udden and daring raid, and on more
than one occasion carried consternation into the enemy's camp by a
brilliant dash through it. One of his most successful raids was made
around McClellan's army on the peninsula, shaking its sense of security
and threatening its communications. On another occasion, he dashed into
Pope's camp, captured his official correspondence and personal effects
and made prisoners of several officers of his staff, Pope himself
escaping only because he happened to be away from headquarters. The one
shadow upon his military career, referred to above, was his absence from
the field of Gettysburg.

He was directed to take a position on the right of the Confederate army,
but started away on a raid in the rear of the Federals, not expecting a
battle to be fought at once, and he did not get back to the main army
until the battle of Gettysburg had been lost. The absence of cavalry
was a severe handicap to the Confederate army, and Lee always attributed
his defeat to Stuart's absence; but Stuart maintained that he had acted
under orders, and that the mistake was not his. He was killed in a fight
with Sheridan's cavalry at Yellow Tavern, Virginia, a short time later.

And here we must end the story of the great soldiers of the Confederacy.
There were many others who fought well and bravely--Bragg, A.P. Hill,
Magruder, Pemberton--but none of them attained the dimensions of a
national figure. Weighing the merits of the leaders of the two armies,
they would seem to be pretty evenly balanced. This was natural enough,
since all of them had had practically the same training and experience,
and, during the war, the same opportunities. Lee, Jackson and Johnston
were fairly matched by Grant, Sheridan and Sherman.

The Southern leaders, perhaps, showed more dash and vim than the
Northern ones, for they waged a more desperate fight; but both sides
fought with the highest valor, and if the war did not have for the North
the poignant meaning it had for the South, it was because practically
all of its battles were fought on southern soil, and the southern people
saw their fair land devastated. In no instance did the North suffer any
such burning humiliation as that inflicted on the South by Sherman in
his march to the sea; at the close of the war, despite its sacrifice of
blood and treasure, the North was more prosperous than it had been at
the beginning, while the South lay prostrate and ruined. So to the North
the war