Page:A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence in the Confederate States of America.djvu/52

48 and annoy him as he passed through the mountains towards Lewisburg, and also ascertain whether he would endeavor to get into the Valley towards Lexington or Staunton.

At Lynchburg, I had received it telegram from General Lee, directing me, after disposing of Hunter, either to return to his army or carry out the original plan, as I might deem most expedient under the circumstance in which I found myself. After the pursuit had ceased, I received another dispatch from him, submitting it to my judgment whether the condition of my troops would permit the expedition across the Potomac to be carried out, and I determined to take the responsibility of continuing it. On the 23rd, the march was resumed and we reached Buchanan that night, where we struck again the route over which Hunter had advanced. The scenes on Hunter's route from Lynchburg had been truly heart-rending. Houses had been burned, and helpless women and children left without shelter. The country had been stripped of provisions and many families without a morsel to eat. Furniture and bedding had been cut to pieces and old men and women and children robbed of all the clothing they had except that on their backs. Ladies trunks had been rifled and their dresses torn to pieces in mere wantonness. Even the negro girls had lost their little finery. We now had renewed evidences of the outrages committed by Hunter's orders in burning and plundering private houses. We saw the ruins of a number of houses to which the torch had been applied by his orders. At Lexington he had burned the Military Institute, with all of its contents, including its library and scientific apparatus; and Washington College had been plundered and the statue of Washington stolen. The residence of Ex-Governor Letcher at that place had been burned by orders, and but a few minutes given Mrs Letcher and her family to leave the house. In the same county a most excellent christian gentleman, a Mr Creigh, had been hung, because, on a former occasion, he had killed a straggling and marauding Federal soldier while in the set of insulting and outraging the ladies of his family. These are but some of the outrages committed by Hunter or his orders, and I will not insult the memory of the ancient barbarians of the North by calling them "acts of Vandalism." If those old barbarians were savage and cruel, they at least had the manliness and daring of rude soldiers, with occasional traits of magnanimity. Hunter's deed were those of a malignant and cowardly fanatic, who was better qualified to make war upon helpless women and children than upon armed soldiers. The time consumed in the perpetration of those deeds, was the salvation of Lynchburg, with its stores, foundries, and factories, which were so necessary to our army at Richmond. Ransom's cavalry moved by Clifton Forge, through the western part of Rockbridge, to keep a lookout for Hunter and ascertain if he should attempt to get into the Valley again.