In the colony escaped from the shells and huddled together around
General Lee were two very humble poor women who often visited me. One of
them was the proud owner of a cow, "Morning-Glory," which she contrived
to feed from the refuse of the camp kitchens, receiving in return a
small quantity of milk, to be sold at prices beyond belief. I never saw
Morning-Glory, but I often heard her friendly echo to the lowing of my
little Rose, morning and evening. Being interpreted, it might have been
found to convey an expression of surprise that either was still alive,
so slender was their allowance of food.
One day I espied, coming down the dusty road, the limp, sunbonneted
figure of Morning-Glory's mistress. She sank upon the nearest chair,
pushed back her calico bonnet, and revealed a face blurred with tears
and hair dishevelled beyond the ordinary.
"Good morning, Mrs. Jones! Come to the fire! It's a cold morning."
"No'm, I ain't cole! It's—it's" (sobbing)—"it's Mornin'-Glory!"
"Not sick? If she is, I'll—"
"No'm, Mornin'-Glory ain't never goin' to be sick no mo'."
"Oh, Mrs. Jones! _Not dead!_"
"Them pickets kep' me awake all las' night, an' I got up in the night
an' went out to see how Mornin'-Glory was gettin' on, an' she—she—she
look at me jus' the same! An' I slep' soun' till after sun-up, and when
I got my pail an' went out to milk her—_thar was her horns an hufs!_"
The poor woman broke down completely in telling me the ghastly story.
"Oh, how wicked! How was it possible to take her off and nobody hear?"
I exclaimed in great wrath.
"I don't know, Mis' Pryor, nothin' but what I tells you. Talk to me
'bout Yankees! Soldiers is soldiers, an' when you say _that_, you jus'
as well say devils is devils."
My other poor neighbor had long been a pensioner on my father. She was
a forlorn widow with many children, hopeless and helpless. My father was
in despair when she turned up "to git away from the shellin'." She found
a small untenanted house near us and set up an establishment which was
supported altogether by boarding an occasional soldier on sick leave,
and taking his rations as her pay. Like Mrs. Jones, she was a frequent
visitor to my fireside. One morning, after some unusual demonstrations
of coy shyness, she blurted out: "I knows fo' I begin what you goin' to
say! You goin' to tell me Ma'y Ann is a fool, an' I won't say you ain't
in the rights of it."
"Well, what is Mary Ann's folly? I thought she had grown up to be a
sensible girl."
"_Sensible! Ma'y Ann!_ Them pretty gals is never sensible! No'm. Melissy
Jane is the sensible one o' my chillun. I tole Ma'y Ann she didn't have
nothin' fitten to be ma'ied in, an' she up an' say she know Mis' Pryor
ain' goin' to let one o' her pa's chu'ch people git ma'ied in rags."
"I certainly will not, Mrs. Davis! Mary Ann, I suppose, is to marry the
soldier you've been taking care of. Tell her she may look to me for a
wedding-dress. When is it to be?"
"Just as Dr. Pryor says—to-morrow if convenient."
I immediately overhauled the bundle of Washington finery and found a
lavender Pina, or "pineapple" muslin, not yet prepared for sale. This
was a delicate gown, trimmed with lavender silk, and with angel sleeves
lined with white silk. This I sent to the prospective bride—considering
her needs and station, a most unsuitable wedding garment, but all I had!
I managed to make a contribution to the wedding supper, a large pumpkin
I extorted from John, who had "found" it. Melissy Jane, homely enough to
be brilliantly "sensible," appeared to take charge of the present,—the
most slatternly, unlovely, and altogether unpromising of the poor white
class I had ever seen; and my father, in view of the great good fortune
coming to the forlorn family in the acquisition of an able-bodied,
whole-hearted Confederate soldier, made no delay in performing the
marriage ceremony. About a week afterward Mrs. Davis, limper than ever,
more depressed than ever, reappeared.
"I hope nobody's sick?" I inquired.
"No'm, the chilluns is as peart as common. Ma'y Ann don't seem no ways
encouraged. 'Pears like she's onreconciled."
"Why, what ails poor Mary Ann?"
"Yas'm—he's lef' her! Jus' took hisself off and never say nuthin'.
We-all don't even know what company owns him."
"Mrs. Davis!" I exclaimed, in great indignation, "this is not to be
tolerated. That man is to be found and made to do his duty. I can manage
it!"
