Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

THOMAS TAYLOR MUNFORD

Another officer of deserved distinction was General Thomas Taylor Munford, who was born in Richmond in 1831. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1852. At the outbreak of the war he was a planter. He became lieutenant colonel of the 30th Virginia Mounted Infantry, organized in 1861. This was the first mounted regiment organized in Virginia. It was subsequently designated as the 2d Regiment of Cavalry, General Stuart’s regiment being the 1st. In the re-organization under Stuart, Munford became colonel. He was in the first fighting and the last fighting of the Army of Northern Virginia. His career as a cavalry officer was brilliant and notable. The discharge of all duties committed to him were performed with absolute faithfulness. When General Ashby died, General Munford was recommended by General Robert E. Lee as his successor. He received two severe wounds at the Second Manassas. He was in the Maryland campaign, was at Sharpsburg and commanded a division of cavalry that confronted Hancock’s troops. Later he became commander of Fitzhugh Lee’s brigade. He was at Gettysburg and in the valley campaign with Early. In November, 1864, he was promoted to brigadier general. At Five Forks and at High Bridge he maintained the splendid reputation that he had won in the earlier days of the war. He was with Rosser at High Bridge, and, in the retreat from Richmond, bore both a prominent and valiant part. After Lee’s surrender, he endeavored to collect the scattered Confederate forces and form a junction with Johnson’s army. General Fitzhugh Lee commanded his excellent services as a division commander. With large agricultural interests in Virginia and Alabama, he still survives, full of honors and full of years, and occupies a most exalted place in the hearts of his Confederate comrades.

At no other place in the war were such a large number of cavalry engaged in a single conflict. It was practically forty per cent more men than were engaged in any one cavalry battle during hostilities, and in few battles were such a large proportion of the leaders West Point graduates.

On the 22d of May General Stuart reviewed the brigades of Fitzhugh Lee, W. H. F. Lee and Wade Hampton. He counted four thousand troopers. This review occurred between Brandy Station and Culpepper Court House, and a sense of pride and exaltation filled Stuart’s heart as he looked over the chivalrous and intrepid legions. A few days later there came over from the valleys of Virginia General William E. Jones, who brought with him a brigade of fairly well mounted and armed men. They were of splendid material. There also came from North Carolina another brigade under General Beverly H. Robertson. Stuart’s forces now numbered five brigades, constituting a magnificent array of cavalrymen. Always proud, he announced a great review for June 5th. He wanted himself and he wanted others to see in array this grand body of horsemen, in every respect the equal of any nine thousand men who ever aligned as cavalry. He asked General Robert E. Lee to be present and to impress these troops with a sight of his magnificent personality. These horsemen rode, and walked, trotted and galloped, and salvos of artillery magnified the splendor of the movements and thrilled the hearts of the riders. General Lee could not come, but General Stuart had all that the pomp and pageantry of war at that date in Virginia could present.

General Stuart, still anxious that General Lee should see his men and that the men should see him, announced another review and parade for the 8th day of June. Many of the horses were the worse for wear, the men’s uniforms were worn, faded and many threadbare, but the sabres, guns and pistols were bright, and if their equipment showed the marks of heavy service, their hearts were true and loyal to their beloved country and they were ready to respond to its every call.

The mind of the Confederate commander was revolving the scheme of the invasion of Pennsylvania, which was to culminate three weeks later at Gettysburg. He was prone to look at things more quietly than General Stuart, and so he reviewed this important part of the army of Northern Virginia, but he forbade the discharge of artillery, and he only allowed them to pass by him at a walk and trot. He knew who and what they were and he knew that when the testing moment came they would be worthy of the Confederacy. Neither General Lee nor General Stuart had any foreshadowing of what the next day would bring forth, and General Lee returned to his headquarters in the midst of his infantry. Stuart’s headquarters were at Fleetwood Hill. General Pleasanton’s headquarters were across the Rappahannock River, eight miles away. Neither seemed to know just what the other was doing. Pleasanton had marched his men down the Rappahannock. He allowed no fires. He had been sent by General Hooker to find out just what General Lee was doing and where his army was encamped. Two fords were accessible, Beverly’s Ford and Kelley’s Ford. General Pleasanton had resolved to use both to force the fighting and to back up the cavalry with infantry, to drive anything out of his way that might cross his path. Stuart, unconscious of the large force of cavalry and infantry that was ready to cross the Rappahannock, had his men at and about St. James Church, over at Fleetwood Hill, and down at Beverly’s Ford.

Pleasanton had with him some splendid artillery, especially the 6th New York Battery. At Chancellorsville, thirty-seven days before, it had written history, and on the morrow it was to write history again at Fleetwood. With thirty men beginning the day, it would bring out unscathed only six; four-fifths were to go down in the storm.

New Jersey, New York, Maine, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island were getting ready with their troops to try out the question of the courage and endurance of the horsemen from Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia.

There was to be an all-day fight, and it was to be a hand-to-hand fight. It was to be a fight in which the sabre would be used. The ever-handy revolver was to be an incident. The highest type of courage was to play an important part. In this hard-fought contest cowards would have no place. If there was cowardice hovering around on that day it did not come to the surface. Valor oozed out from the pores of the actors. The very atmosphere was full of courageous inspiration. Death would lose its terrors on Fleetwood Hill, and fear would be relegated to the rear. Smoke and dust would obscure the sight but could not and would not affect the courage of those who participated. It might hide the vision and obstruct the breathing, but the men who were to fight at Fleetwood were to take no heed of weather or atmospheres. It was to be a complete triumph over all that nature could offer to impede, and a fight with an almost supernatural fierceness that was apparently to be something more than human.

With the dawn General Gregg, with Duffie, crossed at Kelley’s Ford. Gregg traveled with Duffie to Stevensburg and then turned north toward Brandy Station. Duffie went on farther and passed by Stevensburg, and then turned north to Brandy Station; and Pleasanton crossed at Beverly’s Ford, and he headed his columns toward Fleetwood Hill, around which were to be woven wreaths of glory for the men on both sides who here went to battle.

Stuart himself on the night of the 8th camped at Fleetwood Hill. This position commanded a view of the entire country with the exception of immediately westward, which was known as the Barbour place, which was a little higher than Fleetwood Hill.

Telepathy, which frequently pervades the movements of armies, spoke to the Confederates. Their slumbers were disquieted and they breathed in the air that something important was close at hand. Stuart and none of his men knew, for his scouts had not found it out, that less than four miles away, indeed, in some places less than one mile away, there were thousands of Federal cavalry ready to dispute the question of supremacy. General Stuart was himself a mile in the rear of his forces, which were at St. James Church, a third of the way between Fleetwood Hill and Beverly’s Ford, on the road which ran from Beverly’s Ford, and which led along the north bank to Duffin’s Run.

Pleasanton had crossed the Rappahannock in the early morning and was starting on an expedition to break up Confederate communications and find out where all the Confederates were. With twenty thousand horsemen equally matched and in such close proximity, all on the alert, battle could not be long postponed. General Hooker had suspected a forward movement of General Lee’s army. General Pleasanton had behind him Russell’s and Ames’ brigades of infantrymen, and with real military skill had managed to conceal his presence from his enemies, and the Confederates were surprised when, at the dawn of day, Colonel Davis of the 8th New York Cavalry passed the Rappahannock at Beverly’s Ford. The Federals had begun operations very early, even before light. A company of the 6th Virginia Cavalry was ready to dispute the passage of the river and these Virginians, under command of Captain Gibson, persistently and skillfully delayed the advance of the Federal forces. The pickets contested every inch of ground, and for half a mile Davis’ brigade was fighting its way—still pressing forward—and its men realized before the sun had gotten up that the day’s work would be serious. After Davis and his New York regiment had traveled half a mile, Major Flournoy, who commanded the 6th Virginia Cavalry, collected one hundred men. It was barely light, but he went after the 8th New York with vigor. A third of the Confederates were either killed or wounded, but they were not without recompense. Colonel Davis was killed in the fight. Amongst those in the Confederate charge was Lieutenant R. O. Allen, of Company D, 6th Virginia Cavalry. In the movement under Flournoy, his horse was wounded and this induced him to remain in the woods. Observing a Federal officer in the road, about two hundred feet in front of his column, Lieutenant Allen advanced upon him. The Federal commander’s attention was given to his men, and with his sword he was waving them forward. Allen was upon him before he realized the situation, and when Colonel Davis turned his head, he assaulted Allen with his sabre. The fearless Virginian had only one shot in his pistol; he was taking large risks. He reserved his single shot for the crucial moment, and swinging himself upon the side of his horse, he avoided the sword stroke of the Federal; and arising in his saddle, he fired the one shot which he had reserved for the emergency, and the Federal colonel fell dead.

Both Federals and Confederates advanced to the scene of this tragic conflict. Losses were suffered on both sides. The Confederate lieutenant hastily returned to his lines. The firing attracted the attention of General Jones, who promptly ordered up the 7th Virginia Cavalry. The men had been gathered in such haste that a number of them were coatless, and some of them had pressed forward with such impatience that they had not taken time to saddle their beasts. The 7th Virginia charged fiercely, but the Federals met the charge with such courage that the Virginians were forced back and they passed two guns, of Hart’s Battery, stationed in the road.

