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Stumbled upon Spear's tale about food and the march from Appomattox while doing some research about the campaign. Link : http://www.unz.org/Pub/SpearEllis-1913 Found it in a footnote in William Marvel's book, Lee's Last Retreat : The Flight to Appomattox. The story is really about soldier rations, however, buried in the story is Spear taking a subtle, but huge, swipe at Joshua Chamberlain's story of Fredericksburg.
The footnote was in a section about how William Marvel thinks the Gordon / Chamberlain story is a product of post war aggrandizement and fertile imagination. Marvel says it's a myth. An example of aggrandizement is how a brigadier commanding one of three brigades - and in the presence of his division commander - over time becomes that brigadier being selected by U.S. Grant to receive the formal surrender of Confederate infantry. Bartlett and the other brigade commanders somehow became invisible while Chamberlain becomes the most important person there.
Marvel's book is worth a read, too.
The footnote was in a section about how William Marvel thinks the Gordon / Chamberlain story is a product of post war aggrandizement and fertile imagination. Marvel says it's a myth. An example of aggrandizement is how a brigadier commanding one of three brigades - and in the presence of his division commander - over time becomes that brigadier being selected by U.S. Grant to receive the formal surrender of Confederate infantry. Bartlett and the other brigade commanders somehow became invisible while Chamberlain becomes the most important person there.
Marvel's book is worth a read, too.
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