Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 30.djvu/355

 Recollections of Major James Breathed. 347

Price were making war speeches, advocating secession. Breathed was with them, being a relative, and in the fire of youth, he deter- mined to go into the service of the South and link his fortunes with them.

When "Jeff" Thompson, and Generals Marmaduke and Price were compelled to leave their homes and firesides by the orders of the United States Government, Breathed went with them, determin- ing to stand by them and the views they advocated to the end. Breathed's parents begged him not to be too precipitate, and had him to return to Maryland.

En route to Maryland, and while he was on the cars, he satin the same seat with the then Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, U. S. regular cavalry, who was returning to Virginia, to offer his services to the Governor of the State of his birth.

Breathed, two days after reaching home, crossed the Potomac river at Williamsport, Md., went to Martinsburg, Va., and joined a -company of cavalry that was being organized at that place under the command of Captain John Blair Hoge, afterward Company B, First Virginia Cavalry, Army of the Shenandoah, under General Joseph E. Johnston. While in this command he again came in contact with Colonel J. E. B. Stuart, who at that time was Colonel of the First Virginia Cavalry. When they met Stuart recognized Breathed as his travelling companion of a few weeks previous, when they were both en route for the South with the same purpose in view to join the Southern Army of Virginia. Stuart was struck with Breathed's manly and bold bearing, and when Pelham organized the celebrated battery of Stuart Horse Artillery at Centreville, Va., in the fall of 1861, he was transferred from Company B, First Virginia Cavalry, -as a private, to that battery. Later, at the election of officers and at General Stuart's suggestion, Breathed was elected first lieutenant of the battery, and started on his unparalleled record as the hardest artillery fighter the war produced. (So said General R. E. Lee, his -commander.) The organization to which he attached himself was not only known throughout tfce breadth of this fair land, but also in Continental Europe. The names of the incomparable Pelham and the intrepid, reckless, dashing. Breathed will be handed down to generations yet to come, hand in hand, as true types of Southern valor and manhood. Breathed, at the time of which I am writing, was only 22 years of age, being Major Pelham' s senior by one year.

After the war he returned to Hancock, Md., \\here his sister, Mrs. Robert Bridges, resided, and again began the practice of