Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/220

 214 Southern Historical Society Papers.

"Their artillery horses are poor, starved frames of beasts, tied to their carriages and caissons with odds and ends of rope and strips of raw hide; their supply and ammunition trains look like a congregation of all the crip- l>led California emigrant trains that ever escaped off the desert out of the clutches of the rampaging Comanche Indians; the men are ill-dressed, ill- equipped and ill-provided — a set of ragamuffins that a man is ashamed to be seen among, even when he is a prisoner and can't help it; and yet they have beaten us fairly, beaten us all to pieces, beaten us so easily that we are objects of contempt even to their commonest private soldiers with no shirts to hang out the holes of their pantaloons, and cartridge-boxes tied round their waists with strands of rope."*

Troops which could march through an enemy's country without pillaging, and w'ithout insulting the people — troops which were never surprised and never yielded to panic, which could be handled as Lee manoeuvred the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, must have had some discipline, or something which did marvellously well in the place of it.

We were an army of Rebels it is said, and, as I have had to re- call, our men did not object to the name. They recollected that Washington had fought under the same title. Indeed, they had been brought up to believe it true that " rebellion to tyrants was obedience to God," whether the sentiment was an inspiration of Franklin's or not, and to think that it was as applicable to the tyranny of an un- constitutional Democracy as to that of a personal tyrant. Rebels we were called, and the records-; of the war are now labelled the 'Official Records of the War of the Rebellion." But one would scarcely expect to find a strong religious feeling pervading and im- pressing the ranks of Rebels, yet such was the fact in our case.

" Let it be remarked," observed the London Index, "that while all other nations have written their own histories, the brief history of this army, so full of imperishable glory, has been written for them by their enemies, or at least by lukewarm neutrals. Above of all has the Confederate nation dis- tinguished itself from its adversaries by modesty and truth, those noblest ornaments of human nature. A heartfelt, unostentatious piety has been the source whence this army and people have drawn their inspirations of duty, of honor, and of consolation."!

So, too, a correspondent of the same journal, writing from Balti- more, says :

" But before I close I must tell you of the beautiful humility and heroic piety which seemed to pervade the hearts of all the Confederates I saw. I


 * Marginalia, page 48. f Ibid, page i.