#^^ .^^ .c^"' F !^^./' -^ •^ ' 1 \ ■ ^ , " ■ V, ^ '. ' G^^ xO 0> \' V . o^ .^v .' - ■■ . ^^ -# ■^O0'< "^^ / .^•^ -;> /^. '%'' // C> " ^^. ^^^ e line were out of our sicfht, and as we rode over the open country alone, we were constantly looking out for guerillas. Now and then we would be challenged by a soldier, musket in hand, but he always proved to be of the Union army, and let us pass on, I felt more anxiety for my driver than for myself, for he carried with him the proceeds of the last pay day, and falling into the hands of gue- rillas would involve the loss of several months' earn- ings. But we passed safely over the lonely road, and on reaching the head-quarters of the provost- marshal, General Patrick, I was soon safely provided for. Here, with many thanks, I dismissed my driver, who told me, when I met him several months after, that he returned safely to camp. The house to which I was sent was that of Dr. Fisher, of the Confederate army. In the parlor I met Captain Baily, of the Seventh New York Regiment, who was, I heard, shortly afterwards killed in battle. The family had retired for the night, but a pretty white slave waited on me, and I was at once made comfortable. It was a fine house, a little out of the town, standing on an eminence, from whence sloped in all directions beautiful green fields. Our troops were bivouacked on the grounds. The fences had been destroyed, and officers' tents were pitched in LOOKING FOR THE FIFTH CORPS. y$ the midst of the pretty flower-garden, horses were picketed to the young fruit-trees, and our soldiers had broken open the outhouses and cellar and taken every eatable that they could lay their hands on. These were dark days for poor Mrs. Fisher. Her only son was in Stuart's cavalry. Her husband, hav- ing been left by the rebel cavalry in charge of the post, had lingered too long, after our troops came in, without reporting to the provost-marshal, was ar- rested as a spy, and sent to the Old Capitol prison, in Washington, where I afterwards saw him, and gave him news of his family. Most of her slaves, of which she had possessed many, had run away, and she was compelled to witness the destruction of her property with no means of redress. These were inevitable results of the war which the South had waged for the dismemberment of the Republic, but the details were sad to see. But though Mrs. Fisher had little left for herself, she kindly shared that little with the stranger whom the enemy had quartered on her, and I in return interceded with a general officer for the protection of her property, and obtained for her some much needed supplies from our commissary. I had learned at the provost-marshal's, that the Fifth Corps was at Auburn, six or seven miles from Warrenton, and was promised a wagon for the next morning to go there, but late in the day word came that they were hourly expecting orders to move, y^ LOOKING FOR THE FIFTH CORPS. and a wagon could not leave. I therefore walked to General Meade's head-quarters, the tents of which I could see from my chamber-window, and engaged passage for the next day in the mail-wagon. Long before I thought of rising in the morning, the col- ored housekeeper came into my room and .said the head-quarter tents were all taken away ; and look- ing out I saw that the little white village of yester- day had disappeared. I was scarcely dressed when a messenger came to conduct me to the wagon, and I was soon moving with the head-quarter train, which, after going about seven miles, turned into an open field with orders to encamp. After watch- ing for some time the process of setting up the tents, I asked a soldier if he could tell me how far it was to Auburn. " We left Auburn half a mile back," he said, and, to my surprise, added that the little white cottage and contiguous farm, which I had noticed as we passed, was Auburn. As it was within walking distance, he kindly offered to escort me to the place, and so, with difficulty mak- ing our way through the press of men, horses, wagons, etc., we walked back to the house. As I approached I saw signs of an officer's head-quarters on the premises, and on inquiry found, to my infi- nite relief, that the officer was none other than my friend. Colonel Chamberlain, in command of a brigade of the Fifth Corps, for which I had been so long looking. LOOKING FOR THE FIFTH CORPS. JJ I had been a few days at Mr. McCormick's, the owner of the pretty farm called Auburn, when the army moved again on their way to cross the Rap- pahannock. Having watched, from the door-step, the Fifth Corps pass by until Colonel Chamber- lain's brigade came up, and seen him mount his horse and take his position at its head, I took leave of the friendly family at Auburn, and once more in the mail-wagon, " fell in " with the head-quarter train. This time we moved only a few miles, to the farm of Colonel Murray, an officer on General Lee's staff. I was pleasantly entertained for several days by Mrs. Murray, when, finding that the rees- tablishment of field-hospitals was postponed to an indefinite future, I concluded to return to Washing- ton. The Orange and Alexandria Railroad had been torn up by the rebels, but was now put in re- pair by our troops, and an immensely long train of platform-cars — minus even the boxes — was in readiness to go at a late hour in the day. My seat was a pile of mail-bags on the open car, in the cold, dark evening, and so far in the rear that we could not see the lights of the engine. Now and then picket-fires, with weird pictures of soldiers stand- ing or sitting around, would light us long enough to show that we were passing through some fright- ful gorge, and the next instant we would again be in total darkness. For alleviations, some gentle- men found an armful of straw, which they "happed" 7^ yS LOOKING FOR THE FIFTH CORPS. around my feet, and strove, by every cheerful atten- tion in their power, to make the journey tolerable. When I arrived at Alexandria, and was lifted off the car, I could not know by personal sensation whether I was still in possession of pedestrian powers or not, but being guided to the Sanitary Home, I soon regained sensation, and being kindly provided for, for the night, the next morning I crossed the Potomac, by ferry, to Washington. CHAPTER VII. WINTER. QUARTERS. DURING the winter of 1863-4 our army had its base at Brandy Station, and was encamped in that vicinity. Our division hospital was estab- lished near the station, on a rising ground, and near a brick house, which furnished convenient quarters for the medical officers and the lady superintendent. Our position overlooked in all directions a wide extent of country on which had been much hard fighting. The Hon. John M. Botts, who lived near, and on a portion of whose large estate the army was encamped, told us that, from the piazza of his house, he had witnessed over thirty battles. But the contending armies were now in winter- quarters, — there could be no fighting of impor- tance at present, — and our hospital work was con- fined to the care of the sick, of which the number that winter was not large. After the routine of the day was over, I would occasionally beguile the loneliness of the winter evenings with my long- neglected pen, writing out, by the dim light of our commissary candles, sketches of such incidents as had impressed themselves on my memory, of which 79 8o WINTER-QUARTERS. a few may be admitted here, as illustrating different phases of army life in winter-quarters. THE SOLDIER'S GRAVE. On one of the closing days of autumn, 1863, the head-quarters of the Army of the Potomac broke camp at Auburn and moved to Colonel Murray's farm, about two miles from Warrenton Junction. The head-quarters' moving, though not so grand or striking a spectacle as you will often see in mili- tary life, is still quite imposing, and by no means destitute of "the pomp and circumstances of glori- ous war." Altogether, it is as long a procession as the eye can take in at once, consisting of the baggage- wagons and private carriages of the Generals and other officers belonging to this department, ac- companied by their battle-flags, a heavy escort of cavalry, a regiment of infantry, wagons belonging to the subsistence department, and, at this time, a long line of rebel prisoners, marching under guard. We moved along slowly over the hills, through the wooded country, but soon emerged on the plains of Bristow, where had recently been fought the battle which gave to Meade, instead of Lee, the coveted heights of Centreville, and to General Warren the laurels which designate him " Hero of Bristow Sta- tion." Yet, as we passed along, my attention was ar- WINTER-QUARTERS. 8l rested by a little scene, which forms a picture in memory, never to be effaced. Just off to the right, a short distance over the brown plain, was a sol- dier's grave, newly made, and, ranged along, side by side, bowed on reversed muskets over the grave of their comrade, four soldiers, apparently engaged in prayer. They had turned aside from the weary march, and there, unmindful of the gay procession passing by, with heads bowed low, and solemn countenances, gave a few moments to communion with heaven, and a few tears to the sleeper below. Did they think, in those moments, of breaking hearts far away, yearning with vain desire to kneel by that lonely grave ? Were they recalling the fear- ful engagements in which they and the fallen hero had fought side by side, and crying out in their hearts, " Such is the price we pay for human free- dom ! " " So much it costs to secure to our children the blessing of a stable government ! " Or were they anticipating other battles, speedily approach- ing, and wondering if they would be the next to fall, and who would be left to pray over their graves ? I know not what were their thoughts, but these, and many others, rushed upon my mind, and I, too, gave a tear to the solitary grave. Yes, this was a solitary grave, but on many hill- sides and in many valleys of Virginia you may find them, ** strewn thick as autumn's leaves in Vallam- brosa's brook." F 82 WINTER-QUARTERS. There sleep our brothers and our sons, the best we had to give, the costliest sacrifice we could offer on the altar of our country. Their last battle is fought, their last march ended, their last bivouac is made. They sleep well in that deep slumber from which no bugle-call or sound of any kind can awake them, until the loud reveille which shall " shake not the earth only, but also heaven." But who can number the tears that flow, or the hearts that break with longing for the sight of those who shall return no more ? What eye, save that which comprehends immensity, can measure a na- tion's grief, as, like the foot-worn soldier, she bows over the graves of her fallen sons, and, from the depth of her anguish, cries out, " Such is the price we pay for Human Freedom ! " ON A STRETCHER. When our Colonel's wife came to camp, last winter, she expected to have a good time of it. Our Colonel had had his quarters arranged in the best camp style. A nice plank-pavement all around, wherever she might choose to walk ; trees planted so thickly about the tent that you would almost take it for a natural forest ; a pretty archway of green boughs at the entrance, with the red diamond of the division in the centre, and everything about the premises quite an fait. WINTER-QUARTERS. 83 Within, all was cozy and comfortable — the walls splendidly illuminated with pictures from Harper s Weekly and Frank Leslie's Magazine, good board- floor, plenty of chairs and boxes, on which the Colonel's numerous friends could sit around the capacious fire-place and gaze on the ever-consum- ing, but never consumed, "secesh" logs, or, if of an inquisitive turn, look into the little inner sanctuary, just big enough for a bed, and to turn around in. We were all glad when our Colonel's wife came among us, for the presence of a lady in camp is always welcome, and though we cannot all have our wives to winter with us, the sight of one seems to bring home nearer. Camp life is not always destitute of amusement, and, last winter, everybody said it was very gay. There were plenty of balls and receptions, and visit- ing from one camp to another, riding on horseback, or in ambulances, for many other officers besides our Colonel had their wives with them; and, al- though we were not within the charmed circle, we could see, as we paced our beat, or stood on guard, or lingered at the door of our tent, a good deal of what was going on. We knew when our Colonel's wife got her new riding-dress and hat from Wash- ington, and saw her when she first mounted her horse for a ride. Often afterwards, we watched the gay cavalcade, of which she was one, galloping over the hills, and vowed that, if ever **this cruel 84 WINTER-QUARTERS. war is over," our nice little wife shall have just such a riding-dress and hat, and we will have a ride if two horses can be found in the country. So the winter was nearly over, and our Colonel's wife had enjoyed her share of whatever amusement the Army of the Potomac had to offer. But there was one experience she little thought to encounter still in store for her, and that was — being carried on a stretcher. It was brought about in this wise. She had taken several rather hard rides on horseback, to which she was not much accustomed, sometimes in cold, windy days, and on fast horses,- and being rather ambitious, and not willing to give up, when prudence might have dictated rest, she, all at once, and quite contrary to her plans, found herself on the sick roll. Being sick in camp is no joke, and least like one to the lady in question. But sleepless nights and days, and pains in the back and head, and constant nausea, are stubborn facts, to which the stoutest heart must cry, *' I surrender." So, with all the Colonel's good nursing, and the doctor's prescrip- tions, and visits from sympathizing friends, '' she was nothing better, but rather grew worse ; " and right upon this an order came for our division to change camp. Military orders make no exceptions, and hard as it might seem in this state of things, the cozy quar- WINTER-QUARTERS. 85 ters must be evacuated, and new ones sought in a camp three miles distant. The lady's illness had reached a point when, in- deed, it might be said, "the spider's most attenu- ated thread is cord, is cable, to the slender hold " she had on life, and the slightest jar might snap the thread, and then all would be over. Riding in an ambulance over the rough roads and corduroy bridges, was an experiment not in the least desira- ble, and the only other resort which camp afforded was a stretcher. Our stretcher-bearers are sufficiently accustomed to bearing wounded and dead men from the field, or sick men to and from the hospital. But a lady on a stretcher is something quite unique. Eight men, making four reliefs, were detailed to accom- plish the delicate task, and with infinite care and tenderness, our Colonel's wife was laid on the omin- ous little vehicle, to commence her new method of transportation. The Colonel, with several friends, accompanied the party on horseback, and six of the men took their turns in going ahead as pioneers, to select the smoothest places. ** Is that a dead man ! " " Oh, that is a woman ! Is she dead, or what 's the matter with her ? " These questions being asked by stragglers in the hearing of the lady, were not much calculated to raise her spirits and facilitate her convalescence. The removal, however, was accomplished with 86 WINTER-QUARTERS. much less disadvantage than was feared, and now that she is restored to health, she looks back upon it as rather a gay adventure, and declares that she outdid the Colonel on some points of military ex- perience, since he, in all his three years' term of service, had never been carried on a stretcher. THE RECONNOISSANCE. They have gone, they have all passed by, nothing can be seen of them now but a long line of flashing bayonets, passing close under the brow of yonder hill. First went a few miles of cavalry (interspersed with batteries of artillery), the rattling of whose sabres always announce their approach before you. hear the tramp of their horses. If you happen to be near them as they pass, you will hear them jesting in merry tones, or singing snatches of rol- licking songs. They go out ready to do or die, and whatever else happens, you may be pretty sure that the cavalry will not disgrace us. Next went their ambulances, painfully suggestive of broken limbs, fearful sabre gashes, and bullet holes through the lungs ; worse things than these sometimes, but we must not think of them now. Then their train of baggage and supply wagons winding along for several miles, and this is the last we see of the cavalry. A few hours pass, and looking far away over the hills we see a long, dark line in motion, and experi- WINTER-QUARTERS. cS/ ence tells us that it is a body of infantry. As they come out of the shadow of the hill, their bayonets begin to gleam, so that now, in the sunshine, they look like a line of blazing light, and come pouring on, officers riding at the head of their commands^ colors and battle-flags waving on the air, some of them pierced and torn almost to shreds, but borne all the more proudly, and guarded the more sacred- ly for that. Presently, other columns, from other camps and winding around other hills, come on, but all moving in one direction. Where they are going, or for what, nobody knows. As they come nearer, you see that many of them have attached to their knapsack-straps, tincups, frying-pans, tin- pails, coffee-pots, and some a loaf of bread on their bayonets. They seem in good spirits, and, like the cavalry, are singing and joking. But under all this appearance of alacrity you may be sure there is hidden much anxiety, and, in many hearts, a fearful looking forward, — for, my friend, you who sit so quietly smoking your cigar, as you read the news- paper account of the last great battle, it is no easier for these poor fellows to go out from their shelter- tents to die than it would be for you to go out from your counting-room or your law office. " Glori- ous fellows ! " exclaimed the General, as a part of his command was marching by. He was think- ing how gallantly they had behaved on many a fiercely-contested field, and how well he might rely 88 WINTER-QUARTERS. on them to follow wherever he should lead in future. " Poor fellows!" said, at the same moment, a woman in sympathizing tones. She was thinking of fearful sights in crowded hospitals, cruel wounds, amputated limbs, pale faces, and brave, faithful hearts, worn out with excess of anguish. So they pass along for many hours, and after them come their trains of ambulances, baggage and supply wagons, and, lastly, a herd of cattle, propor- tioned in numbers to the rations they are to serve. Now, at length, they are all gone. The camps are like deserted cities, for they have left their huts and tents standing, hoping to come back to them. A (qw soldiers, unfit for a march, are walking around, or lying under their tents. Here and there you may see smoke lazily ascending, but the atmosphere is relieved of that dense body of smoke that usually hangs over camp. The stillness is painful. We sit down mournfully, and wonder where our friends are gone, and what is on the tapis now ; for dear and noble souls have gone out to-day, and many such we have seen go out to return no more. In our hearts we pray for them, and then look out to see what signs of the weather, and hope it will not rain. At night we think of guerillas. We know that our picket line is thin, and that a treach- erous and unscrupulous foe is always going about seeking what he may " gobble." Our sleep, if we get any, is light, and often broken by anxiety. We WINTER-QUARTERS. 89 dream of battle-fields, rebel cavalry, and journeys to Richmond. In the morning we hear a distant cannonading, but we are not startled by it. It may be fighting, or it may be only shelling the woods as they advance. We judge of its distance and direction by the sound. Sometimes it seems to come from the right, sometimes from the left, and sometimes from both directions at once. It con- tinues at intervals through the day, though growing more distant. As the day wears on, a courier comes in and reports our friends. We are relieved to know that they have had no fighting yet, and are doing better than we feared. . But now a new cause of anxiety arises, for the weather, which was fine when they marched out, is changing, and ominous gusts of wind and rain- bearing clouds force themselves on our observation. We try to think we are mistaken, and look earn- estly for patches of blue sky, and gleams of sunshine, but they are not there. Soon a starless, dismal night sets in, with drizzling rain. Oh, the pitiless storm ! What can our friends do, with no shelter but their blankets, and no bed but the soft soil under them. The rain seems to beat on our naked hearts, and we are abandoned to fearful anxiety, for there is not only exposure to the weather, but danger that, the ground being softened by the rain, their progress will be obstructed and their plans defeated, or that the enemy will get advantage of them. 8* 90 WINTER-QUARTERS. But all our fears we know cannot help them, so we strive to commit them to the care of that Provi- dence which rules over all, and to hope for the best. In the morning, going to the hospital, we ob- serve a new patient, and are pained to see that it is a case of extreme suffering. The eyes are partly closed, an expression of mortal anguish is on his face, his respiration labored and irregular. " Whom have you here, nurse ? " " He is a man of our division, ma'am, who went on the march, but gave out by the way, and they sent him back in an ambulance. He was very bad when he came in, and he has been growing worse ever since. " The next day, the fourth since the march, is clear and fine. Our friends return without fio-htine:, and we learn that it was only a reconnoissance. The soldier in the hospital is dead, and we join the little escort that follows him to his long home. There, on the hillside, along with many that went before, and whose graves are marked with simple head-boards bearing the inscription of their names and regiments, his grave is prepared, and the brown coffin lowered in. " I am the resurrection and the life" is read over it, a prayer is said, a salute fired, and he adds one more to the buried soldiers with which the soil of Virginia is so thickly strewn. Poor fellow, he was a recruit, and this was his first and last march. CHAPTER VIII. CA VALR V CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. EARLY in the spring of 1864, General Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac, and preparations were made for breaking up the base at Brandy Station and for a vigorous campaign. In pursuance of an order from head-quarters, there was a general flight of women to Washington. When I next found my division hospital it was at Fredericksburg, Va., after the battle of the Wil- derness, May 5th, 6th, and 7th. It would be in vain to attempt a description of the scenes of suf- fering that crowded on one another there, as our wounded were brought back from the hard fighting of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. The entire city was turned into a hospital, and the houses were literally filled, from garret to cellar, with our patient, dying soldiers. Thence the Hospital Department was ordered to Port Royal — which was made a base during the fighting at the North Anna River — and thence to White House Landing, on the Pamunkey. Here we remained for several weeks ; the wounded were brought in from the battle of Cold Harbor, and our hospitals were established, and again filled with every 91 92 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. conceivable form of suffering. By this time, General D. B. Birney, on whose protection and kindness I had so long relied, was transferred to another com- mand. The old and honored Third Corps, which had so many times stood in the deadly breach, hurling back the tide of invasion that threatened to over- whelm us, was consolidated into the Third Division of the Second Corps. Many of the surgeons with whom I had worked, and other officers, who had been my friends, had left the service at the expira- tion of their three years' term, or fallen in the re- cent battles. Finding but few of my old friends remaining, I accepted an invitation from Dr. Mit- chell, of the Eighth Pennsylvania Cavalry, who was in charge of the hospital of the Cavalry Corps, to undertake the supervision of special diet, and other matters pertaining to the welfare of his pa- tients. While we remained at White House, and for some months after our removal to City Point, I was assisted by Mrs. M. A. Ehler, of Lancaster, Pa., whose devotion to the welfare of the wounded there, and in Gettysburg, is still warmly remem- bered by many who had the good fortune to be the recipients of her kindness. A few extracts from my journal w-ill, perhaps, give the reader some little idea of our work and manner of life at the Cavalry Corps Hospital, where I remained till March ist, 1865. CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. 