"I don't know as I keers to ketch 'im," sighed the poor woman. "Ef you
capters them men erginst ther will, they'll git away ergin—_sho!_ Let
'im go long! He ain't paid me a cent or a ration of meat an' meal sence
he was ma'ied. Anyhow," she proudly added, "_Ma'y Ann is ma'ied!_ Folks
can't fling it up to 'er now as she's a ole maid,"—which proves that
maternal ambitions are peculiar to no condition of life.
Looking back, and living over again these stern times, it seems to
me little short of a miracle that we actually did exist upon the
slender portion of food allotted us. We could rarely see, from one day
to another, just how we were to be fed. "Give us this day our daily
bread"—this petition was our sole reliance. And as surely as the day
would come,
"He that doth the ravens feed,
Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,"
would prove to us that we were of more value in His sight than many
sparrows.
General Lee passed my door every Sunday morning on his way to a little
wooden chapel nearer his quarters than St. Paul's Church. I have a
picture of him in my memory, in his faded gray overcoat and slouch hat,
bending his head before the sleet on stormy mornings. Sometimes his
cousin, Mrs. Banister, could find herself warranted by circumstances
to invite him to dine with her. Once she received from a country friend
a present of a turkey, and General Lee consented to share it with her.
She helped him at dinner to a moderate portion, for there was only one
turkey—like Charles Lamb's hare—and many friends! Mrs. Banister observed
the general laying on one side of his plate part of his share of the
turkey, and she regretted his loss of appetite. "Madam," he explained,
"Colonel Taylor is not well, and I should be glad to be permitted to
take this to him."
After an unusually mild season, John bethought himself of the fishes
in the pond and streams, but not a fishhook was for sale in Richmond or
Petersburg. He contrived, out of a cunning arrangement of pins, to make
hooks, and sallied forth with my boys. But the water was too cold, or
the fish had been driven down-stream by the firing. The usual resource
of the sportsman with an empty creel—a visit to the fishmonger—was quite
out of the question. There was no fishmonger any more.
Under these circumstances you may imagine my sensation at receiving the
following note:—
"MY DEAR MRS. PRYOR: General Lee has been honored by a visit
from the Hon. Thomas Connolly, Irish M.P. from Donegal.
"He ventures to request you will have the kindness to give Mr.
Connolly a room in your cottage, if this can be done without
inconvenience to yourself."
Certainly I could give Mr. Connolly a room; but just as certainly
I could not feed him! The messenger who brought me the note hastily
reassured me. He had been instructed to say that Mr. Connolly would mess
with General Lee. I turned Mr. Connolly's room over to John, who soon
became devoted to his service. The M.P. proved a most agreeable guest,
a fine-looking Irish gentleman with an irresistibly humorous, cheery
fund of talk. He often dropped in at our biscuit toasting, and assured
us that we were better provided than the commander-in-chief.
"You should have seen 'Uncle Robert's' dinner to-day, madam! He had two
biscuits, and he gave me one."
Another time Mr. Connolly was in high feather.
"We had a glorious dinner to-day! Somebody sent 'Uncle Robert' a box of
sardines."
General Lee, however, was not forgotten. On fine mornings quite a
procession of little negroes, in every phase of raggedness, used to
pass my door, each one bearing a present from the farmers' wives of
buttermilk in a tin pail for General Lee. The army was threatened
with scurvy, and buttermilk, hominy, and every vegetable that could be
obtained was sent to the hospital.
Mr. Connolly interested himself in my boys' Latin studies.
"I am going home," he said, "and tell the English women what I have seen
here: two boys reading Cæsar while the shells are thundering, and their
mother looking on without fear."
"I am too busy keeping the wolf from my door," I told him, "to concern
myself with the thunderbolts."
The wolf was no longer at the door! He had entered and had taken up
his abode at the fireside. Besides what I could earn with my needle, I
had only my father's army ration to rely upon. My faithful John foraged
right and left, and I had reason to doubt the wisdom of inquiring too
closely as to the source of an occasional half-dozen eggs or small bag
of corn. This last he would pound on a wooden block for hominy. Meal was
greatly prized for the reason that wholesomer bread could be made of it
than of wheaten flour,—meal was no longer procurable, but we were never
altogether without flour. As I have said, we might occasionally purchase
for five dollars the head of a bullock from the commissary, every other
part of the animal being available for army rations. By self-denial on
our own part we fondly hoped we could support our army and at last win
our cause. We were not, at the time, fully aware of the true state of
things in the army. Our men were so depleted from starvation that the
most trifling wound would end fatally. Gangrene would supervene, and
then nothing could be done to prevent death. Long before this time, at
Vicksburg, Admiral Porter found that many a dead soldier's haversack
yielded nothing but a handful of parched corn. _We_ were now enduring
a sterner siege. The month of January brought us sleet and storm. Our
famine grew sterner every day. Seasons of bitter cold weather would
find us without wood to burn, and we had no other fuel. I commenced
cutting down the choice fruit trees in the grounds,—and General Wilcox
managed to send me a load of rails from a fence, hitherto spared by the
soldiers. Poor little Rose could yield only one cupful of milk, so small
was her ration; but we never thought of turning the faithful animal into
beef. The officers in my yard spared her something every day from the
food of their horses.
