erally. Much that I have said to the first class is equally applicable to this.

Men who engage in battle expecting to be whipped, are very certain to be whipped. The reason is plain; they fight without object and without spirit-their thoughts more occupied in finding apologies for running than the achievement of victory. Now, I can conceive of but these four things which can induce a rational being to expect defeat in battle:

1st. Superiority in numbers opposed to him. 2d. Superiority in arms.

3d. Superiority in valor.

4th. Superiority in generalship.

Let us consider these matters in their order: 1. Superiority in Numbers.-This is the bugbear that made cowards of us for thirty years before we seceded, which seems to have turned the heads of half the nation, civil and military, within the last two months, and which seems likely to make us destroy ourselves to keep the Yankees from destroying us.

I have already bestowed a few remarks upon this head; let us consider it a little more in detail. To give the instances in which brave men conquered twice and thrice their numbers would be to write a book. Take a few cases from our own history. At Big Bethel one thousand three hundred confederates put to confusion and flight four thousand Federals. At the battle of Blackburn's Ford (Bull Run) one brigade whipped twice its number. At the first battle of Manassas thirty-eight thousand completely routed seventy-five thousand. It is said the Yankees fight better now than they did then; and that the Western Federals fight better than the Eastern. This may be true, but it would be a harmless truth if we did not fight worse. We whipped Western troops at Chickamauga, and we would have whipped them again at Mission Ridge if a brigade or more of our men had not played the coward.

Even in the rout which these men led off, Cleburne's gallant band arrested the whole Federal army, when they were probably four to one against him. This I regard as by far the most brilliant feat of the war. To have stood his ground would have been creditable to him and his men, but in the midst of confusion and flight to have formed his men in an advantageous position, and to have maintained it against repeated assaults of overwhelming numbers, and to have defeated them, entitles him to a monument as high as Lookout, and to each of his men one as high as Mission Ridge. I hope he will preserve with peculiar care the name of every man that stood by him in that memorable conflict.*

Here, then, we have an illustration from the same battle-field, of the difference between running from superior numbers and fighting them bravely. Cleburne demonstrated, under every discouragement, that Western troops, even in the exultation of victory, may be whipped by infe

*If the papers speak the truth, according to Bragg, Bates and his small brigade are entitled to all the credit that I have given to Cleburne and his men. If so, let the names be changed and

the honors stand.

rior numbers, when possessed of superior valor. Let the renegades remember this, and retrieve their credit by fighting gallantly in their next battle.

There are other considerations which it seems to me should divest numbers of their terrors to reflecting troops; at least so far as to raise them above cowardly conduct.

These truths all will admit; the more men in the army, the more unwieldy and sluggish does it become, the more difficult is it to make them effective in action, the more on the sick-list, the more killed by a given number of shots, the more transportation and provisions do they require, and the more unlikely that they will have a commander capable of directing their movements skilfully and usefully. These are most serious drawbacks to a large army, especially when far away from home. They will, of themselves, exhaust it in time. A small army, then, has every advantage of a large one, except in the single matter of numbers. They are more immediately under the eye of their commander, more readily concentrated, more prompt in reaching the points of attack, lose fewer in battle, and in retreat (orderly retreat I mean) are absolutely unapproachable by their cumbersome foe. These facts are of themselves sufficient to account for the many victories which inferior numbers have gained over superior. Let us suppose that Grant commands a hundred thousand men, and Johnston but fifty thousand. There are twenty positions between Dalton and Atlanta which Johnston may occupy, with the certainty of whipping Grant, if his men will fight bravely. (It is to be hoped he has examined all these positions.) Should he be driven from one of these positions after hard fighting, his losses, compared with those of the enemy, will be about as one to five. And so of all the other positions. But there is one view of the subject which should quiet all fears of the soldier on the score of numbers, and it is this: that it is absolutely impossible for Grant to conquer Johnston in the case supposed, because it is absolutely impossible for him to force Johnston into a fight upon ground of his own choosing. Upon the whole, then, there is no great cause of alarm to the soldier in the numbers opposed to him. The Fabian policy avoids defeat at least.

2. Superiority in Arms.-Except in artillery, I know of no advantage the enemy have of us in arms-certainly none to be feared. Of artillery I have already spoken, and shown that they are the least formidable implements of war of any that are used. For the destruction of fortifications, ships, and towns, cannon are useful; but for field service they are the most inconvenient, cumbersome, inefficient, expensive, worthless engines of war that ever were invented. A man told me he had been in six battles, and he had never seen a man killed by a cannon or bomb in his life. Another told me that he had belonged to an artillery corps for two years; that in that time they had broken down four teams of horses, and been brought into action but once, in which he had no reason to believe that they

had killed a single man. They fear cannon, then, simply because men cease to reason when they engage in battle, and surrender themselves to their instinctive impulses.

