THE REALITIES OF WAR
When Dan recovered I returned to Norfolk, and there I stayed for some
time, getting letters from him, taking care of uncle and developing
a genius for housekeeping. One day I was out shopping when I saw
everybody running toward the quay. I turned and went with the crowd. We
saw the Merrimac swing out of the harbor--or did she crawl? A curious
looking craft she was, that first of our ironclads, ugly and ominous.
She had not been gone many hours when the sound of guns came over the
water followed by silence, terrible silence, that lasted until after
the lamps were lit. Suddenly there was tumultuous cheering from the
quay. The Merrimac had come home after destroying the Cumberland and
the Congress.
“Well for the Congress!” we said. Her commander had eaten and drunk of
Norfolk’s hospitality, and then had turned his guns upon her--upon a
city full of his friends. Bravely done, O Merrimac! But that night I
cried myself to sleep. Under the sullen waters of Hampton Roads slept
brave men and true, to whom Stars and Stripes and Southern Cross alike
meant nothing now. The commander of the Congress was among the dead,
and he had been my friend--I had danced with him in my father’s house.
Next day, the Monitor met the Merrimac and turned the tide of victory
against us. Her commander was John L. Worden, who had been our guest
beloved.
During all this time I had been separated from my husband. He had been
detailed to make a survey of Pig Point and the surrounding country, and
it was not until he reached Smithfield that he sent for me. We were
beginning now to realize that war was upon us in earnest. There was
the retreat from Yorktown; Norfolk was evacuated. Troops were moving.
Everything was bustle and confusion. My husband went off with his
command, the order for departure so sudden that he had not time to plan
for me.
As Northern troops began to occupy the country, fearing that I would
be left in the enemy’s lines and so cut off from getting to him, I
took the matter into my own hands and went in a covered wagon to Zuni,
twenty miles distant, where I had heard that his command was encamped
for a few days. After a rough ride I got there only to find that my
husband had started off to Smithfield for me. We had passed each other
on the road, each in a covered wagon. There was nothing to do except to
wait his return that night.
As my husband’s command had been ordered to join the troops at Seven
Pines, I took the train for Richmond the next day, stopped a few hours,
and then went to Petersburg. When I got there the Battle of Seven Pines
was on. For two days it raged--for two days the booming of the cannon
sounded in our ears and thundered at our hearts. Friends gathered at
each other’s houses and looked into each other’s faces and held each
other’s hands, and listened for news from the field. And the sullen
boom of the cannon broke in upon us, and we would start and shiver
as if it had shot _us_, and sometimes the tears would come. But the
bravest of us got so we could not weep. We only sat in silence or spoke
in low voices to each other and rolled bandages and picked linen into
lint. And in those two days it seemed as if we forgot how to smile.
Telegrams began to come; a woman would drop limp and white into the
arms of a friend--her husband was shot. Another would sit with her hand
on her heart in pallid silence until her friends, crowding around her,
spoke to her, tried to arouse her, and then she would break into a cry:
“O my son! my son!”
There were some who could never be roused any more; grief had stunned
and stupefied them forever, and a few there were who died of grief.
One young wife, who had just lost her baby and whose husband perished
in the fight, never lifted her head from her pillow. When the funeral
train brought him home we laid her in old Blandford beside him, the
little baby between.
Now and then when mothers and sisters were bewailing their loss and we
were pressing comfort upon them, there would be a whisper, and one
of us would turn to where some poor girl sat, dumb and stricken, the
secret of her love for the slain wrenched from her by the hand of war.
Sometimes a bereaved one would laugh!
The third day, the day after the battle, I heard that Dan was safe.
Every day I had searched the columns of “Killed and Wounded” in the
Richmond Despatch for his name, and had thanked God when I didn’t find
it. But direct news I had none until that third day. The strain had
been too great; I fell ill. Owing to the general’s illness at this
time his staff was ordered to Petersburg, and Dan, who was engineer
upon the staff, got leave to come on for a day or two in advance of
the other members of it; but while I was still at death’s door he was
ordered off. When I at last got up, I had to be taught to walk as a
child is taught, step by step; and before I was able to join my husband
many battles had been fought in which he took part. I was at the
breakfast-table, when, after months of weary waiting, he telegraphed me
to come to Culpeper Court-house.
This time I packed a small trunk with necessary articles, putting
in heavy dresses and winter flannels. The winter does not come early
in Petersburg; the weather was warm when I started, and I decided
to travel in a rather light dress for the season. I did not trouble
myself with hand-baggage--not even a shawl. The afternoon train would
put me in Richmond before night; I would stop over until morning, and
that day’s train would leave me in Culpeper. Just before I started,
Mr. Sampson, at whose house I was staying, came in and said that an
old friend of his was going to Richmond on my train and would be glad
to look after me. I assented with alacrity. Before the war it was not
the custom for ladies to travel alone, and, besides this, in the days
of which I write traveling was attended with much confusion and many
delays. I reached the depot a few minutes before train time, my escort
was presented and immediately took charge of me. He was a nice-looking
elderly gentleman, quite agreeable, and with just a slight odor of
brandy about him. He saw me comfortably seated, and went to see after
our baggage, he said. He did not return at once, but I took it for
granted that he was in the smoking-car. Traveling was slower then than
now. Half-way to Richmond I began to wonder what had become of my
escort. But my head was too full of other things to bother very much
about it. The outlook from the car window along that route is always
beautiful; and then, the next day I was to see Dan. Darkness, and
across the river the lights of Richmond flashed upon the view. Where
_was_ my escort? I had noticed on the train that morning a gentleman
who wore the uniform of a Confederate captain and whom I knew by sight.
