CHAPTER XLI THE BEGINNING OF THE END
In this February the grey Congress at Richmond created the office of Commander-in-Chief of all the Confederate Armies, and appointed to it Robert Edward Lee. On the twenty-third Lee telegraphed to Johnston, then at Lincolnton, North Carolina:
“GENERAL J.E. JOHNSTON:—
Assume command of the Army of Tennessee and all troops in the Department of South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. Assign General Beauregard to duty under you as you may select. Concentrate all available forces and drive back Sherman.
R.E. LEE.”
“All available forces” were not many, indeed they were very few, but such as they were Johnston drew them together, and with them, the middle of March, faced Sherman at Bentonville. “Drive back Sherman?” Once that might have deen done, with the old Army of Tennessee. It could not be done now with the handful that was left of that army. On the first of April General Sherman’s effective strength is given for all three arms, as something over eighty-one thousand men. Infantry and artillery the grey had on this date sixteen thousand and fourteen men, with a little above four thousand cavalry. Bentonville saw, grey and blue, an almost equal loss. After Bentonville came some days of calm, the grey encamped at Smithfield, the blue at Goldsboro.
But through the pause came always the tolling of the bells, ringing loud and louder—
Early in February Lee at Petersburg wrote to the Secretary of War as follows. “All the disposable force of the right wing of the Army has been operating against the enemy beyond Hatcher’s Run since Sunday. Yesterday, the most inclement day of the winter, the men had to be retained in line of battle, having been in the same condition the two previous days and nights. I regret to be obliged to state that under these circumstances, heightened by assaults and fire of the enemy, some of the men had been without meat for three days, and all were suffering from reduced rations and scant clothing, exposed to battle, cold, hail, and sleet.... The physical strength of the men, if their courage survives, must fail under this treatment. Our cavalry had to be dispersed for want of forage. Fitz Lee’s and Lomax’s divisions are scattered because supplies cannot be transported where their services are required. I had to bring W.H.F. Lee’s division forty miles Sunday night to get him into position. Taking these facts in consideration with the paucity of our numbers, you must not be surprised if calamity befalls us.” Bad in February, it was no better in March.
Back to the trenches before Petersburg came, because they were needed, sundry troops that had fought in the Valley. Back came what was left of the Golden Brigade, and what was left of the Sixty-fifth Virginia. But November and December and January, well-nigh all of that winter, Richard Cleave, carried across the mountains after Cedar Creek, lay at Greenwood, a desperately wounded soldier. In February he began to gather strength, but the latter half of that month found him still a prisoner in a large, high, quiet room, firelit and still.
On a grey afternoon, with a few flakes of snow in the air, turning from the window toward the fire, he found that Unity was his nurse for this twilight hour. She lifted her bright face from her hands. “That was a very sad sigh, Richard!”
He smiled. “Unity, I was thinking.... I have not been a very fortunate soldier. And I used—long ago—to think that I would be.”
“Is there such a thing as a fortunate soldier?”
He smiled again. “That depends.—Is there such a thing as a fortunate war? I don’t know.”
His mother entered the room. “It’s Cousin William, Richard. He wants to come in and talk a little while.”
Cousin William appeared—seventy, and ruddy yet, with a gouty limb and an indomitable spirit. “Ha, Richard! that’s more like! You’re getting colour, and some flesh on your bones! When are you going back to the front?”
“Next week, sir.”
Cousin William laughed. “Well, call it the week after that!” He sat by the couch in the winged chair. The firelight played through the room, lit the two women sitting by the hearth, and the two or three old pictures on the walls. Outside the snow fell slowly, in large, quiet flakes. “Have you had any letters?” asked Cousin William.
Unity answered. “One from Fauquier yesterday. None from Edward for some days. The last was just a line from Columbia written before the troops left the place and Sherman came and burned it. We can’t but feel very anxious.”
But Cousin William could not endure to see Greenwood downcast. “I think you may be certain they are safe.—What did Fauquier say?”
“Just that since Hatcher’s Run there had been comparative inaction. He said that the misery in the trenches was very great, and that day by day the army was dwindling. He said we must be prepared now for the worst.”
Cousin William flushed, leaned forward, and became violently optimistic. “You tell Fauquier—or I’ll write to him and tell him myself—that that is no way to talk! It is no way for his father’s son to talk, or his grandfather’s grandson to talk! I am sure, Richard, that you don’t feel that way!”
