Robert Stiles, Four years under Marse Robert

[65] indifferently from their lips; but in any and every case the volume of sound was tremendous. It was a common saying that the “sick men” left in Barksdale's camp, when the brigade was away on duty, made more noise than any other full brigade in the army. The only comment I have to make upon this statement is that I cannot recall ever having seen ont of them sick or “ailing” in any way, except when suffering from hunger or from wounds. At times they seemed about as rough as the bears they had hunted, yet they were withal simple-minded and tender-hearted boys, and at Fredericksburg hundreds of them became Christians.

I knew almost every man in the brigade and often attended their religious meetings. Many a time, after I became adjutant of our battalion of artillery, Col. H. C. Cabell's, as I galloped past their lines awaiting the order to charge, my heart has been cheered and strengthened by a chorus of manly voices calling after me, “God bless you, Brother Stiles, and cover your head in the day of battle!” How could I help loving these simple, brave, great-hearted fellows.

Early in December, 1861, General Evans was relieved of the command at Leesburg and sent, I think, to South Carolina, his native State, to take charge of some troops there, and Gen. D. H. Hill, of North Carolina, was put in his place. He was a brother-in-law of Stonewall Jackson and, like him, a thorough Christian and thorough Calvinist. That he was likewise a thorough soldier may be inferred, as the logicians would say, “a-priori and a-posteriori,” from the two facts, that he was a graduate of West Point, and that he attained the rank of lieutenant-general in the Confederate service. He was, moreover, a man of intellect and culture, with a decided taste for scholarship and letters, having been, both before and since the war, connected with educational institutions of high grade and a writer of books, both scientific and religious.

Like Jackson he was, too, a born fighter — as aggressive, pugnacious and tenacious as a bull-dog, or as any soldier in the service, and he had a sort of monomania on the subject of personal courage.