discussing the armies of Tennessee and Northern Virginia, and without any desire to detract from the fame of Forrest and Morgan, for whom I have the most profound admiration.
AN UNFORTUNATE OMISSION.
This address must have given great pleasure to the survivors of the Western Army, and to the cavalry especially, though to the men who rode with Wheeler the pleasure was not unmixed with disappointment that their services to the common cause were not considered worthy of special mention. Surely this omission could not have been for lack of material, for is there not official record of the masterly manner in which they covered Bragg's retreat out of Kentucky, in which they were engaged twenty-six times before the pursuit was abandoned at Rock Castle; their grand raids around Rosecran's army, during the Battle of Murfreesboro, which so crippled the Federal commander's resources that he was not in condition to resume his advance for four months; their participation in the Battle of Chickamauga, in which they killed, wounded and captured as many men as they had engaged; their destruction of Rosecrans' wagon-trains in Sequatchee Valley after this battle; their protection of the rear flanks of Johnston's Army in the retreat from Dalton to Atlanta; their fighting in the trenches during the siege of Atlanta, holding their part of the line as steadily as veteran infantry, and of their destruction of the grand raids sent out by Sherman in a last effort to use his cavalry to destroy Hood's communication ? This consisted of 9,600 of the flower of the Federal horse, whose object was, after destroying the West Point and Macon Railroads, to liberate the 35,000 prisoners confined in Andersonville. Wheeler, with 3,800 men, completely defeated and dispersed this grand aggregation—Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia for 1864-1865 putting the Federal loss at 1,500 killed and wounded, 2,500 prisoners, and twelve pieces of artillery. Probably no cavalry achievement of the war surpassed, if any equalled, this in importance and far-reaching results, for had Hood's communications been destroyed and the Federal prisoners released, the campaign, if not the war, would have ended at Atlanta.