“Yes, sir, I do feel that way. We are at the end.”
“At the end!” ejaculated Cousin William. “Absurd! We have held Grant eight months at Petersburg!—Well, say that General Lee eventually determines to withdraw from Petersburg! What will follow? Lee in Virginia and Johnston in Carolina have the inner lines. Lee will march south, Johnston will march north, they will join armies, first crush Sherman, then turn and destroy Grant! Richmond? Well, say that Richmond is given up, temporarily, sir—temporarily! We will take it again when we want it, and if they burn it we will rebuild it! Nothing can keep it from being our capital. The President and the Cabinet and offices can remove for a time. Who knows but what it may be very well to be free and foot-loose of defended cities? Play the guerilla if need be! Make our capital at mountain hamlet after mountain hamlet, go from court-house to court-house—A capital! The Confederacy has a capital in every single Southern heart—” Cousin William dashed his hand across his eyes. “I’m ashamed to hear you speak so, Richard!—But you’re a sick man—you’re a sick man!”
“God knows what should be done!” said Cleave. “I am not an easy giver-up, sir. But we have fought until there is little breath in us with which to fight any more. We have fought to a standstill. And it is the country that is sick, sick to death!”
“Any day England or France—”
“Oh, the old, old dream—”
“Say then it’s a dream!” cried Cousin William angrily. “Say that is a dream and any outer dependence is a dream! The spirit of man is no dream! What have we got for dependence? We have got, sir, the spirit of the men and women of the South! We’ve got the unconquerable and imperishable! We’ve got the spiritual might!”
But Richard shook his head. “A fire burns undoubtedly and a spirit holds, but day by day and night by night for four years death has come and death has come! Half the bright coals have been swept from the hearth. And against what is left, sir, wind and rain and sleet and tempest are beating hard—beating against the armies in the field and against the country in the field. They are beating hard, and they will beat us down. They have beaten us down. It is but the recognition now.”
“Then may I die,” said Cousin William, “before I hear Virginia say, ‘I am conquered!’” His eyes sparkled, his frame trembled. “Do you think they will let it rest there, sir! No! In one year I have seen vindictiveness come into this struggle—yes, I’ll grant you vindictiveness on both sides—but you say that theirs is the winning side! Then I tell you that they will be not less but more vindictive! For ten years to come they will make us drink the water of bitterness and eat the bread of humiliation! _Virginia!_ And that second war will be worse than the first!”
He rose. “I can’t stay here and hear
you talk like this! I suppose you know what you’re talking about, but you people in the field get a jaundiced view of things! I’m going to see Noel. Noel and I worked it all out last night.—General Lee to cut loose from the trenches at Petersburg, Johnston to strike north, then, having the inner lines—” And so on.
When he was gone Richard laughed. Unity, the log in her hands with which she was about to replenish the fire, looked over her shoulder. “That’s sadder than sighing!” she said. “Don’t!”
“What shall we do?” he asked. “Go like pieces of wood for a twelvemonth—sans care, sans thinking, sans feeling, sans heart, sans—no, not sans courage!”
“No—not sans courage.”
“I am not sad,” he said, “for myself. It would be strange if I were, would it not, to-day? I have a great, personal happiness. And even this afternoon, Unity—I am saying good-bye, as one of the generality, to despair, and pain, and wounded pride, and foreboding, and unhappiness. I have been looking it in the face. Such and so it is going to be in the South, and perhaps worse than we know—and yet the South is neither going to die nor despair!—And now if there is any broth I surely could take it!”
Going downstairs Cousin William found the library and Miss Lucy. “I got too angry, I suppose, with Richard—but to lie there talking of surrender! _Surrender!_ I tell you, Lucy,—but there! I can’t talk about it. Better not begin.”
“Richard is a strong man, William. He’s not the weakly despairing kind.”
“I know, Lucy, I know! But it’s not so bad as he thinks. I look for a big victory any day now.... Well! let’s talk of the wedding. When’s it to be?”
“In three days. The doctor says he may come downstairs to-morrow. Corbin Wood will marry them, here in the parlour. Then, in a few days, Richard will go back to the front.... Oh, the sad and strange and happy so blended together.... We are so desperate, William, that the road has turned because we couldn’t travel it so any longer and live! There’s a strange kind of calm, and you could say that a quiet music was coming back into life.... If only we could hear from Edward!”
