for the day of battle; they
fattened him for the sacrifice. But the cavalryman, had it not been for
his own exertions, and the energy with which he indemnified himself for
his Government's neglect of him, would not have been worth killing. When
I reflect upon the privations I have seen the men endure, and remember
that they well knew that there was no escape from them, except by taking
what they wanted wherever they found it; and remember, further, the
chances that were offered, I am lost in astonishment at their honesty
and forbearance. I am aware that our "distant brethren" of the North, or
those, rather, who will be our brethren, it is inferred, when an
amendment to the Constitution decides who and what we are--it is a
matter perfectly well understood that they will concede no such honesty
to us, and naturally enough. It is a stale, but all the more
certain-on-that-account fact, that they have discovered that "the earth
belongs to the saints," and that they "are the saints." Therefore, to
take anything (upon this continent, at least), in any manner, is to rob
the "saints;" and, while a man may pardon a fellow who robs his
neighbor, it is not in reason that he should forgive the rogue who robs
him.

One special cause of the degeneracy of the Southern cavalry, in the
latter part of the war, was the great scarcity of horses and the great
difficulty of obtaining forage within the Confederate lines, and
consequently, of keeping the horses which we had in good condition.
Morgan's men had the reputation, and not unjustly, of procuring horses
with great facility and economy. Adepts as we were, in the art of
"horse-pressing," there was this fact nevertheless to be said in favor
of the system which we adopted: while making very free with the
horse-flesh of the country into which we would raid, there was never any
wanton waste of the article. We did not kill our tired stock, as did the
Federal commanders on their "raids," when we got fresh ones. The men of
our command were not permitted to impress horses in a friendly country.
It is true that horses were sometimes stolen from people who were most
devoted to our cause, and who lived within our lines, but such thefts
did not often occur, and the perpetrators were severely punished. The
witty editors of Yankee-land would doubtless have explained our rebuke
of this practice, by an application of the old saying that "there is
honor among thieves," which would have been very just and