Early in the morning the artillery on both sides had given a wonderful account of themselves. The 7th Virginia Cavalry, many without their saddles, had rushed to stay the tide of Federal advance from Beverly’s Ford. These, by sheer force of numbers, were swept away, leaving the two guns of Hart’s Confederate Battery unprotected. The Federals, animated by their success in scattering the cavalry, believed they would find these guns an easy prey, but the gunners were in no mood to yield their pieces or to run away from their speechless companions, who, with them, had so firmly stood in battle array for many months. They had learned to love the iron and steel, cold and emotionless though it was, and the thought of these long-time friends passing into the possession and use of their enemies gave them keenest pangs of regret. Supports or no supports, they resolved to fight out the right of ownership, and come what might, to stand or fall by their beloved guns. They saw the advancing foe. The vibration caused by the tramp of the rushing squadrons could be felt, and to escape from capture or death seemed hopeless. Once determined at all hazards to protect their cannon, all questions of escape were dismissed and all fears banished. With haste quickened by danger, they fired shot after shot into the advancing columns of the assailants. Shells were discarded and the deadlier canister pushed into the pieces, now warm by rapid firing, was sent crashing into the front ranks of the foe. These dauntless files went down before the withering currents of death that were starting every moment from the two guns, and when at last they reached the pieces, their ranks were shattered and their columns broken. Slowly the brave men by hand moved their guns to places of safety, and at length they found shelter behind the ranks of the forces disposed around the little country church, and about which for five hours the storm of battle had been raging with intense fierceness. The men who had stood for these guns had risked much and dared everything without counting cost, and as they rolled their guns and caissons into the Confederate ranks, so gladly opened to receive them, their comrades greeted them with shouts of admiration and approval. They had accomplished more than they had even hoped. They had caught the contagion of intrepidity that was in the air on that day. The conduct of the men on both sides was such as to stir the hearts of brave people everywhere in the world and to win for the American volunteer soldier immortal acclaim.

At ten o’clock the din and turmoil had become appalling. Both sides had changed positions, but fought with a courage like to that born of despair. Wherever the men in gray found mounted or unmounted bluecoats they rode at them with furious savagery, and likewise the men in blue seemed to rise out of the earth fully armed and pressed on to unrelenting conflict.

Some Confederate guns near St. James Church were especially destructive and annoying to the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry and a regiment of United States regulars. Their officers concluded that the quickest and most effective way to get rid of this battery was to ride it down. The cavalry was twenty-four hundred feet from the annoying artillery, and the way led across an open space. The bugles were sounded, the guidons were lifted and the order to charge stirred the souls of these brave soldiers. Aligning themselves, they burst into the open space like a devastating cyclone. The earth trembled beneath the tread of the galloping steeds. They were riding, many of them, to death, but death in the excitement of the moment lost all its terrors, and madly they rode forward. There was no organized force in front of this magnificent column to oppose the ride. The guns were to the front and stood out boldly in the perspective. The men at the guns knew well their duty and understood the call. Not a man flinched. The horses were behind, but the cannoneers had no use for horses now. Something like five minutes was necessary to reach the battery. Every man, with quickened movements, prepared to fight to the death and to drive, with promptness and despatch, grape and canister into the ranks of the approaching Federals. The men in blue looked ahead; they saw the gunners with nimble movements loading and ramming the missiles. These they knew must soon send havoc into their ranks, but not a man swayed from his place in the line where duty bade him ride. Starting with victorious cries, they galloped to the muzzles of the thundering guns. They rode over the pieces, they sabred the gunners who did not dodge under the wheels and limber chests. They could not stop. The gait was too rapid to rein up at the guns; they dashed around and over them. If a man in gray showed himself, the swish of a sabre drove him to cover. Now, beyond the guns, they saw moving, charging men. The Federals had cut in between Hampton’s and Jones’ brigades, and the moment of reparation had arrived. Hampton and Jones ordered an assault upon these intrepid assailants. Orders rang out shrill and clear. The gunners who for a moment had disappeared under the wheels and chests sprang up and began to push more grape and canister into the throats of their cannon. They hurled their guns about, stood at their appointed stations ready to turn the storm loose once more against these brave men in blue, who, though balked in their work, had no mind to give up the contest.

With the Federal lines a little scattered, Hampton and Jones rushed down with impetuous fury and the Federals were glad to ride away and escape from the onslaught of these numerous, new-found foes. The guns were saved, but as if by fire; and the artillery at Fleetwood had won, if it were possible, greater fame for the horse artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The morning was well advanced when a single horseman from one of Robertson’s North Carolina regiments, riding with the swiftness of the wind, advised General Stuart that the Federals were advancing from Kelley’s Ford, that they were now at Brandy Station, and were immediately in the rear of the Confederate line. This looked like a bad mix-up all round. The Federals were in the rear of the Confederates and the Confederates were in the rear of the Federals, and nobody seemed to know exactly where the other body was.

When this startling announcement was made, which appeared so unreasonable to General Stuart, because he did not know the man personally, he directed the scout to return and satisfy himself by closest inspection if it could be possible that the troops in the rear were Federal forces. In five minutes the man returned and with confidence pointed General Stuart to the Federal lines, then within less than half a mile of Fleetwood Hill; and there, sure enough, General Stuart saw a long column of the enemy passing. They were the men that had gone under Gregg and Duffie, down by Stevensburg, and had changed their front. They had sought and found their foes. These Federals were facing toward Brandy Station. It was apparent that in a few minutes this place would be captured, and half a mile away was Fleetwood Hill, and this was the key to the situation.

General Stuart, great commander though he was, now faced difficult and perplexing problems that might have embarrassed a man less experienced and less great.

A single gun of Chew’s Battery, because of its exhausted ammunition, had been abandoned on the side of the hill. Some imperfect shells and some shot had been left over in the limber chest and this one single gun was pulled up on the hill and was opened upon the advancing Federals. A courier in great haste was dispatched to General Stuart to tell him of the gravity of the situation. Only three Confederates were there, and they saw that if the Federals once gained Fleetwood Hill and were enabled to plant their artillery on its heights that it must be recovered or the day was lost. General Gregg and General Buford were advancing up the hill, and expected to take it without any fight. They were surprised to find artillery there. They had intended to attack General Stuart in the rear, where they believed there was no protection, and the stubborn defense with this gun amazed and puzzled the Federal commander. He did not know that on the hill there was only one gun and three men; one of these was Major McClellan, Stuart’s adjutant general. It would not have taken long for a charging squad to have gotten control of this important post.

General Gregg, deceived by this stout resistance, prepared to meet artillery with artillery, and he lost some time in unlimbering the three guns he had with him, and as soon as possible they opened vigorously upon the gun and three men who were defending Fleetwood.

To the first courier General Stuart had been incredulous; when the second came, the sound of the Federal cannonading announced unmistakably that the report was true. The Confederates, had nothing closer to Fleetwood Hill than the 12th Virginia under Colonel Harman, and a few men under Colonel White. Major McClellan had done all he could to get orders carried to General Stuart. To get the orders delivered and have reinforcements returned seemed many hours to him and his two companions, now maintaining a place, the retaking of which was necessary to win the battle, and if retaken would cost many lives. Riding in hot haste, with lines broken, Colonel Harman was the first to reach the scene of danger. As he rode up, Major McClellan urged upon Colonel Harman the emergency of the situation. He gave him no time to form his regiment, but ordered him to go in pell mell. Harman was brave and enterprising and he obeyed his orders and rode at full speed to the top of the hill, as the brave cannoneers were retiring, after firing their last cartridge from the lone gun that was standing off Gregg and his men.

One hundred and fifty feet away the 1st New Jersey Cavalry, under Colonel Windom, was advancing in columns of squadrons, with banners flying and sabres drawn. Colonel Harman’s followers of the 12th Virginia had reached the top of the hill at this critical moment, but in columns of fours it went north westwardly of the summit. The men behind their intrepid colonel rode hard to follow him and save the situation. Harman, realizing that instantaneous action was necessary, took the men he had and directed the artillery at the Federals. General Stuart, now alive to the exigencies of the situation, had ordered General Hampton and General Jones to leave the position at St. James Church and concentrate on Fleetwood Hill.

Hampton himself was a good soldier, and he had the perception of a sagacious leader, and when he heard firing he realized the danger and he had already commenced withdrawing his forces to meet the new situation.

The 12th Virginia under Harman, always gallant, at this time seemed to have failed by reason of their inability to get into line in time to make the charge. Harman notified Colonel M. C. Butler, of the South Carolina Legion, that he must look out for enemies that were in the rear, and now the Confederates set about the task of holding Fleetwood Hill, the center of this great cavalry fight. All the regiments of Jones’ brigade and Hampton’s brigade participated in charges and counter charges, and both sides had now reached the top of the eminence. The 1st New Jersey Cavalry had temporary possession of the hill. Harman and White had failed in the first attempt to prevent the 1st New Jersey from this movement. Harman now re-formed his regiment and went on furiously to avenge his former failure. Half way up the hill the gallant Confederate colonel was wounded in an encounter with the Federal commander. Colonel White re-formed his squadrons. He charged along the west side of the hill and attacked the three guns which General Gregg unlimbered and with which he had opened a fierce fire. He drove the Federal cavalry away from the guns, but the gunners of the 6th New York Battery, though the cavalry left them, were not disposed to give up their pieces. Of the thirty-six men, thirty were killed or wounded. All were killed or wounded beside their guns. The Confederates took possession of the pieces, but this was only after a resistance and valor that made this Federal battery famous for all time to come. The possession of these pieces, however, was not to remain long with the Confederates. The captors were quickly surrounded with superior numbers, and the Confederate commander was compelled to cut his way out with heavy loss. He was glad to get away with even a remnant of his brave followers.