93 City Point, Va,, October 16, 1864. I was alone in my tent this afternoon, when the flap was drawn aside, and a pleasant-looking soldier boy inquired if Mrs. Spaulding was here. " She is staying here, but just now has gone out. Do you wish to see her ?" " She is my mother." I stepped outside the tent to show him the direc- tion he should take to find her, and saw that she was hurrying towards us. A delegate of the Christian Commission, who was at the front yesterday, had kindly promised to bring her tidings of her boy; and as she was on her way to learn the result of his inquiries, the sentinel at the entrance of the hospital grounds, having ascertained that the young infantry soldier was her son, told her that he had just passed in, and she quickly returned. He went to meet her, and mother and son, after a separation of two years of danger, hardship, and sorrow, were united in a tearful embrace. Mrs. Spaulding had given four sons to the service of the country. They were all good soldiers, and had shirked no duty, either of the march, skirmish, picket, or heavy engagement. Imbued by their mother with a noble spirit of patriotism, and obedi- ence to any well-defined duty, they had borne in their own persons the brunt of battle, and had shared the burdens and heat of the day; one, reduced to a 94 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. skeleton by sickness, following exposure and toil, had gone home to die. Just a year from the day of his death, another had died in our hospital. He was one of those whose energies were exhausted by the heavy cavalry raids of the present campaign. After he came to us, he did not seem to suffer from severe illness, and was always cheerful and hopeful of recovery ; but little by little his strength departed, until at last the flickering flame of life went suddenly out. A third is now serving in Florida, and the fourth has to-day come from the front, near Richmond, to see his mother. For two years he has been a soldier, suffering much, as all our soldiers do at times, with cold and hunger and weariness, yet always keeping up a stout heart, and constantly writing to his mother to be of good cheer. During all this time he has not met either of his brothers, excepting for a few moments, in our hospital, the one who lately died. Now he sits down once more with his mother, it may be for the last time; and they speak tearfully of the past, and not without anxiety of the future. He tells her of comrades, some of them old playfellows from the same town, killed in battle. Of one poor fellow shot at the picket post after his term of service had expired, and says of him, "Tell his mother that he was a good soldier." They speak of him who has lately passed away, and, after a while, go out to visit his grave. He lies in the little cemetery of CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. 95 the hospital, just in the edge of the woods, near the bank of the Appomattox. There sleep more than a hundred of our cavalrymen, who have died since we came here in June. They lie in rows as regular as those in which they lately stood on dress-parade, or when drawn out in line of battle. But time is precious, and they cannot linger long to weep at his grave, for the few hours of the son's furlough will soon pass. The mother walks with him a mile or two, to our first line of breastworks, where he insists that she shall not go farther, and takes leave of her, saying, '^ Do not fear for me, mother; if I die here, I will surely meet you in heaven." He takes under his arm a bundle which it had been my privilege to prepare for him, — shirt, drawers, socks, handkerchief, towel, canned-milk, tomatoes, and peaches, tea and tobacco, all tied up in a large col- ored handkerchief, which will be nice to muffle around his throat some of these cold nights when he has to stand on picket. They were invaluable to him; but he could hardly be persuaded to take them, lest, as he said, he " should be robbing the sick boys at the hospital." So, after this important era in his soldier life, he walks away to find his post of duty and danger, where, at any moment, the winged messenger of death may find him ; for it sometimes happens to our poor fellows, lying near the entrenchments, that a stray shot or shell kills them while asleep in their quarters. 96 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. Intelligence having reached Mrs. Spaulding, at her home, in the northern part of the State of Maine, that a son was lying sick in the Cavalry Corps Hospital, she had come without delay to look after him ; but finding, to her great grief, that he had been lying in the little cemetery five days, and see- ing that there was much to do for the sons of other mothers who were far away, she forthwith sent her tears back to their fountains, and began to work for them, and soon became so much interested that she begged to be put on permanent duty in the hospital. The patients were always glad to see her in the wards, because, as they would say to her, " You seem so much like my mother," " Your hand feels so much like my mother's hand ;" and when she left for a few weeks, to go home and make prepara- tions for a winter's campaign with us, they pre- sented her with a purse of fifty dollars, to bear her expenses. Oct. 22. — This afternoon one of the ward-masters looked into my tent, and said, *' Jim is dead." He was a man to whom my attention was called when he came to the hospital, two or three weeks ago, as being a brave soldier, worthy of special considera- tion, and I have been much interested in his case. - His emaciated person, hollowed cheeks, and sharp features, indicated too plainly the nature of his disease. We hoped that something might be done to save him, but our efforts were unavailing. CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. Q/ and gradually he sank away. When I saw him this morning, he said, in reply to my questions, that he " felt quite well," and "could eat anything;" but his lips were then growing stiff, his limbs were cold, and in a few hours he was gone. His friend told me that he was respectably con- nected, and the owner of quite a large property. That while he was out in the three months' service, at the commencement of the war, the young girl to whom he was pledged for marriage was lost to him through the treachery of one who had supplanted him in her affections. From the time he had returned, and learned the facts, he seemed bent on one only purpose — that of meeting her seducer and inflicting on him pun- ishment for his crime. The latter, becoming aware of his design, immediately left the place, and went to Washington. Thither Jim followed, and learn- ing that the miscreant had enlisted in a Pennsyl- vania regiment, hesitated not to do the same. Be- fore he could reach the regiment, intelligence came that the man whom he was seeking had been cap- tured while on picket. Whether this was true, or whether, learning that the avenger was at hand, he had deserted to the enemy, was never known. Certain it is, however, that after three years of baf- fled effort, worn out with hard service and exposure in camp and field, added to the burden of mental anguish that he always bore, poor Jim came to our 9 G 98 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. hospital to die — the wreck of a once noble, gener- ous-hearted man. A few days before his death, he had transmitted to friends a large sum of money for the poor girl's benefit, whom, with her child, he had maintained during his absence, though he had entirely relinquished the idea of marrying her. Oct. 24. — Last evening I attended a soldier's prayer-meeting in one of the wards of our hospital. We have had many such during the past summer, and I have often wished that friends at home could look in upon them. Some, I think, would not ob- ject to exchange, for at least one evening, a seat in ^' eir nicely-cushioned pew, and gas-lighted church, for one on a box, or the side of a bed, in our dimly-lighted tents, the discourse of their favorite preacher for these fraternal exhortations, and the grand organ-notes in the stately hymn or loud- swelling anthem, for these voices in " Nearer, my God, to Thee," or " Am I a Soldier of the Cross?" The meetings are conducted by hospital atten- dants and convalescents, and they have one nearly every evening, changing from one ward to another. Last evening, when we entered, the services had commenced. The beds were so arranged as to leave a small vacant space in the centre of the ward, which consists of three hospital tents. On one side of this little square was a small table covered with rubber cloth ; on the opposite side, a box covered with newspapers — reserved seats for the ladies ; CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. 99 while the men were seated throughout the ward on the beds. A large Bible was open on the table ; two candles threw their light on its yellow pages, and the leader of the meeting was just beginning to read. Those sacred words of life and peace were not less precious that the sound of the reader's voice mingled with the roar of cannon a few miles distant, reminding us that the cruel strife is going on. The above-mentioned Bible possesses for us something of unusual interest. I had often -noticed that it was quite difficult for the men to read in their little Testaments by candle-light, and one day had asked at the head-quarters of the Christian Commission if the entire Bible, and one of a larger print, could be obtained. They gave me this, the only one to be had, looking, in its old-fashioned calf binding, and antiquated lettering, as if it might have done service in the War of the Revolution, or been a passenger in the May-Flower. Yet, not- withstanding its advanced age, it was well pre- served, with the exception of a few leaves missing at the beginning and the end, and had made its rounds from ward to ward a most welcome visitor, the source whence many a dying soldier had derived help and comfort. During the progress of the meeting, one of the speakers, whose term of service had expired, being about to return to his home, spoke, with tears, of the Almighty goodness that had led him safely through lOO CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. SO many dangers, and hoped that his rehgious char- acter had not deteriorated through the temptations of a soldier's life. Another was about leaving the hospital to join his regiment at the front, and begged the prayers of his comrades that he might be faithful to duty, and prepared for any future that might await him. At the close, the singers, standing around the bed-side of one near to de.:.th, sang " Rock of Ages," and several other hymns adapted to cheer and encourage the soul about to enter the dark valley. This man did not call himself a Christian when he came to the hospital, but through the influence of these little meetings, and the good men who have attended him as nurses, hopes he has become one, and is dying peacefully. Now that the weather is getting too cold for the open air Sabbath meetings which we have had in the summer, the men are fitting up an old building, which we hope may be used as a chapel, and thus afford to many of our cavalrymen opportunities of hearing tlie Word. Of our Sabbath exercises last summer, one in par- ticular will not be forgotten by those present. It was the baptism of a soldier. The congregation, consisting of three or four hundred convalescents and attendants, was seated on the green in front of the surgeon's quarters. Far away in front, and CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. lOI on the right, stretched the white hospital tents, re- lieved in the background by the dark pine forest, while on the left might be seen through the trees the waters of the Appomattox. The evening was delightful, and for once the artillery duel, which we generally heard at that hour near Petersburg, was omitted. The medical officers, and others here as patients, were seated under the head-quarters fly, from among whom the chaplain stepped towards the congregation, and after a brief address, and appropriate singing, administered the sacrament of baptism to the soldier kneeling before him, while the large flag of the hospital, with its crossed sabres, and the cavalry guidon floated over their heads. The words, **you promise to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil," never seemed more impressive than amid those peculiar surroundings. The scene was poetic beyond description, but let us hope that some impression deeper than poetry remained with the audience. The Cemetery, enclosed by a neat fence, lies under the forest trees near by. It is kept in perfect order, and here, as they depart one by one out of this life, are deposited the bodies of our brave cav- alrymen. To the kindred and friends of those who die here, it must be a satisfaction to know that they have Christian burial in this secluded and beautiful spot ; and though the destiny which makes the last resting-place of their loved ones so far away may 9)^ I02 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. seem severe, yet let them take comfort from the reflection that there is a way to heaven from the field-hospital, or even the battle-field, no less than from the luxurious city or quiet country home. In our field-hospitals the nursing is done by the soldiers. Always after a battle, or a long march, many come in who are disabled by fatigue for duty in the regiment, and after a few days of rest in the hospital they are placed on the convalescent roll. They are then either returned to their regiments or put on duty in the wards. The hospital, consisting of tents or rough wooden buildings — sometimes both — is divided into several sections, to each of which one is detailed as ward-master, who selects his nurses, has supervision of the wards in his sec- tion, and is responsible for their neatness and good order, and the general treatment of the patients. The tents and barracks are regularly arranged, and separated by streets, which, with all the grounds about the hospital, are kept perfectly clean by the police party, whose duty it is to remove whatever filth or rubbish may be scattered about. As you go through the wards, especially the bar- racks or stockades, ypu will notice with pleasure the tasteful manner in which they are ornamented, giving them a cheerful, sometimes even beautiful, appearance. Pictures cut from magazines and weeklies, neatly framed, hang on the walls ; also mottoes express- ing patriotic or religious sentiments, or the names CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITV POINT. IO3 of their favorite generals. These are composed of letters cut from the foil which comes around tobacco, pasted on blue or yellow paper, and stretched on frames. * The ceiling is festooned with tissue paper of various colors, cut in open work. Then there are chandeliers made by stringing together, or rather apart, several hoops of different sizes conically, wound with strips of red, blue, and yellow paper, and ornamented elaborately with paper flowers and leaves, in cutting which the German soldiers excel. In all the wards you will see some of the soldiers sitting on the bed's side, intent on carving rings or pipes from the hard laurel root of the country, rings from bones, or perhaps transforming the thin sides of cigar boxes into pretty brackets. You will stop to listen to some narrating stories of the fight or march. If you have conversation with those lying in the beds, they will manifest their pleasure at your interest in them by the lighting up of the eye, and some will be sure to take from under their pillows, for your inspection, the dear pictures of wife and children, companions of all their weary days. Occa- sionally one manifests taste and skill in sketching with the pencil. Two pretty pictures of soldiers on picket were made and presented to me by a soldier. The greeting a woman coming into the hospital receives is sometimes affecting. " It seems so good to see a woman 'round ; you look so much like my wife, my sister, or my mother." " How soft your 104 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. hand feels on my forehead." " How shall I ever pay you for what you have done for me?" "That looks like the light of other days," are frequent expres- sions, and leave the person addressed nothing to reeret but that sh: can do so little for men to whom a little is worth so much. Yet it is difficult for many of them to understand the motive which prompts a lady to undergo the hardships and priva- tions of life in a field-hospital ; and one of the most frequent questions is, " How much pay do you get?" When I tell them that I do not wish or receive any pay but that of the satisfaction of doing something to make their situation more tolerable, they cannot comprehend it, and ask if I have a husband or brother in the service.. A poor forlorn-looking fellow comes to my quarters with a picture which he says he has framed for me. It is cut from Harpc/s Weekly, and represents Paris fashions for January 1864, in the persons of three dashing young ladies, whose well-fitting and tasteful gar- ments are excellent "samples to judge by." The frame to which it is pasted is a hoop covered with blue paper and coiled around with yellow — the cav- alry color. < I am charmed with the gift, and express in warmest terms my admiration and gratitude. As I hang it on the wall, a companion to other orna- ments by which these dear souls have testified their affection, and he rises to go, he asks, " Have you any more of that licorice ? I have a bad cough," and CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. IO5 accompanies the assertion with practical illustration. Forthwith my box of licorice and candies — gifts to the soldiers from friends at home — is produced, and with a nice little assortment, wrapped in paper, he returns to his ward, as much pleased as I am with my picture. Oct. 27, 1864. — Yesterday and to-day patients have been coming in — nearly two hundred — from the hospitals at the extreme front. A heavy engagement has been going on, and these have been sent in to make room for the wounded there. Many of them look worn and emaciated, and say that fighting nearly every day, and doing picket duty these cold nights, have been very severe on the cavalry. 28. — For the last two or three days the fighting has been very heavy. The cannonading was at times terrific — the explosions seeming to roll over and over one another, keeping up a continual roar for hours. We hear it was a reconnoissance near Hatcher's Run. About one hundred wounded came into our hospital this morning, and many more to the infantry hospitals. Of our cavalrymen, many were badly wounded ; a large proportion in the thigh, some in the face, or through the lungs and other parts of the body. Many have already suf- fered amputation. Some of the poor fellows must die soon. One little fellow with delicate features, not yet I06 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. eighteen years old. cannot reconcile himself to the loss of his right arm. The bullet struck his arm about half-way between the shoulder and elbow joint. He said it felt as though some one had dealt him a heavy blow with a club. With his left hand he took the bullet out of his sleeve and threw it away. The bone was much shattered and required amputation. When I spoke to him, he tried to smile through his tears, but it was evidently very hard to put a cheerful aspect on the matter. A boy of the same age, whom I once saw in a hospital in Washington, said, in reply to my words of sympathy, ** No ; I have not lost my arm. I gave it to my country, and I gave it willingly. I ex- pected they would take my life, but as they took only my arm, I feel very thankful." I afterwards saw his mother sitting by his side, weeping incon- solably for her boy's loss, while he, with unflinch- ing countenance, was striving to comfort her. November 6th was a lovely day of Indian sum- mer, and in company with a small party of friends I rode out to our front line of fortifications. We were able to approach within a few miles of Peters- burg, and, looking through the fine glass on our signal-station, could see the rebel soldiers engaged on their works, and set our watches by a clock on an old tower. The house on which is this signal- station was for many years owned and occupied by Colonel Avery. It is a large, old-fashioned house, CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. 10/ its Spacious rooms, broad halls, tastefully-arranged garden, and walks with rows of box, still surviving the general desolation, show that it was once a beautiful home. Standing on the highest land in the vicinity, it overlooks Petersburg and the sur- rounding country, and has served at times as a tar- get for both armies. We could trace the course of cannon-balls as they passed from room to room through the entire building, piercing every wall, and leaving in each a hole, smoothly cut, about the size of a barrel-head, while in other places the walls were riddled with smaller shot. It seemed a singular coincidence, that the walls of a room, apparently a drawing-room, pierced in this way, were ornamented with pictured paper representing warlike scenes — soldiers in line of battle, cavalry and infantry mixed up in fearful con- fusion, the living with their gaily-painted battle- flags pressing on and trampling over the dead and dying. There was something weird and awful in the sight of these mimic scenes of warfare, which, after having for long years appealed to the imagination of the dwellers in that house, now found their counterpart in dread realities within sight of its windows. Colonel Avery is now an old man. He possessed great wealth and influence, and exerted himself to the utmost to save Virginia to the Union, riding with several of his friends through the coun- I08 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. try day and night, and entreating the planters to unite with him in resisting the insane measure of secession. But his efforts were unavaihng. " The North will not fight," they said ; and so the over- whelming tide of angry excitement swept away his wiser counsels. But, to their amazement, the North did fight, and now their ruined homes are a mute testimony to their folly. The owner of this once elegant estate, finding his protest unavailing, has retired to a place of safety, while his broad fields are furrowed with breastworks, and trampled over by the merciless hoof of War. From the parapet of one of our forts we had a good view of the rebel intrenchments and picket lines, as also of our own. Picket firing was con- stant on both sides. The soldiers in the fort pointed out a spot near by, where a corporal was last even- ing killed by a fragment of a shell. The ground was still stained with the poor fellow's blood. Standing under a tree, with no thought of the im- pending fate, the missile of death found the vital part. He staggered a few steps, and fell lifeless among his comrades. A few months since, in the same fort, we saw the guns in action, witnessed the reply of the rebel guns, and could distinctly hear the hideous yell which accompanies their fighting. As the firing became rapid, the officers in the fort begged us to hasten our departure, the locality CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. IO9 being no longer safe, and going to a point out of range of the guns, we sat in our carriage and wit- nessed one of the grandest artillery duels of the season. The shells followed each other rapidly, and sometimes we could see them all along both lines for many miles. First would come the flash and puff of smoke, then the report, followed by a continuous shriek of the shell as it darts into the air, its burning fuse showing the immense globe to be revolving on its axis. Slowly it ascends, like a rocket, then, making a grand swoop, falls rapidly as an eagle pounces on its prey. An explosion and another puff of smoke announce that it has ac- complished its mission. This firing along the lines was a specimen of what occurred nearly every evening during the summer. Many of the shot and shell were aimed at a brigade of the Ninth Corps, lying directly in front of our point of obser- vation. It was composed mostly of colored troops, who were favorite targets for the guns of their ci-devant masters. It has not been an unusual thing in our camps for a shell to fall while our wearied soldiers are asleep, and, bursting in their midst, kill one or more without awaking them. An officer of a Mas- sachusetts regiment, while writing a letter to his wife, was struck and instantly killed. The unfin- ished letter — stained with his life-blood — an- nounced to her the sad tidings of his death. no CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. Three soldiers were stooping over their camp- fire, cooking their supper — the middle one had just changed his position to reach an article behind him, when a solid shot, passing in range, killed his two companions, leaving him unhurt. ** That night," said he, "for the first time in many years, I said my prayers." In our drives about City Point, and the fortifications around Petersburg, we pass many ruins where were once the pleasant homes of families driven away by the ravages of war. A pretty clump of trees, with several tall chimneys and gate-posts still standing, the well-curb, carriage drives, long rows of box and other shrubbery, and here and there little huts for negro quarters, tell the story of past glory and present desolation. However great may be our loyalty to our country, and our detestation of the crime of treason against it, we are saddened at the sight of these ruins, and deplore the misery which involves, in many cases, the innocent as well as the guilty. A few days since, we made an excursion to the signal-station in the Department of the James, known as Butler's Tower. We drove from our camp, near City Point, about three miles up the Appomattox river, where we crossed the pontoon bridge, then a mile or two, partly through the camps of the Tenth Corps, to the tower. This we ascended to a height of about one hundred and CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. Ill twenty feet, in a chair elevated through the