CHAPTER I.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been

corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within

the text and consultation of external sources.

All misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage,

have been retained. For example, indorsement; demarkation; clew;

land owners, landowners.

WORKS BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON

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A

Rebel's Recollections

By

George Cary Eggleston

Author of "Dorothy South," "A Captain in the Ranks,"

"Running the River," etc.

Fourth Edition, with an additional chapter on the

Old Régime in the Old Dominion

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

The Knickerbocker Press

1905

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by

GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington

Copyright, 1905

by

GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON

DEDICATION.

I wish to dedicate this book to my brother, EDWARD EGGLESTON; and

even if there were no motives of affection impelling me thereto,

I should still feel bound to inscribe his name upon this page, as

an act of justice, in order that those critics who confounded me

with him, when I put forth a little novel a year ago, may have no

chance to hold him responsible for my political as they did for

my literary sins.

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

"A Rebel's Recollections" was published in 1874. It has ever since

enjoyed a degree of public favor that is perhaps beyond its merits.

However that may be, my friends among the historians and the

critical students of history have persuaded me that, for the sake of

historical completeness, I should include in this new edition of the

book the prefatory essay on "The Old Régime in the Old Dominion,"

which first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1875.

I am doing so with the generous permission of Messrs. Houghton,

Mifflin, & Co., publishers of the Atlantic Monthly.

The scholars have said to me and to my publishers that during its

thirty years of life the book has become a part of that body of

literature to which historians must look as the sources of history.

They have urged that the introductory chapter, now for the first time

included in the volume, is an essential part of that material of

history.

The story of the book and of this introductory chapter may, perhaps,

have some interest for the reader. In that belief I tell it here.

In the year, 1873, I was editing the weekly periodical, Hearth and

Home. I went to Boston to secure certain contributions of literary

matter. There, for the first time, I met Mr. William Dean Howells,

then editor of the Atlantic Monthly,--now recognized as the foremost

creative and critical writer of America.

In the course of our conversation, Mr. Howells asked me why I should

not write my reminiscences of life as a Southern soldier. At that

time war passions had only just begun to cool, and so I answered that

it would be hardly fair to the publishers of Hearth and Home for me

in that way to thrust upon the readers of that periodical the fact

that its editor had been a Rebel soldier.

"Oh, I didn't mean," answered Mr. Howells, "that you should write

your reminiscences for Hearth and Home. I want you to write them for

the Atlantic."

I put the matter aside for a time. I wanted to think of it, and I

wanted to consult my friends concerning the propriety of doing what

Mr. Howells had suggested. Then it was that I talked with Oliver

Johnson, and received from him the advice reported in the preface to

the first edition of this book, which is printed on another page.

An arrangement was at once made with Mr. Howells that I should write

seven of the nine papers composing the book, for publication in the

Atlantic, the two other papers being reserved in order to "give

freshness" to the volume when it should appear.

After the first paper was published, Mr. Howells wrote me that it had

brought a hornets' nest about his ears, but that he was determined to

go on with the series.

After the second paper appeared, he wrote me a delightful letter,

saying that the hornets had "begun to sing psalms in his ears," in

view of the spirit and temper of my work.

After all the papers were published, and on the day on which the

book, with its two additional chapters, appeared, there was held at

the Parker House in Boston a banquet in celebration of the fifteenth

anniversary of the founding of the Atlantic. At that dinner, and

without warning, I was toasted as the author of the latest book of

Civil War reminiscences. I made a feeble little speech in reply,

but I found that the spirit in which I had written "A Rebel's

Recollections" had met with cordial response from the New England

audience. A company of "original abolitionists" had even planned

to give me a dinner, all my own, with nobody present but original

abolitionists and my Rebel self.

In the same way the book was received by the press, especially in New

England, until I was satisfied that my work had really ministered

somewhat to that reconciliation between North and South which I had

hoped to help forward.

Some months later, in 1875, I wrote the article on the old Virginian

life, and sent it to Mr. Howells. Mindful of his editorial injunction

to confine articles to six magazine pages in length, I condensed

what I had to say into that space. Then for the first time in my life

I had an experience which has never since been repeated. Mr. Howells

sent the article back to me with a request that I should _double its

length._

Some years later, the Authors Club gave a reception to Mr. Howells

as our foremost living novelist, and it fell to me, as the presiding

officer of the club's Executive Council, to escort the guest of the

evening to the club. The war papers of the Century Magazine were at

that time attracting a country-wide attention. As we drove to the

club, Mr. Howells said to me:

"It was you and I who first conceived the idea of 'War Papers' as

a magazine's chief feature. We were a trifle ahead of our time,

I suppose, but our thought was the same as that which has since

achieved so great a success."

In view of all these things, I inscribe this new and expanded

edition of "A Rebel's Recollections" to the true godfather of the

book,--to

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS,

with admiration for his genius, with a grateful recollection of his

helpfulness, and with personal affection.

GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON.

THE AUTHORS CLUB,

_January, 1905_.

PREFACE.

Lunching one day with Oliver Johnson the best "original abolitionist"

I ever knew, I submitted to him the question I was debating with

myself, namely, whether I might write this little volume of

reminiscences without fear of offending excellent people, or, still

worse, reanimating prejudices that happily were dying. His reply

was, "Write, by all means. Prejudice is the first-born of ignorance,

and it never outlives its father. The only thing necessary now to

the final burial of the animosity existing between the sections is

that the North and the South shall learn to know and understand each

other. Anything which contributes to this hastens the day of peace

and harmony and brotherly love which every good man longs for."

Upon this hint I have written, and if the reading of these pages

shall serve, in never so small a degree, to strengthen the kindly

feelings which have grown up of late between the foemen of ten years

ago, I shall think my labor well expended.

I have written chiefly of the things I saw for myself, and yet this

is in no sense the story of my personal adventures. I never wore a

star on my collar, and every reader of military novels knows that

adventures worth writing about never befall a soldier below the rank

of major.

G. C. E.

_October, 1874._

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I. THE MUSTERING 1

II. THE MEN WHO MADE THE ARMY 29

III. THE TEMPER OF THE WOMEN 56

IV. OF THE TIME WHEN MONEY WAS "EASY" 77

V. THE CHEVALIER OF THE LOST CAUSE 108

VI. LEE, JACKSON, AND SOME LESSER WORTHIES 138

VII. SOME QUEER PEOPLE 169

VIII. RED TAPE 193

IX. THE END, AND AFTER 229

THE OLD RÉGIME IN THE OLD DOMINION.

It was a very beautiful and enjoyable life that the Virginians led

in that ancient time, for it certainly seems ages ago, before the

war came to turn ideas upside down and convert the picturesque

commonwealth into a commonplace, modern state. It was a soft, dreamy,

deliciously quiet life, a life of repose, an old life, with all its

sharp corners and rough surfaces long ago worn round and smooth.

Everything fitted everything else, and every point in it was so well

settled as to leave no work of improvement for anybody to do. The

Virginians were satisfied with things as they were, and if there

were reformers born among them, they went elsewhere to work changes.

Society in the Old Dominion was like a well rolled and closely

packed gravel walk, in which each pebble has found precisely the

place it fits best. There was no giving way under one's feet, no

uncomfortable grinding of loose materials as one walked about over

the firm and long-used ways of the Virginian social life.

Let me hasten to say that I do not altogether approve of that life

by any means. That would be flat blasphemy against the god Progress,

and I have no stomach for martyrdom, even of our modern, fireless

sort. I frankly admit in the outset, therefore, that the Virginians

of that old time, between which and the present there is so great a

gulf fixed, were idle people. I am aware that they were, when I lived

among them, extravagant for the most part, and in debt altogether.

It were useless to deny that they habitually violated all the wise

precepts laid down in the published writings of Poor Richard, and set

at naught the whole gospel of thrift. But their way of living was

nevertheless a very agreeable one to share or to contemplate, the

more because there was nothing else like it anywhere in the land.

A whole community, with as nearly as possible nothing to do, is apt

to develop a considerable genius for enjoyment, and the Virginians,

during somewhat more than two centuries of earnest and united effort

in that direction, had partly discovered and partly created both a

science and an art of pleasant living. Add to idleness and freedom

from business cares a climate so perfect that existence itself is a

luxury within their borders, and we shall find no room for wonder

that these people learned how to enjoy themselves. What they learned,

in this regard, they remembered too. Habits and customs once found

good were retained, I will not say carefully,--for that would imply

effort, and the Virginians avoided effort always,--but tenaciously.

