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For this purpose the shelling was again stopped, and at about two o'clock the keeledar began to descend in a palanquin, with three or four followers. All the general and staff-officers in camp were directed to assemble for the purpose of meeting this rebellious chief. General Doveton's tent was the place of rendezvous.
Before I had time to give a second look I was hurried forward with the rest towards the centre of the camp, where the fight was at the hottest. About five hundred men, the pick of the Mexican army, had collected round a knot of staff-officers, and were making a most gallant defence. General Houston had attacked them with three hundred of our people, but had not been able to break their ranks.
There is the dog of the Middlesex regiment, who always bit staff-officers and was fourteen times condemned to death by elderly and irascible colonels, and fourteen times rescued by his devoted comrades.
Only one hundred of these belonged to the regular British garrison in Canada a few staff-officers, twenty-two men of the Royal Artillery, and seventy men of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, a regiment which was to be commanded in Quebec sixteen years later by Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent.
His staff-officers had now gathered around him, and one of them said: "What will history say of our surrendering if there is any possibility of escape? Posterity will not understand it." To these words, General Lee replied: "Yes, yes, they will not understand our situation; but that is not the question. The question is, whether it is right; and, if it is right, I take the responsibility."
"The bridge on the Piankatank River, near Dragon Ordinary, had been destroyed by the citizens, and, as there were no fords, a squadron of the Twelfth Illinois swam their horses over the river, while another portion of Kilpatrick's command the Colonel and his staff-officers assisting constructed a floating bridge of felled trees and fence-rails in about half an hour, over which the remainder of the cavalry crossed in safety.
I applied to General McDowell for home staff-officers, and he gave me, as adjutant-general, Lieutenant Piper, of the Third Artillery, and, as aide-de-camp, Lieutenant McQuesten, a fine young cavalry-officer, fresh from West Point.
On my way back to Dinwiddie I stopped at the headquarters of General Warren, but the General being asleep, I went to the tent of one of his staff-officers. Colonel William T. Gentry, an old personal friend with whom I had served in Oregon.
To be extolled by the entire press of the South after every engagement, and by a portion of the press North with equal vehemence, was calculated to give him the entire confidence of his troops and to make him feared by his antagonists. It was not an uncommon thing for my staff-officers to hear from Eastern officers, "Well, Grant has never met Bobby Lee yet."
I talked with him a good deal, also with General Cadwalader, and with the staff-officers of General Patterson, viz., Fitz-John Porter, Belger, Beckwith, and others, all of whom seemed encouraged to think that the war was to be short and decisive, and that, as soon as it was demonstrated that the General Government meant in earnest to defend its rights and property, some general compromise would result.
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