Away up in the heart of the Allegheny mountains, in Pocahontas county,
West Virginia, is a beautiful little valley through which flows
the east fork of the Greenbrier river. At a point where the valley
road intersects the old Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike, a famous
thoroughfare in its day, is a post office in a farm house. The name of
the place is Travelers’ Repose, for it was once a tavern. Crowning some
low hills within a stone’s throw of the house are long lines of old
Confederate fortifications, skilfully designed and so well “preserved”
that an hour’s work by a brigade would put them into serviceable shape
for the next civil war. This place had its battle—what was called a
battle in the “green and salad days” of the great rebellion. A brigade
of Federal troops, the writer’s regiment among them, came over Cheat
mountain, fifteen miles to the westward, and, stringing its lines
across the little valley, felt the enemy all day; and the enemy did a
little feeling, too. There was a great cannonading, which killed about
a dozen on each side; then, finding the place too strong for assault,
the Federals called the affair a reconnaissance in force, and burying
their dead withdrew to the more comfortable place whence they had come.
Those dead now lie in a beautiful national cemetery at Grafton, duly
registered, so far as identified, and companioned by other Federal dead
gathered from the several camps and battlefields of West Virginia. The
fallen soldier (the word “hero” appears to be a later invention) has
such humble honors as it is possible to give.
His part in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the Summer hills
Is that his grave is green.
True, more than a half of the green graves in the Grafton cemetery
are marked “Unknown,” and sometimes it occurs that one thinks of the
contradiction involved in “honoring the memory” of him of whom no
memory remains to honor; but the attempt seems to do no great harm to
the living, even to the logical.
A few hundred yards to the rear of the old Confederate earthworks is a
wooded hill. Years ago it was not wooded. Here, among the trees and
in the undergrowth, are rows of shallow depressions, discoverable by
removing the accumulated forest leaves. From some of them may be taken
(and reverently replaced) small thin slabs of the split stone of the
country, with rude and reticent inscriptions by comrades. I found only
one with a date, only one with full names of man and regiment. The
entire number found was eight.
In these forgotten graves rest the Confederate dead—between eighty and
one hundred, as nearly as can be made out. Some fell in the “battle;”
the majority died of disease. Two, only two, have apparently been
disinterred for reburial at their homes. So neglected and obscure
in this _campo santo_ that only he upon whose farm it is—the aged
postmaster of Travelers’ Repose—appears to know about it. Men living
within a mile have never heard of it. Yet other men must be still
living who assisted to lay these Southern soldiers where they are, and
could identify some of the graves. Is there a man, North or South,
who would begrudge the expense of giving to these fallen brothers the
tribute of green graves? One would rather not think so. True, there
are several hundreds of such places still discoverable in the track of
the great war. All the stronger is the dumb demand—the silent plea of
these fallen brothers to what is “likest God within the soul.”
They were honest and courageous foemen, having little in common with
the political madmen who persuaded them to their doom and the literary
bearers of false witness in the aftertime. They did not live through
the period of honorable strife into the period of vilification—did
not pass from the iron age to the brazen—from the era of the sword to
that of the tongue and pen. Among them is no member of the Southern
Historical Society. Their valor was not the fury of the non-combatant;
they have no voice in the thunder of the civilians and the shouting.
Not by them are impaired the dignity and infinite pathos of the Lost
Cause. Give them, these blameless gentlemen, their rightful part in all
the pomp that fills the circuit of the summer hills.
1903.
Transcriber’s Notes:
- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Blank pages have been removed.
- A few obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.