The Virginians were born conservatives, constitutionally opposed to

change. They loved the old because it was old, and disliked the new,

if for no better reason, because it was new; for newness and rawness

were well-nigh the same in their eyes.

This constitutional conservatism, without which their mode of life

could never have been what it was, was nourished by both habit and

circumstance. The Virginians were not much given to travelling beyond

their own borders, and when they did go into the outer world it was

only to find a manifestation of barbarism in every departure from

their own prescriptive standards and models. Not that they were more

bigoted than other people, for in truth I think they were not, but

their bigotry took a different direction. They thought well of the

old and the moss-grown, just as some people admire all that is new

and garish and fashionable.

But chief among the causes of that conservatism which gave tone

and color to the life we are considering was the fact that ancient

estates were carefully kept in ancient families, generation after

generation. If a Virginian lived in a particular mansion, it was

strong presumptive proof that his father, his grandfather, and his

great-grandfather had lived there before him. There was no law of

primogeniture to be sure by which this was brought about, but there

were well-established customs which amounted to the same thing.

Family pride was a ruling passion, and not many Virginians of the

better class hesitated to secure the maintenance of their family

place in the ranks of the untitled peerage by the sacrifice of their

own personal prosperity, if that were necessary, as it sometimes

was. To the first-born son went the estate usually, by the will of

the father and with the hearty concurrence of the younger sons, when

there happened to be any such. The eldest brother succeeded the

father as the head of the house, and took upon himself the father's

duties and the father's burdens. Upon him fell the management of

the estate; the maintenance of the mansion, which, under the laws

of hospitality obtaining there, was no light task; the education of

the younger sons and daughters; and last, though commonly not by

any means least, the management of the hereditary debt. The younger

children always had a home in the old mansion, secured to them by the

will of their father sometimes, but secure enough in any case by a

custom more binding than any law; and there were various other ways

of providing for them. If the testator were rich, he divided among

them his bonds, stocks, and other personal property not necessary to

the prosperity of the estate, or charged the head of the house with

the payment of certain legacies to each. The mother's property, if

she had brought a dower with her, was usually portioned out among

them, and the law, medicine, army, navy, and church offered them

genteel employment if they chose to set up for themselves. But these

arrangements were subsidiary to the main purpose of keeping the

estate in the family, and maintaining the mansion-house as a seat of

elegant hospitality. So great was the importance attached to this

last point, and so strictly was its observance enjoined upon the new

lord of the soil, that he was frequently the least to be envied of

all.

I remember a case in which a neighbor of my own, a very wealthy

gentleman, whose house was always open and always full of guests,

dying, left each of his children a plantation. To the eldest son,

however, he gave the home estate, worth three or four times as much

as any of the other plantations, and with it he gave the young

man also a large sum of money. But he charged him with the duty

of keeping open house there, at all times, and directed that the

household affairs should be conducted always precisely as they had

been during his own lifetime. The charge well-nigh outweighed the

inheritance. The new master of the place lived in Richmond, where he

was engaged in manufacturing, and after the death of the father the

old house stood tenantless, but open as before. Its troops of softly

shod servants swept and dusted and polished as of old. Breakfast,

dinner, and supper were laid out every day at the accustomed hours,

under the old butler's supervision, and as the viands grew cold

his silent subordinates waited, trays in hand, at the back of the

empty chairs during the full time appointed for each meal. I have

stopped there for dinner, tea, or to spend the night many a time, in

company with one of the younger sons who lived elsewhere, or with

some relative of the family, or alone, as the case might be, and I

have sometimes met others there. But our coming or not was a matter

of indifference. Guests knew themselves always welcome, but whether

guests came or not the household affairs suffered no change. The

destruction of the house by fire finally lifted this burden from its

master's shoulders, as the will did not require him to rebuild. But

while it stood, its master's large inheritance was of very small

worth to him. And in many other cases the preference given to the

eldest son in the distribution of property was in reality only a

selection of his shoulders to bear the family's burdens.

In these and other ways, old estates of greater or less extent were

kept together, and old families remained lords of the soil. It is not

easy to overestimate the effect of this upon the people. A man to

whom a great estate, with an historic house upon it and an old family

name attached to it, has descended through several generations,

could hardly be other than a conservative in feeling and influence.

These people were the inheritors of the old and the established.

Upon them had devolved the sacred duty of maintaining the reputation

of a family name. They were no longer mere individuals, whose acts

affected only themselves, but were chiefs and representatives

of honorable houses, and as such bound to maintain a reputation

of vastly more worth than their own. Their fathers before them

were their exemplars, and in a close adherence to family customs

and traditions lay their safety from unseemly lapses. The old

furniture, the old wainscot on the walls, the old pictures, the old

house itself, perpetually warned them against change as in itself

unbecoming and dangerous to the dignity of their race.

And so changes were unknown in their social system. As their fathers

lived, so lived they, and there was no feature of their life

pleasanter than its fixity. One always knew what to expect and what

to do; there were no perplexing uncertainties to breed awkwardness

and vexation. There was no room for shams and no temptation to vulgar

display, and so shams and display had no chance to become fashionable.

Aside from the fact that the old and the substantial were the

respectable, the social status of every person was so fixed and

so well known that display was unnecessary on the part of the

good families, and useless on the part of others. The old ladies

constituted a college of heralds and could give you at a moment's

notice any pedigree you might choose to ask for. The "goodness" of

a good family was a fixed fact and needed no demonstration, and

no _parvenu_ could work his way into the charmed circle by vulgar

ostentation or by any other means whatever. As one of the old dames

used to phrase it, ostentatious people were thought to be "rich

before they were ready."

As the good families gave law to the society of the land, so their

chiefs ruled the State in a more positive and direct sense. The

plantation owners, as a matter of course, constituted only a minority

of the voting population, at least after the constitution of 1850

swept away the rule making the ownership of real estate a necessary

qualification for suffrage; but they governed the State nevertheless

as completely as if they had been in the majority. Families naturally

followed the lead of their chiefs, voting together as a matter of

clan pride, when no principle was involved, and so the plantation

owners controlled directly a large part of the population. But a more

important point was that the ballot was wholly unknown in Virginia

until after the war, and as the large landowners were deservedly

men of influence in the community, they had little difficulty, under

a system of _viva-voce_ voting, in carrying things their own way

on all matters on which they were at all agreed among themselves.

It often happened that a Whig would continue year after year to

represent a Democratic district, or _vice versa_, in the Legislature

or in Congress, merely by force of his large family connection and

influence.

All this was an evil, if we choose to think it so. It was

undemocratic certainly, but it worked wonderfully well, and the

system was good in this at least, that it laid the foundations of

politics among the wisest and best men the State had; for as a rule

the planters were the educated men of the community, the reading

men, the scholars, the thinkers, and well-nigh every one of them was

familiar with the whole history of parties and of statesmanship.

Politics was deemed a necessary part of every gentleman's education,

and the youth of eighteen who could not recapitulate the doctrines

set forth in the resolutions of 1798, or tell you the history of the

Missouri Compromise or the Wilmot Proviso, was thought lamentably

deficient in the very rudiments of culture. They had little to do,

and they thought it the bounden duty of every free American citizen

to prepare himself for the intelligent performance of his functions

in the body politic. As a result, if Virginia did not always send

wise men to the councils of the State and nation, she sent no

politically ignorant ones at any rate.

It was a point of honor among Virginians never to shrink from any of

the duties of a citizen. To serve as road-overseer or juryman was

often disagreeable to men who loved ease and comfort as they did, but

every Virginian felt himself in honor bound to serve whenever called

upon, and that without pay, too, as it was deemed in the last degree

disreputable to accept remuneration for doing the plain duty of a

citizen.

It was the same with regard to the magistracy. Magistrates were

appointed until 1850, and after that chosen by election, but under

neither system was any man free to seek or to decline the office.

Appointed or elected, one must serve, if he would not be thought to

shirk his duties as a good man and citizen; and though the duties

of the office were sometimes very onerous, there was practically no

return of any sort made. Magistrates received no salary, and it was

not customary for them to accept the small perquisites allowed them

by law. Under the old constitution, the senior justice of each county

was _ex-officio_ high sheriff, and the farming of the shrievalty--for

the high sheriff always farmed the office--yielded some pecuniary

profit; but any one magistrate's chance of becoming the senior

was too small to be reckoned in the account; and under the new

constitution of 1850 even this was taken away, and the sheriffs

were elected by the people. But to be a magistrate was deemed an

honor, and very properly so, considering the nature of a Virginian

magistrate's functions.

