When the tall man and his inferior satellite had warmed their boots till they smoked, they rose, recovered their muskets, and bowed themselves into the yard. Soon afterward I bade the young ladies good night, and repaired to my room. The tall man and his associate were pacing up and down the grass-plot, and they looked very cold and comfortless, I thought. I should have liked to obtain for them a draught of cider, but prudently abstained; for every man in the army would thereby become cognizant of its existence. So I placed my head once more upon a soft pillow, and pitied the chilled soldiers who slept upon the turf. I thought of Miss Bessie with her roguish eyes, and wondered what themes were now engrossing her. I asked myself if this was the romance of war, and if it would bear relating toone's children when he grew as old and as deaf as the wheezy gentleman down-stairs. In fine, I was a little sentimental, somewhat reflective, and very drowsy. So, after a while, processions of freebooting soldiers, foraging Quartermasters, deaf gentlemen, Fogg's regiment, and multitudes of ghosts from Manassas, drifted by in my dreams. And, in the end, Miss Bessie's long curls brushed into my eyes, and I found the morning, ruddy as her cheeks, blushing at the window.
I found at breakfast, that Miss Bessie had been placed beside me, and I so far forgot myself as to forget all other persons at the table. Miss Priscilla asked to be helped to the corn-bread, and I deposited a quantity of the same upon Miss Bessie's plate. Miss Bell asked if I did not lovedearold Virginia, and I replied to Miss Bessie that it had lately become very attractive, and that, in fact, I was decidedly rebellious in my sympathy with the distressed Virginians. Ididexcept, however, the man darkly mooted as "Henry," and hoped that he would be disfigured—not killed—at the earliest engagement. The deaf old gentleman bristled up here and askedwhohad been killed at the recent engagement. There was a man named Jeems Lee,—a distant connection of the Lightfoots,—not the Hampshire Lightfoots, but the Fauquier Lightfoots,—who had distinctly appeared to the old gentleman for several nights, robed in black, and carrying a coffin under his arm. Since I had mentioned his name, he recalled the circumstance, and hoped that Jeems Lightfoot had not disgraced his ancestry. Nevertheless, the deaf gentleman was not to be understood as expressing any opinion upon the merits of the war. Forhispart he thought both sides a little wrong, and the crops were really in a dreadful state. The negroes were very ungrateful people and property should be held sacred by all belligerents.
At this point he caught Miss Priscilla's eye, and was transfixed with conscious guilt.
I had, meantime, been infringing upon Miss Bessie's feet,—very pretty feet they were!—which expressive but not very refined method of correspondence caused her to blush to the eyes. Miss Bell, noticing the same, was determined to tell 'Henry' at once, and I hoped in my heart that she would set out for Manassas to further that purpose.
The door opened here, and the rubicund visage of Mr. Fogg appeared like the head of the Medusa. He said that 'Captain' had ordered the blue roan to be saddled and brought over to me, but I knew that this was a cunning device on his part, to revisit the dwelling. Miss Bell, somehow caught the idea that Fogg was enamored of her, and the poor fellow was subjected to a volley of tender innuendos and languishing glances, that by turn mortified and enraged him.
I bade the good people adieu at eight o'clock, promising to return for dinner at five; and Miss Bessie accompanied me to the lane, where I took leave of her with a secret whisper and a warm grasp of the hand. One of her rings had somehow adhered to my finger, which Fogg remarked with a bilious expression of countenance. I had no sooner got astride of the blue roan than he darted off like the wind, and subjected me to great terror, alternating to chagrin, when I turned back and beheld all the young ladies waving their handkerchiefs. They evidently thought me an unrivalled equestrian.
I rode to a picket post two miles from the mill, passing over the spot where the Confederate soldier had fallen. The picket consisted of two companies or one hundred and sixty men. Half of them were sitting around a fire concealed in the woods, and the rest were scattered along the edges of a piece of close timber. I climbed a lookout-tree by means of cross-strips nailed to the trunk, and beheld from the summit a long succession of hazy hills, valleys, andforests, with the Blue Ridge Mountains bounding the distance, like some mighty monster, enclosing the world in its coils. This was the country of the enemy, and a Lieutenant obligingly pointed out to me the curling smoke of their pickets, a few miles away. The cleft of Manassas was plainly visible, and I traced the line of the Gap Railway to its junction with the Orange and Alexandria road, below Bull Run. For aught that I knew, some concealed observer might now be watching me from the pine-tops on the nearest knoll. Some rifleman might be running his practised eye down the deadly groove, to topple me from my perch, and send me crashing through the boughs. The uncertainty, the hazard, the novelty of my position had at this time an indescribable charm: but subsequent exposures dissipated the romance and taught me the folly of such adventures.
The afternoon went dryly by: for a drizzling rain fell at noon; but at four o'clock I saddled the blue roan and went to ride with Fogg. We retraced the road to Colonel T——s, and crossing a boggy brook, turned up the hills and passed toward the Potomac. Fogg had been a schoolmaster, and many of his narrations indicated keen perception and clever comprehension. He so amused me on this particular occasion that I quite forgot my engagement for dinner, and unwittingly strolled beyond the farthest brigade.
Suddenly, we heard a bugle-call from the picket-post before us, and, at the same moment, the drums beat from the camp behind. Our horses pricked up their ears and Fogg stared inquiringly. As we turned back we heard approaching hoofs and the blue roan exhibited intentions of running away. I pulled his rein in vain. He would neither be soothed nor commanded. A whole company of cavalry closed up with him at length, and the sabres clattered in their scabbards as they galloped toward camp at the top of their speed. With a spring that almost shook me from the saddle and drove the stirrups flying from my feet, the blueroan dashed the dust into the eyes of Fogg, and led the race.
Not the wild yager on his gait to perdition, rode so fearfully. Trees, bogs, huts, bushes, went by like lightning. The hot breath of the nag rose to my nostrils and at every leap I seemed vaulting among the spheres.
I speak thus flippantly now, of what was then the agony of death. I grasped the pommel of my saddle, mechanically winding the lines about my wrist, and clung with the tenacity of sin clutching the world. Some soldiers looked wonderingly from the wayside, but did not heed my shriek of "stop him, for God's sake!" A ditch crossed the lane,—deep and wide,—and I felt that my moment had come: with a spring that seemed to break thew and sinew, the blue roan cleared it, pitching upon his knees, but recovered directly and darted onward again. I knew that I should fall headlong now, to be trampled by the fierce horsemen behind, but retained my grasp though my heart was choking me. The camps were in confusion as I swept past them. A sharp clearness of sense and thought enabled me to note distinctly the minutest occurrences. I marked long lines of men cloaked, and carrying knapsacks, drummer-boys beating music that I had whistled in many a ramble,—field-officers shouting orders from their saddles, and cannon limbered up as if ready to move,—tents taken down and teams waiting to be loaded; all the evidences of an advance, that I alas should never witness, lying bruised and mangled by the roadside. A cheer saluted me as I passed some of Meade's regiments. "It is the scout that fetched the orders for an advance!" said several, and one man remarked that "that feller was the most reckless rider he had ever beheld." The crisis came at length: a wagon had stopped the way; my horse in turning it, stepped upon a stake, and slipping rolled heavily upon his side, tossing me like an acrobat, over his head, but without further injury than a terrible nervous shock and a rent in my pantaloons.
