The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-04-11
THE TAR HEEL SPIRIT.

Elsewhere is published the names of
the military organizations and the Of
ficers of North Carolina who were on
the parol list. at the final curtain of
the War Between the States at Apo
mattox.
That field came as the elimination
of a weeks retreat from Petersburg,
defended with heroic courage by an
ARM that possibly did more against
undreamed of odds than any force of
soldiery the world had then or has
yet known. The Confederacy was in
more than one sense a dream" The
with passion of patriotism that
scorned to count the cost, that looked
on the possibility of defeat as a wo-
man heeds the suggestion of falsity
in the man she loves. This, of the
section at large. Trained in the tech
nical schools of war, there were many
who cast their fortunes with the Lost
Cause" who knew it lost at the be-
ginning. Their labors and the glory
that they wrought are jewels of the
virtue of NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. that for
the knowledge of their blight blazed
the most fiercely for the instant's
CLEAN of their passage. The wizard,
Lee, shutting through his steady
hands daily decisions on which hung
thousand lives, arriving at instant de-
examinations pregnant with history,
retreating with the lure of a bird
feigning' broken wing and assault
ing with the ferocity and surprise of
a tiger SPRINT" from his covert!
overhead was as a world-spectaele
the greatest soldier of history. The
fact that he combined with the genius
that could give to despair the romance
of success wrung almost from the
grasp of fate human sympathy that
could pen his farewell address"
marked him as a warrior unique in
time
Jackson, the thunderbolt, he who
took commands. ana executed them
with a dazzling audacity and embel-
lishment of iniatiYe, was in reality, as
we'll as in trite terms of illustration,
the right arm of Lee.
About the body of the Federal
strength and power these men and the
brave cohorts that they led danced
like fighters in the ring against a su-
perior physique. But, while the world
applauded, their every effort cost in
the slow spilled blood a gradual weak
fIao
marvellous delay of the end. 1t cam
not be doubted but that they saw the
curtain trembling above their heads;
it cannot be suggested that either they
or the flower of the soldiery which
they commanded could have done
aught to further prolong the newt
able failure.
In all this North Carolina bore
part which can be best illustrated by
the cold eloquence of figures. The en-
tire military population of the eleven
seseding States was 1,064,193. OF
these there were enrolled from first
to last 100000 men. OF this the pops
ulation fit for arms in North Caro-
lima was 1880. She furnished in
soldiers the grand total of 125, 600
men-one-fifth of those actually en-
listed as against one-ninth in military
population! OF these fourteen thous-
and were killed and five thousand
wounded or captured. The record is
one that spells tragedy born of the
travail of hope that would not down
that bought its capitals on the page
of history with the red paragraphs
of bloodl
1t is not the purpose here to cir
cumstantially reply to the criticisms
which have been levelled at the claims
as to the part that the North Caro-
lima troops took in the War Between
the States. That matter has been
thrashed out. 1t remains that in the
end, after Gettysburg, after Chica-
magua, after the horrors of the bloody
angle i'm the fighting about SpottsyI-
vania and the Wilderness, when in the
face of an hundred thousand and
more of fresh and sanguine troops,
the pitiful eight thousand representing
the Army of Northern Virginia We're