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A WISE JUDGE.
The following is an extract from a letter written by a resident of Chicago, Major Chas. A. Hale, who has the honor of having served in the Fifth New Hampshire, a regiment which fought gallantly at Gettysburg, and is distinguished for having sustained the greatest losses in battle of any infantry or cavalry regiment in the whole Union army:
“There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind but that the sons of North Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi carved on the tablets of history equal laurels with the sons of Virginia in the great events of that supreme attempt to gain victory on Cemetery Ridge. Pettigrew and Trimble deserve equal honors with Pickett, and if we weigh with judicial exactness more, for impartial evidence proves that they suffered in a greater degree, and forced their way nearer the lines where pitiless fate barred their entrance. The nearest point reached by any troops was Bryan’s barn; this is made conclusive by evidence on both sides. If there were a thousand Confederates inside the stone wall at the angle more than two-thirds of that number must have been Pettigrew’s men.”
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HOW PICKETT’S DIVISION ‘ABSQUATULATED.’
Pickett’s division of the army of Northern Virginia is rarely heard of either before or after Gettysburg. No body of troops during the last war made as much reputation on so little fighting. Newspaper men did the work by printer’s ink and the casualties were small.
Fourteen hundred and ninety-nine were captured at Gettysburg. More than this number “absquated” when Petersburg fell and there was a probability of leaving Virginia. Pickett’s division made a poor show at the surrender at Appomattox.—Abbeville, (S. C.) Medium.
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ÆSOP’S FABLE—THE DOG AND THE BONE.