Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 10.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[528] his sweetheart. He is an artist; and every sentence shows the skill of his pencil and brush. The volume contains the most life-like and graphic pictures of the private soldier, in all of his relations and circumstances. He who has “been there” will readily recognize the fidelity of the likenesses.

Mr. W. L. Sheppard, who was a lieutenant in the Howitzers, and now ranks as one of the best illustrators in the country, enriches the volume with thirty-one cuts, which are fac-simile reproductions of his original drawings, made especially for this book. They are among his best efforts, and add to his already extended and well-deserved reputation.

He who buys this book will read it; he who reads it will surely wish to buy it. The first proposition is high compliment; the second assertion is higher praise, and can truthfully be affirmed of not one book in a thousand. Altogether, in our candid judgment, this is the best book of its character that we have seen.

By all means, let out readers get this book. But don't commence to read it after dark, unless you have good eye-sight and wish to sit up all night. You will not put it down until the last sentence is read: and then, perhaps with tearful eyes, you will reluctantly close the volume, and recalling their heroism and patriotism, their patient fortitude and cheerful self-denial and suffering, your heart will pay a well-merited tribute to the grandest body of men that ever stood on earthly battlefields — the private soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, unconquered and unconquerable, who, in rags and famine, would gladly have continued the unequal contest, and who only once turned their backs to the foe — when, with a breaking heart, their peerless General was constrained by Providence to surrender them to “overwhelming numbers and resources.”