3. Superiority in Valor.-This the Yankees have never shown, and never will show, until our troops become the biggest of fools and the Leanest of cowards.

4. Superiority of Generalship. - Certainly there is no cause for fear from this source, as yet. Reason down your fears then, soldiers; but if you cannot, fight them out.

CHAPTER III.

In all that I have said to you, or mean to say to you, I suppose you fight against superior numbers. I have endeavored to demonstrate to you that there is not near the danger in meeting superior numbers in the field that is generally supposed. In a conflict of one thousand against two thousand, the first of unyielding valor, and the second of common soldiery, which is likely to conquer? Every man in the world will answer: "The first." Is not this an unquestionable truth? Why, then, will not reasonable beings reduce it to practice in the war? "Because," it will be answered, "men cannot screw themselves up to unyielding valor." True, but with a man of common-sense, it should require but very little screwing to do that which will insure him victory, or no valor. When I was a boy, about thirteen years of age, my father lived fourteen miles from Augusta. On the road to the city, there was one point where a man had been murdered, and another where a woman had been killed, and stories were rife in the neighborhood of terrific sights seen at these places at night. I do not suppose that a house full of gold could have induced me to pass them alone at night. One day my father remarked, in my presence: "I never allowed my children to be frightened with foolish stories about ghosts, etc. There is my who, if necessary, would go from here to Augusta at midnight, with no more fear than I would feel at doing so." Mercy on me!" thought I; "how little my father knows of his !" But the remark had a magical effect upon me. It set me to thinking of the folly of my fears, the glory I should have in verifying my father's opinion of me, and the shame that I should feel at his discovering that he had over-estimated me, and I began to entertain a timid desire to prove my heroism. Not long after this I was belated, and had to pass one of these places at night, and alone. I was awfully alarmed as I approached the spot, but I determined to go slowly by it. When I reached it my fears rapidly subsided; "and now," thought I, “if I can only tell, when I get home, that I stopped and searched for ghosts and blue-lights, and listened for groanings, etc., what an honor it will be for me!" I did so, and thenceforward became a tolerably brave boy.

Now, if such inducements as these could make a timid boy act the hero, why should not love of country, the glory of victory, and the shame of defeat, make even cowards act the hero? But I

am departing from the subjects proposed for this article. I come now to speak of actual operations in the field.

If ten thousand engage twenty thousand, the labor of fighting is about equal on both sides. The human constitution can only endure a certain amount of labor and fatigue, and at this point the belligerents must stop. All other things being equal, then, if the ten thousand hold on to this point, they cannot possibly be conquered; and it's a hundred to one, that the twenty thou sand yield the contest before they reach the point of exhaustion.

Charge of Bayonets.-If the soldier forgets all else that I have written or may write, let him not forget what I say upon this head. It has been said that in all Bonaparte's battles there were but three instances of a fight with bayonets. With these exceptions, whenever he or his adversaries brought the battle to a hand-to-hand fight, one or the other party invariably gave way. Now he fought every nation in Europe, and, with one exception, always with inferior numbers. The Turks he fought in Egypt and Syria-a barbarous people. At Acre, he fought the Turks, assisted by the English. I do not remember that his troops ever recoiled from a charge of bayonets. Be that as it may, we all know that up to his Russian campaign, his battles were little else than one unbroken series of victories. I have inquired of a number of our officers and soldiers whether they ever witnessed a fight with bayonets during the war, and I have not found the man who has seen such a thing. And yet I have heard of a hundred, if not five hundred, charges being made during the war. In all these charg es, then, one or the other party must have given way. Now what is the conclusion from all this? Why, that whether you fight with civilized or barbarous nations, or with civilized and barbarous mixed, with royalists or republicans, with equal or unequal numbers, (the disproportion not being very great,) you have only to stand firm in a bayonet-fight, to assure you of victory. is nothing in war more certain than this. When the battle, then, comes to a cross of bayonets, whatever may be your alarms, see it through, and your triumph is sure.

There

Charging up to the Cannon's Mouth.-This is considered the very acme of heroism. Well, now, there is not the one tenth part of the danger in it that is generally supposed. The reason is plain. Cannon cannot be constantly adjusted to an ever-approaching object. Many of you know how wildly they shoot, until the gunner, by a number of experimental shots, "gets the range," as it is called, even of a stationary object. But that range is lost with every approach of the object to the cannon. None but the most expert riflemen could hit a squirrel rapidly descending a tree. Now, the movement of a cannon to hit an approaching regiment must be like that of the rifleman's gun, constantly lowering, but with a variable velocity, as the regiment approaches more or less rapidly. If the regiment oblique a little from the first line of approach, the cannon

must undergo two adjustments to hit it: the one perpendicular, and the other lateral. Now, who is competent to make the lubberly thing fulfil all these conditions? No man that ever lived or ever will live. To keep a cannon sighted upon a moving object is difficult enough, but to load and fire it, and still keep it on the moving object, is impossible. "Marching up to the cannon's mouth," then, if done quickly, is demonstrably less dangerous than remaining stationary at exact cannonrange.

