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Glimpses of the Confederate army
Randolph H. Mckim, D. D., Late First Lieutenant, and A. D. C. 3d Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia
[This chapter was prepared by
Dr. McKim at the request of the Editors of the ‘
Photographic History of the
Civil War’ to describe the Confederate army from the standpoint of the individual and to bring out conditions under which the war was waged by that army, as well as to show the differences between those conditions and the life and activity of the
Union army.
The following pages are written under the limitations imposed by these conditions.]
Writers on the
Civil War frequently speak of the
Southern army as ‘the Secession army.’
Yet the most illustrious leaders of that army,
Robert E. Lee and ‘
Stonewall’
Jackson, to name no more, were in fact opposed to secession; though when
Virginia at length withdrew from the
Union, they felt bound to follow her. I think it likely indeed that a very large proportion of the conspicuous and successful officers, and a like proportion also of the men who fought in the ranks of the Confederate armies were likewise originally Union men—opposed, at any rate, to the exercise of the right of secession, even if they believed that the right existed.
It will be remembered that months elapsed between the secession of the
Gulf States and that of the great border States, Virginia,
North Carolina, and
Tennessee, which furnished so large a proportion of the soldiers who fought for the Southern Confederacy.
But, on the 15th of April, 1861, an event occurred which instantly transformed those great States into Secession States—the proclamation of
Abraham Lincoln calling
