very man, woman and child was
familiar. The rattle of the dead-wagons could be heard at every turn.
They piled them high, these uncoffined bodies of the brave, and hurried
them under the burning sun to the trenches outside the city. They piled
them in long heaps to await the slow work of the tired grave-diggers.
The frail board coffins in which they were placed at last would often
burst from the swelling corpse. The air was filled with poisonous odors.

The hospitals were jammed with swollen, disfigured bodies of the wounded
and the dying. Gangrene and erysipelas did their work each hour in the
weltering heat of mid-summer.

But the South received her dead and mangled boys with a majesty of grief
that gave no cry to the ear of the world. Mothers lifted their eyes from
the faces of their dead and firmly spoke the words of resignation:

"Thy will, O Lord, be done!"

Her houses were filled with the wounded, the dying and the dead, but
Richmond lifted up her head. The fields about her were covered with
imperishable glory.

The Confederacy had won immortality.

The women of the South resolved to wear no mourning for their dead.
Their boys had laid their lives a joyous offering on their country's
altar. They would make no cry.

Johnston had lost six thousand and eighty-four men, dead, wounded and
missing at Seven Pines, and Lee had lost seventeen thousand five hundred
and eighty-three in seven days of continuous battle. But the South was
thrilled with the joy of a great deliverance.

Jefferson Davis in his address to the army expressed the universal
feeling of his people:

"Richmond, July 5, 1862.

"_To the Army of Eastern Virginia_:

"_Soldiers_:

"I congratulate you upon the series of brilliant victories which,
under the favor of Divine Providence, you have lately won; and as
President of the Confederate States, hereby tender to you the
thanks of the country, whose just cause you have so skillfuly and
heroically saved.

"Ten days ago an invading army, vastly superior to yours in numbers
and the material of war, closely beleaguered your Capital and
vauntingly proclaimed our speedy conquest. You marched to attack
the enemy in his entrenchments. With well-directed movements and
death-defying valor you charged upon him in his strong positions,
drove him from field to field over a distance of more than
thirty-five miles, and, despite his reenforcement