of manner which, though inspiring confidence, interposed a veil of
reserve between him and even his warmest admirers. Years after the war
one of my friends who had been an officer in the Army of Northern
Virginia, first under General Joe Johnston and then under General Lee,
said to me:
"Lee was a great soldier and a good man but I never wanted to put my
arms around his neck and kiss him as I wanted to do with Joe Johnston."
With a bit of a jealous feeling for my own Soldier I asked:
"Did you want to do that to General Pickett?"
"To Pickett?--Why, I not only wanted to but I did."
One evening when General Lee, General Beauregard, my Soldier and his
Brigade Commanders were studying war-maps in our cabin and
confidentially discussing the freeing of the slaves and the enlisting of
them as soldiers, General Lee finished by saying:
"Well, gentlemen, we must hope for the best. If we should give up there
are many who would feel that we had sold the South--many of our Southern
States would think so, for even they have no idea that we have come to
the last of our resources and no realization of how starving and poor we
are, and, alas, gentlemen, too much of the best blood of the land is
being spilled, too many homes being despoiled and made desolate, too
many mothers with broken hearts."
Solemnly they shook hands and General Lee and his companions galloped
off, my Soldier and I standing in the doorway listening.
"Hear the horses' hoofs saying, 'Blood-blood, Blood-blood,'" said I.
"So they do, little one," answered my Soldier. "Strange--strange I had
not thought of that before."
We turned to the map on the floor and rolled up the ways to go and
prayed for a miracle to bring success.
XVIII
THE AMENITIES
We were near the Federal lines and the men on the opposing sides enjoyed
friendly chats with each other, swapped jokes, bartered tobacco for
coffee and exchanged newspapers.
The Federals kept their cattle in a stockade in the rear of their camp.
Early one morning they were surprised to see Confederate soldiers
running along the line in a manner suggestive of a drove of highly
excited cows.
"What's the matter with you, Johnnies, over there?" came the query
across the lines. "Are you all crazy?"
The only answer was a vociferous and long-drawn out chorus of "Moo-o-o!
Moo-o-o! Moo-o-o!"
Disgusted with the pertinaceous lunacy of their foes the blue-coats gave
up the conundrum. A little while later the problem was solved. In the
night General J. E. B. Stuart with some of his men had circled the camp
and driven off all the Federal cattle, and the "Moo!" of the
Confederates was a graphic announcement to the victims of their loss.
For a time the "Johnnies" fared sumptuously on steak and roast while the
"Yanks" were compelled to forage till they could lay in a new supply of
live stock.
The red flag of the politicians never wholly divided the hearts of the
soldiers into hostile camps. Not only did the West Pointers retain the
comradeship of the old Army days, but the enlisted men shared the
friendly sentiment.
In the summer of '63 the Confederate and Federal soldiers doing duty on
opposite banks of the Black Water River in Virginia were wont to divert
themselves by trading with each other. They had built for their traffic
a miniature fleet of rudely but ingeniously carved boats. One of these
little vessels would be taken up stream, the current of which was seldom
strong, and with rudder fixed it would go down the river with its cargo
of sugar and coffee wrapped in the latest newspaper and stored in the
scooped deck, and would be grappled and hauled in by the sentry on the
opposite side. Back the same trusty little carrier dove would come,
laden with plugs of tobacco, wrapped likewise in the latest paper on
that side. Cheers and shouts from both lines would greet each cargo as
it touched the shore.
One morning a short time after the battle of Gettysburg the Confederates
anxiously awaited the return of their little craft. It came and was
enthusiastically received, but to their surprise, no answering shout
went up from the opposite shore on the landing of the boat. The cargo,
much to their disappointment, was wrapped in brown paper.
"Well, we have whipped them Yanks again as sure as guns," they argued
sympathetically in explanation of the silence and the brown paper. The
vessel was sent back and on the paper in which the cargo was wrapped
were these words:
"We-all are so sorry for you-all Yanks, but we won't crow loud, so send
along the paper."
The boat returned with the paper, on the margin of which was written:
"'Twas sech darned infernal hard luck in the papers for you Rebs we was
'feared they'd sink the coffee."
