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Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War

by George Alfred Townsend · English · Gutenberg #23340 · 686,110 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, and His Romaunt Abroad During the War

Author: George Alfred Townsend


        
Release date: November 5, 2007 [eBook #23340]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT, AND HIS ROMAUNT ABROAD DURING THE WAR ***




Produced by Rebecca Hoath, Suzanne Shell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









CAMPAIGNS

OF

A NON-COMBATANT,

AND HIS

ROMAUNT ABROAD DURING THE WAR.

BY
GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND.


NEW YORK:
BLELOCK & COMPANY,
19 BEEKMAN STREET,
1866.



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1866, by

GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.

SCRYMGEOUR, WHITCOMB & CO.,

Stereotypers,

15 WATER STREET, BOSTON.


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|Transcriber's note: Inconsistency in hyphenation in this etext is as in|
|the original book.                                                     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+


TO

"Miles O'Reilly,"

Who saw the war as vividly as he sang it; and whose aims for the peace
that has ensued, are even nobler than the noble influence he exerted
during the struggle, these chapters of travel are inscribed by his
friend and colleague.




PREFACE.


In the early part of 1863, while I was resident in London,--the first of
the War Correspondents to go abroad,--I wrote, at the request of Mr.
George Smith, publisher of the Cornhill Magazine, a series of chapters
upon the Rebellion, thus introduced:--

     "Few wars have been so well chronicled, as that now desolating
     America. Its official narratives have been copious; the great
     newspapers of the land have been represented in all its campaigns;
     private enterprise has classified and illustrated its several
     events, and delegates of foreign countries have been allowed to
     mingle freely with its soldiery, and to observe and describe its
     battles. The pen and the camera have accompanied its bayonets, and
     there has not probably been any skirmish, however insignificant,
     but a score of zealous scribes have remarked and recorded it.

     "I have employed some leisure hours afforded me in Europe, to
     detail those parts of the struggle which I witnessed in a civil
     capacity. The Sketches which follow are entirely personal, and
     dwell less upon routine incidents, plans, and statistics, than upon
     those lighter phases of war which fall beneath the dignity of
     severe history and are seldom related. I have endeavored to
     reproduce not only the adventures, but the impressions of a
     novitiate, and I have described not merely the army and its
     operations, but the country invaded, and the people who inhabit it.

     "The most that I have hoped to do, is so to simplify a campaign
     that the reader may realize it as if he had beheld it, travelling
     at will, as I did, and with no greater interest than to see how
     fields were fought and won."

To those chapters, I have added in this collection, some estimates of
American life in Europe, and some European estimates of American life;
with my ultimate experiences in the War after my return to my own
country. I cannot hope that they will be received with the same favor,
either here or abroad, as that which greeted their original publication.
But no man ought to let the first four years of his majority slip away
unrecorded. I would rather publish a tolerable book now than a possibly
good one hereafter.




CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT,

AND HIS

Romaunt abroad during the War.




CHAPTER 1.

MY IMPRESSMENT.


"Here is a piece of James Franklin's printing press, Mr. Townsend," said
Mr. Pratt to me, at Newport the other day,--"Ben. Franklin wrote for the
paper, and set type upon it. The press was imported from England in
1730, or thereabouts."

He produced a piece of wood, a foot in length, and then laid it away in
its drawer very sacredly.

"I should like to write to that press, Mr. Pratt," I said,--"there would
be no necessity in such a case of getting off six columns for to-night's
mail."

"Well!" said Mr. Pratt, philosophically, "I have a theory that a man
grows up to machinery. As your day so shall your strength be. I believe
you have telegraphed up to a House instrument, haven't you?"

"Mr. Pratt," cried I, with some indignation, "your memory is too good.
This is Newport, and I have come down to see the surf. Pray, do not
remind me of hot hours in a newspaper office, the click of a Morse
dispatch, and work far into the midnight!"

So I left Mr. Pratt, of the Newport _Mercury_, with an ostentation of
affront, and bade James Brady, the boatman, hoist sail and carry me over
to Dumpling Rocks.

On the grassy parapet of the crumbling tower which once served the
purposes of a fort, the transparent water hungering at its base, the
rocks covered with fringe spotting the channel, the ocean on my right
hand lost in its own vastness, and Newport out of mind save when the
town bells rang, or the dip of oars beat in the still swell of
Narragansett,--I lay down, chafing and out of temper, to curse the
only pleasurable labor I had ever undertaken.

To me all places were workshops: the seaside, the springs, the summer
mountains, the cataracts, the theatres, the panoramas of islet-fondled
rivers speeding by strange cities. I was condemned to look upon them all
with mercenary eyes, to turn their gladness into torpid prose, and speak
their praises in turgid columns. Never nepenthe, never _abandonne_,
always wide-awake, and watching for saliences, I had gone abroad like a
falcon, and roamed at home like a hungry jackal. Six fingers on my hand,
one long and pointed, and ever dropping gall; the ineradicable stain
upon my thumb; the widest of my circuits, with all my adventure, a
paltry sheet of foolscap; and the world in which I dwelt, no place for
thought, or dreaminess, or love-making,--only the fierce, fast, flippant
existence of news!

And with this inward execration, I lay on Dumpling Rocks, looking to
sea, and recalled the first fond hours of my newspaper life.

To be a subject of old Hoe, the most voracious of men, I gave up the
choice of three sage professions, and the sweet alternative of idling
husbandry.

The day I graduated saw me an _attache_ of the Philadelphia _Chameleon_.
I was to receive three dollars a week and be the heir to lordly
prospects. In the long course of persevering years I might sit in the
cushions of the night-editor, or speak of the striplings around me as
"_my_ reporters."

"There is nothing which you cannot attain," said Mr. Axiom, my
employer,--"think of the influence you exercise!--more than a clergyman;
Horace Greeley was an editor; so was George D. Prentice; the first has
just been defeated for Congress; the last lectured last night and got
fifty dollars for it."

Hereat I was greatly encouraged, and proposed to write a leader for next
day's paper upon the evils of the Fire Department.

"Dear me," said Mr. Axiom, "you would ruin our circulation at a wink;
what would become of our ball column? in case of a fire in the building
we couldn't get a hose to play on it. Oh! no, Alfred, writing leaders is
hard and dangerous; I want you first to learn the use of a beautiful
pair of scissors."

I looked blank and chopfallen.

"No man can write a good hand or a good style," he said, "without
experience with scissors. They give your palm flexibility and that is
soon imparted to the mind. But perfection is attained by an alternate
use of the scissors and the pen; if a little paste be prescribed at the
same time, cohesion and steadfastness is imparted to the man."

His reasoning was incontrovertible; but I damned his conclusions.

So, I spent one month in slashing several hundred exchanges a day, and
paragraphing all the items. These reappeared in a column called "THE
LATEST INFORMATION," and when I found them copied into another journal,
a flush of satisfaction rose to my face.

The editor of the _Chameleon_ was an old journalist, whose face was a
sealed book of Confucius, and who talked to me, patronizingly, now and
then, like the Delphic Oracle. His name was Watch, and he wore a
prodigious pearl in his shirt-bosom. He crept up to the editorial room
at nine o'clock every night, and dashed off an hour's worth of
glittering generalities, at the end of which time two or three
gentlemen, blooming at the nose, and with cheeks resembling a map drawn
in red ink, sounded the pipe below stairs, and Mr. Watch said--

"Mr. Townsend, I look to you to be on hand to-night; I am called away by
the Water-Gas Company."

Then, with enthusiasm up to blood-heat, aroused by this mark of
confidence, I used to set to, and scissor and write till three o'clock,
while Mr. Watch talked water-gas over brandy and water, and drew his
thirty dollars punctually on Saturdays.

So it happened that my news paragraphs, sometimes pointedly turned into
a reflection, crept into the editorial columns, when water-gas was
lively. Venturing more and more, the clipper finally indited a leader;
and Mr. Watch, whose nose water-gas was reddening, applauded me, and
told me in his sublime way, that, as a special favor, I might write all
the leaders the next night. Mr. Watch was seen no more in the sanctum
for a week, and my three dollars carried on the concern.

When he returned, he generously gave me a dollar, and said that he had
spoken of me to the Water-Gas Company as a capital secretary. Then he
wrote me a pass for the Arch Street Theatre, and told me, benevolently,
to go off and rest that night.

For a month or more the responsibility of the _Chameleon_ devolved
almost entirely upon me. Child that I was, knowing no world but my own
vanity, and pleased with those who fed its sensitive love of approbation
rather than with the just and reticent, I harbored no distrust till one
day when Axiom visited the office, and I was drawing my three dollars
from the treasurer, I heard Mr. Watch exclaim, within the publisher's
room--

"Did you read my article on the Homestead Bill?"

"Yes," answered Axiom; "it was quite clever; your leaders are more alive
and epigrammatic than they were."

I could stand it no more. I bolted into the office, and cried--

"The article on the Homestead Bill is mine, so is every other article in
to-day's paper. Mr. Watch does not tell the truth; he is ungenerous!"

"What's this, Watch?" said Axiom.

"Alfred," exclaimed Mr. Watch, majestically, "adopts my suggestions very
readily, and is quite industrious. I recommend that we raise his salary
to five dollars a week. That is a large sum for a lad."

That night the manuscript was overhauled in the composing room. Watch's
dereliction was manifest; but not a word was said commendatory of my
labor; it was feared I might take "airs," or covet a further increase of
wages. I only missed Watch's hugh pearl, and heard that he had been
discharged, and was myself taken from the drudgery of the scissors, and
made a reporter.

All this was very recent, yet to me so far remote, that as I recall it
all, I wonder if I am not old, and feel nervously of my hairs. For in
the five intervening years I have ridden at Hoe speed down the groove of
my steel-pen.

The pen is my traction engine; it has gone through worlds of fancy and
reflection, dragging me behind it; and long experience has given it so
great facility, that I have only to fire up, whistle, and fix my
couplings, and away goes my locomotive with no end of cars in train.

Few journalists, beginning at the bottom, do not weary of the ladder ere
they climb high. Few of such, or of others more enthusiastic, recall the
early associations of "the office" with pleasure. Yet there is no world
more grotesque, none, at least in America, more capable of fictitious
illustration. Around a newspaper all the dramatis personae of the world
congregate; within it there are staid idiosyncratic folk who admit of
all kindly caricature.

I summon from that humming and hurly-burly past, the ancient
proof-reader. He wears a green shade over his eyes and the gas burner is
drawn very low to darken the bald and wrinkled contour of his forehead.
He is severe in judgment and spells rigidly by the Johnsonian standard.
He punctuates by an obdurate and conscientious method, and will have no
italics upon any pretext. He will lend you money, will eat with you,
drink with you, and encourage you; but he will not punctuate with you,
spell with you, nor accept any of your suggestions as to typography or
paragraphing whatsoever. He wears slippers and smokes a primitive clay
pipe; he has everything in its place, and you cannot offend him more
than by looking over any proof except when he is holding it. A chip of
himself is the copyholder at his side,--a meagre, freckled, matter of
fact youth, who reads your tenderest sentences in a rapid monotone, and
is never known to venture any opinion or suggestion whatever. This boy,
I am bound to say, will follow the copy if it be all consonants, and
will accompany it if it flies out of the window.

The office clerk was my bane and admiration. He was presumed by the
verdant patrons of the paper to be its owner and principal editor, its
type-setter, pressman, and carrier. His hair was elaborately curled, and
his ears were perfect racks of long and dandyfied pens; a broad,
shovel-shaped gold pen lay forever opposite his high stool; he had an
arrogant and patronizing address, and was the perpetual cabbager of
editorial perquisites. Books, ball-tickets, season-tickets, pictures,
disappeared in his indiscriminate fist, and he promised notices which he
could not write to no end of applicants. He was to be seen at the
theatre every night, and he was the dashing escort of the proprietor's
wife, who preferred his jaunty coat and highly-polished boots to the
less elaborate wardrobe of us writers. That this noble and fashionable
creature could descend to writing wrappers, and to waiting his turn with
a bank-book in the long train of a sordid teller, passed all speculation
and astonishment. He made a sorry fag of the office boy, and advised us
every day to beware of cutting the files, as if that were the one vice
of authors. To him we stole, with humiliated faces, and begged a
trifling advance of salary. He sternly requested us not to encroach
behind the counter--his own indisputable domain--but sometimes asked us
to watch the office while he drank with a theatrical agent at the
nearest bar. He was an inveterate gossip, and endowed with a damnable
love of slipshod argument; the only oral censor upon our compositions,
he hailed us with all the complaints made at his solicitation by
irascible subscribers, and stood in awe of the cashier only, who
frequently, to our delight and surprise, combed him over, and drove him
to us for sympathy.

The foreman was still our power behind the throne; he left out our copy
on mechanical grounds, and put it in for our modesty and sophistry. In
his broad, hot room, all flaring with gas, he stood at a flat stone like
a surgeon, and took forms to pieces and dissected huge columns of
pregnant metal, and paid off the hands with fabulous amounts of
uncurrent bank bills. His wife and he went thrice a year on excursions
to the sea-side, and he was forever borrowing a dollar from somebody to
treat the lender and himself.

The ship-news man could be seen towards the small-hours, writing his
highly imaginative department, which showed how the Sally Ann, Master
Todd, arrived leaky in Bombay harbor; and there were stacks of newsboys
asleep on the boilers, fighting in their dreams for the possession of a
fragment of a many-cornered blanket.

These, like myself, went into the halcyon land of Nod to the music of a
crashing press, and swarmed about it at the dawn like so many gad flies
about an ox, to carry into the awakening city the rhetoric and the
rubbish I had written.

And still they go, and still the great press toils along, and still am I
its slave and keeper, who sit here by the proud, free sea, and feel like
Sinbad, that to a terrible old man I have sold my youth, my convictions,
my love, my life!




CHAPTER II.

THE WAR CORRESPONDENT'S FIRST DAY.


Looking back over the four years of the war, and noting how indurated I
have at last become, both in body and in emotion, I recall with a sigh
that first morning of my correspondentship when I set out so
light-hearted and yet so anxious. It was in 1861. I was accompanied to
the War department by an _attache_ of the United States Senate. The new
Secretary, Mr. Edwin M. Stanton, referred me to a Mr. Sanford, "Military
Supervisor of Army Intelligence," and after a brief delay I was
requested to sign a parole and duplicate, specifying my loyalty to the
Federal Government, and my promise to publish nothing detrimental to its
interests. I was then given a circular, which stated explicitly the kind
of news termed contraband, and also a printed pass, filled in with my
name, age, residence, and newspaper connection. The latter enjoined upon
all guards to pass me in and out of camps; and authorized persons in
Government employ to furnish me with information.

Our Washington Superintendent sent me a beast, and in compliment to what
the animal might have been, called the same a horse. I wish to protest,
in this record, against any such misnomer. The creature possessed no
single equine element. Experience has satisfied me that horses stand on
four legs; the horse in question stood upon three. Horses may either
pace, trot, run, rack, or gallop; but mine made all the five movements
at once. I think I may call his gait an eccentric stumble. That he had
endurance I admit; for he survived perpetual beating; and his beauty
might have been apparent to an anatomist, but would be scouted by the
world at large. I asked, ruefully, if I was expected to go into battle
so mounted; but was peremptorily forbidden, as a valuable property might
be endangered thereby. I was assigned to the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps
in the anticipated advance, and my friend, the _attache_, accompanied me
to its rendezvous at Hunter's Mills. We started at two o'clock, and
occupied an hour in passing the city limits. I calculated that,
advancing at the same ratio, we should arrive in camp at noon next day.
We presented ludicrous figures to the grim sabremen that sat erect at
street corners, and ladies at the windows of the dwellings smothered
with suppressed laughter as we floundered along. My friend had the
better horse; but I was the better rider; and if at any time I grew
wrathful at my sorry plight, I had but to look at his and be happy
again. He appeared to be riding on the neck of his beast, and when he
attempted to deceive me with a smile, his face became horribly
contorted. Directly his breeches worked above his boots, and his bare
calves were objects of hopeless solicitude. Caricatures, rather than
men, we toiled bruisedly through Georgetown, and falling in the wake of
supply teams on the Leesburg turnpike, rode between the Potomac on one
side and the dry bed of the canal on the other, till we came at last to
Chain Bridge.

There was a grand view from the point of Little Falls above, where a
line of foamy cataracts ridged the river, and the rocks towered gloomily
on either hand: and of the city below, with its buildings of pure
marble, and the yellow earthworks that crested Arlington Heights. The
clouds over the Potomac were gorgeous in hue, but forests of melancholy
pine clothed the sides of the hills, and the roar of the river made such
beautiful monotone that I almost thought it could be translated to
words. Our passes were now demanded by a fat, bareheaded officer, and
while he panted through their contents, two privates crossed their
bayonets before us.

"News?" he said, in the shortest remark of which he was capable. When
assured that we had nothing to reveal, he seemed immeasurably relieved,
and added--"Great labor, reading!" At this his face grew so dreadfully
purple that I begged him to sit down, and tax himself with no further
exertion. He wiped his forehead, in reply, gasping like a triton, and
muttering the expressive direction, "right!" disappeared into a
guard-box. The two privates winked as they removed their muskets, and we
both laughed immoderately when out of hearing. Our backs were now turned
to the Maryland shore, and jutting grimly from the hill before us, the
black guns of Fort Ethan Allen pointed down the bridge. A double line of
sharp abattis protected it from assault, and sentries walked lazily up
and down the parapet. The colors hung against the mast in the dead calm,
and the smoke curled straight upward from some log-huts within the fort.
The wildness of the surrounding landscape was most remarkable. Within
sight of the Capital of the Republic, the fox yet kept the covert, and
the farms were few and far apart. It seemed to me that little had been
done to clear the country of its primeval timber, and the war had
accomplished more to give evidence of man and industry, than two
centuries of occupation. A military road had been cut through the solid
rocks here; and the original turnpike, which had been little more than a
cart track, was now graded and macadamized. I passed multitudes of
teams, struggling up the slopes, and the carcasses of mules littered
every rod of the way. The profanity of the teamsters was painfully
apparent. I came unobserved upon one who was berating his beasts with a
refinement of cruelty. He cursed each of them separately, swinging his
long-lashed whip the while, and then damned the six in mass. He would
have made a dutiful overseer. The soldiers had shown quite as little
consideration for the residences along the way. I came to one dwelling
where some pertinacious Vandal had even pried out the window-frames, and
imperilled his neck to tear out the roof-beams; a dead vulture was
pinned over the door by pieces of broken bayonets.

"Langley's,"--a few plank-houses, clustering around a tavern and a
church,--is one of those settlements whose sounding names beguile the
reader into an idea of their importance. A lonesome haunt in time of
peace, it had lately been the winter quarters of fifteen thousand
soldiers, and a multitude of log huts had grown up around it. I tied my
horse to the window-shutter of a dwelling, and picked my way over a
slimy sidewalk to the ricketty tavern-porch. Four or five privates lay
here fast asleep, and the bar-room was occupied by a bevy of young
officers, who were emptying the contents of sundry pocket-flasks. Behind
the bar sat a person with strongly-marked Hebrew features, and a
watchmaker was plying his avocation in a corner. Two great dogs crouched
under a bench, and some highly-colored portraits were nailed to the
wall. The floor was bare, and some clothing and miscellaneous articles
hung from beams in the ceiling.

"Is this your house?" I said to the Hebrew.

"I keepsh it now."

"By right or by conquest?"

"By ze right of conquest," he said, laughing; and at once proposed to
sell me a bootjack and an India-rubber overcoat. I compromised upon a
haversack, which he filled with sandwiches and sardines, and which I am
bound to say fell apart in the course of the afternoon. The watchmaker
was an enterprising young fellow, who had resigned his place in a large
Broadway establishment, to speculate in cheap jewelry and do itinerant
repairing. He says that he followed the "Army Paymasters, and sold
numbers of watches, at good premiums, when the troops had money."
Soldiers, he informed me, were reckless spendthrifts; and the prey of
sutlers and sharpers. When there was nothing at hand to purchase, they
gambled away their wages, and most of them left the service penniless
and in debt. He thought it perfectly legitimate to secure some silver
while "going," but complained that the value of his stock rendered him
liable to theft and murder. "There are men in every regiment," said he,
"who would blow out my brains in any lonely place to plunder me of these
watches."

At this point, a young officer, in a fit of bacchanal laughter,
staggered rather roughly against me.

"Begurpardon," he said, with an unsteady bow, "never ran against person
in life before."

I smiled assuringly, but he appeared to think the offence unpardonable.

"Do asshu a, on honor of gentlemand officer, not in custom of behaving
offensively. Azo! leave it to my friends. Entirely due to injuries
received at battle Drainesville."

As the other gentlemen laughed loudly here, I took it for granted that
my apologist had some personal hallucination relative to that
engagement.

