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Address of General Gordon.

Said General Gordon:

It was my honor to have served in the army commanded by General Johnston during his memorable campaign in North Georgia in 1864, and to have had his personal acquaintance during that time, as also to have met him frequently since the war. And while it is with a melancholy pleasure that I would now speak briefly concerning him, I am deeply sensible of my inability to do justice to the career of that distinguished citizen and eminent soldier, even under the most favorable conditions of time and opportunity, but more especially so in the limited time required by these ceremonies. I will, therefore, not attempt more than to offer a few observations touching his military and civic career, and will confine my remarks relating to his military operations to the time during which he commanded the Army of Tennessee.

The campaign already referred to, was inaugurated in May, 1864, by General Sherman advancing upon General Johnston at Dalton, Georgia, with (in my judgment) the most magnificiently appointed, the bravest and the best army that was marshaled by the Federal government during the war. It was, in round numbers, one hundred [204] thousand strong, with two hundred and fifty pieces of artillery; while Johnston's army numbered between fifty and sixty thousand. And I here remark that General Sherman was too sagacious, too well acquainted with the skill and ability of his wily adversary, ever to jeopardize a general offensive engagement with him, or even to attack him, with the major portion of his command, at any time throughout the campaign. His policy was, in moving upon Johnston's various positions, to press forward a heavy line of skirmishers, strongly supported, as near to his position as possible without bringing on a general engagement, thereby developing the location of Johnston's line, and if he found a salient or supposed weak link in his line, then to furiously assault that particular point with a massed force, evidently intending, if the assault succeeded, then to wheel right and left on the flanks of the broken line, and at the same time to order a general attack along our entire front. But it so happened with all these gallant assaults, that Johnston's line was never broken or seriously embarrassed, but the assaulting columns were invariably repulsed, and in some instances with losses that were frightful. And thus it was that Sherman was compelled to dislodge Johnston (if he would dislodge him at all) from his various positions by making flank movements, which he did slowly and continuously, and fortifying as he went, as if anticipating an offensive movement by his vigilant antagonist. By this policy he finally forced Johnston beyond the Chattahoochie river to a point in front of Atlanta, which city was then fortified and garrisoned by several thousand State troops of Georgia, and from which position in front of Atlanta General Johnston informed the speaker soon after the war that he intended to move forward and attack Sherman with his entire veteran army, as he crossed the Chattachoochie river, leaving the State troops in the works to protect Atlanta; and that if he failed to demolish or defeat him he then intended to fall back to the fortifications around Atlanta, and hold the place as long as possible. But just as this movement was about to be inaugurated he was relieved of the command of his army, and thus ended his military operations in Georgia.

During this celebrated campaign, and upon which the eyes of the whole country, both North and South, seemed to be fixed in anxious suspense, Sherman had the advantage of superior numbers, as also the moral advantage of being the attacking force, while Johnston had the inestimable physical advantage of fighting for the most part from behind strong entrenchments, and was thereby enabled to inflict a loss upon his adversary of about four to one—Sherman's [205] loss, as I now remember it, being about forty thousand and Johnston's ten thousand. As accounting for this great disparity in losses, and as indicating the gallantry and fierceness of some of General Sherman's partial sssaults, I refer to his attack upon that part of our line at Kenesaw Mountain, known afterwards by the Confederates as ‘Cheatham's Angle,’ by the Federals as the ‘Dead Angle,’ where he massed a division in columns of four lines, brigade front, and stormed a salient, almost a right angle in our line—the first line of the storming column coming in a rushing run, with bayonets fixed, with guns loaded but uncapped — the idea being that we were fortified (as we were) and that the first line should not break the force and momentum of the charge by stopping to fire, but to take us with the bayonet in a rushing onset. It was a gallant, a magnificent charge, but a most disastrous failure, for when the front line of the attacking force arrived within thirty paces of our line, strongly fortified with breastworks and head logs, it encountered our abattis, which was made of sharpened brush and tree tops, with the sharpened points projecting toward the enemy and spread out about thirty paces in front of our line, and built to the height of a man's waist. When the front line of the storming column reached this formidable obstruction it was compelled to halt, and the rear lines closed upon it. In the mean time a deadly fire, at short range, had been opened from our line upon the front and both flanks of the assaulting column, and for a few moments the carnage was awful—too awful to be long endured by human courage or mortal sacrifice. The column that obstructed fired in great confusion for a few moments, and then staggering and falling, it fled to a lodgment under the brow of the hill on which our line was located, leaving eight hundred dead in the space of about two hundred paces front, as I was informed by a Federal officer, as he and I looked upon the appalling scene three days afterward during a truce to bury the Federal dead. Johnston's losses in this engagement were insignificant by virtue of his complete de fences, being at this point something less than twenty.

Those of us who served under General Johnston fully appreciate the sagacity and wisdom of General Sherman's policy in never engaging him in a general battle when in position, for when he was attacked he fought with the desperation of a crowded lion.

To summarize: During this campaign, brilliant on both sides, Johnston retreated nearly one hundred miles, fighting to some extent almost daily, never losing a dollar's worth of commissary or quartermaster stores. Sherman said he retreated with clean heels, [206] was never taken by surprise, his army never panicked or even confused, its discipline, its esprit du corps, its morale and its confidencein him maintained until the very hour his sword fell from his hand at the command of his Government—at the same time inflicting a loss upon his antagonist of four times that of his own.

