In the black night-watches as by day--toward
morning, as at evening--they stood, clutching the musket, peering out
into the pitchy darkness; or lay, dozing around the grim cannon, in the
embrasures. Hunger, and cold, and wounds, and the whispering voice of
Despair, had no effect on them. The mortal tedium left them patient.
When you saw the gaunt faces contract, and tears flow, it was because
they had received some letter, saying that their wives and children
were starving. Many could not endure that. It made them forget all.
Torn with anguish, and unable to obtain furloughs for a day even, they
went home without leave--and civilians called them deserters. Could
such men be shot--men who had fought like heroes, and only committed
this breach of discipline that they might feed their starving children?
And, after all, it was not desertion that chiefly reduced Lee's
strength. It was battle which cut down the army--wounds and exposure
which thinned its ranks. But thin as they were, and ever growing
thinner, the old veterans who remained by the flag of such glorious
memories, were as defiant in this dark winter of 1864, as they had been
in the summer days of 1862 and 1863.
Army of _Northern Virginia_!--old soldiers of Lee, who fought beside
your captain until your frames were wasted, and you were truly his
"wretched" ones--you are greater to me in your wretchedness, more
splendid in your rags, than the Old Guard of Napoleon, or the three
hundred of Thermopylae! Neither famine, nor nakedness, nor suffering,
could break your spirit.
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