The days were so dark and cheerless, the news from the armies at a
distance so discouraging, it was hard to preserve a cheerful demeanor
for the sake of the family. And now began the alarming tidings, every
morning, of the desertions during the night. General Wilcox wondered
how long his brigade would hold together at the rate of fifty desertions
every twenty-four hours!
The common soldier had enlisted, not to establish the right of
secession, not for love of the slave,—he had no slaves,—but simply
to resist the invasion of the South by the North, simply to prevent
subjugation. The soldier of the rank and file was not always
intellectual or cultivated. He cared little for politics, less for
slavery. He did care, however, for his own soil, his own little farm,
his own humble home, and he was willing to fight to drive the invader
from it. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not stimulate him in
the least. The negro, free or slave, was of no consequence to him. His
quarrel was a sectional one, and he fought for his section.
In any war the masses rarely trouble themselves about the merits of the
quarrel. Their pugnacity and courage are aroused and stimulated by the
enthusiasm of their comrades or by their own personal wrongs and perils.
Now, in January, 1865, the common soldier perceived that the cause was
lost. He could read its doom in the famine around him, in the faces
of his officers, in tidings from abroad. His wife and children were
suffering. His duty was now to them; so he stole away in the darkness,
and in infinite danger and difficulty found his way back to his own
fireside. He deserted, but not to the enemy.
But what shall we say of the soldier who remained unflinching at his
post _knowing_ the cause was lost for which he was called to meet
death? Heroism can attain no loftier height than this. Very few of the
intelligent men of our army had the slightest hope, at the end, of our
success. Some, like Mr. William C. Rives, had none at the beginning.
One night all these things weighed more heavily than usual upon me,—the
picket firing, the famine, the military executions, the dear one "sick
and in prison." I sighed audibly, and my son Theodorick, who slept near
me, asked the cause, adding, "Why can you not sleep, dear mother?"
"Suppose," I replied, "you repeat something for me."
He at once commenced, "Tell me not in mournful numbers"—and repeated
the "Psalm of Life." I did not sleep; those were brave words, but not
strong enough for the situation.
He paused, and presently his young voice broke the stillness:—
"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy
name"—going on to the end of the beautiful psalm of adoration and faith
which nineteen centuries have decreed to be in very truth a Psalm of
Life.
That General Lee was acutely sensible of our condition was proved
by an interview with General Gordon. Before daylight, on the 2d of
March, General Lee sent for General Gordon, who was with his command
at a distant part of the line. Upon arriving, General Gordon was much
affected by seeing General Lee standing at the mantel in his room, his
head bowed on his folded arms. The room was dimly lighted by a single
lamp, and a smouldering fire was dying on the hearth. The night was
cold, and General Lee's room chill and cheerless.
"I have sent for you, General Gordon," said General Lee, with a dejected
voice and manner, "to make known to you the condition of our affairs and
consult with you as to what we had best do. I have here reports sent
in from my officers to-night. I find I have under my command, of all
arms, hardly forty-five thousand men. These men are starving. They are
already so weakened as to be hardly efficient. Many of them have become
desperate, reckless, and disorderly as they have never been before.
"It is difficult to control men who are suffering for food. They are
breaking open mills, barns, and stores in search of it. Almost crazed
from hunger, they are deserting in large numbers and going home. My
horses are in equally bad condition. The supply of horses in the country
is exhausted. It has come to be just as bad for me to have a horse
killed as a man. I cannot remount a cavalryman whose horse dies. General
Grant can mount ten thousand men in ten days and move round your flank.
If he were to send me word to-morrow that I might move out unmolested,
I have not enough horses to move my artillery. He is not likely to send
me any such message, although he sent me word yesterday that he knew
what I had for breakfast every morning. I sent him word I did not think
that this could be so, for if he did he would surely send me something
better.
"But now let us look at the figures. As I said, I have forty-five
thousand starving men. Hancock has eighteen thousand at Winchester.
