Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1307

Rh by Captain Payne, on General Jackson's call for the best mounted man in the Black Horse troop, and was given a message to carry to Gen. R. E. Lee. Delivering this safely he was warned by General Lee not to allow the answer under any circumstances to fall into the hands of "those people," as he demonstrated the enemy. He brought the answer to General Jackson that night, finding the general sleeping in his blanket under a tree. After reading it Jackson turned over to sleep again and Vass sought rest in the nearest fence corner, to be awakened next morning by the first guns of the battle of Second Manassas. At the battle of Chantilly he was alone with Jackson when a courier came up from General Branch with the information that the latter's guns were so wet with the rain that they could not be used, and asking what he should do if attacked. Jackson rose in his stirrups and pointing his finger at the courier, answered: "You tell General Branch that the rain is falling as hard on the enemy as upon us. If they advance, and the guns cannot be discharged, use the bayonets and hold the position." Just before the battle of Fredericksburg, when General Stuart was urging upon General Lee that the Federals were advancing on Fredericksburg, and that the position should at once be secured, General Lee's doubts were removed by the testimony of Vass, who had been close to the enemy's campfires, and was introduced to General Lee by Stuart in these words: "General, here is a young man who has been with me a long time, and you can place full reliance in what he says." The gallant scout was once wounded, that being at Poolesville, Md., during the Sharpsburg campaign, receiving a bullet on the ribs from a Federal cavalryman, but not preventing him from dropping his antagonist. On the last day at Appomattox he carried the message which withdrew from action the last Confederate battery. Two brothers of this faithful soldier were in the service and both were killed in battle. He is now a highly respected citizen of Danville, and has three children living.

Benjamin Boisseau Vaughan, now president of the National bank of Petersburg, Va., and one of the leading citizens of that historic town, honorably sustained the record of his family which has long been distinguished in Virginia, by patriotic service in the Confederate cause. Sixteen years of age and a student at the Virginia military academy at the beginning of the war, he went out with the cadet corps in 1862 to participate in the battle of McDowell, with Jackson's troops, and then enlisted in Company G of the First Virginia cavalry, the old regiment of the gallant General Stuart. During the remainder of the war he served with this brave regiment of troopers, under the leadership of Fitzhugh Lee, J. E. B. Stuart and Wade Hampton, throughout the campaigns in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, until finally taking part in the disastrous fight at Sailor's Creek, during the retreat of the army from Petersburg, he was among the many brave men who were surrounded and captured by the hosts of the enemy. He was held as a prisoner of war at Point Lookout until June, 1865. Mr. Vaughan was born in Dinwiddie county in 1844, the son of Benjamin B. Vaughan, who was graduated at Princeton college in 1838, and in a distinguished law class at Harvard, and was subsequently prominent as a lawyer and political leader in his county, which he represented in the Virginia legislature.