The Woodbury (Tenn.) Press of September 19, 1878, published the following upon the occasion of the first reunion of the Regiment after the war:
Address of Adjutant George B. Guild.
I rejoice in my heart to meet so many of you. More than thirteen years have passed away since, in the Old North State, by order of superior officers, you laid aside the equipments of war and furled forever the flag you have loved and followed—often in victory, sometimes in disaster, but always in honor and with a soldier’s devotion to duty. It is meet and proper, fellow soldiers, that our reunion should be inaugurated at Woodbury. For here, under these towering hills and along the meanderings of the beautiful little river that laves your green and fertile valleys, were enacted many of the stirring scenes through which the Regiment passed. Here too it was our fortune to have encamped on outpost duty for some time. Who is it that does not remember with the fondest recollection the generous liberality of this hospitable people? Your male population were mostly in the army. The decrepit old men and women were here—God bless them!—and nobly did they extend a helping hand in every possible manner. This is the first opportunity we have had to return to you the thanks of our grateful hearts; and when I do so, I know that I utter the sentiment of every member of the Regiment. Amid all of the vicissitudes through which we afterwards passed, and the dreary years that have gone by since then we have remembered with gratitude, and with a longing for your prosperity and happiness, the good and noble women of this vicinity. In the name of the Regiment, I again extend our heartfelt thanks. It is meet and proper from another view that our inaugural meeting should be at Woodbury; for in this vicinity two of the Regiment’s companies were recruited—Company E, Capt. H. A. Wyly, and Company G, Capt. J. W. Nichol. And while it would be improper to make distinctions when all have acted so well their part, two better companies never answered the bugle call or followed honor’s beckoning. A hundred battle fields have been stained with your blood, and nowhere at any time has the slightest dishonor tarnished your fame as soldiers.
I see around me some of the surviving veterans of these two noble companies, battle-scarred, limbless, with the honors of war thick upon their persons; and it is well and proper that we should meet here amid friends and relatives of such men, to clasp again the friendly hand and open to each other the warm hearts of comrades while we talk of battles lost and won and renew that attachment for each other that germinated and ripened amid scenes that unmistakably told what stuff men are made of. Let this be an inauguration of a meeting together which shall extend through long years to come, having for its object the perpetuation of the truth of history, to preserve unsullied the reputation of the living, and to embalm forever the memory of those gallant spirits who offered their lives a free sacrifice to a cause which was as holy as that which nerved the arms of our Revolutionary sires. Let our children learn of it, so that they may teach their children’s children that to have fought and lost does not necessarily stigmatize their ancestors as traitors. Might is not always right, and “truth crushed to earth will rise again.”
But, fellow soldiers, it is no part of our coming together to discuss the theory of the War between the States—its causes or whether we were right or wrong. “There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” It is a stern fact that war did come and the most stupendous conflict of arms ensued of which modern history gives any account. Suffice it to say at this time that a strong sectional feeling had been engendered between the sections of the country; that it had originated many years before the war; and that it had grown in intensity year after year until 1861, when the war cloud became so heavily charged with angry passion that it burst in all its fury and enveloped the country in a conflict which, besides a million lives, cost an inestimable amount of property and treasure. Some of our sister States had been thoroughly instructed in the doctrine of State sovereignty. They had wrongs, grievous wrongs, to complain of at the hands of the North, which the North refused to remedy. They asked peaceably to retire from the Union of States. The government proposed to coerce them into submission and made her levies for armies upon sister Southern States for the purpose of whipping them into the Union. Not till this was done by the general government did Tennessee appear upon the scene. A few months before at the ballot box she had, by a majority of over sixty thousand, decided to cling to the Union of our fathers; but when she saw that it was to be a war of subjugation, she scorned to be neutral and elected to go with her people and kindred and to share their fate, be it for weal or for woe. Tennessee answered her sister States as Ruth did Naomi: “Whither thou goest, I will go; ... thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.”