In the old Army my Soldier had a dear comrade, at this time a General in
the Army of the Potomac. His brother had the misfortune to be captured
and put into Libby prison and, in memory of the old friendship, my
Soldier secured his release and took him as a guest into our home, the
old Pickett mansion in Richmond. In an unaccountable moment of
indiscretion he wrote a letter in which he said that the Confederacy was
on its last legs, stating that he was in a home of wealth, where there
was a house full of servants, and in the morning the basket was sent to
market packed full of money and brought back only half full of
provisions. This letter fell into the hands of Judge Ould, Commissioner
of exchange of prisoners, who immediately reported it and the offending
writer was returned to prison. My Soldier's sympathy was not cooled by
this unhappy incident, and later he secured permission for me to go to
the prison at will and take whatever I could of our scanty store that
would be a help or comfort to him--beaten biscuit, eggs, milk or fruit.
However unpromising the outlook might be I always managed to find
something for him. Every week when I would take him clean linen the
other prisoners would cut dice for that which he left off. Of more value
than anything else was the gourd of soft soap which I carried to him,
for we had no salt to make hard soap. I think he cared more for the
human interest that I brought from outdoor life, the glint of sunshine,
however dark my own heart might be.
It was thus that I saw the inside of Libby prison. Let no man who did
not see Libby prison in the last days of the Confederacy imagine for a
moment that he is able to conceive of any fraction of its infernal
horror. It is easy to understand that, in a country where the soldiers
were starving in the field and families were starving at home, a prison
would not be a comfortable place of abode, but it would have to be seen
to be in the least appreciated. When I look back through memory at that
scene of indescribable wretchedness, unutterable gloom and despair, I
can almost envy those whose fancy falls so far short of the reality.
It had been many months since the authorities of the North had set a
rigid bar against the exchange of prisoners, involving the reinforcement
of the Confederate Army. It was impossible for the South to replace her
captured men, while the Federal Army could be easily kept in full force
by new recruits. Mr. Davis had vainly pleaded for exchange on the field.
He had sent two Federal prisoners to Washington to represent our
condition and the impossibility of feeding prisoners in addition to
trying to keep our own soldiers from starvation. The stern necessities
of war had prevailed against him. The prisoners themselves had given
assent to the sad fate that was to be theirs. They had offered their
lives for their country. What mattered it whether the supreme sacrifice
was accepted in the swift glory of the battle flash or in the long
dreary darkness of a hopeless imprisonment.
In my visits to the prison I met and knew other unfortunate ones and am
thankful that I was able to minister to some of them. Among my son's and
my own best friends in after years were some whom I first met in that
awful, woeful place.
Dining with Mr. and Mrs. Beverly Tucker at a hotel in Washington years
after the war, I saw a strange gentleman at a table near, gazing so
earnestly at me that I said to my host, "Is that gentleman some one whom
I should know and speak to?" Mr. Tucker looked up, half inclined to be
offended. The stranger rose and came to our table.
"Excuse me," he said, bowing to my host and hostess. Turning to me, his
voice trembling, he said, "Forgive this intrusion but I couldn't help
it. I want to ask you, please, if you ever gave buttermilk and soft
soap, fresh figs, a clean shirt, a world of sunshine and a lot of other
things to a poor, wounded, weary, homesick boy in Libby prison? Aren't
you the lady? You are; don't you remember me?"
The tears were streaming down his face now as he held out his hand.
"Yes," I said, "I remember; of course, I remember. You are the poor
wounded boy the prisoners used to call Little Willie Sourmilk, Little
Kentuck, Baby Blue, etc."
"Yes; that's me, and, oh, I am so glad that I have found you at last. Do
you know that I have prayed to God every night that I might, and, lady,
you never will know what a benediction your visits were to old Libby,
and me--oh, you saved my life; I never can forget that first day. It was
in June. The roses were in bloom, and such roses! A great bunch was
lying on the top of your basket. I was stretched out on the table near
the barred window trying to think of old Kentucky and forget my wounds
when I heard a voice say, 'Little fellow, would you like to have a
beaten biscuit and a glass of buttermilk?' 'Would I? Oh, God, would I?'
