PREFACE.
It was the singular good fortune of the people of the Confederate
States, in their ill-fated struggle for separate government, to
have for their leaders men of the loftiest mould.
The challenge can be safely given to the world to furnish
from any of the nations of the earth, in any one era of its history,
an assemblage of heroes who, for supreme ability, for martial
prowess, and at the same time for devotion to duty and unsullied
purity of character, will surpass the chieftains who commanded
the armies of the Confederacy.
Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Albert Sydney Johnston, Stonewall
Jackson, Joseph E. Johnston, A. P. Hill, Leonidas Polk, J.
E. B. Stuart,—and others still spared to their countrymen,—
deserve to live and will live through future ages in human
remembrance among the knightliest and noblest of mankind.
The perusal of this faithful story of a grand life nobly lived
will convince the reader that William N. Pendleton rightfully
belongs to this galaxy of Christian heroes.
If it be true that the character of a people and their cause may
be fairly measured by the characters of their typical men,—their
chosen leaders and representatives,—then indeed the people of
the Confederate South have here their proudest heritage, and no
higher duty can be discharged to the living and the dead than
that performed by the truthful chronicler of such lives and such
men.
This work of duty and love fittingly delineates the life, labors,
and character of a Christian soldier and patriot,—a man whose
virtues, though well known to the people whom he served and
those among whom he lived, "were best known to his family, his
servants, and the poor."
The devoted love of the daughter has not been allowed to
weaken the fidelity of the historian or to give exaggerated color
to the events and the scenes which she describes.
No biography of General Pendleton could be complete which
did not give some account of the society, the institutions, the
traditions, the people, the environment under the influence and
in the midst of which he was reared, and this lovely picture is
here drawn true to life.
Nor could any just history of General Pendleton's life be written
which did not also portray, as has been done in this volume,
the beauties of the life of the lovely woman who was for more
than half a century his helpmeet,-the worthy sharer of his joys
and his sorrows, his trials and his triumphs.
"For contemplation he, for valor formed;
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace:
He for God only, she for God in him."
