Hunter's raiding party of about eighteen thousand
effective men entered Lexington on the evening
of the 11th of June last year, and remained
there until the morning of the 14th—a delay for
which the General has been blamed in certain
quarters. This blame, of course, makes no difference,
as had he not been censured for this—it
being then the fashion to abuse him—his candid
accusers would readily have found some other
source of accusation.

For the delay, however, there were many valid
and peremptory reasons—General Duffié's cavalry
column of about three thousand men, detached at
Stanton and sent across the Blue Ridge to cut
the railroad between Amherst Court-House and
Lynchburgh, having lost its way in the mountains,
as was usual with its leader, and not rejoining
the main command at Lexington until late in
the evening of the 13th. This expedition had not
been successful, only slightly damaging the railroad,
capturing three hundred wagons and teams,

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and taking some seventy or eighty prisoners. It
brought news, however, that Sheridan had had a
heavy fight with Fitz-Hugh Lee's cavalry at Charlottesville
some two or three days before; and
herein—that we were waiting for Duffié—lies a
partial explanation of our delay at a juncture so
critical. Cut off from our communications, and
hearing only through Richmond papers and contrabands
of Sheridan's march toward Charlottesville,
Hunter naturally, and we believe rightly,
supposed that Sheridan was attempting to join
his expedition against Lynchburgh; and it was
partly to await his arrival, and partly to give
time for Duffié's cavalry to rejoin us, that the halt
in question had been made.

REASONS FOR A NON-DIRECT ADVANCE.

But there were yet other and manifold reasons
for the delay. From our central position while at
Lexington, the enemy were puzzled to guess in
what direction would be our next advance—whether
still directly up the valley against Lynchburgh,
or across the Blue Ridge to Charlottesville,
and from thence across country to join General
Grant, destroying all the railroads connecting
Lynchburgh with Richmond on our line of march.
It was also requisite at this point to still further
strip the army of all superfluous stores and

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equipments, placing it in the lightest marching order,
as we were substantially with a railroad terminus
in front of us at Lynchburgh, and another in our
rear at Rock Fish Gap; so that if General Grant
had been repulsed, of which we heard many and
curiously circumstantial accounts, General Lee
could in twenty-four hours have enveloped us with
veteran forces more numerous than our own, in
addition to the troops we were already contending
with—and the forces thus united would be in communication
with their base, while we were wholly
cut off from ours, and already beginning to run
short of everything which our foraging parties
could not hunt up and bring in from the surrounding
country.

For these considerations, and in order to destroy
the enormous branch of the Tredegar Iron Works,
then in full activity at Buchanan, General Hunter
decided not to move directly up the valley against
Lynchburgh, but to cross the James at Buchanan,
thence strike for the town of Liberty on the Virginia
and East Tennessee railroad, and so approach
Lynchburgh on the south-west side, which was
reported to be the side least heavily fortified.
This would still keep open to us, if unsuccessful
before our objective point, or forced to withdraw
under pressure of superior numbers, two lines of
retreat: one northward across the Alleghanies, and
viâ the Kanawha to Parkesburgh on the Ohio;

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the other towards East Tennessee, destroying the
great salt works near Salem, of such vital importance
to the rebels, as we passed. To retreat down
the Shenandoah from Lynchburgh, as we had
come up, would have been simply absurd and impossible—
the country being thoroughly eaten out,
for one reason, and the railroad on the east side of
the Blue Ridge, running from Lynchburgh to
Waynesboro', offering to whatever force might be
able to repulse us the means of intercepting our
retreat in the strong positions afforded by Stanton
and its surrounding hills and earthworks.

BUCHANAN AND ITS FOUNDRIES.

Starting from Lexington on the morning of the
14th, and driving the routed valley-forces easily
before us, we entered Buchanan that evening, and
had much trouble in saving the town from a conflagration
which McCausland's retreating and
demoralized forces had left behind them as a souvenir.
Here a vast branch of the Tredegar Iron
Works, owned by Gen. Anderson, together with
many other furnaces and foundries casting shot,
shell, and ordnance for General Lee, was destroyed;
and next day, though with severe difficulties,
and at a great expense of pioneering labor
and bush-fighting, our column crossed the Blue
Ridge between the shadows of the Peaks of Otter

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—the narrow road over which we trailed in serpent-fashion
looking down continually over precipices
of from five to fifteen hundred feet in
depth, while immediately above us towered the
highest and sharpest of the Otter peaks—forming
the loftiest point of the Blue Ridge Range—clothed
with dense timber and undergrowth to within some
two hundred feet of its topmost pinnacle.

