Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/65

 Last

o fl'

<> A'"/'///,r//

57

After the disaster at Spotsylvania C. H., the Fifth regiment was little more in size than a full company, and Company D was pro- portionally small, so that at the surrender, owing to casualties of severe service, but three were present to ground arms to- wit: Lieutenant C. W. Baylor, Sergeant Frank McCutchan and private C. G. Berry. On the morning of the surrender the regiment formed as a company numbered but fifty-one men, rank and file.

The loss of the Fifth regiment at the battle of Cedar Mountain was three killed and seventeen wounded, of this loss Company D sustained one-third, as three of our comrades were killed and four wounded.

The following abstract of General Order from headquarters, giving history of campaign of 1862, may be of general interest to all sol- diers of the Stonewall Brigade: " During the year 1862, the Stone- wall Brigade lost 1220 men in killed and wounded, no record of those that died of disease ; Fifth regiment lost 400, almost one-third of entire loss. We marched 1500 miles, encountering the snow and ice of the mountains of Hampshire and Morgan counties ; the miasma of summers in the swamps of Henrico and Hanover. The brigade at the beginning of 1863 numbering but 1200 muskets."

T. M. SMILEY, Orderly Sergeant, Co. D, Fifth Va. Infantry, Stonewall Brigade.

LAST DAYS OF THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA.

An Address Delivered by Hon. THOMAS G. JONES, Governor of Ala- bama, before the Virginia Division of the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia at the Annual Meeting, Richmond, Va., October i2th, 1893.

The President, Hon. George L. Christian, having called the meet- ing to order, in glowing terms, introduced the orator.

Governor Jones, after appropriately acknowledging the kind intro- duction of the chairman, said:

Posterity will admit, as Greeley does in his "American Conflict," that the Confederacy had no alternative to staying its arm at Sumter but "its own dissolution." The smoke in Charleston harbor had hardly cleared away before there arose in sight of the world the heroic figure of the Army of Northern Virginia. Many have ques- tioned its cause, but none have ever doubted it.