Referring to the defensive or Fabian policy of General Johnson during this campaign, and in regard to which there was and is a diversity of opinion both North and South, but concerning which your speaker does not deem it appropriate on this solemn occasion to express any opinion; yet he does not deem it inappropriate to say that it seems but fair to the voiceless dead to remark that General Johnson appeared to be profoundly impressed at this period of the war with the momentous fact that the available resources of the Confederacy, both in men and material, were practically exhausted and alarmingly growing less; that our armies were daily diminishing by death, from disease and casualties in battle, and without any means by which to recruit them. It therefore appeared to be a matter of the supremest importance to husband his resources in every regard, and more especially in respect to the lives of his men. And hence the policy pursued by him at that juncture of the struggle seemed to be imperatively demanded by the situation, and that the offensive policy was warranted only when an obvious advantage was presented, such as appeared to be presented when Sherman's army was divided in crossing the Oustenaula river, and, believing which, Johnson issued his battle order and formed his lines for an offensive movement, but which plan he suddenly abandoned, as he states, upon the representations of Generals Hood and Polk, two of his lieutenant-generals, and ordered a retrograde movement, ‘a movement,’ he adds in his report, ‘that I have ever since regretted.’

If, therefore, we would justly consider the wisdom and propriety of his policy, they ought to be viewed in the light of the facts we have mentioned, as also in the significant light of subsequent events.

In the especial matter of logistics, or that branch of the military art which includes the moving and supplying of armies, General Johnston was, in my judgment, without a parallel in either of the great contending armies. Those who served under him well remember that harmonious system, that masterly method, and that freedom from confusion with which he handled and swayed a large army, whether moving it on the general march or marshalling it on the field in ‘battle's magnificently stern array.’ Each command moved to its designated place on the march or in the line of battle with the methodical [207] precision of a well adjusted machine. He possessed a genius for military organization; was a born quartermaster and commissary; and when he could not obtain clothing and food for his men you may be sure they were not to be had—you may be sure they were not there. His anxious efforts to keep his army supplied with all the necessary material, his care for the lives and safety of his men, superadded to his great generalship, elicited the loyalty and devotion of his army to a degree that was only equaled by that of the army of Northern Virginia to the invincible and immortal Lee.

As an instance of the confidence and devotion of his army, after he had left it and after it had been beaten, battered and broken by the battles around Atlanta, Jonesboroa, Franklin and Nashville, and he had been recalled by the voice of the country to its command in North Carolina, and the men heard that he was coming and was then in the vicinity of the army, many of them left their camps, guns, equipage, everything, and set out to find him, and when they did so they embraced him with shouts of joy and tears of affection; and the old hero was so deeply affected by their demonstrations of devotion that his strong frame trembled with emotion, as it had never done in the fiery face of booming battle.

Soon after this the battle of Bentonville occurred, in which his old soldiers, though tattered and torn, barefooted and ragged, fought with the same courage and alacrity that had characterized them in the better days of their hope and power. But do not understand me to say or imply that that army (the army of Tennessee) ever refused to fight under any commander who ordered it to battle. It never did. And at the storming of Franklin, Tenn., under command of General Hood, men never fought more bravely or died more freely. That was a battle which, for desperate, reckless courage, will rank with Gettysburg or Balaklava.

As another evidence of General Johnston's military sagacity and of his ability to divine the plans and movements of his adversaries, I have heard it stated that General Sherman said he never made a movement, while confronting him, in which Johnston had not anticipated him. I have also seen it stated that General Sherman esteemed him the greatest soldier of the Confederacy; and very naturally might General Sherman, himself a great soldier, think so, for he had known and felt the masterly stroke of his majestic arm.

When the war was ended, the partisanship of the soldier was at at once submerged in the nationality of the citizen; and General Johnston exerted his influence in the establishment of peace, in behalf [208] of sectional reconciliation and national union. He at once recognized that we then had but one flag, one Union, and one country; and he desired to see that flag respected, and that Union permanent, and that country glorious.

He was distinguished for the catholicity of his sentiments and the general conservatism of his nature, for the punctilious integrity of his public acts and the probity and purity of his private life. He was one of the patriots of the century, one of the soldiers of the age, and one of the men of the times. And thus it is that we have assembled for the last time to do honor to truth, to virtue and to genius as exemplified in the life and character of this eminent man—the last of the great leaders of a fallen cause. If it were in my power I would take these beautiful flowers, evergreens and immortelles which the ladies have here so lovingly and sympathetically provided, and which so fittingly typefy the beauty of his life and the durability of his fame, and reach out my hand to-night and place them upon his grave, as our last tender tribute to departed worth. Life's eventful scene with him is ended. He is now where there is no more strife, no more struggle, no more booming of guns, no more fighting of battles.

The tempests may roar and the loud thunders rattle,
     He heeds not, he hears not, he is free from all pain;
He sleeps his last sleep, he has fought his last battle,
     No sound can awake him to glory again.

Let him rest, let him rest!

The oration of General Gordon was received, perhaps, with better effect upon the audience than any other delivered during the ceremonies. General Gordon had served under Johnston in the Atlanta campaign, and as with a soldier's knowledge he reviewed those memorable scenes, his listeners were wrought to a full sensibility of the circumstances and situations, and were en rapport with the plans laid out by him who was destined never to carry them into completion. General Gordon paid a glowing tribute to his dead commander of old days.

The choir then sang: ‘Rest, Spirit, Rest.’

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