You were tattered and half-starved; your
forms, were warworn; but you still had faith in Lee, and the great
cause which you bore aloft on the points of your bayonets. You did not
shrink in the last hour the hour of supreme trial. You meant to follow
Lee to the last. If you ever doubted the result, you had resolved, at
least, on one thing--to clutch the musket, to the end, and die in
harness!
Is that extravagance--and is this picture of the great army of Northern
Virginia overdrawn? Did they or did they not fight to the end? Answer!
Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, Charles City, every spot around
Petersburg where they closed in death-grapple with the swarming enemy!
Answer! winter of '64,--bleak spring of '65,--terrible days of the
great retreat when hunted down and driven to bay like wild animals,
they fought from Five Forks to Appomattox Court-House--fought
staggering, and starving, and falling--but defiant to the last!
Bearded men were seen crying on the ninth of April, 1865. But it was
_surrender_ which wrung their hearts, and brought tears to the grim
faces.
Grant's cannon had only made "Lee's Miserables" cheer and laugh.
IV.
THE BLANDFORD RUINS.
These memories are not cheerful. Let us pass to scenes more sunny--and
there were many in that depressing epoch.
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