"What giggling for, Bob?" he said; "honor concerned in this matter,
Will! Do asshu a, fell under Colonel's horse, and Company A walked over
small of my back." The other officers were only less inebriated and most
of them spoke boastfully of their personal prowess at Drainesville. This
was the only engagement in which the Pennsylvania Reserves had yet
participated, and few officers that I met did not ascribe the victory
entirely to their own individual gallantry. I inquired of these
gentlemen the route to the new encampments of the Reserves. They lay
five miles south of the turnpike, close to the Loudon and Hampshire
railroad, and along both sides of an unfrequented lane. They formed in
this position the right wing of the Army of the Potomac, and had been
ordered to hold themselves in hourly readiness for an advance. By this
time, my friend S. came up, and leaving him to restore his mortified
body, I crossed the road to the churchyard and peered through the open
door into the edifice. The seats of painted pine had been covered with
planks, and a sick man lay above every pew. At the ringing of my spurs
in the threshold, some of the sufferers looked up through the red eyes
of fever, and the faces of others were spectrally white. A few groaned
as they turned with difficulty, and some shrank in pain from the glare
of the light. Medicines were kept in the altar-place, and a doctor's
clerk was writing requisitions in the pulpit. The sickening smell of the
hospital forbade me to enter, and walking across the trampled yard, I
crept through a rent in the paling, and examined the huts in which the
Reserves had passed the winter. They were built of logs, plastered with
mud, and the roofs of some were thatched with straw. Each cabin was
pierced for two or more windows; the beds were simply shelves or berths;
a rough fireplace of stones and clay communicated with the wooden
chimney; and the floors were in most cases damp and bare. Streets,
fancifully designated, divided the settlement irregularly; but the
tenements were now all deserted save one, where I found a whole family
of "contrabands" or fugitive slaves. These wretched beings, seven in
number, had escaped from a plantation in Albemarle county, and
travelling stealthily by night, over two hundred miles of precipitous
country, reached the Federal lines on the thirteenth day. The husband
said that his name was "Jeems," and that his wife was called "Kitty;"
that his youngest boy had passed the mature age of eight months, and
that the "big girl, Rosy," was "twelve years Christmas comin'." While
the troops remained at Langley's, the man was employed at seventy-five
cents a week to attend to an officer's horse. Kitty and Rose cooked and
washed for soldiers, and the boys ran errands to Washington and
return,--twenty-five miles! The eldest boy, Jefferson, had been given
the use of a crippled team-horse, and traded in newspapers, but having
confused ideas of the relative value of coins, his profits were only
moderate. The nag died before the troops removed, and a sutler, under
pretence of securing their passage to the North, disappeared with the
little they had saved. They were quite destitute now, but looked to the
future with no foreboding, and huddled together in the straw, made a
picture of domestic felicity that impressed me greatly with the
docility, contentment, and unfailing good humor of their dusky tribe.
The eyes of the children were large and lustrous, and they revealed the
clear pearls beneath their lips as they clung bashfully to their
mother's lap. The old lady was smoking a clay pipe; the man running over
some castaway jackets and boots. I remarked particularly the broad
shoulders and athletic arms of the woman, whose many childbirths had
left no traces upon her comeliness. She asked me, wistfully: "Masser,
how fur to de nawf?"

"A long way," said I, "perhaps two hundred miles."

"Lawd!" she said, buoyantly--"is dat all? Why, Jeems, couldn't we foot
it, honey?"

"You a most guv out before, ole 'oman," he replied; "got a good ruff
over de head now. Guess de white massar won't let um starve."

I tossed some coppers to the children and gave each a sandwich.

"You get up dar, John Thomas!" called the man vigorously; "you tank de
gentleman, Jefferson, boy! I wonda wha your manners is. Tank you,
massar! know'd you was a gentleman, sar! Massar, is your family from ole
Virginny?"

It was five o'clock when I rejoined S., and the greater part of our
journey had yet to be made. I went at his creeping pace until courtesy
yielded to impatience, when spurring my Pegasus vigorously, he fell into
a bouncing amble and left the _attache_ far behind. My pass was again
demanded above Langley's by a man who ate apples as he examined it, and
who was disposed to hold a long parley. I entered a region of scrub
timber further on, and met with nothing human for four miles, at the end
of which distance I reached Difficult Creek, flowing through a rocky
ravine, and crossed by a military bridge of logs. Through the thick
woods to the right, I heard the roar of the Potomac, and a finger-board
indicated that I was opposite Great Falls. Three or four dead horses lay
at the roadside beyond the stream, and I recalled the place as the scene
of a recent cavalry encounter. A cartridge-box and a torn felt hat lay
close to the carcasses: I knew that some soul had gone hence to its
account.

The road now kept to the left obliquely, and much of my ride was made
musical by the stream. Darkness closed solemnly about me, with seven
miles of the journey yet to accomplish, and as, at eight o'clock, I
turned from the turnpike into a lonesome by-road, full of ruts, pools,
and quicksands, a feeling of delicious uneasiness for the first time
possessed me. Some owls hooted in the depth of the woods, and wild pigs,
darting across the road, went crashing into the bushes. The
phosphorescent bark of a blasted tree glimmered on a neighboring knoll,
and as I halted at a rivulet to water my beast, I saw a solitary star
floating down the ripples. Directly I came upon a clearing where the
moonlight shone through the rents of a crumbling dwelling, and from the
far distance broke the faint howl of farm dogs. A sense of insecurity
that I would not for worlds have resigned, now tingled, now chilled my
blood. At last, climbing a stony hill, the skies lay beneath me
reddening with the flame of camps and flaring and falling alternately,
like the beautiful Northern lights. I heard the ring of hoofs as I
looked entranced, and in a twinkling, a body of horsemen dashed past me
and disappeared. A little beyond, the road grew so thick that I could
see nothing of my way; but trusting doubtfully to my horse, a deep
challenge came directly from the thicket, and I saw the flash of a
sabre, as I stammered a reply. Led to a cabin close at hand, my pass
was examined by candle-light, and I learned that the nearest camp of the
Reserves was only a mile farther on, and the regiment of which I was in
quest about two miles distant. After another half hour, I reached Ord's
brigade, whose tents were pitched in a fine grove of oaks; the men
talking, singing, and shouting, around open air fires; and a battery of
brass Napoleons unlimbered in front, pointing significantly to the West
and South. For a mile and a half I rode by the light of continuous
camps, reaching at last the quarters of the ----th, commanded by a
former newspaper associate of mine, with whom I had gone itemizing,
scores of times. His regiment had arrived only the same afternoon, and
their tents were not yet pitched. Their muskets were stacked along the
roadside, and the men lay here and there wrapped in their blankets, and
dozing around the fagots. The Colonel was asleep in a wagon, but roused
up at the summons of his Adjutant, and greeting me warmly, directed the
cook to prepare a supper of coffee and fried pork. Too hungry to feel
the chafing of my sores and bruises, I fell to the oleaginous repast
with my teeth and fingers, and eating ravenously, asked at last to be
shown to my apartments. These consisted of a covered wagon, already
occupied by four teamsters, and a blanket which had evidently been in
close proximity to the hide of a horse. A man named "Coggle," being
nudged by the Colonel, and requested to take other quarters, asked
dolorously if it was time to turn out, and roared "woa," as if he had
some consciousness of being kicked. When I asked for a pillow, the
Colonel laughed, and I had an intuition that the man "Coggle" was
looking at me in the darkness with intense disgust. The Colonel said
that he had once put a man on double duty for placing his head on a
snowball, and warned me satirically that such luxuries were preposterous
in the field. He recommended me not to catch cold if I could help it,
but said that people in camp commonly caught several colds at once, and
added grimly that if I wished to be shaved in the morning, there was a
man close by, who had ground a sabre down to the nice edge of a razor,
and who could be made to accommodate me. There were cracks in the bottom
of the wagon, through which the cold came like knives, and I was
allotted a space four feet in length, by three feet in width.

Being six feet in height, my relation to these Procrustean quarters was
most embarassing; but I doubled up, chatteringly, and lay my head on my
arm. In a short time I experienced a sensation akin to that of being
guillotined, and sitting bolt upright, found the teamsters in the
soundest of Lethean conditions. As the man next to me snored very
loudly, I adopted the brilliant idea of making a pillow of his thigh;
which answered my best expectations. I was aroused after a while, by
what I thought to be the violent hands of this person, but which, to my
great chagrin, proved to be S., intent upon dividing my place with me.
Resistance was useless. I submitted to martyrdom with due resignation,
but half resolved to go home in the morning, and shun, for the future,
the horrible romance of camps.




CHAPTER III.

A GENERAL UNDER THE MICROSCOPE.


When I awoke at Colonel Taggert's tent the morning afterward, I had
verified the common experience of camps by "catching several colds at
once," and felt a general sensation of being cut off at the knees. Poor
S., who joined me at the fire, states that he believed himself to be
tied in knots, and that he should return afoot to Washington. Our horses
looked no worse, for that would have been manifestly impossible. We were
made the butts of much jesting at breakfast; and S. said, in a spirit of
atrocity, that camp wit was quite as bad as camp "wittles." I bade him
adieu at five o'clock A. M., when he had secured passage to the city in
a sutler's wagon. Remounting my own fiery courser, I bade the Colonel a
temporary farewell, and proceeded in the direction of Meade's and
Reynold's brigades. The drum and fife were now beating _reveille_, and
volunteers in various stages of undress were limping to roll-call. Some
wore one shoe, and others appeared shivering in their linen. They stood
ludicrously in rank, and a succession of short, dry coughs ran up and
down the line, as if to indicate those who should escape the bullet for
the lingering agonies of the hospital. The ground was damp, and fog was
rising from the hollows and fens. Some signal corps officers were
practising with flags in a ploughed field, and negro stewards were
stirring about the cook fires. A few supply wagons that I passed the
previous day were just creaking into camp, having travelled most of the
night. I saw that the country was rude, but the farms were close, and
the dwellings in many cases inhabited. The vicinity had previously been
unoccupied by either army, and rapine had as yet appropriated only the
fields for camps and the fences for fuel. I was directed to the
headquarters of Major-General M'Call,--a cluster of wall tents in the
far corner of a grain-field, concealed from public view by a projecting
point of woods. A Sibley tent stood close at hand, where a soldier in
blue overcoat was reading signals through a telescope. I mistook the
tent for the General's, and riding up to the soldier was requested to
stand out of the way. I moved to his rear, but he said curtly that I was
obstructing the light. I then dismounted, and led my horse to a clump of
trees a rod distant.

"Don't hitch there," said the soldier; "you block up the view."

A little ruffled at this manifest discourtesy, I asked the man to denote
some point within a radius of a mile where I would _not_ interfere with
his operations. He said in reply, that it was not his business to denote
hitching-stalls for anybody. I thought, in that case, that I should stay
where I was, and he politely informed me that I might stay and
be--jammed. I found afterward that this individual was troubled with a
kind of insanity peculiar to all headquarters, arising out of an
exaggerated idea of his own importance. I had the pleasure, a few
minutes afterward, of hearing him ordered to feed my horse. A thickset,
gray-haired man sat near by, undergoing the process of shaving by a very
nervous negro. The thickset man was also exercising the privileges of
his rank; but the more he berated his attendant's awkwardness, the more
nervous the other became. I addressed myself mutually to master and man,
in an inquiry as to the precise quarters of the General in command. The
latter pointed to a wall tent contiguous, and was cursed by the thickset
man for not minding his business. The thickset man remarked
substantially, that he didn't know anything about it, and was at that
moment cut by the negro, to my infinite delight. Before the wall tent in
question stood a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman in shirt-sleeves and
slippers, warming his back and hands at a fire. He was watching, through
an aperture in the tent, the movements of a private who was cleaning his
boots. I noticed that he wore a seal ring, and that he opened and shut
his eyes very rapidly. He was, otherwise, a very respectable and
dignified gentleman.

"Is this General M'Call?" said I, a little discomposed. The gentleman
looked abstractedly into my eyes, opening and shutting his own several
times, as if doubtful of his personality, and at last decided that he
_was_ General M'Call.

"What is it?" he said gravely, but without the slightest curiosity.

"I have a letter for you, sir, I believe."

He put the letter behind his back, and went on warming his hands. Having
winked several times again, apparently forgetting all about the matter,
I ventured to add that the letter was merely introductory. He looked at
it, mechanically.

"Who opened it?" he said.

"Letters of introduction are not commonly sealed, General."

"Who are you?" he asked, indifferently.

I told him that the contents of the letter would explain my errand; but
he had, meantime, relapsed into abstractedness, and winked, and warmed
his hands, for at least, five minutes. At the end of that time, he read
the letter very deliberately, and said that he was glad to see me in
camp. He intimated, that if I was not already located, I could be
provided with bed and meals at headquarters. He stated, in relation to
my correspondence, that all letters sent from the Reserve Corps, must,
without any reservations, be submitted to him in person. I was obliged
to promise compliance, but had gloomy forebodings that the General
would occupy a fortnight in the examination of each letter. He invited
me to breakfast, proposed to make me acquainted with his staff, and was,
in all respects, a very grave, prudent, and affable soldier. I may say,
incidentally, that I adopted the device of penning a couple of gossipy
epistles, the length and folly of which, so irritated General M'Call,
that he released me from the penalty of submitting my compositions for
the future.

I took up my permanent abode with quartermaster Kingwalt, a very prince
of old soldiers, who had devoted much of a sturdy life to promoting the
militia interests of the populous county of Chester. When the war-fever
swept down his beautiful valley, and the drum called the young men from
villages and farms, this ancient yeoman and miller--for he was
both--took a musket at the sprightly age of sixty-five, and joined a
Volunteer company. Neither ridicule nor entreaty could bend his purpose;
but the Secretary of War, hearing of the case, conferred a brigade
quartermastership upon him. He threw off the infirmities of age, stepped
as proudly as any youngster, and became, emphatically, the best
quartermaster in the Division. He never delayed an advance with tardy
teams, nor kept the General tentless, nor penned irregular requisitions,
nor wasted the property of Government. The ague seized him,
occasionally, and shook his grey hairs fearfully; but he always
recovered to ride his black stallion on long forages, and his great
strength and bulk were the envy of all the young officers.

He grasped my hand so heartily that I positively howled, and commanded a
tall sergeant, rejoicing in the name of Clover, to take away my horse
and split him up for kindling wood.

"We must give him the blue roan, that Fogg rides," said the
quartermaster, to the great dejection of Fogg, a short stout youth, who
was posting accounts. I was glad to see, however, that Fogg was not
disposed to be angry, and when informed that a certain iron-gray nag was
at his disposal, he was in a perfect glow of good humor. The other
_attaches_ were a German, whose name, as I caught it, seemed to be
Skyhiski; and a pleasant lad called Owen, whose disposition was so mild,
that I wondered how he had adopted the bloody profession of arms. A
black boy belonged to the establishment, remarkable, chiefly, for
getting close to the heels of the black stallion, and being frequently
kicked; he was employed to feed and brush the said stallion, and the
antipathy between them was intense.

The above curious military combination, slept under a great tarpaulin
canopy, originally used for covering commissary stores from the rain.
Our meals were taken in the open air, and prepared by Skyhiski; but
there was a second tent, provided with desk and secretary, where Mr.
Fogg performed his clerk duties, daily. When I had relieved my Pegasus
of his saddle, and penned some paragraphs for a future letter, I
strolled down the road with the old gentleman, who insisted upon showing
me Hunter's mill, a storm-beaten structure, that looked like a great
barn. The mill-race had been drained by some soldiers for the purpose of
securing the fish contained in it, and the mill-wheel was quite dry and
motionless. Difficult Creek ran impetuously across the road below, as if
anxious to be put to some use again; and the miller's house adjoining,
was now used as a hospital, for Lieutenant-Colonel Kane, and some
inferior officers. It was a favorite design of the Quartermaster's to
scrape the mill-stone, repair the race, and put the great breast-wheel
to work. One could see that the soldier had not entirely obliterated the
miller, and as he related, with a glowing face, the plans that he had
proposed to recuperate the tottering structure, and make it serviceable
to the army, I felt a regret that such peaceful ambitions should have
ever been overruled by the call to arms.

While we stood at the mill window, watching the long stretches of white
tents and speculating upon the results of war, we saw several men
running across the road toward a hill-top cottage, where General Meade
made his quarters. A small group was collected at the cottage,
reconnoitring something through their telescopes. As I hastened in that
direction, I heard confused voices, thus: "No, it isn't!" "It is!" "Can
you make out his shoulder-bar?" "What is the color of his coat?" "Gray!"
"No, it's butternut!" "Has he a musket!" "Yes, he is levelling it!" At
this the group scattered in every direction. "Pshaw!" said one, "we are
out of range; besides, it is a telescope that he has. By----, it is a
Rebel, reconnoitring our camp!" There was a manifest sensation here, and
one man wondered how he had passed the picket. Another suggested that he
might be accompanied by a troop, and a third convulsed the circle by
declaring that there were six other Rebels visible in a woods to the
left. Mr. Fogg had meantime come up and proffered me a field-glass,
through which I certainly made out a person in gray, standing in the
middle of the road just at the ridge of a hill. When I dropped my glass
I saw him distinctly with the naked eye. He was probably a mile distant,
and his gray vesture was little relieved by the blue haze of the forest.

"He is going," exclaimed a private, excitedly; "where's the man that was
to try a lead on him?" Several started impulsively for their pieces, and
some officers called for their horses. "There go his knees!" "His body
is behind the hill!" "Now his head----"

"Crack! crack! crack!" spluttered musketry from the edge of the mill,
and like as many rockets darted a score of horsemen through the creek
and up the steep. Directly a faint hurrah pealed from the camp nearest
the mill. It passed to the next camp and the next; for all were now
earnestly watching; and finally a medley of cheers shook the air and the
ear. Thousands of brave men were shouting the requiem of one paltry
life. The rash fool had bought with his temerity a bullet in the brain.
When I saw him--dusty and still bleeding--he was beset by a full
regiment of idlers, to whom death had neither awe nor respect. They
talked of the delicate shot, as connoisseurs in the art of murder,--and
two men dug him a grave on the green before the mill, wherein he was
tossed like a dog or a vulture, to be lulled, let us hope, by the music
of the grinding, when grain shall ripen once more.

I had an opportunity, after dinner, to inspect the camp of the
"Bucktails," a regiment of Pennsylvania backwoodsmen, whose efficiency
as skirmishers has been adverted to by all chroniclers of the civil war.
They wore the common blue blouse and breeches, but were distinguished by
squirrel tails fastened to their caps. They were reputed to be the best
marksmen in the service, and were generally allowed, in action, to take
their own positions and fire at will. Crawling through thick woods, or
trailing serpent-like through the tangled grass, these mountaineers were
for a time the terror of the Confederates; but when their mode of
fighting had been understood, their adversaries improved upon it to such
a degree that at the date of this writing there is scarcely a Corporal's
guard of the original Bucktail regiment remaining. Slaughtered on the
field, perishing in prison, disabled or paroled, they have lost both
their prestige and their strength. I remarked among these worthies a
partiality for fisticuffs, and a dislike for the manual of arms. They
drilled badly, and were reported to be adepts at thieving and unlicensed
foraging.

The second night in camp was pleasantly passed. Some sociable
officers--favorites with Captain Kingwalt--congregated under the
tarpaulin, after supper-hour, and when a long-necked bottle had been
emptied and replenished, there were many quaint stories related and
curious individualities revealed. I dropped asleep while the hilarity
was at its height, and Fogg covered me with a thick blanket as I lay.
The enemy might have come upon us in the darkness; but if death were
half so sound as my slumber afield, I should have bid it welcome.




CHAPTER IV.

A FORAGING ADVENTURE.


There was a newsboy named "Charley," who slept at Captain Kingwalt's
every second night, and who returned my beast to his owner in
Washington. The aphorism that a Yankee can do anything, was exemplified
by this lad; for he worked my snail into a gallop. He was born in
Chelsea, Massachusetts, and appeared to have taken to speculation at the
age when most children are learning A B C. He was now in his fourteenth
year, owned two horses, and employed another boy to sell papers for him
likewise. His profits upon daily sales of four hundred journals were
about thirty-two dollars. He had five hundred dollars in bank, and was
debating with Captain Kingwalt the propriety of founding an army express
and general agency. Such a self-reliant, swaggering, far-sighted, and
impertinent boy I never knew. He was a favorite with the Captain's
black-boy, and upon thorough terms of equality with the Commanding
General. His papers cost him in Washington a cent and a half each, and
he sold them in camp for ten cents each. I have not the slightest doubt
that I shall hear of him again as the proprietor of an overland mail, or
the patron and capitalist of Greenland emigration.

I passed the second and third days quietly in camp, writing a couple of
letters, studying somewhat of fortification, and making flying visits to
various officers. There was but one other Reporter with this division of
the army. He represented a New York journal, and I could not but
contrast his fine steed and equipments with the scanty accommodations
that my provincial establishment had provided for me. His saddle was a
cushioned McClellan, with spangled breast-strap and plump saddle-bags,
and his bridle was adorned with a bright curb bit and twilled reins. He
wore a field-glass belted about his body, and was plentifully provided
with money to purchase items of news, if they were at any time difficult
to obtain. I resolved inwardly to seize the first opportunity of
changing establishments, so that I might be placed upon as good a
footing. My relations with camp, otherwise, were of the happiest
character; for the troops were State-people of mine, and, as reporters
had not yet abused the privileges accorded them, my profession was held
in some repute. I made the round of various "messes," and soon adopted
the current dissipations of the field,--late hours, long stories,
incessant smoking, and raw spirits. There were some restless minds about
me, whose funds of anecdote and jest were apparently inexhaustible. I do
not know that so many eccentric, adventurous, and fluent people are to
be found among any other nationality of soldiers, not excepting the
Irish.

