Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 24.djvu/282

 274 Southern Historical Society Papers.

We might thus contend that General Lee had 120,000 men op- posed to him, which would bear to 57,000, the number of his army as made up by General Fitz. Lee's critic, about the same proportion as the " less than 40,000" reported by General Lee, bears to the "87,164 carried into action " by General McClellan.

WALTER H. TAYLOR.

[From the Times Democrat, June, 1895]

GENERAL W. H. C. WHITING.

A CHEVALIER OF THE LOST CAUSE.

His Incomparable Gifts and One flisfortune Were fir. Davis and Gen- eral Bragg Responsible for His Fatalities?

A recent elaborate and sympathetic article on the career of the late General W. H. C. Whiting, while properly eulogizing the hero of it, may have, unintentionally, done injustice to Hon. Jefferson Davis, as President of the Southern Confederacy, and General Brax- ton Bragg, who was conspicuous in the same cause. The phenome- nal accomplishments of General Whiting are admirably summed up. Few men have been born into the world with such astonishing en- dowments of body and mind. His personal masculine beauty was a splendid shrine for one of the most brilliant, comprehensive, and ver- satile intellects. His record at West Point has not yet, I presume, been matched. The late Dr. Greebough, of the navy, who knew him well, declared to me that Whiting not only surpassed all of his military contemporaries in serious or manly accomplishments, but could even beat* all the boys of his time playing marbles. He was by parentage a northern man, southern born, however, and, like Byron, his "blood was all meridian." My personal acquaintance with him was very slight, but it happened at a time when this extra- ordinary man was in the crisis of his destiny, and, perhaps, with as much delicacy as possible, I may clear up some of the adverse criti- cisms made, in all sincerity, no doubt, upon men who, like Whiting, are with the historic dead, and whose characters need not fear truth as well as commendation.

The charge made against Mr. Davis substantially is that he did not