The magistrates were something more than justices of the peace.

A bench of three or more of them constituted the County Court, a

body having a wide civil and criminal jurisdiction of its own, and

concurrent jurisdiction with the Circuit Court over a still larger

field. This County Court sat monthly, and in addition to its judicial

functions was charged with considerable legislative duties for the

county, under a system which gave large recognition to the principle

of local self-government. Four times a year it held grand-jury

terms--an anomaly in magistrate's courts, I believe, but an excellent

one as experience proved. In a large class of criminal cases a bench

of five justices, sitting in regular term, was a court of oyer and

terminer.

The concurrent jurisdiction of this County Court, as I have said,

was very large, and as its sessions were monthly, while those of

the circuit judges were held but twice a year, very many important

civil suits involving considerable interests were brought there

rather than before the higher tribunal. And here we encounter a

very singular fact. The magistrates were usually planters, never

lawyers, and yet, as the records show, the proportion of County-Court

decisions reversed on appeal for error was always smaller than that

of decisions made by the higher tribunals, in which regular judges

sat. At the first glance this seems almost incredible, and yet it

is a fact, and its cause is not far to seek. The magistrates, being

unpaid functionaries, were chosen for their fitness only. Their

election was a sort of choosing of arbitrators, and the men elected

were precisely the kind of men commonly selected by honest disputants

as umpires--men of integrity, probity, and intelligence. They came

into court conscious of their own ignorance of legal technicalities,

and disposed to decide questions upon principles of "right between

man and man" rather than upon the letter of the law; and as the law

is, in the main, founded upon precisely these principles of abstract

justice, their decision usually proved sound in law as well as right

in fact.

But the magistrates were not wholly without instruction even

in technical matters of law. They learned a good deal by long

service,--their experience often running over a period of thirty

or forty years on the bench,--and, in addition to the skill which

intelligent men must have gained in this way, they had still another

resource. When the bench thought it necessary to inform itself on

a legal point, the presiding magistrate asked in open court for the

advice of counsel, and in such an event every lawyer not engaged in

the case at bar, or in another involving a like principle, was under

obligation to give a candid expression of his opinion.

The system was a very peculiar and interesting one, and in Virginia

it was about the best also that could have been hit upon, though it

is more than doubtful whether it would work equally well anywhere

else. All the conditions surrounding it were necessary to its

success, and those conditions were of a kind that cannot be produced

at will; they must grow. In the first place, the intelligence and

culture of a community must not be concentrated in certain centres,

as is usually the case, especially in commercial and manufacturing

States, but must be distributed pretty evenly over the country, else

the material out of which such a magistracy can be created will not

be where it is needed; and in the very nature of the case it cannot

be imported for the purpose. There must also be a public sentiment

to compel the best men to serve when chosen, and the best men must

be men of wealth and leisure, else they cannot afford to serve,

for such a magistracy must of necessity be unpaid. In short, the

system can work well only under the conditions which gave it birth

in Virginia, and those conditions will probably never again exist in

any of these States. It is a matter of small moment to the citizen

of Massachusetts or New York that Virginia once had a very peculiar

judiciary; but it is not a matter of light importance that our scheme

of government leaves every State free to devise for itself a system

of local institutions adapted to its needs and the character and

situation of its people; that it is not uniformity we have sought and

secured in our attempt to establish a government by the people, but

a wise diversity rather; that experience and not theory is our guide;

that our institutions are cut to fit our needs, and not to match a

fixed pattern; and that the necessities of one part of the country do

not prescribe a rule for another part.

But this is not a philosophical treatise. Return we therefore to

the region of small facts. It is a little curious that with their

reputed fondness for honorary titles of all kinds, the Virginians

never addressed a magistrate as "judge," even in that old time when

the functions of the justice fairly entitled him to the name. And

it is stranger still, perhaps, that in Virginia the members of the

Legislature were never called "honorable," that distinction being

held strictly in reserve for members of Congress and of the national

cabinet. This fact seems all the more singular when we remember that

in the view of Virginians the States were nations, while the general

government was little more than their accredited agent, charged with

the performance of certain duties and holding certain delegated

powers which were subject to recall at any time.

I have said that every educated Virginian was acquainted with

politics, but this is only half the truth. They knew the details

quite as well as the general facts, and there were very many of them

not politicians and never candidates for office of any kind who could

give from memory an array of dates and other figures of which the

Tribune Almanac would have no occasion to be ashamed. Not to know

the details of the vote in Connecticut in any given year was to lay

oneself open to a suspicion of incompetence; to confess forgetfulness

of the "ayes and noes" on any important division in Congress was

to rule oneself out of the debate as an ignoramus. I say debate

advisedly, for there was always a debate on political matters when

two Virginia gentlemen met anywhere except in church during sermon

time. They argued earnestly, excitedly, sometimes even violently,

but ordinarily without personal ill-feeling. In private houses they

could not quarrel, being gentlemen and guests of a common host, or

standing in the relation of guest and host to each other; in more

public places--for they discussed politics in all places and at all

times--they refrained from quarrelling because to quarrel would

not have been proper. But they never lost an opportunity to make

political speeches to each other; alternately, sometimes, but quite

as often both, or all, at once.

It would sometimes happen, of course, that two or more gentlemen

meeting would find themselves agreed in their views, but the pleasure

of indulging in a heated political discussion was never foregone for

any such paltry reason as that. Finding no point on which they could

disagree, they would straightway join forces and do valiant battle

against the common enemy. That the enemy was not present to answer

made no difference. They knew all his positions and all the arguments

by which his views could be sustained quite as well as he did, and

they combated these. It was funny, of course, but the participants in

these one-sided debates never seemed to see the ludicrous points of

the picture.

A story is told of one of the fiercest of these social political

debaters--a story too well vouched for among his friends to be

doubted--which will serve, perhaps, to show how unnecessary the

presence of an antagonist was to the successful conduct of a debate.

It was "at a dining-day," to speak in the native idiom, and it so

happened that all the guests were Whigs, except Mr. E----, who was

the staunchest of Jeffersonian Democrats. The discussion began, of

course, as soon as the women left the table, and it speedily waxed

hot. Mr. E----, getting the ear of the company at the outset, laid on

right and left with his customary vigor, rasping the Whigs on their

sorest points, arguing, asserting, denouncing, demonstrating--to his

own entire satisfaction--for perhaps half an hour; silencing every

attempt at interruption by saying:

"Now wait, please, till I get through; I'm one against seven, and you

must let me make my points. Then you can reply."

He finished at last, leaving every Whig nerve quivering, every Whig

face burning with suppressed indignation, and every Whig breast full,

almost to bursting, with a speech in reply. The strongest debater

of them all managed to begin first, but just as he pronounced the

opening words, Mr. E---- interrupted him.

"Pardon me," he said, "I know all your little arguments, so I'll go

and talk with the girls for half an hour while you run them over;

when you get through send for me, and I'll come and SWEEP YOU CLEAR

OUT OF THE ARENA."

And with that the exasperating man bowed himself out of the

dining-room.

But with all its ludicrousness, this universal habit of "talking

politics" had its uses. In the first place, politics with these

men was a matter of principle, and not at all a question of shrewd

management. They knew what they had and what they wanted. Better

still they knew every officeholder's record, and held each to a

strict account of his stewardship.

Under the influence of this habit in social life, every man was

constantly on his metal, of course, and every young man was bound

to fortify himself for contests to come by a diligent study of

history and politics. He must know as a necessary preparation for

ordinary social converse all those things that are commonly left to

the professional politicians. As well might he go into society in

ignorance of yesterday's weather or last week's news, as without full

knowledge of Benton's Thirty Years' View, and a familiar acquaintance

with the papers in the Federalist. In short, this odd habit compelled

thorough political education, and enforced upon every man old enough

to vote an active, earnest participation in politics. Perhaps a

country in which universal suffrage exists would be the better if

both were more general than they are.

But politics did not furnish the only subjects of debate among these

people. They talked politics, it is true, whenever they met at all,

but when they had mutually annihilated each other, when each had

said all there was to say on the subject, they frequently turned to

other themes. Of these, the ones most commonly and most vigorously

discussed were points of doctrinal theology. The great battle-ground

was baptism. Half the people were, perhaps, Baptists, and when

Baptist and pedo-Baptist met they sniffed the battle at once,--that

is to say, as soon as they had finished the inevitable discussion of

politics.

