A foolish reason, but it was the best the young man could offer. The truth is, however, Burnside’s army was in a position of extreme danger, after its failure to carry the Heights, and had not Lee been diligently expecting another attack, instead of a retreat, he might have subjected it to infinite discomfiture. It was to do us more injury, and not less, that he delayed to destroy the pontoon bridge and shell the town while our troops were in it.
The young man gloried in that great victory.
“But,” said I, “what did you gain? It was all the worse for you that you succeeded then. That victory only prolonged the war, and involved greater loss. We do not look at those transient triumphs; we look at the grand result. The Confederacy was finally swept out, and we are perfectly satisfied.”
“Well, so am I,” he replied, looking me frankly in the face. “I tell you, if we had succeeded in establishing a separate government, this would have been the worst country, for a poor man, under the sun.”
“How so?”
“There would have been no chance for white labor. Every rich man would have owned his nigger mason, his nigger carpenter, his nigger blacksmith; and the white mechanic, as well as the white farm-laborer, would have been crushed out.”
“You think, then, the South will be better off without slavery?”
“Certainly, I do. So does every white man that has to work for a living, if he isn’t a fool.”
“Then why did you fight for it?”
“We wasn’t fighting for slavery; we was fighting for our independence. That’s the way the most of us understood it; though we soon found out it was the rich man’s war, and not the pore man’s. We was fighting against our own interests, that’s shore!”