Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/298

 290 Southern Historical Society Papers.

[From the Richmond, Va., Times, November 11, 1900.]

CONFEDERATE GENERALS THEIR ABILITY.

Did General Lee Counsel the Abandonment of Richmond After the Battle of the Wilderness ?

[To the imputation of remissness in Southern newspapers generally, " in defending the history of the Confederacy " protest may justly be made.

It is felt that there is not one but by whom it is ardently cherished, and that every one is ready, at all times, to defend its history the motives and actions of its people. EDITOR.]

Editor of the Times :

SIR I quote from your beautiful editorial, " Robert E. Lee," of January igth, ulto:

' ' The other Confederate armies had as good material in their ranks as Lee's army had, but they accomplished little in comparison with what his army accomplished, and why ? Because they had no Lee to make the army as one man. This is the highest tribute that can be paid to man, and no other man that ever lived can claim it in the same proportion as Lee can."

It is most deplorable that Southern newspapers are remiss in de- fending the history of the Confederacy, and thus the Times becomes conspicuous and endeared to all who value the truth, in the contrast to them, as a rule, which it presents. Your columns alone have lifted the shadow of false report from many of the most heroic and glorious achievement of* a citizen soldiery, the armies of the South, the world in any age has known.

Let us look upon the parallels presented in the careers of our gen- erals and their great battles and campaigns. Following these up as we know them, how unitive by the ignorant interference of the politi- cal head of the War Department. So much for the army in Virginia. A case approximately parallel at that same period, was the move- ments of General Sterling Price, in Missouri, by which all the territory of the slave States west of the Mississippi and the absolute control of that stream below St. Louis would have fallen under the