On this question of Baptism each had been over the ground many

hundreds of times, and each must have known when he put forth an

argument what the answer would be. But this made no manner of

difference. They were always ready to go over the matter again. I

amused myself once by preparing a "part" debate on the subject. I

arranged the remarks of each disputant in outline, providing each

speech with its proper "cue," after the manner of stage copies of a

play, and, taking a friend into my confidence, I used sometimes to

follow the discussion, with my copy of it in hand, and, except in

the case of a very poorly informed or wholly unpractised debater, my

"cues" and speeches were found to be amusingly accurate.

The Virginians were a very religious as well as a very polemical

people, however, and I do not remember that I ever knew them, even

in the heat of their fiercest discussions upon doctrine, to forget

the brotherly kindness which lay as a broad foundation under their

card-houses of creed. They believed with all their souls in the

doctrines set down by their several denominations, and maintained

them stoutly on all occasions; but they loved each other, attended

each other's services, and joined hands right heartily in every good

work.

There was one other peculiarity in their church relations worthy of

notice. The Episcopal Church was once an establishment in Virginia,

as every reader knows, but every reader does not know, perhaps, that

even up to the outbreak of the war it remained in some sense an

establishment in some parts of the State.

There were little old churches in many neighborhoods which had stood

for a century or two, and the ancestors of the present generation

had all belonged to them in their time. One of these churches I

remember lovingly for its old traditions, for its picturesqueness,

and for the warmth of the greeting its congregation gave me--not

as a congregation but as individuals--when I, a lad half grown,

returned to the land of my fathers. Every man and woman in that

congregation had known my father and loved him, and nearly every

one was my cousin, at least in the Virginian acceptation of that

word. The church was Episcopal, of course, while the great majority,

perhaps seven eighths of the people who attended it and supported

it were members of other denominations--Baptists, Presbyterians, and

Methodists. But they all felt themselves at home here. This was the

old family church where their forefathers had worshiped, and under

the shadow of which they were buried. They all belonged here no

matter what other church might claim them as members. They paid the

old clergyman's salary, served in the vestry, attended the services,

kept church, organ, and churchyard in repair, and in all respects

regarded themselves, and were held by others, as members here of

right and by inheritance. It was church and family, instead of Church

and State, and the sternest Baptist or Presbyterian among them would

have thought himself wronged if left out of the count of this little

church's membership. This was their heritage, their home, and the

fact that they had also united themselves with churches of other

denominations made no difference whatever in their feeling toward

the old mother church, there in the woods, guarding and cherishing

the dust of their dead.

All the people, young and old, went to church; it was both pleasant

and proper to do so, though not all of them went for the sake of

the sermon or the service. The churches were usually built in the

midst of a grove of century oaks, and their surroundings were nearly

always pleasantly picturesque. The gentlemen came on horseback, the

ladies in their great lumbering, old-fashioned carriages, with an

ebony driver in front and a more or less ebony footman or two behind.

Beside the driver sat ordinarily the old "mammy" of the family, or

some other equally respectable and respected African woman, whose

crimson or scarlet turban and orange neckerchief gave a dash of color

to the picture, a trifle barbaric, perhaps, in combination, but

none the less pleasant in its effect for that. The young men came

first, mounted on their superb riding horses, wearing great buckskin

gauntlets and clad in full evening dress--that being _en règle_

always in Virginia,--with the skirts of the coat drawn forward, over

the thighs, and pinned in front, as a precaution against possible

contact with the reeking sides of the hard-ridden steeds.

The young men came first to church, as I have said, and they did so

for a purpose. The carriages were elegant and costly, many of them,

but nearly all were extremely old-fashioned; perched high in air,

they were not easy of entrance or exit by young women in full dress

without assistance, and it was accounted the prescriptive privilege

of the young men to render the needed service at the church door.

When this preliminary duty was fully done, some of the youths took

seats inside the church, but if the weather were fine many preferred

to stroll through the woods, or to sit in little groups under the

trees, awaiting the exit of the womankind, who must, of course, be

chatted with and helped into their carriages again.

Invitations to dinner or to a more extended visit were in order

the moment the service was over. Every gentleman went to dine with

a friend, or took a number of friends to dine with him. But the

arrangements depended largely upon the young women, who had a very

pretty habit of visiting each other and staying a week or more,

and these visits nearly always originated at church. Each young

woman invited all the rest to go home with her, and after a deal of

confused consultation, out of whose chaos only the feminine mind

could possibly have extracted anything like a conclusion, two or

three would win all the others to themselves, each taking half a

dozen or more with her, and promising to send early the next morning

for their trunks. With so many of the fairest damsels secured for

a visit of a week or a fortnight, the young hostess was sure of

cavaliers in plenty to do her guests honor. And upon my word it was

all very pleasant! I have idled away many a week in these old country

houses, and for my life I cannot manage to regret the fact, or to

remember it with a single pang of remorse for the wasted hours.

Perhaps after all they were not wholly wasted. Who shall say? Other

things than gold are golden.

As a guest in those houses one was not welcome only, but free. There

was a servant to take your horse, a servant to brush your clothes, a

servant to attend you whenever you had a want to supply or a wish to

gratify. But you were never oppressed with attentions, or under any

kind of restraint. If you liked to sit in the parlor, the women there

would entertain you very agreeably, or set you to entertaining them

by reading aloud, or by anything else which might suggest itself. If

you preferred the piazza, there were sure to be others like-minded

with yourself. If you smoked, there were always pipes and tobacco on

the sideboard, and a man-servant to bring them to you if you were not

inclined to go after them. In short, each guest might do precisely as

he pleased, sure that in doing so he should best please his host and

hostess.

My own favorite amusement--I am the father of a family now, and may

freely confess the fancies and foibles of a departed youth--was to

accompany the young mistress of the mansion on her rounds of domestic

duty, carrying her key-basket for her, and assisting her in various

ways, unlocking doors and--really I cannot remember that I was of any

very great use to her after all; but willingness counts for a good

deal in this world, and I was always very willing at any rate. As a

rule, the young daughter of the mansion was housekeeper, and this may

perhaps account for the fact that the habit of carrying housekeeper's

key-baskets for them was very general among the young gentlemen in

houses where they were upon terms of intimate friendship.

Life in Virginia was the pursuit of happiness and its attainment.

Money was a means only, and was usually spent very lavishly whenever

its expenditure could add in any way to comfort, but as there was

never any occasion to spend it for mere display, most of the planters

were abundantly able to use it freely for better purposes. That is

to say, most of them were able to owe their debts and to renew their

notes when necessary. Their houses were built for comfort, and most

of them had grown gray with age long before the present generation

was born. A great passage-way ran through the middle, commonly, and

here stood furniture which would have delighted the heart of the

mediævalist: great, heavy oaken chairs, black with age and polished

with long usage--chairs whose joints were naked and not ashamed;

sofas of ponderous build, made by carpenters who were skeptical as

to the strength of woods, and thought it necessary to employ solid

pieces of oak, four inches in diameter, for legs, and to shoe each

with a solid brass lion's paw as a precaution against abrasion. A

great porch in front was shut out at night by the ponderous double

doors of the hallway, but during the day the way was wide open

through the house.

The floors were of white ash, and in summer no carpets or rugs

were anywhere to be seen. Every morning the floors were polished

by diligent scouring with dry pine needles, and the furniture

similarly brightened by rubbing with wax and cork. In the parlors

the furniture was usually very rich as to woods and very antique

in workmanship. The curtains were of crimson damask with lace

underneath, and the contrast between these and the bare, white,

polished floor was singularly pleasing.

The first white person astir in the house every morning was the

woman who carried the keys, mother or daughter, as the case might

be. Her morning work was no light affair, and its accomplishment

consumed several hours daily. To begin with she must knead the light

bread with her own hands and send it to the kitchen to be baked and

served hot at breakfast. She must prepare a skillet full of light

rolls for the same meal, and "give out" the materials for the rest

of the breakfast. Then she must see to the sweeping and garnishing

of the lower rooms, passages, and porches, lest the maids engaged in

that task should entertain less extreme views than her own on the

subject of that purity and cleanliness which constituted the house's

charm and the housekeeper's crown of honor. She must write two or

three notes, to be dispatched by the hands of a small negro to her

acquaintances in the neighborhood,--a kind of correspondence much

affected in that society. In the midst of all these duties, the young

housekeeper--for somehow it is only the youthful ones whom I remember

vividly--must meet and talk with such of the guests as might happen

to be early risers, and must not forget to send a messenger to the

kitchen once every ten minutes to "hurry up breakfast!" not that

breakfast could be hurried under any conceivable circumstances, but

merely because it was the custom to send such messages, and the young

woman was a duty-loving maid who did her part in the world without

inquiring why. She knew very well that breakfast would be ready at

the traditional hour, the hour at which it always had been served

in that house, and that there was no power on the plantation great

enough to hasten it by a single minute. But she sent out to "hurry"

it nevertheless.