The sky was clear on Cleave’s and Judith’s wedding-day. The sun shone, the winds were quiet, there was a feeling in the air as of the coming spring. Her sisters cut from the house-plants flowers for Judith’s hair; there fell over her worn white gown her mother’s wedding-veil. The servants brought boughs of cedar and bright berries, and with them decked the large old parlour, where the shepherds and shepherdesses looked out from the rose wreaths on the wall as they had looked when Hamilton and Burr and Jefferson were alive. The guests were few, and all old friends and kinsfolk, and there were, beside, Mammy and Julius and Isham and Scipio and Esther and Car’line and the others, Tullius among them. A great fire warmed the room, shone in the window-panes and the prisms beneath the candles and the polished floor and the old gilt frames of the Cary portraits. Margaret Cleave sat with her hand shadowing her eyes. Her heart was here, but her heart was also with her other children, with Will and Miriam. Molly, who was Miriam’s age, kept beside her, a loving hand on her dress. Cousin William gave away the bride. An artillery commander, himself just out of hospital, stood with Cleave.—Oh, the grey uniforms, so worn and weather-stained for a wedding party!
It was over—the guests were gone. The household, tremulous, between smiles and tears, went its several, accustomed ways. There was no wedding journey to be taken. All life was fitted now to a Doric simplicity, a grave acceptance of realities without filagree adornment. There was left a certain fair quietness, limpid sincerity, faith, and truth.... There was a quiet, cheerful supper, and afterwards a little talking together in the library, the reading of the Richmond papers, Unity singing to her guitar. Then at last good-nights were said. Judith and Cleave mounted the stairs together, entered hand in hand their room. The shutters were all opened; it lay, warmed by the glowing embers on the hearth, but yet in a flood of moonlight. His arm about her, they moved to the deep window-seat above the garden, knelt there and looked out. Valley and hill and distant mountains were all washed with silver.
“The moon shone so that April night—that night after you overtook the carriage upon the road—and at last we understood ... I sat here all that night, in the moonlight.”
“The garden where I said good-bye to you, a hundred years ago, the day after a tournament.... It does not look dead and cold and a winter night. It looks filled with lilies and roses and bright, waving trees—and if a bird is not singing down there, then it must be singing in my heart! It is singing somewhere!—Love is best.”
“Love is best.”
A week from this day he passed through Richmond on his way to the front. Richmond! Richmond looked to him like a prisoner doomed, and yet a quiet prisoner with a smile for children and the azure spaces in the winter sky. People were going in streams into the churches. The hospitals, they said, were very full. In all the departments, it was said, the important papers were kept packed in boxes, ready to be removed if there were need. No one any longer noticed the cannon to the south. They had been thundering there since June, and it was now March. There was very little to eat. Milk sold at four dollars a quart. And yet children played about the doors, and women smiled, and men and women went about the day’s work with sufficient heroism. “Dear Dick Ewell” had charge of the defences of Richmond, the slightly manned ring of forts, the Local Brigade, Custis Lee’s division at Chaffin’s Bluff. In the high, clear March air, ragged grey soldiers passed, honoured, through the streets, bugles blew, or drums beat. One caught the air of Dixie.
Cleave rode out over Mayo’s Bridge and south through the war-scored country to Petersburg and the grey lines, to division headquarters and then to the Golden Brigade. The brigade and he met like tried friends, but the Sixty-fifth and he met like lovers.
The lines at Petersburg!—stretched and stretched from the Appomattox, east of the town, to Five Forks and the White Oak Road, stretched until now, in places, there was scarcely more than a skirmish line, stretched to the breaking-point! The trenches at Petersburg!—clay ditches where men were drenched by the winter rains, pierced by the winter sleet, where they huddled or burrowed, scooping shallow caves with bayonet and tin cup, where hands and feet were frozen, where at night they watched the mortar shells, and at all hours heard the minies keening, where the smoke hung heavy, where the earth all about was raw and pitted, where every muscle rebelled, so cramped and weary of the trenches! where there were double watches and a man could not sleep enough, where there were nakedness and hunger and every woe but heat, where the sharpshooters picked off men, and the minies came with a whistle and killed them, and the bombs with a shriek and worked red havoc, where men showed a thousand weaknesses and again a thousand heroisms! Oh, the labyrinth of trenches, forts, traverses, roads, approaches, raw red clay, and trampled herbage, hillock and hollow, scored, seamed, and pitted mother earth, and over all the smoke and noise, blown by the March wind! And Petersburg itself, that had been a pleasant town, was a place of ruined houses and deserted streets! A bitter havoc had been wrought.
