John D. Billings, The history of the Tenth Massachusetts battery of light artillery in the war of the rebellion

[438] party to the war can successfully claim the achievement of prodigies that never occurred. The systematic sifting and weighing processes and tests to which all claims are subjected by the earnest seekers after the truth lay bare all such attempts at deception. The relative strength of the contestants at different periods of the war is the only question yet unsettled, and even that is rapidly approaching adjustment.

Nor have I intended to underrate the calibre of our antagonists in writing up the Company, for, obviously, there must be at least two parties to a well contested field, and I firmly believe that no braver men were ever banded in an unrighteous cause than constituted the Rebel Army of Northern Virginia—unquestionably the flower of the Southern forces. They fought with a valor that would have insured success had the God of Battles been on their side. To defeat such an army was glory enough; to be defeated by them, no disgrace. But they were not invincible man for man. The men who entered the Army of the Potomac in 1861, 1862, and 1863 were every inch their peers. Whenever the circumstances indicated otherwise, the fault was not in the men but their leaders. Had the Union army been as well officered as the Confederate, the Rebellion would have gone down in Virginia in 1862. But my present purpose is not with this phase of the late conflict. I only wish to emphasize the good character and excellent fighting material of the Company as a whole, and cite as weighty evidence bearing on this position the incontrovertible statement that the men never turned their backs upon the foe, unless by order, whenever there was an available shot in the limber. Nor was the Battery ever driven from the field. Further, no man was ever accused of