Hampton, Jones, Robertson were all now converging upon Fleetwood Hill. No sooner had Flournoy, who had already been seriously battered, arrived with the 6th Virginia Cavalry than he was ordered by General Stuart to charge the Federals on the right flank, which was to the east and south of Fleetwood Hill. The decimation of the day had reduced Flournoy’s regiment to two hundred men. Disparity of numbers had no terrors for these brave riders. They forced the lines of the enemy and attacked and captured their battery, but they were unable to hold it, as more than one thousand Federals attacked this regiment in the rear. But the scenes, like a kaleidoscope, were changing. Every turn of the wheel seemed to make new combinations. In the midst of this confusion and uncertainty General Wade Hampton appeared upon the scene. He entered upon their view at a gallop. As he approached Fleetwood Hill he saw the plateau covered with Federal cavalry. There was nothing to do but fight it out and so General Hampton ordered a charge of his columns.

MAP OF BATTLEFIELD OF FLEETWOOD HILL

This field was now to witness one of the most thrilling and stirring incidents of the entire war. By the commands on either side, two brigades of horsemen in column were to make an attempt to ride each other down. Such scenes with small numbers had occurred many times, but now it was to be tried out on a larger scale. Nearly evenly matched, the contest was to put to severest strain the valor and the grit of all who should enter the arena.

Neither dared await the shock that the charge of the other would bring. Motion, rapid motion alone would counteract the impact from either side. To stand still meant to be overwhelmed. To ride meant overturning, mayhap going down under a great crash, and possibly, if the sword and bullets should be escaped, then mangling or death beneath the bodies or hoofs of the maddened or injured horses.

The spirit of the hour was doing and daring. The leaders thought quickly and acted promptly. The day was well advanced when this event occurred.

Fifteen hundred horses would weigh one million, six hundred and fifty thousand pounds; fifteen hundred men would weigh two hundred and forty thousand pounds, an aggregate of one million, eight hundred and ninety thousand pounds.

One million, eight hundred and ninety thousand pounds of flesh and blood to rush at the rate of seven feet per second against a moving wall of like weight and material meant woe, ruin, desolation. It did not require long to cover the intervening space. Each side moved toward the other with grim determination, and two bodies thus in motion were to clash in a brief interval.

The men were enthused by the cries of “Charge! Charge! Charge!” and the excitement and exhilaration of battle and struggle made every heart fearless, defiant and reckless. They plunged their spurs into the sides of their steeds. Some drew their sabres, others their revolvers. The men spurring, shouting, yelling, by their enthusiasm, excited and aroused the dumb brutes, who seemed to feel the energy of combat. Racing at their highest speed, with mouths open and distended nostrils, madly and furiously they galloped to the onset.

Horses and men alike seemed to catch the animation of great deeds, and, as if in sympathy with each other, men and beasts together were willingly rushing onward to make destruction and wreck. Not a single man hesitated. Here and there a horse fell and his master went down to earth, but not one turned aside from the path of jeopardy and peril. The surging crowd, from both directions, was now, at highest speed, pushing relentlessly forward to overwhelm their foes. The beasts seemed almost human in the exhilaration and dash of the rapid charge, and appeared to apprehend the call that was being made upon their spirit and powers. Neither side took time to count the cost or figure the result. If either rode away or hesitated, they felt that the last state of that soldier would be worse than the first. There was nothing left but to fight out the issues that war at this moment had thus joined. Its terrors, if they reasoned, would overwhelm reason. Three minutes was all the time that was allowed to calculate before the awful shock would come. The crash would be bad enough, but on the eve of this, the deadly sabre loomed up before the eyes of the actors, the flash of the revolver and then the crush and down-going of stricken, maimed, dead brutes, and with them broken limbs and maimed bodies of the daring riders stood, if only for an instant, before the vision.

The fearful onset speedily came. Some horses passed their heads by, but this meant the lifting of the riders from their saddles to take their chances in the crush below. Horses’ heads met horses’ heads, and these sprang high into the air, and then fell in a heap on the ground. Others by the tremendous shock were killed and lay gasping in agony. Some swept by only to be turned about and anew to dash at their opposers. Of the men, some already pale in death lay beneath the bodies of their gasping steeds. Others, with glistening sabres, were cutting and slashing those who fell or lay by their side, or stood in their front. Again, others with their revolvers or carbines were firing at their foes and with savage determination fought without mercy or pity.

A dense cloud of dust rose from the spot where the struggling men and beasts had met. The smoke of firearms shut out the light of day. Amid these scenes of horror, darkness and suffering, men fought to the death. In a little while, from the dust and smoke, with blackened and stained faces the fighters began to rise. Those who had escaped returned to help those who had fallen. The passions of war seemed for a brief while satiated. The men in blue singly and in squads, glad to be relieved from the horrible surroundings, some walking and some riding, turned their faces from the fearful scenes of ruin and disaster that loomed up in ghastly horror before their eyes. They realized that the men in gray had vanquished them, and without a stain on their valor and courage, they marched away to cross the river they had forded at the coming of the dawn, with highest hopes and grandest expectations of victory.

Over toward the west was a part of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry. They had fought much during the day and they had fought well, but they were not dispirited and they were ready to fight some more. Young’s charge had cut them off from their comrades. They examined the field and saw that they must either surrender or cut their way through the Confederate lines. The Confederate guns were on a narrow ridge. To gain their friends, these New Jersey men must pass through or over these batteries. These Federal horsemen were too brave to hesitate at any danger, however appalling. What was to be done must be done quickly. Delay only increased danger and risks. The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man dies but one, and animated by the loftiest impulses of courage, they resolved to take the one chance, and if need be to face the iron storm they well knew must burst upon them, if they made gallant attempt to ride down their foes. The bugle blast ended all questionings, and forward they galloped to meet whatever the moment should bring.

The artillerymen looked and saw a new danger looming up on the horizon. With the speed of the wind the men in blue were riding down upon them. The pieces were quickly changed to meet this advancing foe. At this critical moment there were no Confederate horsemen to help defend or support the guns. The brave artillerists, spurred to sublime valor by the exigencies of the supreme test, resolved to defend their holdings or die with their pieces.

The blue-clad assailants came dashing upon the flank of the batteries. In a moment the guns were turned and hurling defiance and destruction in the face of the foes. They unhorsed and destroyed some, but they could not destroy all, and a remnant rushed in upon the nervy gunners who awaited the crash. It was a hand-to-hand fight between the men on horseback and the men on the cannons and on the ground. The Federal colonel fell at the side of a caisson. Another gunner fired a pistol ball into the heart of the Federal major. These died gloriously, but they died in vain. The charge failed. The enemy retreated and glory crowned the brave artillerists with new laurels. They were alone, but their name was legion, and they fought with fury and with success. The Confederates held the coveted hill. Gregg had made a great fight. He and his men had lost, but they had won for Federal cavalry great honor and had shown a valor that was worthy of any cause, and which entitled them to the praise of their people and their country. From the south, toward Culpepper Court House, clouds of dust now rose on the horizon. Long lines of Confederate infantry were seen advancing. They had come to help their cavalry comrades, but their coming so long delayed was of no avail. The horsemen, without help, had driven back their foes and these were now recrossing the Rappahannock, over which at dawn they had passed with sure and expectant hopes of a speedy and great victory.

Two men, who fell on the Confederate side, proved a great loss. Colonel Sol Williams, of the 2d North Carolina Cavalry, active, brave and gallant, observing that his regiment was inactive for a brief while, volunteering to ride with the charging column, went down at the front. His death was a great loss to his country and to the cavalry service.

Colonel Frank Hampton, younger brother of General Wade Hampton, discerning an emergency, placed himself at the head of a small squad, and charged a Federal column to delay its advance until other troops could be brought to resist it. With hardly one to fifteen of the foe, he assaulted the Federal column with fiercest vigor. His small company responded to duty’s call, but it was a forlorn hope. They died as brave men are ever ready to die for the cause they love. Colonel Hampton fell, mortally wounded, but he fell where all the Hamptons were wont to fall—at the front.

The Federal cavalry lost the field. They left some guns in possession of their foes, many banners, hundreds of prisoners and numerous dead. They hesitated long about leaving these things behind them, and a real grief filled their hearts at the thought that, after a day of so much daring and such brilliant achievement, they must recede before their foes and desert their wounded—remit them to the care and mercy of their enemies, and their dead to sepulture by the hands of those they had so valiantly fought.

These memories were depressing, but notwithstanding these sad recollections, they carried some splendid assurances from the field of carnage and ruin. They had met in an open field the best troopers the army of General Lee could send to conflict. Against these brave and experienced riders of the Confederates they had held their own, and for fourteen hours they had fought with a courage and an intrepidity that not even the Confederate legions could surpass. They had demonstrated that the Federal cavalry, when the conditions were equal, was not inferior to the men who rode with Stuart, and who had rendered his name and theirs illustrious. This new-found realization of power and courage gave Federal cavalry a pervading consciousness of their strength as warriors, and created in their minds and hearts a quickened courage that would bear them up and make them more fearless and efficient in the service their country would expect from them, in the twenty-two months that yet remained before the end would come, and Lee and his legions be compelled by the decrees of a pitiless fate to ground their arms and acknowledge Federal supremacy.

Chapter XXI
GENERAL J. E. B. STUART’S CHAMBERSBURG
RAID, OCTOBER 9, 1862

On the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th of October, 1862, General J. E. B. Stuart performed his most brilliant military feat in the raid on Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

Fording the Potomac on the morning of the 10th, at early dawn, he proceeded to Mercersburg and thence to Chambersburg. The crossing of the river had been skilfully and bravely done, and the march of forty miles to Chambersburg was no mean task in the fifteen hours which had elapsed since morn. Fair weather marked the day’s ride, and at 9 o’clock at night the brilliant cavalry soldier of the Army of Northern Virginia housed himself and men in the quiet and quaint old town, well up in the boundaries of the Quaker State.

