Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/279

 Tin MnnHuient to Mosby's M>. '21 \

men always fought in a mounted charge, with pistols. The fact that we were called rebrls ^.ive the enemy no rights as combatants that we did not equally enjoy. As belligerents we stood on the same plane. One side could not demand what it did not concede to the other. Massachusetts furnishes high authority in favor of the rights of men who fight in a cause that has grown from an insurrection into an international conflict. In his Hunker Hill address, Mr. Webster said: "The battle of Bunker Hill was attended with the most impor- tant effects beyond its immediate results as a military engagement. It created at once a state of open, public war. There could now be no longer a question of proceeding against individuals as guilty of treason and rebellion. That fearful crisis was past." If Bunker Hill could elevate a local tumult and a skirmish to the dignity of public war, and clothe the defeated party with all the rights of bel- ligerents, then what was the effect of the victories of Jackson and Lee? The government of the United States was born in a rebellion and promoted rebellions all over the world until it had one of its own. In 1851 the Austrian Minister, the Chevalier Hulseman, com- plained in a diplomatic note that the instructions of the American government to its agent in Europe were offensive to the Imperial Cabinet because it applied an honorary title to the Hungarian chief, Kossuth. Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, said in reply: "In respect to the honorary, epithet bestowed in Mr. Mann's in- structions on the late chief of the revolutionary government of Hun- gary, Mr. Hulseman will bear in mind the government of the United States cannot justly be expected, in a confidential communication to its own agent, to withhold from an individual an epithet of distinc- tion of which a great part of the world thinks him worthy, merely on the ground that his own government regards him as a rebel. At an early stage of the American revolution, while Washington was considered by the English government as a rebel chief, he was re- garded on the continent of Europe as an illustrious hero." When Webster wrote that, the Hungarian revolution had been crushed and Kossuth was an exile.

General Grant had come from the west and taken command of the army cantoned in Culpeper south of the Rappahannock. He moved toward Richmond, crossed James river, and was in front of Lee at Petersburg. My battalion remained in northern Virginia to threaten Washington and the border. It operated along the Potomac in the Shenandoah Valley, and did not come in contact with the portion of the army immediately under the command of General Grant. He