Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/529

 The Cam'paign from the Wilderness to Petersburg. 523

present these in their proper connection with the statements of high Federal authorities. These incidents will enable us, in some measure, to appreciate that self-sacrificing devotion to duty which character- ized our great leader, and will serve to show how worthy the men of that army, which he loved so well, were of his confidence and leader- ship. And here let me say that no man but a craven, unworthy of the name of American freeman, whether he fought with us or against us — whether his birthplace be in the States of the South or in the States of the North — would desire to obliterate a single page or erase a single line of the fair record of their glorious deeds.

When General Lee set out from Orange Courthouse on the morn- ing of the 4th of May to meet the Army of the Potomac, which moved at midnight of the 3d of May from Culpeper, he took with him Ewell's corps (diminished by General Robert Johnston's North Carolina brigade, then at Hanover Courthouse, and Hoke's North Carolina brigade of Early's division, which was in North Carolina), and Heth's and Wilcox's divisions of A. P. Hill's corps, leaving Anderson's division of Hill's corps on the Rapidan Heights, with orders to follow the next day, and ordering Longstreet to follow on with his two divisions (Kershaw's and Field's) from Gordonsville. So, on May 5th, General Lee had less than twenty-six thousand in- fantry in hand. He resolved to throw his heads of columns on the old turnpike road and the plank road, and his cavalry on the Cathar- pin road on his right, against General Grant's troops, then marching through the Wilderness to turn our position at Orange Courthouse. This was a movement of startling boldness when we consider the tremendous odds. General Grant's forces at the beginning of the campaign have been given as more than one hundred and forty thousand of all arms, or about one hundred and twenty thousand in- fantry, and all of these, except Burnside's corps of twenty thousand, were across the river with him on the 5th. General Lee had less than fifty-two thousand men of all arms, or forty-two thousand infan- try — fifteen thousand of which, under Longstreet and Anderson, a days' march from him, and the two North Carolina brigades, under Johnston and Hoke, which reached him, the one on the 6th of May, and the other on the 21st of May — at Spotsylvania Courthouse. And here in the beginning was revealed one great point in General Lee's bold strategy, and that was his profound confidence in the steady valor of his troops, and in their ability to maintain themselves successfully against very heavy odds — a confidence justified by his past experience and by the results of this campaign. He himself