ster, for not serving out
horse feed, as General F. Lee's division of cavalry, who were, as I
mentioned before, outside, up in the James River direction, had cut
off a wagon train that held their provender, so we had to send out a
forage detail in the neighborhood, with a pass from General Sheridan,
to get through the Federal troops that filled the woods for miles
around, for their name was legion. We stacked eight thousand stands of
arms, all told; artillery, cavalry, infantry stragglers, wagon-rats,
and all the rest, from twelve to fifteen thousand men. The United
States troops, by their own estimate, were 150,000 men, with a
railroad connecting their rear with Washington, New York, Germany,
France, Belgium, Africa, "all the world and the rest of man-kind," as
General Taylor comprehensively remarked, for their recruiting stations
were all over the world, and the crusade against the South, and its
peculiar manners and civilization, under the pressure of the "almighty
American dollar," was as absolute and varied in its nationality as was
that of "Peter the Hermit," under the pressure of religious zeal, upon
Jerusalem.

Success had made them good natured. Those we came in contact with were
soldiers--fighting men--and, as is always the case, such appreciate
their position and are too proud to bear themselves in any other way.
They, in the good nature of success, were more willing to give than
our men, in the soreness of defeat, to receive.

The effect of such conduct upon our men was of the best kind; the
unexpected consideration shown by the officers and men of the United
States army towards us; the heartiness with which a Yankee soldier
would come up to a Confederate officer and say, "We have been fighting
one another for four years; give me a Confederate five dollar bill to
remember you by," had nothing in it offensive.

They were proud of their success, and we were not ashamed of our
defeat; and not a man of that grand army of one hundred and fifty
thousand men but could, and I believe would, testify, that, on purely
personal grounds, the few worn-out half-starved men that gathered
around General Lee and his falling flag held the prouder position of
the two. Had the politicians left things alone, such feelings would
have resulted in a very different condition of things.

Those of us who took serious consideration of the state of affairs,
felt that with our defeat we had as absolutely lost our country--the
one we