Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/221

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imprisonment and disease ami wounds and death. Their patriotiMii \\MN .is broad as the Confederacy, and as unselfish as a mother's love. They had a conviction of the righteousness of their cause that no doubt ever disturbed; a faith in their own invincibility and a confi- dence in their officers that no disaster could diminish; a manly subor- dination to authority, and a faithfulness in the discharge of duty seldom equalled; a bravery calm as peace and reckless as fire; and a patience which willingly suffered frost and famine, whose fever gave intensity to their purpose and tireless vigils in long sieges, accompa- nied by the bursting of bombshells and the incessant rattle of mus- ketry, daytime and night-time, through many tedious months. But it was in the forlorn hope, in the desperate assault upon the enemy's works, or in the steady movement upon his lines, or in the dashing charge upon his guns in the open field, their nature most appeaVed. Then qualities, which, like the Punic characters upon the sword of the Icelandic chieftan, were invisible in repose, like them, too, in battle and deadly peril, gleamed and glowed with a terrifying resplendence, and obtained, even in defeat, the applause our enemies won only by success. Neither victory nor disaster could materially affect the fame of this enrolled infantry. They did not change their virtues because fortune changed her face.

These were some of the traits of the men, whose lives were as thickly strewn with battles, as their graves are strewn with flowers in spring. They were displayed by this matchless infantry .when it starved in the trenches at Vicksburg; or besieged Cumberland Gap, climbed on the hills at Chickamauga or stormed the breastworks at Frank- lin; or assaulted the fortifications about Knoxville; or held the lines around Petersburg and Richmond; or stood immovably at Spotsyl- vania; or repelled the invaders a: Fredericksburg; or drove them to the music of the rebel yell, from the field at Chancellorsville, or charged the heights of Gettysburg. In every position and in all conditions they exhibited to the admiring gaze of the nations, the finest specimens of real, true, genuine manhood, Christian or pagan, the world has ever seen. Of this famous army, Alabama furnished 122,000 men, thirty-five thousand of whom returned no more to their homes. Some of them repose in graves marked unknown, in dis- tant countries. The remains of others are scattered on every moun- tain height and plain; upon every hilltop and valley, from Gettysburg to where the Mississippi rolls his multitudinous waters to the sea, and around green boughs.

Their unremembered bones do waste away in rain, and dew, and