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and rage about the battle.
I admitted the gross mismanagement and was saying something in extenuation, when the old fellow broke in:
Oh! it is not mismanagement that hurts me, sir; it is cowardice — the disgraceful cowardice of our officers and men.
I was astounded, and protested that I saw nothing of this, when he broke out again:
Saw nothing of this, sir?
Why, I saw nothing else!
There is General----,
mentioning a man I never heard mentioned on any other occasion save with admiration for his courage and devotion.
“Why, sir, with my own eyes I saw him perceptibly quicken his pace under fire and that right before the men. And I saw him visibly incline his head, sir, and that right in the presence of the men. He ought to be shot to death for cowardice.”
I confess I was utterly confounded.
I had myself seen General ---- repeatedly passing and repassing a knoll more fearfully torn by artillery fire perhaps than any other spot of earth I ever looked upon.
His men were behind ithe passed over it and
in front of them.
My recollection is that officers were not mounted.
Of course he quickened his pace, partly because his presence was required first at one end of the line and then at the other; but the marvel to me was that he lived at all. As to the inclination of his head, all I saw was that instinctive inclination, equally natural under a heavy fire and a heavy rain.
When I recalled the scene and the heroic conduct of General , I remember saying to myself, “What is the true standard of courage?”
There were a number of Yale men in the Twenty-first Mississippi, among others two brothers, Jud. and
Carey Smith.
We used to call Jud. “
Indian Smith” at Yale.
I think it was at Savage Station, when the Seventeenth and Twenty-first Mississippi were put into the woods at nightfall and directed to lie down, that
Carey Smith, the younger brother, putting his hand in his bosom, found it covered with blood, when he withdrew it, and saying: “What does this mean?”
instantly died.
He had been mortally wounded without knowing when.