centre by ropes and pulleys. Standing on the platform at the top, and looking through the signal-glass across the crooked Appomattox, we had a better view of Petersburg and its surroundings than from any other point, and could trace lines of fortifications both of besiegers and besieged. Turning in the opposite direction, we looked over a beautiful coun- try towards Richmond, the church -spires of which can be seen in a clear day. Just at the base of the tower is a little block-house, which, when our troops came in and took possession of the post, was occu- pied by a signal corps of the rebels. So suddenly did our men come upon them, that they were all, eight in number, either captured or killed, and in the pocket of one was found their signal code. This was soon deciphered by our signallers, who thus obtained a key to the signals of the enemy. Nov. 22. — To-day received a large number of boxes and barrels of hospital stores from an asso- ciation of ladies known as *' The Patriotic Daugh- ters of Lancaster, Pa." The stores were of the greatest importance to us at this time, and are not the first received from the same quarter; they hav- ing done much in the way of supplying our hospital with delicacies during the summer. One circum- stance connected with this supply illustrates a lia- bility common in the army, and not very pleasant. The stores were forwarded to Washington by Adams 112 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. Express, and thence by United States mail steamer, under care of a friend. While on the steamer, a barrel of apples was broken open and nearly emp- tied, and a box in which had been packed choice Madeira wine, when brought to my quarters, was found to contain nothing but saw-dust and shavings; a little strip having been broken off from the end of the box and every bottle taken out. I could not but feel grieved that our sick and wounded men were thus deprived of articles they so much need. It requires the greatest care and vigilance to pre- vent hospital supplies, in transit, from falling into the hands of unprincipled men, who are always on the watch for them. A similar mishap occurred to me in the summer of 1863, in coming from Gettysburg to Sulphur Springs, Va. In Washington, a large box had been packed for me, containing some useful cooking utensils, articles of special diet, clothing, stimulants, etc. Having obtained transportation for it, I saw it placed on the same train of cars in which I took passage. At Bealton, the nearest station to Sulphur Springs, I inquired for my box, and was told that the baggage train had stopped several miles back, at Warrenton Junction, but that it would come on the next day, and my box would be forwarded without delay. I went directly to General Birney's head-quarters at Sulphur Springs, nine miles from Bealton, and found CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. II3 in the regimental hospitals of our division many cases where articles of special diet were greatly- needed. But what could I do without my box ? In that was a complete outfit for the present emergency, but without it I was quite powerless. The need was pressing, so much so, that one of our doctors rode one day twelve miles for a paper of corn starch, and I made a journey of fourteen miles for half a bottle of brandy. Every morning an order was sent by the quartermaster to Bealton to have the box brought up on an army wagon, and every evening the wagons returned without it, until at length, being furnished with an ambulance and a mounted orderly, I set out with the determination to find it, if it was to be found. Leaving our head- quarters at six o'clock in the morning, I went first to Germantown, where General Meade, who then commanded the Army of the Potomac, had his head-quarters, to inquire for tidings of it of Sur- geon-General Letterman, to whose care it was con- signed. Not finding it there, I next went to Bealton Station, where I learned it had been sent to Warren- ton Junction, and to that place I next went in pur- suit of it. There, after much unnecessary delay on the part of officials, I found it, and taking it in the ambulance returned to head-quarters by way of Warrenton, having ridden thirty-five miles. Being too weary to open it that night, I sent it to a place of safety, and early in the morning requested 10* H 114 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. the services of one of our men for that purpose, when, to my grief and dismay, I found that all my useful and much desired articles had been taken out, and the box filled with rusty chains, old halters, bits of harness and leather, carefully packed in, and covered with a filthy old horse-blanket ! The fraud had undoubtedly been committed by the teamsters at the station, who, having taken out the original contents, had filled it with refuse articles pertaining to their vocation. Such is army life ! Dec. 7. — Within a few days two hundred sick and wounded have come in from the front. We hear that the army is moving and a battle expected Some of these men were wounded in a cavalry dash, under General Gregg, on a railroad station of the rebels at Stony Creek. They report it very. suc- cessful — destroyed the station, took two pieces of artillery, two hundred and fifty prisoners, burnt up the locomotives and a large quantity of stores. One fine, soldierly-looking fellow to whom I gave some grapes to-day, said : " I can eat now better than I could last summer." " You have been here before, then ? " "Yes ; I was here last August, wounded in the face; you can see the scar now. You used to come in and feed me with mashed-potato and other food that could be easily swallowed." Corporal M. of the First Maine Cavalry died this CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. II5 morning. He was wounded on the 27th of Oct., and was one of fifteen cases too severe to be moved, and consequently left here when others, wounded at the same time, were sent to Washington. He was truly a Christian soldier and faithful unto death. His wound was through the lungs, and, though suffering much all the time, he never uttered a word of complaint. One day, I found him bolstered up in bed, while one of his attendants was sitting by, singing the hymn beginning — " My days are gliding swiftly by." His difficult breathing and the expression of his countenance showed severe suffering, but his only reply to my question of how he felt, was, " Heaven- ly." The last time I saw him while he retained his consciousness, he said, — " I think I shall go to-night or to-morrow." " Go where. Corporal ? " " I shall die. My wound is large and my strength is small. My greatest trouble now is that I make so much work for the nurses." He is the second of the fifteen above mentioned who has died. The first, also wounded in the lungs, was a beautiful boy of nineteen. I grieved much to see these men go, for they bore their extreme suffering with the greatest forti- tude, and were rare examples of true heroism. The remaining thirteen seem in a fair way to recover. Il6 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. Sergeant Lane, of the Sixteenth Pennsylvania Cav- alry, having had his right leg amputated, came near dying of secondary hemorrhage, but is now consid- ered out of danger. For three weeks he lay on his back without moving, a man sitting by his side, and with his thumb compressing the femoral artery just above the extremity of the stump ; thus hold- ing in the life current until the artery could close up and form for itself a ligature. Dec. 12. — Received from ladies in Bangor, Maine, a generous donation of clothing, jellies, wines, with many other useful articles, and fifty dollars in money, for the use of the sick and wounded in our hospital. Fifty wounded men came in yesterday, and about the same number to-day. In making my rounds in the wards, to-day, I found one fine-looking, young soldier pierced with twenty-two gunshot wounds. Some of them are severe, though there are none that seem likely to prove fatal. He had been doing picket duty, and was lying with a relief-party near the picket line, when they were suddenly awakened from sleep by a small squad of rebel cavalry dashing in among them and firing. The party instantly threw up their arms in token of surrender; but the rebels continued to fire until they had killed or wounded nearly every man of the party, and then galloped off A brother of this poor fellow, belonging to CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. TI/ the party, in attempting to escape, fell down in the darkness, and was run over and badly bruised by one of the horsemen. After they had dispersed, finding himself alone, he got up and groped his way to the nearest picket-post, and the next day was brought into our hospital. He had spoken to me of this brother with great anxiety, fearing that he was either killed or captured. It was, therefore, a joyful surprise when, yesterday, he was brought into the same ward and laid by his side. Yesterday, my attention was attracted to a man wounded through the body, the expression of whose countenance indicated unusual suffering, and that his days were nearly numbered. Opposite him lay a man, somewhat older than himself, who had re- ceived a similar wound while attempting to bring him off the field. To-day they are both dead. Dec. i6. — I have just removed my quarters, from the tent which I have occupied since May, to a wooden building put up by the Christian Commis- sion for the use of the hospital. Its dimensions are sixty feet by twenty-one. It is situated in a central locality, and consists of a large kitchen for the preparation of special diet, a capacious store- room, reception and sleeping rooms. The money it costs is well appropriated, and will greatly in- crease our facilities for making the patients comfort- able, as up to this time all our cooking operations have been performed under a fly. It is an era in Il8 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. my hospital life — leaving the simple tent which has so long sheltered me, and taking possession of these spacious apartments, with their boarded walls and floors, glass windows to look out of, and doors turning on hinges, with locks and keys. Luxuries to which I have become quite unaccustomed. This morning, about one hundred of our sick and wounded were sent to Washington. Many of them were in great suffering. A corporal, wounded in the shoulder, was shaking with a chill while being borne on the stretcher to the steamer. An- other, a fine young fellow — so anxious to go that the doctor yielded to his wishes, though he was evidently almost gone — died before he could be removed from the stretcher. Others were in great agony from fractured bones. Several of their com- rades, wounded a few days since, have died. Jan. 12, 1865. — It is nearly a month since I made an entry in my journal, during which time our hospital has been holding on the even tenor of its way, though not without some events of interest and importance. Among the number of deaths is that of Sergeant Buzzell, of the First Maine Cav- alry, wounded below the knee, on the 27th of Oc- tober. He died just as the old year was going out. His case was one of those which so often occur in military hospitals, when, in hope of saving a limb, amputation is deferred until it is too late to save life. CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. IIQ He was a brave soldier, beloved and respected In his regiment, and an object of interest to all who knew him in the hospital. He clung with great tenacity to life, with all its alluring prospects ; but when he found there was uncertainty in his case, he looked death calmly in the face, and began earn- estly to make preparations for an encounter with the last enemy. He said, one day, to an attendant, " Oh, that the Saviour would only pass by, that I might with my hand touch the hem of his gar- ment;" and begged his friends to pray for him, that, if it were possible, his life might be spared, but if it could not be, that he might be prepared to die. Sustaining faith and glorious hope came at last, and he died with the soldier's watchword on his lips — *' All right ! " He received, from the first moment of his enter- ing the hospital, the most unremitting and faithful attentions from his comrades on duty as nurses. Indeed, the patience and fidelity with which these men discharge their duties, often affords me matter of sincere admiration. It is a chapter in the history of the war which can never be fully written out. Watching their patients day and night with the kind- ness and solicitude of brothers, — even when their wounds have arrived at such a stage that it is im- possible to breathe the same atmosphere without risk to health, if not to life, — and when all efforts are unavailing, and it becomes certain that no hu- I20 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. man power can ward off from the poor sufferer the grasp of death, with what grief do they witness his departure, and with what tenderness perform for his mortal remains the last offices of affection. Passing through the wards, to-day, a young rebel prisoner, a Mr. Mason, of Virginia, who has been with us several months, called me to his bed and begged my acceptance of a ring, made of bone, in token of his gratitude for what I had done for himself and comrades. ** It is too large for you to wear," he said, " but please keep it in remembrance of the Johnnies^ We have always had in our hospitals a greater or less number of rebel prisoners, and I have never known them to be treated with less attention than our own men. As they lie side by side in the wards, I often pass among them without knowing the rebel from the Union soldiers, and, in their helpless condition, do not care to inquire. They affiliate readily v/ith our men, and seem for the most part religiously inclined. I believe they have received the same treatment as our own men, both in hospitals and prisons, all through the army; and I have known parents at the South, who had sons in the Union prisons, to decline offers of exchange, because they believed them to be better off in a Northern prison than in the Southern army. Our friends at home did not forget us during the holidays. From the directors of the United States CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. 121 Mint at Philadelphia, we received supplies for an elegant Christmas dinner, sufficient in quantity to feast the entire hospital. Turkeys and chickens nicely cooked, cheese, butter, bread, cranberry sauce, celery, pies, cakes, peaches, tomatoes, and apples, furnished to our cavalry-men a dinner which we think was not surpassed by any in the army. It was served in the wards to those unable to go out ; but for others a newly-finished barrack was fitted up, ornamented on the walls with wreaths of ever- green, in which the red and white berries of holly and mistletoe were conspicuous, and mottoes ap- propriate to the occasion. Tables were laid, long enough to seat two hundred at a time, and these were crowded three times in succession with conva- lescents, nurses, and others employed in various capacities about the hospital ; and while they did ample justice to the viands, we were glad to be assured that there was enough for all. Jan. 14. — Yesterday the monotony of hospital life was varied by a ride with a party of friends to Dutch Gap. Crossing the Appomattox on the pontoon bridge, we drove about six miles to the James River, which v/e crossed in the same manner to Aikin's Landing. There we visited the double- turreted iron-clad monitor Onondaga, one of the finest of that class of gunboats. Commander Par- ker entertained our party most courteously for a few hours, and, after we had lunched in his elegant 122 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. little cabin, kindly gave us the use of a little steam launch, used as a torpedo-boat, for running up to the Gap. Dutch Gap is an immense cut through a strip of land about one hundred and thirty yards in width, but so long as to make a bend of seven miles in the river; and it was in order to shorten by this distance the navigation for our army on the James, that General Butler conceived the idea of cutting a passage of sufficient dimensions for the James River to flow through. As going from Aikin's Landing to the Gap is running the gauntlet of the guns of Howlitt House battery and the rebel sharp- shooters along the river bank, it was somewhat hazardous, but was accomplished safely in fifteen minutes. We landed at the Gap, ascended the hill, walked across the narrow strip of land, looked down into the chasm through which the water was rushing with great force, examined at leisure with our field-glasses the rebel fort Howlitt and other objects of interest, including rebel troops on dress parade, and returned by the same route as we had come, arriving home late at night, after driving over such roads as are common at this season of the year in Virginia, but which can be appreciated only by those familiar with them. Feb. 8. — For several days there had been rumors of an important movement of the army, and we were not surprised on the 6th to hear heavy CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. I23 cannonading on our left. The night following was cold and stormy with sleet and snow, and the next morning was one of the most dismal of the winter. But at an early hour ambulances came in with wounded men, succeeded by many more during the day, from the fight at Hatcher's Run. The suffer- ings of these poor fellows were greatly augmented by exposure to cold and storm, after being wounded. The cavalry was heavily engaged, and lost many. Hearing that some had been brought in dead, I went this morning to the tent used as a receptacle for such, to see if any whom I knew were among them. They were lying stiff and cold in the uniform in which they had gone out to battle. As I drew aside the blue coat-capes which covered their faces, great was my surprise and grief to recognize two young officers who were lately in our hospital with wounds. One, an especial friend, Captain Harper of the Fourth Pennsylvania Cavalry, called at my quarters only a few days since. He had then just returned from a leave of absence, during which he had visited his home. Full of life and spirits, in his new cavalry uniform, and mounted on a power- ful horse, he looked the picture of a gallant soldier. Now he lies outstretched in his rough coffin, with features rigid in death, waiting a soldier's burial. By his side lie two noble-looking young privates, both shot through the head. This evening, Colonel T., of the Tenth New York Cavalry, having died of 124 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. his wounds since he came in, is added to the number. Feb. 17. — This morning I had the pleasure of a short social interview with General and Mrs. Grant at the head-quarters of the army. The General's quiet manners and grave deportment suit well a man to whom the attention of the world is directed, and who has on his mind affairs so weighty and im- portant, and Mrs. Grant seems well adapted to her position as his wife. We had likewise the pleasure of meeting Brigadier -General Patrick, "Provost- Marshal General of the armies operating against Richmond," a fine, soldierly-looking, elderly gentle- man, a friend to all who are the soldiers' friends, and invariably using the great influence of his posi- tion for the defence of right and the suppression of wrong. Two men, these, of whom their country may be proud. Feb. 26. — Last evening we again heard heavy cannonading on our left, and to-day hear that it was the rebels firing on some of their own men de- serting to our lines. This is of late a frequent oc- currence. About two hundred came in last evening, and it is said they average this number daily. These indications of demoralization in Lee's army, together with recent successes of our own army, give hope that the long agony of civil war is nearly over. Mar. 28. — Visited, in company with Miss Bridget Deavers, two large camps of dismounted cavalry- CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. I25 men lying along the James River, a few miles from City Point. Bridget — or, as the men call her, Biddy — has probably seen more of hardship and danger than any other woman during the war. She has been with the cavalry all the time, going out with them on their cavalry raids — always ready to succor the wounded on the field — often getting men off who, but for her, would be left to die, and, fearless of shell or bullet, among the last to leave. Protected by officers and respected by privates, with her little sunburnt face, she makes her home in the saddle or the shelter-tent; often, indeed, sleep- ing in the open air without a tent, and by her cour- age and devotion "winning golden opinions from all sorts of people." She is an Irish woman, has been in the country sixteen years, and is now twenty-six years of age. " Where is the nice little horse you had with you at the hospital last summer, Bridget ? " " Oh, Moseby captured that from me. He came in while I was lying asleep on the ground, and took my horse and orderly. I jumped up and ran away." One of the above-mentioned camps consists of men just come in from Sheridan's last raid, having been during the past winter in the valley of the Shenandoah. We found them lying under their shelter-tents or sitting on the ground in front of them, boiling coffee over their camp-fires and eating 126 CAVALRY CORPS HOSPITAL, CITY POINT. their rations of salt pork and Jiard tack. They looked tired and sunburnt, but were every moment expecting horses and a call to " boots and saddles." Having distributed socks, handkerchiefs, towels, and some articles of clothing which we brought for them, and partaken of Bridget's simple fare, sitting on a blanket in front of her tent, we remounted our horses and rode along the river-side to the other camp, which is a more permanent institution. CHAPTER IX. THE FOURTH OF APRIL, 1865. THE Fourth of April, 1865, unlike many of its predecessors, dawned peacefully and brightly at City Point, Va. From the moment when, at early dawn on the 25th of March, we had heard heavy cannonading at Fort Steadman, which, though at the time we were ignorant of its meaning, proved to be the reveille of the spring campaign, all had been eager curiosity and anxious expectation. Day by day there had been heavy firing, some- times near, sometimes more distant. Day by day, we had seen but one phase of its results, in ex- hausted, lacerated forms — many of them friends and old acquaintances — laid along on straw in the crowded box-cars, as they came in train after train from the battle-field, and thence borne to the hos- pitals, or the transports lying at the wharf The gun-boats and all the troops having been within a few days withdrawn from City Point, which had for more than nine months been the base of army operations, the great hospitals with their long Hnes of tents and barracks, and thousands of wounded men, as well as the vast quantities of 127 128 THE FOURTH OF APRIL, 1865. government stores, — supplies for the grand army, — were left without military protection ; and as we were totally ignorant of how things were going at the front, we were not without anxiety lest the rebels should break through and make a raid on us. There was indeed such an attempt on the evening of the 29th of March, when at half-past ten we were electrified by a sudden outburst of musketry and artillery, which continued, in a prolonged, deaf- ening roar, without a moment's letting down, for one hour, then with slight intervals for an hour or two more ; while in the direction of Petersburg, shells were continuously flying up and swooping over like rockets, and the sky all aglow with those death- dealing pyrotechnics. Then came on a pouring rain, the sounds ceased, and we could breathe freely again. Then in the early dawn of April 3d, we were startled from our beds by terrific explosions in the direction of Richmond — concussion breaking on concussion, roar upon roar, louder than the loud- est thunder; the earth trembling as if affrighted, and the sky lighted with an angry flare. It was then that the Confederate iron-clads and bridges on the James River were blown up, and Richmond fired by its defenders. But the end of these fearful catastrophes was at hand. Before another sunset, tidings came for which we had long waited and prayed, but scarcely dared hope — Petersburg and THE FOURTH OF APRIL, 1865. I29 Richmond are evacuated by the rebel army and occupied by our troops ! The rebellion has col- lapsed ! So, as I have said, the 4th dawned peacefully over City Point, and anthems of praise to God went up where many lives were still ebbing away in completion of the great sacrifice. Then there was a general turning of faces towards Petersburg. All who could, were anxious to see for themselves the city, insignificant in itself, but great in its relations to the rebellion, which our army had so long been watching, on whose shining spires and fortifications we had often gazed with curiosity, but which had hitherto been hermetically sealed to our approach. It was not easy just then to procure horses or an ambulance, because everything in that line was needed at the front, and the quartermasters — I often wondered at their patience — were getting tired of such requisitions from the sanitary women — a term which they applied indiscriminately to all women connected with the hospitals. By the special indulgence, however, of my friend Dr. John M. Kollock, " Chief Inspector of Depot Field Hos- pitals at City Point," I was favored with an ambu- lance, and having invited two of my "sanitary friends,"— Mrs. Mary Hill and