Special Commissioner. Commanding.
This was the end of all our hopes and aspirations. Might had prevailed over right, and the conquered banner had been furled for all time.
Judge Clark in his Regimental Histories reproduced fac-similes of two paroles, one of an officer in the army of Northern Virginia, who surrendered at Appomattox Court House, the other, of the writer of this sketch, an officer of the last grand army of the Confederacy, commanded by General Joseph E. Johnston. This parole appears on the opposite page. It was in keeping the inviolate faith of a similar parole issued to our great commander, Robert E. Lee, that General Grant, be it said to his everlasting credit, stayed the hand of President Johnston, who, soon after the war, issued a shameful order for the arrest of the “noblest Roman of them all.” By this one act, General Grant won the respect and esteem of the entire South.
North Carolina has much to be proud of. She was first at Bethel, she went farthest at Gettysburg, she was last at Appomattox, her dead and wounded in battle exceeded in numbers those of any other two States of the Confederacy together. But, her last and most precious offering to the cause of Liberty were her boy-soldiers, who at her bidding willingly left their homes, and marched, and fought, and starved, and froze, and bled, and died that she might live and be free. God bless the Junior Reserves. Their memory will ever be cherished by the Old North State they loved so well.
The following patriotic lines, written by the author of the “Conquered Banner,” will appeal to the heart of many a mother whose young son marched away with the Junior Reserves:
“Young as the youngest, who donned the Gray,
True as the truest who wore it,
Brave as the bravest he marched away
(Hot tears on the cheeks of his mother lay)