Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/226

 218 Southern Historical Society Papers.

gallant stands made by these men then as can be found in the pages of history. We were overwhelmed by numbers in the army and by suffering and starvation at home, where such men as Sheridan and Sherman overran our country and devastated it so that " a crow flying over would have to carry his rations with him." With such a record as that, we old veterans still think we have a right to talk, and if any of the younger generation wish to learn what fighting is, let him attend any " Campfire," and get some of the men around to talk about the old times; old eyes will kindle into flashing fire, old forms, bent with age, straighten up, as first one and then another tells of the charge on such and such a battery, or a stand made be- hind such a fence, or how such and such a battery as, for instance, the First Company of Howitzers at Chancellorsville held the entire right wing of the Union army at bay for a whole day without infantry support, as Rev. William Dame, of Baltimore, will tell him; or get Major Robert Stiles to repeat his lecture on the Second Battle of Cold Harbor, where in eight minutes 13,000 of Grant's splendid army were killed and wounded by the "ragged rebels"; and the youth, if he has any manhood in him, and is not simply a second- class cigarette smoker, will become convinced that the "old man " is not far wrong in claiming a right to talk, and that "there 'were giants in those days."

Possibly, therefore, he will listen more respectfully and with more interest not only to the tales of the battles, with the rattle of mus- ketry, the deep boom of cannon, the whistle of the conical bullet, the bursting of the shell, the commands of the officers riding here and there with sometimes loud and angry curses and sometimes with the clear, cool words of the man who has thorough control of him- self; the noise, dust, confusion and, above all, an excitement that compares with nothing else in the world, the weary marches through rain or choking dust, the dreary camps, the suffering from cold and lack of clothing but to the cause for which their fathers fought and for which so many of them laid down their lives.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the case may be, from the stand- point from which it is viewed, we had no war correspondents in our army who made it their business to laud their officers and to decry the action of those not so popular, and therefore as unwilling as some of us may be to write articles of this character at this late date, we feel it is due that the individual soldier should tell what he saw and what he knew, not only of the privates who stood shoulder to shoulder with him, but of their great and gallant leaders, than whom