“The universal practice of carrying arms in the South is undoubtedly the cause of occasional loss of life, and is much to be regretted. On the other hand, this custom renders altercations and quarrels of very rare occurrence, for people are naturally careful what they say when a bullet may be the probable result.”

LtC Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, HM Coldstream Guards, 24 May 1863

After six tremendous Union assaults on his position on August 29, 1862, Stonewall Jackson’s troops still held Stony Ridge. 

That night a friend told Jackson, “We have won this battle by the hardest kind of fighting.” Jackson replied, “No, no, we have won it by the blessing of Almighty God !’

 “He possessed every virtue of other great commanders without their vices. He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. 

He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy and a man without guile. 

He was a Caesar without his ambition; Frederick without his tyranny; Napoleon without his selfishness, and Washington without his reward. He was obedient to authority as a servant, and loyal in authority as a true king. 

He was gentle as a woman in life; modest and pure as a virgin in thought; watchful as a Roman vital in duty; submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles!”

War-era Georgia Senator Ben Hill’s tribute to Robert E. Lee

"General, did you ever hear of Mosby?"
"Yes, have you caught him?"
"He has caught you."
Captain John S. Mosby capturing General E.H. Stoughton, March, 1863

General Stoughton was sleeping soundly when the raiding party entered his room. “There was no time for ceremony, so I drew up the bedclothes, pulled up the general’s shirt, and gave him a spank on his bare back, and told him to get up” Mosby recalled.

Guards on duty were taken by surprise and captured. The telegraph operator was seized, and the telegraph wires were cut. A group went to Colonel Wyndham’s quarters, but he had gone to Washington that evening. Others went to the stables and gathered horses. Mosby took five or six men and went to General Stoughton’s quarters, and knocked on the door.

With Stoughton captured, the raiders prepared to leave. No shots were fired during the raid, and no alarm had been raised, a stroke of luck for the Confederates as they were in the midst of several thousand Union soldiers. 

All the Rangers made it safely back to Confederate lines. In addition to General Stoughton, there were two other officers and 30 enlisted men brought back as prisoners, along with 58 horses.

“…We must forevermore do honor to our heroic dead. We must forevermore cherish the sacred memories of those four terrible but glorious years of unequal strife.

We must forevermore consecrate in our hearts our old battle flag of the Southern Cross – not now as a political symbol, but as the consecrated emblem of an heroic epoch. 

The people that forgets its heroic dead is already dying at the heart, and we believe we shall be truer and better citizens of the United States if we are true to our past.”
Confederate Veteran Rev. Randolph Harrison McKim

WHEN DID YOU EVER HEAR OF A SOUTHERN SOLDIER SAYING HE WAS FIGHTING TO PRESERVE SLAVERY? 

THAT'S RIGHT...NEVER!

“As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. 

No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
Major General John B. Gordon, from his book, Causes of the Civil War.

Photo: The Bloody Lane at Sharpsburg (Antietam for you Yanks). General Gordon was wounded here 5 times walking this stretch of the road during the battle.

“Had the cotton gin of Massachusetts inventor Eli Whitney not come on the scene in the late 1700’s, African slavery in this country was most likely doomed. 

The antislavery and emancipation feeling in the South was ascendant, but thwarted by profitable slave-trading and hungry cotton mills in New England which gave rise to more plantations in the South, and the perpetuation of slavery. 

And after years of treating the American South as an agricultural colony, New England set out in 1861 to strip it of political power.”
Bernhard Thuersam- Director Cape Fear Historical Institute NC.