directing me to proceed without delay to Atlanta, Georgia, and report to General Sherman for the purpose of reorganizing and commanding the cavalry of his military division.

I had led the Third Cavalry Division constantly for nearly six months. It was first to cross the Rapidan and first to engage the enemy in the Wilderness. It was the only division to occupy Spottsylvania Court House. It did its full part in the battle of Yellow Tavern, where Jeb Stuart was defeated and killed. It marched to the James River and then rejoined the army with the cavalry corps at Chesterfield Station, where it made a successful turning movement against Lee's left and rear. It took part in all Grant's operations till he confronted and besieged Lee in his works at Petersburg. From the Chickahominy to Prince George Court House, including the passage of the James, it was the only cavalry division present with the army. From Prince George it moved by the way of Reams Station against the Weldon, the Southside, and the Danville railroads, destroying them so completely that they were out of service for nine weeks. With only four weeks' rest it rejoined Sheridan in the valley, where it took a leading part in the battle of Kearneyville, Winchester, and Waynesborough. During this period it captured many prisoners and participated in twenty-six fights and skirmishes. It marched one thousand three hundred and fifty miles from the 1st of May to the 1st of September, and did its full share of the cavalry work at all times and in all places.1 And yet the division grew steadily in strength and efficiency. With only three thou10. R. Serial No. 90, p. 520, Wilson's Report.

sand six hundred troopers in the saddle, we crossed the Rapidan five months before, and, yet, with all our losses, the division numbered about five thousand men for duty when I left it. Every man was mounted and every non-commissioned officer and private was armed with a Spencer carbine. All things considered, it had become as good a division of cavalry as ever upheld the Union cause. This is shown not only by the extraordinary services I have just outlined, no less than by its splendid deeds under Custer, my gallant successor. Its two best regiments were the Fifth New York and the First Vermont from the opposite sides of the Champlain Valley. They were almost to a man of Anglo-American stock, steady, amenable to discipline, natural cavalrymen, devoted to the Union and without hatred or passion, they were ever ready for the fray. The division contained, besides two other New York regiments, one Connecticut, one New Hampshire, one Ohio, and one Pennsylvania regiment, one troop from Indiana and two regular batteries of horse artillery, all splendid specimens of the American soldier and a complete epitome of the Northern people. By constant work, constant instruction, constant attention to the details of discipline and equipment and by the gradual perfection of their armament they had become, without bravado or bluster, model American cavalry, fully competent to grapple with any military task that might confront them.

On the day I left I was aroused before sunrise by the réveillé, which, as custom required, started with my own buglers and was taken up in turn at brigade and regimental headquarters, and then by troop and battery, till mountain and valley, forest

and field, reëchoed with the strains of martial music. Nothing could have been more stirring than bugle answering bugle on that clear, chilly morning. Borne, at first softly, in upon the awakening sense, gradually swelling as note answered note and finally dying out in the distance with a delicious and lingering concord of sweet sounds, it was an experience never to be forgotten. The regret which I naturally felt at parting with the gallant comrades whom I had come to regard as brothers in the great cause, filled my heart with sympathy and affection which have lasted to this day. Perhaps it was a similar feeling, mingled with grateful ambition, that warmed the heart of my successor and inspired his tongue with pleasant words and generous assurances, ending in an offer to serve with me in the West, and making us better friends than ever before.

After turning the division and its permanent staff over to him, with the brief remark that he knew it as well as I did, I took my leave and started with my aids and an escort of fifty men to Martinsburg, on the way to Washington, for the purpose of completing my arrangements for the great command and responsibilities which had been imposed upon me in the West. While Grant authorized Sheridan to send either Torbert or myself to reorganize and command Sherman's cavalry, both Sheridan and I felt that the great task was really intended for me, and, as Torbert did not care to leave the Army of the Potomac, the detail fell to my lot.

INDEX