A little deeper flush, a little stronger emphasis of pride.

“He joined it in the spring of '61, sir.” *

Yes, I was sure of it now. Her eyes had gazed straight into mine; her head inclined and her eyelids drooped a little now, and there was something in her face that was not pain

*The Stonewall Brigade was, of course, not so named until after the first battle of Manassas, and it did not exist as an organization after May, 1864; but men who had at any time belonged to one of the regiments that composed it ever after claimed membership in the brigade. Among soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, and yet more among their families and friends, once of “The Stonewall Brigade,” always of that immortal corps.

If asked what I regarded as the most fatal mistake of the military authorities of the Confederacy, I should unhesitatingly answer—their utter and amazing failure to appreciate the distinctive inspiration of the soldier, the informing spirit of an army. That spirit, that inspiration, is best expressed in the one word “Promotion”—promotion on the spot, “on the field;” instant, responsive, rapid promotion.

I do not deny the existence of other great principles and forces, fundamental and formative, in the life of the soldier. On the contrary, I thoroughly believe in and appreciate them, and shall take pleasure in pointing them out at the last chapter of this work; but I do say that the great element of progress and development in the military is the desire for promotion, or at least, for honorable distinction in the profession.

I do not hesitate to say the soldier cannot be highly developed without this influence. The true soldier is ever looking for opportunities to earn promotion or distinction, and the true general ever on the lookout to reward men who have well earned the one or the other. This is the way—I am willing to say, the only way—to make a soldier or an army and to develop both to the highest point of effectiveness.

Probably the greatest master of the art of war, in ancient or modern times, was the first Napoleon, and his army —if not the best that ever marched or fought—certainly reached a height of resistless power that alarmed and for a time dominated Europe.

It is well known how largely he made use of and relied upon the element we are now considering, and which we may as well characterize plainly as the love of glory. Countless stories are told illustrating how he stimulated this natural desire, until it became the one passionate thirst of his soldiers. They enjoyed the privilege of unrestrained access to him at all times, and he encouraged them to address him as “Sire.”

In one of his greatest battles he occupied a commanding height from which, mounted on his favorite war horse and surrounded by a magnificent staff, he overlooked the drawn fight that hung in the balance on the plain below; striving through the battle smoke, to analyze the field and to determine where to deliver his final blow. He was sitting deep in the saddle and deeply absorbed, when a young infantry soldier, from one of his favorite corps, pressed through the gorgeous uniforms and prancing steeds of the staff until pale, haggard, bloody, powder-begrimed, he reached the Emperor's side, and slapping his hand smartly upon his thigh, pointed eagerly to a particular part of the field and said: “Sire, send a strong column there, and the day is ours!”

Napoleon, startled from his reverie, turned and looked upon the hatless, breathless, but inspired boy; then breaking into a smile of appreciation and delight, and shaking his finger at him, burst out: “You little devil! Who told you my secret? Go back to your regiment, sir!”

The column was hurled upon the weak point the two Napoleons had detected; the victory was won, and the victor rode over to the spot where the fatal thrust had been made— and there, just where the head of the French column had pierced the hostile line, lay that peerless youth with a bullet through his brain, but the light of battle and of victory glorifying his countenance. The Emperor turned pale and reeled in his saddle, but quickly recovering, gazed yearningly at the dead hero, and with bitter emphasis exclaimed, “But for that accursed bullet, there lies a Marshal of France!”

Another illustration occurs to me.

On a rapid march through an unfamiliar region the head of his column halted on the bank of a river, and the Emperor, turning to the ranking engineer officer present, demanded to know its width. The colonel said he could not tell; but the Emperor instantly replied:

“But I must know.”

“The instruments are in the rear, sire. I cannot tell without the instruments.”

“I said nothing about instruments; I asked the width of this river, and I must be told.”

“Sire, no one can tell without the instruments,” said the colonel.

At this moment a young lieutenant of engineers stepped forward and saluted, saying:

“Sire, I think I can tell you, near enough for all practical purposes, the width of the stream.”