The blue roan of which friend Fogg had been deprived, exhibited
occasional evidences of a desire to break my neck. I was obliged to
dispense with the spur in riding him, but he nevertheless dashed off at
times, and put me into an agony of fear. On those occasions I managed to
retain my seat, and gained thereby the reputation of being a very fine
equestrian. As there were few civilians in camp, and as I wore a gray
suit, and appeared to be in request at head-quarters, a rumor was
developed and gained currency that I was attached to the Division in the
capacity of a scout. When my horse became unmanageable, therefore, his
speed was generally accelerated by the cheers of soldiers, and I became
an object of curiosity in every quarter, to my infinite mortification
and dread.

The Captain was to set off on the fourth day, to purchase or seize some
hay and grain that were stacked at neighboring farms. We prepared to go
at eight o'clock, but were detained somewhat by reason of Skyhiski being
inebriated the night before, and thereby delaying the breakfast, and
afterward the fact that the black stallion had laid open the black-boy's
leg. However, at a quarter past nine, the Captain, Sergeant Clover,
Fogg, Owen, and myself, with six four-horse wagons, filed down the
railroad track until we came to a bridge that some laborers were
repairing, where we turned to the left through some soggy fields, and
forded Difficult Creek. As there was no road to follow, we kept straight
through a wood of young maples and chestnut-trees. Occasionally a trunk
or projecting branch stopped the wagons, when the teamsters opened the
way with their axes. After two hours of slow advance, we came to the end
of the wood, and climbed a succession of hilly fields. From the summit
of the last of these, a splendid sweep of farm country was revealed,
dotted with quaint Virginia dwellings, stackyards, and negro-cabins, and
divided by miles of tortuous worm-fence. The eyes of the Quartermaster
brightened at the prospect, though I am afraid that he thought only of
the abundant forage; but my own grew hazy as I spoke of the peaceful
people and the neglected fields. The plough had furrowed none of these
acres, and some crows, that screamed gutturally from a neighboring
ash-tree, seemed lean and pinched for lack of their plunder of corn.

Many of the dwellings were guarded by soldiers; but of the resident
citizens only the women and the old men remained. I did not need to ask
where the young men were exiled. The residue that prayed with their
faces toward Richmond, told me the story with their eyes. There was,
nevertheless, no melodramatic exhibition of feeling among the bereaved.
I did not see any defiant postures, nor hear any melting apostrophies.
Marius was not mouthing by the ruins of Carthage, nor even Rachel
weeping for her Hebrew children. But there were on every hand
manifestations of adherence to the Southern cause, except among a few
males who feared unutterable things, and were disposed to cringe and
prevaricate. The women were not generally handsome; their face was
indolent, their dress slovenly, and their manner embarrassed. They
lopped off the beginnings and the ends of their sentences, generally
commencing with a verb, as thus: "Told soldiers not to carr' off the
rye; declared they would; said they bound do jest what they pleased. Let
'em go!"

The Captain stopped at a spruce residence, approached by a long lane,
and on knocking at the porch with his ponderous fist, a woman came
timidly to the kitchen window.

"Who's thar?" she said, after a moment.

"Come out young woman," said the Captain, soothingly; "we don't intend
to murder or rob you, ma'am!"

There dropped from the doorsill into the yard, not one, but three young
women, followed by a very deaf old man, who appeared to think that the
Captain's visit bore some reference to the hencoop.

"I wish to buy for the use of the United States Government," said the
Captain, "some stacks of hay and corn fodder, that lie in one of your
fields."

"The last hen was toted off this morning before breakfast," said the old
man; "they took the turkeys yesterday, and I was obliged to kill the
ducks or I shouldn't have had anything to eat."

Here Fogg so misdemeaned himself, as to laugh through his nose, and the
man Clover appeared to be suddenly interested in something that lay in a
mulberry-tree opposite.

"I am provided with money to pay liberally for your produce, and you
cannot do better than to let me take the stacks: leaving you, of course,
enough for your own horses and cattle."

Here the old man pricked up his ears, and said that he hadn't heard of
any recent battle; for his part, he had never been a politician; but
thought that both parties were a little wrong; and wished that peace
would return: for he was a very old man, and was sorry that folks
couldn't let quiet folks' property alone. How far his garrulity might
have betrayed him, could be conjectured only by one of the girls taking
his hand and leading him submissively into the house.

The eldest daughter said that the Captain might take the stacks at his
own valuation, but trusted to his honor as a soldier, and as he seemed,
a gentleman, to deal justly by them. There could be no crop harvested
for a twelvemonth, and beggary looked them in the face. I have never
beheld anything more chivalrously gallant, than the sturdy old
quartermaster's attitude. He blended in tone and face the politeness of
a diplomat and the gentleness of a father. They asked him to return to
the house, with his _officers_, when he had loaded the wagons; for
dinner was being prepared, and they hoped that Virginians could be
hospitable, even to their enemies. As to the hay and fodder, none need
be left; for the Confederates had seized their horses some months
before, and driven off their cows when they retired from the
neighborhood.

I so admired the queer gables and great brick ovens of the house, that I
resolved to tie my horse, and rest under the crooked porch. The eldest
young lady had taken me to be a prisoner, and was greatly astonished
that the Quartermaster permitted me to go at large. She asked me to have
a chair in the parlor, but when I made my appearance there, the two
younger sisters fled precipitately. The old man was shaking his head
sadly by the fireplace. Some logs burned on the andirons with a red
flame. The furniture consisted of a mahogany sideboard, table, and
chairs,--ponderous in pattern; and a series of family portraits, in a
sprawling style of art, smirked and postured on the wall. The floor was
bare, but shone by reason of repeated scrubbing, and the black
mantel-piece was a fine specimen of colonial carving in the staunchest
of walnut-wood.

Directly the two younger girls--though the youngest must have been
twenty years of age--came back with averted eyes and the silliest of
giggles. They sat a little distance apart, and occasionally nodded or
signalled like school children.

"Wish you _would_ stop, Bell!" said one of these misses,--whose flaxen
hair was plastered across her eyebrows, and who was very tall and
slender.

"See if I don't tell on you," said the other,--a dark miss with roguish
eyes and fat, plump figure, and curls that shook ever so merrily about
her shoulders.

"Declar' I never said so, if he asks me; declar' I will."

"Tell on you,--you see! Won't he be jealous? How he will car' on!"

I made out that these young ladies were intent upon publishing their
obligations to certain sweethearts of theirs, who, as it afterward
seemed, were in the army at Manassas Junction. I said to the
curly-haired miss, that she was endangering the life of her enamored;
for it would become an object with all the anxious troops in the
vicinity to shorten his days. The old man roused up here, and remarked
that his health certainly was declining; but he hoped to survive a while
longer for the sake of his children; that he was no politician, and
always said that the negroes were very ungrateful people. He caught his
daughter's eye finally, and cowered stupidly, nodding at the fire.

I remarked to the eldest young woman,--called Prissy (Priscilla) by her
sister,--that the country hereabout was pleasantly wooded. She said, in
substance, that every part of Virginia was beautiful, and that she did
not wish to survive the disgrace of the old commonwealth.

"Become right down hateful since Yankees invaded it!" exclaimed Miss
Bell. "_Some_ Yankee's handsome sister," said Miss Bessie, the
proprietor of the curls, "think some Yankees puffick gentlemen!"

"Oh, you traitor!" said the other,--"wish _Henry_ heard you say that!"

Miss Bell intimated that she should take the first opportunity of
telling him the same, and I eulogized her good judgment. Priscilla now
begged to be excused for a moment, as, since the flight of the negro
property, the care of the table had devolved mainly upon her. A single
aged servant, too feeble or too faithful to decamp, still attended to
the menial functions, and two mulatto children remained to relieve them
of light labor. She was a dignified, matronly young lady, and, as one of
the sisters informed me, plighted to a Major in the Confederate service.
The others chattered flippantly for an hour, and said that the old place
was dreadfully lonesome of late. Miss Bell was _sure_ she should die if
another winter, similar to the last, occurred. She loved company, and
had always found it _so_ lively in Loudon before; whereas she had
positively been but twice to a neighbor's for a twelvemonth, and had
quite forgotten the road to the mill. She said, finally, that, rather
than undergo another such isolation, she would become a _Vivandiere_ in
the Yankee army. The slender sister was altogether wedded to the idea of
her lover's. "_Wouldn't_ she tell Henry? and _shouldn't_ she write to
Jeems? and oh, Bessie, you would not _dare_ to repeat that before
_him_." In short, I was at first amused, and afterwards annoyed, by this
young lady, whereas the roguish-eyed miss improved greatly upon
acquaintance.

After a while, Captain Kingwalt came in, trailing his spurs over the
floor, and leaving sunshine in his wake. There was something galvanic in
his gentleness, and infectious in his merriment. He told them at dinner
of his own daughters on the Brandywine, and invented stories of Fogg's
courtships, till that young gentleman first blushed, and afterward
dropped his plate. Our meal was a frugal one, consisting mainly of the
ducks referred to, some vegetables, corn-bread, and coffee made of
wasted rye. There were neither sugar, spices, nor tea, on the premises,
and the salt before us was the last in the dwelling. The Captain
promised to send them both coffee and salt, and Fogg volunteered to
bring the same to the house, whereat the Captain teased him till he left
the table.

At this time, a little boy, who was ostensibly a waiter, cried: "Miss
Prissy, soldiers is climbin' in de hog-pen."

"I knew we should lose the last living thing on the property," said this
young lady, much distressed.

The Captain went to the door, and found three strolling Bucktails
looking covetously at the swine. They were a little discomposed at his
appearance, and edged off suspiciously.

"Halt!" said the old man in his great voice, "where are you men going?"

"Just makin' reconnoissance," said one of the freebooters; "s'pose a
feller has a right to walk around, hain't he?"

"Not unless he has a pass," said the Quartermaster; "have you written
permission to leave camp?"

"Left'nant s'posed we might. Don't know as it's your business. Never see
_you_ in the regiment."

"It is my business, as an officer of the United States, to see that no
soldier strays from camp unauthorizedly, or depredates upon private
property. I will take your names, and report you, first for straggling,
secondly for insolence!"

"Put to it, Bill!" said the speaker of the foragers; "run, Bob! go it
hearties!" And they took to their heels, cleared a pair of fences, and
were lost behind some outbuildings. The Captain could be harsh as well
as generous, and was about mounting his horse impulsively, to overtake
and punish the fugitives, when Priscilla begged him to refrain, as an
enforcement of discipline on his part might bring insult upon her
helpless household. I availed myself of a pause in the Captain's wrath,
to ask Miss Priscilla if she would allow me to lodge in the dwelling.
Five nights' experience in camp had somewhat reduced my enthusiasm, and
I already wearied of the damp beds, the hard fare, and the coarse
conversation of the bivouac. The young lady assented willingly, as she
stated that the presence of a young man would both amuse and protect the
family. For several nights she had not slept, and had imagined footsteps
on the porch and the drawing of window-bolts. There was a bed, formerly
occupied by her brother, that I might take, but must depend upon rather
laggard attendance. I had the satisfaction, therefore, of seeing the
Captain and retinue mount their horses, and wave me a temporary good by.
Poor Fogg looked back so often and so seriously that I expected to see
him fall from the saddle. The young ladies were much impressed with the
Captain's manliness, and Miss Bell wondered _how_ such a _puffick_
gentleman could _reconcile_ himself to the Yankee cause. She had felt a
desire to speak to him upon that point as she was _sure_ he was of fine
stock, and entirely averse to the invasion of such territory as that of
_dear_ old Virginia. There was something in his manner that _so_
reminded her of some one who should be _nameless_ for the present; but
the "nameless" was, _of course_, young, _handsome_, and _so_ brave. I
ruthlessly dissipated her theory of the Captain's origin, by stating
that he was of humble German descent, so far as I knew, and had probably
never beheld Virginia till preceded by the bayonets of his neighbors.

After tea Miss Bessie produced a pitcher of rare cider, that came from a
certain mysterious quarter of the cellar. A chessboard was forthcoming
at a later hour, when we amused ourselves with a couple of games,
facetiously dubbing our chessman Federals and Confederates. Miss Bell,
meanwhile, betook herself to a diary, wherein she minutely related the
incidents and sentiments of successive days. The quantity of words
underscored in the same autobiography would have speedily exhausted the
case of italics, if the printer had obtained it. I was so beguiled by
these patriarchal people, that I several times asked myself if the
circumstances were real. Was I in a hostile country, surrounded by
thousands of armed men? Were the incidents of this evening portions of
an historic era, and the ground about me to be commemorated by
bloodshed? Was this, in fact, revolution, and were these simple country
girls and their lovers revolutionists? The logs burned cheerily upon the
hearth, and the ancestral portraits glowered contemplatively from the
walls. Miss Prissy looked dreamily into the fire, and the old man snored
wheezily in a corner. A gray cat purred in Miss Bell's lap, and Miss
Bessie was writing some nonsense in my note-book.

A sharp knock fell upon the door, and something that sounded like the
butt of a musket shook the porch without. The girls turned pale, and I
think that Miss Bessie seized my arm and clung to it. I think also, that
Miss Bell attempted to take the other arm, to which I demurred.

"Those brutal soldiers again!" said Priscilla, faintly.

"I think one of the andirons has fallen down, darter!" said the old man,
rousing up.

"Tremble for my life," said Miss Bell; "_sure_ shall die if it's _a
man_."

I opened the door after a little pause, when a couple of rough privates
in uniform confronted me.

"We're two guards that General Meade sent to protect the house and
property," said the tallest of these men; "might a feller come in and
warm his feet!"

I understood at once that the Quartermaster had obtained these persons;
and the other man coming forward, said--

"I fetched some coffee over, and a bag o' salt, with Corporal Fogg's
compliments."

They deposited their muskets in a corner, and balanced their boots on
the fender. Nothing was said for a time.

"Did you lose yer poultry?" said the tall man, at length.

"All," said Miss Priscilla.

"Fellers loves poultry!" said the man, smacking his lips.

"Did you lose yer sheep?" said the same man, after a little silence.

"The Bucktails cut their throats the first day that they encamped at the
mill," said Miss Priscilla.

"Them Bucktails great fellers," said the tall man; "them Bucktails awful
on sheep: they loves 'em so!"

He relapsed again for a few minutes, when he continued: "You don't like
fellers to bag yer poultry and sheep, do you?"

Miss Priscilla replied that it was both dishonest and cruel. Miss Bell
intimated that none but Yankees would do it.

"P'raps not," said the tall soldier, drily; "did you ever grub on fat
pork, Miss? No? Did you ever gnaw yer hard tack after a spell o'
sickness, and a ten-hour march? No? P'raps you might like a streak o'
mutton arterwards! P'raps you might take a notion for a couple o'
chickens or so! No? How's that, Ike? What do you think, pardner? (to me)
I ain't over and above cruel, mum. I don't think the Bucktails is over
and above dishonest to home, mum. But, gosh hang it, I think I _would_
bag a chicken any day! I say that above board. Hey, Ike?"

When the tall man and his inferior satellite had warmed their boots till
they smoked, they rose, recovered their muskets, and bowed themselves
into the yard. Soon afterward I bade the young ladies good night, and
repaired to my room. The tall man and his associate were pacing up and
down the grass-plot, and they looked very cold and comfortless, I
thought. I should have liked to obtain for them a draught of cider, but
prudently abstained; for every man in the army would thereby become
cognizant of its existence. So I placed my head once more upon a soft
pillow, and pitied the chilled soldiers who slept upon the turf. I
thought of Miss Bessie with her roguish eyes, and wondered what themes
were now engrossing her. I asked myself if this was the romance of war,
and if it would bear relating to one's children when he grew as old and
as deaf as the wheezy gentleman down-stairs. In fine, I was a little
sentimental, somewhat reflective, and very drowsy. So, after a while,
processions of freebooting soldiers, foraging Quartermasters, deaf
gentlemen, Fogg's regiment, and multitudes of ghosts from Manassas,
drifted by in my dreams. And, in the end, Miss Bessie's long curls
brushed into my eyes, and I found the morning, ruddy as her cheeks,
blushing at the window.




CHAPTER V.

WHAT A MARCH IS IN FACT.


I found at breakfast, that Miss Bessie had been placed beside me, and I
so far forgot myself as to forget all other persons at the table. Miss
Priscilla asked to be helped to the corn-bread, and I deposited a
quantity of the same upon Miss Bessie's plate. Miss Bell asked if I did
not love _dear_ old Virginia, and I replied to Miss Bessie that it had
lately become very attractive, and that, in fact, I was decidedly
rebellious in my sympathy with the distressed Virginians. I _did_
except, however, the man darkly mooted as "Henry," and hoped that he
would be disfigured--not killed--at the earliest engagement. The deaf
old gentleman bristled up here and asked _who_ had been killed at the
recent engagement. There was a man named Jeems Lee,--a distant
connection of the Lightfoots,--not the Hampshire Lightfoots, but the
Fauquier Lightfoots,--who had distinctly appeared to the old gentleman
for several nights, robed in black, and carrying a coffin under his arm.
Since I had mentioned his name, he recalled the circumstance, and hoped
that Jeems Lightfoot had not disgraced his ancestry. Nevertheless, the
deaf gentleman was not to be understood as expressing any opinion upon
the merits of the war. For _his_ part he thought both sides a little
wrong, and the crops were really in a dreadful state. The negroes were
very ungrateful people and property should be held sacred by all
belligerents.

At this point he caught Miss Priscilla's eye, and was transfixed with
conscious guilt.

I had, meantime, been infringing upon Miss Bessie's feet,--very pretty
feet they were!--which expressive but not very refined method of
correspondence caused her to blush to the eyes. Miss Bell, noticing the
same, was determined to tell '_Henry_' at once, and I hoped in my heart
that she would set out for Manassas to further that purpose.

The door opened here, and the rubicund visage of Mr. Fogg appeared like
the head of the Medusa. He said that 'Captain' had ordered the blue roan
to be saddled and brought over to me, but I knew that this was a cunning
device on his part, to revisit the dwelling. Miss Bell, somehow caught
the idea that Fogg was enamored of her, and the poor fellow was
subjected to a volley of tender innuendos and languishing glances, that
by turn mortified and enraged him.

I bade the good people adieu at eight o'clock, promising to return for
dinner at five; and Miss Bessie accompanied me to the lane, where I took
leave of her with a secret whisper and a warm grasp of the hand. One of
her rings had somehow adhered to my finger, which Fogg remarked with a
bilious expression of countenance. I had no sooner got astride of the
blue roan than he darted off like the wind, and subjected me to great
terror, alternating to chagrin, when I turned back and beheld all the
young ladies waving their handkerchiefs. They evidently thought me an
unrivalled equestrian.

I rode to a picket post two miles from the mill, passing over the spot
where the Confederate soldier had fallen. The picket consisted of two
companies or one hundred and sixty men. Half of them were sitting around
a fire concealed in the woods, and the rest were scattered along the
edges of a piece of close timber. I climbed a lookout-tree by means of
cross-strips nailed to the trunk, and beheld from the summit a long
succession of hazy hills, valleys, and forests, with the Blue Ridge
Mountains bounding the distance, like some mighty monster, enclosing the
world in its coils. This was the country of the enemy, and a Lieutenant
obligingly pointed out to me the curling smoke of their pickets, a few
miles away. The cleft of Manassas was plainly visible, and I traced the
line of the Gap Railway to its junction with the Orange and Alexandria
road, below Bull Run. For aught that I knew, some concealed observer
might now be watching me from the pine-tops on the nearest knoll. Some
rifleman might be running his practised eye down the deadly groove, to
topple me from my perch, and send me crashing through the boughs. The
uncertainty, the hazard, the novelty of my position had at this time an
indescribable charm: but subsequent exposures dissipated the romance and
taught me the folly of such adventures.

The afternoon went dryly by: for a drizzling rain fell at noon; but at
four o'clock I saddled the blue roan and went to ride with Fogg. We
retraced the road to Colonel T----s, and crossing a boggy brook, turned
up the hills and passed toward the Potomac. Fogg had been a
schoolmaster, and many of his narrations indicated keen perception and
clever comprehension. He so amused me on this particular occasion that I
quite forgot my engagement for dinner, and unwittingly strolled beyond
the farthest brigade.

Suddenly, we heard a bugle-call from the picket-post before us, and, at
the same moment, the drums beat from the camp behind. Our horses pricked
up their ears and Fogg stared inquiringly. As we turned back we heard
approaching hoofs and the blue roan exhibited intentions of running
away. I pulled his rein in vain. He would neither be soothed nor
commanded. A whole company of cavalry closed up with him at length, and
the sabres clattered in their scabbards as they galloped toward camp at
the top of their speed. With a spring that almost shook me from the
saddle and drove the stirrups flying from my feet, the blue roan dashed
the dust into the eyes of Fogg, and led the race.

