He is living to-day in Columbia, an expert mechanic in the service of the Southern Railroad, earning an honest living by the sweat of his brow, with a clear conscience, a faithful heart, and surrounded by a devoted family.

That the campaign against Knoxville was a failure, cannot be wondered at under the circumstances.  In the first place Longstreet’s forces were too weak—­the two thousand reinforcements to come from Virginia dwindled down to a few regiments of cavalry and a battery or two.  The men were badly furnished and equipped—­a great number being barefoot and thinly clad.  Hundreds would gather at the slaughter pens daily and cut from the warm beef hides strips large enough to make into moccasins, and thus shod, marched miles upon miles in the blinding snow and sleet.  All overcoats and heavy clothing had been left in Virginia, and it is a fact too well known to be denied among the soldiers of the South that baggage once left or sent to the rear never came to the front again.

Longstreet did not have the support he had the right to expect from his superiors and those in authority at Richmond.  He had barely sufficient transportation to convey the actual necessaries of camp equippage, and this had to be used daily in gathering supplies from the surrounding country for man and beast.  He had no tools for entrenching purposes, only such as he captured from the enemy, and expected to cross deep and unfordable rivers without a pontoon train.  With the dead of winter now upon him, his troops had no shelter to protect them from the biting winds of the mountains or the blinding snow storms from overhead save only much-worn blankets and thin tent flys five by six feet square, one to the man.  This was the condition in which the commanding General found himself and troops, in a strange and hostile country, completely cut off from railroad connection with the outside world.  Did the men murmur or complain?  Not a bit of it.  Had they grown disheartened and demoralized by their defeat at Knoxville, or had they lost their old-time confidence in themselves and their General?  On the contrary, as difficulties and dangers gathered around their old chieftain, they clung to him, if possible, with greater tenacity and a more determined zeal.  It seemed as if every soldier in the old First Corps was proud of the opportunity to suffer for his country—­never a groan or pang, but that he felt compensated with the thought that he was doing his all in the service of his country—­and to suffer for his native land, his home, and family, was a duty and a pleasure.

The soldiers of the whole South had long since learned by experience on the fields of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, along the valleys of Kentucky, the mountains and gorges of Tennessee, and the swamps of the Mississippi, that war was only “civilized barbarism,” and to endure uncomplaining was the highest attributes of a soldier.  Civilization during the long centuries yet to come may witness, perhaps, as brave, unselfish, unyielding, and patriotic bands of heroes as those who constituted the Confederate Army, but God in His wisdom has never yet created their equals, and, perhaps, never will create their superiors.