At Buchanan we captured, amongst other prisoners,
Colonel Angus McDonald, formerly of the
Union army—a cruel and hoary-headed rebel commissary,
who had caused the death of Colonel
Strother's father by arresting that gallant old
patriot for his avowed Unionism, and casting him—
an old man over seventy years of age, with
whom his tormentor had previously held most
friendly social relations—into a dark cellar-cell in
the common jail of Martinsburg, there to languish
on damp straw for a few days, until death put an
end to his life and miseries together. “I can only
regret my civilization,” said the Colonel, when
the capture of this miscreant was announced.
“Just for this one morning, Miles, I should like
to be a Camanche or Sioux Indian, and have their
privilege of vengeance.” Not being a Camanche
but a gentleman, however, he took no other notice
of the prisoner than to see that he was no better
and no worse treated than his fellow-captives of
higher and lower rank.

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THE BLUE RIDGE AND ITS BEAUTIES.

From the peaks of Otter the view over “the
Piedmont of Virginia,” as it is called, can nowhere
be surpassed on this continent—perhaps not in the
world. The lessening hills of the Blue Ridge,
with many a lovely valley and brawling stream
between, roll downward from our feet in woody
and billowy undulations, ever diminishing until
they merge and fade away in the noble champagne
country beyond, dotted with still handsome villas
and farm-houses that were both happy and prosperous
before the war.

In our upward march that day the obstructions
left behind by the enemy had been of the most
annoying nature. At every five hundred yards a
few strokes of the axe would drop enormous trees
across the narrow road, scarcely wide enough to
prop both wheels of a wagon; while at turningpoints,
or other places offering natural facilities
for such work, this narrow and precipice-sided
causeway would be either cut away altogether or
blown up with gunpowder, leaving us no alternative
but to rebuild the same before proceeding.
It was not without severe bushwhacking and the
loss of many wagons and ambulances that this
march was accomplished—the mules and horses
frequently becoming restive, either from harnesschafing
or some other irritant; and in such cases,

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where the drivers were not particularly nimble
and steady, wagon and mules, or ambulances and
horses, would go crashing down over the yawning
chasms on our left, until either shattered and
stopped against some trees, or rent into insignificant
fragments by the downward process of attrition.

Despite all these annoyances, however, the view
from the signal-station overlooking the Piedmont
of Virginia was one that can never fade from
recollection. Beautiful little farms in the vales
between the spurs of the hills, nestling beneath
us in frightened silence—so many doves with the
hawks swooping in circles over their helpless
heads. Beautiful sunlight patches floating over
the massive and varying verdures of the mountains;
clear springs bubbling out from beneath
every moss-grown rock; rich flowers shedding
brilliancy and perfume even from the topmost
cliffs; and dense woods of unmatchable shadow
and stateliest growth giving the coolness and
repose of perpetual twilight, even in the noon
and glare of that toilsome summer day.

PREFACE TO A SKETCH.

And now, before describing our descent on the
Virginia and Tennessee railroad at Liberty; the
two days of engagement in front of Lynchburg;

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the subsequent actions at Liberty and Salem, and
the arduous withdrawal of our nearly starving
and ammunitionless forces across the sterile tract of
the Catawba and other mountain ranges of the
Alleghanies, our route leading us through the
famous Sweet, and White, and Red Sulphur
Springs of the Kanawha, and past the Hawk's
Nest, that loveliest and most unique of all the
views in this region of rugged beauty—perhaps
the writer may be pardoned a digression in order
to answer the many inquiries that have from time
to time been addressed to him in regard to the
character and calibre of the remarkable officer
who was the leader and supporting strength of
this daring and most exhaustive expedition—
his inflexible will seeming to supply continued
energy and endurance to his whole command, and
his soldiers being cheered by witnessing a veteran
of sixty sharing all their privations, undergoing
more than their share of labors, and apparently
becoming fresher, hardier, and more lightspirited
the more our prospects darkened, and the
more lofty and unending appeared the hills we
had to cross before either food or respite could be
gained.

It is of Gen. David Hunter the writer desires to
say some few words—words, indeed, essential to
a full comprehension of this hurried narrative,
and also designed to quiet the many of his

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Democratic friends who continually do cry, but not like
the Seraphim and Cherubim: “What could you
have seen in such a leader to excite your admiration?
And why do you embarrass yourself by
supporting one against whom so large a part of
the public stand arrayed, either from judgment
or prejudice?”

GENERAL DAVID HUNTER.—WHO HE IS AND
WHAT?

