The truth of history.
The
Whig has seen a Yankee almanac, printed in
Philadelphia, which professes to give a synoptical history of the present war, obtained from authentic sources.
The authentic sources are, of course, the reports of Yankee officers and the records of the war office at
Washington.
The history is in fact but a repetition of all the falsehoods that have been perpetrated by Yankee officials, acting upon the advice of
Halleck, to claim every battle as a victory, no matter what the result might be. The Yankee nation is told that its heroes failed at
Bethel because the
Confederates had a work there mounted with heavy guns, while the
Yankees had only light howitzers, and that they had twelve men killed and the
Confederates six.
The truth is, that we had six light howitzers and had but one man (
John Wyatt) killed, while we buried twenty seven of their men on the field, and, from all the information we could gather from the people living on the road along which they fled, killed and wounded four or five times that number, who were carried off. We had but 1,160 men in the battle, while they had six fresh and full regiments.
The Confederate force at
Rich Mountain is given at 3,000.
It was less than 300.
The
Yankees had gained a great victory in the
first battle of Manassas, when
Johnston arrived with 27,000 fresh troops and snatched it from them.
We had but 27,000 men all told, and the battle was fought by less than half that number.
The
Yankees were 50,000 strong.
At
Kearnstown Jackson is said by this veracious chronicler to have had 12,000 men and the
Yankees 8,000.
In point of fact,
Jackson had 3,700, the
Yankees 18,000, and so on. The heroic
Yankees are always out-numbered and always victorious.
From this specimen the
Whig is inclined to doubt the truth of all past history, existing with "the
English cynic," "As for history, I know it to be a lie." This is true to a certain extent.
We must form our judgment of history from results, not from details.
We know that a British army was captured at
Saratoga, and that the result secured the alliance of
France.
We know that a second British army was taken at
York, and that the result secured our independence.
This is all that we need care for, and by the light of the result we shall be enabled to see with tolerable accuracy the truth of the details.
It is hardly probable, for instance, that if the rebels had been such cowardly creatures as the
British accounts represented, they would ever have been able to have captured two entire British armies.
In the same way, men at a distance will see clearly enough that, whereas the
Yankees were 20,000,000, and we but 5,000,000, if they had not been badly beaten in nearly every encounter, they must have exterminated us, or at least subdued us, long ago. They will see the difference between the
Yankee statements and the actual results, and they will find no difficulty in ascertaining the truth.
