“THE LAST THROUGH TRAIN FOR FOUR YEARS”
I COPY in substance, and sometimes verbatim, the account written in
1861, and published later, of our journey northward in the last train
that went through to Washington before the outbreak of hostilities.
I preface the narrative by saying that, by the merciful provision of
the Divine Father, Who will not try us beyond our strength, we, one
and all, kept up to our own hearts the sanguine incredulity in the
possibility of the worst coming to pass, which was characteristic of
Union lovers at the South, up to the battle of Manassas.
After that, the scales fell from all eyes. Had not my mother hoped
confidently that the war-cloud would blow over, and that, before long,
she would not have allowed Alice to go back to Newark with us? My place
was with my husband, but this young daughter she had the right to keep
with her.
Had I not hoped for a peaceful solution of the national problem, if
only through the awakening of the fraternal love of those whose fathers
had fought, shoulder to shoulder, to wrest their country from a common
oppressor, I could not have said “Good-bye” smilingly to home and
kindred. When I said to my mother: “We shall have you with us at the
seashore, this summer,” it was not in bravado, to cheat her into belief
in my cheerfulness.
Our party of Mr. Terhune, Alice, our boy and baby Christine, with their
nurse and myself, was comfortably bestowed in the train that was to
meet the boat at Acquia Creek. Luggage and luncheon were looked after
as sedulously as if there were no superior interest in our minds. The
very commonplaceness of the details of getting ready and sending us
off, exactly as had been done, time and time again, were in themselves
heartening. What had been, would be. To-morrow should be as to-day.
When we and our appurtenances were comfortably bestowed in the ladies’
car (there were no parlor cars or sleepers, as yet), I had leisure to
note what was passing without. The scene should be that which always
attends the departure of a passenger train from a provincial city. Yet
I felt, at once, that there was a difference.
I noticed, and not without an undefined sense of uneasiness, the
unusual number of strollers that lounged up and down the sidewalks,
and loitered about the train, and that some of these were evidently
listening to the guarded subtones to which the voices of all—even the
rudest of the loungers—were modulated. With this shade of uneasiness
there stole upon me a strange, indescribable sense of the unreality of
all that I saw and heard. The familiar streets and houses were seen,
as through the bewildering vapors of a dream; men and women glided by
like phantoms, and there was a shimmer of red-and-orange light in the
air—the reflection of the glowing west—that was vague and dazing, not
dazzling.
The train slid away from the station. My father and my brother Horace
lifted their hats to us from the pavement; we held the children up to
the open window to kiss their hands to them; I leaned forward for one
last, fond look into the dear eyes, and our journey had begun.
Not a word was exchanged between the members of our party, while we
rumbled slowly up Broad Street toward the open country.
I was unaccountably indisposed to talk, and this feeling seemed to
pervade the company of passengers. The dreamy haze enveloped me again.
The car was very full and very quiet. The languorous hues of the west
swooned into twilight, and here and there a star peeped through the
gray veil of the sky.
We had cleared the city limits, and the blending of daylight and the
falling darkness were most confusing to the eye, when I became aware
that the train was slowing up where there was no sign of a switch or
“turn-out.” If it actually halted, it was but for a second, just long
enough to enable two men, standing close to the track, to board the
train. They entered our car, and my husband pressed my arm as they
passed down the aisle to seats diagonally opposite to us.
Under cover of the rattle and roar of the speeding train, he told me
presently—after cautioning me not to glance in their direction—that
they were Messrs. Carlisle and Dent—well known to visitors to the
convention as most prominent among the leaders of the Union party.
On through the gathering gloom rolled the ponderous train—the only
moving thing abroad, on that enchanted night. Within it there was
none of the hum of social intercourse one might have expected in the
circumstances. Adult passengers were not drowsy, for every figure was
upright, and the few faces, dimly visible in the low light of the lamps
overhead, were wakeful—one might have imagined, watchful. I learned
subsequently that the insufficient light was purposely contrived by
conductor and brakemen, and why. But for the touch of my husband’s
hand, laid in sympathy or reassurance upon mine, and the sight of my
babies, sleeping peacefully—one in the nurse’s arms, the other on
the seat beside her, his head in her lap—I might have believed the
weird light within, the darkness without, and the motionless shapes
and saddened faces about me, accessories to the fantasy that gained
steadily upon me.
The spell was broken rudely—terribly—at Fredericksburg. We steamed
right into the heart of a crowd, assembled to await the arrival of
the train, which halted there for wood and water. It was a tumultuous
throng, and evidently drawn thither with a purpose understood by all.
