Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/420



Tribute to General "Dick" Anderson. 419

This little affair had the effect of retarding Burnside's army from four o'clock in the afternoon until six o'clock next morning, and ma- terially aided in the capture of Harper's Ferry, Burnside having gained only three miles in fourteen hours. My force, composed of Company B, Captain Henderson, from Okalona, Mississippi, and the Georgia Hussars, from Savannah, Georgia, lost twelve out of thirteen, officers and men in proportion, in thirteen months, and never were stampeded. I have never doubted if I had had them with me at Frederick, instead of a mixed command, we would have carried that gun and horses off in the face of Burnside's army. The horses were not killed, as stated in General Johnson's article, but knocked down, and the cannon upset over them by their own troops.

John Esten Cooke, in " Surry of Eagle's Nest," gives the credit of this affair to Pierce Young, who was miles away. Now it is given to Butler. Neither of those soldiers need or would accept what doesn't belong to them. They are knights " without fear and with- out reproach/'

Savannah, Ga.

Tribute to General "Dick" Anderson. By General JOHN BRATTON.

[By some mistake the following paragraphs at the beginning of General Bratton's address on Seven Pines were omitted in the copy sent us, and we insert them here as containing a deserved tribute from a gallant soldier to his dead comrade :]

MY COMRADES, You have selected for your reunion this year a spot hallowed to us by the life-blood of dead comrades, and on which the blood of many of us still living was freely poured. The committee, in extending your invitation to be present with you here, did not, in accordance with the rules of your Association, designate the subject, but left it to my discretion. I need not say that the place of meeting settled that question, and I shall avail myself of this occasion to meet an obligation long felt, and perform a long de- ferred duty to the officers and men of the regiment that I had the honor to command on this bloody field. I shall endeavor to tell the story of your achievements in the battle of Seven Pines, as it would have been told in my official report of that action, had it been in my