before, and without breakfast we had been riding all day. Late in the
afternoon we made up our minds to go for supper and lodging to a great
country house which I had frequently visited as a guest in the days
of its abundance. As we rode through the plantation, decay manifested
itself on every hand. There was a small, straggling crop in process of
growth, but sadly ill attended. There were no animals in sight except
five sheep that we saw grazing on a hillside.
As we turned the corner of the woodland the mansion came into view.
Only its walls were left standing. Fire had destroyed the rest. At the
gate we met an old negro serving-man, whom I had known in the palmy
days as Uncle Isham.
When I had seen him last he was in livery. As I saw him _now_ he was in
rags.
Some eager, hurried inquiries as to the family brought out the fact
that the mistress of the mansion with her two grown daughters was
living in one of the negro quarters in rear of the burned house, and
that he, alone, remained as a servant on the plantation.
“Dey took all de res’ off No’th, an’ dey tried to take Isham, too. But
Isham he slip’ de bridle one night, an’ he came back heah to look after
ole missus an’ de girls. So heah I is, an’ heah Ise gwine to stay.”
We did not remain to hear Isham’s account of his adventures, but
hurried on to find out the condition of things with the family. There
were but two rooms--one below, and the other above stairs--in the hut
in which they were living. Yet the proud woman who was thus reduced
showed no shame of her poverty, but gloried in it rather, as the old
soldier glories in the scars received in his country’s service.
She welcomed us with as warm a show of hospitality as she had ever made
in the old days of lavish entertainment.
After our first inquiries concerning their welfare, she said to us
laughingly: “I wouldn’t keep you to-night, but would send you on to
a better place, if I knew any better in the neighborhood. As it is,
you’ll have to sleep under the trees for lack of room; but you boys are
rather used to that. As for supper, I can give you some corn-bread and
some sorghum molasses. The bread won’t be very good, because our supply
of salt has run out, and of course as the cows have all been killed I
can’t give you butter. But there’s enough bread and sorghum, anyhow.”
“How long since you had meat?” I asked.
“About three weeks,” she replied. “That is to say, since the last big
raiding party came by.”
“Have you no pigs left?”
“No, we haven’t a living animal of any kind.”
“Whose sheep are those I saw as I rode up?”
“They belong to a neighbor,” she answered. “They’re what’s left of a
large flock. When the raiders were here those five sheep ran into the
bushes and escaped. But even if they were ours, you know, we couldn’t
kill one.”
I remembered then that a law of the Confederacy made it a crime
severely punishable to slaughter a sheep, even one’s own. They were
wanted by the government for their wool to clothe the army.
Waiving all this aside as a matter of small moment, our hostess pressed
us again to dismount for supper.
At this point Johnny Garrett lied:
“Oh, we can’t stay to supper, and the fact is we couldn’t eat if we
did. It’s only half an hour since we ate the best part of a ham out of
our haversacks. And besides we’ve got to get to Gordonsville to-night.”
I am afraid I was accessory after the fact to the telling of that lie.
At least I didn’t contradict it.
We pushed on a little way till we had got out of sight of the house.
Then we stopped by mutual consent under a tree and dismounted.
“The grass is pretty good,” I said, “and we’ll let the horses crop it
while we wait for it to get good and dark.” It did not seem necessary
to mention what we were to wait for darkness for.
“Yes,” said Johnny, “there are the sheep, and I’ll keep an eye on them.”
When it was thoroughly dark we committed a double crime.
It was sheep stealing as well as a violation of the other law, but we
were not in a mood to consider such things just then. Under cover of
the darkness we killed the fattest sheep in the lot, dressed it as well
as we could, and then by the light of some matches I wrote a little
note on a leaf from my memorandum book. It said simply this:--
“There is no law to forbid some hungry women to eat a sheep that
somebody else has killed in violation of law.”
Pinning this to the carcass we carried the mutton to the house, and
hung it to a tree where it would be seen with the dawn.
We felt as well about this thing as if we had been engaged in some
highly moral act.
A LITTLE REBEL
It was an odd kind of a situation. It was in 1862, and we were on the
coast of South Carolina defending the railroad line between Charleston
and Savannah.
