STUART'S RAID.
The old Chickahominy bridges were soon repaired, and the whole of
Franklin's corps crossed to the south side. McClellan moved his
head-quarters to Dr. Trent's farm, a half-mile from Michie's, and the
latter gentleman's fields and lawn were made white with tents. Among
others, the Chief of Cavalry, Stoneman, pitched his canopy under the
young oaks, and the whole reserve artillery was parked in the woods,
close to the house. The engineer brigade encamped in the adjacent
peach-orchard and corn-field, and the wheat was trampled by battery and
team-horses. Smith's division now occupied the hills on the south side
of the Chickahominy, and the Federal line stretched southeastward,
through Fairoaks, to White Oak Swamp, seven miles away. Porter's corps
still lay between Mechanicsville and New Bridge, on the north bank of
the river, and my old acquaintances, the Pennsylvania Reserves, had
joined the army, and now formed its extreme right wing. This odd
arrangement of forces was a subject of frequent comment: for the right
was thus four miles, and the left fourteen miles, from Richmond. The
four corps at once commenced to entrench, and from Smith's redoubt on
the river bluffs, to Casey's entrenched hill at White Oak, a continuous
line of moderately strong earthworks extended. But Porter and the
Reserves were not entrenched at all, and only a few horsemen were
picketed across the long reach of country from Meadow Bridge to Hanover
Court House. Both flanks, in fact, were open, and the left was a day's
march from the right. We were, meantime, drawing our supplies from White
House, twenty miles in the rear; there were no railroad guards along the
entire line, and about five companies protected the grand depot. Two
gunboats lay in the river, however, and as the teams still went to and
fro, a second depot was established at a place called Putney's or
"Garlic," five miles above White House. I went often, and at all hours
of the day and night, over this exposed and lonely route. My horse had
been, meantime, returned to the Provost Quarters, and the rightful owner
had obtained his stallion in exchange. I rode the said stallion but
once, when he proceeded to walk sideways, and several times rivalled the
renowned Pegasus in his aerial flights. The man named "Pat" essayed to
show his paces one day, but the stallion took him straight into
Stoneman's wall-tent, and that officer shook the Irishman blind. My
little bob-tailed brownie was thrice endeared to me by our separation;
but I warned the man "Pat" to keep clear of him thereafter. The man
"Pat" was a very eccentric person, who slept on the porch at Michie's,
and used to wake up the house in the small hours, with the story that
somebody was taking the chickens and the horses. He was the most
impulsive person that I ever knew, and when I entrusted despatches to
him once, he put them on the hospital boat by mistake, and they got to
New York at the close of the campaign.
Michie's soon became a correspondents' rendezvous, and we have had at
one time, at dinner, twelve representatives of five journals. The Hon.
Henry J. Raymond, Ex-Lieutenant Governor of New York, and proprietor of
the _Times_ newspaper, was one of our family for several weeks. He had
been a New Hampshire lad, and, strolling to New York, took to journalism
at the age of nineteen years. His industry and probity obtained him both
means and credit, and, also, what few young journalists obtain, social
position. He was the founder of Harper's Magazine, one of the most
successful serials in America, and many English authors are indebted to
him for a trans-Atlantic recognition of their works. He edited an
American edition of _Jane Eyre_ before it had attracted attention in
England, and conducted the _Courier and Enquirer_ with great success for
many years. The _Times_ is now the most reputable of the great New York
dailies, and Mr. Raymond has made it influential both at home and
abroad. He has retained, amidst his social and political successes, a
predilection for "Bohemia," and became an indefatigable correspondent. I
rode out with him sometimes, and heard, with interest, his accounts of
the Italian war, whither he also went in furtherance of journalism.
Among our quill cavalry-men was a fat gentleman from Philadelphia, who
had great fear of death, and who used to "tear" to White House, if the
man "Pat" shot a duck in the garden. He was a hearty, humorous person,
however, and an adept at searching for news.
