Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/211

 Unveiling Confederate Monument <// Montgomery t Ala, 201

other kind of unsoldierly conduct. He hardly needed Lee's noble order to restrain him in Pennsylvania. He could not disgrace his home by pillage of another's home, or degrade his wife and mother by insulting the wives and mothers of other men. His chivalry taught him to protect the defenceless. Gordon expressed this feel- ing when he said to the frightened women of the invaded town of York, who feared insult if his ragged troops were permitted to dis- perse through the town: " Have no fear, you are as safe as if your own people were here. My men would not let the man who harmed a women live to see. the sun go down."

It is not strange that this soldier who had such home influences, and received letters by every mail telling him of their prayers for him, should think of prayer for himself and his cause. It is a sus- taining thought in the hour of battle, that there is an invisible hand which may be invoked to save and to shield. Whether secretly or openly, the soldier who had gone unscathed in many battles, began to pray for himself, and became resigned to the will of a higher Power. He began to consider himself as a mere instrument in the hands of Providence, and by the very exaltation of his faith and consecration to duty, became possessed of a strange moral and phy- sical strength. He had an abiding faith, amounting almost to fanat- icism, that the God of battles would in the end, send his cause safe deliverance.

He was always without money; yet he was never known to beg for money. His month's pay during the last half of the struggle, would hardly buy a dinner, and towards the last, his government was unable to pay at all. Many of the Revolutionary fathers, under less illing circumstances, threatened to leave Washington before Tren- >n, and could be persuaded to strike the blow there, only upon compliance with their demand, for "a bounty of ten dollars, pro- vided it should be paid in hard money," for already, says the histo- m, " distrust of the continental currency was beginning to cause

depreciation." These same Revolutionary soldiers, even after

ice, threatened calamities to the Republic on account of arrears pay, which only the wisdom and firmness of Washington could avert. This Confederate had seen value quickly depart from the Confeder- te note in which he was paid, until it became perfectly worthless to-

irds the end, yet he never remonstrated with his government, and 10 thought entered his brain to stay the arm of Lee or Jackson, mtil htf could have a balance struck and settled.

Then- uas an intense spirit of comradeship in this man. There