The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

[203] Virginia, who fell mortally wounded at first Fredericksburg, and lingered for some weeks in great agony, uttered many sentiments which would adorn the brightest pages of Christian experience, and, among other things, sent this message to his loved and honored chieftains: “Tell Generals Lee and Jackson that they know how a Christian soldier should live; I only wish they were here to see a Christian soldier die” Not many months afterward Jackson was called to “cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees,” and left another bright illustration of how Christian soldiers of that army were wont to die. Colonel Willie Pegram, “the boy artillerist,” as he was familiarly called, left the University of Virginia, at the breaking out of the war, as a private soldier, rose to the rank of colonel of artillery (he refused a tender of promotion to the command of an infantry brigade), upon more than one occasion elicited high praise from A. P. Hill, Jackson, and Lee, arid, at the early age of twenty-two, fell on the ill-fated field of Five Forks, gallantly resisting the overwhelming odds against him. His last words were: “I have done my duty, and now I turn to my Saviour”

And thus I might fill pages with the dying words of these noble men, which are, indeed, “apples of gold in pictures of silver,” and show that they were taught by God's spirit how to live, and how to die. But I have already exceeded my allotted space, and must hasten to close. No! it was not discipline alone which made the Army of Northern Virginia what it was — which gave to it that heroic courage, that patience under hardships, that indomitable nerve under disaster, and that full confidence in its grand old chief, and in itself, that won, against fearful odds, a long series of splendid victories, and which, even in its defeat, wrung from Horace Greeley the tribute, “The rebellion had failed, and gone down, but the rebel army of Virginia and its commander had not failed;” and from Swinton, in his “Army of the Potomac,” the following graceful eulogy: “Nor can there fail to arise the image of that other army, that was the adversary of the Army of the Potomac, and which who can ever forget that once looked upon it?-that array of tattered uniforms and bright muskets — that body of incomparable infantry, the Army of Northern Virginia, which, for four years, carried the revolt on its bayonets, opposing a constant front to the mighty concentration of power brought against it; which, receiving terrible blows, did not fail to give the like; and which, vital in all its parts, died only with its annihilation.”

It was a noble band of intelligent, educated, patriotic soldiers,