The night of his return to the front Cleave stood with Fauquier Cary in an embrasure whence a gun had just been taken to strengthen another work, stood and looked first over the red wilderness of their own camp-fires, and then across a stripe of darkness to the long, deep, and vivid glow that marked the Federal lines. The night was cold but still, the stars extraordinarily bright. “For so long in that quiet room at Greenwood!” said Cleave. “And now this again! It has almost a novel look. There! What a great shell!”
“Fireworks at the end,” answered Cary. “It is the end.”
“Yes. It is evident.”
“I have been,” said Cary, “for a day or two to Richmond, and I was shown there certain papers, memoranda, and estimates. I wish you would listen to three or four statements out of many.—‘Amount needed for abs
olutely necessary construction and repair of railroads if they are to serve any military purpose $21,000,000.’—‘The Commissary debt now exceeds $70,000,000.’—‘The debt to various factories exceeds $5,000,000.‘—‘The Medical Department asks for $40,000,000, at least for the current year.’—‘The Subsistence Bureau and the Nitre and Mining Bureau as well as other Departments are resorting to barter.’—‘Requisitions by the War Department upon the Treasury since ’61 amount to $1,737,746,121. Of the requisition for last year and this year, there is yet unfurnished $160,000,000. In addition the War Department has a further arrearage of say $200,000,000.’—This was a letter from one of the up-river counties patriotically proposing the use of cotton yarn or cloth as specie—thus reducing the necessity for the use of Treasury notes to the smallest possible limit! Let us see how it went.—First it proposed the removal of all factories to safe points near the mountains, where the water-power is abundant and approach by the enemy difficult. Next the establishment of small factories at various points of like character. Around these, as centres, it goes on to say, ‘the women of our country who have been deprived of all and driven from their homes by the enemy should be collected, together with the wives and daughters of soldiers and others in indigent circumstances. There they would not be likely to be disturbed by the enemy. Thus distributed they could be more easily fed, and the country be greatly benefited by their labours, which would be light and highly remunerative to them, thereby lessening the suffering at home and the consequently increasing discontent in the army. Cotton would be near at hand, labour abundant, and the necessity of the transportation of food and material to and from great centres of trade greatly reduced. We would furnish the women of the country generally with yarns and a simple and cheap pattern of looms, taking pay for the same in cloth made by them—’ et cætera!... How desperate we are, Richard, to entertain ourselves with foolery like this!—But the act to use the negroes as soldiers will go through. We have come to that. The only thing is that the war will be ended before they can be mustered in.”
They turned in the embrasure and looked far and wide. It seemed a world of camp-fires. Far to the east, in the direction of City Point, some river battery or gun-boat was sending up rockets. Westward a blue fort began a sullen cannonade and a grey fort nearly opposite at once took up the challenge. “Fort Gregg,” said Cary, “dubbed by our men ‘Fort Hell,’ and Fort Mahone called by theirs ‘Fort Damnation.’”
For all that the night itself was so clear and the stars so high and splendid, there was a murk discernible everywhere a few feet above the earth, rising like a miasma, with a faint, distasteful odour. Through it all the fires lit by men shone blurred. The cannon continued to thunder, and above their salients gathered clouds of coppery smoke. A half brigade passed on its way to strengthen some menaced place, and a neighbouring fire showed in series its face and form. The men looked dead for sleep, hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked. They dragged their limbs, their heads drooped, their shoulders were bowed. They passed like dull and weary sheep. Fort Hell and Fort Damnation brought more guns into action.
Cleave passed his hand before his eyes. “It’s not,” he said, “the way to settle it.”
“Precisely not,” answered Cary. “It is not, and it never was, and it never will be. And that despite the glamour and the cry of ‘Necessity!’”
“Little enough glamour to-night!”
“I agree with you. The glamour is at the beginning. The necessity is to find a more heroic way.”
The two went down from the embrasure and presently said goodnight. Cleave rode on—not to the house in which he was quartered, but to the portion of the lines where, he was told, would be found a command for which he had made enquiry. He found it and its colonel, asked a question or two, and at once obtained the request which he made, this being that he might speak to a certain soldier in such a company.
