The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-08-21

vaded our territory, destroyed our prop erty, blookaded our ports and melted in- surreetion in order to convince us that the Union should command our sincere at taehment
 "sherman and Sheridan carried the torch as well as the swor~, and war was made upon women and children as well as against men with arms in their hands The brutal outrages committed by Sherman.s men in their march to the sea was the fruitful seed of the nameless crimes that so often shocks civilization in the South.
 we stood upon the defensive; we covet- ed no territory and desired no partner ship with states that would not keep faith in war or peace; we failed; but the war never settled that secession was wrong It only settled -Ae fact that 1t could not be peaceably exercised. Super for numbers never settled the rightfulness of any cause. Sometimes they don't even decide elections Witness the failure of the Boers in modern times aWhen the war commenced the North had about twenty million white people, and the South about five million. The l North had the army ana navy and the purse and nearly all the arms, amunition | and naval stores, and the arsenals and I shops for manufacturing implements of war.
 | Had outside Ald.
 'sThese odds alone would have been great. but our ports were blockaded and the North could draw on Europe for men and money and arms, and they drew freely.
 MT. Lincoln called out 75,oOo volunteers for ninety days. to suppress the rebellion.
 ''Ie miscalculated the necessity for men and time about as greatly as Solomon did l the number of wives a man should have ! Before the rebellion was suppressed he had called out 2,77s3oS men, and it took fifty months instead of three. We had on our rolls from the beginning to the end of the war about 100000 men, but I doubt whether we ever had at any one l time 250,0O0 effective fighting men to guard thousands of miles of seacoast and from tier.
 We prolonged the unequal contest for | four bloody years and such was the valor ! of our men and the skill of our command CTS that forty years after the war nearly a million victims of our reslstence arc still on the pension rolls
 "The North, as I have said, could and did draw freely from Europe. Had the Irish and Germans been taken from the federal ranks in any one battle of any i great importance, we would have cap tured the balance of the federals before the battle concluded.
 "rhe south had to fill her gaping ranks from her own bosom we could draw only from the trundle bed; but the material was the best in the world.
 "In the very last fight of the war at Bentonville the junior reserves of North Carolina, boys from fifteen to eighteen. fought like the old guard of Napoleon.
 We exhausted ourselves winning bloody victories.
 Fought Against Great Odds.
 T don't remember a single decisive battle in which the federals did not out number us two to one, that we did not whip them.
 At Charlottesville we had 45000 against 1S2, 600, and killed, wounded and captured 16000 men, and thirteen pieces of artillery, and drove the enemy across the river.
 At Chickamauga we had 4700O, and as- sauted and drove the enemy with 56,000 twelve miles to Chattanooga, captured 5000 prisoners and fifty-one pieces of ar tillery.
 At the Wilderness ana during that campaign Lee had 50,Jj0 and Grant 14l000, and Lee whipped him day after day, until Grant had lost 50,000 men in killed, wound ed and prisoners.
 ''In the Dalton campaign Johnston with 5O00O men against greatly superior num- bers, whipped Sherman. in every engage ment and every confederate captured or