We had no infantry supports, and artillery is supposed to be helpless
without such supports. But as there was nothing on the other side,
except those pestilent sharp-shooters in the Hayward mansion, we did
not need support.
It was our business to shell that mansion, burn it, and drive the
sharp-shooters out. I may say, parenthetically, that we didn’t like the
business. Mr. Hayward, who was familiarly known as “Tiger Bill,” had
been the friend of our battery ever since we had succeeded in putting
out a fire that had burnt some thousands of panels of fence for him.
It is true that his friendship for us was in the main a reflex of his
enmity to the Charleston Light Dragoons and the Routledge Mounted
Riflemen. He favored us mainly to spite them. Nevertheless he favored
us. He sent a wagon every morning to our camp loaded with vegetables,
fruits, suckling pigs, and whatever else his dozen plantations might
afford.
[Illustration: SHE WAS SINGING “DIXIE.”]
Naturally, we did not like the job of burning one of his country
houses. But as business is business, so in war orders are orders.
Half a dozen shells did the work. Flames burst from the house in every
direction, and the enemy’s sharp-shooters who had been using it as
a vantage ground rapidly retreated across the cotton fields to the
woodlands beyond under fire of our guns.
Our captain, a great bearded warrior, six feet four inches high, and as
rough as men are made in appearance, was suddenly seized with a tender
thought. Turning to me, he said: “There may be some poor devil wounded
in that house and likely to be roasted. Let’s ride over there and see.”
We put spurs to our horses, dashed through the sharp-shooters’ fire,
and a few minutes later began exploring the lower quarters of the
house, the fire being above. We found nothing till we came to the
cellar. There we discovered a little girl, anywhere from two to three
years old,--I’m not a good judge of little girls’ ages,--sitting in a
little rocking-chair, and singing “Dixie.”
The captain grabbed her suddenly and ran to the open air with her, for
the volumes of smoke were rapidly penetrating to the cellar. When he
got her out, he said: “Who are you?”
She replied, in a piping little voice, “I’m _Lulalie_.”
Whether this meant that her name was Lula Lee, or Eulalie, or what, we
could not make out.
“Where is your mamma?” asked the captain.
“She’s dead--she died when I was born.”
“Where is your papa?”
“I don’t know. Those ugly other people took him away. When he saw ’em
coming, he took me to the cellar, and told me to stay there so the
shellies wouldn’t hit me.”
“Where’s your maumey?” (Maumey meaning in South Carolina “negro nurse.”)
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Those ugly other people took all the
colored folks away.”
Just then the battery advanced with its colors flying. Looking up the
little girl recognized the Confederate battle banner and said: “That’s
_my kind of a flag_. I don’t like that ugly other striped thing.”
Manifestly the child was without protectors. We adopted her in the name
of the battery.
When we returned to the camp several serious questions arose. Jack
Hawkins, one of the ex-circus clowns of the battery, suggested that
first of all we must secure a chaperone for her. When asked what
he meant by that, he said with lordly superiority: “Well, you see,
chaperone is French for nurse. We want a nurse for this little child.”
“Nonsense,” said Denton, the other ex-circus clown, “you don’t know any
more about the proprieties than you do about French. Chaperone means
somebody to look after a church, and this little girl isn’t even a
chapel. We’ll look after her, and we don’t want no nurse to help.”
The captain, with his long beard, was holding the little child in his
arms all this time, and she suddenly turned around to him and seizing
his beard said: “I like your big whiskers. They are like my papa’s. You
don’t bite, because you’ve got hair on your face?”
“No, dear,” he replied, “I don’t bite such as you.”
But he was very much given to biting, all the same--as the enemy had
more than once found out.
“First of all,” said Denton, who was nothing if not practical, “the
little girl’s got to have some clothes.”
Denton was a tailor, as well as a clown, and naturally his thoughts
were the first to run in that groove.
“I ain’t much used to making girl’s clothes, but a tailor’s a tailor,
and if anybody’ll provide me the materials, I’ll undertake to fix up
some gowns for her.”
