Anybody who will look at the old works to-day, as I have recently done, and consider the facts dispassionately, can see this clearly for himself. Our enemies had behind them, and running parallel with their lines, a system of roads that was out of our sight. They had resources practically illimitable. They had in front of them an attenuated line of men, stretched out for twenty miles, and without the possibility of reinforcement from any source. They could have concentrated any force they pleased at any point they pleased and at any time they pleased, without the possibility of our discovering what they were doing. They could have made an irresistible attack upon any point of our line at will. They did not do it. And so the fight went on. During all those weary months the good women of Petersburg went about their household affairs with fifteen-inch shells dropping occasionally into their boudoirs or uncomfortably near to their kitchen ranges. Yet they paid no attention to any danger that threatened themselves. Their deeds of mercy will never be adequately recorded until the angels report. But this much I want to say of them--they were “war women” of the most daring and devoted type. When there was need of their ministrations on the line, they were sure to be promptly there; and once, as I have recorded elsewhere in print, a bevy of them came out to the lines only to encourage us, and, under a fearful fire, sang Bayard Taylor’s “Song of the Camp,” giving us as an encore the lines:-- “Ah, soldiers, to your honored rest, Your truth and valor bearing, The bravest are the tenderest, The loving are the daring.” With inspiration such as these women gave us, it was no wonder that, as I heard General Sherman say soon after the war: “It took us four years, with all our enormous superiority in resources, to overcome the stubborn resistance of those men.” HAM SEAY Ham Seay had a hæmorrhage that morning--a hæmorrhage from the lungs. But Ham Seay had the fastest horse in the company, and he knew how to ride a horse for all that was in him of achievement. When the news came that Stuart wanted to communicate as quickly as possible with the commandant at Fredericksburg, Ham Seay volunteered to carry the message. “But you’re ill,” said Stuart. “That doesn’t matter,” said Ham. “I can ride my horse, and my horse is a good one.” “But you’re ill,” said Stuart again. “And I don’t want to send an ill man on such a journey as this.” Then Ham Seay rose in the majesty of his manhood. “General,” he said, “I am a doomed man. I cannot live long to render service in the war. I want to render what service I can. I want to carry this message. It will do me no harm. It will not shorten the few days I have yet to live. It will make my life worth something.” So Stuart gave him the message to a general fifty miles away.