Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/148

134 were abundant and even luxurious, their transportation very superior and their telegraph, pioneer, "secret service" and every other department of the highest efficiency; while the Confederates were sadly deficient in all of these and, indeed, lacked everything save devoted patriotism, able leadership and heroic hearts. And yet, with these overwhelming odds against them, the Confederate armies for four years maintained the unequal contest, fought over nearly all the territory of the Confederacy, and in over 2,000 engagements, great and small, won many victories which astonished the world. Col. C. S. Venable, a member of the staff of General Lee, has aptly quoted the inscription on the monument at Lucerne to the Swiss guard "Not conquered, but wearied out with victory" as describing the state of the Southern armies at the close of their heroic struggle for an independent constitutional government. A noted Southern statesman reproduced the same beautiful Swiss legend in a rough form by goodhumoredly saying just after the war was over, "We wore ourselves out whipping them." At the last hours of Appomattox, Gordon sent to Lee the message, "My corps is fought to a frazzle." Yet even after that the fighting was resumed. It is not a boast to declare that in fact the spirit of the South was never broken, the courage of the South never quailed, the convictions of the South were never deserted, and the manhood of the South was never surrendered. It is also the gratification of every patriot in the United States that the Union was not a conqueror, and the free citizenship of our country was never conquered.

In evidence of the high morale of the Confederate army, a letter from a gallant Union colonel, who served to the end of the war, is here quoted as it was published in the Southern Historical Society Papers (Vol. IX, pp. 142,143), in which he says: "I take pleasure in reading the Southern Historical Society Papers, and consider them invaluable. They show conclusively the great