278 Southern Historical Society Papers.
names are inscribed on the monument at Front Royal. The granite shaft perpetuates the fame of a glorious band "a remnant of our Spartan dead." About the affair in which they were sacrificed to the bloody moloch of revenge, I feel now as I have always felt. A Highlander is not asked or expected to forgive or forget Glencoe and Culloden. It will always be a proud satisfaction to me that, in the presence of their executioners, these martyrs did not imitate the despairing cry of the gladiator in the arena Casar, moriluri saluta- mus "Caesar, we who are about to die, salute thee" but, with heroic confidence, foretold that they would have an avenger. The prophecy was fulfilled. Those who committed the great crime have not escaped the Nemesis, who adjusts the unbalanced scale of human
wrongs.
" Called the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss."
JNO. S. MOSBY. San Francisco, October ji, 1899.
MAJOR RICHARDS CITES AUTHORITIES FOR HIS CONCLUSIONS.
RICHMOND, VA., December 3, 1899.
Editor of The Times :
SIR, In my address at the unveiling of the monument erected at Front Royal to the memory of Mosby's men who were executed after they surrendered, I stated two conclusions drawn from the official records of the war which seem to have attracted particular attention and elicited some discussion. The interest thus evidenced encourages me to give the facts supporting those conclusions.
The Front Royal tragedy occurred on September 2$d t 1864. At that time we did not know that Mosby's Rangers, embracing only eight companies of cavalry, had attracted, or rather distracted, the attention of General Grant, who was at that time commanding gen- eral of the United States armies. But the official records, now pub- lished, indicate that he stopped "marching on Richmond" long enough to send explicit instructions to General Sheridan in regard to his campaign against " Mosby's men." Among the first of these orders was the following:
"City Point, Aug. 16, 1864, 1:30 P. M. "Maj.-Gen. Sheridan, Comd., &c., Winchester, Va. :
"The families of most of Mosby's men are known and can be