When breakfast is ready the guests are ready for it. It is a merit of

fixed habits that one can conform to them easily, and when one knows

that breakfast has been ready in the house in which he is staying

precisely at nine o'clock every morning for one or two centuries

past, and that the immovable conservatism of an old Virginian cook

stands guard over the sanctity of that custom, he has no difficulty

in determining when to begin dressing.

The breakfast is sure to be a good one, consisting of everything

obtainable at the season. If it be in summer, the host will have a

dish of broiled roe herrings before him, a plate of hot rolls at

his right hand, and a cylindrical loaf of hot white bread--which

it is his duty to cut and serve--on his left. On the flanks will

be one or two plates of beaten biscuit and a loaf of batter bread,

_i. e._, corn-bread made rich with milk and eggs. A dish of plain corn

"pones" sits on the dresser, and the servants bring griddle-cakes or

waffles hot from the kitchen; so much for breads. A knuckle of cold,

boiled ham is always present, on either the table or the dresser, as

convenience may dictate. A dish of sliced tomatoes and another of

broiled ditto are the invariable vegetables, supplemented on occasion

with lettuce, radishes, and other like things. These are the staples

of breakfast, and additions are made as the season serves.

Breakfast over, the young housekeeper scalds and dries the dishes

and glassware with her own hands. Then she goes to the garden,

smoke-house, and store-room, to "give out" for dinner. Morning rides,

backgammon, music, reading, etc., furnish amusement until one

o'clock, or a little later. The gentlemen go shooting or fishing,

if they choose, or join the host in his rides over the plantation,

inspecting his corn, tobacco, wheat, and live stock. About one the

house grows quiet. The women retire to their chambers, the gentlemen

make themselves comfortable in various ways. About two it is the duty

of the master of the mansion to offer toddy or juleps to his guests,

and to ask one of the dining-room servants if "dinner is 'most

ready." Half an hour later he must send the cook word to "hurry it

up." It is to be served at four, of course, but as the representative

of an ancient house, it is his bounden duty to ask the two-o'clock

question and send the half-past-two message.

Supper is served at eight, and the women usually retire for the night

at ten or eleven.

If hospitality was deemed the chief of virtues among the Virginians,

the duty of accepting hospitality was quite as strongly insisted

upon. One must visit his friends, whatever the circumstances, if he

would not be thought churlish. Especially were young men required

to show a proper respect and affection for elderly female relatives

by dining with them as frequently as at any other house. I shall

not soon forget some experiences of my own in this regard. The most

stately and elegant country-house I have ever seen stood in our

neighborhood. Its master had lived in great state there, and after

his death his two maiden sisters, left alone in the great mansion,

scrupulously maintained every custom he had established or inherited.

They were my cousins in the Virginian sense of the word, and I had

not been long a resident of the State when my guardian reminded me

of my duty toward them. I must ride over and dine there without a

special invitation, and I must do this six or eight times a year

at the least. As a mere boy, half-grown, I made ready for my visit

with a good deal of awe and trepidation. I had already met the two

stately dames and was disposed to distrust my manners in their

presence. I went, however, and was received with warm, though rather

stiff and formal, cordiality. My horse was taken to the stable. I

was shown to my room by a thoroughly drilled servant, whose tongue

had been trained to as persistent a silence as if his functions had

been those of a mute at a funeral. His name I discovered was Henry,

but beyond this I could make no progress in his acquaintance. He

prided himself upon knowing his place, and the profound respect with

which he treated me made it impossible that I should ask him for the

information on which my happiness, perhaps my reputation, just then

depended. I wanted to know for what purpose I had been shown to my

room, what I was expected to do there, and at what hour I ought to

descend to the parlor or library.

It was manifestly out of the question to seek such information at

the hands of so well-regulated a being as Henry. He had ushered me

into my room and now stood bolt upright, gazing fixedly at nothing

and waiting for my orders in profound and immovable silence. He

had done his part well, and it was not for him to assume that I

was unprepared to do mine. His attitude indicated, or perhaps I

should say aggressively asserted, the necessity he was under of

assuming my entire familiarity with the usages of good society and

the ancient customs of this ancient house. The worst of it was I

fancied that the solemn rogue guessed my ignorance and delighted in

exposing my fraudulent pretensions to good breeding. But in this

I did him an injustice, as future knowledge of him taught me. He

was well drilled, and delighted in doing his duty, that was all. No

_gaucherie_ on my part would have moved him to smile. He knew his

place and his business too well for that. Whatever I might have done

he would have held to be perfectly proper. It was for him to stand

there like a statue, until I should bid him do otherwise, and if I

had kept him there for a week I think he would have given no sign

of weariness or impatience. As it was, his presence appalled and

oppressed me, and in despair of discovering the proper thing to do, I

determined to put a bold face upon the matter.

"I am tired and warm," I said, "and will rest awhile upon the bed. I

will join the ladies in half an hour. You may go now."

At dinner, Henry stood at the sideboard and silently directed the

servants. When the cloth was removed, he brought a wine tub with

perhaps a dozen bottles of antique Madeira in it and silently

awaited my signal before decanting one of them. When I had drunk a

glass with the ladies, they rose and retired according to the custom,

leaving me alone with the wine and the cigars,--and Henry, whose

erect solemnity converted the great silent dining-room into something

very like a funeral chamber. He stood there like a guardsman on duty,

immovable, speechless, patient, while I sat at the board, a decanter

of wine before me and the tub of unopened bottles on the floor by my

side--enough for a regiment.

I did not want any wine or anything else except a sound of some sort

to break the horrible stillness. I tried to think of some device by

which to make Henry go out of the room or move one of his hands or

turn his eyes a little or even wink; but I failed utterly. There was

nothing whatever to be done. There was no order to give him. Every

want was supplied and everything was at my hand. The cigars were

under my nose, the ash pan by them, and a lighted wax candle stood

within reach. I toyed with the decanter in the hope of breaking the

stillness, but its stand was too well cushioned above and below to

make a sound. I ventured at last to move one of my feet, but a strip

of velvet carpet lay between it and the floor.

I could stand it no longer. Filling a glass of wine I drank it off,

lighted a fresh cigar, and boldly strode out of the house to walk on

the lawn in front.

On the occasion of subsequent visits I got on well enough, knowing

precisely what to expect and what to do, and in time I came to regard

this as one of the very pleasantest houses in which I visited at all,

if on no other account than because I found myself perfectly free

there to do as I pleased; but until I learned that I was expected

to consult only my own comfort while a guest in the house the

atmosphere of the place oppressed me.

Not in every house were the servants so well trained as Henry,

but what they lacked in skill they fully made up in numbers, and

in hardly anything else was the extravagance of the Virginians

so manifest as in their wastefulness of labor. On nearly every

plantation there were ten or twelve able-bodied men and women

employed about the house, doing the work which two or three ought to

have done, and might have done; and in addition to this there were

usually a dozen or a score of others with merely nominal duties or no

duties at all. But it was useless to urge their master to send any of

them to the field, and idle to show him that the addition which might

thus be made to the force of productive laborers would so increase

his revenue as to acquit him of debt within a few years. He did not

much care to be free of debt for one thing, and he liked to have

plenty of servants always within call. As his dinner table bore every

day food enough for a battalion, so his nature demanded the presence

of half a dozen servitors whenever one was wanted. Indeed, these

people usually summoned servants in squads, calling three or four

to take one guest's horse to the stable or to bring one pitcher of

ice-water.

And yet I should do the Virginians great injustice were I to leave

the impression that they were lazy. With abundant possessions,

superabundant household help and slave labor, they had a good deal of

leisure, but they were nevertheless very industrious people in their

way. It was no light undertaking to manage a great plantation and

at the same time fulfil the large measure of duties to friends and

neighbors which custom imposed. One must visit and receive visitors,

and must go to court every month, and to all planters' meetings.

Besides this there was a certain amount of fox hunting and squirrel

and bird and turkey shooting and fishing to be done, from which it

was really very difficult to escape with any credit to oneself.

