Weston were of the younger set, while McCook, Minty, Long, Hatch, R. W. Johnson, Knipe, Kelly, Hammond, Coon, G. M. L. Johnson, Spalding, Pritchard, Miller, Harrison, Biggs, Vail, Israel Garrard, McCormick, Pierce, and Frank White were somewhat older, though none of them had reached middle life. Harnden, as sturdy as Balfour of Burleigh, and Eggleston, the type of those who rode with Cromwell at Marston Moor, were graybeards, but were full of activity and courage. Ross Hill and Taylor, although captains, were mere boys, but full of experienced valor.

The men in the ranks were mostly from the Western and Northwestern and upper slave States, and of them it may be truthfully averred that their superiors for endurance, self-reliance, and pluck could nowhere be found. After they were massed at Nashville they believed themselves to be invincible, and it was their boast that they had never come in sight of a hostile gun or fortification that they did not capture. Armed with Spencers, it was their conviction that elbow to elbow, dismounted, in single line, nothing could withstand their charge. “Only cover our flanks,” said Miller to Wilson, as they were approaching Selma, “and nothing can stop us!” In conclusion, it may be safely said that no man ever saw one of them in the closing campaign of the war skulking before battle or sneaking to the rear after the action began. They seemed to know by instinct when and where the enemy might be encountered, and then the only strife among them was to see who should be first in the onset. With a corps of such men, properly mounted and armed, and with such organization and discipline as prevailed among them during their last great campaign, no hazard of war can be regarded as too great for them to undertake, and nothing should be counted as impossible except defeat.

When the “records” are all published and the story properly written, it will show that no corps in the army, whether cavalry or infantry, ever inflicted greater injury upon the “Lost Cause,” or did more useful service toward the re-establishment of the Union under the Constitution and the laws, than was done by the cavalry corps of the Military Division of the Mississippi.

THE END.