to join the troops under General McCausland, and with these troops resisted the advance of the enemy. On the morning of Saturday, the 11th of June, he with a detachment of the Fourteenth Virginia Cavalry were stationed as pickets about four miles north of Lexington on the Staunton road. Upon the advance of the enemy, Captain White with others of the pickets fired and one Yankee soldier was killed.

Captain White fell back with the pickets to Lexington, and on that day the enemy took possession of the town. Captain White went to his farm, about three miles south of Lexington, for the purpose of making arrangements to leave with our troops, but before getting away was arrested by the enemy and delivered to their provost-marshal, Captain Berry, and kept during Sunday, 12th, with other prisoners, in the court-house. On Sunday evening he was placed in charge of a squad of soldiers and taken to one of the enemy's camps north of Lexington on the Staunton road and kept there during Sunday night. On Monday morning he was taken by the squad of soldiers to the place where the picket fight occurred on the previous Saturday. Two families lived near by. The soldiers endeavored to obtain evidence from these families to identify Captain White and to prove that he was with the pickets on the previous Saturday at the time a Yankee soldier was killed. The families who lived near by say that they furnished no evidence to identify Captain White.

The Yankee soldiers, however, took Captain White a short distance into the woods and shot him, and one of them on the evening of the same day gave to Mrs. Cameron, a lady of the neighborhood, information by which she was enabled to send out and find the body.

There is but little doubt that the reason for the killing of Captain White was the fact that he had been engaged with our troops in resisting the advance of the enemy by which one of the Yankee soldiers had been killed. The Yankees called him a bushwhacker.

He was not a bushwhacker in the proper sense. He was with our organized troops acting under the orders of commissioned officers. He was discharging that duty which the country expects every good citizen to perform.

If every citizen of Rockbridge and the adjacent counties had done their duty as did Captain White the advance of the enemy into the country would have been promptly checked.

I doubt not that it will be the policy of our authorities to offer every inducement to our citizens who may be at home to unite with our regular troops in resisting the raids of the enemy, and that they will hold the enemy to a strict account for any outrages which they may perpetrate upon our citizens who may be thus engaged.

Captain White was the only son of Matthew White, one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most respectable citizens of Rockbridge County. He was the brother-in-law of the late General E. F. Paxton, who was killed at the battle of Chancellorsville, and of myself.

When en route in charge of a squad of Yankee soldiers to the scene of his murder, in passing a lady relative, he requested her to say to his friends if he never returned, "that he died as he lived, true to the Southern cause. " He was patriotic, generous, and brave man.

His surviving friends appeal to the authorities with full confidence that they will avenge his foul murder.

Respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES G. PAXTON,

Quartermaster.