Notes & Queries

Notes & Queries EDITED BY BOYD B. STUTLER this department is designed as an open forum for researchers into Civü War themes and for readers of CivU War History in general. It is open for questions on and discussions of phases of the Great Conflict and its personnel. Also, we welcome notes on newly discovered, little known, or other sidelights of the war. Contributions are invited; address Editor, Ctot'Z War History, State University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. QUERIES No. 59—The Virginia Confederate Cavalry: As my recently completed biography of Colonel Henry Clay Pate, 5th Virginia Cavalry, CSA (killed at Yellow Tavern), took shape I became more than ever impressed with the need of a reference work that would do for the Virginia cavalry what Colonel Jennings C. Wise's Long Arm of Lee does for the artillery. Such a work would fit into place the many references to companies such as the Border Rangers, the Black Walnut Troop, the Madison Invincibles, the Warwick Beauregards , the Washington Mounted Rifles, and the many other independent units that, welded into regiments, came to comprise the Virginia cavalry. Just to place them seems to be not enough, for behind each man who raised a company there is a story, and also intriguing stories of the regiments which they formed and the brigades that grew from these regiments. Stuart's horsemen seem well covered because of their deeds and their colorful leader, but the companies and the men of Gary, McCausland , Imboden, Jenkins and other commands that fought in the mountain wilderness of West Virginia, in the sultry wastes of the Dismal Swamp, or in the rugged terrain of southwestern Virginia have received scant notice. From need came the resolution to chronicle the Virginia cavalry regiments and battalions. Much of the task is that of plowing 415 416BOYD B. STUTLER virgin ground and again, as with Colonel Pate, I need the assistance of many people. I am most anxious to examine unpublished accounts left by the men who wore the yellow ribbon and who answered to the call of the stubby cavalry bugles. The men like Private Hite, 6th Virginia, who walked 75 miles through mountain snow and freezing cold with Rosser's raiding party to get a horse, and who died in the attempt. The heroes, the scbemers, the goldbricks, the scholars, the fighters, the cavalrymen who were first into action and the last to leave the field, for whom rest was a novelty, for whom the petite guerre of the outposts was dangerous and deadly, but who rode into the bright face of danger to carve a record with their blade or blast it with their double-barreled shotguns into history's pages; these men and their units need to be refocused and placed alongside their well-recorded comrades of the infantry and artillery. Some of the records—perhaps the most interesting details of actions and episodes—are already lost. It is late to begin such a work, but as a starter, who can tell me what happened to Colonel William B. Ball, 15th Virginia, after he sailed for Canada in October, 1863, as an acting master in the CS. Navy with a mission to release Confederate prisoners on Lake Erie? Or who can fill in the gaps in the career of Colonel Robert Johnston, West Point, 1850; served on the frontier; resigned in 1861; and was a cavalry commander under Magruder on the Peninsula? He turns up briefly as Colonel of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry in 1862, then no more about him until 1868-1869 when he taught at De Veauz College, near Niagara Falls—then no more untü his death in 1902. Samuel H. Miller No. 60—Philp and Solomons Civil War Imprints: For several years I have been collecting ephemeral Civü War publications and imprints of the firm of Philp and Solomons, of Washington, D.C. They formed one of the major stationery and printing houses of the time, with a small photographic gallery in addition. This firm put out the characteristic carte-de-visite photographs, then very popular, including John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln. They printed various forms for the government, including passes for soldiers on...