THE only association I have with my old home in Virginia that is not one of
unmixed happiness relates to the time immediately succeeding the execution of John Brown
at Harpers Ferry. Our homestead was in Fairfax County, at some distance from the theater
of that tragic episode; and, belonging as we did to a family among the first in the State
to manumit slaves,—our grandfather having set free those that came to him by
inheritance, and the people who served us being hired from their owners and remaining in
our employ through years of kindliest relations,— there seemed to be no especial
reason for us to share in the apprehension of an uprising of the blacks. But there was the
fear - unspoken, or pooh-poohed at by the men who were mouth-pieces for our
community—dark, boding, oppressive, and altogether hateful. I can remember taking it
to bed with me at night, and awaking suddenly oftentimes to confront it through a vigil of
nervous terror, of which it never occurred to me to speak to any one. The notes of
whip-poor-wills in the sweet-gum swamp near the stable, the mutterings of a distant
thunder-storm, even the rustle of the night wind in the oaks that shaded my window, filled
me with nameless dread. In the daytime it seemed impossible to associate suspicion with
those familiar tawny or sable faces that surrounded us. We had seen them for so many years
smiling or saddening with the family joys or sorrows; they were so guileless, so patient,
so satisfied. What subtle influence was at work that should transform them into tigers
thirsting for our blood? The idea was preposterous. But when evening came again, and with
it the hour when the colored people (who in summer and autumn weather kept astir half the
night) assembled themselves together for dance or prayer-meeting, the ghost that refused
to be laid was again at one’s elbow. Rusty bolts were drawn and rusty fire-arms
loaded. A watch was set where never before had eye or ear been lent to such a service. In
short, peace had flown from the borders of Virginia.
Although the newspapers were full of secession talk and the matter was eagerly
discussed at our tables, I cannot remember that, as late as Christmas-time of the year
1860, coming events had cast any definite shadow on our homes. The people in our
neighborhood, of one opinion with their dear and honored friend, Colonel Robert E. Lee, of
Arlington, were slow to accept the startling suggestion of disruption of the Union. At any
rate, we enjoyed the usual holiday gathering of kinsfolk in the usual fashion. The old
Vaucluse house, known for many years past as a center of cheerful hospitality in the
county, threw wide open its doors to receive all the members who could be gathered there
of a large family circle. The woods about were despoiled of holly and spruce, pine and
cedar, to deck the walls and wreathe the picture-frames. On Christmas Eve we had a grand
rally of youths and boys belonging to the "clan," as they loved to call it, to
roll in a yule log, which was deposited upon a glowing bed of coals in the big
"red-parlor" fire-place, and sit about it afterward, welcoming the Christmas in
with goblets of egg-nog and apple-toddy.
"Where shall we be a year hence?" some one asked at a pause in the merry
chat; and, in the brief silence that followed, arose a sudden spectral thought of war. All
felt its presence; no one cared to speak first of its grim possibilities.
On Christmas Eve of the following year the old house lay in ruins, a sacrifice by Union
troops to military necessity; the forest giants that kept watch wound her walls had been
cut down and made to serve as breastworks for a fort erected on the Vaucluse property as
part of the defenses of Washington. Of the young men and boys who took part in that
holiday festivity, all were in the active service of the South,— one of them, alas!
soon to fall under a rain of shot and shell beside his gun at Fredericksburg; the youngest
of the number had left his mothers knee to fight at Manassas, and found himself, before
the year was out, a midshipman aboard the Confederate steamer Nashville, on her
cruise in distant seas!
My first vivid impression of war-days was during a ramble in the neighboring woods one
Sunday afternoon in spring, when the young people in a happy band set out in search of
wild flowers. Pink honeysuckles, blue lupine, beds of fairy flax, anemones, and ferns in
abundance sprung under the canopy of young leaves on the forest boughs, and the air was
full of the song of birds and the music of running waters. We knew every mossy path far
and near in those woods; every tree had been watched and cherished by those who went
before us, and dearer than any other spat on earth was our tranquil, sweet Vaucluse.
Suddenly the shrill whistle of a locomotive struck the ear, an unwonted sound on Sunday.
"Do you know what that means?" said one of the older cousins who accompanied the
party. "It is the special train carrying Alexandria volunteers to Manassas, and
to-morrow I shall follow with my company." Silence fell upon our little band. A cloud
seemed to come between us and the sun. It was the begininng of the end too soon to come.
The story of one broken circle is the story of another at the outset of such a war.