I employed a small boy to lead the blue roan to Captain Kingwalt's quarters, and as I limped wearily after, some regiments came toward me through the fields. General McCall responded to my salute; he rode in the advance. The Quartermaster's party was loading the tents and utensils. The rain fell smartly as dusk deepened into night, and the brush tents now deserted by the soldiers, were set on fire. Being composed of dry combustible material, they burned rapidly and with an intense flame. The fields in every direction were revealed, swarming with men, horses, batteries, and wagons. Some of the regiments began the march in silence; others sang familiar ballads as they moved in column. A few, riotously disposed, shrieked, whistled, and cheered. The standards were folded; the drums did not mark time; the orders were few and short. The cannoneers sat moodily upon the caissons, and the cavalry-men walked their horses sedately. Although fifteen thousand men comprised the whole corps, each of its three brigades would have seemed as numerous to a novice. The teams of each brigade closed up the rear, and a quartermaster's guard was detailed from each regiment to march beside its own wagons. When the troops were fairly under way, and the brush burning along from continuous miles of road, the effect was grand beyond all that I had witnessed. The country people gathered in fright at the cottage doors, and the farm-dogs bayed dismally at the unwonted scene. I refused to ride the blue roan again, but transferred my saddle to a team horse that appeared to be given to a sort of equine somnambulism, and once or twice attempted to lie down by the roadside. At nine o'clock I set out with Fogg, who slipped a flask of spirits into my haversack. Following the tardy movement of the teams, we turned our faces toward Washington. I was soon wet to the skin, and my saddle cushion was soaking with water. The streams crossing the road were swollen with rain, and the great team wheels clogged on the slimy banks. We were sometimes delayed a halfhour by a single wagon, the storm beating pitilessly in our faces the while. During the stoppages, the Quartermaster's guards burned all the fence rails in the vicinity, and some of the more indurated sat round the fagots and gamed with cards.
Cold, taciturn, miserable, I thought of the quiet farm, house, the ruddy hearth-place, and the smoking supper. I wondered if the roguish eyes were not a little sad, and the trim feet a little restless, the chessmen somewhat stupid, and the good old house a trifle lonesome. Alas! the intimacy so pleasantly commenced, was never to be renewed. With the thousand and one airy palaces that youth builds and time annihilates, my first romance of war towered to the stars in a day, and crumbled to earth in a night.
At two o'clock in the morning we halted at Metropolitan Mills, on the Alexandria and Leesburg turnpike. A bridge had been destroyed below, and the creek was so swollen that neither artillery nor cavalry could ford it. The meadows were submerged and the rain still descended in torrents. The chilled troops made bonfires of some new panel fence, and stormed all the henroosts in the vicinity. Some pigs, that betrayed their whereabouts by inoportune whines and grunts, were speedily confiscated, slaughtered, and spitted. We erected our tarpaulin in a ploughed field, and Fogg laid some sharp rails upon the ground to make us a dry bed. Skyhiski fried a quantity of fresh beef, and boiled some coffee; but while we ate heartily, theorizing as to the destination of the corps, the poor Captain was terribly shaken by his ague.
I woke in the morning with inflamed throat, rheumatic limbs, and every indication of chills and fever. Fogg whispered to me at breakfast that two men of Reynold's brigade had died during the night, from fatigue and exposure. He advised me to push forward to Washington and await the arrival of the division, as, unused to the hardships of a march, I might, after another day's experience, becomedangerously ill. I set out at five o'clock, resolving to ford the creek, resume the turnpike, and reach Long Bridge at noon. Passing over some dozen fields in which my horse at every step sank to the fetlocks, I travelled along the brink of the stream till I finally reached a place that seemed to be shallow. Bracing myself firmly in the saddle, I urged my unwilling horse into the waters, and emerged half drowned on the other side. It happened, however, that I had crossed only a branch of the creek and gained an island. The main channel was yet to be attempted, and I saw that it was deep, broad, and violent. I followed the margin despairingly for a half-mile, when I came to a log footbridge, where I dismounted and swam my horse through the turbulent waters. I had now so far diverged from the turnpike that I was at a loss to recover it, but straying forlornly through the woods, struck a wagon track at last, and pursued it hopefully, until, to my confusion, it resolved itself to two tracks, that went in contrary directions. My horse preferred taking to the left, but after riding a full hour, I came to some felled trees, beyond which the traces did not go. Returning, weak and bewildered, I adopted the discarded route, which led me to a worm-fence at the edge of the woods. A house lay some distance off, but a wheat-field intervened, and I might bring the vengeance of the proprietor upon me by invading his domain. There was no choice, however; so I removed the rails, and rode directly across the wheat to some negro quarters, a little removed from the mansion. They were deserted, all save one, where a black boy was singing some negro hymns in an uproarious manner. The words, as I made them out, were these:—
"Stephen came a runnin',His Marster fur to see;But Gabriel says he is not yar';He gone to Calvary!O,—O,—Stephen, Stephen,Fur to see;Stephen, Stephen, get along up Calvary!"
"Stephen came a runnin',His Marster fur to see;But Gabriel says he is not yar';He gone to Calvary!O,—O,—Stephen, Stephen,Fur to see;Stephen, Stephen, get along up Calvary!"
I learned from this person two mortifying facts,—that I was farther from Washington than at the beginning of my journey, and that the morrow was Sunday. War, alas! knows no Sabbaths, and the negro said, apologetically—
"I was a seyin' some ole hymns, young Mars'r. Sence dis yer war we don't have no more meetin's, and a body mos' forgits his pra'rs. Dere hain't been no church in all Fairfax, sah, fur nigh six months."
Washington was nineteen miles distant, and another creek was to be forded before gaining the turnpike. The negro sauntered down the lane, and opened the gate for me. "You jes keep from de creek, take de mill road, and enqua' as ye get furder up," said he; "it's mighty easy, sah, an' you can't miss de way."
I missed the way at once, however, by confounding the mill road with the mill lane, and a shaggy dog that lay in a wagon shed pursued me about a mile. The road was full of mire; no dwellings adjoined it, and nothing human was to be seen in any direction. I came to a crumbling negro cabin after two plodding hours, and, seeing a figure flit by the window, called aloud for information. Nobody replied, and when, dismounting, I looked into the den, it was, to my confusion, vacant.
The soil, hereabout, was of a sterile red clay, spotted with scrub cedars. Country more bleak and desolate I have never known, and when, at noon, the rain ceased, a keen wind blew dismally across the barriers. I reached a turnpike at length, and, turning, as I thought, toward Alexandria, goaded my horse into a canter. An hour's ride brought me to a wretched hamlet, whose designation I inquired of a cadaverous old woman—
"Drainesville," said she.
"Then I am not upon the Alexandria turnpike?"
"No. You're sot for Leesburg. This is the Georgetown and Chain Bridge road."
With a heavy heart, I retraced my steps, crossed ChainBridge at five o'clock, and halted at Kirkwood's at seven. After dinner, falling in with the manager of the Washington Sunday morningChronicle, I penned, at his request, a few lines relative to the movements of the Reserves; and, learning in the morning that they had arrived at Alexandria, set out on horseback for that city.
Many hamlets and towns have been destroyed during the war. But, of all that in some form survive, Alexandria has most suffered. It has been in the uninterrupted possession of the Federals for twenty-two months, and has become essentially a military city. Its streets, its docks, its warehouses, its dwellings, and its suburbs, have been absorbed to the thousand uses of war.