Tom Booker, who was much given to riding around the country, said at
once: “I know where the mortal remains of an old store repose, up at
Gillisonville, about nine miles away. If I had any money--”
Every man thrust his hand into his pocket, and each drew out what he
had. The sum total was more than adequate. When Tom returned a few
hours later there were no “mortal remains” of that store left. He
brought back with him thirty-seven yards of highly colored calico, of
different patterns, one red blanket, a box full of galloon trimming,
something that he called “gimp,” two bolts of domestic, three cans of
tomatoes, and two bottles of chow-chow, besides a dozen quarter cases
of sardines and two kegs of cove oysters.
He dumped the merchandise on the ground with the remark: “There, I’ve
closed that store.”
Denton made some invidious remarks reflecting upon Tom’s taste in the
selection of calicoes, etc., adding the suggestion that there was
galloon enough and “gimp” enough in the invoice “to upholster all the
women in Charleston for the next six months--if they liked that kind of
thing.”
Nevertheless, he set to work with a will. Within a day or two the
little lady was provided with gowns and night-gowns, and underclothes
sufficient in quantity, at least, though perhaps not made strictly
in accordance with the latest fashions in gear of that kind. Indeed,
Denton had succeeded in making her look very much hindsidebefore.
The little girl’s gowns all buttoned down in front. But the little
girl was pleased with what she called the “gownies” and sometimes the
“pritties.” Their barbaric colors tickled her taste so much that Denton
decided to make her a cloak out of the flaming red blanket.
When it was put on her, her glory was complete. She said: “It looks
like my kind of a flag,” referring to the red of the battle banner.
* * * * *
She was taken away from us presently by a committee of good women of
the neighborhood. She became the protégée of a lady whose whole life
had been given to caring for other people, including our battery.
Denton, however, put in a claim to the privilege of continuing to
fashion her clothes.
“You see I’ve got the whole stock of that store on my hands; and since
I learned dress-making, I’ve a fancy to perfect myself. And you see
I’ve got fond of the little girl.”
A couple of tears trickled down the hoary old sinner’s cheek, and Mrs.
Hutson consented.
Every day after roll-call the captain sent a delegation to the Hutsons’
house to ask after the battery’s child. Every day when we drilled at
the guns the little girl herself came in her barbaric costume to see
what she called her “shooties,” meaning the cannoneers.
We had to part with our little girl presently, we being under orders,
and she stationed. As we moved away from the station on our flat cars,
she stood upon the platform, and waved “her kind of a flag” at us,
crying, throwing kisses, and calling out: “Good-by, you good shooties.”
I think the morals of the battery were distinctly better after this
little episode.
TWENTY-ONE
After the battle of Bull Run, or Manassas, as we called it, the region
north of Fairfax Court House was a No-man’s land.
Little by little we occupied it during that summer, even to Mason’s
and Munson’s hills. But the process of occupation was slow. When we
pressed forward immediately after the battle all that region was _terra
incognita_.
About half the people inhabiting it were loyal to one side; about half
to the other. So in asking information we had to be circumspect.
But we had assurance that the Hopes were loyal to our side. So when
Lieutenant Billy Wilds was sent out with a party of us, on scouting
duty, he naturally went to the Hope mansion for information.
He got it in abundance. Charlotte Hope, the daughter of the house,
came out to give it to us, and she was very enthusiastic. She was a
brunette, full of life, full of health, and full of enthusiasm for the
cause. Besides, she knew how to sit gracefully on a rail fence. She had
a rich contralto voice that had narrowly escaped being a bass. She
was beautiful to her finger tips. She “had a way with her” that was
fascinating beyond belief.
As she sat there on the rail fence, explaining the geography of the
region round about, we all fell in love with her as troopers should, so
far at least as to be ready to do any conceivable deed of derring-do
in her behalf. But Lieutenant Wilds fell in love with her in fuller
fashion, as was afterwards made manifest.
She sat there on the fence curled up most entrancingly and expounded
the geography of the country with great minuteness. But when she tried
to tell us just where a certain strong Federal post was, which we very
much wanted to attack, she grew impatient of words.
Turning to a negro boy she said: “Saddle Saladin. I’ll go and show
them.”
Three minutes later she was in the saddle. Half an hour afterwards
Charlie Irving, our captain who had joined us and taken command,
gently ordered her to the rear. As I have related in another book of
reminiscences she refused to obey. She said: “I believe you are going
to charge those fellows, and I want to see the fun.”
