Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/235

 Battle of Cedar Creek. 223

[From the Richmond, Va., Times-Dispatch, Nov. 6, 18, 1904.]

BATTLE OF CEDAR CREEK, OCT. 19, 1864.

An Event That Has Not Been Told About as Importance

Demands.

BY CAPTAIN J. S. McNEILY, PARTICIPANT HIS VIEWS. Tactics Employed by General Early and the Results That Followed.

With Prefatory Note by U. S. Senator, J. W. Daniel.

Editor of The Times- Dispatch :

SIR. I enclose for "the Confederate Column" an article on "The Battle of Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864," by Captain J. S. McNeily, of Vicksburg, Miss. This gentleman, who now edits the Vicksburg Herald, was a participant in that battle, and is much re- spected by those who know him. He is the son-in-law of Colonel Edmund Berkeley, formerly of the famous 8th Virginia Infantry, succeeding General Eppa Hunton in that honorable command. He has been a student of our battles and battlefields, and is full of a sense of justice, as well as of information and ability. I was not at Cedar Creek because disabled in a previous battle, but I have long believed from my knowledge of the pugnacity and energy of Gen- eral Early, and of the great disparity of his forces to those of his opponent, that his critics were not appreciative of the companies that environed him circumstances which ere long swept away all military resistance in Virginia. This review by Captain McNeily is conceived in the spirit of a true soldier who knows those facts and who shared in the event which he so ably analyzes. I will make no further comment at this time, save to say that the high character, intelligence and the experience of the author of the article gives it great weight.

Very respectfully,

JNO. W. DANIEL.

No other engagement of equal magnitude and consequence dur- ing the war has been so scantily and misleadingly treated as Cedar