me changes since Cold Harbor. Colonel Alger had returned and
resumed command of his regiment. Major Melvin Brewer, of the First
Michigan, had been promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned to
command of the Seventh Michigan, his appointment dating June 6.

There is a certain something about the events of that war that makes
them stand out in bold relief, like architectural images on the facade
of an edifice. They throw all other recollections of a lifetime into the
shade. As I sit at my desk writing, with memory at elbow as a prompter,
it is difficult to believe that today (May 7, 1908) it lacks but one
short month of being forty-four years since those preparations were
making on the banks of the Pamunkey river for a cavalry expedition in
some respects more strenuous, more difficult than any which had preceded
it. Yet those incidents are burned into the memory, and it seems that,
after all, it may have been but yesterday, so deep and lasting were the
impressions then produced. As the well focused optical image is
transferred to a sensitized surface, reproducing the picture, so were
those scenes fixed in the mind with photographic certainty, to be
retained as long as memory lasts, somewhat faded by time, it may be, but
complete in outline if not in details.

The campaign of the previous month had been a hard one for the cavalry.
Aside from the fact that he was leaving one third of his force behind,
Sheridan's corps had been decimated. A large number of his troopers had
been killed and wounded, or rendered hors de combat in other ways. The
horses had suffered terribly and many of them had been shot. So only
about half the number of mounted men fit for duty that followed the
colors of the cavalry corps out of the Wilderness, May 8, marched across
the Pamunkey on the pontoon bridge, June 6. Readers who have followed
this narrative through the preceding chapters will readily understand
this.

Sheridan's plan[27] was to move along the north bank of the North Anna
to a point opposite Trevilian Station, on the Virginia Central railroad;
then cross the North Anna by one of the bridges or fords, and by a rapid
movement capture the station, destroy the railroad from Louisa
Courthouse to Gordonsville, and proceed thence to Charlottesville, where
the expected junction with Hunter was to be made. If this plan should
succeed, the two forces thus united were to advance on Lynchburg and do
what, as a matter of fact, Sheridan did not