Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/30

 18 Southern Historical Society Papers.

is not my purpose here to go into all this. But suffer one question : Is it not strange that Robert E. Lee, nor Dabney H. Maury, nor Stephen D. Lee, nor any other man borrowed by us from your State or from the Army of Northern Virginia ever lost confidence in Joseph E. Johnston? Nay, nor in the Army of Tennessee while under his command? As to John- ston, did not the Government itself retract its distrust at the last, and in the most desperate moment of its existence lean to him for succor and salvation, along with General Lee? Who were the right and left arm of Davis and the Confederacy in the last extremity? Those two Virginians, Joseph E. John- ston and Robert E. Lee. Who held the back door of the Con- federacy against the hordes of Sherman whilst Lee held you of the Army of Northern Virginia facing Grant at Petersburg? Joseph E. Johnston. What army was that which he led? The battered remnant of the unfortunate, discredited old Army of Tennessee, in large part, that had washed it hands in the waters of the Ohio, or fought its way through the gaps of East. Ten- nessee or West Virginia, or sent its men to defend Vicksburg, Miss., and Baton Rouge, La., or the city on the Guff of Mexico itself, Mobile, Ala. : who spared thousands of its men even at one time to save the trans-Mississippi States! And now be- hold it! Fighting its last battle far east, on North Carolina soil! Truly, no "pent-up Utica" was ours! Almost the whole vast Confederacy, outside of Virginia, herself, heard the rattle of our musketry, the thunder of our guns and the unconquered yell of our ragged, barefooted men ! Such was the territory we were drawn from from time to time to defend. That last battle,, Bentonville, N. C, found the Army of Tennessee 12,000 strong, i. c, fit for duty. These, added to Hardee's men, made Joseph E. Johnston's last army a little army of 22,000 men. He hurled them at Sherman's 90,000, taking them by surprise, fighting them for two days and pushing back their left wing over a mile. Their very last battle act was a successful charge. The news of Lee's surrender alone put an end to the fighting of the Army of Tennessee. Their presence in North Carolina.