On the whole, the time of the planters was pretty fully occupied.

The women had household duties, and these included the cutting and

making of clothes for all the negroes on the plantation, a heavy task

which might as well have been done by the negro seamstresses, except

that such was not the custom. Fair women who kept dressmakers for

themselves worked day after day on coarse cloths, manufacturing coats

and trousers for the field hands. They did a great deal of embroidery

and worsted work too, and personally instructed negro girls in the

use of the needle and scissors. All this, with their necessary

visiting and entertaining, and their daily attendance upon the sick

negroes, whom they always visited and cared for in person, served to

make the Virginian women about the busiest women I have ever known.

Even Sunday brought them little rest, for, in addition to other

duties on that day, each of them spent some hours at the "quarters"

holding a Sunday-school.

Nevertheless the Virginians had a good deal of leisure on their

hands, and their command of time was a very important agent, I should

say, in the formation of their characters as individuals, and as a

people. It bred habits of outdoor exercise, which gave the young

men stalwart frames and robust constitutions. It gave form to their

social life. Above all, it made reading men and students of many,

though their reading and their study were of a somewhat peculiar

kind. They were all Latinists, inasmuch as Latin formed the staple

of their ordinary school course. It was begun early and continued

to the end, and even in after life very many planters were in the

habit of reading their Virgil and their Horace and their Ovid as

an amusement, so that it came to be assumed, quite as a matter of

course, that every gentleman with any pretension to culture could

read Latin easily, and quote Horace and Juvenal from memory.

But they read English literature still more largely, and in no

part of the country, except in distinctly literary centres like

Cambridge or Concord, are really rich household libraries so common a

possession, I think, as they were among the best classes of Virginian

planters. Let us open the old glass doors and see what books the

Virginians read. The libraries in the old houses were the growth of

many generations, begun perhaps by the English cadet who founded the

family on this side of the water in the middle of the seventeenth

century, and added to little by little from that day to this. They

were especially rich in the English classics, in early editions with

long _s's_ and looped _ct's_, but sadly deficient in the literature

of the present. In one of them, I remember, I found nearly everything

from Chaucer to Byron, and comparatively little that was later. From

Pope to Southey it furnished a pretty complete geologic section of

English literature, and from internal evidence I conclude that when

the founder of the family and the library first took up his residence

in the Old Dominion, Swift was still a contributor to the Gentleman's

Magazine, and Pope was a poet not many years dead.

There was a copy of "Tom Jones," and another of "Joseph Andrews,"

printed in Fielding's own time. The "Spectator" was there, not in the

shape of a reprint, but the original papers, rudely bound, a treasure

brought from England, doubtless, by the immigrant. Richardson,

Smollett, Swift, and the rest were present in contemporary editions;

the poets and essayists, pretty much all of them, in quaint old

volumes; Johnson's "Lives of the Poets;" Sheridan's plays, stitched;

Burke's works; Scott's novels in force, just as they came, one after

another, from the press of the Edinburgh publishers; Miss Edgeworth's

moralities elbowing Mrs. Aphra Behn's strongly tainted romances; Miss

Burney's "Evelina," which was so "proper" that all the young ladies

used to read it, but so dull that nobody ever opens it nowadays; and

scores of other old "new books," which I have no room to catalogue

here, even if I could remember them all.

Byron appeared, not as a whole, but in separate volumes, bought as

each was published. Even the poor little "Hours of Idleness" was

there, ordered from across the sea, doubtless, in consequence of the

savage treatment it received at the hands of the Edinburgh Review,

bound volumes of which were on the shelves below. There was no copy

of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," but as nearly all the rest

of Byron's poems were there in original editions, it seems probable

that the satire also had once held a place in the library. It had

been read to pieces, perhaps, or borrowed and never returned.

There were histories of all kinds, and collected editions of standard

works in plenty, covering a wide field of law, politics, theology,

and what not.

Of strictly modern books the assortment was comparatively meagre.

Macaulay's "Miscellanies," Motley's "Dutch Republic," Prescott's

"Mexico," "Peru," etc.; stray volumes of Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer,

and Lever; Kennedy's "Swallow Barn," Cooke's "Virginia Comedians,"

half a dozen volumes of Irving, and a few others made up the list.

Of modern poetry there was not a line, and in this, as in other

respects, the old library--burned during the war--fairly represented

the literary tastes and reading habits of the Virginians in general.

They read little or no recent poetry and not much recent prose. I

think this was not so much the result of prejudice as of education.

The schools in Virginia were excellent ones of their kind, but their

system was that of a century ago. They gave attention chiefly to "the

humanities" and logic, and the education of a Virginian gentleman

resembled that of an Englishman of the last century far more closely

than that of any modern American. The writers of the present

naturally address themselves to men of to-day, and this is precisely

what the Virginians were not, wherefore modern literature was not at

all a thing to their taste.

To all this there were of course exceptions. I have known some

Virginians who appreciated Tennyson, enjoyed Longfellow and Lowell,

and understood Browning; just as I have known a few who affected a

modern pronunciation of the letter "a" in such words as "master,"

"basket," "glass," and "grass."

A REBEL'S RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTER I.

THE MUSTERING.

That was an admirable idea of De Quincey's, formally to postulate

any startling theory upon which he desired to build an argument or

a story, and to insist that his readers should regard the postulate

as proved, on pain of losing altogether what he had to say. The

plan is a very convenient one, saving a deal of argument, and

establishing in the outset a very desirable relation of mastery and

subordination between writer and reader. Indeed, but for some such

device I should never be able to get on at all with these sketches,

fully to understand which, the reader must make of himself, for the

time at least, a Confederate. He must put himself in the place of

the Southerners and look at some things through their eyes, if he

would understand those things and their results at all; and as it is

no part of my purpose to write a defense of the Southern view of any

question, it will save a good deal of explanation on my part, and

weariness on the part of the reader, if I follow De Quincey's example

and do a little postulating to begin with. I shall make no attempt

whatever to prove my postulates, but any one interested in these

pages will find it to his advantage to accept them, one and all, as

proved, pending the reading of what is to follow. After that he may

relapse as speedily as he pleases into his own opinions. Here are the

postulates:--

1. The Southerners honestly believed in the right of secession, not

merely as a revolutionary, but as a constitutional right. They not

only held that whenever any people finds the government under which

it is living oppressive and subversive of the ends for which it

was instituted, it is both the right and the duty of that people to

throw off the government and establish a new one in its stead; but

they believed also that every State in the Union held the reserved

right, under the constitution, to withdraw peaceably from the Union

at pleasure.

2. They believed that every man's allegiance was due to his State

only, and that it was only by virtue of the State's continuance in

the Union that any allegiance was due to the general government

at all; wherefore the withdrawal of a State from the Union would

of itself absolve all the citizens of that State from whatever

obligations they were under to maintain and respect the Federal

constitution. In other words, patriotism, as the South understood it,

meant devotion to one's State, and only a secondary and consequential

devotion to the Union, existing as a result of the State's action in

making itself a part of the Union, and terminable at any time by the

State's withdrawal.

3. They were as truly and purely patriotic in their secession and in

the fighting which followed, as were the people of the North in their

adherence to the Union itself. The difference was one of opinion as

to what the duties of a patriot were, and not at all a difference in

the degree of patriotism existing in the two sections.

4. You, reader, who shouldered your musket and fought like the hero

you are, for the Union and the old flag, if you had been bred at the

South, and had understood your duty as the Southerners did theirs,

would have fought quite as bravely for secession as you did against

it; and you would have been quite as truly a hero in the one case as

in the other, because in either you would have risked your life for

the sake of that which you held to be the right. If the reader will

bear all this in mind we shall get on much better than we otherwise

could, in our effort to catch a glimpse of the war from a Southern

point of view.