The soldier came and faced Cleave where the latter waited for him beside a deserted camp-fire. The red light showed both their faces, worn and grave and self-contained. Off in the night and distance the two forts yet thundered, but all hereabouts was quiet, the fires dying down, the men sinking to rest. “Stafford,” said Cleave, “I have been lying wounded for a long while, and I have had time to look at man’s life, and the way we live it. It’s all a mystery, what we do, and what we do not do, and we stumble and stumble!...” He held out his hand. “Don’t let us be enemies any longer!”
CHAPTER XLII APRIL, 1865
A Confederate soldier, John Wise, speaks of the General-in-Chief. “I have seen many pictures of General Lee, but never one that conveyed a correct impression of his appearance. Above the ordinary size, his proportions were perfect. His form had fullness, without any appearance of superfluous flesh, and was as erect as that of a cadet, without the slightest apparent constraint. No representation that I have ever seen properly conveys the light and softness of his eye, the tenderness and intellectuality of his mouth, or the indescribable refinement of his face....
“There was nothing of the pomp or panoply of war about the headquarters, or the military government, or the bearing of General Lee.... Persons having business with his headquarters were treated like human beings, and courtesy, considerateness, and even deference were shown to the humblest. He had no gilded retinue, but a devoted band of simple scouts and couriers who, in their quietness and simplicity, modelled themselves after him.... The sight of him upon the roadside or in the trenches was as common as that of any subordinate in the army. When he approached or disappeared, it was with no blare of trumpets or clank of equipments.... He came as unostentatiously as if he had been the head of a plantation riding over his fields to enquire and give directions about ploughing or seeding. He appeared to have no mighty secrets concealed from his subordinates. He assumed no airs of superior authority.... His bearing was that of a friend having a common interest in a common venture with the person addressed, and as if he assumed that his subordinate was as deeply concerned as himself in its success. Whatever greatness was accorded to him was not of his own seeking.... But the impression which he made by his presence, and by his leadership, upon all that came in contact with him, can be described by no other term than that of grandeur.... The man who could so stamp his impress upon his nation ... and yet die without an enemy; the soldier who could make love for his person a substitute for pay and clothing and food, and could, by the constraint of that love, hold together a naked, starving band, and transform it into a fighting army; the heart which, after the failure of its great endeavour, could break in silence, and die without the utterance of one word of bitterness—such a man, such a soldier, such a heart, must have been great indeed—great beyond the power of eulogy.”
He had fifty thousand men to his opponents’ hundred and odd thousand. His men were very weary, very hungry, very worn. He had a thirty-mile line to keep, and behind him the capital of his government of which he was the sole defence. For months there had come upon his ears, resoundingly, the noise of disaster, disaster in every ward of the one-time grey fortress of the South. For all victories elsewhere his opponent fired salutes, thundering across the winter air into the grey lines, listened to grimly, answered defiantly by the grey trenches. The victories in Georgia—Winchester and Cedar Creek—Franklin and Nashville—Fort Fisher—Savannah—Columbia—Charleston—the blue salvoes and huzzahs came with frequency, with frequency! And ever thinner and thinner grew the grey ranks.
... There was but one last hope untried, and that was slight indeed, slight as gossamer. Break away from these lines, cover somehow and quickly a hundred and forty southward-stretching miles, unite with Johnston, strike Sherman, turn and combat with Grant! How slight was the hope Lee perhaps knew better than any man. But he had accepted a trust, and hand and head served his cause to the last.
... To
strike aside Grant’s left wing, with a last deadly blow, and so pass out—
Fourteen thousand men, under Gordon, were given the attack upon Fort Stedman and the three forts on lifted ground beyond. On the twenty-fifth of March, at dawn, the assault was made—desperately made, and desperately repulsed. When the bitter day was over the blue had lost two thousand men, but the grey had lost twice as many.
A.P. Hill held the grey right from Hatcher’s Run to Battery Gregg. Gordon had the centre. Longstreet held from the Appomattox to the White Oak Road. Now on the twenty-ninth of March, Grant planned a general attack. Sheridan was here from the Valley, to come in on the grey rear with thirteen thousand horse. Every corps of the Army of the Potomac had its appointed place and task in a great movement to the right. Lee, divining, drew from his threadbare, extended lines what troops he might and placed them at Five Forks, confronting the Second and Fifth blue Corps,—Fitz Lee’s and W.H.F. Lee’s cavalry, say four thousand horse, Pickett’s division, thirty-five hundred muskets, Anderson with as many more. All the night of the twenty-ninth, troops were moving in a heavy rain.
