He himself had been wounded slightly in a skirmish just after Stone River, but he was now entirely well.

The Southern forces were gathering and General Bragg would have a great army with which they were confident of winning a victory like that of the Second Manassas or Fredericksburg.

He was glad that his son was on the staff of so great a genius as General Jackson and that he was also under the command of that other great genius, Lee.
Harry stopped reading for a moment or two and smiled with satisfaction.
The impression that Lee and Jackson had made upon the South was as great in the west as in the east.

The hero-worship which the fiery and impressionable South gives in such unstinted measure to these two men had begun already.

Harry was glad that his father recognized the great Virginians so fully, men who allied with genius temperate and lofty lives.
He resumed his reading, but the remainder of the letter was occupied with personal details.