Also, our orders to move and to go into battle were always brought by horsemen; so the horsemen were thought about as _causing others to fight_ instead of _doing it themselves_. So, in short, it came to pass, that this innocent infantry had a dim sort of notion that the chief end of the cavalry was, in battle time, to run away and bring up other people to do the fighting, and in quiet time, to "range" for buttermilk and other delicacies, which the poor footmen never got. Hence the soubriquet of "buttermilk ranger" universally applied to the cavalry by the army. But, I assure you, that all this was dispelled at once, and for good and all, at Spottsylvania. Here had these gallants gotten down off their horses. They hadn't run _anywhere at all_; didn't want anybody else to come, and fight for them. They had jumped into about five or six times their number of the flower of the Federal infantry. They met them front to front, and muzzle to muzzle. Of course they had to give back; but it was slowly, _very slowly_, and they made the enemy pay, in blood, for every step they gained. They had worried these Federals into a fever, and kept them fooling away nearly twenty-six hours of priceless time; and made Grant's plan _fail_, and made General Lee's plan succeed, and had secured the strong line for our defence. It was a piece of regular, obstinate, bloody, "bulldog" work. We knew, well as we thought of ourselves, that not the staunchest brigade of our veteran "incomparable" infantry, or battery of our canister-shooting artillery, could have _fought_ better, _stood_ better, or _achieved more_, for the success of the campaign. We felt that General Lee,--that the whole army,--"owed the cavalry one," "_several_," in fact. The army, even the infantry, had come to know the cavalry, at last. Obstinacy, toughness, dogged refusal to be driven, was their test of manhood, and this test the cavalry had signally, and _brilliantly_ met. Everybody was satisfied, the _cavalry would do, they_ were "all right." We couldn't praise them enough, we were proud of them. The remark was even suffered to pass, as nothing to his discredit particularly, that our "Magnus Apollo," General Lee, himself, had once been in the cavalry, and no one resented it _now_. We knew that it was when he was _younger_ than now. We, of the "Howitzers," knew very well what arm of the service, and what corps of that arm, the experienced old General would join, if he was enlisting in the Army of Northern Virginia, now, when he knew more than he did. Still! he had been a cavalryman; admit it!