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Notes and Queries. did General L. A. Armistead fight on the Federal side at First Manassas?
General Abner Doubleday, in his
Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (page 195), says: “
Armistead was shot down by the side of the gun he had taken.
It is said he had fought on our side in the
first battle of Bull Run, but had been seduced by Southern affiliations to join in the rebellion, and now dying in the effort to extend the area of slavery over the free States, he saw with a clearer vision that he had been engaged in an unholy cause, and said to one of our officers, who leaned over him: ‘Tell
General Hancock I have wronged him, and have wronged my country.’
”
Now, we have only quoted this statement in order to pronounce it without the shadow of foundation, and to express our surprise that a soldier of
General Doubleday's position should thus recklessly reflect on the honor of a brave foeman upon the flimsy “it is said,” and the camp rumor of “one of our officers.”
But the man who could gravely assert that the
Confederates were fighting “to extend the area of slavery over the free States,” is probably sufficiently blinded by his prejudices to believe
anything to the detriment of “Rebels.”
Is it still the “Confederate Congress?”
The
Army and Navy Journal published recently the following:
There is little said about the ‘Rebel Brigadiers’ in the present Congress, but there is a pretty good number of them on hand--eight in the Senate and thirteen in the House.
The Senate has also four Confederate Colonels, one Captain and two privates; and the House has nineteen Colonels, two Majors, seven Captains, one Lieutenant, and fourteen who were privates, or whose rank is not given.
Among the Congressmen prominent in the Confederate Government who did not serve in the army are Senator Garland of Arkansas, and Ben Hill of Georgia, who were in the Confederate Senate, Alexander H. Stephens, the Confederacy's Vice-President, Joseph E. Brown, who was the ‘War-Governor’ of Georgia, Singleton of Mississippi, and Vest of Missouri, who were in the Rebel Congress, and Reagan of Texas, who was Postmaster-General of the Confederacy during its whole existence.
We have no doubt that
the soldiers on the other side of the
Potomac really rejoice that the
South has so frequently put into places of honor
