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38 Southern Historical Society Papers.

port his stricken chief, was borne to the ground, and it was not until he saw the blood gushing from the mortal wound that he recalled the warning he had given but a short time before. Fate had led both men unconsciously along, until they stood immediately in front of the sharpshooters' target.

Corporal Mauk was close enough to the group to hear the con- versation with the dodging soldier, and he often repeated Sedgwick's expression about the inability of a sharpshooter to hit an elephant at so great a distance. General McMahon described the touching scene in a private letter to a friend, a portion of which was published not a great while ago, and the last sentence uttered by Sedgwick, as recorded by his chief of staff, is identical with what Mauk heard him say an instant before the sharpshooter gave such awful proof of his skill.

[From the Richmond Dispatch of November 17 and December 3, 1899.]

RICH MOUNTAIN IN 1861.

An Account of that Memorable Campaign and How General Garnett was Killed.

HISTORY OF THE OCCURRENCES

Of May 10th, llth, and 12th Taliaferro Succeeds to Command After

the Fall of Garnett Incidents of the Report by Dr. Henry M. Price,

Company K, -44th Virginia Volunteers, With Corrections and

Additional Particulars by C. T. Allen, formerly of

Lunenburg County, Va.

BY DR. HENRY M. PRICE.

At the request of many old comrades, and through your courtesy, I will try to give your readers a true history of the occurrences of the loth, nth, and I2th of May, 1861, culminating in the tragic death of General Garnett, and the loss of West Virginia to the State and the Confederacy. No campaign has been more misunderstood, nor more misrepresented, both North and South than this.

On the evening of the loth of July, 1861, the Forty-fourth Vir- ginia Volunteers, commanded by Colonel William C. Scott, of Pow-