"Going out for Wool and coming home Shorn."
We are greatly disappointed that Kilpatrick and his hen-roost warriors were not all taken. Yet, although the scoundrels did not meet with the full measure of retribution due to their crimes, we do not recollect to have heard or read of a more thorough failure, short of entire annihilation. They were sent to capture the city of Richmond and liberate the Yankee prisoners. --They not only did not capture the city, but the city captured a large number of them, as Algiers captured Lieut. Gen. Count O'Reily, who was sent to capture Algiers. They tore up a few miles of railroad, which will be replaced in two or three days, burnt a dwelling-house, two barns, and a mill — all of which could have been done in one night by a negro not having the fear of the gallows before his eyes — stole a quantity of plate from Mr. Morson, set all the hens and turkies (which seem to have known by instinct that Hen-roost Kilpatrick was coming) to cackling, fled upon the first scent of gunpowder — as though they had been anointed in childhood with brimstone for the itch, and still remembered the horrors of the infliction — and made their way to beast Butler, leaving behind them 200 killed and wounded, 450 prisoners, 700 horses, any quantity of saddles, blankets, and overcoats, and small arms out of number. We would add that they left their honor behind them; but that would not be correct, for they had none to leave. ‘ "They are brave gallants, these Yankee men,To twist the necks of cock and hen."
’ To speak seriously, nothing can be more contemptible than the fighting of the Yankees. A large body of them were repulsed at Green's farm by a battalion of clerks who had never been under fire before. At the battery on the Brook Turnpike, a still larger force was routed with even more case, by a mere handful. At Atlee's Gen. Hampton put several regiments to rout with a few shells, Col. Bradley Johnson, with about forty men, was assailed by four hundred of them, and not only put them to rout, but took thirty-five of them prisoners. In Hanover, four men made a whole regiment run. Last and most wonderful of all, in Goochland James Pleasants, a youth about nineteen, small in stature, not particularly remarkable for strength of body or limb, but of undaunted courage, killed one, and took eleven prisoners, out of a body of twelve. How he managed to accomplish this astonishing feat we cannot imagine. We suppose he must have surrounded them! All this, we repeat, proves these marauders to have been execrable cowards. But there can be no doubt that the thing will be tried again, with, probably, bolder men. And let our measures be proportionately vigilant. From what was done with forty men by Colonel Johnson; from what was done by four men in Hanover; above all, from what was done by one man in Goochland, the people of the country ought to derive the greatest encouragement. They see how easy it is for associations of a few individuals in every neighborhood to punish the marauders severely. The marauders themselves know what fearful dangers such associations, knowing the country and picking the places for ambushes, are capable of inflicting, and for that reason they take care to threaten with death all who are caught with arms in their hands. Averill, wherever he stopped, stuck up handbills to that effect, and thus prevented the complete annihilation of his force. For if the people had turned out with their rifles, and occupied the gorges and passes through which he was compelled to make his way, not one would have been left to tell the tale.