I was challenged thrice on the Long Bridge, and five times on the road, before reaching the city. I rode under the shadows of five earthworks, and saw lines of white tents sweeping to the horizon. Gayly caparisoned officers passed me, to spend their Sabbath in Washington, and trains laden with troops, ambulances, and batteries, sped along the line of railway, toward the rendezvous at Alexandria. A wagoner, looking forlornly at his splintered wheels; a slovenly guard, watching some bales of hay; a sombre negro, dozing upon his mule; a slatternly Irish woman gossiping with a sergeant at her cottage door; a sutler in his "dear-born," running his keen eye down the limbs of my beast; a spruce civilian riding for curiosity; a gray-haired gentleman, in a threadbare suit, going to camp on foot, to say good by to his boy,—these were some of the personages that I remarked, and each was a study, a sermon, and a story. The Potomac, below me, was dotted with steamers and shipping. The bluffs above were trodden bare, and a line of dismal marsh bordered some stagnant pools that blistered at their bases. At points along the river-shore, troops were embarking on board steamers; transports were taking in tons of baggage and subsistence. There was a schooner, laden to the water-line with locomotive engines and burden carriages; there, a brig, shipping artillery horses by a steam derrick, that lifted them bodily from the shore and deposited them in the hold of the vessel. Steamers, from whose spacious saloons the tourist and the bride have watched the picturesque margin of the Hudson, were now black with clusters of rollicking volunteers, who climbed into the yards, and pitched headlong from the wheel-houses. The "grand movement," for which the people had waited so long, and which McClellan had promised so often, was at length to be made. The Army of the Potomac was to be transferred to Fortress Monroe, at the foot of the Chesapeake, and to advance by the peninsula of the James and the York, upon the city of Richmond.
I rode through Washington Street, the seat of some ancient residences, and found it lined with freshly arrived troops. The grave-slabs in a fine old churchyard were strewn with weary cavalry-men, and they lay in some side yards, soundly sleeping. Some artillery-men chatted at doorsteps, with idle house-girls; some courtesans flaunted in furs and ostrich feathers, through a group of coarse engineers; some sergeants of artillery, in red trimmings, and caps gilded with cannon, were reining their horses to leer at some ladies, who were taking the air in their gardens; and at a wide place in the street, a Provost-Major was manœuvring some companies, to the sound of the drum and fife. There was much drunkenness, among both soldiers and civilians; and the people of Alexandria were, in many cases, crushed and demoralized by reason of their troubles. One man of this sort led me to a sawmill, now run by Government, and pointed to the implements.
"I bought 'em and earned 'em," he said. "My labor and enterprise set 'em there; and while my mill and machinery are ruined to fill the pockets o' Federal sharpers, I go drunk, ragged, and poor about the streets o' my native town. My daughter starves in Richmond; God knows Ican't get to her. I wish to h——l I was dead."
Further inquiry developed the facts that my acquaintance had been a thriving builder, who had dotted all Northeastern Virginia with evidences of his handicraft. At the commencement of the war, he took certain contracts from the Confederate government, for the construction of barracks at Richmond and Manassas Junction; returning inopportunely to Alexandria, he was arrested, and kept some time in Capitol-Hill prison; he had not taken the oath of allegiance, consequently, he could obtain no recompense for the loss of his mill property. Domestic misfortunes, happening at the same time, so embittered his days that he resorted to dissipation. Alexandria is filled with like ruined people; they walk as strangers through their ancient streets, and their property is no longer theirs to possess, but has passed into the hands of the dominant nationalists. My informant pointed out the residences of many leading citizens: some were now hospitals, others armories and arsenals; others offices for inspectors, superintendents, and civil officials. The few people that remained upon their properties, obtained partial immunity, by courting the acquaintance of Federal officers, and, in many cases, extending the hospitalities of their homes to the invaders. I do not know that any Federal functionary was accused of tyranny, or wantonness, but these things ensued, as the natural results of civil war; and one's sympathies were everywhere enlisted for the poor, the exiled, and the bereaved.
My dinner at the City Hotel was scant and badly prepared. I gave a negro lad who waited upon me a few cents, but a burly negro carver, who seemed to be his father, boxed the boy's ears and put the coppers into his pocket. The proprietor of the place had voluntarily taken the oath of allegiance, and had made more money since the date of Federal occupation than during his whole life previously. He said to me, curtly, that if by any chance the Confederates should reoccupy Alexandria, he could very well afford to relinquish his property. He employed a smartbarkeeper, who led guests by a retired way to the drinking-rooms. Here, with the gas burning at a taper point, cobblers, cocktails, and juleps were mixed stealthily and swallowed in the darkness. The bar was like a mint to the proprietor; he only feared discovery and prohibition. It would not accord with the chaste pages of this narrative to tell how some of the noblest residences in Alexandria had been desecrated to licentious purposes; nor how, by night, the parlors of cosey homes flamed with riot and orgie. I stayed but a little time, having written an indiscreet paragraph in the Washington Chronicle, for which I was pursued by the War Department, and the management of my paper, lacking heart, I went home in a pet.
Disappointed in the unlucky termination of my adventures afield, I now looked ambitiously toward New York. As London stands to the provinces, so stands the empire city to America. Its journals circulate by hundreds of thousands; its means are only rivalled by its enterprise; it is the end of every young American's aspiration, and the New Bohemia for the restless, the brilliant, and the industrious. It seemed a great way off when I first beheld it, but I did not therefore despair. Small matters of news that I gathered in my modest city, obtained space in the columns of the great metropolitan journal, the——. After a time I was delegated to travel in search of special incidents, and finally, when the noted Tennessee Unionist, "Parson" Brownlow, journeyed eastward, I joined hissuite, and accompanied him to New York. The dream of many months now came to be realized. A correspondent on the ——'s staff had been derelict, and I was appointed to his division. His horse, saddle, field-glasses, blankets, and pistols were to be transferred, and I was to proceed without delay to Fortress Monroe, to keep with the advancing columns of McClellan.
At six in the morning I embarked; at eleven I was whirled through my own city, without a glimpse of my friends; at three o'clock I dismounted at Baltimore, and at five was gliding down the Patapsco, under the shadows ofFort Federal Hill, and the white walls of Fort McHenry. The latter defence is renowned for its gallant resistance to a British fleet in 1813, and the American national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," was written to commemorate that bombardment. Fort Carroll, a massive structure of hewn stone, with arched bomb-proof and three tiers of mounted ordnance, its smooth walls washed by the waves, and its unfinished floors still ringing with the trowel and the adze,—lies some miles below, at a narrow passage in the stream. Below, the shores diverge, and at dusk we were fairly in the Chesapeake, under steam and sail, speeding due southward.
TheAdelaidewas one of a series of boats making daily trips between Baltimore and Old Point. Fourteen hours were required to accomplish the passage, and we were not to arrive till seven o'clock next morning. I was so fortunate as to obtain a state-room, but many passengers were obliged to sleep upon sofas or the cabin floor. These boats monopolized the civil traffic between the North and the army, although they were reputed to be owned and managed by Secessionists. None were allowed to embark unless provided with Federal passes; but there were, nevertheless, three or four hundred people on board. About one fourth of these were officers and soldiers; one half sutlers, traders, contractors, newsmen, and idle civilians, anxious to witness a battle, or stroll over the fields of Big Bethel, Lee's Mills, Yorktown, Gloucester, Williamsburg, or West Point; the rest were females on missions of mercy, on visits to sons, brothers, and husbands, and on the way to their homes at Norfolk, Suffolk, or Hampton. Some of these were citizens of Richmond, who believed that the Federals would occupy the city in a few days, and enable them to resume their professions and homes. The lower decks were occupied by negroes. The boat was heavily freighted, and among the parcels that littered the hold and steerage, I noticed scores of box coffins for the removal of corpses from the field tothe North. There were quantities of spirits, consigned mainly to Quartermasters, but evidently the property of certain Shylocks, who watched the barrels greedily. An embalmer was also on board, with his ghostly implements. He was a sallow man, shabbily attired, and appeared to look at all the passengers as so many subjects for the development of his art. He was called "Doctor" by his admirers, and conversed in the blandest manner of the triumphs of his system.
