Three Years in the Confederate Horse Artillery — George Michael Neese.

November 25— A large lot of tobacco that was stored in Winchester was destroyed to-day by the order of General Jackson. I do not know who stored it or for what purpose, but it was destroyed to keep it from eventually passing into the hands of the Yanks and gratifying our late friends who are after us with guns. We are camped about a mile from where the tobacco was burned, but I smelled the burning sacrifice all day, and this evening at dusk I went to the great funeral pyre, which was beyond the southern limits of town near a group of weeping willows not far from the Front Royal pike. There was a large stock of fine-looking tobacco burning, when I saw it after dark, and many a glorious quid had then already gone up in the curling aromatic smoke from the fire that was burning all day. The sacrificial flame shot its dancing light through the dusky shadows of night and its golden lances were caught by the drooping branches of the willows that were weeping over the funeral pyre. A strong guard of soldiers were standing around the fire, with fixed bayonets, to keep sacrilegious sinners from snatching with irreverence the incense from the glowing censer. I heard to-night that the tobacco destroyed to-day was worth about seventy-five thousand dollars.