Through the dripping day of the thirtieth sounded, now and again, a sullen firing. On the thirty-first the grey attacked—attacked with all their old elan and fury—and drove Sheridan back in disorder on Dinwiddie Court House. Night came down and made the battle cease. There dawned, grey and still, the first of April. All day there was fighting, but in the dim evening came the catastrophe. Like a great river that has broken its banks, the blue, advancing in force, overflowed Pickett’s division.... The grey loss at Five Forks was five thousand.
With the morning light Grant began his general advance upon Petersburg. The grey trenches fought him back, the grey trenches that were now no more than a picket line, the grey trenches with men five yards apart. They gave him pause—that was all that they could do. All the South was an iron bell that was swinging—swinging—
General Lee telegraphed Breckinridge, Secretary of War. “It is absolutely necessary that we abandon our position to-night or run the risk of being cut off in the morning. I have given all the orders to officers on both sides of the river, and have taken every precaution I can to make the movement successful. Please give all orders that you find necessary in and about Richmond. The troops will all be directed to Amelia Court House.”
This day was killed A.P. Hill.
In Richmond, twenty miles away, the second of April was a day bright and mild, with the grass coming up like emerald, the fruit trees in bloom, white butterflies above the dandelions, the air all sheen and fragrance. It was Sunday. All the churches were filled with people. The President sat in his pew at Saint Paul’s, grave and tall and grey, distinguished and quiet of aspect. Here and there in the church were members of the Government, here and there an officer of the Richmond defences. Dr. Minnegerode was in the pulpit. The sun came slantingly in at the open windows,—sunshine and a balmy air. It was very quiet—the black-clad women sitting motionless, the soldiers still as on parade, the marked man in the President’s pew straight, quiet, and attentive, the white and black form in the pulpit with raised hands, speaking of a supper before Gethsemane—for it was the first Sunday in the month and communion was to follow. The sun came in, very golden, very quiet....
The sexton of Saint Paul’s walked, on tiptoe, up the aisle. He was a large man, with blue clothes and brass buttons and a ruffled shirt. Often and often, in these four years, had he come with a whispered message or a bit of paper to this or that man in authority. He had come, too, with private trouble and woe. This man had risen and gone out for he had news that his son’s body was being brought, into town; these women had moved gropingly down the aisle, because the message said father or brother or son or husband ... Saint Paul’s was used to the sexton coming softly up the aisle. Saint Paul’s only thought, “Is he coming for me?”—“Is he coming for me?”
But he was coming, it seemed, for the President.... Mr. Davis read the slip of paper, rose with a still face, and went softly down the aisle, erect and quiet. Eyes followed him; many eyes. For all it was so hushed in Saint Paul’s there came a feeling as of swinging bells.... The sexton, who had gone out before Mr. Davis, returned. He whispered to General Anderson. The latter rose and went out. A sigh like a wind that begins to mount went through Saint Paul’s. Indefinably it began to make itself known that these were not usual summons. The hearts of all began to beat, beat hard. Suddenly the sexton was back, summoning this one and that one and the other.—“Sit still, my people, sit still, my people!”—but the bells were ringing too loudly and the hearts were beating too hard. Men and women rose, hung panting a moment, then, swift or slow, they left Saint Paul’s. Going, they heard that the lines at Petersburg had been broken and that General Lee said the Government must leave Richmond—leave at once.
Outside they stood, men and women, dazed for a moment in the great porch, in the gay light of the sun. The street was filling with people, people in the green, climbing Capitol Square. It climbed to the building Jefferson had planned, to the great white pillars, beyond and between which showed the azure spring sky. The eyes of the people sought their capitol. They rested, too, on the great bronze Washington, riding his horse against the blue sky, with Marshall and Henry and Jefferson and Mason and Lewis and Nelson about him. Across from the church was a public building in which there were Government offices. Before this building, out in the street, a great heap of papers was burning with a light, crackling flame. “Government papers,” said some one, then raised his eyes to the stars and bars above the white capitol and took off his hat.