“Tell me then, sir!”

The lieutenant advanced to the edge of the water and faced the other shore. Drawing down the visor of his cap until it just cut the further brink, he turned his head—taking care to keep his chin at the same level—until the cap brim struck the bank they were on. Then, again addressing the Emperor, he said:

“Sire, let them measure the distance from here to yonder barn and you will have approximately the width of the river.”

Recognizing the resource and quickness of the young officer, Napoleon ordered an immediate exchange of rank, making the lieutenant a colonel and the colonel a lieutenant, on the spot.

These incidents require not one word, by way either of explanation or of emphasis. It is easy to see, indeed would seem impossible not to see, how such instant, responsive, public recognition and reward of merit and of service must inspire and develop an army.

What I mean to assert is that the Confederate military authorities—that is, the governing authorities—did absolutely nothing, in this general direction; that we did not have, as General Hooker and other Federal generals testified, material originally inferior which we toned up by admirable training and discipline; but, on the contrary, that the material of our armies, the bulk of our rank and file was as fine as the world ever saw, as full of military capacity and aptitude and ambition, and that we steadily toned down this superb material, by habitual neglect of what is most essential to the development of the soldier.

It is needless to say that the Army of Northern Virginia was under a leadership in the field as developing and uplifting as soldiers ever followed; but, with this exception, all things were against us. The controlling military authorities seem to have relied entirely upon the patriotism and character of the individual men, and did nothing to make them soldiers, or to make the aggregation of them an army. Any one of us might perform prodigies of valor, no one ever noticed it; or exhibit the most decided and even brilliant capacities for command or advancement, the advancement or command might never come.

Take the case of Lieutenant Falligant at Cold Harbor already mentioned. Our battalion report set forth his splendid conduct in detail; General Kershaw, commanding our division, was full of enthusiastic admiration, and promised—and I have no doubt fulfilled his promise—to press Falligant's promotion; yet no notice was ever taken of the matter. If Falligant had done in Napoleon's army precisely what he did in the Army of Northern Virginia I have no doubt he would have been decorated on the field and promoted to be full colonel of artillery. He was a second lieutenant when he rendered his superb service at Cold Harbor, '64. If I mistake not, he was a second lieutenant at Appomattox.

I think it was at Suffolk that a private soldier in one of the regiments of the Confederate force investing the place proposed and, alone and single-handed, executed a brilliant and daring plan, which completely rid the investing force of the galling fire of sharpshooters concealed in tall, dry grass on the other side of a deep stream.

This gallant and ingenious fellow, when the wind was blowing from our side toward the enemy's, procured a long, thick plank, with which he entered the water, lying breast down on one end of the plank, which of course inclined the other end upward, making a sort of protection for him and especially for his head. Thus equipped, he paddled across the stream to a point projecting out toward our shore, and where the dry grass stood high above water so deep that the sharpshooters could not approach near it, and there, and as far up and down the stream as he could venture, he set fire to the grass. The flames spread rapidly, and the daring incendiary, taking advantage of the flight and confusion of the sharpshooters, swam safely back to our side of the stream.

The force was entirely relieved from the annoying and destructive fire, but their heroic deliverer was, as usual, overlooked and neglected.

I am not sure that the Federal military authorities fully recognized the principles we have been discussing, but they certainly contrasted very strongly with ours in this respect.

After the battle of Chickamauga Longstreet sent to Richmond a number of Federal flags captured by his men in the engagement, in charge of a party consisting of several private soldiers, two or three non-commissioned officers, and a lieutenant or two, who had specially distinguished themselves in the capture of the banners. They were met at the depot by a negro with a one-horse wagon, into which the captured banners were dumped, and in which they were hauled to the Capitol—and the men received transportation back to the army. Of course they were laughing-stocks to their fellows, and felt the deep sting of the lesson that gallant conduct is a matter beneath notice.

