Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/95

 Ceremonies at Unveiling of Statue of General Lee. 89

and the planting of standards upon the guns of the enemy, was robbed of its results by the lack of support — these errors blasted the fair hopes of a victory which might have changed the result of the war.

I leave to history the task of adjudging the blame for these errors. I content myself with declaring, as the result of my stuily of the evidence, that Lee was not in fault. The electric cord which bound the great Lieutenants of Lee to each other, and to their commander, and which on so many other fields made them invincible and crowned them with imperishable laurels, seems, on that day, to have sped but a broken current. As Lee was eager to save them from blame and to say " it was all my fault," their generous souls would be the first to exonerate him and repudiate his self-sacrifice.

The battle of Gettysburg was delivered by General Lee with sixty-two thousand men of all arms against 07ie hundred and five thousand of the enemy. Considering that Lee was the attacking party and was repulsed, it must be accepted as a Confederate defeat. But such was the impression produced upon the enemy by its fierce assaults that he was ignorant of his victory, and the question engag- ing his attention seems to have been, not whether he should press a defeated adversary, but whether he should himself await a repetition of the attack.

Crimson with the setting of the sun which fell upon the field of Gettysburg, boding storm and tempest to the Confederate cause; yet it substantially ended the campaign of 1863, and left the Federal army farther from Richmond than it was at its opening.

Lee recrossed the Potomac at leisure and without serious molesta- tion, and none but minor operations intervened until the spring of 1864.

We now approach that last and matchless campaign in which the "consummate flower" of Lee's soldiership burst into its fullest bloom, and witched the world with its beauty.

The grim hero of Vicksburg and of Missionary Ridge, a man of inflexible will and desperate tenacity, who measured his own re- sources and those of his adversary with merciless precision, stepped to the head of the Army of the Potomac. That army was now swollen to an enormous host of 07ie hundred and forty-one thousand men, while his home Government, weary of failure and desperately in earnest, gave him the assurance of reinforcement whenever re- quired.

Lee confronted him with sixty-four thousand men, precious men.