This company, consisting, of seventy-five men--many of
them married and with families--was under the command of
an officer whose conduct throughout the eventful and
trying scenes about to be recorded, has often been the
subject of much censure--with what justice our readers
must determine.
Captain Headley was one of those officers who, without
having acquired no greater rank at the age of forty than
he now possessed, had served in the army of the United
States from his boyhood, and was, in all the minutiae of
the service, a strict disciplinarian. He had, moreover,
acquired habits of deference to authority, which caused
him, on all necessary occasions, to regulate his conduct
by the orders of his superiors, and so strongly was this
engrafted on his nature, that while he possessed mind
and energy sufficient to plan the most feasible measures
himself, his dread of that responsibility which
circumstances had now forced upon him, induced the utmost
disinclination to depart from the letter of an instruction
once received, and unrevoked.
These, however, were purely faults of his military
education.
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