About the same time I read in the Northern papers an account of the reception accorded a similar party of Federal soldiers, sent upon a like errand, to Washington. As I remember, they were received by the full Cabinet, assembled in the War Department. The line officers were made majors and colonels, the non-commissioned officers received commissions, and the privates had the chevrons of sergeants and corporals sewed upon their coatsleeves. Of course they returned to their army, themselves heroes and inspirers of heroic deeds among their comrades.

When I was captured and passed through Grant's army I felt as if I had entered a new world. The non-commissioned officer who was first to reach me, as we were walking to find the Federal officer commanding on that part of the line, rattled off to me his military history, which was at his tongue's end.

“Major,” said he, “you've helped me to my shoulder straps. You make the fifth field officer I've been the first man to reach; twice my hand has been first on captured cannon. You see that man yonder? He's a private soldier still, because he hasn't the mind or education to make an officer, and he knows it and don't want a commission; but look at his medals and decorations. There ain't a general officer in the corps but touches his hat to him.”

And so it seemed to be with all the men I saw. Each appeared fully aware of the amount of good conduct laid up to his credit, and yearning for opportunity to win further distinction.

There was nothing approximating this in our service. I can truly say,—and thousands of my old comrades can say with me,—I never saw or heard of a medal or a ribbon being pinned on a man's jacket, or even so much as a man's name being read out publicly in orders for gallantry in battle. With some of us, at least, it would have gone far to atone for having nothing put inside our stomachs if we had had a red ribbon or some such thing pinned outside our jackets. Not only did I never see or hear of a promotion on the field, but I do not believe such a thing ever occurred in any army of the Confederacy, from the beginning to the end of the war. Indeed, I am confident it never did; for, incredible as it may appear, even Lee himself did not have the power to make such a promotion. On page 147 of his book, Colonel Taylor, the Adjutant-General of his army, says:

Some years ago, during the discussion of the pension legislation of Congress, the following statements, substantially, were published at Washington in The National Tribune of May 16, 1889. We do not vouch for their accuracy, but there is truth enough in the figures to make them valuable, and power enough to startle the thoughtful reader.

The article asserts that the Federal force invading the South from '61 to '65 was fully twice as large as was ever put afield by any other modern nation, and that it contested more battles, did more fighting, and lost more in killed and wounded than all the armies of modern Europe in the last three-quarters of a century, that is, since the close of the Napoleonic wars in 1815.

It states that 2,320,272 men served an average of three years during our war; that no other war of the century has lasted so long or been filled with such continuous and sanguinary fighting; that 2,261 battles and skirmishes were fought, many of them more destructive of human life than any other battles in modern history; that over 400,000 men lost their lives in the struggle—that is, double the number of the entire army of Great Britain, 143,000 more than that of Austro-Hungary; more than Napoleon arrayed against the coalition of England, Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Spain; and twice as many as he had when he began his Waterloo campaign. The article closes with these words:

“Our war lasted nearly seven times as long as the Franco-Prussian struggle, and we lost over six times as many killed on the field of battle as the Germans lost in overrunning the whole of France.”

As I understand, the above figures represent the numbers and losses of the Federal armies alone. If so, what a story they tell of the fighting power of the little Confederacy, cut off from the world in its death grapple, opposing the great hosts of the Union with less than one-third their numbers and meeting, among the overwhelming myriads of its foes, more imported foreigners than the entire number of the native soldiers of the South.

In my account of the campaign of '64, especially of Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor, in noting our first real experience of fighting “in the trenches” and behind “works,” I failed to mention its tendency to demoralize the men.

The protection of a little pile of earth being in front of a man and between him and his enemy, his natural tendency is to stay behind it, not only as to part, but as to the whole of his person. I have more than once seen men behind such a line fire their muskets without so much as raising their heads above the curtain of earth in front of them; fire, indeed, at such an inclination of their gun-barrels upward as to prevent the possibility of hitting an enemy, unless that enemy were suspended in the sky or concealed in the tree tops.