Miss Virginia Hart, — to accompany me, started at an early hour for a drive of nine miles to Petersburg. Our driver was I 130 THE FOURTH OF APRIL, 1865. a "contraband" just brought in, who had, he said, " been driving three years for Mars'r Davis, but was now gfwine to drive for Mars'r Linkum." We had Httle difficulty in finding the way, for everything that was moving was going in one and the same direction. Squads of cavalry-men, soldiers and civilians on foot, parties of refugees, black and white, in old Virginia wagons, returning to homes whence they had long been exiled, thronged the way. The first evidence that the rebellion had indeed collapsed, was the unguarded state of our line of earthworks around City Point. Where (unless escorted by Federal officers) we had before been challenged by mounted sentinels with drawn sabres, there was now nothing to obstruct our way. Forts which had hitherto been mounted with dark- mouthed cannon, like crouching monsters ready at a moment's warning to belch forth death and de- struction, were dismantled. On an open plateau we turned aside while a line of from two to three thousand prisoners of war passed under guard, on their way to City Point. They had been captured by the Sixth and Ninth Corps while making a desper- ate fight for the inner cordon of works about Peters- burg. They were better clothed than their comrades whom we had seen in the early days of the war, looked defiant and plucky, and some declared that the " Yanks have not conquered tJiem^ and never THE FOURTH OF APRIL, 1865. I3I will." Others saluted us pleasantly as they passed. While we waited, the young Ohio officer who had them in charge, came up to our ambulance and told us all he knew of the situation, for we, having no daily journal of current events, were far more igno- rant on these points than were our friends at home. " It is rurnored," he said, " that Lee has surrendered with 20,000 men." This was a mistake. Lee was that day at Amelia, on his way to Appomattox Court-House, where he surrendered on the 9th. At length, by a turn in the road, we were suddenly brought in full sight of the ** Cockade City." There it lay, spread out under the bright sunshine, as quiet and beautiful as if no cannon-ball or fiery bomb- shell had ever gone screeching over it. The trees were in their tender, early foliage, the gardens gay with spring flowers. The blinds were closed on the windows. There were but few ladies in the streets, and these, we noted, wore garments in the styles of four years ago, showing that the blockade- runners did not bring them the latest London and Paris fashions. One elderly lady, richly dressed, walked slowly along, with her white handkerchief held closely to her eyes, as if she could not bear to witness the overthrow of her beloved city, or per- haps her heart was breaking for sons or brothers slain in battle. As often as we stopped, poor women, white and black, gathered around our ambulance. They had baskets on their arms, and had been 132 THE FOURTH OF APRIL, 1865. walking about since sunrise, in hope of finding something wherewith to satisfy the demands of hunger, which had been unappeased for several days. It was time the city had surrendered, for it was on the eve of starvation. **If there was food in the town, they could not buy, with meat six dollars a pound, and flour a thousand dollars a barrel." They thank God that the Union army has at length come in. Have been praying for it so long, day and night. ** Were you not frightened to see so many soldiers ? " " Not so much as we expected to be. They had told us so many frightful stories about the Yankees; but they came in so quietly, and seemed so friendly, that we soon got over our fears." At the corner of one of the principal streets we stopped to see the Ninth Corps pass. They marched with martial music and waving banners, but with no look of exultation, through the conquered city, for to them it was no holiday parade. They had fought like giants to obtain this consummation, and had left thousands of their comrades " dead on the field of honor." Here a young cavalry-man, Maloney, whom we had known at the hospital, rode up and offered to serve us as escort. He had been riding hard with despatches to an officer at the front, and was on his way back to City Point. THE FOURTH OF APRIL, I865. I33 Alighting at a hardware store, we were attracted by rows of EngHsh-looking cans in the windows. " They are the cans in which were imported beef and mutton for our army," said the shopkeeper. " The blockade-runners brought them in great quantities, and our soldiers were glad to sell the empty cans. I sometimes paid as high as five dol- lars apiece for them. I preferred rather to put my money in these than to keep it, as I knew the Con- federacy would soon go tip, and then it would be worthless." He had transformed many into cups and a variety of culinary dishes, the tin covered with a ground of clear brown, on which were the well-preserved yellow stamps, with English armorial bearings and the motto, " In hoc signo spes mea." We purchased one as a memento of the love of our brethren across the sea. In another store a fine display of French and English chinaware won our admiration. As we made a small investment in that line, we asked, — " Did you have this on hand before the war, or is it of recent importation ?" " Oh, I have been importing it all along. It was easy for me to keep up my supply until we lost Wilmington." Observing a tobacco warehouse open, and some of our men bringing out tobacco ad libitum, we, with the help of Maloney, transferred a generous quantity to our ambulance, which we distributed 134 THE FOURTH OF APRIL, 1865. next day to the men in our hospitals, much to their dehght ; those who did not use it themselves, wishing for a piece to keep as a memento or to "send home to father." Leaving Petersburg on our return, we took a road leading through the in- trenchments. All along the road lay the debris of battle — torn garments, caps, shoes, canteens, haver- sacks, belts — intermingled with abundant cannon- balls, solid shot, and exploded shells, as well as many shells not exploded, to which, in passing, we gave a ivide berth. In the forts we gathered a few relics left by the soldiers in their sudden departure. Half-way between two lines of rebel breastworks lay a rebel officer, unburied. He was shot through the head, fell backwards, and lay with his face to the sky, one delicate hand thrown up, just as the surprised soul left the body. Poor, lifeless form, we would, were it possible, give you burial ! Passing through our own inside line of fortifica- tions, we came to the deserted camps of the Ninth Corps. They looked like a miniature city, with their long, regular streets of little wooden huts, from which, when the men went out to battle, they took the shelter-tents which had served as roofs. Near the camping ground were three recently- prepared cemeteries for the dead of the three . divi- sions, for within the last few days the Ninth Corps has poured (5ut its blood like water. Each was enclosed by an ornamental fence, such as our soldiers THE FOURTH OF APRIL, 1865. I35 know SO well how to build. Here, on the broad, open field, lay the dead who fell in storming the Con- federate works on the 2d. They were laid in rows, side by side, in their blue over-coats, which were their only wrappings for the grave, to which were pinned slips of paper bearing their names, to be transferred to their head-boards. A hundred men had been at this work since daylight, and, with the sun near setting, there still remained near- ly three hundred to be buried. We alighted and walked reverently and tearfully through the ranks of these slain heroes. Brave men, ye died for us ! God help your countrymen to preserve unsullied that national honor in defence of which you fell ! In the presence of these witnesses, who have offered up their lives, we ask : " Shall all the out- poured blood and nameless agony of the last four years be in vain ? Can we ever forget the great price at which this day of victory has been ob- tained, or count for less than a holy thing the blood with which a United Country has been rebaptized ? " CHAPTER X. AFTER THE SURRENDER. ON Sunday evening, the 9th of April, there were signs of rejoicing at City Point. On the open space of the great hospital there was an immense bonfire, and around its weird light gath- ered a crowd of soldiers and citizens, many of the former worn and crippled or maimed; and while every available combustible was piled upon the flames, they listened to or related with eager interest every particular that had reached them of the great event of the day — Lee's Surrender ! Another week passed, and on the i6th the joy at the promise of returning peace was overshadowed by the terrible announcement that President Lin- coln had been assassinated ! The rumor had reached us in the early morning, but had been rejected as too dreadful to be possi- ble. Still, nothing else was talked or thought of during the day, and the gloom of an anxious fore- boding spread through the camps. In the after- noon I had occasion to call at the quartermaster's department at City Point, where, as everywhere, the rumor was the subject of conversation. An officer remarked that the report still wanted official 136 AFTER THE SURRENDER. I37 confirmation, as might be known from the fact that flags on all the shipping in the river were flying at mast-head. As he spoke, all eyes naturally turned to the window, which commanded a view of the gun-boats and other shipping on the James River, and at the instant we saw every flag lowered. The effect on every one was like the announcement of a personal bereavement. Tears started to every eye, mixed with exclamations of grief and imprecations on the assassin, v It was just a week before, on Sun- day the 9th, that, on the occasion of President Lin- coln's leaving the harbor in his gun-boat, the salute had been so heavy and general as, for the time, to have the effect of a naval battle ; and the day pre- vious, his carriage had been standing in the hospital grounds all day, while he was passing from ward to ward, visiting and cheering with his presence and kind words the wounded men. When a friend, fearing he would overfatigue himself, remonstrated, he replied, " I must see as many of them as possi- ble; it may be long before I shall again have oppor- tunity to shake hands with a wounded soldier." At no moment had the wisdom of President Lincoln's administration been more amply vindi- cated, both at home and abroad ; never did his fame shine with a brighter lustre; never was his name dearer to the heart of the nation — than when Booth's pistol did its deadly work, and robbed our country of its brightest ornament. 12* 138 AFTER THE SURRENDER. On the 17th, accompanied by Bridget Devers, I took a train, going out to the front, with sanitary supplies for some wounded cavalry-men, of whom we had heard that they were in great suffering. The cars, having stopped three or four hours within a dozen miles, pushed on to Ford's Station, where they made a general " break down," and there was no possibility of their getting farther at that time. We stepped out, and making our way through other trains of cars crowded in from front and rear, and a promiscuous assemblage of men, horses, wagons, and tents, we were accosted by a thin-looking, thinly-clothed woman, in a Shaker bonnet, — " Please, madam, can you tell me what I am to do ? Your soldiers have taken everything from me. They have left me not a particle of food, and I know not where to get any." "There is the sutler's tent; can't you buy some- thing there?" " But they will not take our money, and I have no greenbacks!' We walked with her to her house, a good-look- ing, two-storied white house, with green blinds, standing picturesquely in a grove of large, old trees. We were welcome to stay in the house as long as we chose, but her hospitality must of ne- cessity end with the bare shelter. Her husband had been a teacher, and they were both intelligent and respectable, but much depressed and discouraged. AFTER THE SURRENDER. I39 Their house was stripped of bedding, clothing, food, cooking-utensils — almost everything. Half-a-dozen cracked dishes, a few silver spoons which had been hidden away, and an iron tea-kettle, completed the inventory of their household possessions. Fortu- nately, I had brought a few cooking-utensils, and with sundry purchases from the sutler, and a requi- sition on my own stores, the present necessity was supplied. During the evening some soldiers came in, who reported that the wounded cavalry-men to whom we were going had been carried into City Point. The next morning, standing on the piazza in the pleasant spring sunshine, we saw the head of a col- umn of cavalry emerging from a belt of woods in the distance. It was Sheridan's cavalry corps re- turning from the late campaign. We watched them as they passed leisurely along, regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, division after divi- sion. War was behind them. Peace and home and love before. At length, in the afternoon, came the ambulances, and, watching for a friend among the officers, we obtained the use of one, and joined the column as it wound its slow length along. Near Petersburg, spreading themselves over an area of five or six miles, on the same hills, and near the fortifications lately occupied by Lee's army, they encamped. We were furnished with a tent, and soon met many friends who had happily escaped the perils of the late campaign. 140 AFTER THE SURRENDER. It was wonderfully picturesque, this cavalry camp. The little white tents, arranged in regular lines, covering the hills near and far away. Horses and mules picketed everywhere, white lines of army wagons, soldiers moving to and fro, parties of horsemen dashing over the hills, battle-flags waving at head-quarters, all under the bright sunshine. Nor were peculiarities of sound wanting. At night, lying in your tent, you would think you heard a human cry of distress. It was repeated, louder and more intense, answered here and there, echoed along in the same lugubrious strains, until corre- sponding kicks made you aware that it was the indignant protest of the mules. Then came the bugle reveille — the clear, sweet notes breaking the silence of early morning, the strain caught up and answered from hill to hill, repeated and winding through all the camp from head-quarters to farthest outpost. Then the call for watering horses, and other orders throughout the day, all delivered in bugle strains, until "' taps " issued its imperative " put out the lights." It was suggested to me by one of the surgeons, that, after the hard campaign, the men, who for a long time had tasted nothing but their army rations, would be much benefited and cheered by some small gift of sanitary luxury, such as a can of peaches or tomatoes, or a few pickles to each. I willingly undertook the work — AFTER THE SURRENDER. I4I going to City Point for supplies, taking them around from camp to camp, and personally distrib- uting to each man some small gift as suggested. A week passed, and I had not half finished the pleasant work, when the call to ''boots and sad- dles" rang out in bugle-notes through the camp, and Sheridan with his brave cavalry corps turned their faces southward, looking for Johnston.* On the breaking up of the camp, I went to City Point, but the next day returned to Petersburg and took charge of the special-diet kitchen in the Fair Grounds Hospital, by invitation of Dr. Blickhan, of the Twenty-eighth Indiana Regiment, surgeon in charge. The enclosure of the fair grounds, just outside the city, had been used as a hospital ever since the war began. Its old-fashioned buildings, to which had been added several barracks, over- shadowed by large trees — the grounds, intersected with nicely gravelled walks, sloping to a creek, along which was a race-course, now a semicircular row of hospital tents, with the grove beyond — made a pretty picture. * A few weeks later, at Petersburg, I was aroused in the early morning by the silvery notes of the bugle reveille close at hand. What could it mean ? There was no cavalry camp near the night before, but there must be one now, for this was a cavalry call. Surprised and delighted with the familiar strain, I looked out, and almost under my window, on a little wooded hill, were head-quarter tents, and a camp spread out on the farther slope. It was a por- tion of Sherman's army on its way home, taking its turn on the hills lately occupied by Lee's army. 142 AFTER THE SURRENDER. When the hospital with the town fell into our hands, it was pretty well filled with wounded and worn-out men from the rebel army. Since then the armies of the Potomac and James, Sheridan's cav- alry and Sherman's army had contributed to fill it with wounds, fevers, rheumatisms, and, if not all, at least a great proportion, of the ills which flesh is heir to. Here I remained, looking after special diet, and rendering such service as I could until the ist of July. My friend. Dr. Blickhan, had been re- lieved — his place had been filled by men of a differ- ent stamp. I had taken lodgings outside the hos- pital, and was still looking after special cases in which I was much interested, when my strength gave out, and I was obliged, with great regret, to re- hnquish the work, and leave men who needed the care I would gladly have continued to give. The labor in the special-diet kitchen, and much of that in the hospital at Petersburg, was performed by the blacks just emancipated from slavery. I found them docile and lovable, willing to work, and many of them intensely eager to learn. Every spare moment would be devoted to the spelling- book, or mastering some of the scriptural texts that in large letters adorned the rough walls and posts of the kitchen. After the labors of the day were over, they would sit with delight for an hour's in- struction in the evening — seizing, as it were, with joy the key of knowledge that had been so long AFTER THE SURRENDER. 143 withheld. That they appreciated the gift of free- dom, there could be no doubt. As I sat, one day, in the neat little parlor of " Aunt Susy's " tiny white cottage, she thus related some of her experiences. " 'T is a great blessing that the Lord has 'stowed on our people. I can't 'spress my feelings on the morning of the 'vacua- tion. They told us the Yankees were coming in, and that they would send we alls to Cuba, and har- ness us to carts and treat us like brutes ; and all night I could not sleep because I knew they were 'vacuating the town. Early in the morning I heard a great shouting, and jumped up and ran out with- out stopping to put on my shoes. My husband was at the lower end of the garden, and he said : " * Do go in and dress yourself, if you please.' " By the time I got back, there was a great crowd of people all over the hills, shouting and waving ; and presently a Union officer rode by very near where we were standing, and he bowed and said, ' Good-morning ;' and we all bowed low and said, 'Good-morning;' and then he smiled and said, ' You are all free this morning ! ' Then we all cried and praised the Lord, and it seemed as if a great load was lifted from my heart. Mr. S., one of our white neighbors, was standing near us, and he said, * I thank God that I live to see the sun rise this blessed morning, and feel myself a free man, for I have been in bondage as well as you.' He 144 AFTER THE SURRENDER. has always been for the Union, and has often been obliged to go away from home to keep from being shot. And there was poor brother H. He had been waiting on the sick in the hospital a year, and at the end of that time they paid him a hundred dollars of their money, which was n't enough to buy a bushel and a half of meal." * Aunt Ellwood, a tall yellow woman, with straight black hair and piercing black eyes, whose occa- sional slips in language contrasted quaintly with her general correctness and fluency of speech, and who came often to the hospital to attend to her boy, a bright little octoroon of twelve years, made her appeal as follows : " I had a nice house, honey, before you alls came into Petersburg. I was lawfully married to my husband, and we lived together twenty-five years. He was a stone-mason by trade, and a hard-working man; and we had a good farm and house, and I never asked him for a thing that he did n't get for me. When your soldiers came in and saw my house, my carpets, my secretary, my dishes, my ■^ In this connection, and as illustrating the destruction and de- preciation of private property by the war, I will add a fact that came to my knowledge in Petersburg. Mr. Gill bought a lot of land in Petersburg just before the war, for which he paid seventy- five dollars in gold. During the war he sold it for one hundred and ten dollars, Confederate money, and bought a bushel of meal for one hundred dollars ; hence, his bushel of meal cost him nearly seventy-five dollars in gold. AFTER THE SURRENDER. I45 COWS, and my horse and wagon, they would not beheve that they all 'longed to me till I done took my papers out of my pocket and showed them my 'ceipts. Then they said, * Why, mother, a great many of the white women of the South don't keep their houses as nice as you do.' When the army went by, I went out and said to the captain, * Cap- tain, you won't burn my house, will you ? ' and he said, ' Oh, no, mother ; we have no orders for burning to-day ; we are after the Johnnies, and that 's all.' Well, madam, in two hours from that time my house was in ashes. I and my children were in the field, and I don't know whether it was fired by a shell or by some of the soldiers, but when we came back, it was burnt to the ground. Some of the soldiers told the captain about it, and he came back to see me, and 'pear'd mighty sorry. He said : * Why, mother, I found you in a house this morn- ing, and I can't leave you and your children in the woods.' So he took me to a large house that 'longed to Mr. Dabney. He had gone away, and the captain gave me a paper, and told me to stay there till fall." " How many children have you Aunty ? " ** I has three chillun that I has to scuffle for, honey, and three that can scuffle for themselves. This little boy that you sees in the hospital has been a hard-working boy ever since he was seven years old. He has been my chief 'pendence ever since his father died, till he done fell from a tree and 13 K 146 AFTER THE SURRENDER. broke his arm so bad, that the doctor had to cut it off. If you sees anything when you turns round, honey, that you can spar for me, you won't lose any- thing from the good Father. I tells you, madam, Fse a woman that 's born of the Spirit, and He tell me I shall find friends now and then as I goes along. I has no house, no moneys, no anything for my chillun, but I keeps 'pending on the Lord, and that is all my 'pendence. I know He takes care of me. I shall have moneys by and by. When the day of my death comes, that will be my riches day. If you can give us something to help us till after next winter respires, when once the winter has respired we can scuffle for ourselves.' " CHAPTER XI. ALONG THE LINES. April, 1866. ALL through February and March, we have in Virginia, contrasting with many cold, bluster- ing days, some delightfully mild and spring-like. The sun, unobstructed by a cloud, pours his heating rays upon the earth ; the atmosphere is balmy with the breath of pine groves, and we wonder where winter has so deftly hidden itself. On such days, it has been a rare treat to explore on horseback the surrounding country, riding over the smooth, sanded roads, along the lines of forti- fication with which the earth for many miles around Petersburg is furrowed, through the old camps of the late contending armies, into the forts which will hereafter be famous in song and story, and over battle-fields which have so often shaken at the tread of armed hosts and the thunder of artillery. A few miles east of Petersburg is Fort Stedman, captured from the rebels on the i6th of June, 1864, and known until late in the war as Battery No. Four. It is on our inside line, built in a pretty grove on high ground, and from the parapet com- manding a near view of the outside rebel line, which 147 148 ALONG THE LINES. here approaches ours, nearer than at any other point. Here, early on the morning of the 25th of March, 1865, sounded the reveille of the spring campaign for the Army of the Potomac, by the rebels surprising our garrison, carrying the fort and a part of the line to the right and left of it, and turning the guns of the fort on its defenders. But our troops soon rallied and, after a short contest, retook the fort, and drove back the enemy with a heavy loss in killed and wounded, and nineteen hundred prisoners ; our loss in killed being sixty- eight, three hundred and thirty-seven wounded, and five hundred and six missing. Some of the little log-houses occupied by the soldiers are still stand- ing, and gabions loosened from the works are roll- ing about. Following the lines southward as they come around the city, our next point of attraction is the crater, on the rebel line, out of which, on the morn- ing of the 30th of July, 1 864, was blown the fort stand- ing over it. The distance between the lines at this point is seventy yards. Our men commenced tun- nelling in rear of this line, so that the length of the tunnel was one hundred and fifty yards. Tracing its course from the crater, we look down into its mouth, still open, and see where in the red clay the work began, which went on in silence sixteen nights, the enemy all the time suspecting something of the kind, but searching in vain to discover it. ALONG THE LINES. I49 In one