Defence of Petersburg.1
Address of Capt. W. Gordon McCabe (formerly Adjutant of Pegram's battalion of artillery, A. N. V.) before the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia, November 1, 1876. [published by request of the Association.]
Comrades of the Army of Northern Virginia:
I am here in obedience to your orders and give you a soldier's greeting.
It has fallen to me, at your behest, to attempt the story of a defence more masterly in happy reaches of generalship than that of Sebastopol, and not less memorable than that of Zaragoza in a constancy which rose superior to accumulating disaster, and a stern valor ever reckoned highest by the enemy.
It is a great task, nor do I take shame to myself that I am not equal to it, for, speaking soberly, it is a story so fraught with true though mournful glory — a story so high and noble in its persistent lesson of how great things may be wrested by human skill and valor from the malice of Fortune — that even a Thucydides or a Napier might suffer his nervous pencil to droop, lost, perchance, in wonder at the surprising issues which genius, with matchless spring, extorted time and again from cruel odds, or stirred too deeply for utterance by that which ever kindles the hearts of brave men — the spectacle of human endurance meeting with unshaken front the very stroke of Fate.
And if intensity of sorrowful admiration might not unnaturally paralyze the hand of the historian, who should undertake to transmit to posterity a truthful record of the unequal contest, what mortal among men could stand forth undismayed, when bidden to trace even the outlines of the story in presence of the survivors of that
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incomparable army, the followers of that matchless leader — veterans, to whom it has been given to see its every episode emblazoned in crimson letters by the very God of Battles.
And yet it is because of this presence, that I stand here not unwillingly to-night — for when I look down upon these bronzed and bearded faces, I cannot but remember that we have shared together the rough delights, the toils, the dangers of field of battle, and march and bivouac, and feel sure of indulgence in advance from those who are knit to even the humblest comrade by a companionship born of common devotion to that Cause which is yet “strong with the strength” of Truth, and “immortal with the immortality” of Right — born of such common devotion, nurtured in the fire of battle, strengthened and sanctified by a common reverence for the valiant souls who have fallen on sleep.
It is not mine, comrades, to dazzle you with the tricks of rhetoric, nor charm your ear with smooth flowing periods; but even were such mastery given to me, it would scarce befit my theme — for we have now to trace the history of the army to which we belonged, not in its full blaze of triumph, as when it wrote Richmond and Chancellorsville upon its standards, but in those last eventful days when its strength was well nigh “too slender to support the weight of victory” ; we have now to mark the conduct of its leader, not as when, the favored child of Mars, the clangor of his trumpets from the heights of Fredericksburg haughtily challenged the admiration of astonished nations, but in that severer glory which shines round about him as he stands at bay, girt with a handful of devoted soldiery, staying the arm of Fate with an incredible vigor of action and a consummate mastery of his art, and, still unsubdued in mind, delivers his last battle as fiercely as his first.
And in the prosecution of the task confided to me — in my attempts to reconcile the conflicting testimony of eye-witnesses, in sifting hostile reports, and in testing by official data the statements of writers who have essayed the story of this final campaign — although at times it has seemed well-nigh a hopeless labor, and more than once recalled the scene in Sterne's inimitable masterpiece, in which Mr. Shandy, taking My Uncle Toby kindly by the hand, cries out, “Believe me, dear brother Toby, these military operations of yours are far above your strength,” yet, remembering the spirited reply of My Uncle Toby, “What care I, brother, so it be for the good of the nation,” --even so have I been upheld, reflecting that if it should be my good fortune to restore to its true light and bearing
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even one of the many actions of this vigorous campaign, which may have been heretofore misrepresented through ignorance or through passion, it would be counted as a service, however humble, to that army, whose just renown can never be too jealously guarded by the men who were steadfast to their colors.
That I should attempt a critical examination of that defence in detail, is manifestly impossible within the limits of an address, when it is remembered that, south of the Appomattox alone, thirteen pitched fights were delivered outside the works, beside numberless “affairs” on the part of the cavalry and small bodies of infantry, while each day was attended by a number of minor events, which, taken separately, appear to be of little historical importance, but, when combined, exerted no mean influence on the conduct of the campaign.
Nor, on the other hand, has the time yet come, in the opinion of many officers of sound and sober judment, for that larger treatment of my theme which would necessitate an impartial examination of the measure to which the military operations were shaped by considerations of a political character — in other words, the time has not yet come when one may use the fearless frankness of Napier, who justly reckons it the crowing proof of the genius of Wellington, that while resisting with gigantic vigor the fierceness of the French, he had at the same time to “sustain the weakness of three inefficient cabinets.”
I propose, therefore, to notice some of the leading events of the campaign in its unity, which will indicate the general conception of the defence of Petersburg, animated by no other feeling towards the many brave men and officers of the Army of the Potomac than one of hearty admiration for their courage and endurance, desirous, above all, that truth, so far as we can attain it now, shall be spoken with soldierly bluntness, and error be not perpetuated.
And at the very outset, it is not only pertinent, but essential to a proper appreciation of the conduct of affairs, that we should consider the morale of the two armies as they prepared to move into those vast lines of circumvallation and contravallation, destined to become more famous than Torres Vedras or those drawn by the genius of Turenne in the great wars of the Palatinate.
The more so, that the most distinguished of Lee's foreign critics has declared that from the moment Grant sat down before the lines of Richmond, the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia saw that the
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inevitable blow “might be delayed, but could not be averted.”
2 Other writers, with mawkish affectation of humanity, little allied to sound military judgment, have gone still further, and asserted that the struggle had assumed a phase so hopeless, that Lee should have used the vantage of his great position and stopped the further effusion of blood.
Let us, the survivors of the Army of Northern Virginia, authoritatively declare in reply, that such was not the temper of our leader nor the temper of his men.
It would, indeed, have been an amazing conclusion for either army or general to have reached as the lesson of the