The Maine bugle ... campaign; 1-5 Jan. 1894-Oct. 1898 - Maine.gov

206 THE MAINE BUGLE.
" Longing for her, our spirits wilt
Like shipwrecked men's, on rafts, for water. ""
And so we almost trembled as the rumbling of the hoofs and
the clanging of the sabers on the bridge were echoed by the
up-river hills, for we feared the reverberation might reach the
ears of Lee and wake him from his trance, and start him up
crying for his horse. He slept well through it all though, and
we camped that night on the wind}- south bank of the James.
Next morning, March 27th, we were off bright and early for
the left flank of the Army of the Potomac, where we found our
old friends of Gregg's cavalry division from whom we had
parted when ordered to the Shenandoah Valley with the other
two divisions of the corps ;
but we missed the golden beard of
the imperturbable General Gregg, who had so admirably commanded
this superb division, and who, for some pressing private
reasons, had now resigned from the army. On the day of our
arrival. General Crook assumed command of the division, and
reported to General Sheridan, thus reuniting the old cavalry
corps under its most famous commander.
Before starting again on the war-path, it may not be amiss to
say a few words in regard to the cavalry as it stood at this time
in the estimation of the army and of the country, and of the
steps by which it was brought into favor, if only as a poor trib-
ute to the memory of a gallant few, who, ardently seeking to
distinguish their arm of the service, lost their lives before it had
gained its best rei)ute.
It was quite the thing early in the war to sneer at mounted
troops. A distinguished major-general is said to have asked,
after an engagement, if anybody had seen a dead cavalryman
and very likely nobody had, for in those primitive days the
major-generals themselves had not the least idea of how to go
to work to get cavalry killed, and when an}' did fall they fell
through a laudable desire to do something for the country and
for their own reputation, and not because the\' had been ordered
to do anything hazardous. For a long while the)' had no united
organization ;
on
the Peninsula, under McClellan, nobody in