see that the conflict was ended there, as but a few stragglers could be seen. Hence it was mere folly for our small force to continue the fight, and I said to my aid: "No; the best thing the men can do, is to get out of this, and let them go." I know these brigades were the last troops to leave the field, and as we moved slowly back, but few of Pickett's men were visible.

In reviewing the events preceding the battle, and the occurrences during the three days, we cannot fail to be impressed with the cause of embarrassment to General Lee, and the reasons for his failure to obtain a decided and useful victory. For the proof is abundant that Gettysburg fight was a drawn battle, though with General Lee in the enemy's country, failure of victory was a defeat to his campaign.

The errors, a want of judgment which defeated General Lee's plans, are conspicuous and numerous, and it is strange, tho' reasonably certain, that if any one of these errors had not been made, the result of Gettysburg would have been a victory for us.

But all in succession were against us, and we were crushed by a combination of mistakes and disasters, to which few armies have ever been subjected.

I will enumerate these errors:

Ist. The absence of Stuart's cavalry. That officer disobeyed two orders of General Lee, to keep his cavalry between our army and the enemy. Hence General Lee was seriously embarrassed, as he never knew the precise movements of the enemy, and could not prepare to meet them as he desired.

2nd. General Ewell not moving directly on Gettysburg early on the 1st, where he would have begun the fight with Hill, made it speedily successful at an early hour of the day, and prevented the enemy from halting on Cemetery Hill.

3rd. Our success the first day not having been followed up by vigorous pursuit of the enemy.

4th. Failure to attack the enemy by daybreak on the 2nd, before he had concentrated, as desired by General Lee.

5th. Want of concert in attacks on 2nd, and especially Rodes' failure to sustain Early at night.

6th. Longstreet's delay in reaching the field early on 2nd, when only three miles distant, until 4 o'clock P. M.

7th. Longstreet's not vigorously attacking with his whole force. on the 3rd.

8th. Failure to occupy Culp's Hill on 1st, without opposition, which would have driven the enemy from Cemetery Hill.

9th. A great error in attacking the third day on a line six miles long, and without simultaneous effort, instead of concentrating two corps against the enemy's left, as General Lee intended, and moving forward to the attack successive divisions, until the adversary was overwhelmed, his line broken, and his left turned. The even balance of the day as it was shows that this strategy would have succeeded.

The battle of Gettysburg was fought on 3rd in reality by three divisions-Pickett's, Heth's, under Pettigrew, Pender's, under Trimble-all concentrated on the enemy's left centre. Longstreet's two right divisions were not put in earnestly. Two divisions of Hill were in position on Seminary Ridge, and Ewell's Corps on left, held in threatening attitude.

It was evident that in General Lee's position, distant from his supplies and from all reinforcements, and inferior in numbers, that these disadvantages could only be neutralized by repeated and hard blows, dealt so rapidly that the enemy would not have time to mature any plan or to put himself in a secure position. General Lee fully realized this, and as soon as he was aware that the enemy were at Gettysburg, was earnest in a desire to push our success the first day, and to attack by daylight on 2nd. This was prevented by the indecision of his corps commanders.

Both armies were exhausted by the great efforts and sacrifices that had been made, and seemed willing to end the campaign without further struggle.

But there is no question that, as General Lee hoped and believed, a successful battle in Pennsylvania would have secured Southern

independence.

WILLIAM HENRY CHASE WHITING,

Major-General C. S. Army.

An Address Delivered in Raleigh, N. C., on Memorial Day, May 10th, 1895, at the request of the Ladies' Memorial Society.

By C. B. DENSON, of the Engineer Service, C. S. Army.

"Respectfully dedicated to the surviving partner of the joys and sorrows of the matchless genius, the heroic soldier and the unselfish patriot, to whose memory these pages are devoted.”

Ladies of the Memorial Association, Comrades of the

Confederate States Army, Ladies and Gentlemen:

The poet has said in touching numbers

Character is the foundation of human greatness. In its perfection, it represents, in the individual, the sum of the activities of life; in a national sense, it is the development in history of the ruling spirit of a people, leading to the flower of achievement-to the utmost limit of moral, physical and intellectual effort, in the discharge of duty.

The element of character most God-like, is self-sacrifice.

According to this standard, we are here to-day, thirty years after the deep-mouthed cannon have hushed their voices, to honor the memory of the most peerless heroes in the annals of the world.

He who imagines that the statesmen of the South, above all the people of North Carolina, rushed into the tremendous conflict of the Civil War in thoughtless pride, or mad determination to preserve a single species of property, knows nothing of the true spirit that filled the hearts of the best of the land.

The Union had been the beloved object of Southern patriotism. Alamance and Mecklenburg sounded to arms for the revolutionary struggle, Patrick Henry's eloquence fired the torch of liberty, Washington led her hosts, Madison drafted the Constitution, Marshall interpreted the laws-Southern men all. King's Mountain and Guilford were the precursors of the inevitable close of the drama of the revolution at Yorktown. For seventy years and more Southern genius dominated the country and led it, step by step, to the pinnacle of fame. Jefferson and Jackson were the great executives of the first half of the century. The second War of Independence, in 1812, was maintained chiefly by Southern valor. Scott and Taylor, as well as Lee and Davis, in the Mexican war, were men of the South. Fought by an overwhelming majority of Southern men, that war, with the purchases previous thereto and succeeding, by Southern statesmanship, had doubled the area ruled by the Federal government, against the repeated protest of the North. The South had given to the general government, of her own accord, the princely territory of the States between the Tennessee and the Great Lakes. There was never a a conflict in behalf of the Union and the Constitution of these United States, in which the men of the South did not far outnumber those of any other section, and give their precious lives in due proportion.

The world will never know how much it cost the South; how stupendous was the price that North Carolina paid to defend the Constitutional rights of the States. Was there no sorrow in contemplating the destruction of the fabric reared by the efforts of Southern statesmanship and cemented with the blood of her children?

Who, to-day, would have had this old Commonwealth trample upon her traditions-even from the earliest colonial days, "of the freest of the free," in Bancroft's words-and tamely submit to military usurpation from Washington to send her sons into the field, against every dictate of conscience and settled conviction of the sov

ereign rights of the States; to send her sons, I say, against their brethren of Virginia and South Carolina-bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh, not only in the claims of blood, but in history and sentiment?

Never have the annals of history known a line of statesmen like those who guided the fortunes of this country for three-quarters of a century or more! Think of the purity of character of Nathaniel Macon, of John C. Calhoun, of William A. Graham, of Jefferson Davis! Who knew more of the constitutional authority of the State to order her citizens to stand in her defence than such statesmen ?

My comrades, when men stand above the graves of our sacred dead and drop a flower there to honor them, because they died for what they thought was right, and bend their heads before your gray hairs, in token that your suffering for long years touches them, because you thought you were right-there is a vain and empty echo to such words, kindly meant as they may be.

For one, I am here to affirm, before high Heaven, that they were right, and that North Carolina would have been recreant to every principle of honor and duty had she done otherwise. When I see the saintly Bishop-General, who was born on your own soil, leaving the pulpit under the imperative sense of overwhelming duty and sharing the dangers of the field; at one moment stretching forth his arms in blessing upon the stricken people, and the next moment torn apart by an enemy's shot, I feel, with the poet

When I think of Stonewall Jackson, wounded unto death, yet wrestling in prayer with his God, as he was wont to do, in the valley of the Shenandoah, before some bloody enterprise of the next day, like the stern Covenanters of old, and then committing his cause and