On the 17th of March, 1865, Col. White’s order for his men to join him was put into the hands of his Company officers, and as it was his last General Order to an organized battalion, I append it in full; and the reader will bear in mind that it was written the day after the Yankee Sheridan, whose name will ever be synonymous with infamy, had marched with fifteen thousand cavalry up the Shenandoah Valley;
“Head-Quarters, 35th Battalion,
“March 6th, 1865.}
“General Order, No. 1.
“Soldiers of the renowned 35th: Your Chief calls you again from your pleasant homes and loved ones to the field of battle! You will not be slow to answer his call.
“The invading foe has penetrated to the very heart of your beloved Virginia, and proud spirits like yours cannot tamely rest while upon every breeze is borne the wailing of helpless women and children!
“Come, my gallant boys! and we will throw the weight of our sabres in the scale with our brethren in arms against the dastard hordes of the North, who thus, without mercy or justice, pollute the sacred altars of our bleeding land.
“E. V. White,
“Lieutenant-Colonel Commanding.”
After several attempts, which failed because of the scattered condition of his command, Captain Myers got about sixty men of Companies A, B and C, together on the night of the 20th, at the Semper’s Mill rendezvous, and on the morning of the 21st started for Richmond, leaving Boyd Barrett and Sam White in Loudoun, with instructions to gather up the remaining “Comanches,” who were not yet ready to march, and bring them out in ten days.
The line of march was by Madison C. H. and Gordonsville, through the country that Sheridan’s army had just passed over, and it would have taken a man with a nicely balanced mind for calculation to figure out anything in the way of destruction that might be added to what had been accomplished by these fire-brands of Satan or Stanton; but what affected the military situation was the ruin to the Rail Road, for there was literally not a rail or even a cross-tie left upon it for miles, and everything that bore the faintest resemblance to a bridge, though it was only a foot-plank over a ditch, had been taken up and destroyed, but the injury which this destruction was intended to inflict upon the army of Gen. Lee was scarcely felt by it now, from the fact that the road ran through an already impoverished country, and there were no supplies in the Valley to be brought over it, while the necessity for sending rations from Richmond to Gen. Early’s forces at Staunton was ended by the annihilation of that command by Sheridan before he struck the Rail Road at all, and consequently the raiding on the road was, in a military point of view, utterly useless.