Jubal Anderson Early, Ruth Hairston Early, Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early , C. S. A.

[295] what was necessary not only to its comfort, but to its very existence, but our people everywhere were pinched for the necessaries of life. Gentlemen, ladies, and children, who had been accustomed to every indulgence and luxury, were very often put to the utmost straits for clothes to wear and meat and bread to eat, and while this was the case with them there was a long, long list of the wives and the children of the privates in the ranks fighting for their homes and their altars, who were on the very brink of actual starvation.

Now, I ask, in the name of all that is sacred, did they expect that the men who had come down to make war upon a people so reduced by their barbarous acts to the very verge of starvation and nakedness should, when taken in battle, be fed and clothed better than the men who, sacrificing all mere personal considerations, were so bravely meeting their foes in deadly strife, while their wives, children, mothers and sisters were starving?

There is talk about the food furnished the sick and wounded as being unsuited for their condition. I will mention an incident that occurred under my own observation. While we were at Spottsylvania Court-House in May, 1864, battling with such immense odds, I was in command of a corps, and I received a message to come to General Lee's headquarters at night on one occasion for the purpose of receiving some instructions from him. General Lee was then himself suffering with a dysentery which had reduced him very much, and rendered all of us who were aware of his condition exceedingly uneasy, for we knew that if he failed all was gone.

When I arrived, his dinner and supper, both in one, were just ready and I was invited in to partake of the meal, and I found it to consist of, what to me was most acceptable, a scant supply of hard crackers, fried fat bacon, and a beverage made as a substitute for coffee out of parched wheat, without sugar, and this was all. This was what the foremost commander of the age was reduced to in the then critical condition of his health.