The drums beat, flags were unfurled to the breeze, sweethearts waved their handkerchiefs, and the boys went in. Ours was an unequal contest. It was a battle of the weak against the strong and powerful. The future historian, when he comes to tell the truth of history, will record it as follows: In point of numbers the Northern States were more than four times that of the Southern States. When we take into the estimate that some of these so-called Southern States contributed more largely to the Northern army than they did to ours, the disproportion in numbers can hardly be estimated. Not only this, but the North, before the contest was over, called to their assistance hundreds of thousands of foreigners and the negro slaves of the South. We withdrew from the Union, which left the government, with all its immense machinery, in their hands. They needed no recognition from foreign powers; we by our own strong arms had to win it. The accumulated national wealth of nearly a century was theirs—a powerful navy, the regular army, arms and ordnance of every description, with the machinery and workshops to manufacture more.
The South was an agricultural people. They had contented themselves with the production of the raw material, while they left it to the North to manufacture every article of use, from the smallest to the most important. They had to establish as best they could shops for the manufacture of every accouterment of the soldier and of every munition of war. There were not in the whole South a percussion cap manufactory or powder mill that could fill the cartridge boxes of a regiment of soldiers. There was no accumulation of supplies anywhere. There was not a single war vessel and but a few merchantmen in her harbors, and a drillmaster was as big a show as an elephant. I speak of this more particularly to refute the assertion that the South had for years been preparing for war. Not one word of it is true. Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation was the electric spark that set fire to the house, and all the water in Christendom could not have quenched it. She did not stop to count the cost or to wait to get ready.
The Federal government proposed to subdue the rebellion in sixty days, and for this purpose sent forward toward Richmond the most magnificent army that had been seen on the continent, composed mainly of the regulars of the old army and officered by men of known ability and experience. It has been said that grand preparations had been made for a jollification over their anticipated victory, and that a large number of the citizens of Washington had accompanied the army “to see the fun.” They were met at Manassas by a little over one-half their number of citizen-soldiers. A great battle was fought, which terminated in a most disastrous defeat and rout. Not until then did the Federal government comprehend the magnitude of their undertaking. New levies were made and the greatest expenditures entered upon. The South, too, marshaled her resources. It was a war between giants, and the full strength and capacity of both were brought to bear upon the result.
Great battles were fought from the Potomac to the Western borders, with varied results, for four years. I feel justified in saying that the South fairly won her proportion of these; but the difficulty with us was that we so expended our strength in battle that we were unable to follow up our advantage—that we had no reserve to call upon from the rear. This fact caused delay and enabled the enemy to draw upon their inexhaustible resources and repair the damage. In other words, we did not have the troops to follow up the success we had fairly won or to secure the prize within our grasp; while the enemy could in forty-eight hours (or in a very short time) hurry fresh men to their assistance, drawing not only from their own supplies, but from the mercenary population of foreign countries, with the slave population of the South thrown in for good measure. It could then be with the South but a question as to how long she could stand this letting out of her lifeblood. She stood alone and could look to no assistance from without. The principles of attrition were applied; and after more than four years of bloody war the South succumbed, but not to superior courage and soldierly bearing upon the field of battle. Her armies had been shattered and broken, and there were none to stand in their places. Numbers had told at last, and the fiery wave of battle had spent its force upon the beach.
We would not speak disparagingly of the soldier who fought against us, for to do so would be casting a shadow upon our own record. He fought well and bravely, and none other could have accomplished what he did. But the Northern soldier fought for conquest and subjugation; the Southern soldier fought for his home and his family. The one was an army of invasion, and the other was an army of defense. The Southern soldier fought more valiantly than the Northern soldier from the simple fact that he had more to fight for. But it is all over now, and it becomes us with charity to bury all the sad memories from our sight and to forget as well as we can all the heart burnings it engendered. “The past comes not back again. The present is ours; let us improve it and go forward to meet the shadowy future with manly hearts and without fear.” This beautiful land is ours by birthright. Our fathers bequeathed it to us. We have an inalienable right to it, and in the language of Georgia’s greatest orator: “We are here in our father’s house. We are at home, thank God! We come charging on the Union no wrong to us. The Union never wronged the South. We charge all our wrongs to the higher law of fanaticism, which never kept a pledge or obeyed a law. We sought to leave the association of those who could not keep fidelity to the covenant. So far from having lost our fidelity to the Constitution, the South when she sought to go by herself hugged the Constitution to her bosom and carried it with her.”