So greatly did this desire to fight behind protection increase that I have seen men begin digging every time the column halted, until their commanding officers declared that any man caught intrenching himself without orders should be punished severely. It is fair to say that, after a while the better men of the army, at least, learned to use without abusing the vantage ground of earth-works.

In commenting upon Grant's theory and plan of attrition, I should have added that one feature of it was to turn loose upon our armies and our homes the twin giant of starvation.

My story is told. If it has failed to interest and to stir you deeply, the fault is in the telling. And yet I cannot but hope that, in spite of feeble and inadequate portrayal, the great outlines of the picture have so impressed themselves upon you that you are ready to admit the life of Marse Robert's boys, from '61 to '65, to have been a higher and greater life than you had imagined.

It would seem as if this must be so, if you have credited the writer with a fair average of intelligence and conscientiousness. I can well understand, however, that, without reflecting upon me in any offensive sense, some of those who have done me the honor to read these reminiscences may feel that I have unconsciously and very naturally idealized my comrades of the long ago and the vivid life we lived together in our golden youth.

It is difficult to meet such a suggestion. I believe the strongest and most satisfactory way to meet it and, at the same time, the fittest way to end this book, will be to close with an analysis of the Soldier-Life, from which it will appear how natural and normal it is, that elements and forces, such as characterize that life, should produce men and deeds and scenes and incidents such as I have endeavored to portray in the foregoing pages.

It is also, just now, specially to be desired that the essential character and training of the military life should be better and more generally understood. However we may differ as to the advisability of the new career of foreign complication and conquest upon which this country seems to have entered, and which has resulted and must necessarily result in such an expansion of its military establishment, yet we must all agree that it is well the growing multitudes of young men who are entering and to enter the military service should have high and clear conceptions of that great life to which they have devoted themselves—a life, by the way, which, notwithstanding the horrors that often attended it, grew upon me every day I lived it; and to which, if the war had resulted in the establishment of the Southern Confederacy, I should have consecrated myself with whole-hearted devotion.

It will not be forgotten that I claim for the Army of Northern Virginia some peculiar characteristics, as well as a fuller and finer development of the soldierly character in general, because of the circumstances under which that army fought, and especially the leader, whose banner it followed; but, after all, the heroic story I have told is in no small degree the normal product and outcome of a grand system of physical, mental and moral training, which has been little understood and grossly misconceived and misrepresented.

What, then, is the training and what are the formative elements and forces of the Soldier-Life? I answer:

If you have measured these elements as I have mentioned them, there can be little need of elaboration or of argument. The compact analysis makes ample impression at once of theoretical soundness and of practical power. Beyond a doubt these are the essential elements and forces of the military life; they are such as must of necessity be unceasingly operative, and their influence in the development of character can scarcely be exaggerated. Let us briefly consider them.

The essential character of the soldier-life is “Service.”

Can this be questioned? When a man enters the military profession, whether as an officer or a private soldier, by that very act he is cut off from the pursuit of his personal aims and purposes and devoted to the service of his country. Thereafter he has no home, no farm, no workshop, no business. He knows no self-directed future, attempts nothing, expects nothing, for himself. Every man outside the army regards him, and he regards himself, as a man relieved, separated from the entanglements and opportunities of the business world, and consecrated to a service which may at any time demand the sacrifice even of his life. Our English Bible, upon this, as upon so many practical phases of our human experience, rings wondrous true. Wrote the great apostle: “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.”

The keynote which inspires and dominates and regulates all this life of “Service” is the single, simple majestic law of “Duty.” No employment of the soldier is too trivial and none too great to be included in this all-embracing term and regulated by this all-pervading law.

Descriptive names and phrases express and impress conceptions, and thus frequently constitute a sort of connecting link between causes and effects, principles and results. “Service;” “the service;” “entered the service;” “discharged from the service;” “promoted for gallant and meritorious service:” “Duty;” “on duty;” “off duty;” “present for duty;” “absent from duty;” “shot to death for absence from duty”—how many times, during the four years from '61 to '65, do you suppose I read, wrote, uttered, heard these and kindred expressions? Is it not clear that, by his everyday's experience and intercourse, this one great figure—his life a “service,” its employment “duty”—is burned in upon the soldier's soul?

