THE Falling Flag.

[JAGwinn]

THE
Falling Flag.

EVACUATION OF RICHMOND,
RETREAT AND SURRENDER
AT
APPOMATTOX.

By EDWARD M. BOYKIN,
LT. COL. 7th REG'T S.C. CAVALRY.


Third Edition.


NEW YORK:
E.J. HALE & SON, PUBLISHERS,
MURRAY STREET.
1874.


DEDICATION.

TO THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE
7th South Carolina Cavalry,
THIS
SHORT ACCOUNT OF AN INTERESTING PERIOD IN THEIR
MILITARY HISTORY,
AND THAT OF
THE CAUSE THEY LOVED SO WELL, AND FOR WHICH THEY
FOUGHT SO FAITHFULLY,
Is Dedicated,
BY ONE WHO CONSIDERS HAVING BEEN THEIR COMRADE THE
PROUDEST RECOLLECTION OF HIS LIFE.​

PAGE 11
We passed into the "Rockets," the southern suburb of Richmond, at an easy marching gait, and there learned that the bridge had taken fire from some of the buildings, which by this time we could see were on fire in the city. Fearing our retreat would be cut off at that point, which would throw us from our position as rear-guard, we pushed on rapidly, the column moving at a trot through the "Rockets."

The peculiar population of that suburb were gathered on the sidewalk; bold, dirty looking women, who had evidently not been improved by four years' military association, dirtier (if possible) looking children, and here and there skulking, scoundrelly looking men, who in the general ruin were sneaking from the holes they had been hiding in—not, though, in the numbers that might have been expected, for the great crowd, as we soon saw, were hard at it, pillaging the burning city. One strapping virago stood on the edge of the pavement with her arms akimbo, looking at us with intense scorn as we swept along; I could have touched her with the toe of my boot as I rode by her, closing the rear of the column; she caught my eye—"Yes," said she, with all of Tipperary in her brogue, "afther fighting them for four years ye're running like dawgs!" The woman was either drunk or very [12]much in earnest, for I give her credit for feeling all she said, and her son or husband had to do his own fighting, I will answer for it, wherever he was, or get no kiss or comfort from her. But I could not stop to explain that General Longstreet's particular orders were not to make a fight in the city, if it could be avoided, so I left her to the enjoyment of her own notions, unfavorable as they evidently were to us.


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