to any good purpose, very difficult. It
was very easy to charge down a road in column of fours, but very hard to
charge across the country in extended line, and keep any sort of
formation. Then we never used sabers, and long guns were not exactly the
weapons for cavalry evolutions. We found the method of fighting on foot
more effective--we could maneuver with more certainty, and sustain less
and inflict more loss. "The long flexible line curving forward at each
extremity," as an excellent writer described it, was very hard to break;
if forced back at one point, a withering fire from every other would be
poured in on the assailant. It admitted, too, of such facility of
maneuvering, it could be thrown about like a rope, and by simply facing
to the right or left, and double-quicking in the same direction, every
man could be quickly concentrated at any point where it was desirable to
mass them.

It must be remembered that Morgan very rarely fought with the army; he
had to make his command a self-sustaining one. If repulsed, he could not
fall back and reform behind the infantry. He had to fight infantry,
cavalry, artillery; take towns when every house was a garrison, and
attack fortifications with nothing to depend on but his own immediate
command. He was obliged, therefore, to adopt a method which enabled him
to do a great deal in a short time, and to keep his men always in hand,
whether successful or repulsed. With his support from forty to five
hundred miles distant, an officer had better learn to rely on himself.

If General Morgan had ever been enabled to develope his plan of
organization as he wished, he would have made his division of mounted
riflemen a miniature army. With his regiments armed as he wished
them--a battalion of two or three hundred men, appropriately armed, and
attached to each brigade, to be used only as cavalry, and with his
battery of three-inch Parrots, and train of mountain howitzers, he could
have met any contingency. The ease and rapidity with which this simple
drill was learned, and the expedition with which it enabled all
movements to be accomplished, chiefly recommended it to Morgan, I have
seen his division, when numbering over three thousand men, and stretched
out in column, put into line of battle in thirty minutes. Regular
cavalry can no doubt form with much more dispatch, but this was quicker
than it is often done in this country.

The weapon which was always preferred by the officers