3. III.
In concluding this sketch, an attempt will be made to give the
reader some idea of the personal character and appearance of the
brave man who, in his letter from Havana, has made that calm
and decorons appeal to posterity.
General Early, during the war, appeared to be a person of
middle age; was nearly six feet in height; and, in spite of severe
attacks of rheumatism, could undergo great fatigue. His hair
was dark and thin, his eyes bright, his smile ready and expressive,
though somewhat sarcastic. His dress was plain gray,
with few decorations. Long exposure had made his old coat
quite dingy. A wide-brimmed hat overshadowed his sparkling
eyes and forehead, browned by sun and wind. In those sparkling
eyes could be read the resolute character of the man, as in
his smile was seen the evidence of that dry, trenchant, often
mordant humour, for which he was famous.
The keen glance drove home the wit or humour, and every
one who ventured upon word-combats with Lieutenant-General
Early sustained “a palpable hit.” About some of his utterances
there was a grim effectiveness which it would be hard to excel.
There was a member of the Virginia Convention who had called
him a “submissionist” in that body, but when the war commenced,
hired a substitute, and remained at home, though
healthy and only forty. Early the “submissionist” went into
the army, fought hard, and then one day in 1862 met his quondam
critic, who said to him, “It was very hard to get you
to go
out”—alluding to Early's course in the Convention on secession.
Early's eye flashed, his lip curled. “Yes,” he replied, looking
at the black broadcloth of his companion, “but it is a d—d sight
harder to get you up to the fighting.” There was another member
of the Convention who had often criticised him, and dwelt upon
the importance of “maintaining our rights in the territories at all
hazards.” This gentleman, being aged, did not go into the army;
and one day when Early met him, during the retreat from
Manassas, the General said, with his customary wit, “Well,
Mr. M—, what do you think about getting our rights in the
territories now? It looks like we were going to lose some of
our own territory, don't it?” When General Lee's surrender
was announced to him, while lying nearly dead in his ambulance,
he muttered to his surgeon, “Doctor, I wish there was powder
enough in the centre of the earth to blow it to atoms. I would
apply the torch with the greatest pleasure. If Gabriel ever
means to blow his horn, now is the time for him to do it—no
more joyful sound could fall on my ears.”
These hits he evidently enjoyed, and he delivered them with the
coolness of a swordsman making a mortal lunge. In fact, everything
about General Early was bold, straightforward, masculine,
and incisive. Combativeness was one of his great traits.
There were many persons in and out of the army who doubted
the soundness of his judgment; there were none who ever
called in question the tough fibre of his courage. He was universally
recognised in the Army of Northern Virginia as one
of the hardest fighters of the struggle; and every confidence
was felt in him as a combatant, even by his personal enemies.
This repute he had won on many fields, from the first Manassas
to Winchester; for one of the hardest fights of the war, if it
was a defeat, was that affair on the Opequon.
It was not so much good judgment that General Early wanted
in his Valley campaign, as troops. He was “leading a forlorn
hope,” and forlorn hopes rarely succeed. “He has done as well
as any one could,” General Lee is reported to have said; and the
Commander-in-Chief had better opportunities of forming a correct
opinion than others.
Returning to Early the man, what most impressed those who
were thrown with him, was that satirical, sometimes cynical
humour, and the force and vigour of his conversation. His
voice was not pleasing, but his “talk” was excellent. His
intellect was evidently strong, combative, aggressive in all domains
of thought; his utterance direct, hard-hitting, and telling.
He was a forcible speaker; had been successful at the bar;
and in the army, as in civil life, made his way by the
independent force of his mind and character—by his strong will,
sustained energy, and the native vigour of his faculties. Sarcastic
and critical, he was criticised in return, as a man of rough
address, irascible temperament, and as wholly careless whom he
offended. So said his enemies—those who called in question
his brains and judgment. What they could not call in question,
however, was his “zeal, fidelity, and devotion,” or they will
not do so to-day. Robert E. Lee has borne his supreme and
lasting testimony upon that subject, and the brave and hardy
soldier who led that forlorn hope in the Shenandoah Valley,
when the hours of a great conflict were numbered, and darkness
began to settle like a pall upon the land illustrated by such
heroic struggles, by victories so splendid—the brave and hardy
Early at last has justice done him, and can claim for himself
that, when the day was darkest, when all hearts desponded, he
was zealous, faithful, devoted. If the world is not convinced by
the testimony of Lee, that this man was devoted to his country,
and true as steel to the flag under which he fought—true to it in
disaster and defeat as in success and victory—let them read the
letter of the exile, signing himself “J. A. Early, Lieut.-Gen.
C. S. A.”