"There are certain pretenders," he said, "who are at this moment imposing upon the Government. I regret that it is necessary to repeat it, but the fact exists that the Government is the prey of harpies. And in the art of which I am an humble disciple,—that of injecting, commonly called embalming,—the frauds are most deplorable. There was Major Montague,—a splendid subject, I assure you,—a subject that anyProfessorwould have beautifully preserved,—a subject that one esteems it a favor to obtain,—a subject that I in particular would have been proud to receive! But what were the circumstances? I do assure you that a person named Wigwart,—who I have since ascertained to be a veterinary butcher; in plain language, a doctor of horses and asses,—imposed upon the relatives of the deceased, obtained the body, and absolutely ruined it!—absolutelymangledit! I may say, shamefully disfigured it! He was a man, sir, six feet two,—about your height, I think! (to a bystander.) About your weight, also! Indeed quite like you! And allow me to say that, if you should fall into my hands, I would leave your friends no cause for offence! (Here the bystander trembled perceptibly, and I thought that the doctor was about to take his life.) Well!Ishould have operated thus:—"
Then followed a description of the process, narrated with horrible circumstantiality. A fluid holding in solution pounded glass and certain chemicals, was, by the doctor's "system," injected into the bloodvessels, and the subjectat the same time bled at the neck. The body thus became hard and stony, and would retain its form for years. He had, by his account, experimented for a lifetime, and said that little "Willie," the son of President Lincoln, had been so preserved that his fond parents must have enjoyed his decease.
It seemed to me that the late lamented practitioners, Messrs. Burke and Hare, were likely to fade into insignificance, beside this new light of science.
I went upon deck for some moments, and marked the beating of the waves; the glitter of sea-lights pulsing on the ripples; the sweep of belated gulls through the creaking rigging; the dark hull of a passing vessel with a grinning topmast lantern; the vigilant pilot, whose eyes glared like a fiend's upon the waste of blackness; the foam that the panting screw threw against the cabin windows; the flap of fishes caught in the threads of moonlight; the depths over which one bent, peering half wistfully, half abstractedly, almost crazily, till he longed to drop into their coolness, and let the volumes of billow roll musically above him.
A woman approached me, as I stood against the great anchor, thus absorbed. She had a pale, thin face, and was scantily clothed, and spoke with a distrustful, timorous voice:—
"You don't know the name of the surgeon-general, do you sir!"
"At Washington, ma'am?"
"No, sir; at Old Point."
I offered to inquire of the Captain: but she stopped me, agitatedly. "It's of no consequence," she said,—"that is, it is of great consequence to me; but perhaps it would be best to wait." I answered, as obligingly as I could, that any service on my part would be cheerfully rendered.
"The fact is, sir," she said, after a pause, "I am going to Williamsburg, to—find—the—the body—of my—boy."
Here her speech was broken, and she put a thin, whitehand tremulously to her eyes. I thought that any person in the Federal service would willingly assist her, and said so.
"He was not a Federal soldier, sir. He was a Confederate!"
This considerably altered the chances of success, and I was obliged to undeceive her somewhat. "I am sure it was not my fault," she continued, "that he joined the Rebellion. You don't think they'll refuse to let me take his bones to Baltimore, do you, sir? He was my oldest boy, and his brother, my second son, was killed at Ball's Bluff:Hewas in the Federal service. I hardly think they will refuse me the poor favor of laying them in the same grave."
I spoke of the difficulty of recognition, of the remoteness of the field, and of the expense attending the recovery of any remains, particularly those of the enemy, that, left hastily behind in retreat, were commonly buried in trenches without headboard or record. She said, sadly, that she had very little money, and that she could barely afford the journey to the Fortress and return. But she esteemed her means well invested if her object could be attained.
"They were both brave boys, sir; but I could never get them to agree politically. William was a Northerner by education, and took up with the New England views, and James was in business at Richmond when the war commenced. So he joined the Southern army. It's a sad thing to know that one's children died enemies, isn't it? And what troubles me more than all, sir, is that James was at Ball's Bluff where his brother fell. It makes me shudder to think, sometimes, that his might have been the ball that killed him."
The tremor of the poor creature here was painful to behold. I spoke soothingly and encouragingly, but with a presentiment that she must be disappointed. While I was speaking the supper-bell rang, and I proposed to get her a seat at the table.
"No, thank you," she replied, "I shall take no meals on the vessel; I must travel economically, and have prepared some lunch that will serve me. Good by, sir!"
Poor mothers looking for dead sons! God help them! I have met them often since; but the figure of that pale, frail creature flitting about the open deck,—alone, hungry, very poor,—troubles me still, as I write. I found, afterward, that she had denied herself a state-room, and intended to sleep in a saloon chair. I persuaded her to accept my berth, but a German, who occupied the same apartment, was unwilling to relinquish his bed, and I had the power only to give her my pillow.
Supper was spread in the forecabin, and at the signal to assemble the men rushed to the tables like as many beasts of prey. A captain opposite me bolted a whole mackerel in a twinkling, and spread the half-pound of butter that was to serve the entire vicinity upon a single slice of bread. A sutler beside me reached his fork across my neck, and plucked a young chicken bodily, which he ate, to the great disgust of some others who were eyeing it. The waiter advanced with some steak, but before he reached the table, a couple of Zouaves dragged it from the tray, and laughed brutally at their success. The motion of the vessel caused a general unsteadiness, and it was absolutely dangerous to move one's coffee to his lips. The inveterate hate with which corporations are regarded in America was here evidenced by a general desire to empty the ship's larder.
"Eat all you can," said a soldier, ferociously,—"fare's amazin' high. Must make it out in grub."
"I always gorges," said another, "on a railroad or a steamboat. Cause why? You must eat out your passage, you know!"
Among the passengers were a young officer and his bride. They had been married only a few days, and she had obtained permission to accompany him to Old Point. Very pretty, she seemed, in her travelling hat and flowing robes;and he wore a handsome new uniform with prodigious shoulder-bars. There was a piano in the saloon, where another young lady of the party performed during the evening, and the bride and groom accompanied her with a song. It was the popular Federal parody of "Gay and Happy:"
"Then let the South fling aloft what it will,—We are for the Union still!For the Union! For the Union!We are for the Union still!"
"Then let the South fling aloft what it will,—We are for the Union still!For the Union! For the Union!We are for the Union still!"
The bride and groom sang alternate stanzas, and the concourse of soldiers, civilians, and females swelled the chorus. The reserve being thus broken, the young officer sang the "Star-Spangled Banner," and the refrain must have called up the mermaids. Dancing ensued, and a soldier volunteered a hornpipe. A young man with an astonishing compass of lungs repeated something from Shakespeare, and the night passed by gleefully and reputably. One could hardly realize, in the cheerful eyes and active figures of the dance, the sad uncertainties of the time. Youth trips lightest, somehow, on the brink of the grave.