Not the wild yager on his gait to perdition, rode so fearfully. Trees,
bogs, huts, bushes, went by like lightning. The hot breath of the nag
rose to my nostrils and at every leap I seemed vaulting among the
spheres.

I speak thus flippantly now, of what was then the agony of death. I
grasped the pommel of my saddle, mechanically winding the lines about my
wrist, and clung with the tenacity of sin clutching the world. Some
soldiers looked wonderingly from the wayside, but did not heed my shriek
of "stop him, for God's sake!" A ditch crossed the lane,--deep and
wide,--and I felt that my moment had come: with a spring that seemed to
break thew and sinew, the blue roan cleared it, pitching upon his knees,
but recovered directly and darted onward again. I knew that I should
fall headlong now, to be trampled by the fierce horsemen behind, but
retained my grasp though my heart was choking me. The camps were in
confusion as I swept past them. A sharp clearness of sense and thought
enabled me to note distinctly the minutest occurrences. I marked long
lines of men cloaked, and carrying knapsacks, drummer-boys beating music
that I had whistled in many a ramble,--field-officers shouting orders
from their saddles, and cannon limbered up as if ready to move,--tents
taken down and teams waiting to be loaded; all the evidences of an
advance, that I alas should never witness, lying bruised and mangled by
the roadside. A cheer saluted me as I passed some of Meade's regiments.
"It is the scout that fetched the orders for an advance!" said several,
and one man remarked that "that feller was the most reckless rider he
had ever beheld." The crisis came at length: a wagon had stopped the
way; my horse in turning it, stepped upon a stake, and slipping rolled
heavily upon his side, tossing me like an acrobat, over his head, but
without further injury than a terrible nervous shock and a rent in my
pantaloons.

I employed a small boy to lead the blue roan to Captain Kingwalt's
quarters, and as I limped wearily after, some regiments came toward me
through the fields. General McCall responded to my salute; he rode in
the advance. The Quartermaster's party was loading the tents and
utensils. The rain fell smartly as dusk deepened into night, and the
brush tents now deserted by the soldiers, were set on fire. Being
composed of dry combustible material, they burned rapidly and with an
intense flame. The fields in every direction were revealed, swarming
with men, horses, batteries, and wagons. Some of the regiments began the
march in silence; others sang familiar ballads as they moved in column.
A few, riotously disposed, shrieked, whistled, and cheered. The
standards were folded; the drums did not mark time; the orders were few
and short. The cannoneers sat moodily upon the caissons, and the
cavalry-men walked their horses sedately. Although fifteen thousand men
comprised the whole corps, each of its three brigades would have seemed
as numerous to a novice. The teams of each brigade closed up the rear,
and a quartermaster's guard was detailed from each regiment to march
beside its own wagons. When the troops were fairly under way, and the
brush burning along from continuous miles of road, the effect was grand
beyond all that I had witnessed. The country people gathered in fright
at the cottage doors, and the farm-dogs bayed dismally at the unwonted
scene. I refused to ride the blue roan again, but transferred my saddle
to a team horse that appeared to be given to a sort of equine
somnambulism, and once or twice attempted to lie down by the roadside.
At nine o'clock I set out with Fogg, who slipped a flask of spirits into
my haversack. Following the tardy movement of the teams, we turned our
faces toward Washington. I was soon wet to the skin, and my saddle
cushion was soaking with water. The streams crossing the road were
swollen with rain, and the great team wheels clogged on the slimy banks.
We were sometimes delayed a half hour by a single wagon, the storm
beating pitilessly in our faces the while. During the stoppages, the
Quartermaster's guards burned all the fence rails in the vicinity, and
some of the more indurated sat round the fagots and gamed with cards.

Cold, taciturn, miserable, I thought of the quiet farm, house, the ruddy
hearth-place, and the smoking supper. I wondered if the roguish eyes
were not a little sad, and the trim feet a little restless, the chessmen
somewhat stupid, and the good old house a trifle lonesome. Alas! the
intimacy so pleasantly commenced, was never to be renewed. With the
thousand and one airy palaces that youth builds and time annihilates, my
first romance of war towered to the stars in a day, and crumbled to
earth in a night.

At two o'clock in the morning we halted at Metropolitan Mills, on the
Alexandria and Leesburg turnpike. A bridge had been destroyed below, and
the creek was so swollen that neither artillery nor cavalry could ford
it. The meadows were submerged and the rain still descended in torrents.
The chilled troops made bonfires of some new panel fence, and stormed
all the henroosts in the vicinity. Some pigs, that betrayed their
whereabouts by inoportune whines and grunts, were speedily confiscated,
slaughtered, and spitted. We erected our tarpaulin in a ploughed field,
and Fogg laid some sharp rails upon the ground to make us a dry bed.
Skyhiski fried a quantity of fresh beef, and boiled some coffee; but
while we ate heartily, theorizing as to the destination of the corps,
the poor Captain was terribly shaken by his ague.

I woke in the morning with inflamed throat, rheumatic limbs, and every
indication of chills and fever. Fogg whispered to me at breakfast that
two men of Reynold's brigade had died during the night, from fatigue and
exposure. He advised me to push forward to Washington and await the
arrival of the division, as, unused to the hardships of a march, I
might, after another day's experience, become dangerously ill. I set
out at five o'clock, resolving to ford the creek, resume the turnpike,
and reach Long Bridge at noon. Passing over some dozen fields in which
my horse at every step sank to the fetlocks, I travelled along the brink
of the stream till I finally reached a place that seemed to be shallow.
Bracing myself firmly in the saddle, I urged my unwilling horse into the
waters, and emerged half drowned on the other side. It happened,
however, that I had crossed only a branch of the creek and gained an
island. The main channel was yet to be attempted, and I saw that it was
deep, broad, and violent. I followed the margin despairingly for a
half-mile, when I came to a log footbridge, where I dismounted and swam
my horse through the turbulent waters. I had now so far diverged from
the turnpike that I was at a loss to recover it, but straying forlornly
through the woods, struck a wagon track at last, and pursued it
hopefully, until, to my confusion, it resolved itself to two tracks,
that went in contrary directions. My horse preferred taking to the left,
but after riding a full hour, I came to some felled trees, beyond which
the traces did not go. Returning, weak and bewildered, I adopted the
discarded route, which led me to a worm-fence at the edge of the woods.
A house lay some distance off, but a wheat-field intervened, and I might
bring the vengeance of the proprietor upon me by invading his domain.
There was no choice, however; so I removed the rails, and rode directly
across the wheat to some negro quarters, a little removed from the
mansion. They were deserted, all save one, where a black boy was singing
some negro hymns in an uproarious manner. The words, as I made them out,
were these:--

    "Stephen came a runnin',
      His Marster fur to see;
    But Gabriel says he is not yar';
      He gone to Calvary!
          O,--O,--Stephen, Stephen,
                Fur to see;
          Stephen, Stephen, get along up Calvary!"

I learned from this person two mortifying facts,--that I was farther
from Washington than at the beginning of my journey, and that the morrow
was Sunday. War, alas! knows no Sabbaths, and the negro said,
apologetically--

"I was a seyin' some ole hymns, young Mars'r. Sence dis yer war we don't
have no more meetin's, and a body mos' forgits his pra'rs. Dere hain't
been no church in all Fairfax, sah, fur nigh six months."

Washington was nineteen miles distant, and another creek was to be
forded before gaining the turnpike. The negro sauntered down the lane,
and opened the gate for me. "You jes keep from de creek, take de mill
road, and enqua' as ye get furder up," said he; "it's mighty easy, sah,
an' you can't miss de way."

I missed the way at once, however, by confounding the mill road with the
mill lane, and a shaggy dog that lay in a wagon shed pursued me about a
mile. The road was full of mire; no dwellings adjoined it, and nothing
human was to be seen in any direction. I came to a crumbling negro cabin
after two plodding hours, and, seeing a figure flit by the window,
called aloud for information. Nobody replied, and when, dismounting, I
looked into the den, it was, to my confusion, vacant.

The soil, hereabout, was of a sterile red clay, spotted with scrub
cedars. Country more bleak and desolate I have never known, and when, at
noon, the rain ceased, a keen wind blew dismally across the barriers. I
reached a turnpike at length, and, turning, as I thought, toward
Alexandria, goaded my horse into a canter. An hour's ride brought me to
a wretched hamlet, whose designation I inquired of a cadaverous old
woman--

"Drainesville," said she.

"Then I am not upon the Alexandria turnpike?"

"No. You're sot for Leesburg. This is the Georgetown and Chain Bridge
road."

With a heavy heart, I retraced my steps, crossed Chain Bridge at five
o'clock, and halted at Kirkwood's at seven. After dinner, falling in
with the manager of the Washington Sunday morning _Chronicle_, I penned,
at his request, a few lines relative to the movements of the Reserves;
and, learning in the morning that they had arrived at Alexandria, set
out on horseback for that city.

Many hamlets and towns have been destroyed during the war. But, of all
that in some form survive, Alexandria has most suffered. It has been in
the uninterrupted possession of the Federals for twenty-two months, and
has become essentially a military city. Its streets, its docks, its
warehouses, its dwellings, and its suburbs, have been absorbed to the
thousand uses of war.

I was challenged thrice on the Long Bridge, and five times on the road,
before reaching the city. I rode under the shadows of five earthworks,
and saw lines of white tents sweeping to the horizon. Gayly caparisoned
officers passed me, to spend their Sabbath in Washington, and trains
laden with troops, ambulances, and batteries, sped along the line of
railway, toward the rendezvous at Alexandria. A wagoner, looking
forlornly at his splintered wheels; a slovenly guard, watching some
bales of hay; a sombre negro, dozing upon his mule; a slatternly Irish
woman gossiping with a sergeant at her cottage door; a sutler in his
"dear-born," running his keen eye down the limbs of my beast; a spruce
civilian riding for curiosity; a gray-haired gentleman, in a threadbare
suit, going to camp on foot, to say good by to his boy,--these were some
of the personages that I remarked, and each was a study, a sermon, and a
story. The Potomac, below me, was dotted with steamers and shipping. The
bluffs above were trodden bare, and a line of dismal marsh bordered some
stagnant pools that blistered at their bases. At points along the
river-shore, troops were embarking on board steamers; transports were
taking in tons of baggage and subsistence. There was a schooner, laden
to the water-line with locomotive engines and burden carriages; there,
a brig, shipping artillery horses by a steam derrick, that lifted them
bodily from the shore and deposited them in the hold of the vessel.
Steamers, from whose spacious saloons the tourist and the bride have
watched the picturesque margin of the Hudson, were now black with
clusters of rollicking volunteers, who climbed into the yards, and
pitched headlong from the wheel-houses. The "grand movement," for which
the people had waited so long, and which McClellan had promised so
often, was at length to be made. The Army of the Potomac was to be
transferred to Fortress Monroe, at the foot of the Chesapeake, and to
advance by the peninsula of the James and the York, upon the city of
Richmond.

I rode through Washington Street, the seat of some ancient residences,
and found it lined with freshly arrived troops. The grave-slabs in a
fine old churchyard were strewn with weary cavalry-men, and they lay in
some side yards, soundly sleeping. Some artillery-men chatted at
doorsteps, with idle house-girls; some courtesans flaunted in furs and
ostrich feathers, through a group of coarse engineers; some sergeants of
artillery, in red trimmings, and caps gilded with cannon, were reining
their horses to leer at some ladies, who were taking the air in their
gardens; and at a wide place in the street, a Provost-Major was
manoeuvring some companies, to the sound of the drum and fife. There
was much drunkenness, among both soldiers and civilians; and the people
of Alexandria were, in many cases, crushed and demoralized by reason of
their troubles. One man of this sort led me to a sawmill, now run by
Government, and pointed to the implements.

"I bought 'em and earned 'em," he said. "My labor and enterprise set 'em
there; and while my mill and machinery are ruined to fill the pockets o'
Federal sharpers, I go drunk, ragged, and poor about the streets o' my
native town. My daughter starves in Richmond; God knows I can't get to
her. I wish to h----l I was dead."

Further inquiry developed the facts that my acquaintance had been a
thriving builder, who had dotted all Northeastern Virginia with
evidences of his handicraft. At the commencement of the war, he took
certain contracts from the Confederate government, for the construction
of barracks at Richmond and Manassas Junction; returning inopportunely
to Alexandria, he was arrested, and kept some time in Capitol-Hill
prison; he had not taken the oath of allegiance, consequently, he could
obtain no recompense for the loss of his mill property. Domestic
misfortunes, happening at the same time, so embittered his days that he
resorted to dissipation. Alexandria is filled with like ruined people;
they walk as strangers through their ancient streets, and their property
is no longer theirs to possess, but has passed into the hands of the
dominant nationalists. My informant pointed out the residences of many
leading citizens: some were now hospitals, others armories and arsenals;
others offices for inspectors, superintendents, and civil officials. The
few people that remained upon their properties, obtained partial
immunity, by courting the acquaintance of Federal officers, and, in many
cases, extending the hospitalities of their homes to the invaders. I do
not know that any Federal functionary was accused of tyranny, or
wantonness, but these things ensued, as the natural results of civil
war; and one's sympathies were everywhere enlisted for the poor, the
exiled, and the bereaved.

My dinner at the City Hotel was scant and badly prepared. I gave a negro
lad who waited upon me a few cents, but a burly negro carver, who seemed
to be his father, boxed the boy's ears and put the coppers into his
pocket. The proprietor of the place had voluntarily taken the oath of
allegiance, and had made more money since the date of Federal occupation
than during his whole life previously. He said to me, curtly, that if by
any chance the Confederates should reoccupy Alexandria, he could very
well afford to relinquish his property. He employed a smart barkeeper,
who led guests by a retired way to the drinking-rooms. Here, with the
gas burning at a taper point, cobblers, cocktails, and juleps were mixed
stealthily and swallowed in the darkness. The bar was like a mint to the
proprietor; he only feared discovery and prohibition. It would not
accord with the chaste pages of this narrative to tell how some of the
noblest residences in Alexandria had been desecrated to licentious
purposes; nor how, by night, the parlors of cosey homes flamed with riot
and orgie. I stayed but a little time, having written an indiscreet
paragraph in the Washington Chronicle, for which I was pursued by the
War Department, and the management of my paper, lacking heart, I went
home in a pet.




CHAPTER VI.

DOWN THE CHESAPEAKE.


Disappointed in the unlucky termination of my adventures afield, I now
looked ambitiously toward New York. As London stands to the provinces,
so stands the empire city to America. Its journals circulate by hundreds
of thousands; its means are only rivalled by its enterprise; it is the
end of every young American's aspiration, and the New Bohemia for the
restless, the brilliant, and the industrious. It seemed a great way off
when I first beheld it, but I did not therefore despair. Small matters
of news that I gathered in my modest city, obtained space in the columns
of the great metropolitan journal, the----. After a time I was delegated
to travel in search of special incidents, and finally, when the noted
Tennessee Unionist, "Parson" Brownlow, journeyed eastward, I joined his
_suite_, and accompanied him to New York. The dream of many months now
came to be realized. A correspondent on the ----'s staff had been
derelict, and I was appointed to his division. His horse, saddle,
field-glasses, blankets, and pistols were to be transferred, and I was
to proceed without delay to Fortress Monroe, to keep with the advancing
columns of McClellan.

At six in the morning I embarked; at eleven I was whirled through my own
city, without a glimpse of my friends; at three o'clock I dismounted at
Baltimore, and at five was gliding down the Patapsco, under the shadows
of Fort Federal Hill, and the white walls of Fort McHenry. The latter
defence is renowned for its gallant resistance to a British fleet in
1813, and the American national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," was
written to commemorate that bombardment. Fort Carroll, a massive
structure of hewn stone, with arched bomb-proof and three tiers of
mounted ordnance, its smooth walls washed by the waves, and its
unfinished floors still ringing with the trowel and the adze,--lies some
miles below, at a narrow passage in the stream. Below, the shores
diverge, and at dusk we were fairly in the Chesapeake, under steam and
sail, speeding due southward.

The _Adelaide_ was one of a series of boats making daily trips between
Baltimore and Old Point. Fourteen hours were required to accomplish the
passage, and we were not to arrive till seven o'clock next morning. I
was so fortunate as to obtain a state-room, but many passengers were
obliged to sleep upon sofas or the cabin floor. These boats monopolized
the civil traffic between the North and the army, although they were
reputed to be owned and managed by Secessionists. None were allowed to
embark unless provided with Federal passes; but there were,
nevertheless, three or four hundred people on board. About one fourth of
these were officers and soldiers; one half sutlers, traders,
contractors, newsmen, and idle civilians, anxious to witness a battle,
or stroll over the fields of Big Bethel, Lee's Mills, Yorktown,
Gloucester, Williamsburg, or West Point; the rest were females on
missions of mercy, on visits to sons, brothers, and husbands, and on the
way to their homes at Norfolk, Suffolk, or Hampton. Some of these were
citizens of Richmond, who believed that the Federals would occupy the
city in a few days, and enable them to resume their professions and
homes. The lower decks were occupied by negroes. The boat was heavily
freighted, and among the parcels that littered the hold and steerage, I
noticed scores of box coffins for the removal of corpses from the field
to the North. There were quantities of spirits, consigned mainly to
Quartermasters, but evidently the property of certain Shylocks, who
watched the barrels greedily. An embalmer was also on board, with his
ghostly implements. He was a sallow man, shabbily attired, and appeared
to look at all the passengers as so many subjects for the development of
his art. He was called "Doctor" by his admirers, and conversed in the
blandest manner of the triumphs of his system.

"There are certain pretenders," he said, "who are at this moment
imposing upon the Government. I regret that it is necessary to repeat
it, but the fact exists that the Government is the prey of harpies. And
in the art of which I am an humble disciple,--that of injecting,
commonly called embalming,--the frauds are most deplorable. There was
Major Montague,--a splendid subject, I assure you,--a subject that any
_Professor_ would have beautifully preserved,--a subject that one
esteems it a favor to obtain,--a subject that I in particular would have
been proud to receive! But what were the circumstances? I do assure you
that a person named Wigwart,--who I have since ascertained to be a
veterinary butcher; in plain language, a doctor of horses and
asses,--imposed upon the relatives of the deceased, obtained the body,
and absolutely ruined it!--absolutely _mangled_ it! I may say,
shamefully disfigured it! He was a man, sir, six feet two,--about your
height, I think! (to a bystander.) About your weight, also! Indeed quite
like you! And allow me to say that, if you should fall into my hands, I
would leave your friends no cause for offence! (Here the bystander
trembled perceptibly, and I thought that the doctor was about to take
his life.) Well! _I_ should have operated thus:--"

Then followed a description of the process, narrated with horrible
circumstantiality. A fluid holding in solution pounded glass and certain
chemicals, was, by the doctor's "system," injected into the
bloodvessels, and the subject at the same time bled at the neck. The
body thus became hard and stony, and would retain its form for years. He
had, by his account, experimented for a lifetime, and said that little
"Willie," the son of President Lincoln, had been so preserved that his
fond parents must have enjoyed his decease.

It seemed to me that the late lamented practitioners, Messrs. Burke and
Hare, were likely to fade into insignificance, beside this new light of
science.

I went upon deck for some moments, and marked the beating of the waves;
the glitter of sea-lights pulsing on the ripples; the sweep of belated
gulls through the creaking rigging; the dark hull of a passing vessel
with a grinning topmast lantern; the vigilant pilot, whose eyes glared
like a fiend's upon the waste of blackness; the foam that the panting
screw threw against the cabin windows; the flap of fishes caught in the
threads of moonlight; the depths over which one bent, peering half
wistfully, half abstractedly, almost crazily, till he longed to drop
into their coolness, and let the volumes of billow roll musically above
him.

A woman approached me, as I stood against the great anchor, thus
absorbed. She had a pale, thin face, and was scantily clothed, and spoke
with a distrustful, timorous voice:--

"You don't know the name of the surgeon-general, do you sir!"

"At Washington, ma'am?"

"No, sir; at Old Point."

I offered to inquire of the Captain: but she stopped me, agitatedly.
"It's of no consequence," she said,--"that is, it is of great
consequence to me; but perhaps it would be best to wait." I answered, as
obligingly as I could, that any service on my part would be cheerfully
rendered.

"The fact is, sir," she said, after a pause, "I am going to
Williamsburg, to--find--the--the body--of my--boy."

Here her speech was broken, and she put a thin, white hand tremulously
to her eyes. I thought that any person in the Federal service would
willingly assist her, and said so.

"He was not a Federal soldier, sir. He was a Confederate!"

This considerably altered the chances of success, and I was obliged to
undeceive her somewhat. "I am sure it was not my fault," she continued,
"that he joined the Rebellion. You don't think they'll refuse to let me
take his bones to Baltimore, do you, sir? He was my oldest boy, and his
brother, my second son, was killed at Ball's Bluff: _He_ was in the
Federal service. I hardly think they will refuse me the poor favor of
laying them in the same grave."

