still stood to their guns, and, in answer to the enemy, thundered forth their defiant motto, “Come and take us!” And now—­who more peaceful, who more public-spirited, who more kind in word and deed?  Of the Virginia detachment I knew little except their splendid record.  From the fifth company I frequently received patients during my service with the Army of Tennessee, for, like their comrades of Virginia, they seemed to be in every battle, and in the thick of it.  In fact, New Orleans and the whole State of Louisiana, like every city and State in the South, are peopled with veterans and heroes.  In comparatively few cases have military organizations been kept up.  Other duties engross the late Confederates, of whom it may be truly said their record of citizenship is as excellent as their war record.  If to any reader it occurs that I seem to be doing particular justice to New Orleans troops, I will say, let the feeling which arises in your own breast regarding your “very own” plead for me.  Remember that my husband was one of the famous Dreux Battalion, and afterwards of Gibson’s Brigade, also that Louisianians were exiles, and that love of our home, with sorrow and indignation on account of her humiliation and chains, drew us very close together.  But aside from this natural feeling there was no shadow of difference in my ministration or in the affection I bore towards all “my boys.”

There was not a single Southern State unrepresented among the bleeding victims of Chickamauga.  From that hardly-contested field, as from many others, a rich harvest of glory has been reaped and garnered until the treasure-houses of history are full to overflowing.  Glowing accounts of the splendid deeds of this or that division, brigade, regiment, company, have immortalized the names of—­their officers.  And what of the unfaltering followers, whose valor supported their brave leaders and helped to create many a splendid record?  Here lay the shattered remnants, each ghastly wound telling its own story of personal bravery.  The fiery sons of South Carolina, unsubdued by the perils they had passed, unmindful of their gaping wounds, as ready then to do and dare as when they threw down the gauntlet of defiance and stood ready to defend the sovereignty of their State.  The men who followed where the gallant Forrest led, “looking the warrior in love with his work.”  The devoted patriots who charged with Breckenridge.  The tall, soldierly Tennesseeans, of whom their commander said, when asked if he could take and hold a position of transcendent danger, “Give me my Tennesseeans, and I’ll take and hold anything;” the determined, ever-ready Texans, who, under the immortal Terry, so distinguished themselves, and under other leaders in every battle of the war won undying laurels; North Carolinians, of whose courage in battle I needed no better proof than the pluck they invariably showed under the torture of fevered wounds or of the surgeon’s