Well, she saw the fun. We made the charge. At the end of it Lieutenant
Wilds was more in love with her than ever.
As we escorted her back to her home she broke into song. Her song was
the old English ballad which begins:--
“In days of old, when knights were bold,
And barons held their sway.”
As she sang, she laid special stress upon two passages in the ballad.
One was the line where the hero says:--
“I’ll live for love or die.”
The other was, where as death overcomes him he sings:--
“I’ve kept the vow I swore.”
The song seemed, whether prophetically or otherwise, to have entered
this young girl’s soul and to have taken possession of her spirit.
It was not long afterwards that we learned that our gallant young
lieutenant was engaged to be married to Charlotte Hope. The marriage
was to take place as soon as the war was over. At that time we regarded
this as a postponement of only a few months at most. We expected to win
then and we expected to win quickly.
Whenever Lieutenant Wilds was sent upon a scouting expedition, he found
it imperatively necessary to call at the Hope mansion for geographical
and other information, though by this time we had all become familiar
with every road and footpath in that quarter of Virginia.
It was a little fiction we were all pleased to love him for. One day
about a month later, while we were waiting in the yard for Lieutenant
Wilds to secure the necessary geographical information indoors, a
Federal force attacked us. The lieutenant came out promptly, swung
himself into the saddle, and ordered a charge. We fought there under
the cherry trees for full fifteen minutes. At the end of the contest
the enemy was driven away, and we pursued--but three of our saddles
were empty.
One of them was that of Lieutenant Wilds.
* * * * *
It was Charlotte’s wish that Lieutenant Wilds should be buried in the
family grave-yard of the Hopes. It was also her wish that his company
should attend the funeral.
We brought two other companies along to stand guard and prevent any
possible interruption of the ceremonies. We buried our comrade with all
military honors. We fired the conventional salute over the grave.
Then we proceeded to attack a military force which had come up, intent
upon disturbing the obsequies.
But before we moved off, Charlotte, who had been dry-eyed from the
first, came to one of us and said: “He was just twenty-one. It will
take just twenty-one to pay for him.”
* * * * *
It was only two or three days later when Charlie Hopper rode into the
camp on a magnificent chestnut-sorrel mare. We did not know him.
He said he didn’t want to enlist. He merely wanted to join the company.
He explained that if he enlisted he would be a man under pay. And he
didn’t want pay, he said, for the work he wanted to do. Only give him
rations and a chance and he would be satisfied.
His idea of a chance soon developed itself. He wanted to be as
continually as possible in the presence of the enemy, anywhere, anyhow.
He wanted to shoot all the “Yankees” he could. For that purpose he had
brought with him the first Whitworth rifle I ever saw, with its long
range, its telescopic sights, and its terrible accuracy of fire.
He seemed about sixteen years old. He didn’t tell us anything about
himself, not even where he came from. But he had a long talk, and a
confidential one, with Charlie Irving. After that Charlie paid him
special attention. He detailed him upon every scouting expedition that
had “business” in it. Sometimes when scouting expeditions were slack,
the young fellow would go off by himself and remain for a day or two in
close proximity to the enemy’s lines.
Each day he wore upon his breast a little tag with a number on it.
One day when the number had reached seventeen, he and I lay together
behind a sycamore log, shooting at a peculiarly pestilent picket post.
After one of his shots he called out, “Eighteen.” The next shot was
simultaneous, he and I firing together. The man at whom we fired fell
forward over his log, evidently dead.
Charlie Hopper turned to me and said: “You fired at the same moment I
did; it’s a disputed bird. I can’t count him.”
Full of curiosity I asked: “What do you mean, Hopper?”
He answered: “Nothing--Just counting--Settling a score!”
It was only a few days later when we were at Falls Church. Young
Hopper’s score read twenty, when he asked permission to ride out and
personally encounter an officer who had separated himself from his
command. The permission was given. Hopper leaped upon his mare, drew
his sword, and galloped toward the officer. They met in mid field. The
officer fired just as the boy clove him to the saddle. Hopper fell
forward on his horse and rode back to the lines.
