Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/322

 314 Southern Historical Society Papers.

[From the Richmond, Va., Time*, September 3, 1809.]

RETALIATION.

THE EXECUTION OF SEVEN PRISONERS BY Col. JOHN S. HOSBY.

A Self-Protective Necessity.

The dedication at Front Royal of the monument to the six men ol the 43d battalion of Virginia cavalry on the anniversary of the day they were hung, September 23, 1864, revives the memory of a painful episode of the war. But it does more: it proves that he- roic sentiment still survives and that those who died for their coun- try's cause, did not die in vain.

"Their country conquers with their martyrdom." At the time it occurred, I was away from my command, wounded. Sheridan, with an overwhelming force, was pushing Early up the Shenandoah Valley; he had sent Torbert with two divisions of cav- alry to cut off his retreat at New Market; Wickham in command ol Fitz Lee's cavalry division had repulsed them at Milford, and Tor- bert was retreating down the Valley. Captain Sam Chapman the same Chapman whom McKinley recently sent as a chaplain to preach humanity in Cuba this is one of the revenges of time with a de- tachment of fifty or sixty men went to the Valley to strike a blow to impede Sheridan's march by breaking his line of communications. This was the work in which we had been engaged. If Sheridan's dispatches to Grant are true, he was as much annoyed by the war in his rear as by that in his front. In his report of the campaign he belittles our operations by saying that he was benefitted by them as we kept his men from straggling but afterward, finding that it would be of more advantage to his reputation to take the opposite ground, in his Memoirs he maintains that while his army was numerically superior to Early 's, yet the partisans in his rear compelled such heavy detachments to guard the border and his line of supplies, that their actual strength was about equal. The Memoir (Vol. I, p. 499) says: "The difference of strength between the two armies at this date was considerably in my favor, but the conditions attending my situation. in a hostile region necessitated so much detached service