Editor National Tribune: I have been reading with interest your "Appomattox Campaign," and with considerable concern have I followed your lines in describing the attack on Fort Stedman. In my mental retrospect I see those rebel troops as they keep reinforcing the first troops that made the capture by marching across the space between their lines and the fort. When our army captured Hare's Hill, in June, 1864, the rebels had a line of earthworks around the eastern and northern base of the knoll. These works remained intact, except where a few roads had been cut thru them to allow the supply wagons to pass. To these the rebel troops hastened. This gave them complete range of the Harrison Creek Valley for nearly a half mile to the east and away to the north for some distance, thus making it more difficult to dislodge them.

A splendid sight was to be seen when Hartranft's Pennsylvanians debouched from the narrow defiles on the east side of Harrison Creek Valley and spread out and formed line preparatory to the division's charge on the fort. It grew into a race between the color-bearers of the regiments of that division, and rendered their advance irresistible. I remember as a boy wondering why so complete a surprise should fail so utterly.

Gen. Gordon lectured in Iola, Kan., the Winter before he died. Being an acquaintance of the man who secured the General's services, I was selected to take the General to the hall and introduce him to our boys and preside at the lecture. After the lecture I went with him to his hotel, and, having been an eyewitness and participant in the recapture of the fort, I inquired of the General why his scheme had failed. His reply was: "God did not intend we should succeed. He caused the axle of the tender of the train that was bringing troops from north of the James to break, and thus prevent 10,000 men from reaching the scene of action. God was on your side and wrought against us. He had decreed that the war should cease. God is always right and just."

A tacit acknowledgment on the part of the General that the war was all wrong, to my mind.―J. E. Henderson, Corporal, Co. B, 60th Ohio, Ninth Corps, Iola, Kan.

Henderson, J. E. "Gen. Gordon's View." The National Tribune: Washington, D.C., November 7, 1912, page 7.