Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/757

260, Humphreys displayed his fitness for the command of brave men. On the first day at Gettysburg the gallant Barksdale fell mortally wounded, and Humphreys succeeded to the command of the now famous brigade, consisting of the Thirteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Twenty-first regiments of Mississippi infantry. From September, 1863, until the following spring, the brigade served under Longstreet in Georgia and in Tennessee, paralleling at Chickamauga and Knoxville its heroic deeds in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Through all the unequaled hardships and dangers of the Overland campaign and of that around Richmond and Petersburg until the final end of all at Appomattox, Humphreys and his gallant men remained faithful, and, when the final catastrophe came, returned to their homes with the consciousness of duty well performed. When President Andrew Johnson was carrying out his reconstruction plan, General Humphreys was elected governor of Mississippi and was inaugurated on the 16th day of October, 1865. In his inaugural address he said: "It has been reported in some quarters that our people are insincere and the spirit of revolt is rampant among us. But if an unflinching fidelity in war gives evidence of a reliable fidelity in peace; if the unvarying professions that spring from private and public sources furnish any evidence of truth, it is sufficiently demonstrated that the people of the South, who so long and against such terrible odds maintained the mightiest conflict of modern ages, may be safely trusted when they profess more than a willingness to return to their allegiance." The radical Congress, however, overthrew the government established in Mississippi under the President's plan, and established in its stead the carpet-bag government which oppressed the people of Mississippi until its overthrow by the people in the election of 1875. After his removal from the gubernatorial chair General Humphreys returned to planting and retired from public life. He died in Le Flore county,