The privations you underwent while a soldier, the absolute sufferings at times for every necessity of life, the exposure to a summer’s sun and heat and to the frost and snow of winter during your long and tiresome marches, nor have I mentioned the long, dark night of many of you in Northern prisons—the history of every civilized war pales into insignificance before it. The magnitude of your battles and the privations of your soldier life are without a parallel. Upon your battle flag is engraven “Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Sequatchie Valley, Tunnel Hill, Dalton, Resaca, New Hope Church, Marietta, Atlanta, Newnan, Saltville, Griswoldville, Buck Head Church, Fayetteville, Bentonville,” and to the list might be added a hundred other battles and skirmishes in which blood was spilled.
But the saddest memory of it all is when we remember the comrades who went with us but came not back. They saw “the blood-red sunset, and we are permitted to see the afterglow.”
“On Fame’s eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread.”
They fell devoted but undying upon the battle fields of the far-off South, where their comrades placed them in their blankets in their shallow graves, which the rains of heaven or the plowshare have leveled with the earth. They are unknown but not forgotten. Their names are enrolled upon the hearts of a grateful and admiring people in letters of gold, and will not be forgotten.
I have been asked to insert in this book the dedicatory speech I had the honor of making upon the occasion of the unveiling of the Confederate monument at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in 1891. Rev. Dr. J. H. McNeilly, who was a true Confederate soldier, in a short time thereafter compiled and published a very neat pamphlet of the entire proceedings. Dr. McNeilly, though advanced in years and very feeble, still retains his love and admiration for his comrades, and is ever ready to lend his aid in the perpetuation of Confederate history. I will be pardoned when I say that I have been selfish enough to yield to this urgent request. The speech follows:
Comrades, Ladies, and Gentlemen: Tennesseeans are justly proud of their history. The daring exploits of their ancestry, who came across the mountains from Virginia and the Carolinas, read like a romance. Their early struggles with the savage and warlike foe and the important services they rendered the colonies in establishing American independence have stamped them as a race of men unexcelled in fortitude and courage. Subsequent facts justify the assertion that they imparted to their posterity all their high patriotic characteristics; for in the various Indian wars under Jackson, in the War of 1812 with Great Britain, in the Seminole War, and in the war with Mexico Tennessee played a most important part. We challenge the pages of history to show where the sons of sister States have done more—yea, as much—to maintain the honor, to broaden the public domain, and to establish the national power and greatness of the United States. Their valor won for them the proud name of “Volunteer State;” hence when our War between the States began, it was impossible for Tennessee to remain inactive. Being forced to a choice, they went with their kindred in blood and interest.
It is not within my province to speak at length of the soldiers—old and young, rich and poor—that crowded into the ranks of the Confederate armies. Tennessee furnished one hundred and eighteen regiments—about one hundred thousand soldiers, nearly one-sixth of the entire Confederate force. Many counties had more soldiers in the army than their voting population. For four years upon hundreds of battle fields they helped maintain the unequal contest. With resources exhausted and their armies depleted to skeletons, they lost all save honor. Three times during the four years’ struggle were Tennesseeans driven from their homes and State; but they never thought once of deserting the flag or giving up the contest, though their homes were in possession of the enemy and their fields furnished them subsistence.
In 1862 they followed the fortunes of that great soldier Albert Sidney Johnston from Bowling Green to Shiloh, the field of his triumph and fall. They retreated from Perryville to Murfreesboro and Chickamauga under General Bragg. They fought under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston from Dalton to Atlanta, marking the route with the blood and graves of the enemy. At the command of Hood, they marched back to bloody Franklin and the vicinity of Nashville. From the Brentwood hills, with longing eyes and yearning hearts, they beheld the spires and domes of the beautiful capital of their beloved State. When overwhelmed with the torrent which Thomas turned upon them, with empty haversacks and naked, bleeding feet in midwinter, they followed their drooping standard beyond the Tennessee. When in the early spring of 1865 the broken and shattered fragments of the Army of Tennessee gathered once more under the standard of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston in North Carolina, a large proportion of Tennesseeans answered to roll call, participated in the unequal battle at Bentonville, and surrendered at Greensboro.