The hilarities of the evening so influenced the German quartered with me, that he sang snatches of foreign ballads during most of the night, and obliged me, at last, to call the steward and insist upon his good behavior.
In the gray of the morning I ventured on deck, and, following the silvery line of beach, made out the shipping at anchor in Hampton Roads. TheMinnesotaflag-ship lay across the horizon, and after a time I remarked the low walls and black derricks of the Rip Raps. The white tents at Hampton were then revealed, and finally I distinguished Fortress Monroe, the key of the Chesapeake, bristling with guns, and floating the Federal flag. As we rounded to off the quay, I studied with intense interest the scene of so many historic events. Sewall's Point lay to the south, astretch of woody beach, around whose western tip the dreadedMerrimachad so often moved slowly to the encounter. The spars of theCongressand theCumberlandstill floated along the strand, but, like them, the invulnerable monster had become the prey of the waves. The guns of the Rip Raps and the terrible broadsides of the Federal gunboats, had swept the Confederates from Sewall's Point,—their flag and battery were gone,—and farther seaward, at Willoughby Spit, some figures upon the beach marked the route of the victorious Federals to the city of Norfolk.
The mouth of the James and the York were visible from the deck, and long lines of shipping stretched from each to the Fortress. The quay itself was like the pool in the Thames, a mass of spars, smoke-stacks, ensigns and swelling hills. The low deck and quaint cupola of the famousMonitorappeared close into shore, and near at hand rose the thick body of theGalena. Long boats and flat boats went hither and thither across the blue waves: the grim ports of the men of war were open and the guns frowned darkly from their coverts; the seamen were gathering for muster on the flagship, and drums beat from the barracks on shore; the Lincoln gun, a fearful piece of ordnance, rose like the Sphynx from the Fortress sands, and the sodded parapet, the winding stone walls, the tops of the brick quarters within the Fort, were some of the features of a strangely animated scene, that has yet to be perpetuated upon canvas, and made historic.
At eight o'clock the passengers were allowed to land, and a provost guard marched them to the Hygeia House,—of old a watering-place hotel,—where, by groups, they were ushered into a small room, and the oath of allegiance administered to them. The young officer who officiated, repeated the words of the oath, with a broad grin upon his face, and the passengers were required to assent by word and by gesture. Among those who took the oath in this way, was a very old sailor, who had been in the Federal service forthe better part of his life, and whose five sons were now in the army. He called "Amen" very loudly and fervently, and there was some perceptible disposition on the part of other ardent patriots, to celebrate the occasion with three cheers. The quartermaster, stationed at the Fortress gave me a pass to go by steamer up the York to White House, and as there were three hours to elapse before departure, I strolled about the place with our agent. In times of peace, Old Point was simply a stone fortification, and one of the strongest of its kind in the world. Many years and many millions of dollars were required to build it, but it was, in general, feebly garrisoned, and was, altogether, a stupid, tedious locality, except in the bathing months, when the beauty and fashion of Virginia resorted to its hotel. A few cottages had grown up around it, tenanted only in "the season;" and a little way off, on the mainland, stood the pretty village of Hampton.
By a strange oversight, the South failed to seize Fortress Monroe at the beginning of the Rebellion; the Federals soon made it the basis for their armies and a leading naval station. The battle of Big Bethel was one of the first occurrences in the vicinity. Then the dwellings of Hampton were burned and its people exiled. In rapid succession followed the naval battles in the Roads, the siege and surrender of Yorktown, the flight of the Confederates up the Peninsula to Richmond, and finally the battles of Williamsburg, and West Point, and the capture of Norfolk. These things had already transpired; it was now the month of May; and the victorious army, following up its vantages, had pursued the fugitives by land and water to "White House," at the head of navigation on the Pamunkey river. Thither it was my lot to go, and witness the turning-point of their fortunes, and their subsequent calamity and repulse.
I found Old Point a weary place of resort, even in the busy era of civil war. The bar at the Hygeia House wasbeset with thirsty and idle people, who swore instinctively, and drank raw spirits passionately. The quantity of shell, ball, ordnance, camp equipage, and war munitions of every description piled around the fort, was marvellously great. It seemed to me that Xerxes, the first Napoleon, or the greediest of conquerors, ancient or modern, would have beheld with amazement the gigantic preparations at command of the Federal Government. Energy and enterprise displayed their implements of death on every hand. One was startled at the prodigal outlay of means, and the reckless summoning of men. I looked at the starred and striped ensign that flaunted above the Fort, and thought of Madame Roland's appeal to the statue by the guillotine.
The settlers were numbered by regiments here. Their places of business were mainly structures or "shanties" of rough plank, and most of them were the owners of sloops, or schooners, for the transportation of freight from New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, to their depots at Old Point. Some possessed a dozen wagons, that plied regularly between these stores and camps. The traffic was not confined to men; for women and children kept pace with the army, trading in every possible article of necessity or luxury. For these—disciples of the dime and the dollar—war had no terrors. They took their muck-rakes, like the man in Bunyan, and gathered the almighty coppers, from the pestilential camp and the reeking battle-field.
Yorktown lies twenty-one miles northwestward from Old Point, and thither I turned my face at noon, resolving to delay my journey to "White House," till next day morning. Crossing an estuary of the bay upon a narrow causeway, I passed Hampton,—half burned, half desolate,—and at three o'clock came to "Big Bethel," the scene of the battle of June 11, 1861. A small earthwork marks the site of Magruder's field-pieces, and hard by the slain were buried. The spot was noteworthy to me, since Lieutenant Greble, a fellow alumnus, had perished here, and likewise, Theodore Winthrop, the gifted author of "Cecil Dreeme" and "John Brent." The latter did not live to know his exaltation. That morning never came whereon he "woke, and found himself famous."
The road ran parallel with the deserted defences of the Confederates for some distance. The country was flat and full of swamps, but marked at intervals by relics of camps. The farm-houses were untenanted, the fences laid flat or destroyed, the fields strewn with discarded clothing, arms, and utensils. By and by, we entered the outer line of Federal parallels, and wound among lunettes, crémaillères, redoubts, and rifle-pits. Marks of shell and ball were frequent, in furrows and holes, where the clay had been upheaved. Every foot of ground, for fifteen miles henceforward, had been touched by the shovel and the pick. Mycompanion suggested that as much digging, concentred upon one point, would have taken the Federals to China. The sappers and miners had made their stealthy trenches, rod by rod, each morning appearing closer to their adversaries, and finally, completed their work, at less than a hundred yards from the Confederate defences. Three minutes would have sufficed from the final position, to hurl columns upon the opposing outworks, and sweep them with the bayonet. Ten days only had elapsed since the evacuation (May 4), and the siege guns still remained in some of the batteries. McClellan worshipped great ordnance, and some of his columbiads, that were mounted in the water battery, yawned cavernously through their embrasures, and might have furnished sleeping accommodations to the gunners. A few mortars stood in position by the river side, and there were Parrott, Griffin, and Dahlgren pieces in the shore batteries.
