- 218 Soil//,, r/i lli.^lui-icnl Soi-it-fi/
gone, now, also, to join the "silent majority." Like most of his old comrades, he early last year ended his useful and worthy life, and, like them, crossed the dark and lonely river that is never stirred by a returning oar, and across whose silent flood no sound is ever wafted back.
[From the Richmond (Va.) Times, Feb. 23, 1896.]
THE BLACK HORSE TROOP.
The Members of the House of Delegates, Who Served in the Famous Body.
PILCHER, LEWIS AND TALLIAFERRO.
All Hade Enviable Records in the Daring and Gallant Band of Soldiers A Brief Sketch of the Black Horse and Its Commanders.
One of the most gallant, serviceable, and picturesque contingents of the Army of Northern Virginia, was that famous company of cav- alry known as the Black Horse Troop, which won such bright laur- els for its daring exploits, and the valuable information and aid it ren- deered the Confederate commanders in some of the greatest engage- ments of the Civil war.
In many respects it was a remarable body of men, composed as it was, of handsome, strapping, debonair Virginians, admirably horsed and equipped, in whose natures the spirit of chivalry was an abiding trait that marked the flight of their banner from the outbreak to the close of the war.
They wielded their sabres like the cuirassiers of old, and used their pistols with the truth and nerve of expert marksmen. They so familiarized themselves with the country in which they operated, that they kept the enemy continuously speculating on their move- ments by checkmating them at every point in the game of war, and achieved such prestige by their strange ubiquity and stratagem that the name of their little legion became a watchword for danger and a signal for action with the Union troops. The Black Horse was organ-
