Page:Confederate Portraits.djvu/61

 glorious victory. This confidence and implicit trust has been in no way impaired, and we are to-day ready, as we have ever been, to obey your orders, whether they be to retire before a largely outnumbering foe, or to spend our last drop of blood in the fiercest conflict. We feel that in parting with you our loss is irreparable. . . and you carry with you the love, respect, esteem, and confidence, of the officers and men of this brigade." ^o

Yet a man so honored, admired, and beloved could write the " Narrative of Military Operations " I What a tangle human nature is !

If I wished to sum up Johnston's character briefly, I should quote two passages, both, as it happens, left us by women. Mrs. Chesnut writes, toward the close of the war: "Afterwards, when Isabella and I were taking a walk. General Joseph E. Johnston joined us. He ex- plained to us all of Lee's and Stonewall Jackson's mis- takes. We had nothing to say — how could we say anything?" ^^ When one reads this, remembering what Lee's position in the Confederacy was, what Johnston's was, and that he was talking to what must have been one of the liveliest tongues in the Southern States, one appreciates why Johnston did not succeed. When one turns to the remark of an officer to Mrs. Pickett — **Lee was a great general and a good man, but I never wanted to put my arms round his neck as I used to want to to Joe Johnston "^2 — one is overcome with pity to think that Johnston should have failed.

�� �