Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/250

 242 Southern Historical Society Papers.

massed in long line with open ground ahead is impregnable against front assault.

Skeptics would be disabused had they seen McClellan's sixty guns at Malvern Hill's plateau, repulse time and again, the flower of our in- fantry the finest, in my belief, the world has ever seen.

I fully concur in the views you express in the editorial of the yth of February, as to the superiority of the Southern soldier over the Northern. To an ordinary intelligence an enlistment of 700,000 men, all told, half fed, half clothed, practically unpaid and poorly furnished in all appointments of war, holding at bay for four years an enlist- ment of 2.700,000 men, with above conditions exactly reversed, ought to furnish mathematical demonstration of the superiority of the Southern soldier over the Northern. The philosophic reasons for this fact are not so easy to fathom.

I have written the above to throw some additional light on a dis- aster which was not well understood in current accounts, and which was always a source of irritation to General Johnson.

There was no sturdier, truer, braver division commander than Gen- eral Edward Johnson, commonly known as c< Old Alleghany.

THOMAS H. CARTER.

LETTER OF LIEUTENANT W. S. ARCHER.

Editor of The Times:

As I served throughout the war in the brigade which held the "Bloody Angle" at Spotsylvania, and it has most unjustly been held responsible for the disaster there, I would like to add one state- ment to what has already been said, which I think has an important bearing on the result.

I do not remember accurately the points of the compass, but will assume that the general direction of the main line of works was up to the salient from south to north. At the salient the line curved sharply to the right and rear, running, I think, almost east. Now the picket line did not conform to the direction of the main line. On the contrary, it continued its northerly course for more than a thousand yards beyond the angle and then turned to the right and rear. Drawing a line due west from the angle you would strike a skirmish line at about three hundred yards. A line drawn from the