Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/265

 Address of Colonel Edward McCrady, Jr. 269

its work was yet unfinished. Not even the vast resources on which he had power to draw could long spare 20,000 men a week for the continuance of the experiment. He had lost in the first three weeks of battle with Lee 60,000 men ; and as Lee had only commenced the campaign with 63,000, Grant could not but reflect that had their armies been equal Lee would not have left him a vestige of his with which to retreat.

But with the abandonment of his boast or promise came the begin- ning of the end to us. From this time forth Grant contented him- self with resuming the work from which McClellan had been called in disgrace, but unlike McClellan he was furnished with all the men and material a siege required. Butler had joined him, and he now had 150,000 men with which to commence the slow but sure if not glorious work of wearing out the remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia.

In speaking of that last terrible struggle of nearly a year, let me use the language of the distinguished English soldier and essayist rather than my own : " Not in the first flush of triumph when his army cheered his victory over McClellan," writes Colonel Chesney, "not when hurling back Federal masses three times the weight of his own on the banks of the Rappahannock, nor even when advancing the commander of victorious legions to carry the war away from his loved Virginia into the North had Lee seemed so great, or won the love of his soldiers so closely as through the dark winter that followed. Overworked his men were sadly, with forty miles of entrenchments for that weakened army to guard. Their prospects were increasingly gloomy as month passed by after month bringing them no reinforce- ments, while their enemy became visibly stronger. Their rations grew scantier and poorer, while the jocund merriment of the invest- ing lines told of abundance, often raised to luxury by voluntary tribute from the wealth of the North." " But the confidence of the men in their beloved chief," says Colonel Chesney, " never faltered, their sufferings were never laid on 'Uncle Robert.' The simple piety which all knew to be the rule of his life acted upon thousands of those under him with a power which those can hardly understand who know not how community of hope, suffering and danger fairly shared amid the vicissitudes of war quickens the sympathies of the roughest and lowest, as well as those above them."

In Lee's own language the line of defence "stretched so long as to break," at last gave way, and the end came. A single Southern soldier had not in the long run been able to whip three Yankees,