Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/428



The Cavalry Affair at Waynesboro. 427

RECAPITULATION.

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344

The Cavalry Affair at Waynesboro. Letter from Captain GEORGE N. BLISS, of First Rhode Island Cavalry.

[We publish with pleasure the following letter of a gallant soldier whom we have the privilege of knowing as one who has not forgotten kindnesses shown him when a wounded prisoner. Dr. John Staige Davis, of the University of Virginia, of whom Captain Bliss speaks so kindly, has, since this letter was written, "crossed over the river," and left behind him the record of a stainless life.]

I have read with great pleasure "Reminiscences of Cavalry Ope- rations, by General T. T. Munford," as published in SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS, but upon page 458, volume XII, I find errors, which, though unintentional, require correction, for the honor of my regiment and in justice to the memory of Colonel Charles Russel Lowell, Second Massachusetts Cavalry, who had thirteen horses shot under him before a soldier's death closed his career, while leading his regiment in a victorious charge at Cedar Creek, October igth, 1864, only three weeks after the fight at Waynesboro, which occurred September 28th, 1864.

General Munford writes: "In this engagement. Captain George N. Bliss commanding a squadron of Rhode Island Cavalry, a Fed- eral officer who fell into my hands, behaved with conspicuous gallantry, strikingly in contrast with the conduct of his command ; 1 take pleasure in making a note of it. Seeing how small a number we had, he urged his Colonel to charge the Fourth Virginia Cavalry as it entered the main street of Waynesboro."

The natural inference is, that the charge was ordered by the Col- onel of the First Rhode Island Cavalry, and that a squadron of that regiment failed to do their duty. As a matter of fact, neither is true. The First Rhode Island Cavalry was, at that time, Headquarter