"Had this communication," he said to Dr. White,
"not come as an order, I should instantly have declined it, and
continued in command of my brave old brigade."
Whether he or his soldiers felt the parting most it is hard to say.
Certain it is that the men had a warm regard for their leader. There
was no more about him at Centreville to attract the popular fancy
than there had been at Harper's Ferry. When the troops passed in
review the eye of the spectator turned at once to the trim carriage
of Johnston and of Beauregard, to the glittering uniform of Stuart,
to the superb chargers and the martial bearing of young officers
fresh from the Indian frontier. The silent professor, absent and
unsmiling, who dressed as plainly as he lived, had little in common
with those dashing soldiers. The tent where every night the general
and his staff gathered together for their evening devotions, where
the conversation ran not on the merits of horse and hound, on
strategy and tactics, but on the power of faith and the mysteries of
the redemption, seemed out of place in an army of high-spirited
youths. But, while they smiled at his peculiarities, the Confederate
soldiers remembered the fierce counterstroke on the heights above
Bull Run.
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