Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 07.djvu/532

524 to furnish their own horses at their own expense. When a man was required to go or to come, his horse had to go or to come, too. When a machine is not greased or is improperly used, it will first creak and then refuse to move. When a horse is not fed, and given no time to rest, and forced in the charge, or on a raid, and forced in the retreat, he cannot perform his duty, and the man upon his back has to bear the censure. A spavined or jammed horse, or when wounded, cannot carry a sound or an impetuous man. A dead horse cannot be replaced without money, which the man could not procure and the Government failed to supply. The man felt that at any moment he was liable to lose his horse. Not the Government's horse, which would be replaced, but his own horse, when he had no chance of getting another and no hope of being remunerated for his loss. You order a cavalryman to be drilled: his horse is not fit for duty; he cannot do it; he appears to be skulking. You order him to go into battle: his regiment is ordered off at a trot, a gallop; it is impossible for him to go. The more gallant he is, the worse he naturally feels. It is simply impossible for him to go. (His only chance is to scout and capture a picket or a straggler). How is he to get away?—"run the gauntlet" or he is forced into another arm of the service against his will. His comrades know his worth and deplore his lot—they know they may be at any moment in the same condition. The man cannot and the other men will not perform their duty under such circumstances—and for reasons like these, a whole arm of the service is weakened and demoralized, and the handful who could keep mounted had to do all the duty. General Ashby labored under all of these disadvantages in every company in his command, every day he had to move. Look at the map and see the country from which most of his men came; his picket-line ran from the Warm Springs, in Bath county, down the whole Valley and along the Potomac to Harper's Ferry, and around to near Leesburg in Loudon county. To accomplish what he did was wonderful! to expect more could not be realized. These things, and the censure that they produced, was the cause of the alienation that for a time existed between Jackson and Ashby. Others had to handle the same force after Ashby's death, but it took time to accomplish what never was given Ashby—as he could never get his men together under Jackson mounted.

Late one night, not long since, having concluded reading General Dick Taylor's narrative, entitled " Destruction and