Nor would we forget to mention in this connection the brave sons of Tennessee who fought in the Army of Virginia, who fought at Manassas under Stonewall Jackson, at Chancellorsville, at Gettysburg, and on other fields, and who, when overwhelmed in numbers, surrendered with Lee at Appomattox. The glory they so nobly won is a part of the immortal heritage of Tennesseeans.
A generation of men has come upon the stage of life since 1861, and the labor of many hands, multiplied by the passing years, has wiped away every trace of the awful conflict, but the story of the Confederate soldier still lives. It has formed an enduring lodgment in every home, and as the years recede its thrilling traditions will pass from lip to lip.
In May, 1865, the remnant of the Confederate army returned to their desolated homes. Since then there has been a desire on the part of this people not only to show to future generations their approval of the manner in which they performed their duty, but also to give some enduring testimonial of their appreciation of the honor and glory they won. This monument is the fulfillment of that cherished purpose; and now that it is finished, we trust that it will meet your approbation. At any rate, we ask you to accept it in the spirit that has created it. As its front inscription indicates, we dedicate it “to the valor, devotion, and sacrifice unto death of the Confederate soldiers of Tennessee.” This generation need not be told what this means, for they too have lived under the dark shadows of the four years of blood and carnage. The tramp, tramp, tramp of the marching hosts echoes in their hearts to-day. Battle succeeds battle more deadly than before. Every messenger from the front tells of the wreck of a living hope. Every home is a house of mourning—a whole people baptized in martial glory, with one hope and one destiny.
This shaft is not intended to commemorate the fame of our great generals—the account of the battle has told of them—but the private soldier, the rank and file of the Confederate armies, the citizen soldiery, who without hope of reward suffered privations, fought against greater numbers, and sacrificed their lives in the discharge of duty. From Gettysburg to the distant fields of the far South—wherever the army fought—they sleep in their blankets in unmarked and forgotten graves. It is their unwritten record we would lift aloft and inscribe their names among the stars. Driven from their homes, weary from forced marches, weak from hunger, in tattered garments, they marched to their death amid bursting shell and rattling, crashing musketry. Such we would remember to-day. And the lone sentinel yonder, as he looks away from the granite base, “instances each soldier’s grave as a shrine.” In the years to come let the stranger who is attracted to this spot, as he gazes up at that typical form, partake of the inspiration that we would have to linger here.
“Pious marble! Let thy readers know
What they and what their children owe
To the brave men whose sacred dust
We here commit unto thy trust.
Protect their memory, preserve their story;
Remain a lasting monument to their glory.”
The Southern States furnished the Federal army with the following:
| White troops | 276,439 |
| Negroes | 178,975 |
| Foreigners | 444,586 |
| Total | 800,000 |
Foreigners in the Federal army were as follows:
| Germans | 176,800 |
| Irish | 144,200 |
| British-Americans | 53,500 |
| English | 45,500 |
| Other foreigners | 74,900 |
| Total | 494,900 |
The Federal army in its report for May, 1865, had present for duty 1,000,576, while it had present equipped 602,598. The Confederate army in its report for April 9, 1865, had 174,223 paroled and 98,802 in Federal prisons, making a total of 272,025.
As the armies stood at time of surrender:
| Federal soldiers | 1,000,576 |
| Confederate soldiers | 272,025 |
| Total enlistment of Federal army | 2,778,304 |
| Total enlistment of Confederate army | 600,000 |
1. The State of New York with 448,850 and Pennsylvania with 337,936 Union soldiers aggregated 768,635 soldiers and outnumbered the entire Confederate army.
2. Illinois with 259,092, Ohio with 313,180, and Indiana with 196,363 soldiers aggregated 768,635 soldiers and outnumbered the Confederate army.
3. New England with 363,162 and the 316,424 Union soldiers of the slave States aggregated 679,586 soldiers and outnumbered the Confederate army.
4. The States west of the Mississippi River, exclusive of Missouri and the other Southern States, enlisted 319,563, Delaware, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia 105,632, and the negro troops enlisted in the Southern States and not before counted were 99,337—an aggregate of 514,532 soldiers.
These facts, taken from the war records, show that there were four Union armies in the field, each of which was as large as the Confederate army.
