LIEUT.-GEN. JOHN B. HOOD.

CHAPTER LX.

Peculiar glory of the soldier-State of Texas.-Early recollections in the war of "Hood and his Texans."- Hood's cavalry command on the Peninsula.Commands the Texas Brigade.-The peculiar losses of Gaines' Mills.-Gen. Hood in the battle of Sharpsburg.-"The two Little Giant Brigades."-Gen. Lee's opinion of Texas soldiers "in tight places."-Gen. Hood wounded at Gettysburg and at Chickamauga.-Commands a corps in Johnston's army.-Remarkable letter to the War Department.-Appointed Commanding General of the Army of Tennessee.-An ascent in rank, but a fall in reputation.—A list of errours in the Georgia-Tennessee campaign.--Failure of that campaign.— Magnanimous confession of Gen. Hood.-His chivalry.-His admirable military figure.

ANY history of the war of the Southern Confederacy is imperfect that fails to notice the large and peculiar measure of glory obtained in it by the soldier-State of Texas. The history of this distant State had, indeed, been a noble school of character; here had been planted a choice seed of manhood; and a population had grown up remarkable in this: that even in its rudest and wildest types was the exquisite mixture of honour and chivalry. This peculiarity was well illustrated in the war. Wherever the rough sons of Texas fought there was blood and glory, the terrible spasm of battle, the desperate achievement; and yet no soldiers of the Confederacy were more generous to the enemy, more magnanimous to prisoners, and more fully alive to all the sentimental appeals of the cause for which they fought. They were the men in the Army of Northern Virginia upon whom Gen. Lee most relied for all desperate enterprises, and whom he once designated by the strongest compliment he was capable of bestowing. Fighting with a fierce, apparently untamed courage, capable of sublimest self-devotion, the soldiers of Texas yet carried through the war a reputation