in reaching the Baltimore pike, striking the reserve artillery and trains at the moment when Pickett was moving up to the assault of Cemetery Ridge.

On the night of July 4 our brigade moved over to the left of the army to picket in front of Round Top. I will never forget that night. It was raining hard and so dark that we were compelled to use lanterns to remove the dead and dying out of our way, fearing our horses would crush them under their feet. The moans of the dying were horrible. Sometimes I imagine I can still hear their voices ringing in my ears. It was awful!

Then commenced the race after Lee's defeated army. For a few days we had with us "Beau" Neill's brigade of the Sixth Corps, but on July 12 we cut loose from them, marched to Boonsborough, where we rejoined General Gregg and one of the other brigades of our division, and, pushing rapidly to Harper's Ferry, crossed over the Potomac on the 14th, with our head-quarters' band playing "I wish I was in Dixie." Next day the two brigades moved out to Shepherdstown and encountered the rebel cavalry again, fighting dismounted behind stone walls and fences all day. An officer of the signal corps sent us a report that all of Lee's army had crossed over to our side of the river and that we were being surrounded by the enemy. Consequently, when night came, we made a hasty retreat to Harper's Ferry. A singular thing about this fight was that while we did not claim any victory, and left all our killed and wounded behind in charge of our surgeons, when the latter rejoined us a few days afterwards they told us that the rebels had commenced their retreat even before we did, also leaving their killed and wounded in charge of their surgeons. That, it is believed, was the only drawn fight the cavalry of both armies ever had—where each abandoned the field to the other—during the four years' contest.

Our line of march southward was over the same ground as that traversed by McClellan in 1862 after Antietam. Nothing much of note occurred. We did not get a fair chance at the rebel cavalry again until we arrived, on September 13, in the neighborhood of Culpeper Court-House. Here Gregg made a mounted attack, driving the rebel cavalry fifteen miles. While we of the staff were placing the regiments in position for this mounted charge I was ordered to find a cover for the Sixth Ohio Cavalry, and took them into a heavy piece of oak timber near the edge of the open country. While I was reporting to General Gregg how our lines were formed he observed the Sixth Ohio breaking and coming back through the woods in great disorder. He at once ordered me to stop and re-form them, but I soon became demoralized myself when I felt the belligerent end of a hornet upon my cheek. The brave old colonel (Steedman) of the Sixth Ohio said that they could stand all the shot and shell the d—d rebels could give them, but not a hornets' nest. Thus were some of the bravest of our soldiers ignominiously put to flight.

And here let me call attention to another instance of the way in which some of our generals gained reputation. When Gregg made his dashing attack upon the enemy at Culpeper Court-House our brigade, being on the left of his line, made a half-wheel, swept down on the flank of the enemy, and drove away the cannoneers from their battery as well as its supports. While we were busy in front in pursuit of these people, having passed the guns, a brigadier-general commanding one of the other divisions, with his staff and orderlies, rode up and had the guns quietly hauled off the field. A few days after this I bought a copy of a New York paper, with a flaming header in large type, announcing the gallant and desperate charge of Kilpatrick's cavalry division, and how its commander had led it in person and captured a battery from the rebels. General Gregg, with his usual modesty, never protested, and we who had done the capturing were the only ones who did the growling for him. There is nothing like newspaper glory for promotion in time of war, and there were only too many of such newspaper generals among us. Gregg would never permit a newspaper correspondent about his command, and hence our division was not appreciated, outside of army circles, as it should have been.

In the month of October came our retrograde movement to Centreville and Fairfax, and another great cavalry charge was witnessed between Culpeper Court-House and Brandy Station, where we repulsed a fearful onslaught of the rebel cavalry and drove them back upon their infantry supports.

After we had crossed over to the north side of the Rappahannock we had a severe dismounted engagement, and during the day, which was election day in Ohio, the troops belonging to that State voted for State candidates. I was detailed to personally superintend the voting in the Sixth Ohio Cavalry. We relieved one company at a time for the purpose, then sent them back to the front and retired the next, and so on until the whole regiment had voted. I doubt if many of the "statesmen" of the present day would care to mix in "practical politics" under similar circumstances.

A few days after this I was severely hurt at Bristow Station and sent to hospital for ninety days. Upon my return to the front great changes had taken place. General Torbert was in command of the First Division, "Old Stand-By" Gregg retaining his own, the Second, and General Wilson in command of the Third Division, with "Cavalry Sheridan" in command of the corps.

On May 3, 1864, Gregg's division moved out from its winter quarters at Warrenton, marched to the Rappahannock at Kelly's Ford, and crossed over to Ely's Ford on the Rapidan. We forced our way over the river, taking the advance of the Second Corps into "The Wilderness" until we came to Todd's Tavern on the Brock road. There we were dismounted and moved to the left and front of a division of the Second Corps which was hotly engaged, and we pressed back the right of the rebel line. During this contest a gay-looking first lieutenant of the engineer corps from General Meade's staff came up to me, asked if I was Captain Thomas, and said that Gregg and Sheridan had sent him out there to me so that I might show him a cavalry charge if we should have one. A few moments afterwards an officer reported to me that General Davies, my brigade commander, on whose staff I was serving, and two of his officers had just been captured by the enemy. Learning the direction in which they had been taken, I took a mounted squadron of the First New Jersey, the nearest at hand, and said to the gay lieutenant, "Now is your chance for a charge." We dashed through the enemy to the rescue of our friends, the lieutenant far in advance of us all, and recaptured them. This officer afterwards distinguished himself as a general in the cavalry during the latter part of the war and on the Mexican frontier. The dashing Mackenzie, for he it was, afterwards called me his godfather for giving him his first baptism in a cavalry charge.

After our division had been relieved by the Second Corps, General Sheridan, with his command, cut loose for a short time from the Army of the Potomac and went on his successful raid around Lee's army, destroying the latter's communication with Richmond. While on this raid—at Beaver Dam Station, on the Fredericksburg and Richmond Railroad—Custer captured a train of cars loaded with some of our infantry who had been taken prisoners a few days before in the Wilderness, and they expressed their delight by singing, "Ain't we glad to get out of the Wilderness?" Our division remained as rear-guard, while the advance were destroying trains, stores, and railroads. On the morning after the capture of Beaver Dam Station, and just as day was breaking, I called up one of the orderlies, who was a barber, to shave me. He jumped to earn his quarter, while I looked around among my brother officers who were sleeping and chuckled to myself in having stolen a march on them. The barber had taken the beard from off one side of my face when the enemy opened two batteries upon us, the shells passing directly over our