100 Nortu CAROLINA Troops, 1861-’65.

firing line knows how impossible it would be for any one to
know who fired the fatal shot, and the man who would at-
tempt to set up such a claim would certainly presume on the

intelligence of the average Confederate soldier.
Aur. H. H. Torar,

Damon, Tex.,
.2 May, 1901.

Nors.—Thus fell in the glory of his prime the greatest soldier the war
produced, when the war was only half through. What heights he might
have reached if he had lived, we know not for he was constantly growing.

It isa singular reflection that notwithstanding the countless tons of
bullets, cannon balls and shell fired during those four eventful years
two minie balls, in all human probability, decided the result as it was.
The bullet that slew Albert Sidney Johnston when in another hour he
would have captured the Western Army with Grant and Sherman at its
head and that other bullet which prostrated ‘‘ Stonewall” Jackson when
on the eve of capturing Hooker’s army destroyed our hopes of success.
There were other occasions when mismanagement intervened, among
them the failure to push our success on the second day at Gettysburg,
and Whiting’s failure to capture Butler when ‘‘bottled up” at Bermuda
Hundreds, but the deaths of Jackson and Johnston were fatalities.

The splendid courage of our soldiery and the patriotism of our people
would have conquered success, but, as Napier said of Napoleon, ‘‘Fortune,
that name for the unknown. combinations of an infinite power, was wanting’
to us and without her aid, the designs of man are as bubbles upon @
troubled ocean.’’—Ep.