Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/249

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shouted to the officer, " Don't shoot my men," and, of course, was compelled at once to surrender.

Captain Carter reports General Johnson limping up and down on top the breastworks, not deigning to protect himself, with stick in hand, from his wound at Alleghany, his clothes torn, encouraging his men in every way, by word and deed.

General Hancock said to General Harry Heth after the war that the attack on the salient was an accident, due to the location of a white house in front of it, which afforded a conspicuous object for the centre of his lines of battle for attack, and that he was not aware of the existence of a salient.

He furthermore said that he had 30,000 troops, in five or six lines of battle, and could have carried the salient, even had the artillery been in place.

The salient was a weak position, affording a divergent, instead of a convergent fire, and General Hancock believed, of course, what he said, for he was a gallant soldier and a gentleman, and the stoutest fighter of all the corps commanders we had to encounter during the war, his attacks always meaning heavy pounding from start to finish, but he is mistaken in this conjecture.

It would be a sufficient reply to say that neither he nor anyone else ever saw, during the war, a good line of artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia, properly supported by infantry in breastworks, with open front, carried by direct front assault, and the production of a single instance during the war may be safely challenged.

It matters not as to the five or six lines of battle in column of at- tack. When the front lines go down those in rear are not so eager to come along, the moral effect being as to the physical, several (or more) to one.

In further reply to General Hancock's surmise, it should be stated that notwithstanding his success at first, his attacking column never reached half way to the heels, of the horse shoe salient.

Some soldiers seem disposed to think arillery is " sound and fury, signifying nothing."

True, it cannot take the place of infantry. Infantry is the bulwark of every army of every age. Men with muskets can scale heights, descend depths, pierce thickets, and, numbered by thousands, can go anywhere and fill the air with deadly missiles. Artillery is a de- pendent auxiliary, defenseless except under proper conditions, but

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