Whatever merit be allowed or denied General Morgan, he is beyond all question entitled to the credit of having discovered uses for cavalry, or rather mounted infantry, to which that arm was never applied before. While other cavalry officers were adhering to the traditions of former wars, and the systems of the schools, however inapplicable to the demands of their day and the nature of the struggle, he originated and perfected, not only a system of tactics, a method of fighting and handling men in the presence of the enemy, but also a strategy as effective as it was novel.
Totally ignorant of the art of war as learned from the books and in the academies; an imitator in nothing; self taught in all that he knew and did, his success was not more marked than his genius.
The creator and organizer of his own little army—with a force which at no time reached four thousand—he killed and wounded nearly as many of the enemy, and captured more than fifteen thousand. The author of the far-reaching "raid," so different from the mere cavalry dash, he accomplished with his handful of men results which would otherwise have required armies and the costly preparations of regular and extensive campaigns.
I shall endeavor to show the intimate connection between his operations and those of the main army in each department where he served, and the strategic importance of even his apparently rashest and most purposeless raids, when considered with reference to their bearing upon the grand campaigns of the West. When the means at his disposal, the difficulties with which he had to contend, and the results he effected are well understood, it will be conceded that his reputation with the Southern soldiery was not undeserved, and that to rank with the best of the many active and excellent cavalry officers of the West, to have had, confessedly, no equal among them except in Forrest, argues him to have possessed no common ability. The design of this work may in part fail, because of the inability of one so little accustomed to the labors of authorship to present his subject in the manner that it deserves; but the theme is one sure to be interesting and impressive however treated, and materials may, in this way be preserved for abler pens and more extensive works.
The apparent egotism in the constant use of the first person will, I trust, be excused by the explanation that I write of matters and events known almost entirely from personal observation, reports of subordinate officers to myself, or personal knowledge of reports made directly to General Morgan, and that, serving for a considerable period as his second in command, it was necessarily my duty to see to the execution of his plans, and I enjoyed a large share of his confidence.
For the spirit in which it is written, I have only to say that I have striven to be candid and accurate; to that sort of impartiality which is acquired at the expense of a total divestiture of natural feeling, I can lay no claim.
A Southern man, once a Confederate soldier—always thoroughly Southern in sentiments and feeling, I can, of course, write only a Southern account of what I saw in the late war, and as such what is herein written must be received.