Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/152

138 And yet, as soon as Grant crossed the river, Lee had advanced on him and faced the powerful invasion from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor and Petersburg, in which Grant lost over 80,000 men and was forced to sit down to the siege of Petersburg, a position he might have taken by direct movement without the sacrifice to which he subjected his army. But meanwhile Lee had not only made his works around Richmond impregnable to direct assault, but had sent a movable column under Early which, after driving Hunter from Lynchburg through the mountains, approached and threatened Washington so vigorously as to alarm the whole North for the safety of the national capital. Then followed the siege of Petersburg by the "attrition" and starvation plan of campaign, until the Confederate army, after a series of battles, was gradually worn away, its lines "stretching until they broke," and at last, on April 9, 1865, a bare remnant of Lee's army of exhausted Confederates was surrendered to over 100,000 Federals, who surrounded them. Now in the distribution of the just awards of fame, there is no lessening of the glory due the great Southern military leaders to put on record the truth that the victories won for the Confederacy were in equal measure due to the patient endurance, the heroic courage, the unsurpassed morale of the men of the rank and file, who, often with bare and bleeding feet, gallantly bore their great leaders to an immortality of fame. When Gen. John B. Gordon was enthusiastically cheered at a Confederate reunion, he said, in his own inimitable way: "Comrades, you are cheering the wrong man. You ought to cheer the men of the rank and file who made Gordon." General Lee once said to a foreign officer, who was visiting his headquarters, "I am ashamed for you to see my poor, ragged men in the camp or on parade. But I am not ashamed for the world to see them on the battlefield." Yes! it was on the battlefield that the Confederate soldier was at his best. His uniform might be ragged, but his musket