The following list of killed and wounded (exclusive of prisoners) in the nineteen great battles of the war was compiled by Lieut. Col. G. F. R. Henderson, C.B., in his most excellent book of two volumes styled “Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War.” I am glad that some neutral party has so truthfully recorded the facts as they are. He came to the United States after the war in order to investigate and write for the benefit of an impartial public a true history. He was given every facility for that purpose and had access to the reports of both sides, with the personal interviews of both Federal and Confederate officers who had participated from the beginning to the close of the war. After much labor and time spent, he made the following report, touching the killed and wounded of both armies in the battles named, which report received the full indorsement of Field Marshal the Right Honorable Viscount Wolseley, commander in chief of the Army of Great Britain. Taken, then, as such, it should be accepted as impartial and true.
| Name of | Number of Troops Engaged | Killed and Wounded | Tot | Pct of | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Battle | Date | Cfd | Fed | Cfd | Fed | Total | Pct | Vic |
| Manassas* | 1861 | 18,000 | 18,000 | 1,969 | 1,584 | 3,553 | 9 | 10 |
| Perryville | 1862 | 16,000 | 27,000 | 3,200 | 3,700 | 6,900 | 16 | ··· |
| Shiloh | 1862 | 40,000 | 58,000 | 9,000 | 12,000 | 21,000 | 20 | 20 |
| Seven Pines | 1862 | 39,000 | 51,000 | 6,134 | 5,031 | 11,165 | 12 | 9 |
| Gaines Mill* | 1862 | 54,000 | 36,000 | 8,000 | 5,000 | 13,000 | 14 | 14 |
| Malvern Hill | 1862 | 70,000 | 80,000 | 5,500 | 2,800 | 8,300 | 5 | 3 |
| Cedar Run* | 1862 | 21,000 | 12,000 | 1,314 | 2,380 | 3,694 | 11 | 6 |
| Second Manassas* | 1862 | 54,000 | 73,000 | 9,000 | 13,000 | 22,000 | 17 | 16 |
| Sharpsburg* | 1862 | 41,000 | 87,000 | 9,500 | 12,410 | 21,910 | 17 | 23 |
| Fredericksburg* | 1862 | 70,000 | 120,000 | 4,224 | 12,747 | 16,971 | 8 | 6 |
| Chickamauga* | 1863 | 71,000 | 57,000 | 18,000 | 17,100 | 35,100 | 27 | 25 |
| Chancellorsville* | 1863 | 62,000 | 130,000 | 10,000 | 14,000 | 24,000 | 12 | 17 |
| Gettysburg | 1863 | 70,000 | 93,000 | 18,000 | 17,000 | 37,000 | 24 | 20 |
| Chattanooga | 1863 | 33,000 | 60,000 | 3,000 | 5,500 | 8,500 | 8 | 9 |
| S. River or M’boro* | 1862 -63 | 33,000 | 60,000 | 9,500 | 9,000 | 18,500 | 24 | 20 |
| Wilderness* | 1864 | 61,000 | 118,000 | 11,000 | 15,000 | 26,000 | 14 | 18 |
| Spottsylvania C. H.* | 1864 | 50,000 | 100,000 | 8,000 | 17,000 | 25,000 | 16 | 16 |
| Cold Harbor* | 1864 | 58,000 | 110,000 | 1,700 | 10,000 | 11,700 | 6 | 3 |
| Nashville | 1864 | 39,000 | 55,000 | 3,500 | 3,000 | 6,500 | 6 | 5 |
| (Cfd ＝ Confederate; Fed ＝ Federal; Vic ＝ Victor) | ||||||||
| * Indicates battles won by Confederates. | ||||||||
| Confederates victorious, 12; Federals victorious, 7. | ||||||||
It will be seen from the report that the per cent of casualties (killed and wounded) at Chickamauga is greater than any other battle of the war—to wit: twenty-seven per cent. The next in order are Gettysburg and Murfreesboro, with twenty-four per cent each. It will be remembered, too, that at Gettysburg the combined armies engaged aggregated 163,000, while at Chickamauga the combined armies engaged numbered 128,000. The killed and wounded at Gettysburg numbered 37,000, while at Chickamauga the killed and wounded numbered 35,100—a difference of 35,000 in the aggregated strength of the two armies and only a difference of 1,900 in the number of killed and wounded. Gettysburg and Chickamauga were the two great battles of the war, as I have before remarked, the one in the East and the other in the West. In these engagements the Confederate army had its greatest strength and enthusiasm. After these two battles they fought with some degree of success to the last. The North continued to gather strength, while the South had no resources to draw upon. “The cradle and the grave” had made their liberal contributions, and for the soldier who fell in action there was no one to supply his place.