With all its horrors and in spite of the wretchedness it has wrought,

this war of ours, in some of its aspects at least, begins to look

like a very ridiculous affair, now that we are getting too far away

from it to hear the rattle of the musketry; and I have a mind, in

this chapter, to review one of its most ridiculous phases, to wit,

its beginning. We all remember Mr. Webster's pithy putting of the

case with regard to our forefathers of a hundred years ago: "They

went to war against a preamble. They fought seven years against

a declaration. They poured out their treasures and their blood

like water, in a contest in opposition to an assertion." Now it

seems to me that something very much like this might be said of

the Southerners, and particularly of the Virginians, without whose

pluck and pith there could have been no war at all worth writing

or talking about. They made war upon a catch-word, and fought until

they were hopelessly ruined for the sake of an abstraction. And

certainly history will not find it to the discredit of those people

that they freely offered themselves upon the altar of an abstract

principle of right, in a war which they knew must work hopeless ruin

to themselves, whatever its other results might be. Virginia did not

want to secede, and her decision to this effect was given in the

election of a convention composed for the most part of men strongly

opposed to secession. The Virginians believed they had both a moral

and a constitutional right to withdraw voluntarily from a Union into

which they had voluntarily gone, but the majority of them preferred

to remain as they were. They did not feel themselves particularly

aggrieved or threatened by the election of Mr. Lincoln, and so,

while they never doubted that they had an unquestionable right to

secede at will, they decided by their votes not to do anything of

the kind. This decision was given in the most unmistakable way,

by heavy majorities, in an election which involved no other issue

whatever. But without Virginia the States which had already passed

ordinances of secession would have been wholly unable to sustain

themselves. Virginia's strength in men, material, and geographical

position was very necessary, for one thing, and her moral influence

on North Carolina, Arkansas, and other hesitating States, was even

more essential to the success of the movement. Accordingly every

possible effort was made to "fire the heart" of the conservative

old commonwealth. Delegations, with ponderous stump speeches in

their mouths and parchment appeals in their hands, were sent from

the seceding States to Richmond, while every Virginian who actively

favored secession was constituted a committee of one to cultivate a

public sentiment in favor of the movement.

Then came such a deluge of stump speeches as would have been

impossible in any other state or country in the civilized world, for

there never yet was a Virginian who could not, on occasion, acquit

himself very well on the hustings. The process of getting up the

requisite amount of enthusiasm, in the country districts especially,

was in many cases a very laughable one. In one county, I remember,

the principal speakers were three lawyers of no very great weight

except in a time of excitement. One of them was colonel of the county

militia, another lieutenant-colonel, and the third captain of a troop

of volunteer cavalry, a fine body of men, who spent three or four

days of each month partly in practicing a system of drill which, I

am persuaded, is as yet wholly undreamed of by any of the writers

upon tactics, and partly in cultivating the social virtues over that

peculiar species of feast known as a barbecue. When it became evident

that the people of Virginia were not duly impressed with the wrong

done them in the election of Mr. Lincoln, these were unquestionably

the right men in the right places. They were especially fond of

fervid speech-making, and not one of them had ever been known to

neglect an opportunity to practice it; each could make a speech on

any subject at a moment's warning. They spoke quite as well on a

poor theme as on a good one, and it was even claimed for one of them

that his eloquence waxed hottest when he had no subject at all to

talk about. Here, then, was their opportunity. The ever-full vials

of their eloquence waited only for the uncorking. It was the rule of

their lives to make a speech wherever and whenever they could get an

audience, and under the militia law they could, at will, compel the

attendance of a body of listeners consisting of pretty nearly all the

voters of the county, plus the small boys. When they were big with

speech they had only to order a drill. If a new gush of words or a

felicitous illustration occurred to them overnight, they called a

general muster for the next day. Two of them were candidates, against

a quiet and sensible planter, for the one seat allowed the county in

the convention, and the only difference of opinion there was between

them was involved in the question whether the ordinance of secession

should be adopted _before or after_ breakfast on the morning of the

first day of the convention's existence. One wanted coffee first and

the other did not. On the day of election, a drunken fellow, without

a thought of saying a good thing, apologized to one of them for not

having voted for him, saying, "I promised you, Sam,--but I couldn't

do it. You're a good fellow, Sam, and smart at a speech, but you see,

Sam, you _haven't the weight o' head_." The people, as the result of

the election showed, entertained a like view of the matter, and the

lawyers were both beaten by the old planter.

It was not until after the convention assembled, however, that

the eloquence of the triad came into full play. They then labored

unceasingly to find words with which to express their humiliation in

view of the degeneracy and cowardice of the ancient commonwealth.

They rejoiced in the thought that sooner or later the People--which

they always pronounced with an uncommonly big P--would "hurl those

degenerate sons of illustrious sires," meaning thereby the gentlemen

who had been elected to the convention, "from the seats which they

were now polluting," and a good deal more of a similar sort, the

point of which was that these orators longed for war of the bloodiest

kind, and were happy in the belief that it would come, in spite of

the fact that the convention was overwhelmingly against secession.

Now, in view of the subsequent history of these belligerent orators,

it would be a very interesting thing to know just what they thought

a war between the sections promised. One of them, as I have said,

was colonel of the two or three hundred militia-men mustered in

the county. Another was lieutenant-colonel, and the third was

captain of a volunteer troop, organized under the militia law for

purposes of amusement, chiefly. This last one could, of course,

retain his rank, should his company be mustered into service, and

the other two firmly believed that they would be called into camp

as full-fledged field-officers. In view of this, the colonel, in

one of his speeches, urged upon his men the necessity of a rigid

self-examination, touching the matter of personal courage, before

going, in his regiment, to the battle-field; "For," said he, "where

G. leads, brave men must follow," a bit of rhetoric which brought

down the house as a matter of course. The others were equally valiant

in anticipation of war and equally eager for its coming; and yet

when the war did come, so sorely taxing the resources of the South

as to make a levy _en masse_ necessary, not one of the three ever

managed to hear the whistle of a bullet. The colonel did indeed

go as far as Richmond, during the spring of 1861, but discovering

there that he was physically unfit for service, went no farther. The

lieutenant-colonel ran away from the field while the battle was yet

afar off, and the captain, suffering from "nervous prostration," sent

in his resignation, which was unanimously accepted by his men, on the

field during the first battle of Bull Run.

I sketch these three men and their military careers not without a

purpose. They serve to correct an error. They were types of a class

which brought upon the South a deal of odium. Noisy speech-makers,

they were too often believed by strangers to be, as they pretended,

representative men, and their bragging, their intolerance, their

contempt for the North, their arrogance,--all these were commonly

laid to the charge of the Southern people as a whole. As a matter

of fact, these were not representative men at all. They assumed the

_rôle_ of leadership on the court-house greens, but were repudiated

by the people at the polls first, and afterwards when the volunteers

were choosing officers to command them in actual warfare. These men

were clamorous demagogues and nothing else. They had no influence

whatever upon the real people. Their vaporings were applauded and

laughed at. The applause was ridicule, and the laughter was closely

akin to jeering.

Meantime a terrible dread was brooding over the minds of the

Virginian people. They were brave men and patriots, who would

maintain their honor at any cost. They were ready to sacrifice

their lives and their treasures in a hopeless struggle about an

abstraction, should the time come when their sense of right and honor

required the sacrifice at their hands. There was no cowardice and no

hesitation to be expected of them when the call should come. But

they dreaded war, and most of them prayed that it might never be.

They saw only desolation in its face. They knew it would lay waste

their fields and bring want upon their families, however it might

result in regard to the great political questions involved in it.

And so they refused to go headlong into a war which meant for them

destruction. Some of them, believing that there was no possibility of

avoiding the struggle, thought it the part of wisdom to accept the

inevitable and begin hostilities at once, while the North was still

but poorly prepared for aggressive measures. But the majority of the

Virginians were disposed to wait and to avoid war altogether, if that

should prove possible. These said, "We should remain quiet until

some overt act of hostility shall make resistance necessary." And

these were called cowards and fogies by the brave men of the hustings

already alluded to.

There was still another class of men who were opposed to secession

in any case. Of these, William C. Wickham, of Hanover, and Jubal

Early will serve as examples. They thought secession unnecessary and

imprudent in any conceivable event. They believed that it offered no

remedy for existing or possible ills, and that it could result only

in the prostration of the South. They opposed it, therefore, with

all their might; not only as not yet called for, but as suicidal in

any event, and not to be thought of at all. And yet these men, when

the war came, believed it to be their duty to side with their State,

and fought so manfully in behalf of the South as to make themselves

famous military leaders.

Why, then, the reader doubtless asks, if this was the temper of

the Virginians, did Virginia secede after all? I answer, because

circumstances ultimately so placed the Virginians that they could

not, without cowardice and dishonor, do otherwise; and the

Virginians are brave men and honorable ones. They believed, as I have

said, in the abstract right of any State to secede at will. Indeed,

this right was to them as wholly unquestioned and unquestionable as

is the right of the States to establish free schools, or to do any

other thing pertaining to local self-government. The question of

the correctness or incorrectness of the doctrine is not now to the

purpose. The Virginians, almost without an exception, believed and

had always believed it absolutely, and believing it, they held of

necessity that the general government had no right, legal or moral,

to coerce a seceding State; and so, when the President called upon

Virginia for her quota of troops with which to compel the return of

the seceding States, she could not possibly obey without doing that

which her people believed to be an outrage upon the rights of sister

commonwealths, for which, as they held, there was no warrant in law

or equity.