All day the fevered city watched the trains depart, all day wagons and horsemen passed through the streets, all day there was a saying farewell, farewell—farewell to many things! All day the sun shone, all day men and women were conscious of a strange shock and dizziness, as of a violent physical impact. There was not much, perhaps, of conscious thought. People acted instinctively, automatically. Now and then weeping was heard, but it was soon controlled and it was not frequent. This was shipwreck after four years of storm, after gulfs of despair and shining shores of hope. It was taken quietly, as are many shipwrecks.
Night came. Custis Lee’s troops at Chaffin’s Bluff, eight miles below the city, began to withdraw, crossing the river by pontoons. There was now between Richmond and Manchester only Mayo’s Bridge, guarded by a company or two of the Local Brigade. People were down by the river, many people. It seemed to give them company, swollen like their own hearts, rushing between its rocky islets, on and down to the boundless sea. Others wandered through the streets, or sat silent in the Capitol Square. Between two and three o’clock began the ordered blowing-up of powder magazines and arsenals and of the gunboats down the river. Explosion after explosion shook the night, terrific to the ear, crushing the heart. Up rushed the smoke, the water reddened, the earth trembled, shells from the arsenals burst high in air, lighting the doomed city. They wrought a further horror, for falling fragments or brands set afire first this building and then that. In a short while the whole lower part of the city was burning, burning down. Smoke mounted, the river was lit from bank to bank, there was born with the mounting flames a terrible splendour. On Cary Street stood a great Commissary depot, holding stores that the Government could not remove. Here, in the flame-lit street, gathered a throng of famished men and women. They broke open the doors, they carried out food, while the fire roared toward them, and at last laid hold of this storehouse also. Loud and loud went on the explosions, the powder, the ranged shells and cartridges, and now came the sound of the blowing up of unfinished gunboats. The smoke blew, red-bosomed, over the city. Through the murk, looking upward from the river, came a vision of the pillars of the Capitol, turned from white to coral—above, between smoke-wreaths, lit and splendid, the flag of the Confederacy....
Dawn broke. The last grey troops pass
ed over Mayo’s Bridge, firing it behind them. There came a halt between tides, then, through the murk and roar of the burning city, in from the Varina and New Market roads a growing sound, a sound of marching men, of hurrahing voices, of bands that played now “Yankee Doodle” and now “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Through the April country, miles and miles of springing verdure, miles and miles of rain-softened, narrow roads, marched the Army of Northern Virginia. It must guard its trains of subsistence. But so wet was the country where every streamlet had become a brook, and every brook a river, so deep were the hollows and sloughs of the unutterable road that many a wheel refused to budge. Supply and ammunition wagons, gun wheel and ambulance wheel must be dragged and pushed, dragged and pushed, over and over again. O weariness—weariness—weariness of gaunt, hardly-fed and over-worked horses, weariness of gaunt, hardly-fed, over-worked men! The sun shone with a mocking light, but never dried the roads. Down upon the trains dashed Sheridan’s cavalry—fifteen thousand horsemen, thrice the force of the grey cavalry. Grey rear guard formed, brought guns into action, pushed back the assault, let the trains move on—and then in an hour, _da capo_! Horses fell in harness, wagons had to be abandoned, others, whirled against by the blue cavalry, were burned, there was no time that a stand could be made and rations issued—even had there been any rations to issue. Amelia—There would be stores found at Amelia Court House. That had been arranged for.... But when on the fourth Longstreet reached Amelia, and after him Gordon and Ewell there were no stores found. Some one had blundered, something had miscarried. There were no stores.
On the fifth of April, Lee left Amelia Court House and struck westward, with a hope, perhaps, of Lynchburg and then Danville. Behind him was Grant in strength, Sheridan and Grant.... And still the bottomless roads, and still no rations for his soldiers. The Army of Northern Virginia was weak from hunger. The wounded were many, the sick and exhausted were more. There was now a great, helpless throng in and about the wagons, men stretched upon the boards, wounded and ill, stifling their groans, men limping and swaying alongside, trying to keep up.... And then, again and again, great cavalry dashes, a haggard resistance, a scattering, over-turning, hewing-down and burning.... And still the Army of Northern Virginia drew its wounded length westward.