In the table I have indicated the Murfreesboro—or Stones River, as it is called by the Federals—battle as a victory for the Confederates when it should have been for the Federals. General Bragg gained a great victory at Murfreesboro on the 30th of December, 1862; but after two days’ inactivity and failing to follow it up, he assaulted the fortified position of the Federals with a single division, that of General Breckenridge, who, after a gallant fight, was repulsed with heavy loss on the 1st of January, 1863. That night General Bragg withdrew his army and retreated to Shelbyville. Technically speaking, Colonel Henderson is correct, for the Federals had won every portion of the field at the termination of the battle.
I do not like to criticize any portion of what Colonel Henderson says in his report, but I am of the opinion that he is in error when he places the Confederate forces at Chickamauga as larger than those of the Federal army. I will do him the justice to say that I have heard the same claimed by Northern writers. The Confederate soldiers claim that the Federal army was numerically the largest. They account for the mistake in this way: It was well known that General Longstreet was ordered to Chickamauga to reënforce General Bragg with his large veteran corps from General Lee’s army in Virginia, numbering some twenty or twenty-five thousand. But General Longstreet did not reach the field until the night of the 19th, and participated in the last day’s fight, the 20th of September. Only two of his divisions reached there in time to take part in the last day’s battle—the divisions of Generals McLaws and Hood, numbering less than ten thousand. At a consultation had at General Bragg’s headquarters on the night of the 19th the Confederate army was divided into two wings, General Polk to command the right wing and General Longstreet to command the left wing. More than two-thirds of the left wing were troops of the Army of Tennessee and were on the field before General Longstreet arrived. These facts show that the two armies were about equal numerically; if anything, the Federal army was the larger. The change of figures would adjust the relative strength of each army. Anyhow, there was honor and glory won at Chickamauga—enough to satisfy every American soldier that took part in that great battle. It was the deadliest battle not only of our War between the States, but stands without a parallel in all modern warfare. The great battle between Wellington and Napoleon at Waterloo, fought in 1815, falls short of it three per cent in killed and wounded, when the stake was the destiny of all Europe.
Since the war the government of the United States has purchased the entire battle field of Chickamauga (thousands of acres) and transformed what was a rugged and immense growth of timber and undergrowth into a beautiful national park, checking every point of interest with smooth roadways, and preserving at the same time every object as it appeared during the battle. A military post has been established there, which the government is now about to enlarge at great expense. Troops from all the States, both North and South, participated in the battle of Chickamauga. Most of them have erected imposing monuments to their respective soldiers. A forest of monumental spires is to be seen in any direction one may travel over the great field of battle, every one of which, as it lifts its tall shaft to the skies, tells of the soldiers who fought there, whether they wore the blue or the gray.
As I have said before, the Confederate armies never enlisted more than six hundred thousand soldiers from first to last. I have said also that the Federal writers have denied this and claimed more, which under the circumstances they are more than anxious should be the fact. I still insist that the Confederate estimate—to wit, six hundred thousand—is approximately correct, as is shown in the June (1912) number of the Confederate Veteran in a well-digested and carefully prepared paper written by Rev. R. H. McKim, which most convincingly confirms these figures. President Tyler, of William and Henry College, writing on “The South in the Building of the Nation,” says: “In round numbers the South had on her muster rolls from first to last about six hundred thousand soldiers.” This estimate agrees with that of Adjutant General Cooper, whose duty it was to keep an accurate roster of the Confederate armies during the entire war; that of Dr. Bledsoe, Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Gen. Jubal A. Early, and Gen. John Preston; also with that of many other distinguished and reliable writers I could mention who confirm this estimate of the strength of the Confederate armies.