I said. When you went away you left half the roses on my pillow, and how
I watched for your visits after that. I never knew your name, never knew
how to find you. To us prisoners you were the Rose Lady."
His tears had washed off the kiss on my hand and I was back again,
looking into the wild, harrowing, despairing faces in the dismal
tobacco-warehouse prison, all regardless of my host and hostess and the
surrounding guests.
"Well, I'll be dogged, Jane," said Mr. Tucker to his dear little wife.
"What do you think of this? I always did believe every word of those Ali
Baba and Forty Thieves and Magic Lantern tales and this proves them, for
they are not a bit stranger than this sour buttermilk story."
The stranger was Colonel William H. Lowdermilk, of Anglim's Bookstore.
When later I lost all my worldly goods and was appointed to a desk in
the Pension Office, Colonel Lowdermilk, then of the firm of Lowdermilk &
Company, Book-Dealers, wrote to the Commissioner of Pensions a strong
letter of commendation, in which he told in warmest terms of my care of
himself and other Union soldiers in Libby prison, and asked that every
courtesy and consideration be shown to me for all time and in every
possible way, in sacred memory of the boys in Libby. Throughout his life
afterward he was a devoted, loyal friend to me and mine.
I still have the photograph of him taken in his Federal uniform before
he was captured.
XIX
THE CLOSING DAYS
The close of the stormy career of the Confederacy was marked in blood by
the battle of Five Forks. The end was at hand.
The Army had subsisted on corn for many days. As my Soldier was riding
to Sailor's Creek a woman ran out of a house by the roadside and handed
him a luncheon wrapped in paper. Passing on, he saw a man lying behind a
log; a deserter, he supposed. What did it matter! The poor fellows had
fought long enough and hard enough to earn the right to go home. He
spoke to the man, who looked up, revealing a boyish face. He was thin
and pale, scarcely more than a child.
"Are you wounded, my boy!" asked my Soldier.
"No, General, I am starving, sir," he replied. "I could not keep up any
longer and lay down here to die. I couldn't help it, Marse George."
"Here, take this," said my Soldier. "Eat it, and when you are rested
and have slept go back home."
The soldier took the luncheon gratefully.
"No, Marse George," he answered, "if I get strength to go on I'll follow
you and Marse Robert to the last."
He did follow to the last, being killed a few days later at Sailor's
Creek, where the parting salute was fired over the grave of the
Confederacy.
"They failed and fell, who bade the sun in heaven to stand,
We failed and fell, who set our bars against the progress of the
stars,
And stayed the march of Motherland."
Many months before the farewell shot, when some one applied to President
Lincoln for a pass to go into Richmond, he gravely replied:
"I don't know about that; I have given passes to about two hundred and
fifty thousand men during the last two years to go to Richmond, and not
one of them has got there yet."
Some of those passes had been used and their bearer had arrived at last,
having made the slowest time on record since the first camel bore the
pioneer traveler over an Oriental desert. The queen city of the South
had fallen. The story of the great nation that had hovered upon the
horizon of our visions had been written out to its last sorrowful word.
On the morning of Sunday, April 2, in the holy calm of St. Paul's
Church, we had assembled to ask the great Father of Heaven and earth to
guard our loved ones and give victory to the cause so dear to us.
Suddenly the glorious sunlight was dimmed by the heavy cloud of
disappointment, and the peace of God was broken by the deep-voiced bells
tolling the death-knell of our hopes.
There was mad haste to flee from the doomed city. President Davis and
his Cabinet officers were in the church, and to them the news first
came. They hurried to the State House to secure the Confederate archives
and retreat with them to some place of safety.
Fear and dread fell over us all. We were cut off from our friends and
communication with them was impossible. Our soldiers might have fallen
into the hands of the enemy--we knew not. They might have poured out
their life-blood on the battlefield--we knew not. In our helpless
deserted condition all the world seemed to have been struck with sudden
darkness.
The records having been secured, an order was issued to General Ewell to
destroy the public buildings. The one thing which could intensify the
horrors of our position--fire--was added to our calamities. General J.