O'Ganlon rode with me several times to White House, and we have crossed
the railroad bridge together, a hundred feet in the air, when the planks
were slippery, the sides sloping, and the way so narrow that two horses
could not pass abreast. He was a true Irishman, and leaped barricades
and ditches without regard to his neck. He had, also, a partiality for
by-roads that led through swamps and close timber. He discovered one day
a cow-path between Daker's and an old Mill at Grapevine Bridge. The long
arms of oaks and beech trees reached across it, and young Absalom might
have been ensnared by the locks at every rod therein. Through this
devious and dangerous way, O'Ganlon used to dash, whooping, guiding his
horse with marvellous dexterity, and bantering me to follow. I so far
forgot myself generally, as to behave quite as irrationally, and once
returned to Michie's with a bump above my right eye, that rivalled my
head in size. At other times I rode alone, and my favorite route was an
unfrequented lane called the "Quaker Road," that extended from Despatch
Station, on the line of rail, to Daker's, on the New Bridge Road. Much
of this way was shut in by thick woods and dreary pine barrens; but the
road was hard and light, and a few quiet farms lay by the roadside.
There was a mill, also, three miles from Daker's, where a turbulent
creek crossed the route, and at an oak-wood, near by, I used to frighten
the squirrels, so that they started up by pairs and families; I have
chased them in this way a full mile, and they seemed to know me after a
time. We used to be on the best of terms, and they would, at length,
stand their ground saucily, and chatter, the one with the other,
flourishing their bushy appendages, like so many straggling "Bucktails."
When I turned from the beaten road, where the ruts were like a ditch and
parapet, and dead horses blackened the fields; where teams went creaking
day and night, and squads of sabremen drove pale, barefooted prisoners
to and fro like swine or cattle, the silence and solitude of this
by-lane were beautiful as sleep. Many of the old people living in this
direction had not seen even a soldier or a sutler, save some mounted
scouts that vanished in clouds of dust; but they had listened with awe
to the music of cannon, though they did not know either the place or the
result of the fighting. If fate has ordained me to survive the
Rebellion, I shall some day revisit these localities; they are stamped
legibly upon my mind, and I know almost every old couple in New Kent or
Hanover counties. I have lunched at all the little springs on the road,
and eaten corn-bread and bacon at most of the cabins. I have swam the
Pamunkey at dozens of places, and when my finances were low, and my nag
hungry, have organized myself into a company of foragers, and broken
into the good people's granaries. I do not know any position that
admitted of as much adventure and variety. There was always enough
danger to make my journeys precariously pleasant, and, when wearied of
the saddle, my friends at Daker's and Michie's had a savory julep and a
comfortable bed always prepared. I had more liberty than General
McClellan, and a great deal more comfort.
Mrs. Michie was a warm-hearted, impulsive Virginia lady, with almost New
England industry, and from very scanty materials she contrived to spread
a bountiful table. Her coffee was bubbling with rich cream, and her
"yellow pone" was overrunning with butter. A cleanly black girl shook a
fly-brush over our shoulders as we ate, and the curious custom was
maintained of sending a julep to our bedrooms before we rose in the
mornings. Our hostess was too hospitable to be a bitter partisan, and
during five weeks of tenure at her residence, we never held an hour's
controversy. She had troubles, but she endured them patiently. She saw,
one by one, articles of property sacrificed or stolen; she heard the
servants speaking impudently; and her daughters and son were in a remote
part of the State. The young man was a Confederate Surgeon at Lynchburg,
and the young ladies had taken refuge in Rockbridge County. The latter
were, from all accounts, pretty and intelligent, and one day, as I
examined some parcels of books in the parlors, I found a volume of
amateur poems that some laboring bard had dedicated to the youngest of
them. Mr. Michie was a fine old Virginia gentleman, who remembered
Thomas Jefferson well, as he had been reared in that great statesman's
village, Charlottesville. He told me many anecdotes of Patrick Henry,
John Randolph, and other distinguished patriots.
I wrote in one of the absent daughter's albums the following lines:--
Alas! for the pleasant peace we knew,
In the happy summers of long ago,
When the rivers were bright, and the skies were blue,
By the homes of Henrico:
We dreamed of wars that were far away,
And read, as in fable, of blood that ran,
Where the James and Chickahominy stray,
Through the groves of Powhattan.
