Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/438

 the whole course of the war there was no finer illustration of generalship exhibited by any Federal commander than General Thomas' defence of Nashville.

We note with pleasure the dignified rebuke with which Mr. Van Horne censures the devastation of South Carolina by General Sherman.

There is a wide difference between the sympathies of Chaplain Van Horne and our own regarding the war and its leading actors, and it will be excused in us to feel that he is sometimes too pronounced in his admiration of his heroes, and that occasionally, as in the cases of Mr. Davis and of General Polk, he shows too strongly his partisan feelings.

But he has brought to the work he has so well accomplished an earnest purpose to write history from the most authentic documents attainable.

He is generally fair in his statements of forces, though he does much overstate ours in the Battle of Chickamauga. He has adopted the plan throughout the work of having an appendix to every chapter, made up of official letters, orders and dispatches in support of the narrative contained in the chapter, and he generally adopts the statement of our generals as correct regarding the numbers of their forces. On the whole we heartily approve and commend this book, and if all the generals had historians like Chaplain Van Horne it would be better for their fame, and greatly facilitate the labors of the future historian of the war. ,

Major-General late Confederate Army. 

August 18th, 1864—We marched through Winchester, and were, as usual, warmly greeted. Ladies and children and servants stood in the porches and on the sidewalks, with prepared food of a very tempting kind, and goblets and pitchers of cold fresh water, and sometimes of milk, which they smilingly handed to the tired troops, who, as far as I could observe, seldom declined the proffered kindness. The native Virginians of Winchester and the Valley are as true as steel, and the ladies—God bless and protect them!—are as heroic and self-denying as were the noble Spartan mothers.