[390] please to keep the horse, with many thanks. This was in February, 1862. At that time I was in Virginia, on the sick list from a long and severe attack of camp fever, contracted in the campaign on Big Sewell mountains. My brother wrote me of General Lee's desire to have the horse, and asked me what he should do. I replied at once: “If he will not accept it, then sell it to him at what it cost me.” He then sold the horse to General Lee for $200 in currency, the sum of $25 having been added by General Lee to the price I paid for the horse in September, 1861, to make up the depreciation in our currency from September, 1861, to February, 1862. In 1868 General Lee wrote to my brother, stating that this horse had survived the war—was known as “Traveller” (spelling the word with a double 1 in good English style), and asking for its pedigree, which was obtained, as above mentioned, and sent by my brother to General Lee.The following account of ‘Lucy Long,’ another war-horse of General Lee, appeared in the Abingdon Virginian, of February 13, 1891:
There have appeared from time to time during the past year announcements in Southern newspapers of war-horses ridden during the war by some Confederate soldier, with the caption, “The last war-horse of the Confederacy,” or something similar. It will be learned, doubtless with surprise by some, that there is yet living and in good health, save for the infirmities common to old age, a horse ridden in battle during the war by General Robert E. Lee. It is “Lucy long,” a little sorrel mare, which many will recall having seen ladies ride through the streets of Lexington alongside of General Lee astride of his more famous war-horse “Traveller.” Lucy Long was a present to General Lee from General J. E. B. Stuart in 1862, when the former was conducting the Sharpsburg campaign. That summer George Lee was standing in a skirmish line holding Traveller. The horse was high-spirited, impatient and hard to hold and pulled the General down a steep bank and broke his hands. For a time he found it necessary to travel in an ambulance. It was then that General Stuart found Lucy Long, bought her and gave her to him. She was a low, easy moving, and quiet sorrel mare. General Stuart purchased her from Mr. Stephen Dandridge, the owner of “ The Bower,” a country place in Jefferson county, famous in that day for its hospitality and a famous resort of Stuart with his staff when in
