Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[404] by the way of the Shenandoah Valley to Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, without obstruction, and executed a wonderful feat of strategy. It is true that other commanders in the war had made longer marches and accomplished more magnificent distances. But to estimate properly the generalship of Lee, it must be remembered that when he set out on this expedition, he was confronted by one of the largest and best appointed armies the enemy ever had in the field; that Winchester, Martinsburg, Harper's Ferry, and Berryville were garrisoned by hostile forces; that the Federal cavalry were in splendid condition; and yet in the face of all these facts, he had marched along the Rappahannock, over the passes of the Blue Ridge, up the Shenandoah Valley, and across the fords of the Potomac into Pennsylvania, without his progress being arrested.

When the Confederate army obtained a footing on the soil of Pennsylvania, there were many people who supposed that as here there was no friendly disposition of the invaded, no reputation of political sympathy, as in Maryland, to interpose between them and the penalties of war, the troops would be prompt to exact a severe retribution for the cruelties of the enemy displayed in the desolated homes and fields of the South. But no such thing occurred; no such expectation was answered. On the contrary, no sooner had Gen. Lee crossed the line than he announced that private property would be respected, and proceeded, by general orders, to restrain all excesses of his troops, and, in fact, to give to the invaded people of Pennsylvania a protection which even those of the South had not always had against the impressments and other exactions of the war. No house was entered without authority; no granary was pillaged; no property was taken without payment on the spot; and vast fields of grains were actually picketed by Confederate guards, mounted on almost starved horses.

So far as these orders of Gen. Lee maintained the discipline and morals of his troops, prevented them from degenerating into ruffians, and declined retaliation of this sort, they were generally sustained by the public opinion of his countrymen, for exasperated as they were by what they had experienced of the enemy's barbarities in their own homes, the Southern people were so proud of their reputation for chivalry, and plumed themselves so much on this account, that they were willing to sacrifice for it almost any other passion of the war. But there was an obvious distinction in this matter, and the Richmond Examiner indicated it in a striking and powerful censure of Gen. Lee's course. It was said that only a few persons in the South recommended retaliation in kind; that it was not advised that houses should be burned, or robbed, jewelry stolen, and women raped in Pennsylvania, in exact imitation of the acts of Northern troops in Virginia and Mississippi; but that such guard on the discipline and honour of Confederate soldiers was not inconsistent with a devastation of the