valiant in deeds," there was at last accorded him on field-of-battle the death counted "sweet and honorable."
Such was
WILLIAM JOHNSON PEGRAM,
of the Third corps, who, at the early age of twenty-two, died sword in hand at the head of his men, with all his "honor-owing wounds" in front "to make a soldier's passage for his soul."
On Sunday night, April 2d, the lines of Petersburg and Richmond were, as I have said, evacuated, and the Army of Northern Virginia passed out in retreat. Thus were yielded at the last forty miles of entrenchments guarded by less than 40,000 men,[1] yet held during ten months of ceaseless vigil and fevered famine with such grim tenacity, as has made it hard for the brave of every nation to determine whether to accord their sorrowful admiration more to the stern prowess of the simple soldier, or to the matchless readiness of a leader who by the fervor of his genius developed from slender resources such amazing power.
With the abandonment of these lines ends the task confided to me, comrades, by your generous partiality. Already have you listened to the story of the "Retreat" from the lips of a soldier who bore an honorable part in the disastrous week which culminated in the surrender at Appomattox—a day which marked, indeed, the wreck of a nation, yet which may be recalled with no blush of shame by the men who there sadly furled those tattered colors emblazoned with the names of Manassas and Fredericksburg, of Chancellorsville and Cold Harbor—who there returned a park of blackened guns wrested from the victors at Gaines' Mill and Frazer's Farm, at Second Manassas and Harper's Ferry, at the Wilderness and Reams' Station, at Appomattox Courthouse itself on that very morning—who there, in the presence of above 140,000 of their adversaries, stacked 8,000 of those "bright muskets" which for more than four years had "borne upon their bayonets" the mightiest Revolt in history.
Nor shall those men ever forget the generous bearing of the vic-
- ↑ In field returns for February, 1865, the number given is 59,094 for Department of Northern Virginia, but as General Early very pertinently remarks, this "affords no just criterion of the real strength of that army, as those returns included the forces in the Valley and other outlying commands not available for duty on the lines."—Southern Historical Society Papers, July, 1876, p. 19. General Lee himself says: "At the time of withdrawing from the lines around Richmond and Petersburg, the number of troops amounted to about thirty-five thousand."—Letter to General William S. Smith, July 27th, 1868, Reminiscences of General Lee, p. 268.