However numerous and powerful were the Federal fortifications, they bore no comparison, in either respect, to those relinquished by the revolutionists. Miniature mountain ranges they seemed, deeply ditched, and revetted with sods, fascines, hurdles, gabions or sand bags. Along the York riverside there were water batteries of surpassing beauty, that seemed, at a little distance, successions of gentle terraces. Their pieces were likewise of enormous calibre, and their number almost incredible. The advanced line of fortifications, sketched from the mouth of Warwick creek, on the South, to a point fifteen miles distant on the York: one hundred and forty guns were planted along this chain of defences; but there were two other concentric lines, mounting, each, one hundred and twenty, and two hundred and forty guns. The remote series consisted of six forts of massive size and height, fronted by swamps and flooded meadows, with frequent creeks and ravines interposing; sharpfraiseandabattisplanted against scarp and slope, pointed cruelly eastward. There were two water batteries, of six and fourthirty-two columbiads respectively, and the town itself, which stands upon a red clay bluff, was encircled by a series of immense rifled and smooth-bore pieces, including a powerful pivot-gun, that one of McClellan's shells struck during the first day's bombardment, and split it into fragments. At Gloucester Point, across the York river, the great guns of theMerrimacwere planted, it is said, and a fleet of fire-rafts and torpedo-ships were moored in the stream. By all accounts, there could have been no less than five hundred guns behind the Confederate entrenchments, the greater portion, of course, field-pieces, and, as the defending army was composed of one hundred thousand men, we must add that number of small arms to the list of ordnance. If we compute the Federals at so high a figure,—and they could scarcely have had less than a hundred thousand men afield,—we must increase the enormous amount of their field, siege, and small ordnance, by the naval guns of the fleet, that stood anchored in the bay. It is probable that a thousand cannon and two hundred thousand muskets were assembled in and around Yorktown during this memorable siege. The mind shudders to see the terrible deductions of these statistics. The monster, who wished that the world had but one neck, that he might sever it, would have gloated at such realization! How many days or hours would have here sufficed to annihilate all the races of men? Happily, the world was spared the spectacle of these deadly mouths at once aflame. Beautiful but awful must have been the scene, and the earth must have staggered with the shock. One might almost have imagined that man, in his ambition, had shut his God in heaven, and besieged him there.
While the fortifications defending it amazed me, the village of Yorktown disappointed me. I marvelled that so paltry a settlement should have been twice made historic. Here, in the year 1783, Lord Cornwallis surrendered his starving command to the American colonists and their French allies. But the entrenchments of that earlier day had beenalmost obliterated by these recent labors. The field, where the Earl delivered up his sword, was trodden bare, and dotted with ditches and ramparts; while a small monument, that marked the event, had been hacked to fragments by the Southerners, and carried away piecemeal. Yet, strange to say, relics of the first bombardment had just been discovered, and, among them, a gold-hilted sword.
I visited, in the evening, the late quarters of General Hill, a small white house with green shutters, and also the famous "Nelson House," a roomy mansion where, of old, Cornwallis slept, and where, a few days past, Jefferson Davis and General Lee had held with Magruder, and his associates, a council of war. It had been also used for hospital purposes, but some negroes were now the only occupants.
The Confederates left behind them seventy spiked and shattered cannon, some powder, and a few splintered wagons; but in all material respects, their evacuation was thorough and creditable. Some deserters took the first tidings of the retreat to the astonished Federals, and they raised the national flag within the fortifications, in the gray of the morning of the 4th of May. Many negroes also escaped the vigilance of their taskmasters, and remained to welcome the victors. The fine works of Yorktown are monuments to negro labor, fortheywere the hewers and the diggers. Every slave-owner in Eastern Virginia was obliged to send one half of his male servants between the ages of sixteen and fifty to the Confederate camps, and they were organized into gangs and set to work. In some cases they were put to military service and made excellent sharpshooters. The last gun discharged from the town was said to have been fired by a negro.
I slept on board a barge at the wharf that evening, and my dreams ran upon a thousand themes. To every American this was hallowed ground. It had been celebrated by the pencil of Trumbull, the pen of Franklin, and the eloquence of Jefferson. Scarce eighty years had elapsed since those great minds established a fraternal government; but the site of their crowning glory was now the scene of their children's shame. Discord had stolen upon their councils and blood had profaned their shrine.
I visited next day a bomb-proof postern, or subterranean passage, connecting the citadel with the outworks, and loitered about the fortifications till noon, when I took passage on the mail steamer, which left the Fortress at eleven o'clock, and reached White House at dusk the same evening. The whole river as I ascended was filled with merchant and naval craft. They made a continuous line from Old Point to the mouth of York River, and the masts and spars environing Yorktown and Gloucester, reminded one of a scene on the Mersey or the Clyde. At West Point, there was an array of shipping scarcely less formidable, and the windings of the interminably crooked Pamunkey were marked for leagues by sails, smoke-stacks, and masts. The landings and wharves were besieged by flat-boats and sloops, and Zouaves were hoisting forage and commissary stores up the red bluffs at every turn of our vessel.
The Pamunkey was a beautiful stream, densely wooded, and occasional vistas opened up along its borders of wheatfields and meadows, with Virginia farm-houses and negro quarters on the hilltops. Some of the houses on the river banks appeared to be tenanted by white people, but the majority had a haunted, desolate appearance, the only signs of life being strolling soldiers, who thrust their legs through the second story windows, or contemplated the river from the chimney-tops, and groups of negroes who sunned themselves on the piazza, or rushed to the margin to gaze and grin at the passing steamers. There were occasional residences not unworthy of old manorial and baronial times, and these were attended at a little distance by negro quarters of logs, arranged in rows, and provided with mud chimneys built against their gables. Few of the Northern navigable rivers were so picturesque and varied.
We passed two Confederate gunboats, that had been half completed, and burned on the stocks. Their charred elbows and ribs, stared out, like the remains of some extinct monsters; a little delay might have found each of them armed and manned, and carrying havoc upon the rivers and the seas. West Point was simply a tongue, or spit of land, dividing the Mattapony from the Pamunkey river at their junction; a few houses were built upon the shallow, and some wharves, half demolished, marked the terminus of the York and Richmond railroad. A paltry water-battery was the sole defence. Below Cumberland (a collection of huts and a wharf), a number of schooners had been sunk across the river, and, with the aid of an island in the middle, these constituted a rather rigid blockade. The steamboat passed through, steering carefully, but some sailing vessels that followed required to be towed between the narrow apertures. The tops only of the sunken masts could be discerned above the surface, and much time and labor must have been required to place the boats in line and sink them. Vessels were counted by scores above and below this blockade, and at Cumberland the masts were like a forest; clusters of pontoons were here anchored in the river, and a short distance below we found three of the light-draught Federal gunboats moored in the stream. It was growing dark as we rounded to at "White House;" the camp fires of the grand army lit up the sky, and edged the tree-boughs on the margin with ribands of silver. Some drums beat in the distance; sentries paced the strand; the hum of men, and the lowing of commissary cattle, were borne towards us confusedly; soldiers were bathing in the river; team-horses were drinking at the brink; a throng of motley people were crowding about the landing to receive the papers and mails. I had at last arrived at the seat of war, and my ambition to chronicle battles and bloodshed was about to be gratified.
At first, I was troubled to make my way; the tents hadjust been pitched; none knew the location of divisions other than their own, and it was now so dark that I did not care to venture far. After a vain attempt to find some flat-boats where there were lodgings and meals to be had, I struck out for general head-quarters, and, undergoing repeated snubbings from pert members of staff, fell in at length, with a very tall, spare, and angular young officer, who spoke broken English, and who heard my inquiries, courteously; he stepped into General Marcy's tent, but the Chief of Staff did not know the direction of Smith's division; he then repaired to Gen. Van Vleet, the chief Quartermaster, but with ill success. A party of officers were smoking under a "fly," and some of these called to him, thus—
"Captain! Duke! De Chartres! What do you wish?"
