And now, gentle reader, my task is done—­my pen laid aside, after days and days of earnest toil to give a faithful and correct account of your daring, your endurance, your patriotism, and your fidelity to the cause you had espoused.  Your aims have been of the highest, your performances ideal, and while you were unsuccessful, still your deeds of daring will live in history as long as civilization lasts.  While your cherished hopes ended in a dream, still your aspirations have been of the loftiest, and your acts will be copied by generations yet unborn, as a fitting pattern for all brave men.  You have fought in all the great battles of the East, from the trenches of Petersburg to the rugged heights of Round Top.  Your blood mingled with that of your comrades of the West, from Chickamauga to the storming of Fort London.  You combatted the march of Sherman from the Saltkahatchie to the close, and stacked your arms more as conquering heroes than beaten foes.  You have nothing to regret but the results—­no hope but the continued prosperity of a reunited people.  This heritage of valor left to posterity as a memorial of Southern manhood to the Southern cause will be cherished by your descendants for all time, and when new generations come on and read the histories of the great Civil War, and recall to their minds the fortitude, the chivalry, and the glories of the troops engaged, Kershaw’s Brigade will have a bright page in the book of their remembrance.

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CHAPTER XLIV

Retrospect.

It would be supposed that the writer, who had fought by the side of nearly all, and who had visited battlefields where troops from every State had fallen, could form an idea of “Which were the best troops from the South?” The South has furnished a type of the true soldier that will last as a copy for all time.  She had few regulars, and her volunteer troops were brought into service without preparation or without the knowledge of tactical drill, but in stoicism, heroism, and martyrdom they excelled the world.

I give in these pages a brief synopsis of the characteristics of the troops from different States, and while this is the view of the author alone, still I feel assured that the great mass of the old soldiers will admit its correctness.  To the question, “Which were the best troops from the South?” there would be as many answers and as much differences of opinions as there were States in the Confederacy, or organizations in the field, as each soldier was conscientious in his belief that those from his own State were the best in the army, his brigade the best in the division, his regiment the best in the brigade, and his own company the best in the regiment.  This is a pardonable pride of the soldier, and is as it should be to make an army great.  Where all, individually and collectively, were as good or better than any who ever before faced an enemy upon a battlefield, there really are no “best.”