Before the week was over, the scattering of our household, which no one then believed to
be more than temporary, had begun. Living as we did upon ground likely to be in the track
of armies gathering to confront each other, it was deemed advisable to send the children
and young girls into a place more remote from chances of danger. Some weeks later the
heads of the household, two widowed sisters whose sons were at Manassas, drove away from
their home in their carriage at early morning, having spent the previous night in company
with a half-grown lad digging in the cellar hasty graves for the interment of two boxes of
old English silver-ware, heirlooms in the family, for which there was no time to provide
otherwise. Although the enemy were long encamped immediately above it after the house was
burnt the following year, this silver was found there when the war had ended; it was lying
loose in the earth, the boxes having rotted away.
The point at which our family reunited within the Confederate lines was Bristoe, the
station next beyond Manassas, a cheerless railway inn; a part of the premises was used as
a country grocery store; and there quarters were secured for us with a view to being near
the army. By this time all our 16th and kin of fighting age had joined the
volunteers. One cannot picture accommodations more forlorn’ than these eagerly taken
for us and for other families attracted to Bristoe by the same powerful magnet. The summer
sun poured its burning rays upon whitewashed walls unshaded by a tree. Our bedrooms were
almost uninhabitable by day or night, our fare the plainest. From the windows we beheld
only a flat uncultivated country, crossed by red-clay roads, then ankle-deep in dust. We
learned to look for all excitement to the glittering lines of railway track, along which
continually thundered trains bound to and from the front It was impassible to allow such a
train to pass without running out upon the platform to salute it, for in this way we
greeted many an old friend or relative buttoned up in the smart gray uniform, speeding
with high hope to the scene of coming conflict. Such shouts as went up from sturdy throats
while we stood waving hands, handkerchiefs, or the rough woolen garments we were at work
upon! Then fairly awoke the spirit that made of Southern women the inspiration of Southern
men throughout the war. Most of the young fellows we hew and were cheering onward wore the
uniform of privates, and for the right to wear it had left horns of ease and luxury. To
such we gave our best homage; and from that time forth the youth who was lukewarm in the
cause or unambitious of military glory fared uncomfortably in the presence of the average
Confederate maiden.
Thanks to our own carnage, we were able during those rallying days of June to drive
frequently to visit "the boys" in camp, timing the expeditions to include
battalion drill and dress parade, and taking tea afterward in the different tents. Then
were the gala days of war, and our proud hosts hastened to produce home dainties
dispatched from the far-away plantations— tears and blessings interspersed amid the
packing, we were sure; though I have seen a pretty girl persist in declining other fare,
to make her meal upon raw biscuit and huckleberry pie compounded by the bright-eyed
amateur cook of a well-beloved mess. Feminine heroism could no farther go.
And so the days wore on until the 17th of July, when a rumor from the front
sent an electric shock through our circle. The enemy were moving forward! On the morning
of the 18th those who had been able to sleep at all awoke early to listen for
the first guns of the engagement of Blackburn’s Ford. Deserted as the women at
Bristoe were by every male creature old enough to gather news, there was, for us, no way
of knowing the progress of events during the long, long day of waiting, of watching, of
weeping, of praying, of rushing out upon the railway track to walk as far as we dared in
the direction whence came that intolerable booming of artillery. The cloud of dun smoke
arising over Manassas became heavier in volume as the day progressed. Still, not a word of
tidings, till toward afternoon there came limping up a single, very dirty, soldier with
his arm in a sling. What a heaven-send he was, if only as an escape-valve for our pent-up
sympathies! We seized -him, we washed him, we cried over him, we glorified him until the
man was fairly bewildered. Our best endeavors could only develop a pin-scratch of a wound
on his right hand; but when our hero had laid in a substantial meal of bread and meat, we
plied him with trembling questions, each asking news of some staff or regiment or company.
It has since occurred to me that he was a humorist in disgnise. His invariable reply, as
he looked from one to the other of his satellites, was: "The - Virginia, marm? Why,
of coase. They warn’t no two ways o’ thinkin’ ‘bout that ar
reg’ment. They just kivered tharselves with glory!"
A little later two wagon-loads of slightly wounded claimed our care, and with them came
authentic news of the day. Most of us received notes on paper torn from a soldiers
pocket-book and grimed with gunpowder, containing assurance of the safety of our own. At
nightfall a train carrying more wounded to the hospitals at Culpeper made a halt at
Bristoe; and, preceded by men holding lanterns, we went in among the stretchers with milk,
food, and water to the sufferers. One of the first discoveries I made, bending over in
that fitful light, was a young officer whom I knew to be a special object of solicitude
with one of my comrades in the search; but he was badly hurt, and neither he nor she knew
the other was near until the train had moved on. The next day, and the next, were full of
burning excitement over the impending general engagement, which people then said would
decide the fate of the young Confederacy. Fresh troops came by with every train, and we
lived only to turn from one scene to another of welcome and farewell. On Saturday evening
arrived a message from General Beauregard, saying that early on Sunday an engine and car
would be put at our disposal, to take us to some point more remote from danger. We looked
at one another, and, tacitly agreeing the gallant general had sent not an order but a
suggestion, declined his kind proposal.
