568 NortH Carouina Troops, 1861-’65.

duty was “well done.” Vol. 48, pp. 54, 614, 912, 954; Vol.
44, p. 690, and Vol. 45, p. 255.

In his official report to General Lee of these actions Gen-
eral Stuart wrote: “I was extremely anxious now to attack
the enemy as early as possible, having, since Hampton’s ar-
rival, received sufficient reinforcement to attack the enemy’s
cavalry, but the next morning (21st) being the Sabbath, I
recognized my obligation to do no other duty than what was
absolutely necessary, and determined, so far as was in my
power, to devote it to rest.” Vol. 44, p. 690. But, as we
have seen, he was forced to fight. And this extract is quoted
here that all young North Carolinians, in studying Confeder-
ate soldiery, may see that this great, ideal cavalry general of
the South, with Jackson and Lee, recognized and obeyed God,
as the “Lord of hosts.”

Jackson prayed as hard as he fought. He always prayed
fervently first and then fought. And his battles and victories
were the answered inspirations of his prayers. When a great
crisis was upon him, the flaps of his tent hung closed for hours
and no one dared approach, for all knew that “Jackson was
holding a council of war with God.” And the South’s sub-
limest and truest title of Lee was—‘Our Christian Leader.”
The Commander-in-Chief of a Christian people, whose hearts,
together with those of their three greatest generals, were con-
tinually and earnestly asking their God to give victory to
their Confederacy. They were the great typical sons of the
Southern men and mothers around them; testifying, as the
presence of such men always does, by their individual great-
ness, the greatness of those about them. Not exceptions to
but only exalted emblems of the South’s men and women.
Just as our own Mitchell and other great mountains are ele-
vated expressions of the earth’s surface around them, without
which respective surroundings neither these “giants among
men” nor the mountains could exist. And these “Princes in
Israel” and these mountains and their environments are not,
in any way, the result of the so-called evolution of certain
scientists nor of their “law of the survival of the fittest,” but
each and all are the result of the immediate word and work
of God. The South’s God did not answer those patriot

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Srxty-THrrp REGIMENT. 569

pray-ers for their Confederacy, as they prayed, for, “He
doeth all things well’? and not always as we ask. He saw
that, for us and our posterity and all the world beside, it
was best that the Confederacy should die, after writing its
glories of men and women with letters of eternal stars in
the everlasting firmament of history. And thus, by Him
and by His love, ours became “The Lost Cause,” that as a
magnificent part of this great republic, magnified through
Him by our glories of war and our “white robes of great trib-
ulation,” we may majestically move along the mighty marches
which He has mapped out for us even to “the uttermost parts
of the earth for our possession,” utterly regardless of all small
men and measures and political parties intervening between
His “chosen people’ and His great predestined plans and
purposes for us, “who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the
adoption, and the glory, and the covenants and the giving of
the law, and the service of God, and the promises.”

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JAMES B. GORDON,

Under special instructions from General Stuart, dated 24
June, 1863, Vol. 45, p. 927, General Robertson’s cavalry cov-
ered the front of Ashby’s and Snicker’s Gap for some days
and then moved to Gettysburg, via Williamsport and Cham-
bersburg, arrived near Cashtown 3 July, and was put on our
army’s right flank. After the fall of Colonel Evans that
great cavalry leader, Lieutenant-Colonel James B. Gordon,
of the Ninth North Carolina Regiment, and of Wilkes
county, N. C., was put temporarily in command of the Sixty-
third Regiment and commanded it all during the Gettysburg
campaign and some time after. The night of 4 July, when
the retreat began, the Sixty-third Regiment was again as-
signed the post of honor as picket and rear guard. At the
instance of General R. E. Lee, General Stuart instructed
General Robertson, now on the right near Fairfield, Pa.,
“that it was essentially necessary for him to hold the Jack
Mountain passes,” including two prominent roads. Vol. 44,
p. 699, As Company F, of the Sixty-third Regiment, rode
to the top of one of the passes to picket, it met the head of a
Federal cavalry regiment coming to take possession of the