Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/20

 Southern Historical Society Papers.

MISSIONARY RIDGE."

By the Rev. P. D. STEPHENSON, D. D., Private 13th Arkansas Infantry and 5th Company Washington Artillery.

A word or two by way of introduction.

First. The "occasion" of this address is the contemplated visit of this Camp, along with the hundreds of other veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia, to Chattanooga, Tenn., to attend the reunion of the United Confederate Veterans next May. The conspicuous objects before your eyes every day while there will be Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. Many Federal soldiers live in Chattanooga, numbers of whom prob- ably were in the battles on those lofty heights, and no doubt some of them will delight to refer to that conflict, and even invite you to go with them and let them show you the scene of their glory and of Southern shame. While admitting the defeat and the shame of it, yet I think I can say something which will help you to meet misrepresentations and soothe the sensitiveness which your Southern blood will naturally feel while hearing their side of that sad story, for I assume that the followers of the incomparable Lee learned from him not only to make a record almost matchless in all history for heroic and victorious achievement in battle, but learned also how to catch his noble sympathy and magnanimity for the victims of adversity, especially when those victims of adversity were of their own blood, nay, brothers-in-arms, in the same cause.

Second. My first account of this battle was written imme- diately after the war, when every detail was vivid, like a fiery photograph before my eyes. This particular paper is substan- tially a copy of that account, and in its original form was a letter to two Virginia girls, who wrote me after visiting the battlefield and expressed a wish that I had been with them to explain the fight to them. When even young girls showed such a curiosity to have it explained while having the site of