"General Hood killed, my horse killed, my brigade torn to pieces, and I haven't a single man left.” General Longstreet smiled, and quietly asked him if he did not think he could find one man. Quieted by the tone of the question, he began to look for his men, found quite a number of them, and quickly joined the fighting forces at the front, where he discovered that the Confederates had carried the first line, that Johnson's division was in the breach and pushing on, with Hindman spreading battle to the enemy's limits, Stuart's division holding bravely on, and the brigades of Kershaw and Humphreys coming along to help restore the battle to good organization. About one o'clock in the day lunch was ordered spread for a number of the officers. General Longstreet meanwhile rode with General Buckner and the staffs to view the changed conditions of the battle. He could see but little of the enemy's line, and only knew it by the occasional exchange of fire between the skirmishers. Suddenly the party discovered that they had passed the Confederate line and were within the fire of the Federal sharp-shooters, who were concealed behind the trees and under the brush. They came back in more than doublequick. General Longstreet ordered General Buckner to establish a twelve-gun battery on the right and enfilade the Federal works. Then he rode away to enjoy a sumptuous spread of Nassau bacon and Georgia sweet potatoes. They were not accustomed to potatoes of any kind in Virginia, and the Georgia variety was a peculiar luxury. While the lunch was in its first stages a fragment of shell came tearing through the woods, passed through a book in the hands of a courier who sat his horse hard by reading, and struck down the chief of ordnance, Colonel T. P. Manning. Friends sprang forward to look for the wound and give relief. Manning had just taken an unusually large bite of sweet potato, and was about suffocating thereby. He was supposed to be gasping for his last breath when General Longstreet suggested that he be relieved of the potato and given a chance to breathe. This done, he soon revived, and was ready to be taken to the hospital, and in a few days he was again ready for either a Federal shell or a Georgia potato. The vicissitudes of the battle were many and varied, but finally the Federal forces quit the field and the different wings of the Confederate army came together and greeted each other with loud huzzas. The Army of the Tennessee was ready to celebrate its first grand victory, in spite of the great losses sustained. The twilight dews hung heavy over the trees, as if to hush the voice of victory in the presence of death, but nevertheless, the two lines, which neared as they advanced, united their shouts in increasing volume, not as the cannon's violent noise, but as one great burst of harmony that seemed almost to lift from their rooted depths the great forest trees. Before greetings and congratulations upon the success had passed it was night, and the mild beams of the quartering moon were more suggestive of Venus than of Mars, as Longstreet rested in the white light of the one great triumph of Confederate arms in the West. IN EAST TENNESSEE ABOUT the 1st of November, 1863, it was determined at Confederate head-quarters that Longstreet should be ordered into East Tennessee against General Burnside's army. On the 22d of October General Grant joined the army, and it was known that General Sherman was marching to join him. On the 20th of October General Burnside reported by letter to General Grant an army of twenty-two thousand three hundred men, with ninety-odd guns, but his returns for November gave a force of twenty-five thousand two hundred and ninety, and over one hundred guns. Eight thousand of his men were on service north of Knoxville and about Cumberland Gap. To march, capture, and disperse this formidable force, fortified at points, Longstreet had about fifteen thousand men, after deducting camp guards and foraging parties. Marching and fighting had been his almost daily occupation from the middle of January, 1863, when he left Fredericksburg to move down to Suffolk, Virginia, until the 16th of December, when he found bleak winter again breaking upon him, away from friends, and dependent upon his own efforts for food and clothing for his ragged and hungry Confederates. It is not in the purview of this paper to more than briefly refer to Longstreet's work in East Tennessee in the bitter winter of 1863-64. He has said that Washington's men at Valley Forge did not suffer more than his command on the hard campaigns of that severe winter. Much of the time half-clad and shoeless, the snowcovered ground bore the bloody imprint of their naked feet. They were compelled to dig holes in the frozen ground, which were thawed out by fires to furnish their usual couch. They had nothing to eat but parched corn. But the brave fellows never lost heart. They undertook to make a joke of their dire straits. As General Longstreet rode out among them, they would call cheerily to know if they might not have a little fodder to eat with their corn. It is now generally conceded that no more valorous service was rendered the Confederate cause during the four years' fighting than Longstreet's work in East Tennessee, cut off from supplies, improperly supported |