If certain leading facts are repeated at the risk of monotony, it will be for the purpose of impressing them upon the memories of youthful readers of history. As a sample, but rather an extreme one, of the thousand and one foolish things which have been written of this affair, I will state that a magazine for children, “St. Nicholas,” I think it was, some time ago contained a description of this assault, in which a comparison was drawn between the troops engaged, and language something like the following was used: “Those on the left faltered and fled. The right behaved gloriously. Each body acted according to its nature, for they were made of different stuff. The one of common earth, the other of finest clay. Pettigrew’s men were North Carolinians, Pickett’s were superb Virginians.” To those people who do not know how the trash which passes for Southern history was manufactured, the motives which actuated the writers, and how greedily at first everything written by them about the war, was read, it is not so astonishing that a libel containing so much ignorance, narrowness and prejudice as the above should have been printed in a respectable publication, as the fact, that even to this day, when official records and other data are so accessible, there are thousands of otherwise well-informed people all over the land who believe the slander to be either entirely or in part true. And it looks almost like a hopeless task to attempt to combat an error which has lived so long and flourished so extensively. But some one has said, “Truth is a Krupp gun, before which Falsehood’s armor, however thick, cannot stand. One shot may accomplish nothing, or two, or three, but keep firing it will be pierced at last, and its builders and defenders will be covered with confusion.” This little essay shall be my one shot, and may Justice defend the right.
In the great war the soldiers from New York and North Carolina filled more graves than those from any of the other States. In the one case fourteen and in the other thirty-six per cent. of them died in supporting a cause which each side believed to be just.
Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia each had about the same number of infantry at Gettysburg, in all twenty-four brigades of the thirty-seven present. Now, this battle is not generally considered a North Carolina fight as is Chancellorsville, but even here the soldiers of the old North State met with a greater loss (killed and wounded, remember, for North Carolina troops never attempted to rival certain Virginia brigades in the number of men captured), than did those from any other State, and, leaving out Georgians, greater than did those from any two States. Though the military population of North Carolina was exceeded by that of Virginia and Tennessee, she had during the war more men killed upon the battlefield than both of them together. This is a matter of record. It may be that she was a little deliberate in making up her mind to go to war, but when once she went in she went in to stay. At the close of the terrible struggle in which so much of her best blood had been shed, her soldiers surrendered at Appomattox and Greensboro more muskets than did those from any other State in the Confederacy. Why troops with this record should not now stand as high everywhere as they did years ago in Lee’s and Johnston’s armies, may appear a problem hard to solve, but its solution is the simplest thing in the world, and I will presently give it.