C. Breckenridge, our Secretary of War, with a wider humanity and a
deeper sense of the rights of our people, tried in vain to have this
order countermanded, knowing that its execution could in no way injure
or impede the victorious army, while it would result in the ruin of many
of our own people. The order was carried out with even greater scope
than was intended.
The Shockoe warehouse was the first fired, it being regarded as a public
building because it contained certain stores belonging to France and
England. A breeze springing up suddenly from the south fanned the slowly
flickering flames into a blaze and they mounted upward until they
enwrapped the whole great building. On the wings of the wind they were
carried to the next building and the next, until when the noon hour
struck all the city between Seventh and Fifteenth Streets and Main
Street and the river was a heap of ashes.
The flames leaped from house to house in mad revel. They stretched out
burning arms on all sides and embraced in deadly clasp the stately
mansions which had stood in lofty grandeur from the olden days of
colonial pride. Soon they became towering masses of fire, fluttering
immense flame-banners against the wind, and fell sending up myriads of
fiery points into the air, sparkling like blazing stars against the dark
curtain that shut out the sky.
A stormy sea of smoke surged over the town--here a billow of blackness
of suffocating density--there a brilliant cloud, shot through with
crimson arrows. The wind swept on and the ocean of smoke and flame
rolled before it in surges of destruction over the once fair and
beautiful city of Richmond.
The terrified cries of women and children arose in agony above the
roaring of the flames, the crashing of falling buildings, and the
trampling of countless feet.
Piles of furniture and wares lay in the streets as if the city had
struck one great moving day, when everything was taken into the highways
and left there to be trampled to pieces and buried in the mud.
Government stores were thrown out to be destroyed, and a mob gathered
around to catch the liquors as they ran in fiery rivers down the
streets. Soon intoxication was added to the confusion and uproar which
reigned over all. The officers of the law, terror-stricken before the
reckless crowd, fled for their lives. The firemen dared not make any
effort to subdue the flames, fearing an attack from the soldiers who
had executed the order to burn the buildings.
Through the night the fire raged, the sea of darkness rolled over the
town, the crowds of men, women and children went about the streets laden
with what plunder they could rescue from the flames. The drunken rabble
shattered the plate-glass windows of the stores and wrecked everything
upon which they could seize. The populace had become a frenzied mob, and
the kingdom of Satan seemed to have been transferred to the streets of
Richmond.
The fire revealed many things which I should like never to have seen
and, having seen, would fain forget.
The most revolting revelation was the amount of provisions, shoes and
clothing which had been accumulated by the speculators who hovered like
vultures over the scene of death and desolation. Taking advantage of
their possession of money and lack of both patriotism and humanity, they
had, by an early corner in the market and by successful blockade
running, bought up all the available supplies with an eye to future
gain, while our soldiers and women and children were absolutely in rags,
barefoot and starving. Not even war, with its horrors and helplessness,
can divert such harpies from their accustomed methods of accumulating
wealth at the expense of those who have spent their lives in less
self-seeking ways.
About nine o'clock Monday morning a series of terrific explosions
startled our ears, inured as they were to every variety of painful
sounds. Every window in our house was shattered and the old plate-glass
mirrors built into the walls were broken. We felt as if called upon to
undergo a bombardment, in addition to our other misfortunes, but it was
soon ascertained that the explosions were from the Government arsenal
and laboratory, now caught by the flames. Fort Darling and the rams were
blown up.
Every bank was destroyed, the flour-mills had caught fire, the War
Department was in ruins, the offices of the _Enquirer_ and _Dispatch_
had been reduced to ashes, the County Court-House, the American Hotel,
and most of the finest stores of the city were ruined. The Presbyterian
Church had escaped. The flames had passed by Libby Prison, as if even
fire realized that it could not add to the horrors of the gloomy place.
While the flames were raging the colored troops of General Weitzel, who
had been stationed on the north side of the James a few miles from
Richmond, entered the city. As I saw their black faces shining through
the gloom of the smoke-shrouded town I could not help thinking that
they added the one feature needed, if any there were, to complete the
demoniacal character of the scene. They were the first colored troops I
had ever seen, and the weird effect produced by their black faces in
that infernal environment was indelibly impressed upon my mind.