Every paroled soldier at Appomattox under General Lee on the 9th of April, 1865, or under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston at Greensboro, N. C., on the 26th of April, 1865, seventeen days afterwards, knew that he was fighting an enemy that outnumbered him from six or twelve to one. The Confederate paroled list, as well as the morning’s reports of the Federal army, will show that this is an indisputable fact, and it should go down in history at these figures.
The latest United States census report made prior to the breaking out of the War between the States shows that the Northern States had a white population about five times as large as that of the Southern States. By the offering of large bounties, the United States enlisted four hundred and ninety-four thousand foreigners. Many of these at the close of the war never claimed citizenship here, but returned to the land of their nativity. Since the passage of the pension laws they have been paid millions of dollars by the United States. After nearly half a century the survivors are still drawing their pensions—mercenary soldiers in fact and in deed.
The Southern States furnished the Northern army 276,439 white troops and 178,975 colored troops. These are well-authenticated facts and fully justify Southern people for the insistence they make of the comparative strength of the two armies during the war.
We claim that no army has ever fought so valiantly as the Confederate army. All history fails to show a parallel case. For four years they maintained the unequal contest, fighting more and greater battles, conducting longer campaigns, and enduring more privations than were ever before recorded. The South claims this much, though in the contest they lost all save honor.
“No nation rose so white and fair,
Or fell so pure of crimes.”
The Confederate cavalry regiments for three winters slept in the open air, without tents, before a log-heap fire. In case of rain or sleet, they would get some forked limbs, place a pole between the forks, put rails on the ground, resting them on the pole, and spread an oilcloth or blanket from the pole down to the ground. The result was a splendid “lay-out” (or “lay-in”), especially with the log-heap fire in front of the opening. The poet has exclaimed in ecstasy:
“Balmy sleep, tired nature’s sweet restorer!”
One can never experience the sentiment unless this is tried. Some died in getting accustomed to it; but generally the survivors were stout, healthy, and active soldiers. A dry snow was not to be dreaded, for it supplied a covering equal to at least two blankets. When morning bugles were sounded, they would rise, throwing blankets and snow off them, feeling stout and strong enough to throw their horse over a ten-rail fence. Such a morning made the boys happy that they were Confederate soldiers and that they could dream of “home, sweet home.”
Every survivor of the Confederate army will indorse what Gen. Bennett H. Young, Commander in Chief of the United Confederate Veterans, so well and truthfully said in his speech on Decoration Day, 1912, at Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, Ky., in part as follows:
Our love of country does not dim or tarnish the love for our Confederation. The Confederate States lived only four years, and they occupy upon the pages of human history more space than any other nation that lived for the same length of time. We are not ashamed for what they did; we rejoice in what we suffered. The glory and grandeur of the character of the Confederate soldier we shall maintain for all time. We have nothing to say derogatory to the courage, valor, and patriotism of our countrymen who sleep beneath the stars and stripes, and whose graves are kept green by a nation’s gratitude and love; but we affirm that no nation of equal numbers, with the limitation of a large population of slaves, enlisted proportionately so vast a number of men under its standards or ever undertook to defend so vast a territory. We contend that no army of equal numbers ever fought so many battles in so brief a period or suffered such tremendous losses. One man in every three who wore the Confederate uniform died on the battle field or from wounds received in conflict or in the hospital. History details no account of such a vast percentage of mortality or such tremendous sacrifices. These losses proclaim the incontestable valor of the Confederate soldiers, and no people who ever engaged in war inflicted upon their enemy such vast damage and injury.
But few remain of the line that went down with the flag on the 26th of April, 1865, at Greensboro, N. C. Another generation has come and gone since then. We seldom see each other now. May we meet again in the great hereafter!
“In many a lonely thicket,
Far from life’s beaten track,
The scout and guard and picket,
The boys who never came back:
They died where the cannon’s thunder
Made savage pulses thrill,
That the flag they battled under
Might wave o’er free men still.”