place they dug directly over it, and would have struck it by digging three feet farther. At length the morning of the 30th came, and at a distance of fifty feet below the surface the fatal fuse accomplished its direful mission, and the works exploded, blowing up the fort, and shaking the earth for miles around. Out of two hundred men in quarters, never dreaming of the volcano beneath them, two only escaped. The rebels were taken by surprise and thrown into confusion. Our troops (mostly colored) came up and threw themselves into the breach, but were not supported by rein- forcements in time to hold the advantage. The enemy soon rallied, a terrible carnage ensued, and resulted in our men being driven back and the line retaken. Twenty-five hundred of assailants and assailed are said to be buried in the bottom of the crater, and even now every heavy rain washes up human bones. The grounds around are neatly fenced, a small refreshment saloon, where are sold relics of battles, is established at its entrance, and the owner, having been ruined in property by the war, seeks a slight indemnification by levying a tax of a quarter per head on each visitor. Farther along on the rebel line is Fort Mahone, christened Fort Damnation by our soldiers in re- turn for the compliment of the rebels in calling their own, Fort Sedgwick, directly opposite. Fort Hell ; and next to Fort Sedgwick is Fort Davis, 13* 150 ALONG THE LINES. one of the finest on our line. A few miles further on the line is Fort Wadsworth, where the military railroad intersects the Weldon road, and two miles further, Forts Fisher and Welsh, where the line, having run westerly for several miles, makes an angle and strikes off in a southerly direction to Hatcher's Run, This is our inside heavy line, on which, as on the outer one, equally heavy, are many other beautiful forts, but those above mentioned are the most noted. They all present the same general appearance, the works being in a good state of pre- servation; and we notice that the outside defences of ours are generally abatis^ while those of the rebels are chevaux-de-frise. Two miles from the Appomattox River, south- west from Petersburg, on the outside rebel line, is Fort Gregg, where the enemy made their last stand on the 2d of April, 1865, and fought desperately, though they well knew that all was lost. Two hundred and fifty picked men from Lee's army had sworn to defend it to the bitter end. They raised the white flag in token of surrender, and then placed their guns in range of the column of Fed- eral troops advancing to receive it. On came our brave boys, (General Gibbon's command,) flushed with victory, and ardent to plant the stars and stripes on the last stronghold of rebellion; but when they are just ready to mount the works, a murderous fire opens on them, and the ranks go ALONG THE LINES. I5I down as the ripened grain falls beneath the scythe of the mower. On thunders the artillery, but our men charge up through carnage and smoke. They leap the ditch, mount the works, and rush into the strife. Then was terrible killing. Fighting hand- to-hand with butt-ends of muskets, until the fort was heaped with the dead. A rebel chronicler states that, after having encouraged their men to the last, Generals Heth and Wilcox, when they saw that they were overwhelmed, put spurs to their horses, galloped out of the sally-port, and fled to- wards the Appomattox. Just at this sally-port, turning my horse that I might take a view of the surroundings, my colored guide, Missouri, turned up a human skull with her walking-stick. " This," said she, " was a Union soldier." " How do you know he was a Union soldier?" " Because here are some pieces of his blue coat." He had been buried in his blanket, but heavy rains had washed away the shallow covering of earth, and the skull had rolled over on the ground. Then she handed me a minie-ball, melted and bat- tered out of shape, which she had picked up close to the body. Perhaps it was the very missile that had carried death to his heart. Within sight of this fort, on the same line, stands the house of my friend, Mrs. H., who came from the North, and set- tled here a few years before the war. Her husband 152 ALONG THE LINES. was conscripted in the rebel army, and she left alone in the care of her children nearly all the time. Imagine a Union woman living unprotected on a rebel line of fortifications ! On the morning of the 2d of April, she saw the Sixth Corps come sweep- ing over the hills and fields that lie between the two lines, break through the works, and plant the Fed- eral flag directly in the rear of her house. They were on their way to take the South Side railroad, which they struck about a mile from the house. Her husband was then at home, was captured by our soldiers and held a prisoner for several months. They were preparing to set fire to the house, when a Federal officer rode up and drove them away. Shells and bullets were flying thickly over the house, and the soldiers began to batter down the door. In vain she entreated them to spare the house, protesting that they were from the North, and loved the Union. They declared that a Union woman could not live so near the rebel lines, and would have treated her roughly, had not another officer come to her rescue. Laying his hand upon her head, he said, " My dear madam, I would not have a hair of your head hurt for the world ; but go into the cellar, and stay there with your children until the shelling is over, for your house may be riddled with balls ; and I will place a guard around it." The house was perforated in many places, but escaped better than that of her neighbor, Mrs. C, ALONG THE LINES. I53 also a Northerner, which being half-way between the lines was completely battered down with shells, while the family in the cellar escaped unhurt. Hatcher's Run was the scene of many heavy battles, and it was near the anniversary of one of those, the 7th of February, that we rode over the fields and through the timber where it occurred. There is little now to mark it as a battle-field, save here and there tree-tops cut off sharply, branches lopped and hanging down, and the trunks pierced with shot and shell. The sun shines quietly through the solitude, and the birds sing undisturbed in the branches. How different from the scenes of con- fusion and terror of a year ago, when, in extending our lines to this place, so many brave men on both sides bit the dust ! Riding out south-westerly from Petersburg on the Boydton plank-road, crossing Hatcher's Run on a rickety old bridge at Burgess's mill, and taking the White Oak road, we find the battle-field of Five Forks, sixteen miles from the city. Here, on the ist of April, 1865, our cavalry under General Sheridan, and infantry under General Warren, engaged the enemy and, after a heavy battle, drove him from his intrenchments, capturing all his artillery and between five and six thousand prisoners. The left fork of the road leads to Din- widdle Court-House, down which Sheridan and his cavalry advanced to the attack. 154 ALONG THE LINES. Here, as indeed nearly all along the road from Hatcher's Run, are marks of fighting on the trees, and quantities of gun-stocks and sword-sheaths lying around. But on none of the battle-fields around Peters- burg had there been more hard fighting than at Ream's Station, six miles south of the city, on the Weldon railroad. A small church near the station is perforated in all directions with shells, canister, and grape-shot, and the trees for miles around bear marks of the fiery storms that have beaten against them, cutting so many of them to the heart. All through the timber are found the usual dedris o(ha.tt\e, — old shoes still tied with their leathern thongs, fragments of clothing, canteens and haversacks, belts and breast-plates that had so often been buckled over hearts throbbing with love for somebody. Just in sight of the station, and within a stone's throw of it, lying under a large tree, was a com- plete skeleton, marked by a little head-board as that of a sergeant belonging to an Arkansas regi- ment. The scanty covering of earth had been washed away and left the skeleton entire. Parts of others lie around, but none so perfect as this. On all these battle-fields, mindful of the anxiety of friends at home for relics, we gathered such as we could bring away conveniently. The most in- teresting were grape and canister shot, slugs, minie- balls, and pieces of shell cut from the trees in which they had been imbedded. ALONG THE LINES. 155 The captain, having previously armed himself with a hatchet for that purpose, rode up to the trees, cut away the chips, and loosened up the ball, then rode out, while I pressed up my gray as closely as possible to the prize, and reaching up or down, as the situation might require, plucked it out easily with my fingers. " Rare fruit our trees yield us," I exclaimed. Little did I think, when in childhood it was my delight to roam the woods in search of berries, and to pluck from the bark of the spruce its gummy treasure, that I should ever gather from the trees of my native land such fruit as this ! But we must not linger too long in this fascina- ting search, for already the sun is declining to the western horizon. His slanting rays penetrate the forest avenues, and light up the grim features of the skeleton under the tree with a ghastly smile. They are like fire in the windows of the planter's houses, and tinge the yellow fields with a golden hue. Ad- monished by the closing day, we turn our horses hastily towards home, and they, catching the spirit of our intention, bring us into camp *' at double- quick." PART II. WITH THE FREEDMEN. THE winter of 1865-6, I spent at Poplar Springs, Va. My work there was mainly receiving from various charitable societies in this country and England, supplies of clothing, and distributing them to the destitute freed people in the encampment, and in the country around. From nine to ten thousand dollars' worth of clothing passed through my hands to the freed people of Virginia during the winter, and the next winter, while engaged in the same work at Petersburg, seven thousand dollars' worth. The following letters, written with a view to keep in activity the interest of friends co-operating in this good work, have already been in print, and are here subjoined as illustrating some of the fruits of American slavery — the cause of all our woe in the late civil war — and the condition of the colored race during the early days of emancipation. 14 157 CHAPTER I. MY ANGELS. WHEN, just before leaving Boston, I said to my venerable friend, " I would like a troop of them to accompany me," and he replied, "They surely will," I did not think, his prophecy would be so nearly verified. He, being a firm believer in the theory of " spirit- ual manifestations," which has so many advocates in and around Boston at the present day, had patiently and kindly favored me with many tests on which he relies for the support of his belief I took the ground that human helpers are our true angels. That when one comes to me in my want, my sorrow, or distress, bearing relief, that is my angel. For, granting there are spiritual beings around me, witnesses of my anguish, they, not being endowed with physical forms and members, cannot furnish me with material aid, which is what I need. Often and often, when I have looked around on the ghastly relics of the battle-field, and heard from every quarter cries for help ! help ! help ! have I wondered if there were indeed pitying angels who beheld the sight, and, if so, must they not long for human hands and human feet, that they might run 158 MY ANGELS. I59 quickly with relief. And then with their superior wisdom and skill, how efficient would be their aid — for, slow and inadequate as was the relief we could bring with human hands, it was often received as a heavenly ministration. Some such shadowy idea as this was doubtless flitting through the brain of Lieutenant S., when, one day, after weeks of uncon- scious illness in the hospital, during which he had taken no nourishment save what I had persuaded him to receive from my hand, he looked up with the light of returning reason in his large blue eyes, exclaiming, ** You, you, are my ministering angel !" With such words I strove to maintain my side of the argument, while my friend insisted that spirit- ual beings are really present in our time of need, and aid us by influencing our fellow-mortals to ad- minister succor. "And they will surely go with you," he said ; " they will follow you, though you will not see them." There was need enough, I thought, for the con- templated journey offered nothing inviting to my anticipations. I was leaving behind me all that I held pleasant in social life. My own home, it was true, stood desolate and uninviting, with no tear for my departure, and no smile to welcome my return ; but many other homes, ** Homes not alien, though not mine," still warm and bright with the light of hope and love, stood open to me, and it was some- thing to turn away from all these. My journey l6o MY ANGELS. would lead me among strangers and away from any human protection to which I might lay claim. The rushing rail-car, the creaking, flying steamboat would bear me swiftly to scenes where all was strange and terrible to my apprehension. And if invisible spirits, full of love and sympathy, are with me on the way, what can they do for me ? I am "of the earth, earthy," my human want requires human help. They have no voice with which to speak to the ear words of consolation — no hands to shield me from danger — no arm on which I may lean, or feet to walk by my side through the crowded thoroughfares. Surely, if my pockets are picked, or if I am subjected to the annoyances of rude or wicked men, or if by collision, or other ac- cident, I feel my limbs being crushed beneath fall- ing timbers, it would be slight relief to Jiope that heavenly beings are looking on with pitying eyes. It was from such a reverie, just as the evening train was about to leave the crowded depot in Bos- ton, that a pleasant voice interrupted me, and a strange gentleman asked permission to take the vacant seat by my side. There was nothing pecu- liar in this, neither was there anything peculiar in the man. He was going from Boston to New York, on some errand of business, and preferred to while away the hours by chatting on the ordinary topics of the day, rather than to spend them in the smok- ing-car, or doze them away in solitude. To divert MY ANGELS. l6l me from my gloomy thoughts during the evening ride, to secure my state-room on the boat, to escort me thither, carrying my travelling-bag, and to bid me good-night with complimentary wishes, cost him little effort, but it was much to me. I know not his name, whether he was a good or bad man ; but if he had been an angel, commissioned espe- cially to care for me during that stage of the jour- ney, I do not know that he could have done more. The night passed quietly on the Sound, and the early dawn brought us safely to the dock in New York. Here my angel took the form of a good- natured hack driver, conducting me safely to my destination, and when there, he spoke through the voices of friends and little children bidding me a joyful welcome. I had purposed to spend only a few days in New York, thinking that my work was ready for me at my journey's end, but my angel knew better. The scene of my winter's work was not yet prepared for me, and not one day too soon or too late would he allow me to proceed on my journey; so, with va- rious pretexts, through the kindly persuasions of friends, he prolonged my stay, until every arrange- ment was made by persons who did not then know of my existence, and then said go so unmistakably, that nothing could delay me another hour. Again my weak faith faltered, when I found myself on the evening train from New York to Baltimore, where 14* L l62 MY ANGELS. I was to arrive at midnight. My companion, this time, was more helpless than myself, being a poor German woman, who could neither speak nor under- stand a word of English ; could signify her destina- tion only by an address on the back of an envelope ; and my few words of sympathy and assistance brought the tears streaming from her eyes. But no sooner had the cars arrived in Baltimore, than my angel appeared with a lantern in his hand, his pockets well filled with business-looking docu- ments, a slouched hat, and pleasant voice. He took me in charge, escorted me through the crowd and the darkness, and did not leave my side until he had placed me in a carriage, and given the driver strict injunctions to land me safely at the Eutaw House. The next day was spent in Baltimore, where an- gelic forms and voices were constantly near me, with words of affection, and every helpful service that I needed, and left me only when I was safely embarked on the steamboat, bound for City Point. Another night on the water was safely passed ; the full moon lent its pleasant light, the waters were tranquil as a " summer's sea," and sleep, un- disturbed as in the seclusion of home, came with its refreshing influences to my wearied body. The morning came^ and we saw the sun rise gloriously over Fortress Monroe. Its beams spar- kled from the dancing waters around that wonder- MY ANGELS. 163 ful piece of masonry, the "Rip-Raps;" revealed the rows of big, black guns, with their ominous mouths pointing towards us, and gilded the " stars and stripes" floating over the " strong tower" oc- cupied by the arch-traitor Davis. Then came on the beautiful Indian summer day, and through its warm, bright atmosphere we steam up the James, past the long, low stretch of New- port News ; past Yorktown, where are seen in a little coppice, close to the water's edge, the remains of the dark brick church (only a wall with a pretty arch in it) in which Pocahontas was baptized ; past Wilson's Landing; past the Carter estate, its brick houses still imposing, though built in the year of our Lord 1670; past Harrison's Landing ; and now we come safely to City Point. During all this time my angel has been near me in the character of the captain of the boat, whom I have recognized as an old acquaintance, and who makes all safe and comfortable for me until I find myself in the train for our short railroad ride to Petersburg. Thus the journey, which I anticipated only with gloomy foreboding, turns out something very much like a pleasure excursion, through the human angels who attend my way. For how much of their kindness I am indebted to the influence of supernatural beings, is not for me to say. It would be pleasant, indeed, to believe 164 MY ANGELS. that, when following a kindly impulse towards our fellows, we are yielding ourselves to the guidance of some of that celestial host who by " Thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest," and who through our hands, our feet, our tongues, accomplish their heavenly ministrations. Oh, ye young and brave, to whom the grass- hopper is not yet a burden, and no fear is in the way, befriend the timid and unprotected. Lend the help of your good right arm and your strong hand to the lonely stranger whom you meet in the rail- car, the crowded station, or the steamboat. So for the time shall you be to her as the Angel OF God. CHAPTER II. POPLAR SPRINGS. Encampment of Freed People, 1 Poplar Springs, Va., December 4, 1865. J IN the winter of 1864-5 the Fiftieth New York Engineer Regiment, belonging to the Sixth Corps, was encamped near Poplar Springs, about four miles from Petersburg. Here they constructed a camp not surpassed in beauty and convenience by any in the Army of the Potomac. In the midst of a beautiful pine grove they cleared a spot of from one to two acres for the head-quarters' houses. This space was levelled, beaten, and sanded, until it became hard and smooth as a house-floor. At the head of this space, and overlooking the en- campgaent, was a row of houses for the Colonel and his staff-officers, and opposite them, across the level area, another row for the line officers. At right angles to these, running out into the pine grove, and parallel to each other, were the streets, on each side of which were the neat little log-cabins of the private soldiers. They were laid out with perfect regularity, and brought by skilful labor to the same degree of smoothness and hardness as the open space above. The officers' quarters were all of the 165 l66 POPLAR SPRINGS. stockade order, the pine logs being split, and placed on the inside, so that, when cemented by the natu- ral mortar of the country, they give the deep brown color of the bark, externally, while within the walls are of a clear, light yellow. The fronts were finished off with pines, of about two inches in diam- eter, split, laid closely together, and nailed on the flat surface, covering the cement, and giving a plain brown color to the whole. But the chief object of attraction is the church, standing at one end of the open area, and fronting inwardly; built in the form of the heavy cross, which was the badge of the Sixth Corps ; of the same general structure as the houses ; its front, and arched doorway and windows, ornamented with the same exquisite work of slender pines, in their native brown ; its belfry bearing the beautiful badge of the Engineer Corps ; its graceful spire, outreaching by twice their height the tallest of the surrounding pines, — it produces the effect of a pretty little antique Gothic. They had scarcely brought their camp to the per- fection at which they aimed, when, with the news of Lee's surrender, came the order for the regiment to move, and, pleasant as was the prospect of peace and home, they left the scene of their pleasant labors with many a fond regret. To them succeeded a part of the Second Penn- sylvania Heavy Artillery, who occupied the camp POPLAR SPRINGS. 167 a part of the summer, leaving, when they moved, a detail of men to guard the buildings until the camp and its environs, including several square miles, were taken possession of by the Freedmen's Bureau. Here are now collected five or six hundred of the colored people, just escaped from the ** barbarism of slavery," who being, as one may say, in the in- fancy of manhood, the Government, like a " cher- ishing mother," is holding by the hand until they shall be able to go alone. The representatives of the Freedmen's Bureau in this department are doing for them all that they can ; the National Freedman's Relief Association is do- ing all it can ; friends in England have done much by sending quantities of stout under-garments ; and yet, such is their destitution and suffering, that I doubt if to most of these poor humans, whose " masters were worser to them after the war began, and so they done runned away," the exchange is not a leap *' from the frying-pan into the fire." They are, in general, willing to work, but the old slavoc- racy will not employ them if it can possibly do without, and they have a horror of going North. Still, of the five or six hundred collected in and about this encampment, only about one hundred and fifty draw Government rations, the remainder contriving in some way to subsist themselves. " Did you have a good master in North Caro- lina?" I asked of a carpenter who was making l68 POPLAR SPRINGS. some repairs on my quarters. "Yes, madam; as the general run of them goes in that country, I can't say but I did." *' Would you not have done better to stay with him ? " " Oh, no, indeed, madam. I'm bound to believe I can do better to have my own labor. To earn a hundred dollars for another man, and not get a hundred cents for yourself, is poor business." Walking around their quarters, and looking into their little huts, one sees pitiable signs of destitution and suffering, but hears no desire to return to the old masters. " That," said a bright, young, yellow woman to me, to-day, pointing to a very black, coarse-looking one, *' is the woman that done set my house afire and burnt up my little baby." " Set your house afire! what did she do that for?" "Well, mistus, in de fus place, she done stole some meat what 'longs to me; then she stole some clo's what 'longs to me ; and I tole her of it, and she quarrelled with me about it, and said she 'd be 'venged on me ; and so, one day, while I was gone to the spring to get some water, she done took a great coal of fire and put it into my bunk, and the wood and straw was so dry that it blazed right up, and when I got back, the roof was all burnt in and my little baby was burnt to death. I put my hand into the fire to pull her out, and that 's what makes it so lame now." POPLAR SPRINGS. 