FROM BULL RUN
TO APPOMATTOX
A BOY'S VIEW
BY
L.W. HOPKINS
OF GENL. J.E.B. STUART'S CAVALRY
6th Virginia Regiment, C.S.A.
PRESS OF
Fleet-McGinley Co.
BALTIMORE
Copyright, 1908
By L.W. HOPKINS
Baltimore
PREFACE
"Life is the mirror of the king and slave,
'Tis just what you are and do.
Then give to the world the best you have,
And the best will come back to you."
I never thought that I should be guilty of writing a book. I did not,however, do this with malice aforethought. My son is responsible forwhatever sin I may have committed in presenting this to the public. Heand I have been good friends ever since we became acquainted, and he hasalways insisted upon my telling him all that I know. When he was aboutthree years old he discovered that I had been a soldier in Lee's armyfrom 1861 to 1865, and, although he is of Quaker descent and a loyalmember of the Society of Friends, and I am half Quaker, yet he loved warstories and I loved to tell them. This accounts for the production ofthe book. After I had told him these stories over and over, again andagain, when he was grown he insisted upon my starting at the beginningand giving him the whole of my experience in the Confederate army. Thenhe wanted it published. I yielded to his request, and here is the book.This is not, however, an exact copy of the typewritten manuscript whichhe has. The original manuscript is more personal. I thought the changewould make it more acceptable to the general reader.
We all believe in peace; universal peace, but when war does come, andsuch a costly war as the one from which this story is taken, we oughtto get all the good out of it we can. The long marches along dustyroads, under hot suns, the long marches through sleet and snows, thelong dreary nights without shelter, the march of the picket to and froon his beat, the constant drilling and training, the struggle on thebattlefields, all these are part of the material that the world hasalways used in constructing a nation. While there are some things aboutwar that we should forget, there are many things that ought never to beforgotten, but should be handed down from sire to son all through theages that are to come.
Historians have told us much about our Civil War, but they have left outthe part that appeals most to the boy, and it is this part that I havetried to bring before the public. Men may read the book if they will,but it is written more particularly for the youth. The boy of today andthe boy that is yet to be ought to know of the bloody sweat throughwhich this nation passed in reaching its present position among thegreat nations of the earth, and the part the boy played in it. It issaid that one boy is a boy; two boys a half boy and three boys no boy atall. That may be true of the boy running loose, unbridled like a colt,but gather up these boys and train them, harness and hitch them and theywill move the world or break a trace. It is the boy who decides the fateof nations. I don't know the average age of our soldiers in times ofpeace, but when wars come and there is a call for soldiers, it is mainlythe boy in his teens who responds; yet, s