It was a new experience for the loyal men of the North to find the hungry Confederate raiders in their very midst and feeding themselves in their pantries and their horses at their granaries.

But the romance of the raid was to end here.

The Potomac, never very sure in its movements, might rise, and Stuart must then return some other way than the one he came. The splashing of the rain, relentless and constant, during the night, and the pattering of great drops as they drove against the window panes, awakened in his bosom the most harassing uncertainty; and throughout the long and (to him) almost endless hours of darkness, came the harrowing thought that the streams fed by the torrents now falling would swell the Potomac and thus cut off all possibility of escape for his command.

GENERAL J. E. B. STUART

His aides and guides, less troubled with responsibility, assured him that his fleet troopers would outride the currents that flowed toward the ocean; but the danger and the trials of the coming day and night rose up in the heart of the dashing commander and disturbed the quiet of his gay and chivalrous soul.

On the morning of the 11th he began his homeward march. Eighty miles from the boundary, where he might pass it, far into an unfriendly country, every resource of which was now placed under contribution to effect his capture or the destruction of his force, and with thousands of troops, both mounted and unmounted, converging to the points where he must pass, rendered his situation acutely desperate and such as to cause keenest apprehension and profoundest fear.

But with Stuart rode officers and men who never quailed. Hampton, Lee, Butler, Robertson, Jones and Pelham, and 1,800 men, the pick of Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas, were in the saddle with him, and there was no foe they feared and none who could whip them except by brute force and superior numbers.

Forth from Chambersburg this splendid division began the march homeward. Twelve hundred horses, the fruits of impressment, made up a part of the train—for already the Confederacy felt the need of stable recruiting—no stragglers nor laggards. A great work was ahead of a great command, and no heart felt solicitude at any fate which awaited.

All day long the steady trot of the troopers was kept up, and when the sun began to hide its face behind the Alleghanies the cavalcade had been less than half the distance required of it for safety and rest. A few minutes’ halt was all that could be allowed. The troopers dismount and shake themselves; the wearied horses munch a little feed, and the bugle-call again commands to saddle.

Thirty-one and a half miles since morn, and yet thirty-three and a half more before dawn.

The knightly Pelham, later to shed his blood, rode all through the night with the advance, and close behind the watchful commander and his escort.

A full day’s work already done, but a fuller night’s work yet to be done.

Peremptory orders are transmitted to ride over everything that opposes the march; and so, trot, trot, trot, through the long hours of darkness, and the wearied horsemen peer through the gloom, and in silent and anxious wonder gaze at the spectres—the creation of their fancy and imagination—which on parallel lines ride by their side; and they scan the horizon with anxious longing to catch the first appearance of the much-desired dawn, which might relieve the dismal and oppressive foreboding of the lengthened night.

Sixty-five miles in twenty-four hours. No halt. Still sixteen miles more.

Thousands of busy and eager enemies and uncalculated dangers beset them. The bodies of these hard riders begin to feel the trying effects of the rapid march, and nature raises a solemn protest against war’s demands upon her children. But the order for the swinging trot abates not, and man and beast, brightened by the rising sun, are put under sterner tribute for stronger effort.

Wearied marchers: the crisis is now at hand.

Stuart and his riders had vanquished nature: Could they now vanquish man? If Stuart crossed the Potomac to reach Chambersburg, he must recross it to reach Virginia; and to prevent the latter, all the skill, energy and genius of the Federal commanders were called forth.

Pleasanton, who with Federal cavalry was hard behind the Confederate raiders, had marched seventy-eight miles in twenty-eight hours, but this wonderful gait still left him in Stuart’s rear, and now that the point at which Stuart was to cross was revealed, every Federal soldier that could be reached was pressed forward to dispute the passage. Whit’s Ford was guarded, but not sufficiently well to impede the rush of the Confederates, and the Federals at the crucial moment retired, and the way was opened for the escape and safety of the valiant Confederate corps.

Twenty-seven hours and eighty-one miles. No sleep. No rest.

Galloping, fighting, scouting and ready to assail any enemy, with human endurance tested to the greatest possible limit—what think you, reader, of the conduct of these riders, when, out of those three brigades, only two men, either by sleep, illness, hunger, weariness or straggling, were missing when, at noon, on the 12th of October, on Virginia’s soil, Stuart called his roll to calculate losses?

Measured by any human formula for patience or endurance, courage, loyalty and chivalry, this service of Stuart and his command stands with but few parallels in military history. They did all men could do, and the Divine Judge himself requires nothing more than this at man’s hands.

Chapter XXII
GENERAL JOHN B. MARMADUKE’S “CAPE
GIRARDEAU RAID,” APRIL, 1863

General John B. Marmaduke was a thoroughly born and reared Southern man. Descended from Virginia ancestry, he first saw the light on March 14th, 1833, at Arrow Rock, Missouri. Possessed of a splendid physique, with a common school education, he entered Yale. He was there two years and one year at Harvard, and then he was appointed to the United States Military Academy from whence he graduated when twenty-two years of age. As a brevet second lieutenant he went with Albert Sidney Johnston and aided in putting down the Mormon revolt in 1858. He remained in the West for two years and at the opening of the Civil War was stationed in New Mexico. Fond of military life, it involved much sacrifice for him to resign his commission in the United States Army, but he did not hesitate an instant and on the 17th of April, 1861, he severed his connection with the regular army and at once raised a company of Missouri State Guards. His West Point education gave him prominence at once and he was made colonel of a Missouri military organization. Brave and proud-spirited, he disagreed with his uncle, Claiborne F. Jackson, then governor of Missouri, and left the service there and reported at Richmond, to the Confederate government. He had five brothers in the Confederate Army or Navy. His father, Meredith Miles Marmaduke, was governor of Missouri in 1844.

With General Hardee, in Southeast Missouri, he was made colonel of the 3d Confederate Infantry. Crossing the river to aid General Albert Sidney Johnston destroy Grant’s army, he participated in the Battle of Shiloh, and was signally honored by his grateful government for his splendid service and was made a brigadier general while he was yet an inmate of the hospital from wounds received on that field. There was a great call at that time in the West for brave and experienced men, and four months after the Battle of Shiloh he was transferred to the trans-Mississippi Department, and from August, 1862, to January, 1863, he commanded the Confederate cavalry in Arkansas and Missouri. Vigilant, active and enterprising, he made a number of raids into Missouri. He was a fierce fighter, and never hesitated to attack his enemy when prudence justified an assault. Ordered to break Federal communication between Springfield and Rolla, Missouri, he inflicted great loss upon his enemies, but after a most valiant attack, through the failure of some of his troops to come on time, he was compelled to withdraw and retreat. He held a conspicuous place in the attack upon Helena, Arkansas, in July, 1863, and was successful in capturing the Federal camps at Pine Bluff. In the defense of Little Rock he played a notable part and covered General Price’s retreat after the evacuation of the capital of Arkansas.

He fought a duel with General Lucien M. Walker which shadowed his life. Under the terms arranged by the seconds, the two men were placed ten feet apart. The weapons were revolvers, and they were to advance and continue firing until the weapons were empty. Walker was mortally wounded at the second shot. Marmaduke was placed under arrest and relieved of his command. The exigencies of the hour made his services so important that he was permitted to resume his command during the pending operations. He was finally released by General Holmes. All through Missouri and Arkansas and Louisiana he was in many engagements, and for his magnificent service in 1864 in delaying Steele and preventing his union with General Banks, and for his valor in the Battle of Jenkins Ferry, he was made a major general. He was with Price in his ill-fated campaign in the fall of 1864. Dauntless and gallant in the protection of Price’s rear, while making vigorous battle he was captured near Fort Scott, Kansas. He was carried to Fort Warren and remained there until August, 1865, and when released went abroad, but returned to engage in business in St. Louis. For two years he was active in journalism. He served as secretary of the Missouri Board of Agriculture, was railroad commissioner four years, elected governor of Missouri in 1884, in which office he died in his fifty-fourth year, in Jefferson City, on December 24th, 1887.

Brave, of great resource, intensely loyal, few men of the war had as many wide experiences. The South had no more loyal son. His three and a half years of military service were marked with incessant and constant activities, and he had no rest, unless while in the hospital recovering from wounds received in battle. Although connected with the cavalry, in an engagement where some Missouri infantry were falling back before a sudden and terrific fire, General Marmaduke, with an aide-de-camp, William Price, rode in among the hesitating infantry, and violently taking from two standard bearers their colors, rushed into the midst of these troops and lifting the banners aloft pleaded with the men to stand firm. His noble example restored order to the line, and out of retreat they moved forward with conspicuous gallantry, and won victory.

In March, 1863, General Holmes was relieved of the command of the Trans-Mississippi Department, and General E. Kirby Smith, who had made such a brilliant reputation in the Kentucky campaign with the army of Tennessee, was assigned to the full charge of the territory. He established his headquarters at Shreveport, Louisiana, and General Holmes was placed in command of the district of Arkansas, which included Arkansas, Indian Territory and the state of Missouri.

Early in April, 1863, General Price returned after his service in the army of Tennessee and the Trans-Mississippi Department, and was assigned to the command of an infantry division. In the northern part of Arkansas there was nothing except Marmaduke’s division of cavalry, and this was in and around Batesville. The Confederates were loth to abandon the portion of Arkansas above the Arkansas River, and endeavored to hold the enemy in check for eighty miles north of that stream. The Confederates were not unaware that a most determined effort would be made to capture Little Rock. By the aid of the forces from Memphis and up the Arkansas River and down through Missouri, combinations were made which it was believed would render it impossible for the Confederates to hold that post.