It was, then, the Orleans Prince who had befriended me, and I had the good fortune to hear that the division, of which I was in search, lay a half mile up the river. I never spoke to the Bourbon afterward, but saw him often; and that he was as chivalrous as he was kind, all testimony proved.
A private escorted me to a Captain Mott's tent, and this officer introduced me to General Hancock. I was at once invited to mess with the General's staff, and in the course of an hour felt perfectly at home. Hancock was one of the handsomest officers in the army; he had served in the Mexican war, and was subsequently a Captain in the Quartermaster's department. But the Rebellion placed stars in many shoulder-bars, and few were more worthily designated than this young Pennsylvanian. His first laurels were gained at Williamsburg; but the story of a celebrated charge that won him the day's applause, and McClellan's encomium of the "Superb Hancock," was altogether fictitious. The musket, not the bayonet, gave him the victory. I may doubt, in this place, that any extensive bayonet charge has been known during the war. Some have gone so far as to deny that the bayonet has ever been used at all.
Hancock's regiments were the 5th Wisconsin, 49th Pennsylvanian, 43d New York, and 6th Maine. They represented widely different characteristics, and I esteemed myself fortunate to obtain a position where I could so eligibly study men, habits, and warfare. During the evening I fell in with the Colonel of each of these regiments, and from the conversation that ensued, I gleaned a fair idea of them all.
The Wisconsin regiment was from a new and ambitious State of the Northwest. The men were rough-mannered, great-hearted farmers, wood-choppers, and tradesmen. They had all the impulsiveness of the Yankee, with less selfishness, and quite as much bravery. The Colonel was named Cobb, and he had held some leading offices in Wisconsin. A part of his life had been adventurously spent, and he had participated in the Mexican war. He was an ardent Republican in politics, and had been Speaker of a branch of the State Legislature. He was an attorney in a small county town when the war commenced, and his name had been broached for the Governorship. In person he was small, lithe, and capable of enduring great fatigue. His hair was a little gray, and he had no beard. He did not respect appearances, and his sword, as I saw, was antique and quite different in shape from the regulation weapon. He had penetrating gray eyes, and his manners were generally reserved. One had not to regard him twice to see that he was both cautious and resolute. He was too ambitious to be frank, and too passionate not to be brave. In the formula of learning he was not always correct; but few were of quicker perception or more practical and philosophic. He might not, in an emergency, be nicely scrupulous as to means, but he never wavered in respect to objects. His will was the written law to his regiment, and I believed his executive abilities superior to those of any officer in the brigade, not excepting the General's.
The New York regiment was commanded by a young officer named Vinton. He was not more than thirty-fiveyears of age, and was a graduate of the United States Military Academy. Passionately devoted to engineering, he withdrew from the army, and passed five years in Paris, at the study of his art. Returning homeward by way of the West Indies, he visited Honduras, and projected a filibustering expedition to its shores from the States. While perfecting the design, the Rebellion commenced, and his old patron, General Scott, secured him the colonelcy of a volunteer regiment. He still cherished his scheme of "Colonization," and half of his men were promised to accompany him. Personally, Colonel Vinton was straight, dark, and handsome. He was courteous, affable, and brave,—but wedded to his peculiar views, and, as I thought, a thorough "Young American."
The Maine regiment was fathered by Colonel Burnham, a staunch old yeoman and soldier, who has since been made a General. His probity and good-nature were adjuncts of his valor, and his men were of the better class of New Englanders. The fourth regiment fell into the hands of a lawyer from Lewistown, Pennsylvania. He had been also in the Mexican war, and was remarkable mainly for strictness with regard to the sanitary regulations of his camps. He had wells dug at every stoppage, and his tents were generally fenced and canopied with cedar arbors. General Hancock's staff was composed of a number of young men, most of whom had been called from civil life. His brigade constituted one of three commanded by General Smith. Four batteries were annexed to the division so formed; the entire number of muskets was perhaps eight thousand. The Chief of Artillery was a Captain Ayres, whose battery saved the three months' army at Bull Run. It so happened that he came into the General's during the evening, and recited the particulars of a gunboat excursion, thirty miles up the Pamunkey, wherein he had landed his men, and burned a quantity of grain, some warehouses, and shipping. I pencilled the facts at once, made up my letter, and mailed it early in the morning.
At White House, I met some of the mixed Indians and negroes from Indiantown Island, which lies among the osiers in the stream. One of these ferried me over, and the people received me obsequiously, touching their straw hats, and saying, "Sar, at your service!" They were all anxious to hear something of the war, and asked, solicitously, if they were to be protected. Some of them had been to Richmond the previous day, and gave me some unimportant items happening in the city. I found that they had Richmond papers of that date, and purchased them for a few cents. They knew little or nothing of their own history, and had preserved no traditions of their tribe. There was, however, I understood, a very old woman extant, named "Mag," of great repute at medicines, pow-wows, and divination. I expressed a desire to speak with her, and was conducted to a log-house, more ricketty and ruined than any of the others. About fifty half-breeds followed me in respectful curiosity, and they formed a semicircle around the cabin. The old woman sat in the threshold, barefooted, and smoking a stump of clay pipe.
"Yaw's one o' dem Nawden soldiers, Aunt Mag!" said my conductor. "He wants to talk wid ye."
"Sot down, honey," said the old woman, producing a wooden stool; "is you a Yankee, honey? Does you want you fauchun told by de ole 'oman?"
I perceived that the daughter of the Delawares smelt strongly of fire-water, and the fumes of her calumet were most unwholesome. She was greatly disappointed that I did not require her prophetic services, and said, appealingly—
"Why, sar, all de gen'elmen an' ladies from Richmond has dere fauchuns told. I tells 'em true. All my fauchuns comes out true. Ain't dat so, chillen?"
A low murmur of assent ran round the group, and I was obviously losing caste in the settlement.
"Here is a dime," said I, "that I will give you, to tell me the result of the war. Shall the North be victorious in the next battle? Will Richmond surrender within a week? Shall I take my cigar at the Spotswood on Sunday fortnight?"
"I'se been a lookin' into dat," she said, cunningly; "I'se had dreams on dat ar'. Le'um see how de armies stand!"
She brought from the house a cup of painted earthenware containing sediments of coffee. I saw her crafty white eyes look up to mine as she muttered some jargon, and pretended to read the arrangement of the grains.
"Honey," she said, "gi' me de money, and let de ole 'oman dream on it once mo'! It ain't quite clar' yit, young massar. Tank you, honey! Tank you! Let de old 'oman dream! Let de ole 'oman dream!"
She disappeared into the house, chuckling and chattering, and the sons of the forest, loitering awhile, dispersed in various directions. As I followed my conductor to the riverside, and he parted the close bushes and boughs to give us exit, the glare of the camp-fires broke all at once upon us. The ship-lights quivered on the water; the figures of men moved to and fro before the fagots; the stars peeped timorously from the vault; the woods and steep banks were blackly shadowed in the river. Here was I, among the aborigines; and as my dusky acquaintance sent his canoeskimming across the ripples, I thought how inexplicable were the decrees of Time and the justice of God. Two races united in these people, and both of them we had wronged. From the one we had taken lands; from the other liberties. Two centuries had now elapsed. But the little remnant of the African and the American were to look from their Island Home upon the clash of our armies and the murder of our braves.
