Beunion of Virginia Division, A. N. V. Association. 205
I am so grateful to him for his appreciation of our beloved leader and the picture he has drawn of him for history; I am so satisfied, so more than satisfied, with the tribute he pays to the Army of Northern Virginia that I am little inclined to question any criticism he makes upon Lee or his army. 1 am content to let the picture stand just as he has drawn it. And if his picture was to be that of history, if others were not to be put beside it, some doing us less justice and others none at all, I for one would rather leave it as it is without attempting to point out where I think Colonel Chesney was mistaken. But this charge of .want of discipline has been made by others who have had no such kindly feeling to us, nor desire to do us justice. Somewhat of this sting, too, is increased by the fact that our critics can quote General Lee himself as authority for the charge. " My army is ruined by straggling, " General Lee said to a distinguished officer at Sharpsburg. And in the last address before this Associ- ation General D. H. Hill makes the same admission.
That the Army of Northern Virginia was depleted by straggling in the Maryland campaign no one can deny. But I, as a line officer, do deny that the cause of this straggling was, in the main, the want of discipline. The difficulty, I believe, was simply that of the limit of human endurance. The day after we captured the stores at the Second Manassas, 1 was ordered to send all the barefooted men in the First South Carolina volunteers to the junction to get the shoes we found there, and well recollect that out of the three hundred in the regiment I sent one hundred men whose feet were on the ground. The enemy pressed, and the stores were burnt and the barefooted men sent back without shoes, and then moved out to protect the burning stores. I admit that there was fault here. I have always thought a great fault, but it was not the fault of the want of disci- pline of the line. It was only an instance of what I believe was a great evil in our organization, which may or may not have been inevitable from the circumstances under which our army was organ- ized — the evil of the want of a properly organized staff If we had had at first a Meigs at the head, of our quartermaster's department, as the Federal troops had at their' s, I cannot but think that some of these evils would have been checked. But however that may be, I cannot allow that this straggling was from the lack of discipline. I insist that it was but the result of human exhaustion. Consider what this army had done from Kernstown, on the 22d March, to Sharps- burg, 17th September.
It had fought the battles of Kernstown, McDowell, Front Royal,