The only really organized force operating in the territory northwest of Arkansas was Marmaduke’s cavalry division, composed of Shelby’s and Greene’s brigades. Anxious to do something to relieve the pressure upon Little Rock, General Marmaduke felt that if he should march northeastwardly to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, he might accomplish two things: first, he might recruit quite a large number of troops. Missouri was one of the best recruiting grounds for the Confederate states. There was no time when an organized force entered Missouri, when there was any sort of opportunity for the young men, or even the middle-aged men to enter the Confederate service that hundreds of them did not rush to the Confederate standard. Marmaduke, Shelby, Price and all those who invaded Missouri were not only gratified but astonished at the readiness with which recruits flocked to join them.

General Marmaduke believed that he might stay the approach of the Federals in their advance upon Little Rock. General Holmes was so pleased with Marmaduke’s offer to do something that he not only approved but encouraged him, and ordered forward to his support Carter’s brigade of Texas cavalry, which was the possessor of a four-gun battery and counted fifteen hundred men. The men of this brigade were not experienced, but they had grit, endurance and courage, and they were not long in measuring up to the standard of veterans. This gave General Marmaduke a force of nearly five thousand cavalry and eight pieces of artillery, but nearly one-fourth of them were unarmed and one-fifth dismounted. This was a formidable array to turn loose either in the rear or in the face of the enemy. It was more than Morgan ever had under his command; it was more than General Wheeler was ever able to take on a raid; and was greater than General Forrest had hitherto been able to pull together.

Marmaduke also learned that there was a Federal officer at Bloomfield, five miles south of Cape Girardeau, who had become infamous in the eyes of the Confederates, and of all the men in the Federal Army the Missouri troops would rather have captured General John McNeil. He was known amongst the men of the South as “the butcher.” This came from his brutality to prisoners and citizens, and he was the most hated man in the Federal Armies west of the Mississippi River.

The season of the year was fairly propitious for cavalry marches. The country was denuded of corn and oats, but green stuff was abundant and the grasses which grew with such luxuriousness in that section furnished bountiful feed, such as it was, for the horses. The scarcity of grain made raiding difficult unless grass was growing. Colonel John F. Phillips, commanding a Federal Missouri cavalry regiment, on July 30th, 1863, wrote of this section: “There is nothing to eat in this country. It is the impersonation of poverty and desolation.”

From Batesville, Arkansas, to Cape Girardeau was about one hundred and eighty miles. Marmaduke had learned that McNeil had been ordered to march northward from Bloomfield, Missouri, toward Pilot Knob. This would be a distance of seventy miles. Marmaduke reasoned correctly that McNeil would obey orders, and so he sent a force toward Bloomfield to stir up McNeil, hoping that he would follow the directions of his superiors and march toward Pilot Knob. Frederickstown was ten miles southeast of Pilot Knob, and here Marmaduke purposed to intercept McNeil, and with Carter behind him and Shelby in front of him, it was calculated that short work would be made of McNeil’s two thousand infantry.

In the beginning of the march there was warm work at Patterson, a small town fifty miles from the Arkansas line. At this point a Missouri Federal militia regiment, under Colonel Smart, and several Home Guard companies had been stationed for quite a while. One of the most offensive of these Home Guard companies was commanded by Captain Leper. Neither Leper nor Smart stood well with the Confederates. They had been aggressive, cruel and malignant, and General Marmaduke had particular reasons for capturing both Leper and Smart. The presence of the Confederates had not been known fully to Smart and his associates, and General Marmaduke had made disposition of his forces to surround Patterson and its garrison, which he intended to capture at any cost. With his eight pieces of artillery he felt sure that within a reasonable time he could batter down the fortifications. Shelby was ordered to swing to the east, and a Texas regiment was to move west; the Texas forces were to go east of the place and close in from that direction, while Shelby came from the other side. The Missourians caught all the pickets, and without alarm were ready to assault the garrison. The officers in charge of the Texas brigade were not familiar with the Missouri tactics. Instead of capturing the pickets, they undertook to fight them and used the artillery and opened a vigorous fire upon these isolated videttes. Colonel Smart had been insistent that there was nothing but a few militia in proximity to Patterson, but when he heard the sound of the artillery, he realized that heavy forces were about to encircle him, and he speedily and hastily fled. A small part of the garrison was captured. The men the Confederates wanted, Smart and Leper, escaped. These fired the houses containing the supplies, and a large part of the town was burned. Later this was charged to the Confederates, and after the war suits were brought against quite a number of Confederate officers to make them responsible for the destruction of the town. This was annoying, but it was not effective. The escape of the hated men quickened desire to bag General McNeil.

A short while after this campaign McNeil still further increased his reputation for bloodthirstiness. A Federal spy was captured and disappeared near Palmyra.

Major J. N. Edwards in his splendid work, “Shelby and his Men,” gives the following account of this terrible incident:

Colonel Porter captured Palmyra late in the fall of 1863, and during his occupation of the town, one Andrew Allsman, an ex-soldier of the 3d Missouri Federal Cavalry, and a spy, informer, guide, traitor and scoundrel generally, was spirited away, no one ever knew how or where. McNeil re-entered Palmyra upon its evacuation by Colonel Porter, confined ten worthy and good men captured from Porter’s command, issued a notice to Porter dated October 8th, informing him that unless Allsman was returned within ten days from the date thereof, the prisoners then in his possession should be executed. W. R. Strachan was the provost marshal, and was just as cruel and just as bloodthirsty as his master. Allsman was not returned—indeed, Porter never saw this notice until the men were shot—and even had it been placed before him, the rendition of Allsman was an impossibility, for he knew nothing whatever of the men required to be produced. Deaf to all petitions, steeled against every prayer for mercy, eager and swift to act, McNeil ordered the execution at the end of the appointed time. Ten brave, good men—Willis Baker, Thomas Humston, Morgan Bixler, John Y. McPheeters, Herbert Hudson, Captain Thomas A. Snider, Eleazer Lake and Hiram Smith—were led out for the death shots. Fearless, proud and noble in their bearing, these innocent and excellent soldiers were sacrificed to the whim of a butcher, and to satisfy the cravings of a foreign and brutal soldiery. They met death without a shudder, willing to yield upon their country’s altar the lives that had been devoted to her service. A young Spartan—one of the abovementioned men—volunteered to take the place of an old man whose family was large and helpless, was accepted, and untouched by the heroism of the boy, and indifferent to one of the finest exhibitions of chivalry upon record, McNeil and Strachan ordered his execution with the rest, thus covering their names with everlasting infamy.

Colonel Carter, of Texas, commanding the brigade called by his name, ambitious for distinction, solicited the leadership of the force which was to attack McNeil, and drive him either to follow the line of his orders or force him to Cape Girardeau. He was specially directed under no circumstances to follow McNeil into Cape Girardeau. That post was strongly fortified and was considered a position of great value on the Mississippi River. Carter was given a force equal to that of McNeil, so that there would be no question of McNeil’s discomfiture if he disputed Carter’s right of way. The men who fought in Missouri and Arkansas never hesitated about results if it was man to man. McNeil’s courage had been hampered by a knowledge of the fact that the Missouri troops had declared if he was ever taken they would put him to death. His persecutions and atrocities had rendered him so odious that nothing could stay the vengeful resolves which filled the hearts of the Missouri and Arkansas Confederates. Carter had orders if McNeil went to Cape Girardeau to rejoin Marmaduke. Marmaduke with Shelby’s brigade and half of Greene’s reached Frederickstown, and there waited for a sight of McNeil or for a report from Carter. Neither came. Quickly marching his command to Jackson, half way between Frederickstown and Cape Girardeau, General Marmaduke there learned that McNeil had hastened to Cape Girardeau; that Carter, pursuing him, had become so enthused that he had lost sight of his positive orders from Marmaduke and had followed McNeil up to and partially into the fortifications of Cape Girardeau. McNeil’s reinforcing the garrison rendered the Federal forces at the Cape impregnable. McNeil was inside the fortification and Carter was outside and he was afraid to go away lest the Federals should rush out and destroy him. Shelby was immediately despatched to extricate Carter from his embarrassing situation. In order to do this, it was necessary to attack the fortification, which Shelby promptly did, and lost forty-five men, killed and wounded, among them some of the very best in his brigade. Some were so seriously wounded that it was impossible to remove them, and they were left in charge of a surgeon, amongst their enemies. In those days of intense bitterness and malignity, this was barely preferable to death.

These four days lost meant much to General Marmaduke. The exuberant zeal of one of Carter’s colonels, coupled with his courage, had changed the Confederate plan and destroyed its successful accomplishment, and seriously affected the ultimate safety of Marmaduke’s whole division. It was only thirty miles from Cairo to Bloomfield, and from New Madrid, Missouri, to Bloomfield, Marmaduke must almost of necessity pass this point, and this rendered the Confederate Army assailable both in its front and in its rear.

Marmaduke, north of Cape Girardeau, started his army south on the 27th of April. General Vandever was north of Marmaduke, and McNeil was south of him. McNeil, who had one day’s start and the shortest road to travel, could easily have intercepted Marmaduke and blocked his way of escape. Marmaduke, of course, might have ridden around him, and doubtless would have attempted to do this, but this was hazardous. McNeil became intimidated by the fear that he might be captured, and that, he well understood, meant direful consequences, and instead of pursuing the shorter road, it was charged that he intentionally took the longer one and let Marmaduke pass the critical point unopposed. This put the entire Federal force behind the Confederates, where it had no chance either greatly to disturb or arrest their march, unless the swelling currents of the St. Francis River might hold them in check until the Federal pursuers could, through such barrier, reach and overwhelm them.