169 " How do you know that this woman set your house on fire ?" " Because, mistus, there was nobody else near but her and her boy; and he stands to it that he saw her put the fire into my bunk." " How old was your baby ?" " Going on two months, mistus ; and I feels right sorry about it, for it was a mighty handsome little baby ; everybody took a fancy to her, and said she was the nicest baby in camp. I 'se used to work all my life, and I loves to work, and I scuffled hard for the things what she stole from me, and I allers keeps my chrllun looking nice ; the Captain praises me mightily. Now I 'se lost everything ; but I would n't mind, if she had n't burnt up my little baby." This is a dark picture, but we must remember that slavery is degrading, and that degradation means sin and crime. " I 'se had twelve chillun," said a poor woman, " sitting by her lone," " and they 'se all sold away from me, down to New Orleans. I don't know what has become of one of 'em. It hurts me mightily to think of 'em." Looking around the walls of her hut, at the vari- ety of '* old traps " she had brought with her, I saw a pair of cards, such as in old times used to accom- pany the spinning-wheel IS I/O POPLAR SPRINGS. "And SO you brought your cards along, aunty; did you think you would find cotton here?" " Oh, no, honey, I fetched 'em from Car'lina for my ha'r. They is what we combs our ha'r with." " How old are you, aunty?" " I can't say 'zactly, honey ; but I knows I 'se mighty old." In the spacious building erected for the Colonel's quarters, a school is just established under the aus- pices of the New York National Freedman's Relief Association, where more than a hundred of all ages congregate daily, eager to obtain that dangerous thing, especially in the eyes of their zvorscr masters, ** a little learning." Last evening, hearing the sounds of a prayer-meeting in the school-room, I walked across the open area to the place. The grounds were white under the light of the full moon. The pretty church, with its heavenward- pointing spire, stood clearly revealed on my right. The encircling pine grove, moved by a gentle south wind, murmured its unceasing music. As I stepped across the threshold of the arched doorway, I saw that the room was crowded, so that I could with difficulty obtain a standing place within. They were engaged in singing, the audience, all around the sides of the room, standing, accompanying the music with a swaying motion of the body like a dancing measure, while the centre was occupied by mourners kneeling on the floor so near to each POPLAR SPRINGS. I7I other, and their heads bowed so low, that they formed a complete mosaic of old hoods, turbans, Shaker bonnets, and the light calico rags in which they are clothed; for these poor creatures, in coming up out of the house of bondage, unlike their Egyp- tian prototypes, brought no *' spoils of silver, or gold, or raiment." Their music was a jargon of unearthly sounds, in which the words, " lined out " by the leader, seemed of little account. Sometimes you catch a few lines, such as — ■» " My soul was grieved and full of woe, Alas ! I know no where to go." " He lead me to Mount Cal-va-ree, And showed how good he was to me." " His temple locks all stained with blood. And every minit was one hour." Sometimes it would change to a livelier measure, as — " I thank God I 'm bound to die, Glory, Hallelujah! O sinners, min' how you step on the cross, Glory, Hallelujah ! O Chrishuns, min' how you walk on the cross, Glory, Hallelujah!" Continued, with many repetitions, half an hour, then there was a vehement exhortation to the mourners to surrender their hearts immediately, a 172 POPLAR SPRINGS reproof to any who might be tired of kneeling, re- minding them at the same time that " allers when the Lord build a church, the devil build a chapel close by." Then Sister Nancy Brooks was called on to pray, and her desires were expressed after this manner : " O Father Almighty, O sweet Jesus, most gloriful King, will you be so pleased to come dis way, and put your eye on dese yere poor mourners. O sweet Jesus, ain't you de Daniel God ? Did n't you de- liber the tree chillun from de firy furnis ? Did n't you hear Jonah cry from de belly of de whale? Oh, if dere be one seeking mourner here dis after- noon, if dere be one sinking Peter, if dere be one weeping Mary, if dere be one doubting Thomas, won't you be so pleased to come and deliber them? Won't you mount your Gospel horse an' ride roun' de souls of dese yere mourners, and say, 'Go in peace, and sin no more.' Won't you be so pleased to come wid de love in one hand, and de fan in de odder han', to fan away doubts ? Won't you be so pleased to shake dese yere souls over hell, and not let'em fall in?" But of all indescribable things, nothing is more so than a religious meeting of these freed people, for, although a few words may be caught up and remembered, their peculiar turn of expression and utterance, their cries and groans and vehement gesticulations, forming a wonderful combination of POPLAR SPRINGS. I73 the solemn and grotesque, can never be reduced to language. The excitement increases to the end, when some of the mourners are, at times, so ex- hausted by the strength of their emotions that they must be assisted to their huts, where they spend a great part of the night in alternate sobs and praise, and the next day are *' monstrous bad, with misery in the back and head." Yet this is their worship. Their meetings are conducted with the greatest solemnity and sincer- ity; they constitute their "religious privileges," and with such spiritual help many are daily passing into the unseen world. 15* CHAPTER III. DOMESTIC RELATIONS OF THE FREEDMEN. THE domestic relations of the freedmen, if in- deed they can be said to have any, are, to use one of their own expressions, " the most twistedest up" affairs conceivable. This, however, is one of the legitimate fruits of slavery, and it will take many generations of freedom to bring them out of their present condition of chaos. What most sur- prises one in this connection is, that families having no legal bond hang together as well as they do. " My husband and I have lived together fifteen years," says the mother of a large family of chil- dren, " and we wants to be married over again now." " I have lived with my husband twenty-one years," says another. " He has always been good to me, and my ways have pleased him, and so we are both satisfied." *' She is my fifth wife," says an old man, of the present incumbent of his bed and board, " and I believe I could live with her any- where." ** They kept my husband away from me three years," says Judy, " and tried to make me marry another man, but I wouldn't do it. They couldn't make me love anybody but Sam ; of course they 174 DOMESTIC RELATIONS. I75 couldn't, and I wouldn't marry anybody else. But if my master found him on his grounds, he'd whip him ; and if his master knew of his being away from home, he 'd whip him ; and then they sold him away, and I could n't hear where he was. After he had been gone three years, I was sick, and master sent me to the doctor's to be cured. One night I heard some one knocking at my doe, and I called out, * Who 's thar ? ' — ' Sam ! ' — ' Sam who ? ' — * You would n't know any better than you does now, if I tol' you. I want to find the way to Dr. T.'s.' — * You is at Dr. T.'s now, but who is you ?' — ' My name is Sam, but they call me Sam Beverly.' (They did call him Sam Beverly, because he 'longed to Miss Harrit Beverly.) Then I got out of bed, and crawled to the doe, and opened it, and I says, * Sam, is this you ? ' and he caught me in his arms, and says, * Judy, is this you ? ' and I was so glad, and after that I could n't get well fast enough. He had been sold back into that part of the country, and had got leave to come up to the doctor's to see his wife. Then he coaxed his master to buy me ; and we have lived together ever since, and that was eleven years ago. My owner said he would n't sell me if I was well; but he thought I was going to die, and sold me off his hands, so as not to lose me entirely." Yet, among many remarkable instances of family devotion and constancy, we must not be surprised to find occasional exceptions. 176 DOMESTIC RELATIONS *' Do you think," I asked of a sick woman, "that your husband will ever return to take care of you and his little children ? " " Do' know, missus; men is so kind o* queer like; 'pears like dar's no 'pending on 'em any how." " My husband done lef me for good," said an- other. " 'Pears like men is n't studyin' 'bout one woman now days, dey 's studyin' 'bout two or three." These uncharitable remarks were doubtless aimed only at persons of their own color, and intended to have no wider application. " Why in the world," I asked of a sensible woman, who was calling her boy "Jeff Davis," across the way, " did you give that name to your child ?" " I didn't want to call him so, missus; but ole master named him, and I couldn't help it; I wanted to call him Thomas." *' You had better change it now, and not compel him to bear that name through life. He will be ashamed of it when he grows up." " Yes, missus ; I think I '11 call him Thomas Grant." They invariably give their names Tom, Billy, Jack; and when interrogated as to their patronymics, hesitate, as if trying to invent a name, and then give that of their former owner, or the town or county from whence they come. Or they will answer, " My name is Peter, but my title is Raleigh ; " or, " My name is Mary, but they call me Branch." It is not unusual to find in a family of half a dozen children, as many shades of color and as many different titles. OF THE FREEDMEN. I77 Still greater is the uncertainty as to age. '^ I am seventeen or seventy," says a young woman ; and a middle-aged man asks for something for his old mother, " thirty years old." The dates from which they reckon are, Christmas, planting time, Fourth of July, and corn time ; and the unlucky waif who does not make his advent at one of these epochs, must date from that nearest. From the mixed character of his domestic relations has perhaps arisen the charge that the negro is wanting in nat- ural affection. That there should be some grounds for such ac- cusation does not appear strange, when we con- sider that to the slave an increase of children is only an increase of gain to the pocket of his owner. The child born under bondage belongs neither to father nor mother, but to master. The parents can- not even select a name for it, and are sure of pos- sessing it only during the first month. After that their only parental privilege is to labor at odd moments for its maintenance; and at any day it may be separated from them forever by sale or division of estate. This, they say, is so much worse than death, ** because, when your child dies, you know where it is ; but when he is sold away, you never know what may happen to him." " My master was the father of two of my girls," says a freed- woman; "and when they were both dead, he whipped me because I said I was glad of M 1/8 DOMESTIC RELATIONS it. But I was glad, for I had seen them suffer with sickness, and I knew if they had lived, master would sell them away from me as he had the others, but when they were dead he could not mistreat them, as he had mistreated me." That the negro is ca- pable of the truest and most devoted affection, and that his heart, in absence, is afflicted with the same longing for kindred as the heart which throbs under a white skin, is attested by abundant proof. Wit- ness the anxiety of mothers peering into every strange face, to see if they can discern some trace of the long-lost child; their agonized expressions, when attempting to relate the horrible tale of sepa- ration ; old men begging to have letters written to the place where their boys were last heard from ; children undertaking long and tiresome journeys because they cannot repress the yearning to see once more the face of the old father or mother, if peradventure they be yet alive. Looking out one cold day in January, I saw an old cart-body with a mule attached to it, standing at the door of a cabin, whose occupant was suffer- ing from a chronic disease that had disabled her for life. On inquiry, I found that her sister and brother-in-law had come a distance of seventy miles, in this crazy old vehicle, over the rough winter roads, to take her and her two little children home, so that the family might all be near to their aged mother. They had *' made corn enough to last OF THE FREEDMEN. I79 them iintivcll corn time again," and had no doubt of being able to provide for all. The next morn- ing was cold and frosty, but they started off at an early hour on the journey which would occupy two or three days, the invalid lying in the bottom of the wagon, the younger child sitting by her side, while the brother, sister, and elder child walked. Where, in the annals of our own race, can we find an ex- ample of more affectionate self-sacrifice? Return- ing to camp, one morning, from a ride of a few miles in the country, I overtook an old man walking in the same direction, and, entering into conversation with him, found that he was in search of a daughter who had been separated from him and her mother, when an infant of a few months, by division of estate. From that time he had had no certain news of her, though he had all the time reason to think that she was not far away. For the last three years he had been travelling through Nottoway, Dinwiddle, Chesterfield, and Amelia counties, push- ing his inquiries wherever his limited means would allow, but he had obtained no clue to her until last night, when he received a letter telling him that she was at Poplar Grove Encampment, the mother of three children. I inquired her name, and told him that I knew her well, and would lead him to her house. So riding up to the little cabin under the tall trees, I called her out and presented her to her father. The iron yoke of servitude has made l80 DOMESTIC RELATIONS them undemonstrative, and their emotions are ex- pressed only by a clasping of hands, and a mute, inquiring gaze into each other's faces. Presently the little grand-daughter walks up, a pretty quad- roon child of eight or nine years, with glossy black curls, a tin vessel of water poised on her head. *' Lucy Ann, this is your grandfather." The child, still preserving the poise, lays her hand in that of the old man, with "howdy', grandfather?" He im- mediately begins to talk about taking them home to the mother, at Nottoway, and in a few days they are gone. Instances of this kind are constantly occurring, where the magnetism of kinship, as strong in the black man as in the white, is drawing together and reuniting family circles, with which slavery has made such fearful havoc. The kind- ness of the colored people towards orphans and homeless children is remarkable, and in this respect their humanity often puts to shame that of the whites. Perhaps the sad experience of their race in the rending of domestic ties, and the sorrows of or- phanage, may account for the tenderness with which they regard these unfortunates, and the readiness with which they place them among their own children, and divide with them their scanty morsel. Not long since, an old man came into camp, bringing in his arms a child of about two years (having walked with her twelve miles), which he said he found a OF THE FREEDMEN. l8l year ago last Christmas, in one of the owner's out- houses, left entirely alone. He had kept her ever since, and the family had grown so fond of her, that nothing but poverty compelled him now to part with her. " But where are her father and mother?" "As to her father," he said, glancing at her light skin and smooth, auburn hair, " he would n't acknowledge her if he could be found; and the mother, they told me, was compelled to leave the place by barbarous treat- ment." The child had evidently been well cared for, and when the old man set her down, and turned reluctantly away, she cried bitterly at being left behind, but a good old aunty in camp immedi- ately adopted her, and she is now perfectly happy with her new " mammy." i6 CHAPTER IV. RELICS OF BARBARISM. January 8, 1866. LIVING in an encampment of freed people affords one a rare opportunity of observing the general effects of slavery. Here the monster " being dead, yet speaketh," through thousands of prisoners come up out of the prison-house, and his ugly apparition stalks in broad daylight, revealed in all its hideous proportions. Here are seen men and women, literally children of a hundred years, whose intellects have been dwarfed and held down by the hard hand of oppres- sion; and here, young women, comely in person, refined in feeling, sensitive in nature, bearing on their bodies the marks of the master's lash, admin- istered by his own hand, and he at once their father and the father of their children. As I walk about the encampment, I often look into the little hut where poor old Si Gillis, nearly blind, sits before his lonely hearth, holding out his hands to the fire, as if to obtain a little of its warmth were his only remaining earthly consolation. He is very tall, though now bent by the weight of years ; his fea- 182 RELICS OF BARBARISM. 183 tures are regular, and he must once have had a noble physique. " How old are you, uncle?'' " Eighty-three years old, madam." " Were you a free man before the war ? " " Oh, no, madam. I Ve been a slave, a dead slave, all my life." " Would not your master take care of you after you had served him so long?" " No, madam ; he always worked me hard, and kept me hard, and at last he died himself If he'd a' lived, he 'd a' made me knock as long as I could a' knocked, and then he 'd a' shoved me off with a piece of bread, only enough to keep me from starv- ing — just as he did my brother, who was a hun- dred years old when he died, and had been a slave all his life." " Did you have a family, uncle ?" "Yes, madam; I had children, and grand-children, and great grand-children, but they were all sold away from me; and I don't know where one of them is but my daughter that lives in Petersburg, and she 's a cripple." So, day after day, the old man sits alone in the docility of second childhood, with nothing in the past but his slave life, and in the present, solitude and poverty. Yet he believes in God, and hopes for " Some humble heaven, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold." 184 RELICS OF BARBARISM. " It is some comfort," he says, " that he will die a free man ; " and when I take to his cabin a slight gift of food or clothing, his ** Thank you, madam, thank you, madam, thank you, madam," follows me as far as I can hear down the walk. Near to him lives old Biddy Williams. " She was raised," she says, ** and always lived with the first quality of white folks." She passed through several generations of the same family, who were all very good to her, but they died, and she is left penniless and alone. Then all the nice things that her " last missus " gave her were stolen from her, and now her sole dependence is on the charity of strangers. Her mother was brought from Africa in a large slave-ship, at the age of ten years, and had filled Biddy's retentive memory with many tales and cus- toms of that happy land beyond the sea, where they had plenty of corn and meat, and everything that heart " could wish ; " where the slave-men that Biddy used to see, when she was a child, in Rich- mond, with their faces tattooed, were the highest quality of gentle folks, and where, when young children died, they were buried near the highway, and every one that passed their graves for a twelve- month threw on them a green twig or flower. " I was born, missus, the year that Gen. Wash- ington's war broke up. Which was first, missus, Gen. Washington's war or Gen. Braddock's?" RELICS OF BARBARISM. 185 "Gen. Braddock's." *' And what does dey all call dis yere last war?" " The war of the Great Rebellion." " Well, missus, what will dey call the nex' war?" ** I hope we will not have another war, Biddy." " Oh, dear, you tink so, missus? I 'se mighty glad, for dey all told me dere would be de wussest war ob de whole dis year." To-day, in the midst of the cold, driving rain, Biddy knocks at the door of my log-cabin. " Oh, missus, can you give me some shoes and stockings ? My feet is so cold, and I has nobody to get my wood and rations, and I 'se 'bliged to go out in the rain, and my clo's is so thin dat de cold goes all through my body." " Come in, and stand by my fire, Biddy, and I will see what I can do for you." Looking among the remnants of the last box I received from kind friends at the North, filled with gifts for these poor outcasts, I find shoes, stockings, warm underclothing, and a hood, with which I tell Biddy to go home, and make herself comfortable as speedily as possible. " Oh, thank you, missus, thank you, dear missus. God bless you ; you certainly has holp me mightily. When is you g'wine away from yere, missus?" " I don't know, Biddy. Not very soon, I hope." " Oh, please don't you go and leave us, missus ; you is our missus and mammy too." 16* l86 RELICS OF BARBARISM. " I lacks nine years of being a hundred, missus," says Violet Hastings, who still stands erect, and has a pleasant countenance, though very black ; " and, O missus, I 'se been de hardest working old nigger ever you see. None of your mean niggers, either, dat you has to keep a beating all de time. When you tells me what you wants done, you may go 'way, and when you comes back you finds it all done — des so; and den when I 'd worked so hard for 'em all, missus, to have 'em turn me off without a piece of bread, or a rag of clo's — dat grieves me to de heart. Col. Kit Haskins is de youngest of my set o' white folks, and he 's a gran' daddy, and he said he could n't keep me to sit down and do nothing, and I might go and get the Yankees to take care of me; so he drove me off. I used to be somebody, but I 'se come down mighty low now. I often prays de Lord to let me die, but he does n't hear dat prayer — he don't mind my humors." " How many children have you had, Violet?" " Seventeen, missus." "And how many husbands ?" *' Only one, missus ; and there nebber was a poor old nigger had a better husband than I did. I lived with him thirty years ; smack up to the time he died ; and now ought n't it to be a great pleasure to me to think he was always kind, and that there nebber was one jarring word between us?" " Certainly it should. Good-bye, Violet." RELICS OF BARBARISM. iS/ "Far'well, my kind missus, far'well, far'well. I hope we will meet in heaven, if we don't meet here again." " I hope so, too, Violet. I shall be real glad to see you there." " I 'm sure we shall know each other." *' Yes, indeed, Violet. Good-bye." On the same street with these lives Charley White, preacher, and leader of prayer-meetings, his countenance beaming with good nature, and enjoying the reputation of being s^nart as well as devout. He regrets that he cannot read, but knows a heap of hymns. Would like me to give him a good shirt and hat, that " I may look kinder decent when I goes among folks," and talks of " making a prescription to buy a pair of shoes." He was a slave up to the fall of Petersburg, has changed masters many times, and seems to think it a grand joke that he is no longer a salable article. " How much did you bring at the sale, Charley ?" " The last time I was sold, missus, they put me on the block, here at Petersburg two years ago come June, and sold me for four hundred dollars in Confederate money. Dat was only forty dollars in gold, yah, yah, yah, he, he, he," and I leave him half convulsed with his yah, yahs, he, hes. Walking half a mile from the camp, across the track of a demolished railroad, which a year ago l88 RELICS OF BARBARISM. was in constant use, carrying supplies from City Point to our great army investing Petersburg, I came to a little settlement of the more enterprising, who are determined, if possible, to make a living for themselves. Some do so by " odd jobs " in the town. Some by digging lead balls, with which many of the hills around are as thickly sown as corn-fields after the spring's planting. A woman, whose only clothing for herself and little daughter for the last two years has been old tenting, or other refuse of camps, patched together, tells me, '' I and my husband digs balls all the week, and Saturday we sells them for two dollars and a half, and buys corn-meal and old bacon. We thought we would n't bother the Government to give us anything, it has so many to take care of; and we has taken care of ourselves ever since j^o?c alls came into Petersburg." Marth Wiley stands leaning over the fence which surrounds her little cabin. I declined her invita- tion to ''walk in," but stand and talk with her in the pleasant sunshine. She is a handsome quadroon woman, with large, black eyes and a very sweet voice. The little mulatto girl, Etta, with her mo- ther's eyes, and hair like an infinity of cork-screws set thickly over her head, looks up at me wonder- ingly, as I take a slender twig from her hand and run it through the rows of woolly screws, not crisp and hard like the hair of most colored children, but soft and pliable as down. The father is at his RELICS OF BARBARISM. 