ed and the great battles of the Wilderness and
Spottsylvania had been fought. Our battery had escaped without serious
loss, as the character of the country afforded little opportunity for
the use of artillery. From Staunton I traveled on a freight train with
the cadets of the Virginia Military Institute and their professors, who
were now the conspicuous heroes of the hour, having just won immortal
fame in their charge, on May 15, at New Market. Among the professors was
my friend and former messmate, Frank Preston, with an empty sleeve, now
captain of a cadet company, and Henry A. Wise, Jr., who took command of
the cadets after the wounding of Colonel Shipp, their commandant.

Our army was now near Hanover Junction, twenty-five miles from Richmond,
and engaged in its death struggle with Grant's countless legions. If
any one period of the four years of the war were to be selected as an
example of Southern endurance and valor, it probably should be the
campaign from the Wilderness, beginning May 5 and closing a month later
at Petersburg, in which the Confederate army, numbering 64,000
half-clothed, half-fed men, successfully resisted a splendidly equipped
army of 140,000--inflicting a loss of 60,000 killed and wounded.

Much has been said and written concerning the comparative equipment,
etc., of the two armies. A striking reference to it I heard in a
conversation at General Lee's home in Lexington after the war. Of the
students who attended Washington College during his presidency he always
requested a visit to himself whenever they returned to the town. With
this request they were very ready to comply. While performing this
pleasant duty one evening, during a visit to my old home in Lexington,
Mrs. Lee, sitting in her invalid-chair, was discoursing to me,
feelingly, on the striking contrast between the ragged clothing worn by
Confederate soldiers as compared with that worn by the Federals, as she
had seen the Federal troops entering Richmond after its evacuation. The
General, who was pacing the floor, paused for a moment, his eye lighting
up, and, at the conclusion of her remarks, said, as he inclined forward
with that superb grace, "But, ah! Mistress Lee, we gave them some
awfully hard knocks, with all of our rags!"

After parting with my cadet friends at Hanover Junction, soon after
day-dawn, I readily found our battery bivouacking in sight of the
station. Some of the men were lying asleep; those who had risen seemed