Sleep seemed to have fled the earth. Day was lighter and something warmer than night, and night was darker and more cold than day, and there seemed no other especial difference. The monotony of attack, monotonously to be repelled, held whether it were light or dark, day or night. Marching held. Hunger held. There held a ghastly, a monstrous fatigue. And always there were present the fallen by the road, the gestures of farewell and despair, the covered eyes, the outstretched forms upon the earth. And always the dwindling held, and the cry, _Close up! Close up! Close up, men!_
“Mighty cold April!” said the men. “Even the pear trees and the peach trees and the cherry trees look cold and misty and wavering—No, there isn’t any wind, but they look wavering, wavering ...”—“Dreamed a while back—sleeping on my feet. Dreamed the trees were all filled with red cherries, and the corn was up, and we had a heap of roasting ears ...”—“Don’t talk that-a-way! Don’t tell about dreams! ’T’isn’t lucky! Roasting ears and cherries—O God! O God!”—“Talking about corn? I heard tell about a lady in the country. All the horses were taken and the plantation couldn’t be ploughed, and she wanted it ploughed. And so a battle happened along right there, and when it was over and everybody that could had marched away, she sent out and gathered two of the horses that were just roaming around loose. So she had plough-horses, but they were so hungry they were wicked, and she didn’t have any fodder at all to give them. Not any at all. But women are awful resourceful. There were a lot of shuck beds in the quarter. She had the ticks ripped open and she took the shucks and soaked them in hot water and sprinkled them with a little salt and fed her plough-horses. If anybody stumbles on a shuck bed in this march I speak for it!”—_Close up! Close up! Close up, men!_
“‘Maxwelton braes are bonny, Where early fa’s the dew, And ’twas there that Annie Laurie Gaed me her promise, true—’”
And on they went—and on they went toward Appomattox.
In every company there was the Controversialist. Not cold nor hunger nor battle could kill the Controversialist. The Controversialist of Company A—the column being halted before a black and cold and swollen stream—appealed to Allan Gold. “I?” said Allan. “What do I think? I think that we were both right and both wrong, and that, in the beginning, each side might have been more patient and much wiser. Life and history, and right and wrong and minds of men look out of more windows than we used to think! Did you never hear of the shield that had two sides and both were precious metal? The traveller who said, ‘This is a gold shield,’ was right—half right. And the traveller who said, ‘This is a silver shield,’ was right—half right. The trouble was neither took the trouble to walk round the shield. So it is, I reckon, in most wars—this one not excepted! Of course, being in, we’ve done good fighting—”
On moved the Army of Northern Virginia, through the cold river and up upon the farther side. _Column forward! Column forward!_ Flowering fruit trees and April verdure and a clearing sky. On and on down a long, long vista.... _Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp!_
“‘Way down South in the land ob cotton, ’Simmon seed and sandy bottom—’”
THE END
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=The Riverside Press=
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
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CHRISTOPHER
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By Richard Pryce
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“A refreshing book for the reader who knows and loves human nature, who delights in the quiet realities of life.”—_Chicago Record-Herald._
“The charm of the story and the leisureliness of its narration remind one of De Morgan’s ‘Joseph Vance,’ or Locke’s ‘The Beloved Vagabond.’ There is enjoyment on every page.”—_Brooklyn Eagle._
“He can draw characters—aristocratic old ladies, maiden ladies and ladies’ maids—which are unforgettable, and he describes houses and rooms so incisively that the reader can share them with their occupants.”
—_London Punch._
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“A brilliant piece of work, full of ripeness and an understanding of the richness of life.”—_N.Y. Evening Sun._
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Crown 8vo. $1.35 _net_. Postage 12 cents
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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
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VIRGINIA CAMPAIGN 1864–1865]
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Transcriber’s Note
Errors in the text have been corrected where they can be reasonably attributed to the printer or editor, or where the same word appears as expected elsewhere. Inconsistencies in punctuation or the sp
acing of characters have been resolved with no further notice.
The word ‘CHAPTER’ at the beginning of Chapter XXXIX was omitted in printing, and is here restored.
p. 183 B[B]-i-n-g-o-go! B-i-n-g-o-go! Removed.
p. 224 I saw nothing else[./,] Replaced.
p. 287 [“]It might have been guessed Added.
p. 332 Have you?[”/’] —Well, that aide goes Replaced. back
p. 332 says Spaulding, [‘]I see a column Added. crossing
p. 360 manœ]u]vres Added.
p. 416 [CHAPTER] XXXIX Added.
p. 429 being cried out, [“]I cannot stay here! Added.
p. 440 Once that might have [d/b]een done Replaced.
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