'Tis a dream come true; for the afternoons
Blow bugles of war, by our fields of grain,
And the sabres clink, as the dark dragoons
Come galloping up the lane;
The pigeons have flown from the eves and tiles,
The oat-blades have grown to blades of steel,
And the Huns swarm down the leafy aisles
Of the grand old Commonweal.
They have torn the Indian fisher's nets,
Where flows Pamunkey toward the sea,
And blood runs red in the rivulets,
That babbled and brawled in glee;
The corpses are strewn in Fairoak glades,
The hoarse guns thunder from Drury's Ridge,
The fishes that played in the cove, deep shades,
Are frightened from Bottom Bridge.
I would that the year were blotted away,
And the strawberry grew in the hedge again;
That the scythe might swing in the tangled hay,
And the squirrel romp in the glen;
The walnut sprinkle the clover slopes,
Where graze the sheep and the spotted steer;
And the winter restore the golden hopes,
That were trampled in a year.
On Friday, June 13, I made one of my customary trips to White House, in
the company of O'Ganlon. The latter individual, in the course of a
"healthy dash" that he made down the railroad ties,--whereby two shoes
shied from his mare's hoofs,--reined into a quicksand that threatened to
swallow his steed. He afterward left his sword at Summit Station, and I,
obligingly, rode back three miles to recover it. We dined at Daker's,
where Glumley sat beside the baby-face, pursuant to his art-duties, and
the plump, red-cheeked miss sat beside me. O'Ganlon was entertained by
the talkative daughter, who drove him quite mad; so that, when we
resumed our horses, he insisted upon a second "healthy dash," and
disappeared through a strip of woods. I followed, rationally, and had
come to a blacksmith's shop, at the corner of a diverging road, when I
was made aware of some startling occurrence in my rear. A mounted
officer dashed past me, shouting some unintelligible tidings, and he was
followed in quick succession by a dozen cavalry-men, who rode as if the
foul fiend was at their heels. Then came a teamster, bare-backed, whose
rent harness trailed in the road, and directly some wagons that were
halted before the blacksmith's, wheeled smartly, and rattled off towards
White House.
"What is the matter, my man?" I said to one of these lunatics,
hurriedly.
"The Rebels are behind!" he screamed, with white lips, and vanished.
I thought that it might be as well to take some other road, and so
struck off, at a dapper pace, in the direction of the new landing at
Putney's or "Garlic." At the same instant I heard the crack of carbines
behind, and they had a magical influence upon my speed. I rode along a
stretch of chestnut and oak wood, attached to the famous Webb estate,
and when I came to a rill that passed by a little bridge, under the way,
turned up its sandy bed and buried myself in the under-brush. A few
breathless moments only had intervened, when the roadway seemed shaken
by a hundred hoofs. The imperceptible horsemen yelled like a war-party
of Camanches, and when they had passed, the carbines rang ahead, as if
some bloody work was being done at every rod.
I remained a full hour under cover; but as no fresh approaches added to
my mystery and fear, I sallied forth, and kept the route to Putney's,
with ears erect and expectant pulses. I had gone but a quarter of a
mile, when I discerned, through the gathering gloom, a black, misshapen
object, standing in the middle of the road. As it seemed motionless, I
ventured closer, when the thing resolved to a sutler's wagon, charred
and broken, and still smoking from the incendiaries' torch. Further on,
more of these burned wagons littered the way, and in one place two slain
horses marked the roadside. When I emerged upon the Hanover road, sounds
of shrieks and shot issued from the landing at "Garlic," and, in a
moment, flames rose from the woody shores and reddened the evening. I
knew by the gliding blaze that vessels had been fired and set adrift,
and from my place could see the devouring element climbing rope and
shroud. In a twinkling, a second light appeared behind the woods to my
right, and the intelligence dawned upon me that the cars and houses at
Tunstall's Station had been burned. By the fitful illumination, I rode
tremulously to the old head-quarters at Black Creek, and as I
conjectured, the depot and train were luridly consuming. The vicinity
was marked by wrecked sutler's stores, the embers of wagons, and toppled
steeds. Below Black Creek the ruin did not extend: but when I came to
White House the greatest confusion existed. Sutlers were taking down
their booths, transports were slipping their cables, steamers moving
down the stream. Stuart had made the circuit of the Grand Army to show
Lee where the infantry could follow.