I spoke of the difficulty of recognition, of the remoteness of the
field, and of the expense attending the recovery of any remains,
particularly those of the enemy, that, left hastily behind in retreat,
were commonly buried in trenches without headboard or record. She said,
sadly, that she had very little money, and that she could barely afford
the journey to the Fortress and return. But she esteemed her means well
invested if her object could be attained.

"They were both brave boys, sir; but I could never get them to agree
politically. William was a Northerner by education, and took up with the
New England views, and James was in business at Richmond when the war
commenced. So he joined the Southern army. It's a sad thing to know that
one's children died enemies, isn't it? And what troubles me more than
all, sir, is that James was at Ball's Bluff where his brother fell. It
makes me shudder to think, sometimes, that his might have been the ball
that killed him."

The tremor of the poor creature here was painful to behold. I spoke
soothingly and encouragingly, but with a presentiment that she must be
disappointed. While I was speaking the supper-bell rang, and I proposed
to get her a seat at the table.

"No, thank you," she replied, "I shall take no meals on the vessel; I
must travel economically, and have prepared some lunch that will serve
me. Good by, sir!"

Poor mothers looking for dead sons! God help them! I have met them often
since; but the figure of that pale, frail creature flitting about the
open deck,--alone, hungry, very poor,--troubles me still, as I write. I
found, afterward, that she had denied herself a state-room, and intended
to sleep in a saloon chair. I persuaded her to accept my berth, but a
German, who occupied the same apartment, was unwilling to relinquish his
bed, and I had the power only to give her my pillow.

Supper was spread in the forecabin, and at the signal to assemble the
men rushed to the tables like as many beasts of prey. A captain opposite
me bolted a whole mackerel in a twinkling, and spread the half-pound of
butter that was to serve the entire vicinity upon a single slice of
bread. A sutler beside me reached his fork across my neck, and plucked a
young chicken bodily, which he ate, to the great disgust of some others
who were eyeing it. The waiter advanced with some steak, but before he
reached the table, a couple of Zouaves dragged it from the tray, and
laughed brutally at their success. The motion of the vessel caused a
general unsteadiness, and it was absolutely dangerous to move one's
coffee to his lips. The inveterate hate with which corporations are
regarded in America was here evidenced by a general desire to empty the
ship's larder.

"Eat all you can," said a soldier, ferociously,--"fare's amazin' high.
Must make it out in grub."

"I always gorges," said another, "on a railroad or a steamboat. Cause
why? You must eat out your passage, you know!"

Among the passengers were a young officer and his bride. They had been
married only a few days, and she had obtained permission to accompany
him to Old Point. Very pretty, she seemed, in her travelling hat and
flowing robes; and he wore a handsome new uniform with prodigious
shoulder-bars. There was a piano in the saloon, where another young lady
of the party performed during the evening, and the bride and groom
accompanied her with a song. It was the popular Federal parody of "Gay
and Happy:"

    "Then let the South fling aloft what it will,--
    We are for the Union still!
        For the Union! For the Union!
    We are for the Union still!"

The bride and groom sang alternate stanzas, and the concourse of
soldiers, civilians, and females swelled the chorus. The reserve being
thus broken, the young officer sang the "Star-Spangled Banner," and the
refrain must have called up the mermaids. Dancing ensued, and a soldier
volunteered a hornpipe. A young man with an astonishing compass of lungs
repeated something from Shakespeare, and the night passed by gleefully
and reputably. One could hardly realize, in the cheerful eyes and active
figures of the dance, the sad uncertainties of the time. Youth trips
lightest, somehow, on the brink of the grave.

The hilarities of the evening so influenced the German quartered with
me, that he sang snatches of foreign ballads during most of the night,
and obliged me, at last, to call the steward and insist upon his good
behavior.

In the gray of the morning I ventured on deck, and, following the
silvery line of beach, made out the shipping at anchor in Hampton Roads.
The _Minnesota_ flag-ship lay across the horizon, and after a time I
remarked the low walls and black derricks of the Rip Raps. The white
tents at Hampton were then revealed, and finally I distinguished
Fortress Monroe, the key of the Chesapeake, bristling with guns, and
floating the Federal flag. As we rounded to off the quay, I studied with
intense interest the scene of so many historic events. Sewall's Point
lay to the south, a stretch of woody beach, around whose western tip
the dreaded _Merrimac_ had so often moved slowly to the encounter. The
spars of the _Congress_ and the _Cumberland_ still floated along the
strand, but, like them, the invulnerable monster had become the prey of
the waves. The guns of the Rip Raps and the terrible broadsides of the
Federal gunboats, had swept the Confederates from Sewall's Point,--their
flag and battery were gone,--and farther seaward, at Willoughby Spit,
some figures upon the beach marked the route of the victorious Federals
to the city of Norfolk.

The mouth of the James and the York were visible from the deck, and long
lines of shipping stretched from each to the Fortress. The quay itself
was like the pool in the Thames, a mass of spars, smoke-stacks, ensigns
and swelling hills. The low deck and quaint cupola of the famous
_Monitor_ appeared close into shore, and near at hand rose the thick
body of the _Galena_. Long boats and flat boats went hither and thither
across the blue waves: the grim ports of the men of war were open and
the guns frowned darkly from their coverts; the seamen were gathering
for muster on the flagship, and drums beat from the barracks on shore;
the Lincoln gun, a fearful piece of ordnance, rose like the Sphynx from
the Fortress sands, and the sodded parapet, the winding stone walls, the
tops of the brick quarters within the Fort, were some of the features of
a strangely animated scene, that has yet to be perpetuated upon canvas,
and made historic.

At eight o'clock the passengers were allowed to land, and a provost
guard marched them to the Hygeia House,--of old a watering-place
hotel,--where, by groups, they were ushered into a small room, and the
oath of allegiance administered to them. The young officer who
officiated, repeated the words of the oath, with a broad grin upon his
face, and the passengers were required to assent by word and by gesture.
Among those who took the oath in this way, was a very old sailor, who
had been in the Federal service for the better part of his life, and
whose five sons were now in the army. He called "Amen" very loudly and
fervently, and there was some perceptible disposition on the part of
other ardent patriots, to celebrate the occasion with three cheers. The
quartermaster, stationed at the Fortress gave me a pass to go by steamer
up the York to White House, and as there were three hours to elapse
before departure, I strolled about the place with our agent. In times of
peace, Old Point was simply a stone fortification, and one of the
strongest of its kind in the world. Many years and many millions of
dollars were required to build it, but it was, in general, feebly
garrisoned, and was, altogether, a stupid, tedious locality, except in
the bathing months, when the beauty and fashion of Virginia resorted to
its hotel. A few cottages had grown up around it, tenanted only in "the
season;" and a little way off, on the mainland, stood the pretty village
of Hampton.

By a strange oversight, the South failed to seize Fortress Monroe at the
beginning of the Rebellion; the Federals soon made it the basis for
their armies and a leading naval station. The battle of Big Bethel was
one of the first occurrences in the vicinity. Then the dwellings of
Hampton were burned and its people exiled. In rapid succession followed
the naval battles in the Roads, the siege and surrender of Yorktown, the
flight of the Confederates up the Peninsula to Richmond, and finally the
battles of Williamsburg, and West Point, and the capture of Norfolk.
These things had already transpired; it was now the month of May; and
the victorious army, following up its vantages, had pursued the
fugitives by land and water to "White House," at the head of navigation
on the Pamunkey river. Thither it was my lot to go, and witness the
turning-point of their fortunes, and their subsequent calamity and
repulse.

I found Old Point a weary place of resort, even in the busy era of civil
war. The bar at the Hygeia House was beset with thirsty and idle
people, who swore instinctively, and drank raw spirits passionately. The
quantity of shell, ball, ordnance, camp equipage, and war munitions of
every description piled around the fort, was marvellously great. It
seemed to me that Xerxes, the first Napoleon, or the greediest of
conquerors, ancient or modern, would have beheld with amazement the
gigantic preparations at command of the Federal Government. Energy and
enterprise displayed their implements of death on every hand. One was
startled at the prodigal outlay of means, and the reckless summoning of
men. I looked at the starred and striped ensign that flaunted above the
Fort, and thought of Madame Roland's appeal to the statue by the
guillotine.

The settlers were numbered by regiments here. Their places of business
were mainly structures or "shanties" of rough plank, and most of them
were the owners of sloops, or schooners, for the transportation of
freight from New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, to their depots at
Old Point. Some possessed a dozen wagons, that plied regularly between
these stores and camps. The traffic was not confined to men; for women
and children kept pace with the army, trading in every possible article
of necessity or luxury. For these--disciples of the dime and the
dollar--war had no terrors. They took their muck-rakes, like the man in
Bunyan, and gathered the almighty coppers, from the pestilential camp
and the reeking battle-field.




CHAPTER VII.

ON TO RICHMOND.


Yorktown lies twenty-one miles northwestward from Old Point, and thither
I turned my face at noon, resolving to delay my journey to "White
House," till next day morning. Crossing an estuary of the bay upon a
narrow causeway, I passed Hampton,--half burned, half desolate,--and at
three o'clock came to "Big Bethel," the scene of the battle of June 11,
1861. A small earthwork marks the site of Magruder's field-pieces, and
hard by the slain were buried. The spot was noteworthy to me, since
Lieutenant Greble, a fellow alumnus, had perished here, and likewise,
Theodore Winthrop, the gifted author of "Cecil Dreeme" and "John Brent."
The latter did not live to know his exaltation. That morning never came
whereon he "woke, and found himself famous."

The road ran parallel with the deserted defences of the Confederates for
some distance. The country was flat and full of swamps, but marked at
intervals by relics of camps. The farm-houses were untenanted, the
fences laid flat or destroyed, the fields strewn with discarded
clothing, arms, and utensils. By and by, we entered the outer line of
Federal parallels, and wound among lunettes, cremailleres, redoubts, and
rifle-pits. Marks of shell and ball were frequent, in furrows and holes,
where the clay had been upheaved. Every foot of ground, for fifteen
miles henceforward, had been touched by the shovel and the pick. My
companion suggested that as much digging, concentred upon one point,
would have taken the Federals to China. The sappers and miners had made
their stealthy trenches, rod by rod, each morning appearing closer to
their adversaries, and finally, completed their work, at less than a
hundred yards from the Confederate defences. Three minutes would have
sufficed from the final position, to hurl columns upon the opposing
outworks, and sweep them with the bayonet. Ten days only had elapsed
since the evacuation (May 4), and the siege guns still remained in some
of the batteries. McClellan worshipped great ordnance, and some of his
columbiads, that were mounted in the water battery, yawned cavernously
through their embrasures, and might have furnished sleeping
accommodations to the gunners. A few mortars stood in position by the
river side, and there were Parrott, Griffin, and Dahlgren pieces in the
shore batteries.

However numerous and powerful were the Federal fortifications, they bore
no comparison, in either respect, to those relinquished by the
revolutionists. Miniature mountain ranges they seemed, deeply ditched,
and revetted with sods, fascines, hurdles, gabions or sand bags. Along
the York riverside there were water batteries of surpassing beauty, that
seemed, at a little distance, successions of gentle terraces. Their
pieces were likewise of enormous calibre, and their number almost
incredible. The advanced line of fortifications, sketched from the mouth
of Warwick creek, on the South, to a point fifteen miles distant on the
York: one hundred and forty guns were planted along this chain of
defences; but there were two other concentric lines, mounting, each, one
hundred and twenty, and two hundred and forty guns. The remote series
consisted of six forts of massive size and height, fronted by swamps and
flooded meadows, with frequent creeks and ravines interposing; sharp
_fraise_ and _abattis_ planted against scarp and slope, pointed cruelly
eastward. There were two water batteries, of six and four thirty-two
columbiads respectively, and the town itself, which stands upon a red
clay bluff, was encircled by a series of immense rifled and smooth-bore
pieces, including a powerful pivot-gun, that one of McClellan's shells
struck during the first day's bombardment, and split it into fragments.
At Gloucester Point, across the York river, the great guns of the
_Merrimac_ were planted, it is said, and a fleet of fire-rafts and
torpedo-ships were moored in the stream. By all accounts, there could
have been no less than five hundred guns behind the Confederate
entrenchments, the greater portion, of course, field-pieces, and, as the
defending army was composed of one hundred thousand men, we must add
that number of small arms to the list of ordnance. If we compute the
Federals at so high a figure,--and they could scarcely have had less
than a hundred thousand men afield,--we must increase the enormous
amount of their field, siege, and small ordnance, by the naval guns of
the fleet, that stood anchored in the bay. It is probable that a
thousand cannon and two hundred thousand muskets were assembled in and
around Yorktown during this memorable siege. The mind shudders to see
the terrible deductions of these statistics. The monster, who wished
that the world had but one neck, that he might sever it, would have
gloated at such realization! How many days or hours would have here
sufficed to annihilate all the races of men? Happily, the world was
spared the spectacle of these deadly mouths at once aflame. Beautiful
but awful must have been the scene, and the earth must have staggered
with the shock. One might almost have imagined that man, in his
ambition, had shut his God in heaven, and besieged him there.

While the fortifications defending it amazed me, the village of Yorktown
disappointed me. I marvelled that so paltry a settlement should have
been twice made historic. Here, in the year 1783, Lord Cornwallis
surrendered his starving command to the American colonists and their
French allies. But the entrenchments of that earlier day had been
almost obliterated by these recent labors. The field, where the Earl
delivered up his sword, was trodden bare, and dotted with ditches and
ramparts; while a small monument, that marked the event, had been hacked
to fragments by the Southerners, and carried away piecemeal. Yet,
strange to say, relics of the first bombardment had just been
discovered, and, among them, a gold-hilted sword.

I visited, in the evening, the late quarters of General Hill, a small
white house with green shutters, and also the famous "Nelson House," a
roomy mansion where, of old, Cornwallis slept, and where, a few days
past, Jefferson Davis and General Lee had held with Magruder, and his
associates, a council of war. It had been also used for hospital
purposes, but some negroes were now the only occupants.

The Confederates left behind them seventy spiked and shattered cannon,
some powder, and a few splintered wagons; but in all material respects,
their evacuation was thorough and creditable. Some deserters took the
first tidings of the retreat to the astonished Federals, and they raised
the national flag within the fortifications, in the gray of the morning
of the 4th of May. Many negroes also escaped the vigilance of their
taskmasters, and remained to welcome the victors. The fine works of
Yorktown are monuments to negro labor, for _they_ were the hewers and
the diggers. Every slave-owner in Eastern Virginia was obliged to send
one half of his male servants between the ages of sixteen and fifty to
the Confederate camps, and they were organized into gangs and set to
work. In some cases they were put to military service and made excellent
sharpshooters. The last gun discharged from the town was said to have
been fired by a negro.

I slept on board a barge at the wharf that evening, and my dreams ran
upon a thousand themes. To every American this was hallowed ground. It
had been celebrated by the pencil of Trumbull, the pen of Franklin, and
the eloquence of Jefferson. Scarce eighty years had elapsed since those
great minds established a fraternal government; but the site of their
crowning glory was now the scene of their children's shame. Discord had
stolen upon their councils and blood had profaned their shrine.

I visited next day a bomb-proof postern, or subterranean passage,
connecting the citadel with the outworks, and loitered about the
fortifications till noon, when I took passage on the mail steamer, which
left the Fortress at eleven o'clock, and reached White House at dusk the
same evening. The whole river as I ascended was filled with merchant and
naval craft. They made a continuous line from Old Point to the mouth of
York River, and the masts and spars environing Yorktown and Gloucester,
reminded one of a scene on the Mersey or the Clyde. At West Point, there
was an array of shipping scarcely less formidable, and the windings of
the interminably crooked Pamunkey were marked for leagues by sails,
smoke-stacks, and masts. The landings and wharves were besieged by
flat-boats and sloops, and Zouaves were hoisting forage and commissary
stores up the red bluffs at every turn of our vessel.

The Pamunkey was a beautiful stream, densely wooded, and occasional
vistas opened up along its borders of wheat-fields and meadows, with
Virginia farm-houses and negro quarters on the hilltops. Some of the
houses on the river banks appeared to be tenanted by white people, but
the majority had a haunted, desolate appearance, the only signs of life
being strolling soldiers, who thrust their legs through the second story
windows, or contemplated the river from the chimney-tops, and groups of
negroes who sunned themselves on the piazza, or rushed to the margin to
gaze and grin at the passing steamers. There were occasional residences
not unworthy of old manorial and baronial times, and these were attended
at a little distance by negro quarters of logs, arranged in rows, and
provided with mud chimneys built against their gables. Few of the
Northern navigable rivers were so picturesque and varied.

We passed two Confederate gunboats, that had been half completed, and
burned on the stocks. Their charred elbows and ribs, stared out, like
the remains of some extinct monsters; a little delay might have found
each of them armed and manned, and carrying havoc upon the rivers and
the seas. West Point was simply a tongue, or spit of land, dividing the
Mattapony from the Pamunkey river at their junction; a few houses were
built upon the shallow, and some wharves, half demolished, marked the
terminus of the York and Richmond railroad. A paltry water-battery was
the sole defence. Below Cumberland (a collection of huts and a wharf), a
number of schooners had been sunk across the river, and, with the aid of
an island in the middle, these constituted a rather rigid blockade. The
steamboat passed through, steering carefully, but some sailing vessels
that followed required to be towed between the narrow apertures. The
tops only of the sunken masts could be discerned above the surface, and
much time and labor must have been required to place the boats in line
and sink them. Vessels were counted by scores above and below this
blockade, and at Cumberland the masts were like a forest; clusters of
pontoons were here anchored in the river, and a short distance below we
found three of the light-draught Federal gunboats moored in the stream.
It was growing dark as we rounded to at "White House;" the camp fires of
the grand army lit up the sky, and edged the tree-boughs on the margin
with ribands of silver. Some drums beat in the distance; sentries paced
the strand; the hum of men, and the lowing of commissary cattle, were
borne towards us confusedly; soldiers were bathing in the river;
team-horses were drinking at the brink; a throng of motley people were
crowding about the landing to receive the papers and mails. I had at
last arrived at the seat of war, and my ambition to chronicle battles
and bloodshed was about to be gratified.

At first, I was troubled to make my way; the tents had just been
pitched; none knew the location of divisions other than their own, and
it was now so dark that I did not care to venture far. After a vain
attempt to find some flat-boats where there were lodgings and meals to
be had, I struck out for general head-quarters, and, undergoing repeated
snubbings from pert members of staff, fell in at length, with a very
tall, spare, and angular young officer, who spoke broken English, and
who heard my inquiries, courteously; he stepped into General Marcy's
tent, but the Chief of Staff did not know the direction of Smith's
division; he then repaired to Gen. Van Vleet, the chief Quartermaster,
but with ill success. A party of officers were smoking under a "fly,"
and some of these called to him, thus--

"Captain! Duke! De Chartres! What do you wish?"

It was, then, the Orleans Prince who had befriended me, and I had the
good fortune to hear that the division, of which I was in search, lay a
half mile up the river. I never spoke to the Bourbon afterward, but saw
him often; and that he was as chivalrous as he was kind, all testimony
proved.

A private escorted me to a Captain Mott's tent, and this officer
introduced me to General Hancock. I was at once invited to mess with the
General's staff, and in the course of an hour felt perfectly at home.
Hancock was one of the handsomest officers in the army; he had served in
the Mexican war, and was subsequently a Captain in the Quartermaster's
department. But the Rebellion placed stars in many shoulder-bars, and
few were more worthily designated than this young Pennsylvanian. His
first laurels were gained at Williamsburg; but the story of a celebrated
charge that won him the day's applause, and McClellan's encomium of the
"Superb Hancock," was altogether fictitious. The musket, not the
bayonet, gave him the victory. I may doubt, in this place, that any
extensive bayonet charge has been known during the war. Some have gone
so far as to deny that the bayonet has ever been used at all.

Hancock's regiments were the 5th Wisconsin, 49th Pennsylvanian, 43d New
York, and 6th Maine. They represented widely different characteristics,
and I esteemed myself fortunate to obtain a position where I could so
eligibly study men, habits, and warfare. During the evening I fell in
with the Colonel of each of these regiments, and from the conversation
that ensued, I gleaned a fair idea of them all.

The Wisconsin regiment was from a new and ambitious State of the
Northwest. The men were rough-mannered, great-hearted farmers,
wood-choppers, and tradesmen. They had all the impulsiveness of the
Yankee, with less selfishness, and quite as much bravery. The Colonel
was named Cobb, and he had held some leading offices in Wisconsin. A
part of his life had been adventurously spent, and he had participated
in the Mexican war. He was an ardent Republican in politics, and had
been Speaker of a branch of the State Legislature. He was an attorney in
a small county town when the war commenced, and his name had been
broached for the Governorship. In person he was small, lithe, and
capable of enduring great fatigue. His hair was a little gray, and he
had no beard. He did not respect appearances, and his sword, as I saw,
was antique and quite different in shape from the regulation weapon. He
had penetrating gray eyes, and his manners were generally reserved. One
had not to regard him twice to see that he was both cautious and
resolute. He was too ambitious to be frank, and too passionate not to be
brave. In the formula of learning he was not always correct; but few
were of quicker perception or more practical and philosophic. He might
not, in an emergency, be nicely scrupulous as to means, but he never
wavered in respect to objects. His will was the written law to his
regiment, and I believed his executive abilities superior to those of
any officer in the brigade, not excepting the General's.