Another unspeakably long day, full of the straining anguish of suspense. Dawning bright
and fair, it closed under a sky darkened by cannon-smoke. The roar of guns seemed never to
cease. First, a long sullen boom; then a sharper rattling fire, painfully distinct; then
stragglers from the field, with varying rumors; at last, the news of victory; and, as
before, the wounded, to force our numbed faculties into service. One of our group, the
mother of an only son barely fifteen years of age, heard that her boy, after being in
action all the early part of the day, had through sheer fatigue fallen asleep upon the
ground, where he was found resting peacefully amidst the roar of the guns.
A few days later we rode over the field. The trampled grass had begun to spring again,
and wild flowers were blooming around carelessly made graves. From one of these imperfect
mounds of clay I saw a hand extended; and when, years afterward I visited the tomb of
Rousseau beneath the Pantheon in Paris, where a sculptured hand bearing a torch protrudes
from the sarcophagus, I thought of that mournful spectacle upon the field of Manassas.
Fences were everywhere thrown down; the undergrowth of the woods was riddled with shot;
here and there we came upon spiked guns, disabled gun-carriages, cannon-balls,
blood-stained blankets, and dead horses. We were glad enough to turn away and gallop
homeward.
With August heats and lack of water, Bristoe was forsaken for quarters near Culpeper,
where my mother went into the soldiers’ barracks, sharing soldiers’
accommodations, to nurse the wounded. In September quite a party of us, upon invitation,
visited the different headquarters. We stopped overnight at Manassas, five ladies,
sleeping upon a couch made of rolls of cartridge-flannel, in a tent guarded by a faithful
sentry. I remember the comical effect of the five bird-cages (of a kind without which no
self-respecting young woman of that day would present herself in public) suspended upon a
line running across the upper part of our tent, after we had reluctantly removed them in
order to adjust ourselves for repose. Our progress during that memorable visit was royal;
an ambulance with a picked troop of cavalrymen had been placed at our service, and the
convoy was "personally conducted" by a pleasing variety of distinguished
officers. It was at this time, after a supper at the headquarters of the "Maryland
line" at Fairfax, that the afterward universal war-song, "My Maryland!" was
put afloat upon the tide of army favor. We were sitting outside a tent in the warn
starlight of an early autumn night, when music was proposed. At once we struck up
Randall’s verses to the tune of the old college song, "Lauriger
Horatius,"— a young lady of the party, Jennie Cary, of Baltimore, having
recently set them to this music before leaving home to share the fortunes of the
Confederacy. All joined in the ring-kg chorus; and, when we finished, a burst of applause
came from some soldiers listening in the darkness behind a belt of trees. Next day the
melody was bummed far and near through the camps, and in due time it had gained the place
of favorite song in the army. Other songs sung that evening, which afterward had a great
vogue, were one beginning "By blue Patapsco’s billowy dash," and "The
years glide slowly by, Lorena."
Another incident of note, during the autumn of ‘61, was that to my cousins, Hefty
and Jennie Cary, and to me was intrusted the making of the first three battle-flags of the
Confederacy. They were jaunty squares of scarlet crossed with dark blue edged with white,
the cross bearing stars to indicate the number of the seceded. States. We set our best
stitches upon them, edged tern with golden fringes, and, when they were finished,
dispatched one to Johnston, another to Beauregard, and the third to Earl Van Dorn, then
commanding infantry at Manassas. The banners were received with all possible enthusiasm;
were toasted, fated, and cheered abundantly. After two years, when Van Dorn had been
killed in Tennessee, mine came back to me, tattered and storm-stained from long and
honorable service in the field. But it was only a little while after it had been bestowed
that there arrived one day at our lodgings in Culpeper a huge, bashful Mississippi
scout,— one of the most daring in the army,—with the frame of a Hercules and the
face of a child. He had been bidden to come there by his genera], he said, to ask, if I
would not give him an order to fetch some cherished object from my dear old home—
something that would prove to me "how much they thought of the maker of that
flag!" A week later I was the astonished recipient of a lamented bit of finery left
"within the lines," a wrap, brought to us by Dillon himself, with a beaming
face. Mounted on a load of fire-wood, he had gone through the Union pickets, and while
peddling poultry had presented himself at the house of my uncle, Dr. Fairfax, in
Alexandria, whence he carried off his prize in triumph, with a letter in its folds telling
us how relatives left behind longed to be sharing the joys and sorrows of those at large
in the Confederacy.