He came up to me now.
“Excuse me, madam, but can I be of any assistance to you? I know your
husband quite well.”
“Do you know where my escort is?” I asked.
He looked embarrassed and tried not to smile.
“We left him at Chester, Mrs. Grey.”
“At Chester? He was going to Richmond.”
“Well--you see, Mrs. Grey, it was--an accident. The old gentleman got
off to get a drink and the train left him.”
I could not help laughing.
“If you will allow me, madam,” said my new friend, “I will see you to
your hotel. How about your baggage?”
“Oh!” I cried in dismay, “Mr. C------ has my trunk-check in his pocket.”
My new friend considered. “If he comes on the next train, perhaps that
will be in time to get your trunk off with you to Culpeper. If not,
your trunk will follow you immediately. I’ll see the conductor and do
what I can. I’m going out of town to-morrow, but Captain Jeter is here
and I’ll tell him about your trunk-check. He’ll be sure to see Mr.
C------.”
I was to see Dan the next day, and nothing else mattered. I made
my mind easy about that trunk, and my new friend took me to the
American, where I spent the evening very pleasantly in receiving old
acquaintances and making new ones.
But with bedtime another difficulty arose: I had never slept in a room
at a hotel by myself in my life. Fortunately, Mrs. Hopson, of Norfolk,
happened to be spending the night there. I sent up a note asking if
I might sleep with her, and went up to her room half an hour later
prepared for a delightful talk about Norfolk. When we were ready for
bed, she took up one of her numerous satchels and put it down on the
side where I afterward lay down to sleep.
“I put that close by the bed because it contains valuables,” she said
with an impressive solemnity I afterward understood.
Of course I asked no questions, though she referred to the valuables
several times. We were in bed and the lights had been out some time
when I had occasion to ask her where she had come from there.
“Oh, Nell!” she said, “didn’t you know? I’ve been to Charlottesville
and I’ve come from there to-day. Didn’t you know about it? John” (her
son) “was wounded. Didn’t you know about it? Of course I had to go to
him. They had to perform an operation on him. I was right there when
they did it.” Here followed a graphic account of the operation. “It was
dreadful. You see that satchel over there?” pointing to the one just
beneath my head on the floor.
“Yes, I see it.”
“Well, John’s bones are right in there!”
“Good gracious!” I cried, and jumped over her to the other side of the
bed.
“Why, what’s the matter?” she asked. “You look like you were scared,
Nell. Why, Nell, the whole of John wouldn’t hurt you, much less
those few bones. I’m carrying them home to put them in the family
burying-ground. That’s the reason I think so much of that satchel
and keep it so close to me. I don’t want John to be buried all about
in different places, you see. But I don’t see anything for you to be
afraid of in a few bones. John’s as well as ever--it isn’t like he was
dead, now.”
I lay down quietly, ashamed of my sudden fright, but there were cold
chills running down my spine.
After a little more talk she turned over, and I presently heard a
comfortable snore, but I lay awake a long time, my eyes riveted on the
satchel containing fragments of John. Then I began to think of seeing
Dan in the morning, and fell asleep feeling how good it was that he was
safe and sound, all his bones together and not scattered around like
poor John’s.
I reached Culpeper Court-house the next afternoon about four o’clock.
Dan met me looking tired and shabby, and as soon as he had me settled
went back to camp.
“I’ll come to see you as often as I can get leave,” he said when
he told me good-by. “We may be quartered here for some time--long
enough for us to get ourselves and our horses rested up, I hope; but
I’m afraid I can’t see much of you. Hardly worth the trouble of your
coming, is it, little woman?”
“Oh, Dan, yes,” I said cheerfully; “just so you are not shot up! It
would be worth the coming if I only got to see you through a car window
as the train went by.”
A few days after my arrival a heavy snow-storm set in. As my trunk
had not yet come, I was still in the same dress in which I had left
Petersburg, and, though we were all willing enough to lend, clothes
were so scarce that borrowing from your neighbor was a last resort. I
suffered in silence for a week before my trunk arrived, and then it was
exchanging one discomfort for another, for my flannels were so tight
from shrinkage and so worn that I felt as if something would break
every time I moved.
During this snow-storm the roads were lined with Confederate troops
marching home footsore and weary from Maryland. Long, hard marches and
bloody battles had been their portion. In August they had come, after
their work at Seven Pines, Cold Harbor, and Malvern Hill, to drive Pope
out of Culpeper, where he was plundering. They had driven him out and
pressed after, fighting incessantly. Near Culpeper there had been the
battle of Cedar Mountain, where Jackson had defeated Pope and chased
him to Culpeper Court-house. Somewhat farther from Culpeper had been
fought the second battle of Manassas, and, crowding upon these, the
battles of Germantown, Centreville, Antietam--more than I can remember
to name. Lee’s army was back in Culpeper now with Federal troops at
their heels, and McClellan, not Pope, in command. Civilians, women,
children, and slaves feared Pope; soldiers feared McClellan--that is,
as much as Lee’s soldiers could fear anybody.
I found our tired army in Culpeper trying to rest and fatten a little
before meeting McClellan’s legions. Then--I am not historian enough to
know just how it happened--McClellan’s head fell and Burnside reigned
in his stead. Better and worse for our army, and no worse for our women
and children, for Burnside was a gentleman even as McClellan was and
as Pope was not, and made no war upon women and children until the
shelling of Fredericksburg.