Confederate officer

“ In the military organization of the States provision is made for brigadier and major generals, but in the Army of the Confederate States the highest grade is that of brigadier general. Hence it will no doubt sometimes occur that where troops of the Confederacy do duty with the militia, the general selected for the command and possessed of the views and purposes of this Government will be superseded by an officer of the militia not having the same advantages. ”

“ Over one-fourth of the West Point graduates who fought during the Civil War were in the Confederate Army. Half of the 304 who served in Gray were on active duty in the United States Army when war broke out. Of the total number of West Pointers who went South, 148 were promoted to the rank of general officer. In all, 313 of the 1,098 officers in the United States Army joined the Confederacy. ”

“ Colonel Lamb to ride his "friend the enemy," for he could
have witnessed the remarkable instance of a brave and
distinguished Federal officer carrying on his back the
illustrious Confederate who, in years that are gone, was
raising old Harry with shot and shell to keep the General
at a safe distance. These two men were heroes of the
right stripe, and we can raise our hats in honour and
admiration of them for the rich heritage which their
manhood and bravery leaves to Americans. ”

“ Some of the officers had, at some time during the war, been active participants on the Confederate side, and those who were too far advanced in age to enter the army had sympathized with the Confederate cause and had otherwise aided it, therefore every officer, from Mayor down to policeman, was removed and their places supplied, in some few instances, by residents who took the required oath, but in most instances the appointees were strangers and citizens of Northern States, who had floated down South in search of some office at the hands of the military commander. ”

“ The Confederate Congress passed a series of resolutions in which it was provided that on the capture of any white commissioned officer who had [p. 236] armed, organized, or led negro troops against the Confederacy, he should be tried by a military court and put to death or otherwise punished.
Democratic journalists and Congressmen at the North were hardly less violent in their opposition to the enlistment of black men. ”

“ That a general action was precipitated by the Confederate forces under General Albert Sidney Johnson and was in the nature of a successful surprise of the Union Army, is the fact which harmonizes the reports of officers of both armies with the incidents of the day, and fairly distributes responsibility, without reflecting the narrow escape of the Union Army from destruction upon any single officer or command ”

“ The Confederate armies now in existence to be disbanded and conducted to their several State capitals, there to deposit their arms and public property in the State Arsenal; and each officer and man to execute and file an agreement to cease from acts of war, and to abide the action of the State and Federal authority. ”

“ He is Ordnance Officer to General Longstreet, and when I left the Confederacy, at the end of January, he was quite well. He is very much liked, and is a very good officer, and, I have no doubt, will make his way.” I should like to quote here also what was said by the Richmond Examiner, in 1863, about the Englishmen then in the Confederacy:
ENGLISHMEN IN OUR SERVICE.
Wherever and whenever a war for freedom is given, there Englishmen will be found, not for glory only, but for the natural bull-dog love of fighting and the inborn British love of the just cause and the weak side. ”

“ Every command given by the Confederate officers was as distinctly heard by us as if given in our own companies. Their lines already extended far beyond our flank and their oft-repeated cheers told us how rapidly their ranks were being increased by new arrivals. ”

“ Thousands of these non-commissioned officers and private soldiers, after the first year of the war, were fitted not only to command regiments, but could well have filled much higher military positions.
Great soldiers were Lee, Johnston, Jackson, Longstreet, Hills, Pickett, Stuart and others, but who made them great? No generals ever had such soldiers. It was these Confederates in the ranks that made the names of their generals immortal. Who would have ever heard of them, or of General Grant, but for the Confederate soldier? ”

“ The rear guard was the front of the fighting, and there the plucky and indomitable Federal leader was pleading with his soldiers to stand firm and beat off the pitiless onslaught of the relentless Confederates, who seemed devilish in their vehement and impetuous charges. He had chosen men of valor for this work, and they nobly responded to his every call. ”

“ In fact, without this arm of the service, the Confederacy could not have so long maintained the unequal contest; nor the Federal Army have prevailed as quickly as was done. The story of the campaigns of Stuart, Wheeler, Morgan, the Lees, Forrest, Hampton, Ashby, Mosby, Green, Van Dorn, Shelby and Marmaduke, and their associates, gave war a new glamour, opened to chivalry a wider field for operation, painted to adventurous genius more entrancing visions, and made the service of men who rode to battle a transcendent power of which warriors had hitherto not even dreamed. ”

“ A people less brave and patriotic would never have consented to incur such a risk with so strong an enemy at its doors. The governor exposed his own capital to save that of the Confederacy. He finally left only one regiment of infantry, one of cavalry, and two or three batteries of artillery between him and an army then estimated to be about 20,000 strong. At the close of this campaign North Carolina had forty regiments in Virginia. ”

“ At the word "forward" our brigade left the cover of the woods at the double-quick, and the men reopened with their yells.
As all veterans of the great war know, in a charge the Confederates did not preserve their alignment, as the Federals did. They usually went at a run, every man more or less for himself. There was also an inexplicable difference between the battle cries of the Federal and Confederate soldiers. ”

“ As I have already stated, no Confederate soldier is given his discharge from the army, however badly he may be wounded; but he is employed at such labour in the public service as he may be capable of performing, and his place in the ranks is taken by a sound man hitherto exempted. ”

