Dreaming her arms were around him."
In modern times there has never been such valor and heroism displayed as in our Civil War, never such soldiers as the Union and Confederate, and certainly never such as the Confederate soldiers, and it would be nothing to their credit to have achieved victories over less valorous foes than the Union soldiers, and no credit to the Union soldiers that they overwhelmed men of less bravery. The individuality of the Confederate soldier was never lost, and this with his self-possession and intelligent thought made him well nigh invincible. The Army of Northern Virginia as a whole was never driven from a battlefield, although confronted by as good soldiers as were on the continent. No danger could appall these men of Lee, no peril awe, no hardships dismay, no numbers intimidate. To them duty was an inspiration. They had devastated no fields, desecrated no temples and plundered no people, always respecting woman, and feared no man. The record of these soldiers since the war is clean, their names a stranger to criminal records; few, if any, who followed Lee have been behind the bars of a jail. He was their great exemplar. Thousands of these non-commissioned officers and private soldiers, after the first year of the war, were fitted not only to command regiments, but could well have filled much higher military positions.
Great soldiers were Lee, Johnston, Jackson, Longstreet, Hills, Pickett, Stuart and others, but who made them great? No generals ever had such soldiers. It was these Confederates in the ranks that made the names of their generals immortal. Who would have ever heard of them, or of General Grant, but for the Confederate soldier?
What this Confederate soldier has been to the South since the war cannot be measured or stated. Shortly after the close of the conflict and he had reached his home, if he had one left, his troubles were not over. He was confronted with the aftermath—the carpet-bagger and the scallawag, as well as by military-enforced reconstruction, the blackest spot on the page of American history. Well we might and did forgive the wrongs of war, but how were we to overlook and forget the outrageous and shameful things done in the name of restoration of civil government, by the carpetbagger, Northern political pest and pirate—the Southern scallawag, the low, mean, unworthy Southern white man, thrown to the surface by the revolution, but, like all dirt and filth, to go to the bottom and sink in the mud when the flood had subsided.
Serious and grave as these questions were, which sorely tried the Confederate soldier's courage, patience and forbearance, as they had been tested in war, he met them bravely, firmly and by his indomitable spirit directed and controlled them. His broad, keen, intelligent knowledge of men and things finally carried him through the trying ordeal, and crowned his labors with stable governments for the states of his Southland, the most American conservative portion of the republic, made so largely by the brain, brawn, energy and industry of the Confederate soldier, who has been the leader, promoter and architect of her industrial and political fortunes, the idol of her people, her representative in the every fiber and thought of her existence and governments. He has raised her from her ashes and poverty into a veritable garden and to industrial and political power. The last roll call will shortly be sounded, his sun will soon set—what a hero! What an object of interest, will be the last surviving soldier of the Confederacy (I crave to be the one!), the only and last representative of that government of which the great English scholar and poet, Professor Worsely, has written:
"No nation ever rose so white and fair,
Or fell so free of crime."
Appendix No. 1
RANK, WOUNDS, DEATHS, DISCHARGES, ETC.
No. 1. James H. French, captain first year of war; led the company in battles of Bull Run and First Manassas.