General Curtis, from St. Louis, sent reinforcements to Cape Girardeau, and he had ordered from Columbus, Kentucky, several regiments through New Madrid, Missouri, to prevent or embarrass the escape of Marmaduke.

McNeil, on the 26th of April, telegraphed from Cape Girardeau that he was attacked by eight thousand men under Marmaduke.

General William Vandever, on April 29th, 1863, six miles from Bloomfield, Missouri, speaking of Marmaduke, said: “I think we have run him harder than he has ever run before.”

Of the men who went with Marmaduke, as before stated, twelve hundred were unmounted and nine hundred unarmed. Some of the men had Enfield rifles, some Mississippi and squirrel rifles. Practically no captures had been made, and the opportunities for securing mounts in this already war-cursed country were very slim. The unmounted men, with hope stirring their hearts, half running, half walking, kept up with their more fortunate comrades who had started with beasts that could at least go a part of the way. If any of these walking troopers picked up a mount, it was the occasion for special thanks to the God of war. In the beginning General Marmaduke divided his forces over large territory and scattered them, to create the impression that he was moving northwardly instead of northeastwardly. He trusted in this way to throw his enemies off their guard. This would enable him to surprise, if not destroy them. McNeil heard of Marmaduke’s coming and retired to Cape Girardeau. He was not willing to meet the Confederates in the open field. The best that Marmaduke could count on for fighting was thirty-five hundred men, a majority of them inadequately armed. He was to face at Cape Girardeau and elsewhere more than ten thousand men. When the Federals started southwardly, after leaving sufficient men to garrison Cape Girardeau, they had forty-five hundred cavalry, forty-five hundred infantry and fifteen pieces of artillery to join in the pursuit.

On the night of the 21st of April Captain John M. Muse of the Missouri division had been ordered with ninety men to Farmington, Missouri, in order to attempt the destruction of the bridge of the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railroad. This was to terrify St. Louis and hold in check the garrisons north of Frederickstown. He was to travel through the woods until he reached Farmington. Enterprising, as well as brave, Muse moved with the greatest celerity. The bridges were all well guarded, and while he destroyed one bridge, the task was performed under tremendous difficulties and with supreme danger. The experiences of this force for four days in the work assigned them was one of the most difficult as well as the most dangerous and heroic happenings of the whole war.

In those days it was easy enough to get into Missouri, but sometimes it was extremely difficult to get out. The Confederates were sorely pressed by two commands, each of them outnumbering their forces. Marmaduke and Shelby did not count the Federals real peril. They believed they could, if necessary, fight and rout these. They could not whip or outwit the elements, and these gave them deep concern. Heavy rains fell, and as there was nothing but mud roads through the territory it required but a few hundred cavalry to pass over one of these to render it thereafter almost impossible to travel. But there was something even worse than these rains and the roads. That was the necessity of crossing swollen streams. Generals can rely upon the fidelity and courage of their troops, but they cannot control the weather. The heavy rains at this period came most inopportunely for General Marmaduke. When he realized the necessity of retiring, he was miles north of Cape Girardeau. General Vandever was behind him, and McNeil over at Cape Girardeau had the shorter route, and with diligence and energy could put himself at any time across his front. The Federals were intensely aroused. They resented this invasion and used the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers in the endeavor to put armies athwart the path that Marmaduke must travel. The situation was full of discouragement. One could not look ahead without seeing dangers, nor think without facing difficulties. The ownership of horses under the exigencies of such a raid was never seriously considered, and while each side would prefer to take from their enemies, they were not unwilling, under the calls of necessity, in the end to impress from their friends. Everything in the line of march that could carry a man or that was better than some man’s horse in the column was quickly appropriated. The heavy marching, the muddy roads and the constant rain had impaired the vitality of a majority of the mounts of General Marmaduke’s men. The horses sank to their knees in the mud, and to carry the soldiers and their equipment and be subject to so much that was injurious under foot not only seriously tried the horses, but it laid grievous burdens upon the men who marched in the rear. The Federal and Confederate artillery had moved over these roads; Federal supply wagons had cut them full of deep ruts, and jug holes and gullies had been washed out, making the movement of artillery tedious and difficult. Three miles an hour with such passways and surroundings would be rapid marching. Many sought to escape the burdens and difficulties of the main road and scattered along the woods or in the fields which lay alongside the line of travel. No sooner would a third of the command pass over any given part of the road than it was a lagoon of mud and slush. Spattered in every direction by the horses’ feet, this disgusting mixture was plastered upon the backs and hips of the beasts and the bodies of the men. Their necks and their faces were encased with the horrible substance. The sides of the horses were covered half an inch deep with the mud, and the clothes of the men were so bespattered that they looked as if they had been drawn through the disgusting mixture. There were no farms, no stores, and few homes to supply any food other than that carried in their haversacks, and this, by the constant rains and the churning on the backs of the men, became so unpalatable that it required fiercest hunger to force the men to eat at all.

When once the question of return was presented and settled it became the paramount thought of the hour. It would have been a tremendous blow to the Confederacy to have had Marmaduke and his men captured. The idea of surrender never entered the minds of these raiders. The marching was to be rapid, and the tired and hungry beasts could not expect much rest from their labors. The most they could have was to browse upon the grass which during the spring season had grown up in the woods and fields and pastures along the roads. The closest point from Cape Girardeau at which Marmaduke could cross the St. Francis River would be fifty miles. The size of the division did much to lengthen the hours of the march. Few cavalry commands ever undertook to ride through any worse country or to travel more difficult roads. The highway was just broad enough for two soldiers to ride abreast, and forty-five hundred men riding two abreast with eight pieces of artillery makes a column from three to five miles. There was no parallel road General Marmaduke could use. It was necessary to keep the Confederates in supporting distance to each other. The men who were pursuing not only had the best mounts, but they had complete supplies of every kind for man and beast.

General Marmaduke dare not separate his forces lest he should be attacked in detail by the forty-five hundred cavalry who were following his train. It might, and probably would happen, that he would need every man he could summon. It required a beast far less time to eat a gallon of oats or corn than to satisfy its hunger by browsing in the woods or fields and thereby secure a sufficiency to meet its hunger and maintain its vitality. The Confederates’ ammunition was now much impaired. The horses for the artillery and the ammunition wagons and the ambulance had been worn out by the march of two hundred and fifty miles. Marmaduke resolved under no circumstances to abandon his artillery. Among the cavalry, the horse artillery was always to be saved, and only extraordinary emergencies would justify any command in giving up its guns. The armies, East and West, looked askance at cavalry who abandoned or permitted the capture of their artillery. Only extremest reasons would excuse such results. Cannon suitable for the artillery in Marmaduke’s Missouri department was not over-abundant, and many requisitions and a good many petitions had to be made before the meagre supply possessed by the Missouri, Texas and Arkansas cavalry could be obtained, and Marmaduke in conjunction with Shelby resolved that only a great peril and severe disaster would justify them in leaving or destroying their few guns.

No officer had a tent. All—of whatever rank—took pot-luck with the men on the ground. Here and there a deserted stable, or an outhouse, or an abandoned home might afford shelter for a small part of the command. All were placed on a common level, in-so-far as conveniences were concerned. No officer was willing to accept anything better than that which the men obtained. Some brush or evergreen limbs, or—if the ravages of war had spared them—a few rails, were laid upon the soaked earth. Over these a gum or other blanket was spread, and these constituted the couches upon which these brave and self-sacrificing soldiers would find even a few hours of rest.

From Frederickstown to the St. Francis River was seventy-five miles. Once the St. Francis was passed, safety was assured. Starting from Frederickstown, on the 27th of April, Shelby, Marmaduke and Carter, the last men to cross the St. Francis River, went over on the 1st of May. This ninety-six hours was used to cover seventy-five miles. This was an average of three-quarters of a mile per hour. There was no human energy that could move a division at a much greater rate of speed. Nature put every possible impediment in the way of these tired, patient Confederate cavalry. Hour by hour, the officers and the men watched the falling rain, and they all understood that these meant increasing difficulties and added danger, and greater labor. The bridges had all been destroyed. Either Federals or Confederates had burned them before. Those who passed these streams must ford them or provide temporary passways. Hours before, Marmaduke and Shelby had been revolving in their minds what might occur when they reached the St. Francis River. They needed no weather prophet to tell them what was going to happen from the incessant rains which had fallen for the last four or five days. The Confederates had no pontoon bridges and no pontoon tackle. They had some axes, a few spikes, and the pioneers a few augurs. With this limited equipment, they understood that they must take what they could find on the banks of the stream and construct something that would carry over the guns and caissons and at least permit the men to walk (even though the bridge be partly submerged) across the rapid currents. The pursuers well understood the thoughts that were passing through the minds of the retreating Confederates. If they were cornered, there could be no doubt that a ferocious resistance would meet the men in blue. If the worst came to the worst, Marmaduke and his men might ride through and over the cavalry that was pursuing them and they could sweep aside the infantry that, by easy stages, along the lands outside the traveled road, were seeking to overtake them or at least to furnish backing for the cavalry who were to do the aggressive and sharper work. There were many anxious hearts among the forty-eight hundred Confederate cavalry. The rank and file had supreme confidence in both Marmaduke and Shelby. They were leaders who never ran away without good reason, and few wished to run away on this expedition. There was no place where they could find even reasonable hope if scattered. It was necessary for them to hang together and to Shelby and his brigade was largely committed the defense of the rear. They had been tried in many difficult circumstances in the past and the three thousand Confederates in front knew that they would discharge well all the duties which might be committed to them in this hour of extremity.

