Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/285

 The M'HHHHciit t<> M*I>S* M -77

a cavalry brigade. We had captured him and a large. portion of" his regiment the ist Vermont cavalry and their commanding general Stmighton. He wrote me a very cordial letter when I was nomi- nated by Hayes as consul at Hong Kong, and said that he had in- formed Senator Kdmunds of the manner he and his men had been treated by us, and asked him to vote for my confirmation. I re- ceived cards of invitation to his daughter's wedding a few days ago. We had many collisions with Colonel Lowell's regiment, 2d Massa- chusetts. On 22d February, 1864, in a fight in Fairfax, we had taken seventy prisoners from it; on July 6, 1864, in a fight in Loudoun, had captured about sixty including the commanding officer, Major Forbes. Colonel Lowell knew that his men who were prisoners, were hostages for his treatment of mine. Chancellor Kent says in regard to retaliation: "Cruelty to prisoners and barbarous destruc- tion of private property will provoke the enemy to severe retaliation upon the innocent. Retaliation to be just, ought to be confined to to the guilty, who may have committed some enormous violation ol public law. [It was not pretended that the seven men of my com- mand had committed any crime.] While he (Marten) admits that the life of an innocent man can not be taken, unless in extraordinary cases, he declares that cases will sometimes occur when the estab- lished usages of war are violated, and there are no other means of restricting the enemy from further excesses. Vattel speaks of retal- iation as a sad extremity, and it is frequently threatened without being put in execution, probably without the intention to do it, and in hopes that fear will operate to restrain the enemy." I made no threat; the enemy would have regarded it as mere brutum fulmen if I had. When Napoleon wanted to disperse a mob in Paris, he first fired grape-shot, and then blank cartridges. It should be borne in mind that the act for which I retaliated was not done by an irrespon- sible private, but either by one or several generals. In 1886. I was invited by the G. A. R. in Boston to deliver an address before them. I accepted; my theme was Stuart's cavalry. Major Forbes, whose lather, John M. Forbes, was one of the merchant princes of Boston, gave me a dinner at Parker's. James Russell Lowell, the uncle of Colonel Lowell, sat next on my right. Next to Mr. Forbes, on his left, sat Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Here was an object lesson any one could understand.

This has been written in justice to a great soldier who was my friend, as well as to the men who were actors with me in the great drama along the Shenandoah, and especially to the seven whose