To the questions thus roughly embodied, we
now answer collectively and in writing, as we
have grown weary of answering verbally and
separately, that in our whole experience of human
nature—and it has been considerably varied—the
purest, gentlest, bravest, and most honest gentleman
we have ever had the means of knowing
thoroughly, is the officer in question. Too fearless
and sincere to be politic—too warm to be
always wise—too innately noble and truthful to
be what is called “successful” in these miserable
latter-days of intrigue and fraud—David Hunter
yet lives in our memory, and must while memory
lasts, as a character so free from any vice, so
incapable of any baseness, that we have often
thought four years of life not wasted, if only for
enabling us by their experience to realize that
such a manhood as his was yet possible in this
soiled and dusty world.

[figure description] Page 328.[end figure description]

“Hunter is the noblest of all noble fellows,”
remarked Fleet-Captain Ramon Rogers one day
(during an interview, by the way, in which he
and the writer were endeavoring to prevent a
personal collision between Admiral Du Pont and
“Uncle David”—both of sensitive and choleric
tempers). “He is both gentle and fierce,” continued
Rogers, “if you can reconcile that contradiction
of terms; and there can be no finer mettle
for any soldier.” Of course, with this spirit on
the part of the officer representing Du Pont, and
an equally sincere admiration of the Admiral on
the part of the officer representing Hunter, negotiations
on the point of difficulty were quickly
adjusted; and thus the only breeze that ever
ruffled, or even threatened to ruffle, the otherwise
invariably pleasant relations of Army headquarters
and the Navy flag-ship in the Department
of the South, faded away, leaving the surface of
conjoint operations as bright and cloudless as
before.

General Hunter is a soldier—not a politician,
not a writer, not a controversialist, not a lawyer;
and as a soldier should be judged. He served
over thirty years, in the saddle and on the frontier,
as captain of dragoons; nor is there an Indian
tribe from the Canadian line to Mexico that
has not its own stories of his rule, and with whose
habits and temperament he is not familiar. He

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was in command of Fort Leavenworth and the
Indian Territories nearly forty years ago; served
on the staff of General Taylor as chief paymaster,
and was his confidential officer during the whole
Mexican war; fought several duels during his
first year in the army, and was once dismissed for
having challenged his superior officer, Colonel
Snelling—being subsequently restored to the service
by President Adams, in an order of high
compliment, very damaging to Colonel Snelling,
and one of the most remarkable General Orders
ever seen. Jefferson Davis served many years
under him as Adjutant of the First Dragoons,
while Hunter was Captain commanding; and
“Black David Hunter,” as his West Point companions
called him from boyhood, and General
Nathaniel Lyon, were about the only two avowed
anti-slavery officers in the army previous to the
breaking out of the late rebellion. Both had
gone to Kansas as tolerators, if not supporters of
slavery; and both had been there converted to
the anti-slavery faith by witnessing the atrocities
of the Border Ruffians from Platte and Doniphan
counties in Missouri, the frauds of Sheriff “Candlebox”
Calhoun, and the open prostitution of
all President Pierce's and Buchanan's power to
coerce the reluctant residents of that Territory to
accept a slaveholding constitution.

In appearance and physique, General Hunter

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is a most remarkable illustration of how far and
how long the good habits of a lifetime can preserve
high spirits, virility, and vigor. Standing
about five feet eight inches high, his shoulders are
broad and powerful, his chest deep, and his limbs
still sinewy and active. Swarthy and Indian-like
both in complexion and of feature, his grey eyes
dilate into blackness and brilliancy under excitement;
his nostrils expand, while his lips are compressed
tightly together under their curling moustache;
and, taking him for all in all—not forgetting
his perfect horsemanship—if there be any
finer ideal of a veteran soldier the writer has
never seen it, not even excepting Generals
Hooker, Sheridan, or Hancock.

Not a Puritan, though of deeply religious
convictions; not a strait-laced nor jaundiced
moralist in judging those faults in others from
which he has been free himself; one to whose
lips a single phrase of profanity is as impossible
as one of falsehood; one whose still white and
perfect teeth give evidence of a stomach never
disarranged by strong potations, a mouth never
misused as a receptacle for tobacco or its fumes;
able to share and even enjoy the roughest food
and severest privations of the humblest private
soldier under his command, although noted in
civilized life for good-living and a generous hospitality;
a pliant wrist for the sabre exercise, a

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steady finger on the trigger; eyes of the farthest
and keenest vision after sixty years of use
that we have ever known; a heart overflowing
with kindliness, though liable to sudden fits of
rage; always with a tendency to side with the
“under-dog” in every fight,—misfortune and
helplessness appearing to have the same attractions
for his chivalrous nature that success and
strength have for men of more worldly and prudent
characters; endowed with an utter scorn of
expediency, when opposed to his convictions of
principle; and with a pride of character which
can neither be purchased, bullied, nor cajoled into
anything which his judgment or prejudice may
regard as of questionable integrity,—such is
Major-General David Hunter, as he was revealed
to us in personal relationship and by correspondence,
during a vicarious but most intimate association
of over three years—the writer during
about one-half of that time serving on his staff,
and when not so serving, but on the staffs of
other generals, being in the receipt of frequent
and confidential letters from his old commander.

