Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/293

 The Monument to Mosty's Mm. 285

Shenandoah campaign and recalled the days when Knighthood was in flower.

When we sent Blazer and his band of prisoners to Richmond they would not have admitted that they ever hung anybody. Major Rich- ards refers to Grant's order to destroy subsistence for an army, so as to make the country untenable by the Confederates, and pathetically describes the conflagration. He ought to know that there had been burning of mills and wheat stacks in Loudoun two years before Grant came to Virginia, (irant's orders were no more directed against my command than Early's. Augusta and Rockinghmm were desolated, where we never had been. But I can't see the slightest connection between burning forage and provisions and hanging prisoners. One is permitted by the code of war, the other is not. After General Lee's surrender I received a communication from General Hancock asking for mine. I declined to do so until I could hear whether Joe Johnston would surrrender or continue the war. We agreed on a five days armistice. When it expired nothing had been heard from John- ston. I met a flag of truce at Millwood, and had proposed an ex- tension of ten days, but received through Major Russell a message from Hancock refusing it, and informing me that unless I surrendered immediately he would proceed to devastate the country. The reply I sent by Russell was: " Tell General Hancock he is able to do it." Hancock then had 40,000 men at Winchester. The next day I dis- banded my battalion to save the country from being made a desert. If anyone doubts this, let him read Hancock's report. If it was legitimate for Hancock to lay waste the country after I had suspended hostilities, surely it was equally so for Grant to do it, when I was do- in^ all the damage in my power to his army. Stanton warned Han- cock not to meet me in person under a flag of truce, for fear that I would treacherously kill him. Hancock replied that he would send an officer to meet me. He sent General Chapman. The attention Grant paid to us shows that we did him a great deal of harm. Keeping my men in prison weakened us as much as to hang them. Major Richards complains of the "debasing epithets" Sheridan applied to us. I have read his reports, correspondence and memoirs, but have never seen the epithets. In common with all Northern and many Southern people, he called us guerrillas. Although I have never adopted it, I have never resented as an insult the term "guer- rilla " when applied to me. Sheridan says that my battalion was "the most redoubtable" partisan body that he met. I certainly take no exception to that. He makes no charge of any act of in-