[172]
statesmen, “right or wrong;” but, alas!
I might have been first called upon to encounter the associates of childhood in the honest mountains and valleys of her west.
What dire complications of crime.
To cut this gordian knot of horrors my sword had instinctively turned against the usurping majesty of cotton.
I owe Virginia little, my country much.
She has intrusted me with a distant command, and I shall remain under her flag as long as it waves the sign of the National Constitutional Government.
In these far distant mountains I could only offer patriotic prayers for the result of the vote on the 23d of May.
I trust that reason may have then recovered her sway — that the voice of a majority may not have been restrained by bayonets; that sounding above the clamor of anarchy, and still respected, it may have pronounced the loyalty and just attitude of the State.
P. St. George Cooke, Colonel Second Regiment United States Dragoons.
