Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/423

 422 Southern Historical Society Papers.

other thing that he gained from the captured order was the mislead- ing direction for Longstreet to remain at Boonsboro, whereas he had gone to Hagerstown. This misinformation can alone explain the extraordinary caution of the advance of two Federal corps against one brigade of a thousand men. My other four brigades were at different points, three, four and six miles off, at sunrise on the I4th September. After the killing of Garland (who had marched his troops three miles that morning) and the dispersion of his brigade by Reno's corps, the road to our rear was entirely open, and was held by my staff and couriers with one piece of artillery for one hour, until Anderson's brigade came up. The other brigades reached me later and all five numbered but 5,000 men But the 40,000 Federals moved cautiously, believing that Longstreet' s corps was there, ac- cording to Lee's order, whereas it was fourteen miles off and did not reach the gap until too late to keep the enemy from getting so ad- vantageous a position for the next day's operations that we were compelled to retreat that night. Lee's wagon trains and reserve artillery were at the foot of the mountain and had the gap been lost, all would have been lost. My little force could have been brushed off in an hour, even after all had gotten up, but the turnpike was held for nine hours without any assistance. To assert that the Fed- erals were not under some delusion as to our numbers is to charge them with an imbecility unexampled in modern warfare. This delu- sion could only have been caused by the captured order.

At Sharpsburg, I made a careful estimate of our forces and placed our numbers at 27,000. This was the army, that but for lost order No. 191, would have beaten McClellan's forces, now swelled to 180,000, captured Washington and Baltimore, received recognition from foreign governments and established the Southern Confederacy! This might have happened in the time of Hezekiah and Sennacherib, but hardly in the days of Lee and McClellan.

General Lee made a second invasion of the North with an army three times as strong, well rested, well equipped and full of enthu- siasm. There was no lost order, no marplots, no frustration of plans, but he met disaster and not success. The North was recruiting from all parts of the globe and we were fighting the whole world in arms. That heroic army of Northern Virginia accomplished more than any one army known to history ever did. All honor to its great leader and to his devoted followers. They did all that mortals could do, but they could not whip the whole human race.

The fruits of the Maryland campaign were our gains of 12,000