Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 03.djvu/13

 was no force in Canby's front except about five hundred cavalry under Colonel Spence.

It is true, Spence handled his men with excellent skill and courage, and no doubt had even praying in a quiet way every night; for he made 40,000 Federals move very circumspectly every day, and entrench themselves every night against him; and here I will say Colonel Spence was one of the most efficient and comfortable out-post commanders I ever had to deal with. He always took what was given him and made the most of it. He was devoted, active, brave and modest, and did his whole duty to the very last day of our existence as an army.

In my comments on the allusion of General Andrews to praying in his camp, I do not mean to dissent from the well understood fact that valor and piety often go together, and we do not, above all things, wish to incur the suspicion of irreverence. The simple, unpretending piety which prevailed in the Confederate camps has always been the subject of our genuine respect. There has never been in any army of modern times a soldiery so sober, so continent, so religious or so reliant, as was to be found in the armies of the Southern Confederacy; from our great commander down to the youngest privates in the ranks, in all might have been observed one high purpose—to stand by the right—and to maintain that the support and aid of the God of Battles was daily invoked; and that it was not invoked in vain, let the unsurpassed achievements of the Confederate troops bear witness. There was never a day from the beginning to the end of the war that the chaplains of our regiments did not discharge their duty, and as a class there were none in our armies who held and who still retain more of the confidence, the respect and the affection of the Confederate soldiers than the Confederate chaplains. No matter what was his sect—whether Roman Catholic or Protestant—every soldier knew he had in his chaplain a friend, and for many weary weeks after the time General Andrews commemorates, he might, had he been with us, have daily attended mass performed by the brave priests in the camps of our Louisianians, or joined in the simpler devotions which were led by the devoted ministers of the regiments of Ector's fierce Texans.

The piety and the valor which went hand in hand through our armies, were not working for naught—and it may yet be, even in the lifetime of General Andrews, that Providence, who works in a misteriousmysterious [sic] way, may manifest how surely the right will