Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 29.djvu/357

 twenty minutes we withdrew and rejoined our brigade, and that night we started on the return march to Virginia.

Although I was in so many of the big battles of the war, I was never wounded until during the fighting around Petersburg, shortly before the surrender, and though now nearly seventy years of age, am still possessed of considerable strength and health, though my brave colonel and captain and, as far as I know, all of the men who crossed the old stone fence with me on the memorable charge have

passed away.

THOMAS E. CAUSBY.

[From the New York Independent, September, 1901.]

CONFEDERATE STATES STATE DEPARTMENT.

A Description of It by Colonel L. Q. Washington.

DEEPLY INTERESTING PAPER.

Personal Reminiscences of Much Value Recollections of President Davis, Bob Toombs, R. M. T. Hunter, and Judah P. Benjamin.

The public has had a deluge of histories in respect to the Civil War and the Southern Confederacy. The history of the antecedent period covering the anti-slavery agitation has also been written up, for the most part with bias and partisanship. The military events of the four-years' struggle have also been exhibited in official reports, documents, memoirs, and narratives of every kind and description. The material for this history exists in abundance; but, though pas- sion is subsiding it would still be difficult to prepare a work satisfac- tory to both sides of this great controversy.

Very little comparatively has been written in respect to the work of the Confederate State Department. Some ambitious attempts have been recently made to supply this omission by persons whose means of obtaining accurate information were quite limited. Mis- representations of Confederate diplomacy have come from different sources. They were made during the war in some anti-administra- tion newspapers published in the South. Attacks were made which