The babel of queries and exclamations smote the breezeless night-air
like a hail-storm. It was apparent that the railway officials returned
curt and unsatisfactory replies, for the noise gathered volume, and
uncomplimentary expletives flew freely. All at once, a rush was made
in the direction of the ladies’ car. Eager and angry visages, dusky in
shadow, or ruddied by torch-light, were pressed against closed windows,
and thrust impudently into the few that were open.
“Three cheers for the Southern Confederacy!” yelled stentorian tones.
Three-times-three roars of triumph deafened us.
“Three cheers for Jefferson Davis—the savior of Southern liberties!”
shouted the fugleman.
Again a burst of frenzied acclamation that made the windows rattle.
I could see the leader of the riot—a big fellow who stood close to our
window. He was bareheaded, and he rested one hand on the side of the
car, swinging his hat with the other, far above his head.
“Three groans for Carlisle!”
Nothing else that has ever pained my ears has given me the impression
of brute ferocity that stopped the beating of my heart for one awful
moment.
From the mob went up a responsive bellow of execration and derision.
“All aboard!” shouted conductor and trainmen.
The hoarse call and the shriek of the engine were welcome music to the
travellers.
My husband’s eyes met mine.
“What Eric S. told us was then true,” he said, without forming the
words with his lips. “Virginia has joined her sisters. And the people
have got hold of the news. Are they blind, not to see that their State
will be the battle-ground, if war should be declared?”
How dearly and for how long she was to pay for her blindness, let the
history of the next four years say!
Leaving the boat at Washington, we were conveyed by stages across
the city to the Baltimore station. It was two o’clock in the spring
morning, when we passed the Capitol. It was lighted from basement to
roof, but, to passers-by, as still as a tomb. Nothing had brought
home to us the fact and the imminence of the peril to our national
existence, as did the sight of that lighted pile. For, as we had been
informed, it was filled with armed men, on guard against surprise or
open attack. On the train, we heard how troops had been hurried from
all quarters of the still loyal States into Washington. The war was on!
Full appreciation of what the Great Awakening was, and what it
portended, came to us in Philadelphia. I had not known there was so
much bunting on this side of the Atlantic as fluttered in the breeze
in the city of staid homes and brotherly loves. It was a veritable
bourgeoning of patriotism. From church-spires; from shop-windows;
from stately dwellings, and from the lowliest house in the meanest
street—they
“All uttered forth a glorious voice.”
Successful rebellion seemed an impossibility in the face of the
demonstration.
Every village, town, and farm-house along the route proclaimed the same
thing. So convinced were we that the mere knowledge of the strength
and unity of the North, East, and West would carry conviction to the
minds of the led, and strike terror to the hearts of the leaders in the
gigantic Treason, that we rallied marvellously the spirits which had
flagged last night.
The train ran into Newark at eight o’clock that evening. By the time
it stopped, we had a glimpse of familiar and anxious faces. We stepped
off into the arms of four of our parishioners, all on the alert for the
first sight of the man of their hour. They received us as they might
welcome friends rescued from great and sore perils.
Carriage and baggage-wagon were waiting. We were tucked into our seats
tenderly, and with what would have been exaggerated solicitude in men
less single of heart and motive.
“But you knew that we would surely come back?” I said to Mr. Farmer, at
the third repetition of his—“Thank Heaven you are here!”
The quartette of heads wagged gravely.
“We knew you would, if you could get here. But there is no telling what
may not happen in these times.”
Their thanksgivings were echoed by ourselves, when, that very week, a
Massachusetts regiment, _en route_ for Washington, was assailed by a
Baltimore mob, several killed and more wounded, and the railway tracks
torn up, to prevent the progress of troops to the national capital.
We laughed a little, and were much moved to see a handsome flag
projecting from a second-story window of our house, as we alighted at
the door. It was a mute token of confidence in our loyalty. Smiles
and softness chased each other when the proud cook, left in charge
during our absence, related how the “beautiful supper,” smoking hot,
and redolent of all manner of appetizing viands, was the gift of two
neighbors, and that pantry and larder were “just packed full” of
useful and dainty edibles, sent and brought by ladies who had forbidden
her to tell their names.
Thus began the four years of separation from my early home and those
who had hallowed it for all time. That eventful journey was the
dividing line between the Old Time and the New. With it, also dawned
apprehension of the gracious dealings of the All-wise and All-merciful
with us—His ignorant, and ofttimes captious, children. It would have
been impossible for my husband, with his staunch principles of fidelity
to the government, and uncompromising adherence to what he believed
to be the right in the lamentable sectional strife, to remain in the
seceding State. Dearly as he loved Virginia—and romantic and tender as
was his attachment to the brave old days that were to him the poetry
of domestic and social life—he must have severed his connection with a
parish in which he would have been accounted a “suspect.” Before the
storm broke, we were gently lifted out of the “nest among the oaks”
and established, as tenderly, in the “pleasant places” the Father—not
we—had chosen.