Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/416

408 The following discussion, as to General Lee's numbers during the seven days battles, has excited great attention, not only on account of the interest in the questions involved, but also because of the standing of the distinguished soldiers who were parties to it. We have been several times urged, by those whose opinions are entitled to weight, to give the discussion a place in our Papers, in order that it may be preserved. We do so without note or comment, leaving our readers to draw their own conclusions.]

It is not fourteen years since our war began, and yet, who on either side of those who took part in it is bold enough to say that he knows the exact truth, and the whole truth, with reference to any of the great battles in which the armies of the North and South met each other?

Was not Mr. Sumner censured by the Legislature of Massachusetts because, prompted in part at least, let us hope, by the love of truth, he renewed in the Senate of the United States after the war a resolution which in substance he had previously brought forward?

This resolution would erase from the colors of the United States army such names as those of Cold Harbor, Manassas, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, which you have seen inscribed upon captured flags. Now we believe that we won those fights, and we wonder why a resolution of Congress should be necessary to blot them from the list of Union victories recorded on the standards of its armies.

We think that we know something about the second battle at Manassas, and yet is not General Fitz John Porter, who fought us so stubbornly at the first battle of Cold Harbor, now in disgrace, because it was proved to the satisfaction of a Federal court-martial that half the Confederate army was not where we all know it was on the morning of August 29th, 1862? And on our side, have we not read General Joseph E. Johnston's "Contribution of materials for the use of the future historian of the war between the States," and has any one risen from the perusal of that interesting book, without the conviction that its distinguished author is mistaken as to some of his statements, or that all contemporaneous history is in error?

I will venture to present only two of the perplexities in which "the future historian of the war between the States" will find himself involved when he comes to compare the "material" contributed