Confederate Shop
By John Sharp Williams
We hear much about a "New South." There is no New South. What there is of change is a change in the direction of the energies of the people; and if there be anything great and good in the "New South," as far as I have been able to ascertain, it is always something whose growth has its roots in the Old South. Everything admirable in the so-called New South is built upon the old, as a house is built upon the rock of its foundation. We hear much of letting the "dead past bury its dead." No poet who is a philosopher, and perhaps no real poet, would ever have uttered that sentence. There is no such thing as a dead past.
But the man who subordinates his nature, who prostitutes his chief energies, to the business of piling one dollar upon another, who forgets that there are flowers and poetry; a past and a present for himself and his race, on earth or in heaven, who had narrowed himself to the point where everything but money-making and so-called business has become "rot," would be bored to death in the kingdom of heaven in 24 hours. A country without history is without traditions, and a country without traditions is without ideals and community aspirations, and a country without sentiment is without capacity for achieving noble purposes, developing right manhood, or taking any truly great place in the history of the world.
I have mentioned some of the great leaders on land and sea of the great army of the Confederacy, but have failed as yet to mention its crowning glory, which was the private soldier. Taken in all, no body of private soldiers like that of the Confederacy has ever existed or fought under any leadership. They were equally great on the march, on the defensive and on the attack, when the order to charge came; in prison, where "durance vile" and suffering for food on one hand, and the temptation of offered freedom on the other, were equal inducements to desertion.
I remember the Confederate soldier best of all when he was on the march. I can see him now winding his way through the dust, shoe-mouth deep, unwashed, unkempt, but jovial still. I can hear his voice as he passes the big gate: "Buddy, does your grandma know you are out?" "Sissy who painted your lips so red?" No wonder that, with all the marching and counterpassing of war, the boys thought that the jolliest life in the world must be that of a soldier, and looked forward to the time when they might be permitted to participate in it.
One of the inexplicable things to me about the Southern soldier is this, that he seemed to have been, for the most part, with a sufficiency of anything in the world except guns and ammunition. He developed a marvelous and unparalleled capacity for starving and going naked, but somehow he seems never to have been without guns and ammunition, at least enough to start a battle on.
I have said the Southern soldier was great on the march, but marching, after all, is only "getting there." Critics were right when they said the Southerner would be great on the charge. The world has witnessed some great charges in its day... but where, in all the history of all the charges, do you find exploits comparable to that beginning at Savage Station and continuing on through the Seven Days' and ending at Malvern Hill." To that of the Texans, when they told Lee to go to the rear, in the Wilderness? To that suicidal, murderous, and unavailing onslaught of the Confederate infantry upon the breastworks of Franklin? And, above all, to that of Pickett and his men at Gettysburg? I can see them now, the reluctantly obedient and sullen corps commander sitting upon the fence, Pickett saluting and asking, "General, shall I carry my men in." Longstreet's bowing without a word. I can hear the Virginian giving his orders, see him in his place with head bared, see the sweep of the line without a break, as it goes across and up the long slope, the orders almost noiselessly passed to close up the artillery, and later the musketry tear the ranks to pieces. I can see the long slope from one end of the gray line to the other, in the course of its march by the dead and dying. I can see the few who attained the heights vaulting, sword in hand, or with clubbed musket, into the enemy's entrenchment. I can see them looking about to find themselves surrounded by blue-coated soldiers—more than enough without arms to have tied them with pocket handkerchiefs. I can see those few—oh, so few-looking back over that long slope to find not one gray coat in sight for support as Lee's orders were not carried out. I see them then, despair of desperation settling upon them, some surrendering and some beginning to break back to the Confederate line. I can hear later the anguished and agonizing reproach of Pickett, when he states to General Lee that his magnificent division has been swept out of existence, and I can hear Lee, with a greatness of soul, a magnanimity of which he alone is capable, saying: "Never mind, General, it has been all my fault," and to the men, "You must help me get out of this as best we can." In comparison with this demonstration of the courage of the soldier and the magnanimity of the leader, what could you quote from all this history?
But if this Southerner were a great soldier, what made him so? There must be some reason for it, or else it cannot be true. What are the private soldiers of a volunteer army? They are simply the plain people in uniform.
These plain people, such as I have described them, being in uniform, constituted what a generous-minded Northern officer has called "the incomparable infantry of Northern Virginia, with bare feet and tattered uniforms, but bright muskets." Well might he use the word "incomparable." What other soldiery in the history of the world, viewed in the cold, historical light of actual accomplishment, has been comparable to it?