A trembling, crazy bridge had been built across the St. Francis River. This was full from bank to bank. Marmaduke, uneasy, had sent an engineer forward to make provision for crossing his army when it should reach the turgid stream. Shelby had ordered Major Lawrence, his pioneer officer, to ride without let or hindrance and construct the bridge, but Marmaduke had pre-arranged this and when Shelby’s engineer reached the river, the bridge was ready for use. It was a slow process to erect this structure. Only men could tread its swinging lines. These were compelled to cross in single file. The river was not cold enough to seriously chill the horses, and they took their chances in the rapid currents. The artillery was the real perplexity. Huge logs were cut down and fastened together, an unwieldy raft was constructed, while an improvised barge helped hold the mass in line, and a piece at a time was run upon the raft and with great effort ferried over. It was a weird scene that night on the banks of the raging stream. All horses can swim, they do not have to be taught as men. With them it is an instinct. Fires were kindled along the bank, and with some oaths and much belaboring the brutes, in the darkness, were forced into the water. Some turned back, but they were beaten over the head with brush and limbs, and then some bold horsemen would plunge in and turn their heads southward across the stream, and, like a long flock of wild geese, with a leader, the horses would paddle themselves across the river. Eight hours of the night were consumed in this dangerous undertaking. To cross four thousand men in single file, and get eight pieces of artillery and eight caissons on a square raft against a rapid current was no mean task.

Two miles back on the road from the river was another weird scene. There were no lights there. General Shelby and his brigade were posted on each side of the battery which occupied the highway, and then the word was passed along the line that come what might, not an inch of ground was to be yielded. These orders are always portentous, and yet they are not terrifying to brave men. A sense of duty comes to the rescue of the human soul under such conditions, and this calms fear and makes hearts unfaltering.

GENERAL MARMADUKE

The spirits of the weary horsemen rose to the sublimest heights. There was not a minute in these eight hours that a foe was not expected. Far out on the roads, vigilant scouts were riding, and far back on the way, for several miles, videttes and squads were posted, so as to catch the first sound of an enemy’s approach. These were all watching and waiting to bring the Confederate rearguard warning of the coming of a foe. They had ridden hard every hour of the day. There was neither corn nor hay nor oats to stay the pangs of hunger which were felt by the half-famished beasts. In sheer pity at first they were permitted, at the ends of the halter, to nibble the grass which even the blight and ravages of war could not destroy, but later this was denied. Their browsing might disturb the acuteness of hearing, and more than that, at any moment they might be called to bear their masters into a night charge. Hard as it looked, they were saddled and bridled, and stood with their owners in line, waiting and ready to fight any foe that might come.

There was no sleeping this night. It was a night of danger, a night of extremest peril. Officers and men stood around in groups, and attack was expected every instant. A sleeping picket, forgetful of duty, at this momentous instant, a forgetful scout, tired out it may be by lengthened and incessant marching, might imperil the safety of the entire command. Men were not left alone to pass the fateful hours and important labors of this crucial moment; they were placed two and two, so that the strengthening of companionship would help them bear the burdens and endure the hardships of the weary hours and heavy tasks of the long, long night. A foe filled with vengeful desire to capture and destroy Marmaduke and his men was behind, and the deep, seething river was in front. No eye could penetrate far into the forest through which the column reached. Horses were brought close up to the line of battle. Here and there a horseholder might steal a cat nap, or at some moment when he was not watched, might, beside a tree, or a stump, enjoy a brief sleep, but it was only for an instant, for everybody was on the lookout. A thousand men were to do an heroic act for three thousand down at the river bank. Those at the river bank might hear the sound of artillery and the rattle of musketry, horses might be pushed into the stream and the riders, stripped and holding to their manes and tails, might possibly cross over the river, but these men who had been placed on the outpost with orders to stand in the face of all attacks, if need be to die there, found no time for sleep.

Shelby and Shanks, and Gordon, and Carter, were all there. They understood and appreciated the importance of the work which had been given them to do. The call of the impending crisis sounded in their ears and filled their souls with sublime courage. The past of these soldiers was a glorious and magnificent record. This lifted them up into a frame of mind which nerved them, if need be, to despise death and cheerfully to perish at the post when duty called. They waited and waited and waited, and no foe came. A little while before the gray streaks of light came coursing in long lines from the east, they were still ready to do and die. A courier came to tell them that all but they had passed the stream. The guns were limbered, and the horses with the artillery in silence were turned toward the St. Francis River, and Shelby and his men, with such horses as had been retained for the use of the rearguard, slowly and complacently rode down to the spot where their comrades had spent the night in ferrying the stream. All did not come at once. The line was long extended, and when the vanguard and the artillery reached the stream, the needed preparations to cross had been made. Two trips put the artillery on the south bank. The horses must take their chances in the stream, and then the men in single file, with water to their knees, slowly waded along the swaying bridge that the currents moved to and fro and threatened to engulf those treading it at every step.

In this retreat and escape across the river, somebody had to be last, and that somebody must take not only the chances of capture, but also the risks of annihilation.

Upon Captain George Gordon, with one hundred and twenty Missourians, this burden was laid. He had been marching and fighting and starving for more than half a month. Shelby had told his men that, as the rearguard, they must all stand together and if need be, fall, and that he did not under any circumstances intend to allow his artillery to be destroyed or captured. Upon Captain George Gordon was laid the duty of holding the last outpost, and with his men constitute the forlorn hope in defense of this little army in its passage of the St. Francis River.

The artillery had been saved. The rearguard, mounted, was not yet over. The sun was just rising when the raft made its last trip and landed the last caisson on the southern bank of the stream. With the sun came the Federal pursuers. They had not believed the Confederates would be able in the night to cross the St. Francis, and so they slept and waited, feeling assured that on the morrow capture would be easy. The Federal sharp-shooters came pressing through the heavy timber. They opened a severe fire, and the thud of a minie ball, ploughing its way through the body of some member of the faithful little rearguard, served notice that trouble was abroad in the land. The pressure grew stronger and stronger. Only a hundred and twenty men in gray were on the north side. All others were safely over the unfordable stream. Federal cavalry riding in hot pursuit could be seen galloping down the highway, and between them and the raging river was only a small column of brave riders clad in gray. The Confederates safely on the south bank looked across the water and grieved at the fate of the one hundred and twenty comrades who stood and held the pursuers at bay until all the others were safely over. Their courage and their generosity appealed to the better instincts of the courageous soldiers. Some offered to swim back and help and rescue the gallant remnant who still remained on the north bank. Sharp-shooters climbed the high trees on the south bank. Some found cozy places on the hills close to the stream, and with deadly aim warned the intruders to caution and reserve.

The water was too deep and the currents too swift to attempt with saddles and bridles and guns to swim the weary beasts over, encumbered as they must be, either in carrying or pulling their riders. There were only three alternatives for these rearguardsmen. One was to surrender; one was to swim, with the chance that more than half would be drowned; and the other was to ride up the stream and seek a more favorable locality for passing the river.

The Federal cavalry were in close and fierce pursuit. Twice this gallant band attempted, when a shallower spot had been found, to cross, but the Federals, angered by the escape of the main army, felt that they were bound to take this rearguard, and so they pressed in upon them with much vigor and determination, resolving to capture them at all hazards.

At last a better swimming place was found, and the rearguard, resolving to die or drown rather than submit to capture, forced their horses into the water. A fusillade of shots was directed at them as they swam across, and the bullets came quick and fast. These spattered the water in the faces of the receding Confederates, and here and there a fatal shot took effect and the lifeless body of a Confederate floated a little way on the surface and then sank in the current. Only a few were killed or wounded. More than nine-tenths of these brave fighters reached the opposite bank.

Shaking the water from their soaked garments, the sharp-shooters turned and fired upon their pursuers, and with steady and accurate aim avenged the death and wounds of those who had suffered in this retreat.

Shelby and Colonel Gordon and Carter were the last men to cross the bridge. Unsightly, tottering, shaky, the bridge had served its purpose. It was not much of a bridge, but it had saved four thousand men and their equipment. Fastened with cables on the south side, when Shelby and Carter stepped upon the shore, a ready knife was drawn by one of his followers, the moorings were cut and the faithful bridge, no longer required, was turned loose down the stream. As it floated out upon the rapid currents, the Federals on the opposite side, in rage and disappointment, opened a fusillade across the water, but a few well-directed shots from the cannon drove them to cover, and Marmaduke, Shelby and Carter and their followers, saved now from pursuit, took up their journey to Jacksonport, sixty miles away. They had no need now to hasten, there was no foe to disturb, alarm and harass them. For four days they waded and rode through muddy, slimy swamps. The experience in these sloughs was horrible in the extreme.

The troopers, willing to rest their faithful steeds, dismounted and walked by their sides. Three times a day they were permitted to graze upon the rich herbage that lined the roads to Jacksonport. Separated along different highways, both men and horses were treated with the greatest consideration and given easy journeys to the camp at Jacksonport, where the wounded might mend, where the horses with scalded backs might recuperate and permit their scars to be covered, and the men might burnish their arms, repair their trappings, wash their soiled garments, and be ready for some other expedition at their country’s call.