189 daily toil, and Andrew, the pretty octoroon boy, in whose face you can hardly discern a trace of the African, is at school. Remarking on the difference of complexion in the two children, draws from Martha some account of her slave life. Her master is a wealthy physician in Dinwiddle. He is her father, and the father of her boy Andrew. Also the father of her brother and sister, and of her sister's two children. Yet he never gave them a " string of clothing " for their children. For this they were obliged to " scuffle " as they could, at the same time working hard for the doctor's family. She and Wiley had always loved each other, but the doctor never allowed him to visit her. His visits were always by stealth, and when discovered were succeeded by a whipping from her master, "with raw-hide, paddle, strap, or switch." At length came the "year of jubilee;" but Wiley could not come away without Martha because he loved her, and Martha could not come without An- drew because she loved him ; so they came, bring- ing the two children, who are equally dear to her ; and the freed bondsman is working hard to earn bread for the son of the wealthy doctor. These are not extreme or exceptional, but only representative cases of such as we meet everywhere among the freedmen. They are but the natural outgrowth of that " pecuHar institution " which, four years ago, Vice-President Stephens declared to be the " Corner-stone of the Confederacy." CHAPTER V. A BAY WITH THE FREED MEN. February 8, 1866. QUITE early this morning, before I had arisen from the breakfast-table, there were several knocks at my door, by people of whom it was almost literally true that they had " nothing to wear." Good human creatures, too, made of the same kind of clay as yourself, Miss Flora McFlimsey, with the same capacities for suffering and enjoy- ment, and, according to their conditions, just as anxious to make a good appearance in the world. My little waiting-maid, Lucy, put several of them off with information that " Miss Charlotte was at breakfast ; " but one, more importunate than the rest, pressed her claims so resolutely that Lucy was obliged to succumb. By this time, having finished my breakfast, I went to the door, and found an aged woman, who, I afterwards learned, rejoiced in the aristocratic name of Isabella Pegram. She was of low stature, her garments clean and tidy, though made up of patches in which white predominated; the blue cape of a military coat buttoned around her shoulders, with its bright brass buttons, a close hood, made of some dark material, drawn tightly 190 A DAY WITH THE FREEDMEN. IQI down over her withered features, and a heavy walk- ing-stick in her hand. *' Good morning, aunty; how are you ? " " Only tol'able, thank you, missus ; how is your- self? " *' Quite well, I thank you ; what do you wish for?" ** I 's a lady that 's never been to see you before, and I wants, if you please, ma'am, to get some clo'se for myself and my three little gran'children. They 's motherless chillun, and has nobody to take care of 'em but me." " How far have you walked this morning, aunty?" " Three miles, missus." " Then you must be tired ; come in and rest a little." " 'Deed, missus, I 'se mighty tired, and painified in my limbs, too," and, declining the proffered chair, she seats herself humbly on the hearth, in my chimney-corner. " How old are you, aunty ? " " I don't know, missus, how old I is; but I knows I is n't young, 'cause I has so many old folk's pains." " You ought not to be out this cold morning, with your painified limbs." '"Pears like it's been mighty cold ever since Christmas, but we could n't 'spect any thing else, 'cause it was such pious weather all afore Christ- mas, and what can't be holp must be enjured!' 192 A DAY WITH THE FREEDMEN. I was now ready to go to the store-room, whither I was followed by the retinue that had been wait- ing around the door, all wishing "to draw," and from whence I had scarcely dismissed Isabella, with a big bundle of such articles as I thought adapted to her wants, when a woman of Amazonian proportions pressed through the crowd. " Here 's I, missus. I 'se the lady that spoke to you last night ; and you promised me some things for myself and my two gran' chillun. I walked yesterday from crack o'day till sun-doWn, ten miles, to come to you, 'cause I heard you had some things to give to we all. This coat as I has on I borrowed from a neighbor, and my little gran' chillun is a* most stark naked. I 'se done men', an men', an' men,' an' men'. I 'se got to walk back to-day, so please, ma'am, discharge me as soon as you can. Here 's my ticket." Saying which, she held out a bit of paper on which was neatly written, in a lady's hand, "Judy Green — sixty years old. Has been the mother of seventeen children. Has had her right arm broken." Having "discharged" Judy with a bundle as large as she was able to carry, and for which she was very grateful, assuring me. that she would come and see me again when the walking gets better, I attend to the others, and, after due inquiry into the circumstances, make up a bundle for each of such articles as they seem most to require. Some receive A DAY WITH THE FREEDMEN. I93 the gifts as a matter of course, while others ahnost dance for joy at the sight of the warm gar- ments, taxing their vocabulary to the utmost for words to express their gratitude to me and the kind donors at the North, whom they "does love," and saying, as they turn away with their faces all aglow, " I '11 fetch you some more eggs. Miss Charlotte ; " or, " My husband says he '11 kill you some more oVliars;' — hares being plenty at this season. Among the applicants are Rachel Harper, who has been the mother of eighteen children, six of whom are living with her, asking Government rations this morning for the first time, as the leaden balls are "getting scacc;' and Mary Perham, a widow with eight children, for five of whom she draws rations, and " has to saiffle for the rest." Ann Brown, whose noble determination not to " bother the Government " was spoken of in a pre- vious letter, has come to ask for something in which to shroud her little girl (the last of eight children), who died last night. In reply to my few words of condolence, she says, quietly, " She said just before she died, * I'm going home to rest. Don't cry when I 'm gone, mammy.' " One woman wants a " dost of castor-oil " for her sick child; and as I take down the bottle from the shelf, she presents a small glass inkstand with a little side spout. 17 N 194 A DAY WITH THE FREEDMEN. " This is a very inconvenient vessel to take it in ; why did n't you bring a cup ? " " Hadn't any." " What have you besides this ? " " Only a small chance of old tin cans and a spoon." After the crowd had subsided a little, a nice-look- ing quadroon boy comes to ask for shoes. I allow him to come in and try on some second-hand boots, and he fits himself to a pair, which makes his hand- some eyes shine. In the meantime he tells his story : Was " raised in North Carolina." Was in the rebel army during the first two years of the war, waiting on his master; then was taken into the Union army, and waited on Federal officers. Now is working with his uncle near here. *' What is your name ? " "John Richards is my Sunday name; my every- day name, John Atrs." Thus passed the morning, and I had just returned to my log-cabin, when an Irish woman, whom I had known in Petersburg last summer, came in. I was familiar with her story. Her husband was an industrious, hard-working man, and, having his wife and five little children to support, had avoided going into the rebel army. To do this, he had sometimes been obliged to absent himself from his family, and remain in concealment for a month at a time. One evening, last winter, his wife being out of the A DAY WITH THE FREEDMEN. I95 house, and he having just been up-stairs to put his little ones in bed, three rebel soldiers came into the yard and called him outside. The moment he appeared, they all three discharged their muskets at him, and he fell. He had life enough left to crawl into the house. "When I came home," she said, *' I found him lying dead across the hearth, and Christmas-day I buried him." The shock broke her heart ; but she must still struggle to get bread for her children. " Och, mavourneen," she said, as she sat down, wiping away the tears, " an' it 's hard- ships has driven me out to ye. I nivir tho't I could be so poor, or see such hard times as I have seen since ye went away. They stole me mule that was earning me three dollars a day ; then they stole me pigs and me hens ; and then I laid down sick, and I thought sure I was about to die. If it hadn't been for the money ye gave me when ye went away, we 'd all a' perished. Sure that was the dearest ten dollars I ever had in me life; may the Lord Al- mighty bless ye." '* I am very glad the money was useful to you ; but your gratitude is due to friends at the North, who pitied your condition, and sent the money for your relief." "Sure the people of the North is kind. I wish I was at the North. Here, they all look strange upon me. I 've been in the country now five years, and I know nobody." 196 A DAY WITH THE FREEDMEN. I gave her a bundle of such articles as I had at hand for her children, and she left for her return walk of four miles, encouraged by the promise of help hereafter. Late in the afternoon, Sylvia Oliver comes in to ask me to write a letter to her " old master," from whom she has been absent only a few weeks. So I open my desk and sit down to write while she dictates. " Tell him it took all the money I had to come to Petersburg; and so I could not go any farther, and since I came here I have heard my mother is dead. Tell him I would not have left him, only I was so anxious to see my mother. Tell him, if he will send me money to come back with, I will try to be a faithful servant. I will try to make it up to him. Tell him, I had rather live with him and Miss Ann than any one else," Sylvia is intelligent, quiet, and womanly in man- ner, lovable and grateful in disposition. The de- sire to return is creditable both to herself and her master, to whom she is sincerely attached, and whom she regrets ever having left. CHAPTER VI. MV SABBAT// MORN/NG SERV/CE. March i8, 1866. THIS morning, before I had quite finished mak- ing my toilet, and ere the sun seemed to have measured a yard above the eastern horizon, the door of my log-cabin opened gently, and a tall, fine-looking man, with a basket in his hand, looked in, saying, " Good-morning, Miss Charlotte ; some eggs for your breakfast." Having seen this man once before, I recognized him, and returned his salutation with, "Good-morn- ing, George." He was a mulatto, with a frank, pleasant face, polite manners, and using just such language as a white gentleman would under similar circumstances. Taking the basket from his hand, I found a dozen eggs, laid nicely between layers of cotton, and took them out with a feeling akin to weeping; for I knew how, from day to day, they had been gathered and laid away for me, where many little mouths had watered for them, and that they were now brought twenty-five miles, an offering of affection. George lives ten miles above Dinwiddie Court-House, and 17- 197 198 MY SABBATH MORNING SERVICE. Dinwiddie Court-House is at least fifteen miles from here. " We have come once more to you, Miss Char- lotte," he said, " to see if you can give us a little help for our wives and children. We could not afford to lose another day from our work, so we started yesterday, two hours to-night, and walked to within six miles of the Grove, and then struck a fire and camped out." *' You are trying to make a crop for yourself now, are you, George?" ** Yes, madam. I hire a piece of ground, and pay the owner one-fourth of the crop ; and then I give him two days' work out of every week for the use of his horse to plough my ground." "Were you a slave or a free man heretofore ? " "Always a slave, madam. I was sold out of Maryland into Virginia, five years ago this gone Christmas, and have been with my owner in Din- widdie ever since, until the surrender." His countenance fell when I told him that now, as when he came last week, I could give him only a very little help ; and at my exclamation of surprise that he should have taken this long walk a second time, he said, "You know. Miss Charlotte, that every little helps, and when a man has wife and children to work for, he is bound to make all edges cut, if it is only for three cents." Looking out on the street in front of my cabin, I saw a company of seventeen, — fifteen men and two MY SABBATH MORNING SERVICE. I99 women, — who had come with George, and for whom he acted as leader and spokesman. I took their names and the number of persons whom they repre- sented, and found the aggregate to be eighty-five. With one or two exceptions, they were sad, earnest- looking men, taking up courageously the heavy burden which had all at once fallen upon them, and appreciating, just as we would, the great blessing of freedom. When I told them how sorry I was that I could not do more for them, because my supplies were limited, and great numbers coming to me daily from as great or greater distances, as needy as them- selves — that the people of the North sympathized with them, were anxious that they should prove themselves worthy of freedom, and were trying to help them a little now, hoping to encourage and give them a start, so that hereafter they can take care of themselves, they replied, taking off their poor, ragged hats, " That is what we want to do, missus. We are boUnd to take care of ourselves, if they will only give us a chance. We have worked to support ourselves and the Johnnies likewise ; we ought now to be able to support ourselves. We scuffle hard to get bread for our wives and children ; but we cannot get money to buy clothes, and we don't know but they '11 have to go naked yet. God bless the Northern people for what they are doing for us ! the best thing they have given us is our freedom." 200 MY SABBATH MORNING SERVICE. Going to .my store-room, I found that, after the great demands of the past week, there still remained some valuable articles, enough to give to each a pair of shoes for some of the little feet at home, one warm garment for each household, with other little articles that would be acceptable where nothing could come amiss. " Thank God, and you too," they said, " for this ; " asking nothing for themselves, though their patched and ragged garments would have been a sufficient appeal if my stock of men's clothing had not been entirely exhausted. My heart went after them sorrowfully as they walked away with their little bundles, which I would gladly have made larger, for I knew too well the story of their distress, though, as some of them say, ** None but Christ knows all we have suffered." Many of the old masters, after having charged them with unwillingness to work, and predicted that they will starve, are determined that their predic- tions shall be verified. They hire them at the lowest possible rates, and withhold the stipulated sum when it is due. If the laborer succeeds in obtaining the hire for which he has worked so hard, it hardly suffices to buy corn-meal and bacon enough to keep wife and children from starving. To buy clothing at the present high prices is not to be thought of It is, therefore, no great wonder that, when rumor goes from neighbor to neighbor that these much coveted articles are to be obtained MY SABBATH MORNING SERVICE. 201 by a walk of twenty-five or thirty miles, they should, like Joseph's starving brethren when they heard that there was corn in Egypt, take up the pilgrim's staff, and journey patiently over the weary way. To them it is no holiday excursion, but a measure to which they are driven by the sorest need. What strikes one as the greatest peculiarity about them is the incongruity between their tattered gar- ments and their truly polite and respectful manner. An old man, after walking from early dawn till starry eve, knocks at my door, and, as I answer the summons, he accosts me with all the grace of " a gentleman of the old school ; " always inquiring kindly after my health before he makes known his errand, — which, indeed, hardly needs to be told. After the customary compliments have been passed, bowing low with hat in hand, or finger on its ragged rim, he proceeds briefly and pathetically to spread before me the story of his poverty, of which the destitution of wife and children is always the bur- den, and begs me, " for Christ's sake, to do him a little good, now that he has walked so far." Through the constant efforts of friends at the North, who never weary in well-doing, I have been able to give something to almost every applicant. I know that the gifts are often received as -coming directly from the Father, in whom they have im- plicit faith that he will not forsake " his poor little ones," and looked upon as weapons with which they may a little longer keep the demon want at bay. Cll A r VV K \- 1 I. T\>n„\R SrRiNOvS, February 26, iS(>o. ''l^O tho Contr.il ».iuirch Sabbath-School. R\ni;or. *■ Maine : 1 ha\ o the ploasua^ of ackno\vlodi;ini;* the ixvoipt ot\\ donation of t\vonty-t\vc doUars, iVom tlio Sabbath^School ot^ Central Chua^h. Bant^or. for I ho ivhef of fixxxi people of this encan>pnient. As NN\> naturally feel an intx^rest in those whom wo h.u benefited, I take it tor ^'ranted that the niem- bvis of the Sxibbath-sehool would like to know somethino^ of those who are thus made the recipi- ents of their charity, and 1 will therefon^^ endeavor to answer to some extent the question which they would j>orhaps ask, vi.-. : " \\ liat has boon done with our money ? '' In looking; o\or our encampment, it was found that there w.\s a lari;e number of old nu n. each livinjj in a little hut by hiu\self. all of whom wei^ in a sx^ty misersible condition. Their clothes and beddings were insufficient* and it was a very difficult matter tor then\ to keep up their fires, and draw their nxtions of soup and bread, with such assistance as could be rcndeaxi In order to have them pn> \ idod for moiv comfortably, ** the Captain/' who LETTER TO A S A FilJ AT II -SC 11 OO L. 203 has chari^c of the camp, had a lonrr stockade huild- inij^ fitted up and furnished with bunks, where they could all be collected toc^ether and suitably cared for. I was able to furnish all necessary beddini; and cloth in<^ from my store-room, and, with a part of your money, to buy for each a nice tin-cup and plate, spoon, knife and fork, and various otlier arti- cles necessary to make them comfortable. When to these was added a little tobacco, they were per- fectly happy. One of these men is ninety-seven years old, and all of them nearly, if not quite, four- score, and they have all been slaves from their birth, until President Lincoln's Proclamation made them free. Sometimes, when I go to see them, I take my Bible, and read a few chapters to them. This is the greatest treat they can possibly have. They listen with the most earnest attention, and, as soon as I have finished, burst out into exclamations like these : — " Glory to de Lord dat I 'se heard dis yere word to-day!" "Glory to King Jesus!" " D.it is de truth dat I 'se been telling dem dis fifty year, dat God is light, and in him is no darkness!" "I knows dat is true, for he has tole me so ; my heart cries out dat it is true — I in you and you in me, you tote your burdens and I tote you ! " " I^at," referring to a short Psahn, " is a kinder little i)ra'ar to say before de shickens crows in de morning." " Dat entices me to look more to my Father, and put all my 'pendence on him." 204 LETTER TO A S A B B ATH- SC HOOL. Another way in which it has afforded me great satisfaction to have the means of helping these peo- ple, is by furnishing them with potatoes for planting. Those who were able to secure in any way a piece of ground began to plough the first of February, — for spring has already come to us in Virginia ; and everywhere, as you ride about in the country, you may see the soft earth turned up and ready for planting, and tufts of fresh green grass and leaves springing up in all sheltered places. Many of those who have required assistance in this way are widows, whose only hope of being able to provide for their families is, as they say, ** to make a crap of corn and potatoes ; " and it has been a great blessing to them to be provided with seed. Two of these women live three miles apart. One of them owns a poor, old, broken-down horse, but has not strength to hold the plough, and is not able to hire help ; the other is strong and robust, but has no horse — so the latter follows the plough for the former every other day, and on the alternate days has the use of the horse for ploughing her own land. Already the tender plants, which contain promise of future subsistence, are shooting up under our warm skies, and in a few weeks many a sunny ridge and slope will be green with the precious crop planted through your charity. Another question which you will doubtless ask LETTER TO A SABBATH-SCHOOL. 205 (since no one wishes to help those who will not help themselves), is, " Will they work ?" It is very true that there are among them some lazy ones, who prefer to beg, or live on the hard- tack and salt fish provided by Government, rather than to exert themselves, — but they are few in comparison with the whole. The extent and sever- ity of the efforts made by many before asking aid, and their determination to help themselves, is sur- prising. To say that the freed men and women will not work for their own maintenance is, I think, as great a libel as was ever perpetrated on any portion of the human race. It were nearer the truth to say they are agonizing for work, — holding out their poor, empty hands — already indurated by the toils of the taskmaster — to God, the Government, the people of the United States, begging, pleading, imploring that they may be filled with honest, remunerative labor. I commenced an industrial school on the 8th of January. It was a bitter cold day ; but thirty-four women were present, some having walked three or four miles, delighted at the prospect of earning something. It was so cold that we could not make ourselves comfortable in the school-room, and they took the work home. The garments were returned, made very nicely. One woman, who had the misfortune 206 LETTER TO A S ABB AT H -SC HOO L. to lose her right arm, made a pair of drawers, but- ton-holes and all, perfectly well. In subsequent meetings the number has increased to fifty-seven. At the second meeting, after all had been supplied with work, and were sewing very quietly, I said, "Perhaps you would like me to read something to you." They replied, " Oh, yes, ma'am. Please read to us in the Bible ; we like to hear that better than anything else." I read at first a few Psalms, and then some one asked for the story of the crucifixion, which I read, while they sewed and listened attentively. Since that I always spend a part of the time in reading, selecting some subject which will furnish a text for moral instruction, such as they seem to require. The difficulties in the way of procuring work are so great, that the school is necessarily irregular; but whenever I can obtain it, they come together, always pleased to do so. Their industry and propriety of deportment could scarcely be surpassed by any ladies in any com- munity. Women ^Iso come to me daily from three or four miles around asking for work, they are so anxious to earn something; and they, as well as the men, seem to desire nothing so much as to get pos- session of a small piece of ground, where they may "make a crap of corn and 'baccy." During the past month the health of the camp has been remarkably good, and there has been less suffering than might have been anticipated. LETTER TO A S A B B AT H - SC H OO L. 20/ For the good order and comfortable condition generally prevailing, we are greatly indebted to the kindness and efficient management of Mr. Cochran, who, as agent for the Freedmen's Bureau, super- intends the camp. In conclusion, allow me to express the hope that the kindness shown to this most unfortunate portion of our countrymen, may be returned in an increased measure of blessing to your own hearts and homes. " The quality of mercy is not strain'd; It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath; it is twice bless'd — It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes," Yours, truly, C. E. McKay. CHAPTER VIII. AUNT BECKY'S TROUBLES. "The Short and Simple Annals of the Poor," THE 17th day of January, 1867, differed from nearly every other day that we had had in Vir- ginia since Christmas, only in that rain had been falling instead of snow, and the rain had come per- sistently, and in torrents, instead of drizzling as usual. But rain, or snow, or biting cold could not keep from my door applicants for charity. Some kind friends at the North, and in England, whose hearts had been touched with pity for the physical sufferings of the freed people, had sent generous supplies of warm clothing for women and children, and had permitted me to act as their al- moner. This joyful fact had been circulated among the people of the adjoining counties and distant plantations, and the possibility of procuring a warm skirt, or blanket, or hood, or even a few patches for the ragged garments of the little ones, was a suf- ficient inducement for undertaking a walk of ten, sometimes even of twenty, thirty or forty miles, through cold and tempest. Among the shivering, bedraggled victims of want and sorrow who came on the day above mentioned, was Aunt Becky, with 20S AUNl BECKY S TROUBLES. 2O9 two daughters, leaving the other four, with their three Httle brothers, in the hut four miles away, where I used to see them last winter. Aunt Becky was still young-looking, of a bright complexion, and had many essentials of a lady ; mild, dark eyes, a very sweet smile, low, soft voice, and a good use of language, or, in Virginia phrase, *' was a nice-spoken nigger." Her husband had been killed three years ago by the kick of a horse, and left her with nine children, the youngest an infant of a few days, the oldest, Eliza, a girl of four- teen years. My acquaintance with her had commenced on a cold day of the preceding winter, when one of her neighbors came to beg me to go to her and carry some medicine for Eliza, who was in a fit, they feared, dying. With such remedies as I had at hand, I hastened down the ravine, across the track of the military railroad, up to the old camping ground, where, in one of the little huts that Union soldiers had oc- cupied a year before, lived Becky with her nine children. Eliza, with her pretty, childish face, in which you could discern only the slightest tint of African blood, was lying on a bunk near the great fireplace, pale, rigid, and speechless, though with signs of life. Her new-born baby, having just died, was laid on a chest near by, shrouded in a few rags, not easily spared from the living. 