“I had, moreover, become convinced that our cavalry were able to successfully compete with double their numbers. The Confederacy possessed, in my opinion, no body of cavalry superior to that which I found guarding the flanks of the Army of Tennessee when I assumed its direction.”
I now quote Federal authority. Writing of the comparative merits of the soldiers of the two armies, in a paper on the Kentucky campaign, General Buell, while denying the superiority of the Southern soldiers over the Northern, admits it was true of the cavalry. He says:
“Another sectional distinction produced a more marked effect in the beginning of the war. The habits of the Southern people facilitated the formation of cavalry corps which were comparatively efficient even without instruction; and accordingly we see Stuart, John Morgan and Forrest riding with impunity around the union armies, destroying or harassing their communications. Late in the war that agency was reversed. The South was exhausted of horses, while the Northern cavalry increased in numbers and efficiency, and acquired the audacity which had characterized the Southern.”
Read that again. It comes very near saying that the South was overcome because the supply of horses failed. The writer is an educated soldier and student of war.
L’ENVOI.
My task is done. My story is told. I have derived pleasure as well as pain and grief from the recital; pleasure in going back over the dreary waste of years to the morning of life, and dwelling in memory amid the scenes of my early manhood; pain that I can not do justice to all who, at the call of country, periled their young lives for home and the right; grief for the heroic dead, who sleep in unmarked graves wherever duty lead to danger and death. Their matchless courage and devotion earned undying fame.
“Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine;
Yet, one I would select from that proud throng”:
Because he was my bedfellow, and I loved him as a brother; faithful in the discharge of every duty, clean, brave, and true—William Nicholson.