General Weitzel sent Major E. E. Graves, of his staff, and Major A. H.
Stevens, of the Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry, at the head of a hundred
mounted men, to reconnoiter the Richmond roads and works. At the
fortifications beyond the junction of the Osborne turnpike and New
Market road they were met by a flag of truce waved from a dilapidated,
old-fashioned carriage drawn by a pair of skeleton-like horses. The
truce party consisted of the Mayor of Richmond, Colonel Mayo; Judge
Meredith, of the Supreme Court; Mr. James Lyons, one of our most eminent
lawyers, and a fourth, whom I do not now recall.
The carriage was probably in the early part of the century what might
have been called, if the modern classic style of phraseology had
prevailed at that time, a "tony rig." At the period of which I write it
had made so many journeys over the famous Virginia roads that it had
become a sepulchral wreck of its former self.
There may have been a time when the reminiscences of animals that
dragged out from the burning Capital the ruins of the stately chariot
were a span of gay and gallant steeds, arching their necks in graceful
pride, champing their bits in scorn of the idea that harness made by man
could trammel their lofty spirits, pawing the earth in disdain of its
commonplace coarseness. If so, the lapse of years and an extended term
of Confederate fare had reduced those noble coursers to shambling
memories.
What of it? The chariot of state might be the wreck of former grandeur,
the horses might be the dimmest of recollections, but was not Mr. Lyons
still Mr. Lyons--in all circumstances, the most dignified member of Old
Dominion aristocracy? The Mayor turned over the keys of the city and in
recognition of the pre-eminence of Mr. Lyons, deputed to him the
performance of further ceremonies. With cold and stately formality Mr.
Lyons "had the honor" to introduce his companions and to present a paper
on which was inscribed:
"It is proper to formally surrender to the Federal authorities the
City of Richmond, hitherto Capital of the Confederate States of
America, and the defenses protecting it."
Major Stevens courteously accepted the surrender on behalf of his
Commanding General, to whom the document was transmitted, and proceeded
to reduce the newly acquired property to possession by fighting the
flames which disputed ownership with him.
Having utilized to good effect what little remnant of the fire
department he could find, Major Stevens ordered the Stars and Stripes to
be raised over the Capitol. Two soldiers of the Fourth Massachusetts
Cavalry, one from Company E and one from Company H, mounted to the
summit of the Capitol, and in a few moments, for the first time in more
than four years, the National Flag fluttered unmolested in the breezes
of the South. The stars of the Union were saluted, while our "warrior's
Banner took its flight to meet the warrior's soul."
That flag which almost a century before had risen from the clouds of
war, like a star gleaming out through the darkness of a stormy night,
with its design accredited to both Washington and John Adams, was raised
over Virginia by Massachusetts, in place of the one whose kinship and
likeness to the old banner had never been entirely destroyed.
In March, 1861, the Confederate Congress adopted the Stars and
Bars--three horizontal bars of equal width, the middle one white, the
others red, with a blue union of nine stars in a circle. This was so
like the National Flag as to cause confusion. In 1863 this flag was
replaced by a banner with a white field, having the battle-flag (a red
field charged with a blue saltier on which were thirteen stars) for a
union. It was feared that this might be mistaken for a flag of truce,
and was changed by covering the outer half of the field with a vertical
red bar. This was finally adopted as the flag of the Confederate States
of America.
Richmond will testify that the soldiers of Massachusetts were worthy of
the honor of first raising the United States flag over the Capitol of
the Confederacy, and will also bear witness to the unvarying courtesy of
Major Stevens and the fidelity with which he kept his trust.
The day after the fire there was a rap at our door. The servants had all
run away. The city was full of northern troops, and my environment had
not taught me to love them. With my baby on my arm I answered the knock,
opened the door and looked up at a tall, gaunt, sad-faced man in ill
fitting clothes, who asked with the accent of the North:
"Is this George Pickett's place?"
"This is General Pickett's home, sir," I replied, "but he is not here."