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In his testimony before the “Committee on the conduct of the
War,”
Major General Joseph Hooker says: “Our artillery had always been superior to that of the rebels, as was also our infantry,
except in discipline; and
that, for reasons not necessary to mention, never did equal
Lee's army.
With a rank and file
vastly inferior to our own, intellectually and physically, that army had,
by discipline alone, acquired a character for steadiness and efficiency unsurpassed, in my judgment, in ancient or modern times.
We have not been able to rival it, nor has there been any near approximation to it in the other rebel armies.”
[Italics mine.] I do not propose to enter upon any “odious” comparison between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia, as to the character of the men who composed them; yet, I think I shall be able to show that
General Hooker is entirely mistaken in attributing the confessed superiority of the Army of Northern Virginia to “
discipline alone,” and that this army was composed of a body of men who, in all the qualities which go to make up what we call
morale, were rarely, if ever, equaled, and never surpassed by any army that ever marched or fought “in all the tide of time.”
The very circumstances which produced the organization of that army called into it the flower of the
South.
On the memorable 17th day of April, 1861, the day on which the Virginia Convention passed its Ordinance of Secession, I witnessed at-the little village of Louisa Court-House,
Virginia, a scene similar to those enacted all
