Some writers have asserted that the Confederate troops were better led than the National, and that this is proved by the greater loss of commanding officers. But the statistics do not bear out any such assertion. On each side one army commander was killed—Gen. J. B. McPherson and Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston. On each side three corps commanders were killed—National, Generals Mansfield, Reynolds, and Sedgwick; Confederate, Jackson, Polk, and A. P. Hill. On the National side fourteen division commanders were killed, and on the Confederate, seven. In comparing losses of brigade commanders, it should be explained, that in the Confederate service, as soon as a man was put in command of a brigade he was made a brigadier-general, but the National government was more chary of rank, and often left a colonel for a long time at the head of a brigade. Counting such colonels who actually fell at the head of their brigades as brigadiers, we find that eighty-five brigade-commanders were killed on the National side, and seventy-three on the Confederate.
On any other subject, the figures that crowd this chapter would be "dry statistics," but when we remember that every unit here presented represents a man killed or seriously injured, a citizen lost to the Republic—and not only that, but its loss of the sons that should have been born to these slaughtered men—every paragraph acquires a deep, though mournful interest. We may well be proud of American valor, but we should also feel humiliated by the supreme folly of civil war.
NOTE.—For the statistics of this chapter, we are largely indebted to Col. William F. Fox's admirable compilation of "Regimental Losses in the American Civil War" (Albany, 1893).
LAST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY.1
BY GEN. JOHN B. GORDON. C. S. A.
1 This article was dictated by Gen. John B. Gordon to the late Henry W. Grady, and prepared by him for publication. It appeared originally in the Philadelphia Times. It is reprinted here by permission, after revision and correction by General Gordon.
I will give you from my personal knowledge the history of the struggles that preceded the surrender of General Lee's army, the causes that induced that surrender—as I had them from General Lee—the detailed account of the last assault ever made upon the Federal lines in pursuance of an offensive purpose, and a description of the last scenes of the bloody and terrible civil war. This history has never been published before. No official reports, I believe, were ever made upon the Confederate side; for after the battle of Hare's Hill, as the attack upon Fort Steadman was called, there was not an hour's rest until the surrender. From the 25th of March, 1865, until the 9th day of April, my men did not take their boots off, the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry was scarcely stilled an instant, and the fighting and marching was continuous. Hence no report of these operations was ever made.