As he rolled off the saddle, he said: “I’m done for, boys, but I’ve
made it twenty-one without counting a single disputed bird.” Then,
feebly, he broke into song, singing,--
“I’ve kept the vow I swore.”
Before we buried him in the _Hope cemetery_ the next day, the captain
told me that Charlie Hopper was none other than Charlotte Hope.
But I had guessed the secret that day when she had refused to count the
“disputed bird.”
A BEEF EPISODE
We had no rations at Bluffton, in South Carolina.
The sea was there with its multitudinous fish, and crabs and shrimps,
and with its mountainous banks of oysters. There were turkeys and deer
and squirrels in the woods, and quail and marsh fowl in the fields. We
were expected to take care of ourselves.
But one cannot shoot turkeys, or deer, or squirrels with a
twelve-pounder Napoleon. And as for the sea food, while we rejoiced in
it for a time, we became desperately weary of it after a while.
We began, therefore, to frequent Bull Island. Bull Island lay near
Hilton Head, which the enemy occupied. Bull Island had been abandoned
at the beginning of the war, and the cattle on the plantations there
had gone wild, breeding as buffalo might.
Here was a source of supply. We resolved to avail ourselves of it.
About twice a week we sent expeditions over there in whale-boats, and
killed a bullock or a cow or two, dressed the meat and brought it home,
taking care to bring the skin also, in order that our half-crazy
doctor might experiment on it with his new process for quick tanning.
As an incident, I may remark that not one of us ever got a pair of
boots out of those hides.
The enemy on Hilton Head were also more or less in lack of beef. They,
too, discovered Bull Island, and frequented it with a purpose similar
to our own.
One day Joe went over there with sixteen men in a boat carrying
that number of oars, and pretty well rigged for sailing. He had no
sooner got his command into the cane-brake in search of cattle, than
he discovered a party of Federals immediately in front of him. In
the dense growth of the forest he could have no idea whatever of
his enemy’s strength. His one thought was, to avoid the capture of
his force. To that end he must make as brave a show of strength as
possible. He therefore ordered his little squad of men to scatter
themselves out over a line of three or four hundred yards, and to keep
up as continuous a fire as possible.
The enemy’s line seemed to be of about equal length, and their fire
about the same as his. It was a little before ten o’clock in the
morning when this thing began, and it was not until after dusk that the
two forces sneaked simultaneously to their boats.
Neither had any beef, and each discovered that the other was
numerically about equal to itself.
So far as we were ever able to discover, nobody had been killed or
wounded on either side. A day had been wasted in futile firing through
the cane. Both sides had been disappointed of their provisions.
Neither had injured the other, neither had gained any benefit, and the
cattle had had a good time.
Thirty years afterwards Joe and the sergeant on the other side met,
and one said to the other: “After all it would have been better if we
had turned our backs on each other that day. There were cattle on both
sides.” The other answered: “Yes, but that would have been the wise way
of peace; we were engaged in the barbarism of war.”
BERNARD POLAND’S PROPHECY
I do not pretend to understand it at all.
The best theories I have ever been able to form, whether physiological
or psychological, or a mixture of the two, have utterly failed to
account to my mind for the facts in Bernard Poland’s case.
I tell the story, therefore, without trying to explain it.
In the year 1857 I became a student in a Virginian college not far from
Richmond. When I took possession of my quarters in the building three
or four days before the session began, I was an entire stranger to
every one there. As I had already spent two years in another college,
I knew the importance of using circumspection in the choice of friends
in such a place, so that I was in no hurry to make acquaintances. It
was my deliberate purpose, indeed, to avoid all intercourse with my
fellow-students, until such time as I should discover who and what they
were.
But one morning--the next after my arrival, I think it was--as I sat in
the great stone portico, two students, evidently old acquaintances,
and both of them members of the college during the previous year, stood
near me discussing some matter or other, I forget what.
The younger was bantering and teasing the other by expressing all sorts
of unconventional, radical, and even revolutionary opinions, which his
friend took the trouble seriously to combat, greatly to the younger
man’s amusement, as I could see. Their conversation did not impress
me in the least, except as it revealed to me something in the younger
man’s mind and character which fascinated me unaccountably.