Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/434

 424 Southern Historical Society Papers.

so profoundly ignorant of Southern institutions is utterly incom- petent to write ' ' History ' ' for our schools.

14. Passing over many other illustrations of the io?ie a?id spirit of this book, before citing some of its more glaring errors of detail, I call attention to the fact that the book has a general habit of sluring over and dwarfing Confederate victories, or of seeking to explain them away, while it magnifies and exalts the successes of the North.

E. G. — It is amazing how any fair-minded man can consider the dwarfingof Jackson's Valley campaign into a " brilliant dash " (p. 291) "up the Shenandoah Valley," and the addition of some "glittering generalities" in the note (p. 303), which the teacher may or may not require the pupil to study, a fair statement of one of the most bril- liant campaigns in all history. McDowell, from whence Jackson electrified the Confederacy with his famous dispatch : " God blessed our arms with victory at McDowell yesterday" — Front Royal, where the two Maryland regiments (Federal and Confederate) had their bloody fight and Jackson flanked Banks — Winchester, where the Federals were driven pell-mell through the streets and Banks won the soubri- quet of " Stonewall Jackson's Quartermaster " — the fighting near Harrisonburg, where Ashby captured Sir Percy Wyndham, and soon after, in a fight with the " Bucktails," yielded up his own chivalric spirit in the hour of victory -Cross-Keys, where Ewell whipped Fre- mont — and Port Republic, where Jackson whipped Shields and sent them both whirling down the Valley to fortify at Strasburg against an expected attack from him at the very hour that " Stonewall " was thundering on McClellan's flank at Richmond — these names and the glorious deeds of " the Foot Cavalry" (who in this campaign of thirty- two days had marched nearly four hundred miles, skirmishing almost daily, fought five battles, defeated three armies, two of which were completely routed, captured about twenty pieces of artillery, some 4,000 prisoners, and immense stores of all kinds, and had done all this with a loss of less than one thousand men, killed, wounded and missing,) should be made familiar to the children of the South. But they would never learn them from this book, and it should never be used in our schools.

I insist that the account of Seven Pines and Seven Days" battles, which the author compresses into eleven lines at the bottom of page 291, is utterly unfair. General J. E. Johnston (see his Narrative, page 133) claims that he won a decided " victory " at Seven Pines, and that his being wounded at the close of the battle only prevented the full fruition of the results contemplated.

As for General Lee's raising "immense numbers of recruits" be-