“ My operations and my campaign stand on their own merits, whatever they may be. Nor, in anything I may have found it necessary to say in regard to the conduct of my troops, do I wish to be understood as, in way, decrying the soldiers who constituted the rank and file of my commands. I believe that the world has never produced a body of men superior, in courage, patriotism, and endurance, to the private soldiers of the Confederate armies. ”

“ This statement does not include the regular army, nor the negro troops raised in the Southern States, which were not raised by calls on the States. It may be safely asserted that the “available force present for duty,” of the Federal armies at the beginning or close of the last year of the war, exceeded the entire force called into the service of the Confederacy during the four years. The aggregate of Federal forces raised during the war numbered more than one-third of the free population of the Confederate States, including men, women, and children. ”

“ Complaint is made that the Southern people have recently elected military men to most of their local State offices. We do ourselves a wrong in making this complaint. I found it almost everywhere true in Georgia and the Carolinas that the best citizens of to-day are the Confederate soldiers of yesterday. Of course, in many individual cases they are bitter and malignant; but in general the good of the Union, no less than the hope of the South, lies in the bearing of the men who were privates and minor officers in the armies of Lee and Johnston. ”

“ It is needless to say that no better soldiers ever bore rifle or sabre than the men of the Southern Confederacy. They were, like most of their northern antagonists, Americans of the same blood as those who carried the redoubts at Yorktown and stormed the hill of Chapultepec, and their courage in the Civil War fully maintained the prestige gained in battle against alien foes. In intelligence, or at least in education, however, the rank and file of the Confederate armies were inferior to the native Americans in the Union armies. ”

“ The Confederate soldier was truly an American, for his people in the South were the truest type of Americans in the land, having very little foreign population among them. Again, this Confederate soldier was born and reared a gentleman, was so by instinct. He was not a mercenary; he was neither for conquest nor aggression, but stood purely for self-defense. He believed in his inmost soul that no people had juster cause, higher aspirations, or made braver or nobler resolves for cause, country, families, homes and firesides. I turn to ask, who were these Confederate soldiers? ”

“ There was an individuality about the Confederate soldier which caused him to act often in battle according to his own opinions, and thereby impair his own efficiency; and the tempting bait offered by the rich plunder of the camps of the enemy's well-fed and well-clothed troops, was frequently too great for our destitute soldiers, and caused them to pause in the career of victory. ”

“ We may in like manner judge that if the campaign against Richmond had resulted in success instead of failure; if the valor of the army, under the leadership of its accomplished commander, had resisted in vain the overwhelming masses which were, on the contrary, decisively repulsed; if we had been compelled to evacuate Richmond as well as Atlanta — the Confederacy would have remained as erect and defiant as ever. Nothing could have been changed in the purpose of its Government, in the indomitable valor of its troops, or in the unquenchable spirit of its people. ”

“ You perhaps have never been concerned in military affairs; you are not soldiers, and have nothing to do with the Confederate army. You are citizens. You are now about to commit an act that will meet with the severest punishment that military law can inflict. We are United States soldiers, acting in discharge of our duties. You, as citizens, have no right to interrupt us. Now, I perceive that you are all old men; and have sons in the Confederate army, perhaps. Our General will retaliate if you hurt a hair of our heads. If you hang one or both of us, he will hang man for man. ”

“ The Confederate soldier was always impatient of military restraint, feeling himself the equal of and as good as any man, and not inferior to his superior in rank; in battle, as a rule, his own general; his individuality and self-reliance, among his noted characteristics, were the crowning glory of his actions, and this self-reliance taught him when it was wise and prudent to fight, and when it was the better part of valor to decline. ”

“ As early as the beginning of 1863, the Confederate cavalry had been taught to be ready for any service, whether in scouting, raiding, assaulting infantry or defending forts. In the demands upon cavalry, the Confederate authorities were no respecter of persons, and that a man belonged to the cavalry gave him no exemption from any service that infantry or artillery could perform. ”

“ The laws against any State maintaining a standing army were put into effect; and the combined military power was formally turned over, as a whole, to the Confederate authorities. This change simply meant that complete organizations were accepted as they stood, as soldiers of the Confederacy instead of soldiers of the states; the men were mustered into the Confederate service and the officers had their state commissions replaced by those from the Confederate War Department. From that date, the troops were to look to the central Government for their pay, subsistence, and supplies. ”

“ I know of but two modes of raising armies within the Confederate States, viz., voluntary enlistment and draft, or conscription. I perceive, in the delegation of power to raise armies, no restriction as to the mode of procuring troops. I see nothing which confines Congress to one class of men, nor any greater power to receive volunteers than conscripts into its service. I see [pg 508] no limitation by which enlistments are to be received of individuals only, but not of companies, or battalions, or squadrons, or regiments. ”

“ In wealth, population, and resources the Federals were enormously superior. They alone possessed a navy, though at first it was a small one. The one advantage on the Confederate side was the large proportion of military officers which belonged to it and their fine training as soldiers. In physique as well as in morale the army of one side differed little from that of the other; perhaps the Federal army was slightly superior in the first, and the Confederate, as being recruited from a dominant white race, in the second. ”

“ And it may be asked with confidence whether for all these manifold purposes one hundred and sixty-two thousand men can be considered an excessive or unreasonable number. To support the army in the field, to equip the civil governments of eleven great States, and to supply the life blood of civilization in a country of such vast extent as the Southern Confederacy, necessarily absorbed the energies of a great number of men. ”