Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 19.djvu/57

 A Remarkable Victory. 51

Considering these facts, was there not as much culpability on one side as the other ? Let us do away with the Pharisaism which affects all the virtues, according to our neighbor the vices. The truth is, there were virtues and vices on both sides. We have a right to be proud of the heroism the war developed, yet when it comes to the question of the treatment of prisoners, both North and South may well say Peccavi!

JOHN A. WYETH.

New York, September 9,

[From the Richmond Times, September 27, 1891.]

A REMARKABLE VICTORY.

Wilson's Defeat at the Staunton River Bridge in 1864.

A Battle Which Saved Lee's Army Two Hundred and Fifty Hastily

Organized Confederates Whip Twenty-five Hundred

Federals Valuable Contributions.

Wilson's defeat at the Staunton-river bridge, June 24, 1864, was the most remarkable result of the fervent patriotism which pervaded all classes and ages and sexes of Virginians during our long and severe trials that the history of that war gives us.

This most interesting narrative of it was given me ten years or more ago by that able and excellent Virginia gentleman, Colonel Tom Flournoy, then residing in Danville. Several times he told me he would write it for record in the Southern Historical Society. Unfor- tunately for history, he, in the struggle for maintenance which had then fallen upon us all, died before he could execute his purpose.

WILSON'S ADVANCE.

His story was that about the 2ist or 22d of Tune, 1864, he was at his home in Halifax county, Va., when about midnight he was aroused by the barking of his dogs and by one of his negro men, who told him a strange man had come to the "quarters" asking for a fresh horse to enable him to carry an important dispatch. The