Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 34.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

No one who participated in that struggle for Constitutional government could have failed to observe the unselfish devotion of the private soldier.

The generals and line officers, charged with responsibility and nerved with ambition, too often soldiers of fortune, had a stimulus and hope of reward that did not often stir the private soldier. His breast was fired and his arm nerved by devotion to duty. He was in many cases better born and more intelligent than his officers, yet he was obedient to orders and marched into the jaws of death with a heroism and courage that challenged the admiration of the world. He knew that in the story of the battle the officers' names would be mentioned, and if among the slain, he would be borne to a well marked tomb, over which loving hands and grateful hearts would spread flowers and shed tears; while over his unmarked grave, most likely the wind would sing a sad requiem and no loving hand would plant a single flower.

A Southern soldier of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry, in pathetic words has epitomized this subject. A lady of Loudoun County, Va., set the words to music. We often heard it sung around our Camp Fires:

All quiet along the Potomac they say
     Except here and there a stray picket
Is shot as he walks on his beat to and fro,
     By a rifleman hid in the thicket.

'Tis nothing—a private or two now and then
     Will not count in the news of the battle,
Not an officer lost; only one of the men—
     Moaning out all alone the death rattle.

All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
     No sound save the rush of the river;
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead,
     That picket's off duty forever.