Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[879] three given him by Congress before his treason, and captured by me after it, should be by that body voted to me for patriotic services. This recommendation was made by the President without any application on my part to him. It was referred by the Senate to its military committee, at the head of which was Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. He presented the bill, had it referred to his committee, and put it in one of his pigeon-holes, where it has ever since slept the sleep that knows no waking.

We enjoyed one set-off to the clannishness of West Point, and its opposition to every high officer that was not a graduate, and to the intrigues of each to pull the other down and set up himself. This was that the Confederate army enjoyed identically the same sort of setbacks from West Point, and I am inclined to think, in a degree quite as great, if not greater. There was the same opposition to volunteer officers of the higher grades, so that but one or two achieved any distinction or had opportunity so to do except, perhaps, because of political standing or as partisan leaders.

On the Confederate side, Braxton Bragg was at the ear of Davis, and was constantly maligning all the generals, especially Beauregard. Bragg was the counterpart of Halleck on our side who had the same position with Lincoln, and did his duty in the same way with great zeal, energy, and success. Longstreet and Lee were quite continually at variance, and at the close of the war, Mahone was almost the only volunteer general left in high position. His celebrated brigade was the only fighting organization left near Lee at the time he was forced to surrender at Appomattox, some of the other generals having virtually allowed their divisions to disband before the surrender; for while Lee had thirty thousand men when he abandoned the intrenchments of Petersburg on the eighth day of April, he actually surrendered, on the ninth day of April, only eight thousand of his army who gave the parole, the balance having either deserted or been abandoned.

Mahone was a railroad engineer, and held only the rank of brigadier-general, having refused several times promotion as major-general. How much his merit for leadership was recognized by Lee will presently appear. After the retreat from Gettysburg, when his army had reached Virginia, Lee manfully acknowledged that the loss of the campaign was due to his own mistaken strategy of Gettysburg, and fearing that he might have lost the confidence of his army and his