Lieut. -Col. Shipp has orders to report to you on reaching Staunton.
Francis H. Smith,
Brevet Major-General."
But while it thus appears that the Superintendent of the Institute was acting under explicit orders from the Governor of Virginia, in placing the Cadets under the control of the Confederate authorities, was the Governor warranted by anything that appears from the records in giving such order?
There appears the earnest desire of General Grant, repeatedly expressed, to destroy the Virginia & Tennessee and the Virginia Central Railroads, that the sources of supplies to the Confederate Army might thereby be cut off. There appears the two movements—the one under Sigel, the other under Hunter—to accomplish this desire and their dismal and disastrous failures; and there appears the clear, strong statements of General Grant that he was taxed in patience and sorely disappointed at these repeated failures, and that other measures, more virulent and drastic than any yet employed in civilized warfare, would now be resorted to, to exhaust the sources of the Confederate supplies. General Grant conceived the purpose of depopulating and utterly destroying the region of country, in Virginia, from whence the food for the Confederate Army had been supplied.
The following letter from General Halleck to General Hunter needs no commentary:
"Washington, July 17, 1864, 12 noon.
Major-General Hunter,
Harpers Ferry, W. Va.:
General Grant has directed General Wright, as soon as he assures himself of the retreat of the enemy toward Richmond, to return to Washington with the Sixth and Nineteenth Corps. He also directs that with the troops belonging to your command you pursue the enemy cautiously, even to Gordonsville and Charlottesville, if you can. He further directs 'if compelled to fall back you will retreat in front of the enemy, towards the main crossings of the Potomac, so as to cover Washington, and not be squeezed out to one side, so as to make it necessary to fall