In the light of these principles, and of his lifelong training, we gain a new conception of that sublime sentence in General Lee's letter to his son, “Duty is the sublimest word in the English language;” and of that groan of his mighty soul in the crisis and agony of defeat, “It is my duty to live.”

The first lesson of the soldier-life is unquestioning Obedience.

No one will deny the justness of the analysis here. Undeniably, the first lesson of the soldier's life, logically and chronologically, is obedience. There is no department, no business, no station, in which instant, implicit, blindfold obedience is so vital to safety and success, or enforced by such terrible sanctions. In military matters hesitation is disobedience, disobedience is mutiny, mutiny is death.

The principle of the soldier's obedience is the principle of obedience, a principle very little understood and very much contemned in this day and land. It is this: authority is to be obeyed, not because it commands what is right, but because it has the right to command. One under rightful authority is therefore absolved from responsibility as to the policy or propriety or consequences of the command; his sole dignity, as well as duty, is to obey with unquestioning alacrity. This principle is not palatable to the republican sovereigns of this country, yet it is a principle notwithstanding—not exclusive, nor of universal application, but it has its place, and, in its place, is of vital importance. It is the principle on which God governs the world, the father his family, the soldier his subordinates; and it has other, many other, applications.

Its direct antagonism is “higher law,” that is, a law higher than the commands of rightful authority; in other words, authority is to be obeyed, not because it has the right to command, but because it commands what is right. This principle, too, has its applications, but it is not applicable to a subordinate under rightful authority. The harmony between the two is found, I think, in a limitation upon the principle of obedience. We pass from the law of obedience to the higher law when, but only when, the command is so palpably and grossly wrong that the authority can no longer be rightful and subjection to it no longer endured. This is the right of revolution, and is applicable by way of exception to every human relation and authority.

The soldier, however, has very little sympathy with the right of revolution, or any modification of or exception to the law of unquestioning obedience. His theory and practice in this regard find apt illustration in the reply of General Jackson to the brigade commander who gave excellent reasons for having modified the order of march: “Sir, you should have obeyed the order first and reasoned about it afterwards. Consider yourself under arrest.”

The last lesson of the soldier-life is unquestioned Command.

The analysis of the life and its lessons is not original with me; it is at least nineteen hundred years old, and rests on the authority of one who was a superb development of the most military nation of history, that grand old Roman centurion whose interview with the Son of God is perhaps the most striking of the Gospel narratives. Said he: “I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh.” Here are the two great correlative lessons of the life, obedience and command, and both are absolute. This is the soldier, not ashamed to obey, not afraid to command; knowing how to render, and thus learning how to exact, obedience.

The daily lesson of the life is unceasing Accountability.

The soldier breathes, as it were, an atmosphere of accountability. His daily routine is made up of inspections and reports. What he is, what he has, what he does, his person, his possessions, his conduct, are constantly passing under a scrutiny so searching that nothing escapes, however; trivial, and all must conform to unvarying “Regulations.” This is perhaps the most prominent and impressive feature of the life. I need not enlarge upon it. The fact is patent— can its influence be doubted? Apart now from your impression as to what the soldier is, what ought he to be as the result of such training? Can you conceive of anything tending more to develop regularity, reliability, promptness, accuracy, even in the smallest details?

In the upper grades of the soldier-life, mark how this accountability is retained and developed into Responsibility, which, in the case of the commander-in-chief, becomes absolutely awful, unmeasured and unmeasurable.

Responsibility! I had almost said no other human being can have any adequate conception of the meaning of the term. Responsible for what? For the lives of his followers, for the future of their bereft families; but it is not life or death, not victory or defeat alone, that trembles in the balance of his battles. It is the life and honor of his country, the weal or woe of millions yet to be. He orders the charge, and liberty and destiny and history flicker in the gleam of his bayonets.