The New York regiment was commanded by a young officer named Vinton. He
was not more than thirty-five years of age, and was a graduate of the
United States Military Academy. Passionately devoted to engineering, he
withdrew from the army, and passed five years in Paris, at the study of
his art. Returning homeward by way of the West Indies, he visited
Honduras, and projected a filibustering expedition to its shores from
the States. While perfecting the design, the Rebellion commenced, and
his old patron, General Scott, secured him the colonelcy of a volunteer
regiment. He still cherished his scheme of "Colonization," and half of
his men were promised to accompany him. Personally, Colonel Vinton was
straight, dark, and handsome. He was courteous, affable, and brave,--but
wedded to his peculiar views, and, as I thought, a thorough "Young
American."

The Maine regiment was fathered by Colonel Burnham, a staunch old yeoman
and soldier, who has since been made a General. His probity and
good-nature were adjuncts of his valor, and his men were of the better
class of New Englanders. The fourth regiment fell into the hands of a
lawyer from Lewistown, Pennsylvania. He had been also in the Mexican
war, and was remarkable mainly for strictness with regard to the
sanitary regulations of his camps. He had wells dug at every stoppage,
and his tents were generally fenced and canopied with cedar arbors.
General Hancock's staff was composed of a number of young men, most of
whom had been called from civil life. His brigade constituted one of
three commanded by General Smith. Four batteries were annexed to the
division so formed; the entire number of muskets was perhaps eight
thousand. The Chief of Artillery was a Captain Ayres, whose battery
saved the three months' army at Bull Run. It so happened that he came
into the General's during the evening, and recited the particulars of a
gunboat excursion, thirty miles up the Pamunkey, wherein he had landed
his men, and burned a quantity of grain, some warehouses, and shipping.
I pencilled the facts at once, made up my letter, and mailed it early in
the morning.




CHAPTER VIII.

RUSTICS IN REBELLION.


At White House, I met some of the mixed Indians and negroes from
Indiantown Island, which lies among the osiers in the stream. One of
these ferried me over, and the people received me obsequiously, touching
their straw hats, and saying, "Sar, at your service!" They were all
anxious to hear something of the war, and asked, solicitously, if they
were to be protected. Some of them had been to Richmond the previous
day, and gave me some unimportant items happening in the city. I found
that they had Richmond papers of that date, and purchased them for a few
cents. They knew little or nothing of their own history, and had
preserved no traditions of their tribe. There was, however, I
understood, a very old woman extant, named "Mag," of great repute at
medicines, pow-wows, and divination. I expressed a desire to speak with
her, and was conducted to a log-house, more ricketty and ruined than any
of the others. About fifty half-breeds followed me in respectful
curiosity, and they formed a semicircle around the cabin. The old woman
sat in the threshold, barefooted, and smoking a stump of clay pipe.

"Yaw's one o' dem Nawden soldiers, Aunt Mag!" said my conductor. "He
wants to talk wid ye."

"Sot down, honey," said the old woman, producing a wooden stool; "is you
a Yankee, honey? Does you want you fauchun told by de ole 'oman?"

I perceived that the daughter of the Delawares smelt strongly of
fire-water, and the fumes of her calumet were most unwholesome. She was
greatly disappointed that I did not require her prophetic services, and
said, appealingly--

"Why, sar, all de gen'elmen an' ladies from Richmond has dere fauchuns
told. I tells 'em true. All my fauchuns comes out true. Ain't dat so,
chillen?"

A low murmur of assent ran round the group, and I was obviously losing
caste in the settlement.

"Here is a dime," said I, "that I will give you, to tell me the result
of the war. Shall the North be victorious in the next battle? Will
Richmond surrender within a week? Shall I take my cigar at the Spotswood
on Sunday fortnight?"

"I'se been a lookin' into dat," she said, cunningly; "I'se had dreams on
dat ar'. Le'um see how de armies stand!"

She brought from the house a cup of painted earthenware containing
sediments of coffee. I saw her crafty white eyes look up to mine as she
muttered some jargon, and pretended to read the arrangement of the
grains.

"Honey," she said, "gi' me de money, and let de ole 'oman dream on it
once mo'! It ain't quite clar' yit, young massar. Tank you, honey! Tank
you! Let de old 'oman dream! Let de ole 'oman dream!"

She disappeared into the house, chuckling and chattering, and the sons
of the forest, loitering awhile, dispersed in various directions. As I
followed my conductor to the riverside, and he parted the close bushes
and boughs to give us exit, the glare of the camp-fires broke all at
once upon us. The ship-lights quivered on the water; the figures of men
moved to and fro before the fagots; the stars peeped timorously from the
vault; the woods and steep banks were blackly shadowed in the river.
Here was I, among the aborigines; and as my dusky acquaintance sent his
canoe skimming across the ripples, I thought how inexplicable were the
decrees of Time and the justice of God. Two races united in these
people, and both of them we had wronged. From the one we had taken
lands; from the other liberties. Two centuries had now elapsed. But the
little remnant of the African and the American were to look from their
Island Home upon the clash of our armies and the murder of our braves.

By the 19th of May the skirts of the grand army had been gathered up,
and on the 20th the march to Richmond was resumed. The troops moved
along two main roads, of which the right led to New Mechanicsville and
Meadow Bridges, and the left to the railroad and Bottom Bridges. My
division formed the right centre, and although the Chickahominy fords
were but eighteen miles distant, we did not reach them for three days.
On the first night we encamped at Tunstalls, a railroad-station on Black
Creek; on the second at New Cold Harbor, a little country tavern, kept
by a cripple; and on the night of the third day at Hogan's farm, on the
north hills of the Chickahominy. The railroad was opened to Despatch
Station at the same time, but the right and centre were still compelled
to "team" their supplies from White House. In the new position, the army
extended ten miles along the Chickahominy hills; and while the engineers
were driving pile, tressel, pontoon, and corduroy bridges, the cavalry
was scouring the country, on both flanks, far and wide.

The advance was full of incident, and I learned to keep as far in front
as possible, that I might communicate with scouts, contrabands, and
citizens. Many odd personages were revealed to me at the farm-houses on
the way, and I studied, with curious interest, the native Virginian
character. They appeared to be compounds of the cavalier and the boor.
There was no old gentleman who owned a thousand barren acres, spotted
with scrub timber; who lived in a weather-beaten barn, with a
multiplicity of porch and a quantity of chimney; whose means bore no
proportion to his pride, and neither to his indolence,--that did not
talk of his ancestry, proffer his hospitality, and defy me to an
argument. I was a civilian,--they had no hostility to me,--but the
blue-coats of the soldiers seared their eyeballs. In some cases their
daughters remained upon the property; but the sons and the negroes
always fled,--though in contrary directions. The old men used to peep
through the windows at the passing columns; and as their gates were
wrenched from the hinges, their rails used to pry wagons out of the mud,
their pump-handles shaken till the buckets splintered in the shaft, and
their barns invaded by greasy agrarians, they walked to and fro,
half-weakly, half-wrathfully, but with a pluck, fortitude, and devotion
that wrung my respect. Some aged negro women commonly remained, but
these were rather incumbrances than aids, and they used the family meal
to cook bread for the troops. An old, toothless, grinning African stood
at every lane and gate, selling buttermilk and corn-cakes. Poor mortal,
sinful old women! They had worked for nothing through their three-score
and ten, but avarice glared from their shrivelled pupils, and their last
but greatest delight lay in the coppers and the dimes. One would have
thought that they had outlived the greed of gold; but wages deferred
make the dying miserly.

The lords of the manors were troubled to know the number of our troops.
For several days the columns passed with their interminable teams,
batteries, and adjuncts, and the old gentlemen were loth to compute us
at less than several millions.

"Why, look yonder," said one, pointing to a brigade; "I declar' to
gracious, there ain't no less than ten thousand in _them_!"

"Tousands an' tousands!" said a wondering negro at his elbow. "I wonda
if dey'll take Richmond dis yer day?"

Many of them hung white flags at their gate-posts, implying neutrality;
but nobody displayed the Federal colors. If there were any covert
sympathizers with the purposes of the army, they remembered the
vengeance of the neighbors and made no demonstrations. There was a
prodigious number of stragglers from the Federal lines, as these were
the bane of the country people. They sauntered along by twos and threes,
rambling into all the fields and green-apple orchards, intruding their
noses into old cabins, prying into smoke-houses, and cellars, looking at
the stock in the stables, and peeping on tiptoe into the windows of
dwellings. These stragglers were true exponents of Yankee
character,--always wanting to know,--averse to discipline, eccentric in
their orbits, entertaining profound contempt for everything that was not
up to the measure of "to hum."

"Look here, Bill, I say!" said one, with a great grin on his face; "did
you ever, neow! I swan! they call that a plough down in these parts."

"Devilishest people I ever see!" said Bill, "stick their meetin'-houses
square in the woods! Build their chimneys first and move the houses up
to 'em! All the houses breakin' out in perspiration of porch! All their
machinery with Noah in the ark! Pump the soil dry! Go to sleep a milkin'
a keow! Depend entirely on Providence and the nigger!"

There was a mill on the New Bridge road, ten miles from White House,
with a tidy farm-house, stacks, and cabins adjoining. The road crossed
the mill-race by a log bridge, and a spreading pond or dam lay to the
left,--the water black as ink, the shore sandy, and the stream
disappearing in a grove of straight pines. A youngish woman, with
several small children, occupied the dwelling, and there remained,
besides, her fat sister-in-law and four or five faithful negroes. I
begged the favor of a meal and bed in the place one night, and shall not
forget the hospitable table with its steaming biscuit; the chubby baby,
perched upon his high stool; the talkative elderly woman, who took
snuff at the fireplace; the contented black-girl, who played the Hebe;
and above all, the trim, plump, pretty hostess, with her brown eyes and
hair, her dignity and her fondness, sitting at the head of the board.
When she poured the bright coffee into the capacious bowl, she revealed
the neatest of hands and arms, and her dialect was softer and more
musical than that of most Southerners. In short, I fell almost in love
with her; though she might have been a younger playmate of my mother's,
and though she was the wife of a Quartermaster in a Virginia regiment.
For, somehow, a woman seems very handsome when one is afield; and the
contact of rough soldiers, gives him a partiality for females. It must
have required some courage to remain upon the farm; but she hoped
thereby to save the property from spoliation. I played a game of whist
with the sister-in-law, arguing all the while; and at nine o'clock the
servant produced some hard cider, shellbarks, and apples. We drank a
cheery toast: "an early peace and old fellowship!"--to which the wife
added a sentiment of "always welcome," and the baby laughed at her knee.
How brightly glowed the fire! I wanted to linger for a week, a month, a
year,--as I do now, thinking it all over,--and when I strolled to the
porch,--hearing the pigeons cooing at the barn; the water streaming down
the dam; the melancholy monotony of the pine boughs;--there only lacked
the humming mill-wheel, and the strong grip of the miller's hand, to
fill the void corner of one's happy heart.

But this was a time of war, when dreams are rudely broken, and mine
could not last. The next day some great wheels beat down the bridge, and
the teams clogged the road for miles; the waiting teamsters saw the
miller's sheep, and the geese, chickens, and pigs, rashly exposed
themselves in the barnyard; these were killed and eaten, the mill
stripped of flour and meal, and the garden despoiled of its vegetables.
A quartermaster's horse foundered, and he demanded the miller's, giving
therefor a receipt, but specifying upon the same the owner's relation to
the Rebellion; and, to crown all, a group of stragglers, butchered the
cows, and heaped the beef in their wagons to feed their regimental
friends. When I presented myself, late in the afternoon, the yard and
porches were filled with soldiers; the wife sat within, her head thrown
upon the window, her bright hair unbound, and her eyes red with weeping.
The baby had cried itself to sleep, the sister-in-law took snuff
fiercely, at the fire; the black girl cowered in a corner.

"There is not bread in the house for my children," she said; "but I did
not think they could make me shed a tear."

If there were Spartan women, as the story-books say, I wonder if their
blood died with them! I hardly think so.

If I learned anything from my quiet study of this and subsequent
campaigns, it was the heartlessness of war. War brutalizes! The most
pitiful become pitiless afield, and those who are not callous, must do
cruel duties. If the quartermaster had not seized the horses, he would
have been accountable for his conduct; had he failed to state the
miller's disloyalty in the receipt, he would have been punished. The men
were thieves and brutes, to take the meal and meat; but they were
perhaps hungry and weary, and sick of camp food; on the whole, I became
a devotee of the George Fox faith, and hated warfare, though I knew
nothing to substitute for it, in _crises_.

Besides, the optimist might have seen much to admire. Individual merits
were developed around me; I saw shop-keepers and mechanics in the ranks,
and they looked to be better men. Here were triumphs of engineering;
there perfections of applied ingenuity. I saw how the weakest natures
girt themselves for great resolves, and how fortitude outstripped
itself. It is a noble thing to put by the fear of death. It was a grand
spectacle, this civil soldiery of both sections, supporting their
principles, ambitions, or whatever instigated them, with their bodies;
and their bones, lie where they will, must be severed, when the
plough-share some day heaves them to the ploughman.

One morning a friend asked me to go upon a scout.

"Where are your companies?" said I.

"There are four behind, and we shall be joined by six at Old Cold
Harbor."

I saw, in the rear, filing through a belt of woods, the tall figures of
the horsemen, approaching at a canter.

"Do you command?" said I again.

"No! the Major has charge of the scout, and his orders are secret."

I wheeled beside him, as the cavalry closed up, waved my hand to
Plumley, and the girls, and went forward to the rendezvous, about six
miles distant. The remaining companies of the regiment were here drawn
up, watering their nags. The Major was a thick, sunburnt man, with
grizzled beard, and as he saw us rounding a corner of hilly road, his
voice rang out--

"Attention! Prepare to mount!"

Every rider sprang to his nag; every nag walked instinctively to his
place; every horseman made fast his girths, strapped his blankets
tightly, and lay his hands upon bridle-rein and pommel.

"Attention! Mount!"

The riders sprang to their seats; the bugles blew a lively strain; the
horses pricked up their ears; and the long array moved briskly forward,
with the Captain, the Major, and myself at the head. We were joined in a
moment by two pieces of flying artillery, and five fresh companies of
cavalry. In a moment more we were underway again, galloping due
northward, and, as I surmised, toward Hanover Court House. If any branch
of the military service is feverish, adventurous, and exciting, it is
that of the cavalry. One's heart beats as fast as the hoof-falls; there
is no music like the winding of the bugle, and no monotone so full of
meaning as the clink of sabres rising and falling with the dashing pace.
Horse and rider become one,--a new race of Centaurs,--and the charge,
the stroke, the crack of carbines, are so quick, vehement, and dramatic,
that we seem to be watching the joust of tournaments or following fierce
Saladins and Crusaders again. We had ridden two hours at a fair canter,
when we came to a small stream that crossed the road obliquely, and
gurgled away through a sandy valley into the deepnesses of the woods. A
cart-track, half obliterated, here diverged, running parallel with the
creek, and the Major held up his sword as a signal to halt; at the same
moment the bugle blew a quick, shrill note.

"There are hoof-marks here!" grunted the Major,--"five of 'em.
The Dutchman has gone into the thicket. Hulloo!" he added,
precipitately--"there go the carbines!"

I heard, clearly, two explosions in rapid succession; then a general
discharge, as of several persons firing at once, and at last, five
continuous reports, fainter, but more regular, and like the several
emptyings of a revolver. I had scarcely time to note these things, and
the effect produced upon the troop, when strange noises came from the
woods to the right: the floundering of steeds, the cries and curses of
men, and the ringing of steel striking steel. Directly the boughs
crackled, the leaves quivered, and a horse and rider plunged into the
road, not five rods from my feet. The man was bareheaded, and his face
and clothing were torn with briars and branches. He was at first riding
fairly upon our troops, when he beheld the uniform and standards, and
with a sharp oath flung up his sword and hands.

"I surrender!" he said; "I give in! Don't shoot!"

The scores of carbines that were levelled upon him at once dropped to
their rests at the saddles; but some unseen avenger had not heeded the
shriek; a ball whistled from the woods, and the man fell from his
cushion like a stone. In another instant, the German sergeant bounded
through the gap, holding his sabre aloft in his right hand; but the left
hung stiff and shattered at his side, and his face was deathly white. He
glared an instant at the dead man by the roadside, leered grimly, and
called aloud--

"Come on, Major! Dis vay! Dere are a squad of dem ahead!"

The bugle at once sounded a charge, the Major rose in the stirrups, and
thundered "Forward!" I reined aside, intuitively, and the column dashed
hotly past me. With a glance at the heap of mortality littering the way,
I spurred my nag sharply, and followed hard behind. The riderless horse
seemed to catch the fever of the moment, and closed up with me, leaving
his master the solitary tenant of the dell. For perhaps three miles we
galloped like the wind, and my brave little traveller overtook the
hindmost of the troop, and retained the position. Thrice there were
discharges ahead; I caught glimpses of the Major, the Captain, and the
wolfish sergeant, far in the advance; and once saw, through the cloud of
dust that beset them, the pursued and their individual pursuers, turning
the top of a hill. But for the most part, I saw nothing; I _felt_ all
the intense, consuming, burning ardor of the time and the event. I
thought that my hand clutched a sabre, and despised myself that it was
not there. I stood in the stirrups, and held some invisible enemy by the
throat. In a word, the bloodiness of the chase was upon me. I realized
the fierce infatuation of matching life with life, and standing arbiter
upon my fellow's body and soul. It seemed but a moment, when we halted,
red and panting, in the paltry Court House village of Hanover; the
field-pieces hurled a few shells at the escaping Confederates, and the
men were ordered to dismount.

It seemed that a Confederate picket had been occupying the village, and
the creek memorized by the skirmish was an outpost merely. Two of the
man Otto's party had been slain in the woods, where also lay as many
Southerners.

Hanover Court House is renowned as the birthplace of Patrick Henry, the
colonial orator, called by Byron the "forest Demosthenes." In a little
tavern, opposite the old Court House building, he began his humble
career as a measurer of gills to convivials, and in the Court House,--a
small stone edifice, plainly but quaintly constructed,--he gave the
first exhibitions of his matchless eloquence. Not far away, on a
by-road, the more modern but not less famous orator, Henry Clay, was
born. The region adjacent to his father's was called the "Slashes of
Hanover," and thence came his appellation of the "Mill Boy of the
Slashes." I had often longed to visit these shrines; but never dreamed
that the booming of cannon would announce me. The soldiers broke into
both the tavern and court-house, and splintered some chairs in the
former to obtain relics of Henry. I secured Richmond newspapers of the
same morning, and also some items of intelligence. With these I decided
to repair at once to White House, and formed the rash determination of
taking the direct or Pamunkey road, which I had never travelled, and
which might be beset by Confederates. The distance to White House, by
this course, was only twenty miles; whereas it was nearly as far to
head-quarters; and I believed that my horse had still the persistence to
carry me. It was past four o'clock; but I thought to ride six miles an
hour while daylight lasted, and, by good luck, get to the depot at nine.
The Major said that it was foolhardiness; the Captain bantered me to go.
I turned my back upon both, and bade them good by.




CHAPTER IX.

PUT UNDER ARREST.


While daylight remained, I had little reason to repent my wayward
resolve. The Pamunkey lay to my left, and the residences between it and
the road were of a better order than others that I had seen. This part
of the country had not been overrun, and the wheat and young corn were
waving in the river-breeze. I saw few negroes, but the porches were
frequently occupied by women and white men, who looked wonderingly
toward me. There were some hoof-marks in the clay, and traces of a broad
tire that I thought belonged to a gun-carriage. The hills of King
William County were but a little way off, and through the wood that
darkened them, sunny glimpses of vari-colored fields and dwellings now
and then appeared. I came to a shabby settlement called New Castle, at
six o'clock, where an evil-looking man walked out from a frame-house,
and inquired the meaning of the firing at Hanover.

I explained hurriedly, as some of his neighbors meantime gathered around
me. They asked if I was not a soldier in the Yankee army, and as I rode
away, followed me suspiciously with their eyes and wagged their heads.
To end the matter I spurred my pony and soon galloped out of sight.
Henceforward I met only stern, surprised glances, and seemed to read
"murder" in the faces of the inhabitants. A wide creek crossed the road
about five miles further on, where I stopped to water my horse. The
shades of night were gathering now; there was no moon; and for the
first time I realized the loneliness of my position. Hitherto, adventure
had laughed down fear; hereafter my mind was to be darkened like the
gloaming, and peopled with ghastly shadows.

