Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/435

 Eclectic History of the United States. 425

tween "Seven Pines" and "Seven Days," the exact truth is that he received from a// sources, including Jackson, (see papers of General Early and Colonel Charles Marshall, Southern Historical So- ciety Papers, volume I, pages 408-424) only 23,000 reinforcements — that McClellan was also reinforced — that General Lee numbered, when Seven Days opened, a little less than 80,000 men (78,000), and McClellan, 105,000 in position, and 10,000 at Fortress Monroe, and he did as much to "strengthen his defences" as did Lee — and that instead of simply "severing McClellan from his supplies," Lee attacked him in works as strong as engineering skill and ample mechanical appliances could make them, and that at Mechanicsville, Beaver Dam Creek, Gaines's Mill, Cold Harbor, Savage Station, Frazier's Farm, and Malvern Hill, (names our children ought to learn, but would never hear of from this book) Lee gained splendid victories and forced McClellen to cower under the shelter of his gunboats at Harrison's Landing.

These brilliant exploits resulted in the capture of many thousand prisoners, thousands of small arms, and fifty-one pieces of artillery, and in the raising of the siege of Richmond and the speedy transfer of the seat of the war north of the Potomac. And yet this book de- votes to these splendid achievements of Lee and his brave men Just eight lines, while it gives fourteen lines to the Baltimore riot, twenty- three lines to falsifying the facts about First Manassas, twenty lines of misrepresentation to the "Trent affair," twenty lines to Fort Donelson, eleven lines to Murfreesboro, twenty-four lines to the capture of New Orleans, forty lines to misrepresenting the truth about the Merimac and Monitor, and only six lines and a half to Jackson's Valley campaign, only nine lines to the Second Manassas campaign, twenty-two lines to the Maryland campaign, only six lines to Fredericksburg, thirty-three lines to falsifying the facts about the Emancipation Proclamation, only thirteen (really only two) lines to Chancellorsville, twenty lines to Gettysburg, thirty-two lines to the capture of Vicksburg, four lines to the splendid Confederate victory at Chickamauga, and forty-five lines to telling of Grant's "masterpiece of strategy, " and Hooker, Sherman and Sheridan's splendid expoits near Chattanooga.

I have not space to follow out further now these illustrations of the utterly unfair tone and spirit of the book. In other papers I propose to examine in detail some of its false statements, omissions and mis- representations, and to bring cumulative proof that the book is so utterly unfit to be used in our schools that it is a great outrage for