A word more and I have done. Possibly, before the war ends, you may get under a general who may command you to pursue a routed foe. In that event, stop not as long as you can keep your feet. Bear hunger and thirst to the utmost point of endurance, rather than stop; and cut off your arm sooner than pause to gather booty at such a time. The reason is obvious: when your enemy is in flight, he is impotent, and you destroy him without hazard to yourselves. His dispersion is so great that he cannot be brought to face you again for months, if ever. His all falls into your hands. His spirit is broken for all time. And oh ! remember, as we pass along, that all these evils, half told, become yours, when you flee.

Soldiers! lay to heart the things that I have written, and reduce them to practice, and our liberty is sure.

Doc. 99.

THE FIRE AND BLOOD OF REVOLUTION.

THE following was published under the above title in the Charlottesville (Virginia) Review, in April, 1861, before Virginia had passed her ordinance of secession:

"That is the cue. They propose to give you a taste of Mr. Yancey's medicines. It will be a nice little operation. Sowing wheat is nothing to marking time and walking sentry at two o'clock in the night, under a drizzling rain. Shucking corn is flat, compared to a charge of bayonets.

"You will also make your arrangements to have your barnyards lit up at night with the fires of the revolution. Set your boots at the head of the bed, for at any moment the same fires may be sputtering and crackling on the roof of your dwelling-house.

"Glistening bayonets on the south bank of the Potomac in front, burning straw-ricks and burning houses behind you, something worse than that, perhaps, in the shape of death produced by invisible and unconfrontable agencies, the State deprived of its labor, those laborers escaping by hundreds, or sold at half their value in the South, your fields unploughed, your public works ruined, land depressed to the lowest figure, State stocks, insurance stocks, bank stocks, railroad stocks, hawked at a mere song-these would be the immediate effects of the "Fire and Sword" which Governor Wise proposes in his speech at Norfolk.

"A peaceable dissolution of the Union is sometimes suggested.

"Let us allow that the result could be effected peaceably.

"The next thing we should want would be a standing army. The John Brown affair cost us three hundred thousand dollars. Make the calculation.

"You would maintain a line of posts all along your frontier.

“You would also want a navy, though Norfolk only produces a few fishing-smacks, except the vessels built there by order of the Government. "You would pay a Southern President, with all the ordinary government officials. You would pay a diplomatic corps.

"You would have to pay for an independent Senate and House of Representatives, and for a new Judiciary.

"Perhaps you think all this would be readily managed. They tell you you are rich. We tell you, that no purely agricultural people ever was rich. The wealth of Philadelphia alone is equal to the entire wealth of the State of Virginia.

"Take the Post-Office alone. The total receipts from the post-offices in Virginia for 1857-58, were $242,951; the expenditures were $453,848. In South-Carolina, the receipts were $101,145; the expenditures were $248,600. In Alabama, the receipts were $111,092; the expenditures were $248,750. In Mississippi, the receipts were $88,458; the expenditures were $332,508. In Arkansas, the receipts were $35,727; the exHow is this deficienpenditures were $244,589. cy made up now? Part of it is made up thus: The receipts in the State of New-York are $1,488,711; the expenditures are $1,154,141. In Massachusetts, the receipts are $565,633; the expenditures are $425,237. In most of the Northern States there is a deficit. But in all the Southern States the deficit is enormous. The whole Northern deficit is some $800,000. The whole Southern deficit is some $3,000,000.

"Suppose, however, the civil war disposed of. Suppose the government established. Suppose us with our army, our navy, our fortifications. Suppose us to have survived the shock with some slaves left, and our depreciated lands. What then? We belong to a Southern confederacy. The Cotton States begin an agitation for the reopening of the slave-trade, or some coolie system. Our remaining negroes are to compete, if they succeed in their schemes, with the new labor. At all events, we are still to be a section, a section as regards the Cotton States, which has no trade with the other section. We are still to have sectional quarrels. There are still to be charges and counter-charges, aggressions and counter-aggressions. We have not conquered a

peace.

"We have now two sections to plague us. On the frontier we have to guard against the North. On the South we have to meet the extreme views of the Gulf States. After a while, perhaps, Virginia would have lost her slaves, and she, with