For four days they had something to face worse than enemies. They were compelled to wade and ride through the muddy, slimy swamps south of the St. Francis. These sloughs, generating miasma in every particle that composed their horrible mixture, rendered these ninety-six hours excruciatingly trying. There was no escape from the slightly elevated roads that had been cut through these forests and swamps. Only a small portion of the cavalry and artillery could pass along these roads until they became practically impassable. The cannons were mired and the horses were tramping in mud and slush above their knees. With the gait of a snail, Marmaduke’s men walked and rode amidst these dreadful surroundings. Had they not been brave men, they would have preferred to have laid down and died rather than to have endured the horrors of this march. A common suffering made them generous and helpful to each other. Food was scarce for man, and there was practically none for the beasts, and all pulled and labored through these quagmires. Longing for the sight of higher ground, praying to escape from these hateful and depressing surroundings, the terribleness of the conditions prevented the men from dismounting to help their wasted and emaciated beasts. Here and there in the mud and slush, the poor brutes, unable to move further, laid down in the water and mud, and neither coaxing nor lashing could induce them to rise. They preferred death to further torment on this God-forsaken road, and all along the path through these swamps, the beholder would constantly see horses either dying under fatigue or so burdened as to be unwilling to rise. They simply died rather than take another step forward. The constant riding by day and by night, the meagre supply of food, the perils in conflict, the tremendous fatigue, the long, long journey, all tried out their souls and their patience, but the worst and hardest of all was the ninety-six hours consumed in covering the horrible roads through these dismal swamps and gloomy bayous.

Chapter XXIII
GENERAL WHEELER’S PURSUIT AND DEFEAT
OF GENERALS STONEMAN, GARRARD AND
McCOOK, JULY 27-AUGUST 5, 1864

By July, 1864, the storms were beating heavily and mercilessly upon the Confederacy. The power of numbers was beginning to tell. The resources of the South, month by month, were more and more impaired. Munitions of war and supplies of food became the controlling elements, and in these the Confederates fared most grievously. The arsenals and manufactories were worked to their utmost limit, and one of the most marvelous things connected with the Confederate war was the ability of its people to supply the necessities of the fighters. The disparity of fighting men was tremendous, and the difference in resources and supplies was to the South appalling. That the war lasted so long is a most magnificent tribute to the loyalty and the patience of the people of the Confederate states. Few nations ever continued so fierce a struggle with such inadequate resources for so lengthened a period. The closest scrutiny of the conditions under which the South made the contest only adds wonder to the spirit and valor of those who thus hampered by adversity and inadequate resources faced so resolutely the losses, privations and sacrifices of so many battles through such lengthened years.

Most of the adversities, as well as much of the severest fighting, marked the campaigns in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. These states covered a vast boundary and into their very heart flowed many navigable streams. The Mississippi, the Ohio, Cumberland, Barren, Tennessee and Yazoo Rivers penetrated or skirted the regions this army was required to defend, and rendered defense not only more difficult, but made the movements of the armies more hazardous.

No such disaster as at Fort Donelson or Vicksburg was possible save in the territory defended by the Army of Tennessee.

The Virginia campaigns were pressed into very narrow limits and comparatively few miles of navigable water affected its strategic movements. Indeed, the James River was the only stream up which to any great extent gunboats could float.

The Army of the Tennessee was to defend the line from Pound Gap to the Mississippi River, a distance of about five hundred miles. It was vulnerable at many points, and the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland not only brought legions of troops to important military positions in this boundary, but also gave strongholds from which operations at many points, for a thousand miles, might be inaugurated. It was a long distance from Paducah to Vicksburg. On the navigable streams that bounded the western lines of this army, forts and stations could be at various points successfully established, and Paducah, Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga and Vicksburg were centers from which forays could be successfully made for nine months in the year. There was nothing but bad roads and the Confederate cavalry to defend this territory from invasion or occupation.

Atlanta was evacuated on the 1st of September, 1864. General Joseph E. Johnson had been relieved on the 17th day of July, 1864, and General Hood assumed command. The enemy were close to the coveted situation. Slowly, but surely, the cordon were closing around Atlanta; and, as the flanks of the Federal Army stretched far out, east and west of the doomed city, the Federals began to employ their cavalry in harassing the rear of the Confederates and in destroying railroads south of General Hood’s position, rendering not only its occupancy difficult, but the feeding of his armies almost impossible.

The Federals never lacked for serviceable horses. True, they were not up to the standard which the Southern cavalry had taken into the war in 1861 and ’62; but well-fed, they could carry their riders, at a moderate rate of speed, a long distance in the day. Month by month, the Federal cavalry began to be better disciplined and better drilled, and became a great force in destroying the Southern armies. It required months, many months, for the Federals to learn successfully the plans under which the Confederate cavalry operated and along which they had so often disturbed and destroyed their communications; and now, at least, when Hood was at bay in Atlanta, the Federals, using their experience and the experience of the Confederates to the best advantage, began their raids. General Johnston had turned over to General Hood, according to Johnston’s statement, forty-one thousand infantry and ten thousand cavalry.

General Joseph Wheeler’s marvelous courage and enterprise had greatly endeared him to all the soldiers of the army of Tennessee. There was no service he would not accept. There was no risk he would not assume. On July 26th, 1864, with his limited command, he had relieved Hardee’s corps, and taken the place of the infantry in the breastworks. While thus occupied, General Wheeler was informed that large cavalry forces had started in the small hours of the night, with ten days’ rations, marching eastwardly, westwardly, southwardly from the rear of Sherman’s army. Sherman’s front covered a space along the Chattahoochee for twenty-five miles. It became apparent to General Wheeler than an extremely formidable cavalry raid was being inaugurated, and one which had most important bearings on the maintenance of Hood’s army about Atlanta. He chafed with the knowledge that his dismounted men were in the infantry breastworks, while the Federals were going out to forage and desolate the country south of Atlanta, and wreck the railroads upon which Atlanta relied alone for food.

On the morning of July 27th General Wheeler was directed to still hold the breastworks from which Hardee had been removed, and to send such force as he could spare in pursuit of the Federal cavalry raiders. He could only put into this service, immediately, fifteen hundred men, and he could only hope that they would be able to delay and harass and not destroy the enemy. The Federal raiders had begun their march at daybreak, on the 27th, and by nightfall had covered twenty-five miles to the south. All through July 27th, at two o’clock, at five o’clock and at six o’clock, Wheeler was interchanging despatches with General Hood. Wheeler was longing to go after the Federal raiders, but he was denied, by General Hood, this opportunity. At length the menace became so portentous that General Hood dare not ignore its consequences. Realizing that unless the Federal expedition was stayed, Atlanta must fall, with reluctance and many misgivings, he consented to turn General Wheeler loose, to try his hand upon the numerous, vigorous and aggressive foe. At nine o’clock at night came the order that General Wheeler himself might go in pursuit of the enemy. A great strategist himself, General Wheeler figured in his mind about where the Federals would strike the Macon railroad, which he foresaw and calculated would be either at Jonesboro, fifteen miles, or Lovejoy Station, twenty miles south of Atlanta.

General Sherman had passed the Chattahoochee River. Atlanta was eight miles south of this stream. Sherman had intrenched his forces east of Atlanta about nine miles. Near Peach Tree Creek, the Confederates had erected a strong line of fortification, and against this Sherman was day by day forcing his volunteers. At this time two railroads entered Atlanta from the south. The Georgia Railroad, toward Augusta, had already been occupied by Sherman and destroyed, so as to be useless even if the Confederates should drive him back across the Chattahoochee. For several miles south of Atlanta, the two railroads now operated ran into Atlanta over a common entrance. One of these railroads, running southwest, reached the Alabama line at West Point; the other ran due south, leading to Macon, eighty miles distant. The Chattahoochee River swung to the south as it passed west from Atlanta.

General Sherman determined to start three cavalry forces to break up these two railroads, upon which the Confederates in Atlanta relied for transportation of ammunition, food, supplies and troops. If these could be destroyed, Atlanta must be evacuated. So long as the Confederates could hold the fortifications around Atlanta, and these two railroads, Atlanta was invincible.

General Sherman directed his subordinates to start a cavalry force twelve miles due west of Atlanta, on the Chattahoochee River, crossing at a place called Campbellton. When over the river, this force, under General E. M. McCook, was to move southeastward, and strike the Macon Railroad at Jonesboro or at Lovejoy. Two other forces of cavalry, under Generals Stoneman and Garrard, were to leave General Sherman’s lines east of Atlanta, at Decatur, to meet at Lithonia, nine miles southeast from Atlanta, and thence to tear up the railroad between Macon and Atlanta.

Up to this time, General Sherman had great faith in General George Stoneman. This officer was born in Chautaugua County, New York, in 1822. He graduated at West Point in 1846, and entered the First Dragoons. In 1855 he became a captain in the 25th United States Cavalry, and was in command of Fort Brown when the Civil War broke out. He refused to surrender Fort Brown to General Twiggs. In a little while he became chief cavalry commander of the Army of the Potomac. Transferred to infantry, he became conspicuous in many of the great battles of Virginia, and in 1863 became a leader of raids in Virginia. One of his chief ambitions was to release the Federal prisoners at Andersonville. He had been given authority, under certain conditions, by General Sherman, after destroying the railroad south of Atlanta, to march through to Andersonville. Stoneman, after the war, became colonel of the 21st Infantry of the United States Army. In 1871 he retired and returned to California. He was elected governor by the Democrats, in 1883, and held this office for four years. With his splendid record and his wide military experience, much was expected of him in this ably-planned onslaught that General Sherman had projected on the Confederate lines.

General Edward M. McCook, who was to figure so prominently in this expedition, was born in Steubenville, Ohio, in 1835. He came of a family known as the “fighting McCooks,” and fully measured up to the family record. He was senior major of the 2d Indiana Cavalry at Shiloh; then colonel at the Battle of Perryville and Chickamauga. He commanded the cavalry of the Army of the Cumberland during the Atlanta campaign. Brave, self-reliant, with a lengthened service, with his many successes in the past, both Generals Grant and Sherman were confident that he would give a most excellent account of himself at this important juncture.