fight in a common cause.

I was assigned to the Seventh Army Corps, then being organized,
with headquarters at Jacksonville, Florida. I reported there to
Major-General Fitzhugh Lee, its commander, and was assigned to the
First Division, then located at Miami, 366 miles farther south, on
the east coast of Florida, at the terminus of railroad transportation.
I assumed command of the Division, July 7th, with headquarters at
Miami. It then numbered about 7500 officers and enlisted men. My
tents were pitched in a cocoanut grove on the shore of the Biscayne
Bay. The corps had been designated to lead an early attack on
Havana. I had exercised no military command for a third of a
century, and had misgivings of my ability to discharge, properly,
the important duties. This feeling was not decreased by the fact
that the division was composed of southern troops--1st and 2d
Louisiana; 1st and 2d Alabama; and 1st and 2d Texas Volunteer
Infantry regiments. Some of these regiments and many of the
companies were commanded by ex-Confederate officers, and one brigade
--the Second--was commanded by Brigadier-General W. W. Gordon, an
ex-Confederate officer from Georgia. He commanded this brigade
until the protocol, when he was made one of the evacuation
commissioners for Porto Rico. Several of the staff were sons of
Confederate officers. The only officer, other than staff-officers,
who was not southern, was Brigadier-General Loyd Wheaton, who
commanded the First Brigade. He had served in the Union Army in
the Civil War from Illinois, and became, after the war, an officer
in the United States Army, from which he was appointed a general
officer of Volunteers in the Spanish War. Wheaton remained in my
command until after our army occupied Havana, and commanded a
division that entered that city, January 1, 1899, then shortly
thereafter was ordered to the Philippines, where he has, in several
battles with the Filipinos, distinguished himself, and deservedly
acquired fame.

I soon, however, became familiar with my duties, and the command
was a most agreeable and pleasant one. I became warmly attached
to and proud of it; and it was, throughout, loyal to me. No better
volunteer soldiers were ever mustered, and if occasion had arisen
they would have proved their skill and valor by heroic deeds and
willing sacrifices.

The camp at Miami was the farthest south of any in the United
States, consequently the hottest, and by reason of