Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/276

 268 Southern Historical Society Papers.

men, greatly outnumbered, were driven like sheep over bluffs 150 feet high, in a struggling mass down upon the shore or into the waters of the Potomac."

How strange it is, at this late day forty-five years after the battle and in view of the indisputable proof furnished by the offi- cial record, that Baker's force was more than double that of Hunton's, and that not until late in the day, after the Eighteenth and Seventeenth Mississippi regiments came upon the field, was there an approximate equality of numbers that such careless and glaring mistakes should be published. The contemporary exagger- ations are pardonable for the Confederates had a marvelous way of magnifying and multiplying themselves in battle and there were also Falstaffs in those days, in whose affrighted vision hundreds of " men in buckram " appeared, whose names were not on the rolls; but now when sectional passions have subsided and the truth is so easily accessible there is no excuse for such misstatements.

A VOLUNTEER EXPEDITION.

Asking pardon for this brief digression, we return to the picket by the river, where Lieutenant Berkeley and White were holding a council. It was agreed that White should go forward alone to reconnoitre, while Berkeley held his men ready for any emergency. Moving cautiously along the bank it being so dark that he could not be recognized White approached the landing where the Federals (estimated at over 1,000) were waiting for deliverance. Returning with this report, it was proposed to try and capture them, but a gallant fellow, afterwards killed at Gettysburg, said the scheme was too utterly rash for consideration, and it was decided that White should ride to Hunton's headquarters, explain the situation, and ask for the regiment. Colonel Hunton who had been prostrated for several weeks by a painful malady, but thinking a battle was imminent, and unwilling that his men should go into it without him, had left his sick bed against the protest of his physician and the entreaties of his family was so completely worn out at the close of the battle as to make it necessary for him to retire to Leesburg for medical attention, leaving Lieutenant-Colonel Tebbs in command. Tebbs would not assume the responsibility of order- ing the regiment on the expedition, but said that any who chose to volunteer for it might do so.