The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1909-12-14

' oA1o lOOh MS pen ana WTOfo
20 the Confederate Quartern1aster-
General?
=, Ieneral:-The want of shoes and
oaanhets IN this army continues to
.duse much suffering and TO impair
% elhclehcy. In one regiment I am
ln,ormed that there are only fifty men
win sefVlceable shoes, and a brigade
mat recently went on picket was com
pelleu 70 cave several undre men
III camp who We're unable to bear
the exposure Of duty, being destitute
OF shoes and blankets
me record seems to show hat
TINS state of affairs endured, and that
repeated pleas were made both for
lood and for clothing. Whatever may
nave been the responses to them
the winter, those who saw
the contents Of the haversacks taken
from the dead or wounded in the
Wilderness will recall their surprise.
often they contained only a few pieces
OF corn-bread and slices of inferior
bacon or salt pork. In this want do
you find any explanation of Southern
fortitude? No, but it helps US to ap-
preclate it truly.
With this prelude, let US go on
with our visit. And as we breast the
herce. wind, and tramp on through the
snow from camp to camp, halt.
what is that we hear from those
houses built of logs or slabs? Men
are preaching or praying earnestly; for
during those bleak winter nights, 50
nave h chaplains recorded, a great
revival was going on. They tell us
that IN every brigade of the sixty odd
thousand men, the veterans of Gains's
Mill, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg
were on their knees asking God to
forgive their sins, to bless their far
away homes and beloved Southland.
One of the officers of a battery tells
I1c in ifC hiCtnry tho ioI aftar -
treat they always met for prayer and
song, and hat when the order came
to march for the Wilderness, while the
teams stood ready to move, they held
the battery long enough to obscure
their custom of WarShip.
In those sacred hours when the
soldiers of Northern Virginia were
supplicating their Creator through his
Son to forgive them all their sins,
and 1mploring his hand to guide them
on in the paths Of righteousness, I
think we find at least profoundly sug-
gestiVe material for the answer to the
question:: Whence came the spirit
that animated and sustained their for
titude through those lever months
of battle? The sense of peace with
God is as much a reality as the phe-
nOmenon of dawn or the Northern
Light Moreover, hear VIA Carlyle
says about an idea: Every society,
v L IAoS a pl L L
the embodiment of an idea. This idea,
be it devotion to a man or class Of
men, to a creed, to an institution, or
even, as in more ancient times. to a
piece of land, is ever a true loyalty:
has in it something of a religious,
paramount, quite infinite characters; it
is properly the soul of the state, it's
life; mysterious as other forms of life,
and like these, working secretly, and
in a depth beyond that of conscious
ness
DO not the losses Of the Southern
armies tell US that there was an idea,
something of a religious, paramount,
quite infinite character possessing the
South? If they do not, go stand
among the graves in the Confederate
cemetery at Spottsylvania, and you
certainly will hear from the tufted
grass that a principle was
in an idea.
There is something more to be
add ed in regard to the Army Of North
ern Virginia, namely the strength
that came to it through the charac-
ter of Lea strength so vital that
although he and most of his army are
in their graves it still lives, not as a
force resisting the Army of the Po-
tomac fighting to maintain our coun-
try undivided, but as fountains in
spring history to preserve the mem
cries of the Confederacy. I sincerely
believe that, with Lee out OF the Re-
bellion, it's star, that hangs detached
but glowing softly over those bygone
| DAYS of the war, would long since
have set.
I'm looking for the source Of Lees
personal influence, we ave to go back,
/ think, to the inherited habit of re-
spect which the people Of the South
paid to social position. It was not
born Of a feeling of subservience, how
ever, for the poorest cracker had
an unmistakable and un-Se1f-cOnSciOus
! dignity about him. He always Wake
up TO and faced the highest with an
air of equality. No, this latent re-
] spect was a natural response on the
mart of men of low estate to good man
ncrs. and oft-displayed sympathy. Lee.
nv his connection through birth and
~ ~~iaoo with the most diSfin-