found Captain Moore, another Captain (whose name I have forgotten, I am sorry to say), and twenty-eight or thirty men, who had been left on picket in the morning, with orders to follow the brigade as soon as relieved. Captain Moore said that my orders would relieve him, in the eyes of General Archer, for not obeying instructions to follow the brigade without delay, and went in at once and drove back the enemy's skirmishers, relieving the train of all annoyance. Generals Archer and Thomas arrived back with their brigades a few minutes later, but never fired a gun, Captain Moore's brilliant dash having accomplished all needed. If Colonel J. Thompson Brown was in command or firing there I did not know it, and Captain Stanard never mentioned it to me then or afterwards, and when Archer and Thomas came back I was the officer who reported the situation to them, as I think General Thomas, if alive, can confirm. Dear General Archer is dead. Stanard[1] and Thomas and Moore, I hope, alive and well.
Yours sincerely,
George Lemmon,
Ex-Ordnance Officer Archer's Brigade.
We clip the following from a private letter from a gallant Colonel who served in the Federal army, and has written a valuable history of his regiment:
"I take great pleasure in reading The Southern Historical Society Papers, and consider them invaluable. They show conclusively the great disparity of numbers, and the bravery and great sacrifices which the Southerners made in battling for their principles and for what they honestly consider were their rights. And I take a just pride, as an American citizen, a descendant on both sides of my parentage, of English stock, who came to this country about 1640, that the Southern army, composed almost entirely of Americans, were able, under the ablest American chieftains, to defeat so often the overwhelming hosts of the North, which were composed largely of foreigners to our soil; in fact, the majority were mercenaries whom large bounties induced to
- ↑ Major P. B. Stanard died several years ago at his residence at Goshen depot, Va., and a gallant spirit and high-toned gentleman was thus lost to Virginia.J. W. J.