She heartily condemned the secession of South Carolina and the rest

as unnecessary, ill-advised, and dangerous; but their secession did

not concern her except as a looker-on, and she had not only refused

to be a partaker in it, but had also felt a good deal of indignation

against the men who were thus endangering the peace of the land. When

she was called upon to assist in reducing these States to submission,

however, she could no longer remain a spectator. She must furnish the

troops, and so assist in doing that which she believed to be utterly

wrong, or she must herself withdraw from the Union. The question was

thus narrowed down to this: Should Virginia seek safety in dishonor,

or should she meet destruction in doing that which she believed to be

right? Such a question was not long to be debated. Two days after the

proclamation was published Virginia seceded, not because she wanted

to secede,--not because she believed it wise,--but because, as she

understood the matter, the only other course open to her would have

been cowardly and dishonorable.

Now, unless I am sadly mistaken, the Virginians understood what

secession implied much more perfectly than did the rest of the

Southern people. They anticipated no child's play, and having cast in

their lot with the South, they began at once to get ready for war.

From one end of the State to the other, every county seat became

a drill field. The courts suspended their sessions, on the ground

that it was not a proper time for the enforced collection of debts.

Volunteer companies soon drained the militia organization of its

men. Public opinion said that every man who did not embrace the very

surest and earliest opportunity of getting himself mustered into

actual service was a coward; and so, to withdraw from the militia and

join a volunteer company, and make a formal tender of services to

the State, became absolutely essential to the maintenance of one's

reputation as a gentleman.

The drilling, of which there was literally no end, was simply funny.

Maneuvers of the most utterly impossible sort were carefully taught

to the men. Every amateur officer had his own pet system of tactics,

and the effect of the incongruous teachings, when brought out in

battalion drill, closely resembled that of the music at Mr. Bob

Sawyer's party, where each guest sang the chorus to the tune he knew

best.

The militia colonels, having assumed a sort of general authority over

the volunteer companies which had been formed out of the old militia

material, were not satisfied with daily musterings of the men under

their captains,--musterings which left the field-officers nothing to

do,--and so in a good many of the counties they ordered all the men

into camp at the county seat, and drew upon the people for provisions

with which to feed them. The camps were irregular, disorderly

affairs, over which no rod of discipline could very well be held, as

the men were not legally soldiers, and the only punishment possible

for disobedience or neglect of duty was a small fine, which the

willful men, with true Virginian contempt for money in small sums,

paid cheerfully as a tax upon jollity.

The camping, however, was enjoyable in itself, and as most of the men

had nothing else to do, the attendance upon roll-call was a pretty

full one. Every man brought a servant or two with him, of course. How

else were his boots and his accouterments to be kept clean, his horse

to be groomed, and his meals cooked? Most of the ladies came, too, in

their carriages every morning, returning to their homes only as night

came on; and so the camps were very picturesque and very delightful

places to be in. All the men wore epaulets of a gorgeousness rarely

equaled except in portraits of field-marshals, and every man was a

hero in immediate prospect.

One day an alarming report came, to the effect that a little

transport steamer, well known in James River, was on her way up to

Richmond with ten thousand troops on board, and instantly the camps

at the court-houses along the railroads were astir. It entered into

nobody's head to inquire where so many troops could have come from

at a time when the entire active force of the United States army

from Maine to Oregon was hardly greater than that; nor did anybody

seem surprised that the whole ten thousand had managed to bestow

themselves on board a steamer the carrying capacity of which had

hitherto been about four or five hundred men. The report was accepted

as true, and everybody believed that the ten thousand men would be

poured into Richmond's defenseless streets within an hour or two. In

the particular county to which I have alluded in the beginning of

this chapter, the cavalry captain sent for half a dozen grindstones,

and set his men to grinding their sabres,--a process which utterly

ruined the blades, of course. The militia colonel telegraphed a stump

speech or two to Richmond, which did no particular harm, as the old

station agent who officiated as operator could not for his life send

a message of more than three words so that it could be read at the

other end of the line. A little telegraphic swearing came back over

the wires, but beyond that the colonel's glowing messages resulted

in nothing. Turning his attention to matters more immediately within

his control, therefore, he ordered the drums to beat, and assembling

the men he marched them boldly down to the railroad station, where

mounting a goods box he told them that the time for speech-making was

now past; that the enemy (I am not sure that he did not say "vandal,"

and make some parenthetical remarks about "Attila flags" and things

of that sort which were favorites with him) was now at our very

thresholds; that he (the colonel) had marched his command to the

depot in answer to the call of his country; that they would proceed

thence by rail to Richmond and at once encounter the enemy, etc.,

etc., etc. He had already telegraphed, he said, to General Lee and to

Governor Letcher, requesting them to dispatch a train (the colonel

would have scorned to say "send cars" even in a telegram), and the

iron horse was doubtless already on its way.

No train came, however, and after nightfall the men were marched back

to their quarters in the court-house.

A few days later some genuine orders came from Richmond, accepting

the proffered services of all the companies organized in the

county, and ordering all, except the one cavalry troop, into camp

at Richmond. These orders, by some strange oversight, the colonel

explained, were addressed, not to him as colonel, but to the several

captains individually. He was not disposed to stand on ceremony,

however, he said; and so, without waiting for the clerical error

to be rectified, he would comply with the spirit of the order, and

take the troops to Richmond as soon as the necessary transportation

should arrive. Transportation was a good, mouth-filling word, which

suited the colonel exactly. In order that there should be no delay or

miscarriage, he marched the men a hundred yards down the hill to the

station, ten hours in advance of the time at which the cars were to

be there; and as there was nothing else to do, he and his lieutenant

thought the occasion a good one for the making of a speech apiece.

The colonel expressed his hearty sympathy with the woes of the

cavalry, who were to be left at home, while the infantry was winning

renown. And yet, he said, he had expected this from the first. The

time had been, he explained, when the cavalry was the quick-moving

arm of the service, but now that the iron horse-- The reader

must imagine the rest of that grandiloquent sentence. I value my

reputation for veracity too much to risk it by following the colonel

in this, his supreme burst of impassioned oratory. He was sorry for

the cavalry, but they should console themselves with the thought

that, as preservers of order in the community and protectors of their

homes, they would not be wholly useless in their own humble way; and

should any of them visit the army, they would always meet a hearty

welcome in his camp. For the present his head-quarters would be in

the Spottswood Hotel, and he would be glad, whenever military duty

did not too greatly absorb his attention, to grasp the hand of any

member of the troop who, wishing to catch a glimpse of real warfare,

should seek him there.

The train came, after a while, and the unappreciative railroad

men obstinately insisted that the State paid for the passage of

certain designated companies only, and that these distinguished

field-officers, if they traveled by that train at all, must pay

their way at regular passenger rates. The colonel and his lieutenant

pocketed the insult and paid their fare; but when, upon the arrival

of the troops at Richmond, nobody seemed to know anything about

these field-officers, and the companies were sent, without them,

into camps of instruction, the gallant leaders returned by passenger

train to their homes. The colonel came back, he said in a speech at

the station, still further to stir the patriotism of the people.

He had been in consultation with the authorities in Richmond; and

while it would not be proper for him to reveal even to these, his

patriotic countrymen, the full plan of campaign confided to him as

a field-officer, he might at least say to them that the government,

within ten days, would have fifteen thousand men in line on the

Potomac, and then, with perchance a bloody but very brief struggle,

this overwhelming force would dictate terms to the tyrants at

Washington.

This time the colonel got himself unmistakably laughed at, and, so

far as I have heard, he made no more speeches.

Meantime it had become evident to everybody that a very real and

a very terrible war was in prospect, and there was no longer any

disposition to tolerate nonsense of the sort I have been describing.

As fast as arrangements could be made for their accommodation, the

volunteers from every part of the State were ordered into camps of

instruction at Richmond and Ashland. As soon as any company was

deemed fit for service, it was sent to the front and assigned to

a regiment. Troops from other States were constantly pouring into

Richmond, and marching thence to the armies which were forming in the

field. The speech-making was over forever, and the work of the war

had begun.