I was yet young in the experience of death, and the toppled corpse of
the slain cavalry-man on the scout, somehow haunted me. I heard his
hoof-falls chiming with my own, and imagined, with a cold thrill, that
his steed was still following me; then, his white rigid face and
uplifted arms menaced my way; and, at last, the ruffianly form of his
slayer pursued him along the wood. They glided like shadows over the
foliage, and flashed across the surfaces of pools and rivulets. I heard
their steel ringing in the underbrush, and they flitted around me,
pursuing and retreating, till my brain began to whirl with the motion.
Suddenly my horse stumbled, and I reined him to a halt.

The cold drops were standing on my forehead. I found my knees a-quiver
and my breathing convulsive. With an expletive upon my unmanliness, I
touched the nag with my heel, and whistled encouragingly. Poor pony!
Fifty miles of almost uninterrupted travel had broken his spirit. He
leaped into his accustomed pace: but his legs were unsteady and he
floundered at every bound. There were pools, ruts, and boughs across the
way, with here and there stretches of slippery corduroy; but the thick
blackness concealed these, and I expected momentarily to be thrown from
the saddle. By and by he dropped from a canter into a rock; from a rock
to an amble; then into a walk, and finally to a slow painful limp. I
dismounted and took him perplexedly by the bit. A light shone from the
window of a dwelling across some open fields to the left, and I thought
of repairing thither; but some deep-mouthed dogs began to bay directly,
and then the lamp went out. A tiny stream sang at the roadside, flowing
toward some deeper tributary; lighting a cigar, I made out, by its
fitful illuminings, to wash the limbs of the jaded nag. Then I led him
for an hour, till my own limbs were weary, troubled all the time by
weird imaginings, doubts, and regrets. When I resumed the saddle the
horse had a firmer step and walked pleasantly. I ventured after a time
to incite him to a trot, and was going nicely forward, when a deep
voice, that almost took my breath, called from the gloom--

"Who comes there? Halt, or I fire! Guard, turn out!"

Directly the road was full of men, and a bull's-eye lantern flashed upon
my face. A group of foot-soldiery, with drawn pistols and sabres,
gathered around me, and I heard the neigh of steeds from some
imperceptible vicinity. "Who is it, Sergeant?" said one. "Is there but
one of 'em?" said another. "Cuss him!" said a third; "I was takin' a
bully snooze." "Who are yeou?" said the Sergeant, sternly; "what are
yeou deouin' aout at this hour o' the night? Are yeou a rebbil?"

"No!" I answered, greatly relieved; "I am a newspaper correspondent of
Smith's division, and there's my pass!"

I was taken over to a place in the woods, where some fagots were
smouldering, and, stirring them to a blaze, the Sergeant read the
document and pronounced it right.

"Yeou hain't got no business, nevertheless, to be roamin' araound
outside o' picket; but seein' as it's yeou, I reckon yeou may trot
along!"

I offered to exchange my information for a biscuit and a drop of coffee,
for I was wellnigh worn out; while one of the privates produced a
canteen more wholesome than cleanly, another gave me a lump of fat pork
and a piece of corn bread. They gathered sleepily about me, while I told
of the scout, and the Sergeant said that my individual ride was "game
enough, but nothin' but darn nonsense." Then they fed my horse with a
trifle of oats, and after awhile I climbed, stiff and bruised, to the
saddle again, and bade them good night.

I knew now that I was at "Putney's," a ford on the Pamunkey, and an hour
later I came in sight of the ship-lights at White House, and heard the
steaming of tugs and draught-boats, going and coming by night. I hitched
my horse to a tree, pilfered some hay and fodder from two or three nags
tied adjacent, and picked my way across a gangway, several barge-decks,
and a floating landing, to the mail steamer that lay outside. Her deck
and cabin were filled with people, stretched lengthwise and crosswise,
tangled, grouped, and snoring, but all apparently fast asleep. I coolly
took a blanket from a man that looked as though he did not need it, and
wrapped myself cosily under a bench in a corner. The cabin light flared
dimly, half irradiating the forms below, and the boat heaved a little on
the river-swells. The night was cold, the floor hard, and I almost dead
with fatigue. But what of that! I felt the newspapers in my breast
pocket, and knew that the mail could not leave me in the morning.
Blessed be the news-gatherer's sleep! I think he earned it.

It was very pleasant, at dawn, to receive the congratulations of our
agent, with whom I breakfasted, and to whom I consigned a hastily
written letter and all the Richmond papers of the preceding day. He was
a shrewd, sanguine, middle-aged man, of large experience and good
standing in our establishment. He was sent through the South at the
beginning of the Rebellion, and introduced into all public bodies and
social circles, that he might fathom the designs of Secession, and
comprehend its spirit. Afterward he accompanied the Hatteras and Port
Royal expeditions, and witnessed those celebrated bombardments. Such a
thorough individual abnegation I never knew. He was a part of the
establishment, body and soul. He agreed with its politics, adhered to
all its policies, defended it, upheld it, revered it. The Federal
Government was, to his eye, merely an adjunct of the paper. Battles and
sieges were simply occurrences for its columns. Good men, brave men, bad
men, died to give it obituaries. The whole world was to him a Reporter's
district, and all human mutations plain matters of news. I hardly think
that any city, other than New York, contains such characters. The
journals there are full of fever, and the profession of journalism is a
disease.

He cashed me a draft for a hundred dollars, and I filled my saddle-bags
with smoking-tobacco, spirits, a meerschaum pipe, packages of sardines,
a box of cigars, and some cheap publications. Then we adjourned to the
quay, where the steamer was taking in mails, freight and passengers. The
papers were in his side-pocket, and he was about to commit them to a
steward for transmission to Fortress Monroe, when my name was called
from the strand by a young mounted officer, connected with one of the
staffs of my division. I thought that he wished to exchange salutations
or make some inquiries, and tripped to his side.

"General McClellan wants those newspapers that you obtained at Hanover
yesterday!"

A thunderbolt would not have more transfixed me. I could not speak for a
moment. Finally, I stammered that they were out of my possession.

"Then, sir, I arrest you, by order of General McClellan. Get your
horse!"

"Stop!" said I, agitatedly, "--it may not be too late. I can recover
them yet. Here is our agent,--I gave them to him."

I turned, at the word, to the landing where he stood a moment before. To
my dismay, he had disappeared.

"This is some frivolous pretext to escape," said the Lieutenant; "you
correspondents are slippery fellows, but I shall take care that you do
not play any pranks with me. The General is irritated already, and if
you prevaricate relative to those papers he may make a signal example of
you."

I begged to be allowed to look for----; but he answered cunningly, that
I had better mount and ride on. An acquaintance of mine here interfered,
and testified to the existency of the agent and his probable connection
with the journals. Pale, flurried, excited, I started to discover him,
the Lieutenant following me closely meantime. We entered every booth and
tent, went from craft to craft, sought among the thick clusters of
people, and even at the Commissary's and Quartermaster's pounds, that
lay some distance up the railroad.

"I am sorry for you, old fellow," said the Lieutenant, "but your
accomplice has probably escaped. It's very sneaking of him, as it makes
it harder for you; but I have no authority to deal with him, though I
shall take care to report his conduct at head-quarters."

I found that the Lieutenant was greatly gratified with the duty
entrusted to him. He had been at the cavalry quarters on the return of
the scouting party, and had overheard the Major muttering something as
to McClellan's displeasure at receiving no Richmond journals. The Major
had added that one of the correspondents took them to White House, and,
mentioning me by name, this young and aspiring satellite had blurted out
that he knew me, and could doubtless overtake me at the mail-boat in the
morning. The Commanding General authorised him to arrest me _with the
papers_, and report at head-quarters. This was then a journey to
recommend him to authority, and it involved no personal danger. I was
not so intimidated that I failed to see how the Lieutenant would lose
his gayest feather by failing to recover the journals, and I dexterously
insinuated that it would be well to recommence the search. This time we
were successful. The shrewd, sanguine, middle-aged man was coolly
contemplating the river from an outside barge, concealed from the shore
by piled boxes of ammunition. He was reading a phonetic pamphlet, and
appeared to take his apprehension as a pleasant morning call. I caught
one meaning glance, however, that satisfied me how clearly he understood
the case.

"Ha! Townsend," said he, smilingly, "back already? I thought we had lost
you. One of your military friends? Good-day, Lieutenant."

"I am under arrest, my boy," said I, "and you will much aggravate
General McClellan, if you do not consign those Richmond journals to his
deputy here."

"Under arrest? You surprise me! I am sorry, Lieutenant that you have had
so fatiguing a ride, but the fact is, those papers have gone down the
river. If the General is not in a great hurry, he will see their columns
reproduced by us in a few days."

"How did they go?" said the Lieutenant, with an oath, "if by the
mail-boat I will have General Van Vliet despatch a tug to overhaul her."

"I am very sorry again," said the bland civilian, smoothing his hands:
"but they went by the _South America_ at a much earlier hour."

I looked appealingly to him; the satellite stared down the river
perplexedly, but suddenly his eye fell upon something that absorbed it;
and he turned like a madman to----

"By! ---- sir, you are lying to me. There is the _South America_ moored
to a barge, and her steam is not up!"

"Those words are utterly uncalled for," said the agent,--"but you cannot
irritate me, my dear sir! I know that youth is hot,--particularly
military youth yet inexperienced; and therefore I pardon you. I made a
mistake. It was not the _South America_, it was--it was--upon my word I
cannot recall the name!"

"You do not mean to!" thundered the young Ajax, to whose vanity, ----'s
speech had been gall; "my powers are discretionary: I arrest you in the
name of General McClellan."

"Indeed! Be sure you understand your orders! It isn't probable that such
a fiery blade is allowed much discretionary margin. The General himself
would not assume such airs. Why don't you shoot me? It might contribute
to your promotion, and that is, no doubt, your object. I know General
McClellan very well. He is a personal friend of mine."

His manner was so self-possessed, his tone so cutting, that the young
man of fustian--whose name was Kenty--fingered his sword hilt, and
foamed at the lips.

"March on," said he,--"I will report this insolence word for word."

He motioned us to the quay; we preceded him. The sanguine gentleman
keeping up a running fire of malevolent sarcasm.

"Stop!" said he quietly, as we reached his tent,--"I have not sent them
at all. They are here. And you have made all this exhibition of yourself
for nothing. I am the better soldier, you see. You are a drummer-boy,
not an officer. Take off your shoulder-bars, and go to school again."

He disappeared a minute, returned with two journals, and looking at me,
meaningly, turned to their titles.

"Let me see!" he said, smoothly,--"_Richmond Examiner_, May 28,
_Richmond Enquirer_, May 22. There! You have them! Go in peace! Give my
respects to General McClellan! Townsend, old fellow, you have done your
full duty. Don't let this young person frighten you. Good by."

He gave me his hand, with a sinister glance, and left something in my
palm when his own was withdrawn. I examined it hastily when I girt up my
saddle. It said: "_Your budget got off safe, old fellow._" He had given
Kenty some old journals that were of no value to anybody. When we were
mounted and about to start, the Lieutenant looked witheringly upon his
persecutor--

"Allow me to say, sir," he exclaimed, "that you are the most unblushing
liar I ever knew."

"Thank you, kindly," said----, taking off his hat, "you do me honor!"

Our route was silent and weary enough. The young man at my side,
unconscious of his wily antagonist's deception, boasted for some time
that he had attained his purposes. As I could not undeceive him, I held
my tongue; but feared that when this trick should be made manifest, the
vengeance would fall on me alone. I heartily wished the unlucky papers
at the bottom of the sea. To gratify an adventurous whim, and obtain a
day's popularity at New York, I had exposed my life, crippled my nag,
and was now to be disgraced and punished. What might or might not befall
me, I gloomily debated. The least penalty would be expulsion from the
army; but imprisonment till the close of the war, was a favorite
amusement with the War Office. How my newspaper connection would be
embarrassed was a more grievous inquiry. It stung me to think that I had
blundered twice on the very threshold of my career. Was I not acquiring
a reputation for rashness that would hinder all future promotion and
cast me from the courts of the press. Here the iron entered into my
soul; for be it known, I loved Bohemia! This roving commission, these
vagabond habits, this life in the open air among the armies, the white
tents, the cannon, and the drums, they were my elysium, my heart! But to
be driven away, as one who had broken his trust, forfeited favor and
confidence, and that too on the eve of grand events, was something that
would embitter my existence.

We passed the familiar objects that I had so often buoyantly
beheld,--deserted encampments, cross-roads, rills, farm-houses, fields,
and at last came to Daker's. I called out to them, and explained my
woful circumstances with rueful conciseness.

It was growing dark when we came to general headquarters, two miles
beyond Gaines's Mill. The tents were scattered over the surface of a
hill, and most of them were illumined by candles.

The Lieutenant gave our horses to an orderly, and led the way through
two outer circles of wall-tents, between which and the inner circle,
guards were pacing, to deny all vulgar ingress.

A staff officer took in our names, and directly returned with the reply
of "Pass in!" We were now in the sacred enclosure, secured by flaming
swords. Four tents stood in a row, allotted respectively to the Chief of
Staff, the Adjutant-General, the telegraph operators, and the select
staff officers. Just behind them, embowered by a covering of cedar
boughs, stood the tent of General McClellan. Close by, from an open plot
or area of ground, towered a pine trunk, floating the national flag.
Lights burned in three of the tents: low voices, as of subdued
conversation, were heard from the first.

A little flutter of my heart, a drawing aside of canvas, two steps, an
uncovering, and a bow,--I stood at my tribunal! A couple of candles were
placed upon a table, whereat sat a fine specimen of man, with kindly
features, dark, grayish, flowing hair, and slight marks of years upon
his full, purplish face. He looked to be a well-to-do citizen, whose
success had taught him sedentary convivialities. A fuming cigar lay
before him; some empty champagne bottles sat upon a pine desk; tumblers
and a decanter rested upon a camp-stool; a bucket, filled with water and
a great block of ice, was visible under the table. Five other gentlemen,
each with a star in his shoulder-bar, were dispersed upon chairs and
along a camp bedside. The tall, angular, dignified gentleman with
compressed lips and a "character" nose, was General Barry, Chief of
Artillery. The lithe, severe, gristly, sanguine person, whose eyes
flashed even in repose, was General Stoneman, Chief of Cavalry. The
large, sleepy-eyed, lymphatic, elderly man, clad in dark, civil gray,
whose ears turned up habitually as from deafness, was Prince de
Joinville, brother to Louis Philippe, King of France. The little man
with red hair and beard, who moved quickly and who spoke sharply, was
Seth Williams, Adjutant-General. The stout person with florid face,
large, blue eyes, and white, straight hair, was General Van Vliet,
Quartermaster-General. And the man at the table, was General Marcy,
father-in-law to McClellan, and Executive officer of the army.

Maps, papers, books, and luggage lay around the room; all the gentlemen
were smoking and wine sparkled in most of the glasses. Some swords were
lying upon the floor, a pair of spurs glistened by the bed, and three of
the officers had their feet in the air.

"What is it you wish, Lieutenant?" said General Marcy, gravely.

The boor in uniform at my side, related his errand and order, gave the
particulars of my arrest, declaimed against our agent, and submitted the
journals. He told his story stammeringly, and I heard one of the
officers in the background mutter contemptuously when he had finished.

"Were you aware of the order prohibiting correspondents from keeping
with the advance?" said the General, looking up.

"I had not been notified from head-quarters. I have been with the army
only a week."

"You knew that you had no business upon scouts, forages, or
reconnoissances; why did you go?"

"I went by invitation."

"Who invited you?"

"I would prefer not to state, since it would do him an injury."

Here the voices in the background muttered, as I thought, applaudingly.
Gaining confidence as I proceeded, I spoke more boldly--

"I am sure I regret that I have disobeyed any order of General
McClellan's; but there can nothing occur in the rear of an army.
Obedience, in this case, would be indolence and incompetence; for only
the reliable would stay behind and the reckless go ahead. If I am
accredited here as a correspondent, I must keep up with the events. And
the rivalries of our tribe, General, are so many, that the best of us
sometimes forget what is right for what is expedient. I hope that
General McClellan will pass by this offence."

He heard my rambling defence quietly, excused the Lieutenant, and
whistled for an orderly.

"I don't think that you meant to offend General McClellan," he said,
"but he wishes you to be detained. Give me your pass. Orderly, take this
gentleman to General Porter, and tell him to treat him kindly. Good
night."

When we got outside of the tent, I slipped a silver half-dollar into the
orderly's hand, and asked him if he understood the General's final
remark. He said, in reply, that I was directed to be treated with
courtesy, kindness, and care, and asked me, in conclusion, if there were
any adjectives that might intensify the recommendation. When we came to
General Porter, the Provost-Marshal, however, he pooh-poohed the
qualifications, and said that _his_ business was merely to put me under
surveillance. This unamiable man ordered me to be taken to Major
Willard, the deputy Provost, whose tent we found after a long search.
The Major was absent, but some young officers of his mess were taking
supper at his table, and with these I at once engaged in conversation.

I knew that if I was to be spared an immersion in the common guardhouse,
with drunkards, deserters, and prisoners of war, I must win the favor of
these men. I gave them the story of my arrest, spoke lightly of the
offence and jestingly of the punishment, and, in fact, so improved my
cause that, when the Major appeared, and the Sergeant consigned me to
his custody, one of the young officers took him aside, and, I am sure,
said some good words in my favor.

The Major was a bronzed, indurated gentleman, scrupulously attired, and
courteously stern. He looked at me twice or thrice, to my confusion; for
I was dusty, wan, and running over with perspiration. His first remark
had, naturally, reference to the lavatory, and, so far as my face and
hair were concerned, I was soon rejuvenated. I found on my return to the
tent, a clean plate and a cup of steaming coffee placed for me, and I
ate with a full heart though pleading covertly the while. When I had
done, and the tent became deserted by all save him and me, he said,
simply--

"What am I to do with you, Mr. Townsend?"

"Treat me as a gentleman, I hope, Major."

"We have but one place of confinement," said he, "the guardhouse; but I
am loth to send you there. Light your pipe, and I will think the matter
over."

He took a turn in front, consulted with some of his associates, and
directly returning, said that I was to be quartered in his office-tent,
adjoining. A horror being thus lifted from my mind, I heard with sincere
interest many revelations of his military career. He had been a common
soldier in the Mexican war, and had fought his way, step by step, to
repeated commissions. He had garrisoned Fort Yuma, and other posts on
the far plains, and at the beginning of the war was tendered a volunteer
brigade, which he modestly declined. His tastes were refined, and a warm
fancy, approaching poetry, enhanced his personal reminiscences. His face
softened, his eyes grew milder, his large, commanding mouth relaxed,--he
was young again, living his adventures over. We talked thus till almost
midnight, when two regulars appeared in front,--stiff, ramrodish
figures, that came to a jerking "present," tapped their caps with two
fingers, and said, explosively; "Sergeant of Guard, Number Five!"

The Major rose, gave me his hand, and said that I would find a candle in
my tent, with waterproof and blankets on the ground. I was to give
myself no concern about the nag, and might, if I chose, sit for an hour
to write, but must, on no account, attempt to leave the canvas, for the
guard would instantly shoot me down. The guard in question had a
_doppel-ganger_,--counterpart of himself in inflexibility,--and both
were appendages of their muskets. He was not probably a sentient being,
certainly not a conversational one. He knew the length of a stride, and
the manual of bayonet exercise, but was, during his natural life, a
blind idolater of a deity, called "Orders." The said "Orders," for the
present evening, were walking, not talking, and he was dumb to all
conciliatory words. He took a position at one end of my tent, and his
double at the other end. They carried their muskets at "support arms,"
and paced up and down, measuredly, like two cloaked and solemn ghosts. I
wrapped myself in the damp blankets, and slept through the bangs of four
or five court-martials and several executions. At three o'clock, they
changed ramrods,--the old doppel-gangers going away, and two new ones
fulfilling their functions.




CHAPTER X.

AFTER THE VICTORY.


The two ramrods were still pacing to and fro, when I aroused in the gray
of the morning; but they looked very misty and moist, as if they were
impalpables that were shortly to evaporate. The Major poked his head
between the flaps at eight o'clock, and said that breakfast was ready;
but the ramrod nearest me kept vigilantly alongside, and I thought he
had been invited also. The other ramrod guarded the empty tent, and I
think that he believed me a doppel-ganger likewise.

I wondered what was to be done with me, as the hours slipped rapidly by.
The guards were relieved again at ten o'clock, and Quartermaster's men
commenced to take down the tents. Camps were to be moved, and I inquired
solicitously if I was to be moved also. The Major replied that prisoners
were commonly made to walk along the road, escorted by horsemen, and I
imagined, with dread, the companionship of negroes, estrays, ragged
Confederates, and such folk, while the whole army should witness my
degradation. Finally, all the tents were lifted and packed in wagons, as
well as the furniture. I adhered to a stool, at which the teamster
looked wistfully, and the implacable sentinels walked to and fro. A
rumor became current among the private soldiers, that I was the nephew
of the southern General Lee, whose wife had been meantime captured at
Hanover Court House. Curious groups sauntered around me, and talked
behind their hands. One man was overheard to say that I had fought
desperately, and covered myself with glory, and another thought that I
favored my uncle somewhat, and might succeed to his military virtues.