This eulogy is warm—the warmest and most
unreserved we have ever written—the roseate ink
of hero-worship not often suiting the hard and
angular steel pens with which faithful verbographs
have to be drawn in this practical and
unromantic age. That “Uncle David” has many

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opinions wholly opposed to our own is quite sufficiently
known; that he, for example, particularly
disliked and distrusted McClellan, for whom the
writer is proud to say he voted; as also that he is
to-day in favor of extending the right of suffrage
to every negro of the South, and disfranchising
every white man in the least degree prominent on
the rebel side—two points with neither of which
the writer can agree.

There are, however, so many to find fault with
this well-abused gentleman, and they appear to do
their work so heartily, that we feel the darker
side of his picture stands in no need of further
shadowing from our hands; while, should any
excuse be needed for the unrestrained and fervent
admiration seeking brief embodiment in this hurried
sketch, let it be found in the fact that the character
of a loved and honored friend—the most
absolutely pure gentleman of our entire acquaintance—
has been made systematically the prey
either of Southern traitors, or the meaner class of
their Northern allies, seeking expression for their
hatred of the Union by abusing one of the Union's
most fervent, if not always wisest, champions;
as also by the time-serving, vacillating, cowardly,
corrupt, and shuffling elements of the Republican
party, ever as ready to surrender any honest leader
whose strides may have outstripped immediate
party-expediency, as they subsequently were to

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adopt the inspirations of his honest genius, and to
claim credit for having originated those very ideas
for the first announcement of which the true
author had been both rebuked and punished.

We claim for Hunter that the most vital and
conquering ideas of our late struggle had their
origin in his tent, and that every forward step of
our Government was but an acceptance—often
slow and semi-reluctant—of some point of policy
for which, on its first promulgation, said government
had officially reprimanded its author. Hunter
first armed and organized negro troops. His
conduct was disapproved and his experimental
regiment disbanded without the pay of soldiers.
But we have had in the service since then not less
than two hundred thousand black men. Hunter
declared that slavery—only existing by civil and
municipal law—was “incompatible with martial
law,” and that slavery, therefore, must cease in all
parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida
within the lines of his command. This order was
immediately and publicly revoked by President
Lincoln; and yet within a month after its recall,
out came the first Decree of Emancipation, covering
not only the three States named, but the entire
South, with an announcement of the self-same
principle!

General Hunter, too, was the first to declare
that rebels could have no rights of property which

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loyal men were bound to respect, and that our
armies should subsist, free of charge, upon any
country through which they passed. For this,
though never officially rebuked, he was for a long
time held up to public odium—all the rebel and
rebel-sympathizing press denouncing him as a
“barbarian;” while but few of the Republican
journals had the courage or good heart to say ten
manly words in defence of our ablest champion.
The same journals, however, “saw a great light”
some short time after, when the Confiscation Bill
passed both Houses of Congress and received the
Presidential signature.

Lastly, let us say, it was Hunter who introduced
and pressed upon the authorities the importance
of vast raids through the interior of the Confederacy,
in lieu of that other policy of attacking the
rebels in their strongholds and precisely where
they invited and dared us to assault their works;
and here, without wishing to take a leaf from
Sherman's nobly-earned chaplet, let us only remark,
in conclusion, that a programme similar to
William Tecumseh's mighty raid from the south-west
to the Atlantic was in the hands of the Hon.
Secretary of War at least one year before Sherman
undertook or even proposed it—its first proposer
having been General David Hunter, and his only
request in connexion therewith, that he might be
allowed to make the experiment, of which he even

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then foretold—as if endowed with prophecy—
the magnificent and all but bloodless success that
must immediately follow.

And now, are our many anxious Democratic
friends, who have occasionally hinted that Hunter
must have given us “love-powders,” any better
satisfied? Or can they now any more clearly
understand why and how it is, that—without any
effort “to fight an unpopular man into popularity”—
we refuse either to give up or conceal our
deep and heartfelt admiration of the very noblest
and purest gentleman upon whose aspect we have
looked since the coffin-lid was shut down over
the cold face and straightened limbs of a father
who sleeps his last sleep under the green turf and
pleasant dews of an Irish hillside?