History of Morgan's Cavalry

by Basil Wilson Duke

From Rye Valley we moved to the main road again, striking it at Mount Airy, thirteen miles from Marion. Here General Breckinridge learned that the enemy had marched directly by to Saltville. He entertained grave fears that the place would be taken, having no confidence in the ability of the small garrison to hold it. His fears were realized. He instructed me to collect details, from all the brigades, of men who were least exhausted, and the most serviceable horses, and follow the enemy as closely as I could, relieving Saltville, if the garrison held out until I arrived. I accordingly marched with three hundred men, arriving at Seven-mile Ford at nightfall on the 19th. I halted until one o'clock at night, and then pressed on, over terrible roads, and reached the vicinity of Saltville at daylight. The night was bitterly cold, and the men were so chilled that they were scarcely able to sit on their horses.

Passing through Lyon's gap we discovered indication, scarcely to be mistaken, that Saltville had indeed fallen. Still it was necessary to make sure, and I moved in the direction of the southern defenses. Shortly afterward, the sight of the enemy and a skirmish which showed a strong force in line, convinced me that I could not enter the place. Scouts, sent to reconnoiter, returned declaring that the enemy held all the entrances. I lost one man killed. Falling back three miles I went into camp to await the time when the enemy should commence his retreat. This he did on the 22nd, and marched toward Kentucky. We immediately followed. At Hyter's Gap the forces of the enemy divided. Those under Gillem moving in the direction of Tennessee, those under Burbridge going straight toward Kentucky. We followed the latter. There is no word in the English language which adequately expresses how cold it was. Our horses, already tired down and half starved, could scarcely hobble. Those of the enemy were in worse condition, and it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that for ten miles a man could have walked on dead ones. They lay dead and stark frozen in every conceivable and revolting attitude, as death had overtaken them in their agony. Saddles, guns, accouterments of all kinds strewed the road like the debris of a rout. We picked up many stragglers. Some pieces of artillery were abandoned but burned.

When we reached Wheeler's ford, fifty-two miles from Saltville, I had left, of my three hundred, only fifty men. Here we had our last skirmish with the enemy, and gave up the pursuit. More than one hundred prisoners were taken, many of them unable to walk. The Federals lost hundreds of men, whose limbs, rotted by the cold, had to be amputated. Such suffering, to be conceived, must be witnessed. The raid had accomplished great things, but at terrible cost. Soon after this, my brigade went into winter quarters. Forage was scarcely to be had at all in the department, and I sent my horses, with a strong detail to guard and attend to them, to North Carolina. The men could scarcely be reconciled to this parting with their best friends, and feared, too, it preluded infantry service. In the winter huts built at Abingdon, they were sufficiently comfortable, but were half famished. The country was almost bare of supplies. Still they bore up, cheerful and resolute.

In March we were ordered to Lynchburg to assist in defending that place against Sheridan. He passed by, however, and struck at larger game. About this time the men who had lain so long, suffered so much, and endured so heroically in prison, began to arrive. The men who had braved every hardship, in field and camp, were now reinforced by those who were fresh from the harsh insults and galling sense of captivity. Six months earlier this addition to our numbers would have told—now it was too late.

Our gallant boys would not halt or rest until they rejoined their old comrades. Then they crowded around with many a story of their prison life, and vow of revenge—never to be accomplished. All asked for arms, and to be placed at once in the ranks. Very few, however, had been already exchanged, and all the others were placed, much against their will, in "Parole camp" at Christiansburg. In April, the enemy advanced again from East Tennessee. Stoneman raided through North Carolina—tapped the only road which connected Richmond with the Southern territory still available, at Salisbury, and then suddenly turned up in our rear, and between us and Richmond. This decided General Early, who was then commanding the department, to move eastwardly that he might get closer to General Lee. All the troops in the department were massed, and we moved as rapidly as it was possible to do. At Wytheville, Giltner met a detachment of the enemy and defeated it. At New river, we found the bridge burned by the enemy, who had anticipated us there, and we marched on toward Lynchburg, on his track. General Early having fallen ill, the command devolved upon General Echols. This officer did all that any man could have done, to preserve the morale of the troops. He was possessed of remarkable administrative capacity, and great tact, as well as energy. While firm, he was exceedingly popular in manner and address, and maintained good humor and satisfaction among the troops, while he preserved order and efficiency.

General Echols had, at this time, besides the cavalry commands of Vaughan, Cosby, Giltner and mine, some four or five thousand infantry—the division of General Wharton, and the small brigades commanded by Colonels Trigg and Preston. My brigade was doing duty as infantry—the horses having not yet returned. Marching about twenty-five miles every day, the men became more than ever disgusted with the infantry service, and their feet suffered as much as their temper. It was observed that the men just returned from prison, although least prepared for it, complained least of the hard marching.

We well knew at this time, that General Lee had been at length forced to evacuate Richmond, but we hoped that followed by the bulk of his army, he would retreat safely to some point where he could effect a junction with General Joseph Johnston, and collect, also, all of the detachments of troops which had previously operated at a distance from the large armies. The troops which General Echols commanded, were veterans, and they understood the signs which were now rife and public. But they were not altogether hopeless, and were still resolute although their old enthusiasm was utterly gone. They still received encouragement from the citizens of the section through which they marched.

It is but justice to the noble people of Virginia to declare that they did not despair of their country until after it was no more. There were individual defections among the Virginians—rare and indelibly branded—but as a people, they were worthy of their traditions and their hereditary honor. With rocking crash and ruin all around her, the grand old commonwealth, scathed by the storm and shaken by the resistless convulsion, still towered erect and proud to the last, and fell only when the entire land had given away beneath her. Two strange features characterized the temper of the Southern people in the last days of the Confederacy. Crushed and dispirited as they were, they still seemed unable to realize the fact that the cause was utterly lost. Even when their fate stared them in the face, they could not recognize it.

Again, when our final ruin came, it was consummated in the twinkling of an eye. We floated confidently to the edge of the cataract, went whirling over and lying utterly stunned at the bottom, never looked back at the path we had followed. The Southern people strained every nerve to resist, and when all efforts failed, sank powerless and unnerved.

The struggle was a hard one. Since the days of Roman conquest the earth has not seen such energy, persistency and ingenuity in arts of subjugation. Since Titus encompassed Jerusalem and the Aurelian shook the east with his fierce legions, a more stubborn, desperate and lavish resistance has not been witnessed against attack so resolute, systematic and overwhelming. The Roman eagle never presaged a wider, more thorough desolation than that of which the flag of the Union was the harbinger. For four years the struggle was maintained against this mighty power. When in the spring of 1865, one hundred and thirty-four thousand wretched, broken-down rebels stood, from Richmond to the Rio Grande, confronting one million fifteen thousand veteran soldiers, trained to all the vicissitudes, equal to all the shocks of war—is it wonderful that when this tremendous host moved all at once, resistance at length, and finally ceased. And this struggle had worn down the people as well as the soldiery. Four years of such bitter, constant, exhausting strife, racking the entire land, until the foot of the conqueror had tracked it from one end to the other, accomplished its objects in time. Even the women, whose heroism outshone any ever displayed upon the battlefield, whose devoted self-sacrificing charity and benevolence can never be justly recorded, whose courage had seemed dauntless, were at last overcome by the misery which surrounded them, and a power which seemed resistless and inexorable.