"I guess I'll take that cheer, if you ain't got no objection," said the
teamster, and he slung it into the wagon. What to do now troubled me
materially; but one of the soldiers brought a piece of rail, and I
"squatted" lugubriously on the turf.

"If you ever get to Richmond," said I, "you shall be considerately
treated." (Profound sensation.)

"Thankee!" replied the man, touching his cap; "but I'm werry well
pleased _out_ o' Richmond, Captain."

Here the Major was seen approaching, a humorous smile playing about his
eyes.

"You are discharged," said he; "General Marcy will return your pass, and
perhaps your papers."

I wrung his hand with indescribable relief, and he sent the "ramrod" on
guard, to saddle my horse. In a few minutes, I was mounted again, much
to the surprise of the observers of young Lee, and directly I stood
before the kindly Chief of Staff. At my request, he wrote a note to the
division commander, specifying my good behavior, and restoring to me all
privileges and immunities. He said nothing whatever as to the mistake in
the papers, and told me that, on special occasions, I might keep with
advances, by procuring an extraordinary pass at head-quarters. In short,
my arrest conduced greatly to my efficiency. I invariably carried my
Richmond despatches to General Marcy, thereafter, and, if there was
information of a legitimate description, he gave me the benefit of it.

My own brigade lay at Dr. Gaines's house, during this time, and we did
not lack for excitement. Just behind the house lay several batteries of
rifled guns, and these threw shells at hourly intervals, at certain
Confederate batteries across the river. The distance was two miles or
less; but the firing was generally wretched. Crowds of soldiers gathered
around, to watch the practice, and they threw up their hats applaudingly
at successful hits. Occasionally a great round shot would bound up the
hill, and a boy, one day, seeing one of these spent balls rolling along
the ground, put out his foot to stop it, but shattered his leg so
dreadfully that it had to be amputated. Dr. Gaines was a rich,
aristocratic, and indolent old Virginian, whose stables, summerhouses,
orchards, and negro-quarters were the finest in their district. The
shooting so annoyed him that he used to resort to the cellar; several
shots passed through his roof, and one of the chimneys was knocked off.
His family carriages were five in number, and as his stables were turned
into hospitals, these were all hauled into his lawn, where their
obsolete trimmings and queer shape constantly amused the soldiers. About
this time I became acquainted with some officers of the 5th Maine
regiment, and by permission, accompanied them to Mechanicsville. I was
here, on the afternoon of Thursday, May 27, when the battle of Hanover
Court House was fought. We heard the rapid growl of guns, and continuous
volleys of musketry, though the place was fourteen miles distant. At
evening, a report was current that the Federals had gained a great
victory, and captured seven hundred prisoners. The truth of this was
established next morning; for detachments of prisoners were from time to
time brought in, and the ambulances came to camp, laden with the
wounded. I took this opportunity of observing the Confederate soldiers,
as they lay at the Provost quarters, in a roped pen, perhaps one hundred
rods square.

It was evening, as I hitched my horse to a stake near-by, and pressed up
to the receptacle for the unfortunates. Sentries enclosed the pen,
walking to-and-fro with loaded muskets; a throng of officers and
soldiers had assembled to gratify their curiosity; and new detachments
of captives came in hourly, encircled by sabremen, the Southerners
being disarmed and on foot. The scene within the area was ludicrously
moving. It reminded me of the witch-scene in Macbeth, or pictures of
brigands or Bohemian gypsies at rendezvous, not less than five hundred
men, in motley, ragged costumes, with long hair, and lean, wild, haggard
faces, were gathered in groups or in pairs, around some fagot fires. In
the growing darkness their expressions were imperfectly visible; but I
could see that most of them were weary, and hungry, and all were
depressed and ashamed. Some were wrapped in blankets of rag-carpet, and
others wore shoes of rough, untanned hide. Others were without either
shoes or jackets, and their heads were bound with red handkerchiefs.
Some appeared in red shirts; some in stiff beaver hats; some were
attired in shreds and patches of cloth; and a few wore the soiled
garments of citizen gentlemen; but the mass adhered to homespun suits of
gray, or "butternut," and the coarse blue kersey common to slaves. In
places I caught glimpses of red Zouave breeches and leggings; blue
Federal caps, Federal buttons, or Federal blouses; these were the spoils
of anterior battles, and had been stripped from the slain. Most of the
captives were of the appearances denominated "scraggy" or "knotty." They
were brown, brawny, and wiry, and their countenances were intense,
fierce, and animal. They came from North Carolina, the poorest and least
enterprising Southern State, and ignorance, with its attendant virtues,
were the common facial manifestations. Some lay on the bare ground, fast
asleep; others chatted nervously as if doubtful of their future
treatment; a few were boisterous, and anxious to beg tobacco or coffee
from idle Federals; the rest--and they comprehended the greater
number--were silent, sullen, and vindictive. They met curiosity with
scorn, and spite with imprecations. A child--not more than four years of
age, I think--sat sleeping in a corner upon an older comrade's lap. A
gray-bearded pard was staunching a gash in his cheek with the tail of
his coat. A fine-looking young fellow sat with his face in his hands,
as if his heart were far off, and he wished to shut out this bitter
scene. In a corner, lying morosely apart, were a Major, three Captains,
and three Lieutenants,--young athletic fellows, dressed in rich gray
cassimere, trimmed with black, and wearing soft black hats adorned with
black ostrich-feathers. Their spurs were strapped upon elegantly fitting
boots, and they looked as far above the needy, seedy privates, as lords
above their vassals.

After a time, couples and squads of the prisoners were marched off to
cut and carry some firewood, and water, for the use of their pen, and
then each Confederate received coffee, pork, and crackers; they were
obliged to prepare their own meals, but some were so hungry that they
gnawed the raw pork, like beasts of prey. Those who were not provided
with blankets, shivered through the night, though the rain was falling,
and the succession of choking coughs that ran through the ranks, told
how ill they could afford the exposure. Major Willard had charge of
these men, and he sent a young officer to get me admittance to the pen,
that I might speak with them.

"Good evening, Major," I said, to the ranking Confederate officer, and
extended my hand. He shook it, embarrassedly, and ran me over with his
eye, as if to learn my avocation. "Can I obtain any facts from you," I
continued, "as to the battle of Hanover?"

"Fuh what puhpose?" he said, in his strong southern dialect.

"For publication, sir."

He sat up at once, and said that he should be happy to tell me anything
that would not be a violation of military honor. I asked him, therefore,
the Confederate Commandant at Hanover, the number of brigades,
regiments, and batteries engaged, the disposition of forces, the
character of the battle, and the losses, so far as he knew, upon his own
side. Much of this he revealed, but unguardedly let out other matters,
that direct inquiry could not have discovered. I took notes of the
legitimate passages, trusting to memory for the rest; and think that I
possessed his whole stock of information, in the course of an hour's
manoeuvring. It seemed that General Branch, formerly a member of the
Federal congress, had been sent with some thousands of Carolina troops
across the upper Chickahominy, to see if it would not be possible to
turn the Federal right, and cut off one of its brigades; but a stronger
Federal reconnoissance had gone northward the day before, and
discovering Branch's camp-fires, sent, during the night, for
reinforcements. In the end, the "North State" volunteers were routed,
their cannon silenced or broken, and seven hundred of their number
captured. The Federals lost a large number of men killed, and the
wounded upon both sides, were numerous.

The Confederate Major was of the class referred to in polite American
parlance, as a "blatherskite." He boasted after the manner of his
fellow-citizens from the county of "Bunkum," but nevertheless feared and
trembled, to the manifest disgust of one of the young Captains.

"Majuh!" said this young man, "what you doin' thah! That fellow's makin'
notes of all your slack; keep your tongue! aftah awhile you'll tell the
nombah of the foces! Don't you s'pose he'll prent it all?"

The Major had, in fact, been telling me how many regiments the "old
Nawth State, suh," had furnished to the "suhvice," and I had the names
of some thirty colonels, in order. The young Captain gave me a sketch of
General Branch, and was anxious that I should publish something in
extenuation of North Carolina valor.

"We have lost mo' men," said he, "than any otha' Commonwealth; but these
Vuhginians, whose soil, by----! suh, we defend suh! Yes, suh! whose soil
we defend; these Vuhginians, stigmatize us as cowads! _We_, suh! yes
suh, _we_, that nevah wanted to leave the Union,--_we cowads_! Look at
ou' blood, suh, ou' blood! That's it, by----! look at that! shed on
every field of the ole Dominion,--killed, muhdud, captued, crippled! We
_cowads_! I want you prent that!"

I was able to give each of the officers a drop of whiskey from my flask,
and I never saw men drink so thirstily. Their hands and lips trembled as
they took it, and their eyes shone like lunacy, as the hot drops sank to
the cold vitals, and pricked the frozen blood. Mingling with the
privates, I stirred up some native specimens of patriotism, that
appeared to be in great doubt as to the causes and ends of the war. They
were very much in the political condition of a short, thick, sententious
man, in blue drilling breeches, who said--

"Damn the country! What's to be done with _us_?"

One person said that he enlisted for the honor of his family, that "fit
in the American Revolution;" and another came out to "hev a squint et
the fightin'." Several were northern and foreign lads, that were working
on Carolina railroads, and could not leave the section, and some labored
under the impression that they were to have a "slice" of land and a
"nigger," in the event of Southern independence. A few comprehended the
spirit of the contest, and took up arms from principle; a few, also,
declared their enmity to "Yankee institutions," and had seized the
occasion to "polish them off," and "give them a ropein' in;" but many
said it was "dull in our deestreeks, an' the niggers was runnin' away,
so I thought I'ud jine the foces." The great mass said, that they never
contemplated "this box," or "this fix," or "these suckemstances," and
all wanted the war to close, that they might return to their families.
Indeed, my romantic ideas of rebellion were ruthlessly profaned and
dissipated. I knew that there was much selfishness, peculation, and
"Hessianism" in the Federal lines, but I had imagined a lofty
patriotism, a dignified purpose, and an inflexible love of personal
liberty among the Confederates. Yet here were men who knew little of
the principles for which they staked their lives;--who enlisted from the
commonest motives of convenience, whim, pelf, adventure, and foray; and
who repented, after their first misfortune, with the salt rheum in their
eyes. I think that all "great uprisings" resolve to this complexion.
With due reverence for my own ancestry, I think that they sometimes
stooped from greatness to littleness. I must confess that certain
admissions in my revolutionary textbook are much clearer, now that I
have followed a campaign. And if, as I had proposed, I could have
witnessed the further fortunes of the illustrious Garibaldi, I think
that some of his compatriots would have been found equally inconsistent.
Let no man believe that the noblest cause is fought out alone by the
unerring motives of duty and devotion. The masses are never so constant.
They cannot appreciate an abstraction, however divine. Any of the
gentlemen in question would have preferred their biscuit and fat pork
before the political enfranchisement of the whole world!

I rode across the fields to the Hogan, Curtis, and Gaines mansions; for
some of the wounded had meantime been deposited in each of them. All the
cow-houses, wagon-sheds, hay-barracks, hen-coops, negro cabins, and
barns were turned into hospitals. The floors were littered with
"corn-shucks" and fodder; and the maimed, gashed, and dying lay
confusedly together. A few, slightly wounded, stood at windows, relating
incidents of the battle; but at the doors sentries stood with crossed
muskets, to keep out idlers and gossips. The mention of my vocation was
an "open sesame," and I went unrestrained, into all the largest
hospitals. In the first of these an amputation was being performed, and
at the door lay a little heap of human fingers, feet, legs, and arms. I
shall not soon forget the bare-armed surgeons, with bloody instruments,
that leaned over the rigid and insensible figure, while the comrades of
the subject looked horrifiedly at the scene. The grating of the
murderous saw drove me into the open air, but in the second hospital
which I visited, a wounded man had just expired, and I encountered his
body at the threshold. Within, the sickening smell of mortality was
almost insupportable, but by degrees I became accustomed to it. The
lanterns hanging around the room streamed fitfully upon the red eyes,
and half-naked figures. All were looking up, and saying, in pleading
monotone: "Is that you, doctor?" Men with their arms in slings went
restlessly up and down, smarting with fever. Those who were wounded in
the lower extremities, body, or head, lay upon their backs, tossing even
in sleep. They listened peevishly to the wind whistling through the
chinks of the barn. They followed one with their rolling eyes. They
turned away from the lantern, for it seemed to sear them. Soldiers sat
by the severely wounded, laving their sores with water. In many wounds
the balls still remained, and the discolored flesh was swollen
unnaturally. There were some who had been shot in the bowels, and now
and then they were frightfully convulsed, breaking into shrieks and
shouts. Some of them iterated a single word, as, "doctor," or "help," or
"God," or "oh!" commencing with a loud spasmodic cry, and continuing the
same word till it died away in cadence. The act of calling seemed to
lull the pain. Many were unconscious and lethargic, moving their fingers
and lips mechanically, but never more to open their eyes upon the light;
they were already going through the valley and the shadow. I think,
still, with a shudder, of the faces of those who were told mercifully
that they could not live. The unutterable agony; the plea for somebody
on whom to call; the longing eyes that poured out prayers; the looking
on mortal as if its resources were infinite; the fearful looking to the
immortal as if it were so far off, so implacable, that the dying appeal
would be in vain; the open lips, through which one could almost look at
the quaking heart below; the ghastliness of brow and tangled hair; the
closing pangs; the awful _quietus_. I thought of Parrhasius, in the
poem, as I looked at these things:--

                         "Gods!
    Could I but paint a dying groan----."

And how the keen eye of West would have turned from the reeking cockpit
of the _Victory_, or the tomb of the Dead Man Restored, to this old
barn, peopled with horrors. I rambled in and out, learning to look at
death, studying the manifestations of pain,--quivering and sickening at
times, but plying my avocation, and jotting the names for my column of
mortalities.

At eleven o'clock there was music along the high-road, and a general
rushing from camps. The victorious regiments were returning from
Hanover, under escort, and all the bands were pealing national airs. As
they turned down the fields towards their old encampments, the several
brigades stood under arms to welcome them, and the cheers were many and
vigorous. But the solemn ambulances still followed after, and the red
flag of the hospitals flaunted bloodily in the blue midnight.

Both the prisoners and the wounded were removed between midnight and
morning to White House, and as I had despatches to forward by the
mail-boat, I rode down in an ambulance, that contained six wounded men
besides. The wounded were to be consigned to hospital boats, and
forwarded to hospitals in northern cities, and the prisoners were to be
placed in a transport, under guard, and conveyed to Fort Delaware, near
Philadelphia.

Ambulances, it may be said, incidentally, are either two-wheeled or
four-wheeled. Two-wheeled ambulances are commonly called "hop, step, and
jumps." They are so constructed that the forepart is either very high or
very low, and may be both at intervals. The wounded occupants may be
compelled to ride for hours in these carriages, with their heels
elevated above their heads, and may finally be shaken out, or have their
bones broken by the terrible jolting. The four-wheeled ambulances are
built in shelves, or compartments, but the wounded are in danger of
being smothered in them. It was in one of these latter that I rode,
sitting with the driver. We had four horses, but were thrice "swamped"
on the road, and had to take out the wounded men once, till we could
start the wheels. Two of these men were wounded in the face, one of them
having his nose completely severed, and the other having a fragment of
his jaw knocked out. A third had received a ball among the thews and
muscles behind his knee, and his whole body appeared to be paralyzed.
Two were wounded in the shoulders, and the sixth was shot in the breast,
and was believed to be injured inwardly, as he spat blood, and suffered
almost the pain of death. The ride with these men, over twenty miles of
hilly, woody country, was like one of Dante's excursions into the
Shades. In the awful stillness of the dark pines, their screams
frightened the hooting owls, and the whirring insects in the leaves and
tree-tops quieted their songs. They heard the gurgle of the rills, and
called aloud for water to quench their insatiate thirst. One of them
sang a shrill, fierce, fiendish ballad, in an interval of relief, but
plunged, at a sudden relapse, in prayers and curses. We heard them
groaning to themselves, as we sat in front, and one man, it seemed, was
quite out of his mind. These were the outward manifestations; but what
chords trembled and smarted within, we could only guess. What regrets
for good resolves unfulfilled, and remorse for years misspent, made
hideous these sore and panting hearts? The moonlight pierced through the
thick foliage of the wood, and streamed into our faces, like invitations
to a better life. But the crippled and bleeding could not see or feel
it,--buried in the shelves of the ambulance.




CHAPTER XI.

BALLOON BATTLES.


Some days ago, as I was sitting in Central Park, under a tree no bigger
than Jonah's gourd, broiling nicely brown, and seasoning the process by
reading what the lesser weeklies said about me, I saw at the Park gate a
great phantasm, like a distended sausage, swaying to and fro as if
striving to burst, and directly the horrible thing blew upwards,
spilling all the stuffing from the case.

I saw in a moment that the apparition was a balloon, and that the
aeronaut was only emptying ballast.

Straight toward me the floating vessel came, so close to the ground that
I could hear the silk crackle and the ropes creak, till, directly, a man
leaned over the side and shouted--

"Is that you, Townsend?"

"Hallo, Lowe!"

"I want you to get on your feet and be spry about it: we have a literary
party here, and wish you to write it up. I'll let one bag of ballast go,
as we touch the grass, and you must leap in simultaneously. Thump!"

Here the car collided with the ground, and in another instant, I found
quantities of dirt spilled down my back, and two or three people lying
beneath me. The world slid away, and the clouds opened to receive me.
Lowe was opening a bottle of Heidsick, and three or four gentlemen with
_heads sick_ were unclosing the petals of their lips to get the
afternoon dew.

These were the various critics and fugitive writers of the weekly and
daily press. They looked as if they wanted to put each other over the
side of the car, but smothered their invective at my advent, as if I
were so much pearl-ash.

It was just seven o'clock, and the Park lay like a veined and mottled
blood-stone in the red sunset. The city wilted to the littleness of a
rare mosaic pin, its glittering point parting the blue scarf of the bay,
and the white bosom of the ocean swelling afar, all draped with purple
clouds like golden hair, in which the entangled gems were the sails of
the white ships.

I said this aloud, and all the party drew their lead pencils. They
forgot the occasion in my eloquence, and wanted to report me.

Just here, I drew a field-glass from the aeronaut, and reconnoitred the
streets of the city. To my dismay there was nobody visible on Broadway
but gentlemen. I called everybody's attention to the fact, and it was
accounted for on the supposition that the late bank forgeries and
defalcations, growing out of the extravagance of womankind, had prompted
all the husbands to make of their homes nunneries.

We observed, however, close by every gentleman, something that resembled
a black dog with his tail curled over his back.

"Stuff!" said one, "they're hay wagons."

"No!" cried Lowe, "they're nothing of the sort; they are waterfalls, and
the ladies are, of course, invisible under them."

We accepted the explanation, and thought the trip very melancholy. No
landscape is complete without a woman. Very soon we struck the great
polar current, and passed Harlem river; the foliage of the trees, by
some strange anomaly, began to ascend towards us, but Lowe caught two
or three of the supposed leaves, and they proved to be greenbacks.

There was at once a tremendous sensation in the car; we knew that we
were on the track of Ketchum and his carpet-bag of bank-notes.

"Is there any reward out?" cried Lowe.

"Not yet!"

"Then we won't pursue him."

As we slowly drifted to the left, the Hudson shone through the trees,
and before dusk we swept across Lake Mahopec. I heard a voice singing to
the dip of oars, and had to be held down by five men to restrain an
involuntary impulse to quit my company.

"Townsend," said Lowe, "have you the copy of that matter you printed
about me in England? This is the time to call you to account for it. We
are two or three miles above _terra firma_, and I might like to drop you
for a parachute."

I felt Lowe's muscle, and knew myself secure. Then I unrolled the pages,
which I fortunately carried with me, and told him the following news
about himself:--

The aeronaut of the Army of the Potomac was Mr. S. T. C. Lowe; he had
made seven thousand ascensions, and his army companion was invariably
either an artist, a correspondent, or a telegrapher.

A minute insulated wire reached from the car to headquarters, and
McClellan was thus informed of all that could be seen within the
Confederate works. Sometimes they remained aloft for hours, making
observations with powerful glasses, and once or twice the enemy tested
their distance with shell.

On the 13th of April, the Confederates sent up a balloon, the first they
had employed, at which Lowe was infinitely amused. He said that it had
neither shape nor buoyancy, and predicted that it would burst or fall
apart after a week. It certainly occurred that, after a few fitful
appearances, the stranger was seen no more, till, on the 28th of June,
it floated, like a thing of omen, over the spires of Richmond. At that
time the Federals were in full retreat, and all the acres were covered
with their dead.

On the 11th of April, at five o'clock, an event at once amusing and
thrilling occurred at our quarters. The commander-in-chief had appointed
his personal and confidential friend, General Fitz John Porter, to
conduct the siege of Yorktown. Porter was a polite, soldierly gentleman,
and a native of New Ha

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