THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER
IN THE CIVIL WAR
by Major General Fitzhugh Lee
An impartial study of the early history of the American Republic from the period a band of patriots, following the wave of Washington's sword, transferred power from king to people, will demonstrate that when Colonies were transformed into States, the latter delegated, in a written Constitution, the powers to be conferred on the United States, but all powers not so delegated were reserved to the States themselves, because they had never parted from them. Hence, sovereign power belonged to a State, while only derivative, and not primitive, power was possessed by the general Government.
The States did not confer upon the Government they were then forming a right to coerce one of their number for any purpose, for it is not natural that the creator should create either executive, judicial or legislative authority anywhere which should be potent to destroy its life or diminish or alter the power it had reserved for its own purposes. A State speaks through its representative bodies, and the majority of delegates in a convention direct its course.
The people of the original thirteen States believed in State sovereignty, and Pennsylvania and the New England States are upon record as primarily holding such opinions. The Southern people were educated in the belief that the allegiance of the citizen was first due to his State, and in any conflict between his Commonwealth and the United States, or other country, his place was at her side - at her feet he should kneel and at her foe his gun should be pointed.
This is the only explanation of the great and enthusiastic response be the masses of the people to the action of their State Conventions, when they decided their States should no longer he members of the Federal Union, but, resuming their original independence, be free afterward to make such other alliances as they might deem best to protect their rights and promote their growth and glory.
The Southern masses were the private soldiers of the armies they not have understood all the public questions involved, or the gravity of secession, or the importance of pending issues, as thoroughly as the statesman of the period, but they must have been thoroughly impressed in a conscious manner with the right of secession and with a fidelity and loyalty to the commands of their respective States. It has been said that man is under no circumstances so independent as he is when the next step is for life or death. The men who were to be enrolled as the soldiers of a new Confederacy of States, to battle for its existence, knew they were taking a step which might bring to them a hostile bullet and a soldier's grave.
The existence of the slightest doubt as to the justice of the course of their States, or the presence of the smallest suspicion that their bayonets would glisten with treason, would have surely brought that independence of action spoken of, against which the pleading eloquence of their leaders would recoil as the waters are dashed back from a great rock.
No earthly mandate can compel men to leave their firesides, families friends, and embrace death with rapture, unless their God-given consciences stamp with approval the motives which control their conduct.
With a free, fair and honest ballot, undisturbed by extraneous influences, and untouched by the modern methods of bribery and corruption, the masses of the people, from which came unbroken ranks of gallant men, voted with practical unanimity to ratify the decision of their State Conventions. The movement to change the map of North America and make two republics grow only one grew before, was enthusiastically received by the great body of the Southern people. Men rushed to arms, companies were rapidly enrolled in every locality - grew into regiments, and regiments into brigades. Orders were joyfully received which carried local troops to the places where armies were forming, and the preparations for the impending battle were eagerly hailed by men whose previous footsteps had only fallen upon the paths of peace.
The private soldier of the Confederacy had no hope of conspicuous honors, no opportunity to lay up riches, while meager rations and scant clothing banished any prospect he may have cherished for a reasonable amount of the pleasures of army life. The separation from his home, in many instances, marked the period when domestic sorrow replaced domestic happiness, and absolute want followed a fair competence.
The producer was taken away, the consumers remained; while added to the infelicity of the wife, the grief of the mother, and the sister's sadness, was the ever tormenting thought that he, whose heart held the concentrated love of the household, might never again enter his doors alive, or even his dead body find a resting place in the little family burying ground, where loving hands could guard it from desecration.
It was a terrible ordeal for those left behind, and it was a torturing thought for the soldier, that he might fall, bequeathing to those he cared most for a life of destitution and sorrow. To the usual hardships and dangers which accompany a soldier's career everywhere, must be added these peculiar conditions which surrounded the service of the Southerners in the late war, because so many of the rank and file had homes, and some property, and being for the most part from the rural districts, their absence in the army immeasurably increased the discomforts of their families, and was a source of never ceasing care and concern to them. It is true, however, that men of means, influence and position were also to be found in the ranks.
At the outbreak of the war all wanted to fight, but all could not hold commissions. Out of 604 students at the University of Virginia when the war broke out, largely over one -half joined the Confederate army at the first trumpet sound of war, and more than 2,000 graduates of that University were in the Confederate service from 1861 to 1865, and more than 400 fell and were buried in soldiers' graves; while from Harvard, the great Northern University, but 1,040 men served in the armies and navies of the United States during the four years of war, and only 15; of these lost their lives.
