Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/294

 286 Southern Historical Society Papers.

humanity against us. The highest compliment ever paid to the effi- ciency of our command is the statement, in Sheridan's Memoirs, that while his army largely outnumbered Early's, yet their line of battle strength was about equal on account of the detachments he was compelled to make to guard the border and his line of com- munication from partisan attacks. Ours was the only force behind him. At that time the records show that in round numbers Early had 17,000 present for duty, and Sheridan had 94,000. The word "guerrilla" is a diminutive of the Spanish word guerra (war), and simply means one engaged in the minor operations of war.

I had only five companies of cavalry when Sheridan came, in Au- gust, 1864, to the Shenandoah Valley. A sixth was organized in September. Two more companies joined me in April, 1865, alter the evacuation of Richmond. They came just in time to surrender. I don't care a straw whether Custer was solely responsible for the hanging of our men or jointly with others. If we believe the reports of the generals, none of them ever even heard of the hanging of our men; they must have committed suicide. Contemporary evidence is against Custer. I wonder if he also denied burning dwelling- houses around Berryville.

Restopchin, the Governor of Moscow, claimed the credit of the burning of it when it was thought to have been the cause of Napo- leon's retreat, but afterward it became known that it was not the cause of it; to escape the odium, he denied all responsibility for it, and declared that it was done by incendiaries for plunder.

I once called at the White House in 1876 to see General Grant; sent him my card, and was promptly admitted. When I came out of his room, one of the secretaries told me that General Custer had called the day before, but that General Grant refused to see him. The incident is related in the Life of Custer. A few weeks afterward Custer was killed in the Sitting Bull massacre.

" Our acts our angels are for good or ill Our iatal shadows that walk by us still."

Major Richards further says " that there was scarcely a family in all that section that did not have some member in Mosby's command." If that is true, I must have commanded a larger army than Sheridan. I didn't know it. He describes the pathos of the scenes that might have been if the "severe and cruel order" had been executed to transfer the families from that region to Fort McHenry, and says it would have "paralyzed" my command. If so, that would have