To oppose him I have not a single vidette. Sheridan, with his terrible
cavalry, has marched unmolested and unopposed along the James, cutting
the railroads and the canal. Thomas is coming from Knoxville with
thirty thousand well-equipped troops, and I have, to oppose him, not
more than three thousand in all. Sherman is in North Carolina with
sixty-five thousand men. So I have forty-five thousand poor fellows
in bad condition opposed to one hundred and sixty thousand strong and
confident men. These forces added to General Grant's make over a quarter
of a million. To prevent them all from uniting to my destruction, and
adding Johnston's and Beauregard's men, I can oppose only sixty thousand
men. They are growing weaker every day. Their sufferings are terrible
and exhausting. My horses are broken down and impotent. General Grant
may press around our flank any day and cut off our supplies."
As a result of this conference General Lee went to Richmond to make one
more effort to induce our government to treat for peace. It was on his
return from an utterly fruitless errand that he said:—
"I am a soldier! It is my duty to obey orders;" and the final disastrous
battles were fought.
It touches me to know now that it was after this that my beloved
commander found heart to turn aside and bring me comfort. No one knew
better than he all I had endeavored and endured, and my heart blesses
his memory for its own sake. At this tremendous moment, when he had
returned from his fruitless mission to Richmond, when the attack on
Fort Steadman was impending, when his slender line was confronted by
Grant's ever increasing host, stretching twenty miles, when the men were
so starved, so emaciated, that the smallest wound meant death, when his
own personal privations were beyond imagination, General Lee could spend
half an hour for my consolation and encouragement.
Cottage Farm being on the road between headquarters and Fort Gregg,—the
fortification which held General Grant in check at that point,—I saw
General Lee almost daily going to this work or to Battery 45.
I was, as was my custom, sewing in my little parlor one morning, about
the middle of March, when an orderly entered, saying:—
"General Lee wishes to make his respects to Mrs. Pryor." The general
was immediately behind him. His face was lighted with the anticipation
of telling me his good news. With the high-bred courtesy and kindness
which always distinguished his manner, he asked kindly after my welfare,
and taking my little girl in his arms, began gently to break his news
to me:—
"How long, madam, was General Pryor with me before he had a furlough?"
"He never had one, I think," I answered.
"Well, did I not take good care of him until we camped here so close to
you?"
"Certainly," I said, puzzled to know the drift of these preliminaries.
"I sent him home to you, I remember," he continued, "for a day or two,
and you let the Yankees catch him. Now he is coming back to be with you
again on parole until he is exchanged. You must take better care of him
in future."
I was too much overcome to do more than stammer a few words of thanks.
Presently he added, "What are you going to say when I tell the general
that in all this winter you have never once been to see me?"
"Oh, General Lee," I answered, "I had too much mercy to join in your
buttermilk persecution!"
"Persecution!" he said; "such things keep us alive! Last night, when
I reached my headquarters, I found a card on my table with a hyacinth
pinned to it, and these words: 'For General Lee, with a kiss!' Now," he
added, tapping his breast, "I have here my hyacinth and my card—_and I
mean to find my kiss_!"
He was amused by the earnest eyes of my little girl, as she gazed into
his face.
"They have a wonderful liking for soldiers," he said. "I knew one little
girl to give up all her pretty curls willingly that she might look like
Custis! 'They _might_ cut my hair like Custis's,' she said. Custis!
whose shaven head does not improve him in any eyes but hers."
His manner was the perfection of repose and simplicity. As he talked
with me, I remembered that I had heard of this singular calmness. Even
at Gettysburg and at the explosion of the crater he had evinced no
agitation or dismay. I did not know then, as I do now, that nothing had
ever approached the anguish of this moment, when he had come to say an
encouraging and cheering word to me, after abandoning all hope of the
success of the cause.
After talking awhile and sending a kind message to my husband, to greet
him on his return, he rose, walked to the window, and looked over the
fields,—the fields through which, not many days afterward, he dug his
last trenches!
I was moved to say, "You only, General, can tell me if it is worth my
while to put the ploughshare into those fields."
"Plant your seeds, madam," he replied; sadly adding, after a moment,
"The doing it will be some reward."
I was answered. I thought then he had little hope. I now know he had
none.
He had already, as we have seen, remonstrated against further
resistance—against the useless shedding of blood. His protest had been
unheeded. It remained for him now to gather his forces for endurance to
the end.
Twenty days afterward his headquarters were in ashes; he had led his
famished army across the Appomattox, and telling them they had done
their duty and had nothing to regret, he had bidden them farewell
forever.