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.