(* “During the truce on the second day of Fredericksburg,” says Captain Smith, “a tall, fine-looking Alabama soldier, who was one of the litter-bearers, picked up a new Enfield rifle on the neutral ground, examined it, tested the sights, shouldered it, and was walking back to the Confederate lines, when a young Federal officer, very handsomely dressed and mounted, peremptorily ordered him to throw it down, telling him he had no right to take it.  The soldier, with the rifle on his shoulder, walked very deliberately round the officer, scanning him from head to foot, and then started again towards our lines.  On this the Federal Lieutenant, drawing his little sword, galloped after him, and ordered him with an oath to throw down the rifle.  The soldier halted, then walked round the officer once again, very slowly, looking him up and down, and at last said, pointing to his fine boots:  “I shall shoot you tomorrow, and get them boots;” then strode away to his command.  The Lieutenant made no attempt to follow.”) And they were not raised in mockery.  The battle-field was the soldier’s harvest, and as the sheaves of writhing forms, under the muzzles of their deadly rifles, increased in length and depth, the men listened with straining ears for the word to charge.  The counterstroke was their opportunity.  The rush with the bayonet was never so speedy but that deft fingers found time to rifle the haversacks of the fallen, and such was the eagerness for booty that it was with the greatest difficulty that the troops were dragged off from the pursuit.  It is said that at Fredericksburg, some North Carolina regiments, which had repulsed and followed up a Federal brigade, were hardly to be restrained from dashing into the midst of the enemy’s reserves, and when at length they were turned back their complaints were bitter.  The order to halt and retire seemed to them nothing less than rank injustice.  Half-crying with disappointment, they accused their generals of favouritism!  “They don’t want the North Car’linians to git anything,” they whined.  “They wouldn’t hev’ stopped Hood’s Texicans—­they’d hev’ let them go on!”

But if they relieved their own pressing wants at the expense of their enemies, if they stripped the dead, and exchanged boots and clothing with their prisoners, seldom getting the worst of the bargain, no armies—­to their lasting honour be it spoken, for no armies were so destitute—­were ever less formidable to peaceful citizens, within the border or beyond it, than those of the Confederacy.  It was exceedingly seldom that wanton damage was laid to the soldier’s charge.  The rights of non-combatants were religiously respected, and the farmers of Pennsylvania were treated with the same courtesy and consideration as the planters of Virginia.  A village was none the worse for the vicinity of a Confederate bivouac, and neither man nor woman had reason to dread the half-starved tatterdemalions who followed Lee and Jackson.  As the grey columns, in the march through Maryland,