FIKST KENTUCKY CAVALRY.

391

CHAPTER XXXIX.

koster of the first kentucky volunteer cavalry.

The Author regrets that unavoidable mistakes are liable to occur in this part of his work. Many of the Company officers have emigrated to other States, and some are in the far west, numbers have passed away; some failed to respond to his communications. Even those who have responded to his communications and have given him valuable aid, the time has been so long since the war closed, that they have imperfect meaii3 at hand to help him much in this line; his principal source of information, therefore, is from the Adjutant-General's Report of the State of Kentucky. That office, too, labored under inferior facilities, owing to many unavoidable circumstances in getting up a faultless report. The proof-sheets of each company's roll ought to have been submitted to competent Company officers of the various organizations before they were ever put to the press; but the exigencies of the times prevented this.

In most works of this kind, the names of the deserters are included in the roster: they will be omitted in this for good reasons. This work, though claimed to be as near as possible an authentic history of the regiment's service, yet is not an official report. Some names may have been put on the rolls unjustly; others afterward had the charges removed; and many, no doubt, have made good citizens: they were simply not composed of the full material to make first-class soldiers. It would do ho good at this clay to have such on record as a lasting stigma to their names, and a source of mortification to innocent descendants and other respectable relatives. For the same reasons the Author will leave out charges on the rolls for minor offenses. Those who had no grave charges against them, either suffered the penalty attached at the time, or were pardoned with proper excuses or promises, and restored to duty, and their names will not be handed down to future generations merely to gratify idle curiosity.