Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 08.djvu/359

Rh And one of the last acts of his military career was that at Bentonville, when, at a critical moment, he in person threw a handful of cavalry against infantry, in a charge in which his only son, a boy of sixteen—true scion of a gallant stock, whose tender years had not sufficed, in his father's eyes, to withhold him from his country's service—fell mortally wounded, in the front of the battle. He withheld no duty, no service, nothing, from the cause; and his personal and soldierly qualities were attested in so many ways, and on so many fields, and are known to so many scores of thousands of the rank and file of both armies, still living, that unless such a life can be lived in vain, and unless history be a myth, these charges, with their suggestions and intendments, would refute themselves.

General Hardee's report, though addressed only to these charges as then formulated, sufficiently shows their utter groundlessness in any shape; and I add such matters as may further confirm or illustrate the facts. The facts being established, any injurious opinions which may have been entertained or expressed in ignorance of, or in despite of the facts, are of consequence only to those guilty of that wrong. And, as to some of the suggestions of the text, no one, on behalf of General Hardee, need discuss or characterize such an outgrowth of unreasoning prejudice and passion, fostered, no doubt, by fifteen years of morbid brooding over the adverse criticism to which the author refers.

General Hood, referring to the contemplated attack on the 20th July, says in his report: "Owing to the demonstrations of the enemy on the right, it became necessary to extend Cheatham a division front to the right." (321.) Sherman also describes the dispositions and movements of his forces which occasioned that necessity (Memoirs, volume II, pages 71-73). General Hood's report shows that his instructions to Hardee and Stewart were "to close the interval" (321) created by shifting Cheatham to the right. General Stewart's report shows the same (349); General Hardee's likewise; and all agree that the interval, either because the movements of the enemy had made it necessary to shift Cheatham much more than a division length, or from some other cause, was two or three times greater than was supposed, and occasioned the delay. The object in posting a staff officer at the point designated was not, as General Hardee understood it, to limit his extension