"These
dispositions," he said, "faithfully sustained, insured the enemy's
speedy evacuation of Chattanooga for want of food and forage. Possessed
of the shortest route to his depot, and the one by which reinforcements
must reach him, we held him at our mercy, and his destruction was only a
question of time." But the dispositions were not "faithfully
sustained," and I doubt not but thousands of men engaged in trying to
"sustain" them now rejoice that they were not. There was no time during
the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was
more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the
people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and
prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution
abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which
degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class.
With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have
extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor
allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming
degraded, and those who did were denominated "poor white trash.
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