This the general of the division knew when he detailed the old Colonel
and gave him his order to hold the pass until relieved, and not let his
guns fall into the hands of the enemy. He knew both the Colonel and his
battery. The battery was one of the oldest in the army. It had been in
the service since April, 1861, and its commander had come to be known as
"The Wheel Horse of his division". He was, perhaps, the oldest officer
of his rank in his branch of the service. Although he had bitterly
opposed secession, and was many years past the age of service when the
war came on, yet as soon as the President called on the State for her
quota of troops to coerce South Carolina, he had raised and uniformed
an artillery company, and offered it, not to the President of the United
States, but to the Governor of Virginia.

It is just at this point that he suddenly looms up to me as a soldier;
the relation he never wholly lost to me afterward, though I knew him
for many, many years of peace. His gray coat with the red facing and the
bars on the collar; his military cap; his gray flannel shirt--it was the
first time I ever saw him wear anything but immaculate linen--his high
boots; his horse caparisoned with a black, high-peaked saddle, with
crupper and breast-girth, instead of the light English hunting-saddle
to which I had been accustomed, all come before me now as if it were but
the other day. I remember but little beyond it, yet I remember, as if
it were yesterday, his leaving home, and the scenes which immediately
preceded it; the excitement created by the news of the President's call
for troops; the unanimous judgment that it meant war; the immediate
determination of the old Colonel, who had hitherto opposed secession,
that it must be met; the suppressed agitation on the plantation,
attendant upon the tender of his services and the Governor's acceptance
of them. The prompt and continuous work incident to the enlistment of
the men, the bustle of preparation, and all the scenes of that time,
come before me now. It turned the calm current of the life of an old and
placid country neighborhood, far from any city or centre, and stirred it
into a boiling torrent, strong enough, or fierce enough to cut its
way and join the general torrent which was bearing down and sweeping
everything before it. It seemed but a minute before the quiet old
plantation, in which the harvest, the corn-shucking, and the Christmas
holidays alone marked the