The experiences of the life are unparalleled Hardships, Perils, Crises.

It would be superfluous to enlarge upon these, the most external and palpable features of a soldier's life, so shortly after a war which has overspread a continent and filled a land with veterans. Nor will we stay to prove what no one will deny, that robustness of character, dauntless determination, courage that saves from, if it does not hide, a multitude of sins, and a composure and balance of soul that no excitement can disturb, no terror overwhelm, are the legitimate fruits of the soldier training.

The social atmosphere of the soldier-life is Freedom from Social Shams.

The unconventionality and candor of student life are proverbial, and yet, though I stepped from the hearty, ideal student life of Old Yale into the ranks of the Confederate soldiery, it was not long before I felt that I had never before realized how unstudied, unconventional, and absolutely sincere human life could be. It was almost startling, the degree to which I knew other men, my comrades, and felt that I was known by them. All the little shams, insincerities, and concealments of ordinary society disappeared; until, for the first time in our lives, we seemed to be stripped bare of the disguises under which we had therefore been accustomed to hide our real characters, not only from the world in general and from our most intimate associates and companions, but even from ourselves.

It was this which imparted to the religious life of the army a power and thrill unattainable, even unapproachable, in ordinary life. So close did men get to each other that I experienced no difficulty and no embarrassment in conversing with every man in the company on the subject of personal religion, and in these conferences have often felt that I was playing upon a naked human soul, between whom and myself there was absolutely no barrier and no screen. It was an experience thrilling and tremendous indeed. In view of it, I have more than once remarked that if my Maker should reveal to me that I had but a short time to live, and should permit me to choose a position in which I could accomplish most for the regeneration of my fellow-men, I should unhesitatingly say, “Let me be an officer in an army, in a time of active service.”

The compensation of the soldier-life is Fixed Pay.

The importance and influence of this feature cannot be estimated until you have answered this question: What is the most demoralizing of all human desires and pursuits? I know not how you will better answer than in the words of Holy Writ; for the wisdom of God has embodied the answer in a proverb, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” And the context is most impressive! “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.” A proposition thus enunciated needs no enforcement, and no one will contend that this terrific indictment is less true or less applicable to-day than when the noble apostle warned his “son Timothy” against this the greatest of all the lures of the tempter. And, so surely as opportunity makes temptation, the soldier, looking securely to his sufficient but fixed compensation, having his undivided services demanded and paid for by his country, and being consequently unable to devote himself to any lucrative employment, must be in great measure protected against the debasing passion of avarice.

The inspiration of the life is Promotion from Above.

Evidently the soldier's compensation is not the inspiration of his calling: and it is perhaps more true of him than of any other man that his chief inspiration is honorable advancement in his profession. Call it love of glory, if you please; even at that it is almost infinitely more elevating and ennobling than love of money, which is the ruling motive of much the larger part of mankind, certainly in this age and land. But the soldier does not call it love of glory. He is no moral philosopher or theorist; he is a practical man, and his inspiration, that of which he talks and dreams, that for which he serves and strives, is all embodied in one word—promotion. This is “the life of the service.” So peculiarly true is this, that the soldier's progress has well-nigh appropriated the term “promotion,” as the soldier's life has appropriated the title “service.”

But it is not the desire for promotion, however inspiring, to which I wish chiefly to ask your attention, but rather the peculiar law of military promotion, namely, that it is promotion from above. Before you estimate the importance of this feature, let me ask you another question: What is the second great demoralizing influence of our age, and particularly of our country? I have not here the Word of God for answer; but in these days of unblushing demagogism I am sure of your concurrence when I say, it is flattery and service of the mob, cowardly concession to it, in order to secure promotion from below. I mean no reflection upon the right or principle of suffrage; but the practice of suffrage, and the means commonly resorted to to control it for personal ends, are at once a menace to free government and a degradation of the candidate and the voter. No honest man can now pass through a political contest without being disgusted, if happily he be not also surprised, at the means employed against him.

