After that they had stood in their tracks
like rooted trees, as motionless as those on the mountain behind them,
their eyes fixed on their commander, and only the quick heaving
up and down the dark line, as of horses over-laboring, told of the emotion
which was shaking them. The Colonel, as he ended, half-turned to
his subordinate officer at the end of the dim line, as though he were about
to turn the company over to him to be dismissed; then faced the line again,
and taking a step nearer, with a sudden movement of his hands towards the men
as though he would have stretched them out to them, began again:
"Men," he said, and his voice changed at the word, and sounded like
a father's or a brother's, "My men, I cannot let you go so. We were neighbors
when the war began -- many of us, and some not here to-night;
we have been more since then -- comrades, brothers in arms; we have all stood
for one thing -- for Virginia and the South; we have all done our duty --
tried to do our duty; we have fought a good fight, and now it seems
to be over, and we have been overwhelmed by numbers, not whipped --
and we are going home. We have the future before us -- we don't know
just what it will bring, but we can stand a good deal. We have proved it.
Upon us depends the South in the future as in the past.
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