The assassination of President Lincoln was in a special way most calamitous to the citizens of the South. It intensified and augmented to the highest degree the angry passions engendered by four years of war and postponed for years that reconciliation of the two sections that the surrender of the Confederate armies should have brought about, happening as it did when the North was ablaze with bonfires in exultation over the downfall of the Confederate government; for General Lee had evacuated Petersburg, Richmond the capital had fallen, and its civil officers were fugitives.
The great crime committed by Booth was the act of a madman, born of the spirit that had suggested the burning of the ancient and famed Temple of Diana. Notwithstanding this, the Northern press teemed with the most exciting and inflammatory editorials, even charging well-known and most respectable citizens of the South and the officials of the Confederate government itself with complicity in the crime. Reason was dethroned, and it was unsafe to express a different conclusion.
At the South the act met with the most profound and pronounced condemnation, not only by the citizens of the South, but by the soldiers who had surrendered and were awaiting their paroles. I remember that when the information reached the army at Greensboro, N. C., one would have supposed that there would have been some indiscreet expressions or exultations, but instead of that it was received in silence and with pronounced expressions of the severest condemnation.
It is believed that if Mr. Lincoln had survived the war there would have been no such radical measures enacted and enforced as existed for years after the declaration of peace. The changed condition that the war had wrought was accepted in good faith by the people of the South, and the legislation necessary to adjust the autonomy of the seceded States would have taken place peaceably and at once. In fact, it is surprising that the good and just people of the North did not intervene to prevent this long period of misrule and the unlawful exercise of power and oppression. It is not my purpose to speak in detail of this now more than to say that I do not think a darker picture was ever spread before human minds than was presented during the long years of reconstruction in the South.
The first ray of sunshine to penetrate the darkness was when Brownlow’s self-constituted legislature elected him to the United States Senate. It was well assumed that his counterpart could not be produced again. DeWitt Senter was Speaker of the Senate and became Governor by virtue of his office. He was from East Tennessee and had been a consistent Union man, with no feelings of enmity toward his fellow citizens from whom he differed regarding public questions. Col. W. B. Stokes, a native of Middle Tennessee, was the logical successor to Brownlow. The Governor and legislature of the State were to be elected in a short time after Brownlow’s election to the Senate, and Acting Governor Senter was a candidate for the office, as well as Colonel Stokes. To beat Stokes it was necessary to have another registration of votes, for as the poll stood Stokes was certain to be elected. Senter was fully aware of this; and having the power by law to ask for another registration, he did so, and at once issued indiscriminately to the voters of the State the necessary certificates. He was elected Governor, with a conservative, representative legislature. A constitutional convention was called, to which was elected by the whole people an able and representative body of men, who enacted a new State constitution in 1870 embracing the necessary amendments. In due time after this all obnoxious and oppressive laws were repealed by the legislature, and the State government was placed in the hands of its citizens again, which was the signal for the accumulated horde of vampires to fold their tents and march away in quest of a more congenial clime.
If there lingered in the minds of the people of the North a feeling that the South was disloyal to the government, it was dispelled by the breaking out of the Spanish-American War in 1898, when they saw with what alacrity and unmistakable patriotism the Southern States answered the call made upon them for their quota of volunteer troops; and tendering at once more than were necessary, it could not but satisfy every doubting Thomas. Besides this, quite a number of the South’s most noted generals during the War between the States tendered their services and were accepted by the President, valiantly assisting in bringing the war to a satisfactory conclusion. If that war effected no other result, it was sufficient, if not necessary, that it had happened in order to silence forever all doubt upon the question of the loyalty and patriotism of the Southern people.
The territory of the United States has broadened by the annexation of a number of new sovereign States. Its population in every section has been increased to a remarkable degree since the war. We feel that we are justified in saying that peace, prosperity, and happiness exist to-day throughout its borders. To extend these national blessings to future generations, we should remember that it can be done only by the enactment and enforcement of laws tempered with justice, founded in wisdom, and in sustaining the decisions of an incorruptible judiciary, which is the last and strongest hope of the liberty and freedom of the people.
The ex-Confederate soldier who faithfully performed his duty during the War between the States can now rest satisfied that the future historian will do him justice in his heroic effort to maintain the Constitution enacted by his rebellious forefathers and his attempt to enforce the decisions made by the highest tribunal of his country. He is as law-abiding to-day, nearly half a century afterwards, as he was then.