Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/381

Rh good common sense in every emergency, stamped him as one of the noted heroes of the war, and his popularity at the North is not surpassed even in his own native South. His coolness at Santiago at the moment when everything looked dark, possibly was the turning point to success on that field. He remembered that in the mighty struggle of 1861-65, when two American armies met in deadly conflict, generally both sides were paralyzed for a time; and after he carried the San Juan hills near Santiago, when for a time things looked blue, he recalled how it was in the great civil war, and said, "If we are so badly hurt, you may rest assured that the Spaniards are worse hurt, and we must hold our lines and not yield an inch." His services in the field were not surpassed by his good sense and administrative talent in caring for the sick soldiers of the Union at Montauk Point.

We are proud of Fitzhugh Lee, another appointment as major-general of President McKinley. Amid all the fault finding (whether true or false), regarding the administrative direction in the care of our troops, he alone has not been criticised on account of the care and management of the soldiers under his charge. He was ever ready to obey the orders of the President, and go to Cuba or wherever, as a soldier, he could have been sent. He, too, has won the admiration of the people of the United States everywhere.

Maj.-Gen. M. C. Butler was, like Lee and Wheeler, a distinguished Confederate soldier who performed his part well, not only in camp with the soldiers intrusted to his care, but as a statesman and a member of the evacuation commission at Havana. These three ex-Confederate generals have enjoyed the confidence of the President possibly as much as any other of the numerous appointments made in the volunteer army by him. Among the brigadier-generals of volunteers appointed from the South, were W. C. Gates of Alabama, H. K. Douglas of