By the 19th of May the skirts of the grand army had been gathered up, and on the 20th the march to Richmond was resumed. The troops moved along two main roads, of which the right led to New Mechanicsville and Meadow Bridges, and the left to the railroad and Bottom Bridges. My division formed the right centre, and although the Chickahominy fords were but eighteen miles distant, we did not reach them for three days. On the first night we encamped at Tunstalls, a railroad-station on Black Creek; on the second at New Cold Harbor, a little country tavern, kept by a cripple; and on the night of the third day at Hogan's farm, on the north hills of the Chickahominy. The railroad was opened to Despatch Station at the same time, but the right and centre were still compelled to "team" their supplies from White House. In the new position, the army extended ten miles along the Chickahominy hills; and while the engineers were driving pile, tressel, pontoon, and corduroy bridges, the cavalry was scouring the country, on both flanks, far and wide.
The advance was full of incident, and I learned to keep as far in front as possible, that I might communicate with scouts, contrabands, and citizens. Many odd personages were revealed to me at the farm-houses on the way, and I studied, with curious interest, the native Virginian character. They appeared to be compounds of the cavalier and the boor. There was no old gentleman who owned a thousand barren acres, spotted with scrub timber; who lived in a weather-beaten barn, with a multiplicity of porch and aquantity of chimney; whose means bore no proportion to his pride, and neither to his indolence,—that did not talk of his ancestry, proffer his hospitality, and defy me to an argument. I was a civilian,—they had no hostility to me,—but the blue-coats of the soldiers seared their eyeballs. In some cases their daughters remained upon the property; but the sons and the negroes always fled,—though in contrary directions. The old men used to peep through the windows at the passing columns; and as their gates were wrenched from the hinges, their rails used to pry wagons out of the mud, their pump-handles shaken till the buckets splintered in the shaft, and their barns invaded by greasy agrarians, they walked to and fro, half-weakly, half-wrathfully, but with a pluck, fortitude, and devotion that wrung my respect. Some aged negro women commonly remained, but these were rather incumbrances than aids, and they used the family meal to cook bread for the troops. An old, toothless, grinning African stood at every lane and gate, selling buttermilk and corn-cakes. Poor mortal, sinful old women! They had worked for nothing through their three-score and ten, but avarice glared from their shrivelled pupils, and their last but greatest delight lay in the coppers and the dimes. One would have thought that they had outlived the greed of gold; but wages deferred make the dying miserly.
The lords of the manors were troubled to know the number of our troops. For several days the columns passed with their interminable teams, batteries, and adjuncts, and the old gentlemen were loth to compute us at less than several millions.
"Why, look yonder," said one, pointing to a brigade; "I declar' to gracious, there ain't no less than ten thousand inthem!"
"Tousands an' tousands!" said a wondering negro at his elbow. "I wonda if dey'll take Richmond dis yer day?"
Many of them hung white flags at their gate-posts, implying neutrality; but nobody displayed the Federal colors. If there were any covert sympathizers with the purposes of the army, they remembered the vengeance of the neighbors and made no demonstrations. There was a prodigious number of stragglers from the Federal lines, as these were the bane of the country people. They sauntered along by twos and threes, rambling into all the fields and green-apple orchards, intruding their noses into old cabins, prying into smoke-houses, and cellars, looking at the stock in the stables, and peeping on tiptoe into the windows of dwellings. These stragglers were true exponents of Yankee character,—always wanting to know,—averse to discipline, eccentric in their orbits, entertaining profound contempt for everything that was not up to the measure of "to hum."
"Look here, Bill, I say!" said one, with a great grin on his face; "did you ever, neow! I swan! they call that a plough down in these parts."
"Devilishest people I ever see!" said Bill, "stick their meetin'-houses square in the woods! Build their chimneys first and move the houses up to 'em! All the houses breakin' out in perspiration of porch! All their machinery with Noah in the ark! Pump the soil dry! Go to sleep a milkin' a keow! Depend entirely on Providence and the nigger!"
There was a mill on the New Bridge road, ten miles from White House, with a tidy farm-house, stacks, and cabins adjoining. The road crossed the mill-race by a log bridge, and a spreading pond or dam lay to the left,—the water black as ink, the shore sandy, and the stream disappearing in a grove of straight pines. A youngish woman, with several small children, occupied the dwelling, and there remained, besides, her fat sister-in-law and four or five faithful negroes. I begged the favor of a meal and bed in the place one night, and shall not forget the hospitable table with its steaming biscuit; the chubby baby, perched upon his highstool; the talkative elderly woman, who took snuff at the fireplace; the contented black-girl, who played the Hebe; and above all, the trim, plump, pretty hostess, with her brown eyes and hair, her dignity and her fondness, sitting at the head of the board. When she poured the bright coffee into the capacious bowl, she revealed the neatest of hands and arms, and her dialect was softer and more musical than that of most Southerners. In short, I fell almost in love with her; though she might have been a younger playmate of my mother's, and though she was the wife of a Quartermaster in a Virginia regiment. For, somehow, a woman seems very handsome when one is afield; and the contact of rough soldiers, gives him a partiality for females. It must have required some courage to remain upon the farm; but she hoped thereby to save the property from spoliation. I played a game of whist with the sister-in-law, arguing all the while; and at nine o'clock the servant produced some hard cider, shellbarks, and apples. We drank a cheery toast: "an early peace and old fellowship!"—to which the wife added a sentiment of "always welcome," and the baby laughed at her knee. How brightly glowed the fire! I wanted to linger for a week, a month, a year,—as I do now, thinking it all over,—and when I strolled to the porch,—hearing the pigeons cooing at the barn; the water streaming down the dam; the melancholy monotony of the pine boughs;—there only lacked the humming mill-wheel, and the strong grip of the miller's hand, to fill the void corner of one's happy heart.
But this was a time of war, when dreams are rudely broken, and mine could not last. The next day some great wheels beat down the bridge, and the teams clogged the road for miles; the waiting teamsters saw the miller's sheep, and the geese, chickens, and pigs, rashly exposed themselves in the barnyard; these were killed and eaten, the mill stripped of flour and meal, and the garden despoiled of its vegetables. A quartermaster's horse foundered, andhe demanded the miller's, giving therefor a receipt, but specifying upon the same the owner's relation to the Rebellion; and, to crown all, a group of stragglers, butchered the cows, and heaped the beef in their wagons to feed their regimental friends. When I presented myself, late in the afternoon, the yard and porches were filled with soldiers; the wife sat within, her head thrown upon the window, her bright hair unbound, and her eyes red with weeping. The baby had cried itself to sleep, the sister-in-law took snuff fiercely, at the fire; the black girl cowered in a corner.
"There is not bread in the house for my children," she said; "but I did not think they could make me shed a tear."
If there were Spartan women, as the story-books say, I wonder if their blood died with them! I hardly think so.
If I learned anything from my quiet study of this and subsequent campaigns, it was the heartlessness of war. War brutalizes! The most pitiful become pitiless afield, and those who are not callous, must do cruel duties. If the quartermaster had not seized the horses, he would have been accountable for his conduct; had he failed to state the miller's disloyalty in the receipt, he would have been punished. The men were thieves and brutes, to take the meal and meat; but they were perhaps hungry and weary, and sick of camp food; on the whole, I became a devotee of the George Fox faith, and hated warfare, though I knew nothing to substitute for it, incrises.