The true soldier knows nothing of such contests or influences. He never dreams of promotion by any other power than that of his superiors, or on any other ground than gallant and meritorious service. No! the soldier's principle, the soldier's inspiration, is promotion from above, and it cuts off a world of temptation and demoralization thus to lift a man's eyes and efforts up for personal elevation and advancement.

We have finished our review of the root forces of the Soldier-Life. Where will you find principles of greater power for the development of character?

Is it objected that the soldier, as we see him in actual life to-day, fails to exhibit any close conformity to these elevated principles and lofty ideals? I answer that the like failure marks the embodiment among men of the principles and ideals of every lofty life—even of our holy religion. But balanced men do not on this ground question either the truth and beauty of these principles and ideals, or the sincere adoption of them by the followers of the Christ, or their moulding influence for good upon those who adopt them.

Is it objected further that, only the highest class of recruits could be expected to appreciate the philosophy of such a system? True, but the same is true of every high vocation— that only a few choice souls thoroughly grasp the inner philosophy, the root principles, the formative forces of the calling to which they have devoted their lives. But it is also true that intellectual appreciation, however much to be desired, is not indispensable to the operation and the moulding power of formative forces such as we have discussed. A young man who enters the military service and is subjected to its discipline and training may not have intellectual life and interest enough even to inquire what it is that is making a new man of him; notwithstanding, being compelled to conform his conduct to the regulations and to live the strenuous life we have just sketched, new habits will gradually be formed and the new man will unconsciously be made.

A touching and beautiful illustration of the justness of this soldier analysis, and the character-moulding power of its principles, occurred the first time I made use of it in public speech, applying it in that instance to a great soldier of the Confederacy, and showing how the mould prefigured the man. At the close of the address the son of another and one of the very greatest of our Confederate leaders, who had fallen in battle early in the war, pressed his way to my side, saying, with the deepest feeling: “Major, you have, in a very just sense, introduced my own father to me to-day. I have always admired the majestic outline of his perfect manhood, but never until I heard you just now have I realized where his qualities came from, nor sympathized, as I should have done, with my father's almost passionate love and reverence for his profession. It is all clear to me now.”

I am not a blind enthusiast. I admit that the almost enforced idleness of the camp in time of peace, the absence of women and children and the lack of other refining and elevating influence of home, are blemishes in the life of the soldier. Nevertheless, I think we may, in the light of our analysis, begin to comprehend why great soldiers—Sir Philip Sidney, Henry Havelock, Hedley Vicars, Chinese Gordon, Stonewall Jackson, Robert Lee—have exhibited an almost unrivaled elevation, strength, and perfection of character, both as men and as Christians. The late Dr. T. De Witt Talmage never penned a truer or a stronger paragraph than the following:

“The sword has developed the grandest natures that the world ever saw. It has developed courage—that sublime energy of the soul which defies the universe when it feels itself to be in the right. It has developed a self-sacrifice which repudiates the idea that our life is worth more than anything else, when for a principle it throws that life away as much as to say, ‘It is not necessary that I live, but it is necessary that righteousness triumph.’ There are thousands among the Northern and Southern veterans of our Civil War who are ninety-five per cent. larger and mightier in soul than they would have been had they not, during the four years of national agony, turned their back on home and fortune, and at the front sacrificed all for a principle.”

In the light of all this, we begin also to understand why the writers of the Sacred Canon make use of the life of the soldier more frequently perhaps than of any other, as a figure of the Christian life. Nor can it do harm in this connection to note that when the Son of God “marveled” at a Roman soldier's faith, pronouncing it the greatest he had found on earth, the man himself traced this faith to the teachings of his military life, saying substantially, with us— I have learned as a soldier the two great lessons of subjection and supremacy, of obedience and command; do you but issue the order, “Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.”