Beauregard, after the first battle of Manassas, in visiting one of his generals, whose tent was pitched not far from his headquarters, ordered one of his couriers, a private soldier, to accompany him. Upon dismounting he threw the bridle-rein to the soldier to hold his horse while he paid his visit, but seeing he was a neat, trim-looking cavalryman, remarked, suppose holding horses is a new business to you! " "Yes," said the soldier, who was a wealthy planter, "when I am in Mississippi I have a hundred negroes to hold my horse." General Lee's son was a private soldier in the artillery, and there were numerous similar instances, but the bulk of the fighting material of the South were men who could not well afford to leave their little farms or moderate business for any purpose, as the daily bread of so many others depended on their daily labor.
Many were intelligent and thinking men, and in instruction and training were far above the average soldiers of the world. It has been well said that, "had the need arisen, as in the case of the Theban army in Thessaly, more than one Epaminondas might have been found serving as a private in the Confederate ranks." An army composed, large part, of brave, thoughtful, sensible soldiers, must write a grand record on the pages of history.
With the component parts of a great engine working true, its work is most satisfactorily performed; so the more faithful, sensible and courageous the soldiers who make up the army, the more they can be wielded to the greatest advantage by a master of war.
The difficulties and embarrassments which confronted the Confederate soldier were overcome; and when the numbers of those who opposed him, their munitions of War, the efficiency of their well-stored quartermaster, commissary and ordnance departments are contrasted with the great deficiency in the South of everything that mobilizes armies and contributes to their strength, the world wonders at what was accomplished.
When " I See the battle-scarred soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy, with uncovered head and profoundest reverence I bow before those dauntless heroes, feeling that if the greatest suffering with the least hope of reward is worthy of the highest honor, these deserve to stand shoulder to shoulder with their greatest army commanders in the brotherhood of glory.
When McDowell, at first Manassas, succeeded in turning Beauregard's left flank, and was driving the fragmentary forces which first encountered his huge turning column, it was the heroic stand taken by the soldiers, almost without command, on a line of battle perpendicular to the original line along Bull Run, which checked his impetuous onset, christened Thomas Jonathan Jackson "Stonewall," and gave to Johnston and Beauregard the victory ; and from that period to 1865 it was the restless charge of gallant troops in offensive battle, or their determined and courageous stand in defensive conflict, which so greatly contributed to promote the glory of their own deeds and the fame of their great generals.
It was a wonderful exhibition of courage, constancy and suffering, which no disaster could diminish, no defeat darken. The soldiers went to battle from a sense of duty, and were not lured into the ranks by bounties or kept there by the hope of pension. The records show 600,000 Southern men were enlisted during the whole war, while 2,700,000 represent the total enlistments of their opponents during the same period.
"It would be difficult to convince the world," General Lee would often say, "of the numerical superiority of our opponents." And yet for four years success trembled in the balance, and though fate denied the Confederate soldiers the final victory, it "clothed them with glorious immortality."
It was a grand struggle on the part of the South, and illustrated in the highest degree the splendid fighting qualities of sons whose movements upon the field of battle were directed by the tactical genius of their leaders.
There was no "passion-swept mob rising in mad rebellion against constituted authority," but armies whose ranks were filled by men whose convictions were honest, and whose loyalty to the Southern cause was without fear and without reproach - men who remained faithful to military duty in the conflict between fidelity to the Confederate banners or adherence to the trust assumed in the marriage vow, who resisted the pressure of letters from home, and whose heart-strings were breaking from the sad tale of starvation and despair in the family homestead. As the hostile invasion swept over more territory the more frequent the appeals came, marked by the pathos and power which agony inspires until at last the long silence told the soldier his home was within his enemies' lines, and the fate of his family was concealed from his view.
Under such conditions the private soldier of the South promptly fell into line. If saved from the dangers of the contest, his reward was the commendation of his immediate commanding officers and the conscientiousness of duty faithfully performed. If drowned amid the hail of shot and shell, his hastily buried body filled a nameless grave, without military honors and without religious ceremonies. No pages of history recounted in lofty language his courage on the field or his devotion to his country, or described how, like a soldier, he fell in the fore-front of battle. His battle picture, ever near the flashing of the guns, should be framed in the memory of all who admire true heroism, whether found at the cannon's mouth, or in the blade of the cavalry, or along the blazing barrels of the infantry. There he stood, with the old, torn slouch hat, the bright eye, the cheek colored by exposure and painted by excitement, the face stained with powder, with jacket rent, trousers torn and the blanket in shreds, printing in the dust of battle the tracks of his shoeless feet. No monument can be built high enough to commemorate the memory of a typical representative private soldier of the South.