894

HISTORY OF THE ORPHAN BRIGADE.

Spalding, she was guarded by this cavalcade of young Kentuckians, who sought out ways not infested by Federal troops, sometimes proceeding by night when day-travel would have been more perilous, and conducted in safety to the top of the hill back of Uniontown, then in possession of Federal soldiers, where she left them and went on foot into the town. Remaining in the vicinity only long enough to ascertain that she was with friends, Capt. Alfred McGill and his good wife, at the old Union Hotel, they returned to their command. She took passage on a steamer that night for Louisville, and went by rail to her home in Lexington. She found friends everywhere, even among acquaintances who were now identified with the Union cause, and but once was trouble imminent. The officer at Louisville threatened to send her back South; but it appears that somebody notified Mr. Lincoln, who, it is said, curtly telegraphed him to stick to his own business. At any rate, she was allowed to go home, where she remained to the close of the war, engaged, heart and hand, with her mother, during the two remaining years, in contributing to the wants of her countrymen at the front and relieving the destitution and suffering of those who were sick and in prison. She is noticed in a previous part of this work as having been an active and efficient ally of the Southern soldiers, and becoming after the war was over the wife of Wallace Herr,- whom she had known as a young lieutenant on her brother-in-law's staff.

V. "The Rose and Expectancy of the Fair State."-    Speaking of a certain gentleman who served in different capacities during the war, and once laid aside his sword to take up a gun in the ranks, a comrade said : " I do not know whether he had been commissioned again or not. Certainly he was worthy of a commission; but this could be said of so many Kentuckians who served in the ranks that it did not excite surprise when a good soldier either received or failed of promotion. Gen. Wm. Preston once said in my hearing that the young Kentuckians in the Confederate Army were ' the rose and    expectancy of the fair State,' representing all that was great and heroic in its remarkable history. President Davis spoke to me in the same vein after the war, referring to us as ' the young seed corn of the Confederacy,' and saying that from the bloody planting and the heroic cultivation of the battlefield there would have grown a crop that would have made illustrious our government had we succeeded in establishing it. How it brightens the memory of the dark days that finally    came to us to know that we made our mark on the history of our era, and that those in the highest places bore willing testimony to our devotion to duty!"

VI. The American Soldier the Best of This Age.   I deem

the American soldier in many respects the finest soldier of the age, as he is certainly the most intelligent. He unites within himself the essential qualities. His patriotism is unquestioned, his endurance almost without limit, while his courage has stood the crucial test of a thousand battlefields, and his pride in his name and honor is a part of the great history of his country. The combination of genuine courage and true pride are in no nation more happily blended than in American soldiery.   Their splendid conduct in the field is equalled only by