18* O 210 AUNT BECKY S TROUBLES. The mother, with a countenance expressing that anguish which only mothers know, was quietly working over her, — rubbing her feet, rubbing her hands, laying her hand gently on the cold forehead, and striving with endearing epithets to call her back to life. ** Eliza, honey, does n't you know me? doesn't you know your mammy? Here are the white lady done come to see you." But it was all in vain. The frightened eyes rolled wildly in their sockets, but gave no sign of recognition. The next day, however, I heard she was a little better, and in a few weeks she was quite well. The next time I went to see Becky, I found her bolstered up in bed, taking her turn to be sick, while Eliza was performing the duties of nurse and cook. Pouring cold water on a quantity of corn- meal, she mixed it with her hand, then moulded it into balls, which she tossed from one hand to the other until they were well beaten, and laid them on the hearth to bake. These are corn-dodgers. Hoe cakes baked on a shovel, or hoe- and ash-cakes baked in hot ashes, are all made the same way. **I am glad to see that Eliza is well enough to help you," I said. " Yes, thank God," replied her mother. " I were jus' a telling her how good the Lord were to take the chile that were ready to go, and spar' her to repent of her sins. I were a'most 'stracted with the thought of her dying ; an' I know'd she wa'n't AUNT BECKY S TROUBLES. 211 prepared. But as for me, I could n't help her den ; I were the blind leading the blind. But now, praise the Lord, He have given me new light, and done took the burden off my back. He have taken my feet out of the pit, and done set them on a rock, and have put a new song in my mouth, and I bless His name." Becky went on a long time in this strain of praise and joy, which, contrasted with the poor and low surroundings, was very touching, and brought tears to my eyes, but left little for me to say. If you could have occupied an unobserved corner of her hut a few evenings later, you might have seen Becky and her three eldest daughters sitting on low stools around the fire, their hands folded on their knees, and with many swayings to and fro of the body, and expressive upward glances, singing, — Shall we meet again ? Shall we meet again ? I '11 meet you in heaven to part no more. Sisters, far-ye-well, Brothers, far-ye-well, God Almighty bless you : Shall we meet again ? This they sang over and over again, in their own plaintive way, and then broke into the lively little refrain — ' De bell done ring, De bell done ring, Good-morning, John the Baptist, De bell done ring. 212 AUNT Becky's troubles. Or.- Sister Phoebe gone to heaven, De bell done ring ; O, I know she mighty happy, De bell done ring; Jus' got over to the heavenly land, De bell done ring. But now Becky had come to tell me her troubles, how she and the children, even the little ones, " certainly did work faithful in the corn-field ^all summer ; " that one day Eliza fainted with the hoe in her hand, and she '* were mightily afeared they never would be able to fetch her to ; " that " they made right smart of corn," but Mr. Blick, the owner of the land, came and took half instead of the fourth part, which was his just due; that little Edna was hired out, but was kept out in the cold so much that her poor little feet were frozen, and now she was at home unable to walk ; and to-day she took Eliza to town, hoping to find a place for her, but the lady to whom she was directed had pro- vided herself with a servant, and she must go back to her miserable home. " How is it possible," I ask myself, " that this poor woman, with only her two hands, has been able to keep ten souls and bodies together, through the last year of suffering and scarcity ? " Surely, He who hears the young ravens when they cry has been her helper. As His instrument, I gave her a bundle of warm clothing for herself AUNT BECKY S TROUBLES. 213 and children, not forgetting a doll for little Edna; and with thankful hearts they retraced their way- homeward, through the cold, driving storm. I had heard nothing of Becky for several weeks, when one morning I recognized her face among the dusky crowd that pressed around my door. She had come, she said, hardly able to speak for the tears and sobs that she could not keep back, to ask me to please give her " something to put little Bella away in. She died last night." She had not suffered much from sickness, but had seemed to pine away, and grow weaker and weaker every day, with no appetite; and for the last week had not tasted food. " But this did n't hurt me so much," she said, "as the death of little Rose, six weeks ago. She got up and went out one night, unbeknownst to us all. It were that cold night when it rained and light- ened so. In the morning I made shor she 'd done gone into Aunt Maria's, and sent Eliza to fetch her home ; but they had n't seen her. Then we was mightil)/ scared, and the neighbors all turned out to hunt for her, and about noon they found her away up on the hill lying dead under a tree. I reckoned she started to go into Aunt Maria's, and lost her way, and then a jack-o'-lantern led her off" I remembered her as a bright little creature of six years, who, when I was sitting in her mother's cabin, would run up behind me and pluck my dress, 214 AUNT BECKY S TROUBLES. and then run off to join in the shout of the merry group of h'ttle woolly heads that had witnessed the bold achievement. I was grieved to hear of her sad fate, and did not wonder at Becky's tears. When I questioned her about her circumstances, she said she *' had been mightily put up to get along." At night, they were " so scarce of kiver for the chillun, it seemed as if it was only God that kept them from freezing. In *' the freezing time, a few weeks ago, when the mills all done stopped, we couldn't get the corn ground, and jus' had to bile it, an' eat it so." It was not surprising that little Bella pined away and died. I gave her '' something to put away the child in," a blanket, and some clothing for those that were left, and, through the kindness of an officer of the Freedman's Bureau, she was provided with a coffin, which some of her neighbors "toted" out for her on their shoulders, and again, with many thanks and God-blessings, she turned her sorrowful steps to- wards the wretched little home for which, as she says, she has *' scuffled so hard." CHAPTER IX. REUNIONS. NOTHING in real life can be more touching and romantic than the reunions constantly occurring between friends and kindred long* sepa- rated by the inexorable decrees of slavery, the power that was — the grim tyrant who, having so long hunted down and destroyed the helpless and despairing, is now, at last, himself hunted down and vanquished. ** I 's tinking ebry day, missus," says my patient old cook, Sylvia, ** dat my boy will come to me. He be 's a man now, if he 's living, for he were sol' away from me ten years ago come Christmas, an' he were a big boy den. Mars'r Robert were a mighty good mars'r; but he 'd a heap o' chillun of his own to provide for, and so he were forced to sell some of we-alls. It's a heap worse 'n death, losing 'em dat way. I made shor I done seen my boy come into camp las' night, but it turned out to be Aunt Peggy's boy come from North Car'lina." I have seldom seen a gentleman, white or black, with a more strikingly handsome countenance, or more graceful and easy address, than Napoleon Johnson. It is true, that, as he stood before me to 215 2l6 REUNIONS. beg clothing for his old mother and little brother, you could hardly have told whether the original material of his garments was the butternut-color of the plantation, the gray of the rebel, or the blue of the Federal uniform, so skilfully were they inter- mingled in patches, with bits of old tenting super- added here and there, sewed together with coarse, white yarn, and, for want of buttons, pinned with smooth splinters of wood ; yet, withal, clean and tidy. ** But you are young, and strong for work," I said, '* and should be able to support your old mother and little brother without the help of charity." " Indeed, madam, I do work, day and night, to get bread for them," he replied, lifting his hat with the easy gesture and smile of a gentleman. ** I 've just found my old mother, and got a little place for her to live in ; but she has nothing to wear, and I cannot buy clothes for her now. You would feel sorry, madam, to see how naked she is. I was sold at sheriff's sale twenty years ago this planting time, into North Carolina, when I was just twelve years old, and have just got back to old Virginia." " But how did you find your mother after twenty years' absence?" " I knew where I left her, and was bound to find her if she was living ; so I came back to this part, and went up and down the country, inquiring at all the plantations, and looking into the faces of all the REUNIONS. 217 old women I saw, until at last I found my mother's face." And so this handsome octoroon gentleman of thirty-two, with his soft, black eyes and musical voice, whose patched and many-colored garments cannot hide the real beauty of his soul or the ele- gance of his manners, has been all his life a chattel — standing on the auction-block, knocked off to the highest bidder, chained hand to hand and foot to foot in the gang with women and children driven like dumb cattle to the slave-mart, handed about from one to another as the representative of a handful of gold, ranking in his master's menage a little lower than his favorite dogs and horses. The thought is overwhelming. I turn my face from him for a moment, for he, with his life-long famil- iarity with such terrible facts, will not understand the meaning of these tears. Julia Jackson was a pretty, industrious quadroon woman, who had been employed in our hospital, and, with her little boy, occupied one of the log- cabins built the preceding year by Union soldiers. She had confided to me her expectation of being married in a few months to Richard Hobbs, and had bespoken my assistance in furnishing her trousseau. Soon after, Richard came to me for ad- vice. It seemed that the course of his and Julia's love was not running so smooth as could be desired. He really loved "Miss Julia," he said, "but she had 19 2l8 REUNIONS. turned him out because he had cut wood for another lady." He was now taking care of Isabella, whose husband had left her, — she being quite ill, and having no one to wait on her but himself. His kind attentions to Isabella, while they had aroused Julia's jealousy, had also kindled her repentance, and she, having confessed her folly, wanted him to come back. ''Well, Richard, I think Julia will make you a very good wife ; and if she is really sorry for her unkindness, I advise you to go back to her." ** Yes, Miss Charlotte, I reckoned she 'd make a mighty nice wife, and that we 'd be married, and go North with you in the spring. I thinks I '11 go back to her, but not now. I '11 let her wait awhile, seeing she done turned me out wunst." Not long after, Richard came to me again, one morning, dressed in his ** Sunday clothes," his pants tucked nicely under his high boots, and his toilet complete with the exception of a collar, for which, as he said, he had come to ask me. " Are you going to be married to-day, Richard ?" " No, missus, not to-day. I '11 go and look after my wife, Emmeline, and the children fust." " Your wife and children, Richard ! You never told me you were married." " No, Miss Charlotte, I did n't tol' you, because I 'se been away from my wife two years, an' I thought she were married ag'in by this time. But I REUNIONS. 219 seen a boy in camp last night that done come from Brunswick county, whar she live ; and he say she are having a mighty hard time of it, and want me to come back. So I '11 go." "And so, Richard, you love Emmeline better than any of these * ladies ' to whom you have been so attentive here ? " '' Well, missus, to tell you the truth, if Emmeline had got another husband, I would n't mind marry- ing one of these ladies ; but I feels for her and for my two little chillun. I wants to h^ far an' honest about it, and I can't rest till I go and see how it is with them. If she is n't married, I '11 get her and the chillun out, if I can ; and if she has got another man, I '11 fotch the chillun here, and marry one of these ladies, — Miss Julia, I thinks ; she wants me so mighty bad." On further inquiry, I learned that Richard had left his wife in slavery two years before, near the Weldon railroad, about seventy miles south of our camp. That he had availed himself of a " pamid'' (raid) of Union cavalry, to escape from the bond- age which he did not then know was so soon to be lifted from his race. That he had heard afterwards that his young master had threatened to shoot him if he could ever find him, and, consequently, he would be obliged to go secretly, and bring his wife and children away in the night. His means of ac- complishing this were his resolution, his two hands 220 REUNIONS. and two feet. Nothing more. He thought if he could " borrow " two dollars, he could buy his " eatings " by the way ; and hoped to return in a week. I gave him the desired collar, and the two dollars, and advised him by all means to go and find his wife and children, if it were possible. Two or three weeks had elapsed, and I was beginning to fear he had come to grief in some way, when, one morning, as I was sitting at the breakfast-table, the door of my log-cabin opened, and Richard entered, in a very dilapidated condition. His " Sunday clothes " were in rags. His boots, which were new and glossy when he left, looked as if they had seen years of hard service, and his face, so black and shining, now had grown thin and pale. " I 'se jus' got back wid my life, and dat 's all, missus; but I 'se done fotch my wife an' chillun." He had found his wife in the same little cabin where he left her two years before. She had known nothing of freedom, save that her master, while exacting her accustomed service, had felt free to give her nothing in return, and had been living in the constant hope of seeing or hearing from Richard. His old master, whose plantation was near that of Emmeline's master, had treated him kindly, saying to him, " You 've always been a good nigger, Rich- ard, and I wish you well. You have a right now to your wife and children, but you must get them out in the night. There are no Union men in this REUNIONS. 221 neighborhood, and if the neighbors see you, they'll shoot you. I give you this shot-gun to defend yourself with ; but keep it for your boy, and when he grows up, give it to him as a present from me." His young master sent him word that he would shoot him if he found him on his plantation. Four white men, with guns, were lurking about his wife's cabin all one night, but he managed to elude them. Being thus warned and threatened, he had availed himself of the darkness of midnight to lead away his little family from the land of their affliction. They could take nothing with them but a little bag of corn bread for subsistence by the way. The daughter, eight years old, walked by the side of her mother. The six-year old boy he " toted " all the way in his arms. The journey occupied four days, and some friendly white people gave them shelter at night. When the way-worn travellers arrived at our camp, " Miss Julia " received them kindly in her little cabin ; gave them a share of her ash-cakes and corn-dodgers; brought water and bandages for poor Emmeline's torn and swollen feet, and lent her a dress in which she could appear when she came to beg one for herself " She had hoped to marry Richard," she said ; " but thought he did right in going back to his wife, and, as Emmeline had no other husband, she had the best right to him." 19* 222 REUNIONS. It would be pleasant to conclude this sketch by drawing a picture of a snug little cabin, with pretty flowers in front, and a garden patch of potatoes, cabbages, and corn in the rear, such as doubtless warmed Richard's imagination and nerved his cour- age during those weary and perilous days of tramp- ing and adventure. But, alas ! the story of '* man's inhumanity to man " continually repeats itself. When I returned to the camp, after six months' ab- sence, I learned that certain white men, represent- ing the law of the land, had taken away all guns from colored people, and among them the precious little shot-gun that Richard's master had given him for his own defence, and an heirloom to his boy. It was hard to submit to this new phase of tyranny, and, influenced by evil counsellors, Richard, with sev- eral others, had made an attempt to recover his property. The house containing the guns had been broken open, but, in the scuffle that ensued, Rich- ard's gun had been broken ; and though no one was hurt, he with three or four of his companions was arrested, tried by Virginia magistrates, and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary at Richmond. Poor Emmeline was struggling along as best she could, with the shadow of starvation for herself and children ever by her side. CHAPTER X. LETTERS FROM PETERSBURG, VA., TO JOEL CAD- BURY, JR., PHILADELPHIA. Petersburg, Va., Jan. 9, 1867. Dear Friend. — Since I last wrote, some few things have suggested themselves to me which may be interesting to the friends who are so kind as to send aid to the poor freedmen of the South. There are in Petersburg thirteen thousand colored people to eight thousand whites. Many of them have been doing very well for themselves, buying little patches of ground, and building little cabins, and making their families quite comfortable. On New Year's day, to have seen them marching around the city in a procession five thousand strong, with banners, gay regalia, and all joyful emblems, cele- brating for the second time the anniversary of their emancipation, one would think they were in quite prosperous circumstances. But there are thousands of poor widows, with large families of children, who cannot get work, or when they do get wash- ing or other work to do, do not always get paid for it. There are many old and helpless ones, who 223 224 LETTERS TO JOEL CADBURY, JR. suffer much with rheumatism and, as they say, " old folks' pains." There is a hospital near me with about a hundred of such cases, and the surgeon in charge told me that, until I furnished him with some clothing from that you sent me, some of these old people had not had a change for a year, and were nearly naked. I was of course thankful to be able to furnish them some of the nice warm English clothing which you had placed at my disposal, and hope most sincerely that the blessing of Him who does not forget his "poor little ones," may come to the hearts and homes of those who sent. Some of the same cloth- ing has gone twenty, thirty, and fifty miles into the country, the people in the country being still more destitute than those in the city. Many of the articles in the cask you sent me were precisely adapted to the want, being garments for women and children, of coarse linsey or flannel, and cotton under-garments. But some were of a finer and more expensive material than is suitable. If you communicate with your friends on the subject, I would advise that very little be sent but what is coarse and strong. Any articles of luxury in the way of clothing, it is better not to give them, as these should be the reward of their own labor and industry. Books, also, are of very little use, as few can read. But whole suits of coarse clothing for women and children, including shoes and stock- LETTERS TO JOEL CADBURY, JR. 225 ings, can never come amiss. Gentlemen's cast-off clothing is also very acceptable for the old men. Last year I spent a good deal of money in pro- viding them with garden-seeds and farming utensils, as it was impossible for those in the country to get them for themselves. This was a great help to them, though they say that the owners of the land came around in the fall and took away half of everything. This was twice as much as they should have taken, one-fourth part being the usual allow- ance for the land-holders. I hope that these facts may be of interest to those who are helping us in our endeavors to ameliorate the condition of these poor people. The field is wide here, and the need very great. Up to this date, I have had nothing but what you sent, though goods have been sent from New York, but are frozen up in the James River, which I hope to have in a few days. I am confident there will be pressing need of all that can be had ; so that any aid you can render in the way of clothing or money, I shall be glad to apply as well as I can. The winter is unusually severe, with a large quantity of snow. For distributing in the country, I shall be obliged to depend on the agents of the Bureau, who are very kind and humane, and glad to forward clothing to the poor. One man came from Sussex County, about thirty miles distant, bringing a letter from his former P 226 LETTERS TO JOEL CADBURY, JR. owner, who was known to and endorsed by Major Stone, Superintendent of the District, under the Bureau. It stated that he had an invalid wife, five small children, and a old father and mother to pro- vide for. That he was " a man of most exemplary character, sober and industrious habits," and "I do not know a single instance of misconduct on his part during his life, and he belonged to me many years." This was a remarkable case, but similar ones are of daily occurrence, where men, with large families, are straining every nerve to ** make bread," as they express it, for their families, but where to buy clothing is out of the question. A great number of widows also come, of whom one cannot help wondering how they can get bread, in these fearfully hard times, for themselves and children. I was very glad, also, to be able to supply clothing, from these English packages, to many of the chil- dren in a school four miles from the city, on the Boydtown Plank-road, which I have established on my own responsibility. It is in a neighborhood in which I have been much interested for a long time, and is taught by a young colored woman, who has been in training in our schools ever since they were established here. It is held in one of the many log-houses built by our soldiers during the war, and is on land owned by a colored woman. The teacher, Eliza Alston, is well qualified to instruct them, and I always find the children looking bright LETTERS TO JOEL CADBURY, JR. 22/ and happy with their books, and the school in just as good order as those taught by white teachers. There are about seventy in the day-school, ten or twelve in the night-school, and a hundred in the Sabbath- school. Miss Eliza manages it all herself, conduct- ing with perfect propriety and success the singing, prayers, and lessons. Last Sabbath, I went out to visit the Sabbath- school. It was quite wonderful to see them all so orderly and happy looking. When I recalled to them the great change that had been brought about for their race since a few years back, when their fathers " did not dare so much as to look on a piece of paper as if they knew anything," as they have often told me, and to teach a colored person was a crime, to be punished by the judge, while now they , could sit in the school-house unmolested, with a competent teacher of their own color ; and asked if any one could tell me to whom they were in- debted for this great change in their condition, many hands went up, and one little barefooted fellow, when called upon to answer, said, " Yankees, I reckon ; " while another reckoned it was " the noon- ion army." I think the kind friends who send these valuable gifts of clothing for the naked, may rest assured that, in most cases, they are helping those who are trying to help themselves. It is very true that some of a lazy and vagabond character come to 228 LETTERS TO JOEL CADBURY, JR. beg; but whenever it can be ascertained that they are such, they are sent away empty-handed, our object being, so far as possible, to stimulate exer- tion, but never to encourage idleness. In this district of sixteen counties, there are thousands of families who are thankfully enjoying the benefits of these Christian charities, and taking up the great burden that has fallen so suddenly upon them, with a cheerful courage. The hoes, spades, and garden-seeds have been eagerly sought for, and many more could have been distributed to advantage. For the want of these useful arti- cles, much land in the country will remain uncul- tivated. Many here told me that their chief dependence through the year has been the hoe I gave them last spring. " She has given me a spade and right smart potatoes," said a woman, to-day, " and now I am going home and going right to digging." Many of the men, as they walk off with their spades over their shoulders, a bag of potatoes on their heads, garden-seeds in their pockets, and a bundle of clothing under their arms, throw back from a beaming countenance a glance full of grati- tude, saying, " I never shall forget you. Miss Char- lotte. I certainly docs hope you '11 rest in the Kingdom, when you dies." LETTERS TO JOEL CADBURY, JR. 229 To THE Same. Petersburg, Va., April i, 1867. Dear Friend. — Your four casks of clothing have arrived, and been nearly all distributed, to the great comfort and relief of a large number of suffer- ing women and children. Nothing in the way of gifts to these poor freed- women could have been more appropriate than the heavy, gray, woollen skirts, and nice warm jackets, contained in those packages, and I have distributed them with the greatest satisfaction. Sixty-five suits of assorted sizes have been sent to a hospital of colored people at Farmville, for which an urgent requisition had been on hand for a long time. Many of the patients there were in a suffering condition, having nothing wherewith to change the ragged garments which they were obliged to wear both night and day. The remainder has mostly been given to people coming from the country, distances of from five to thirty miles. The men generally come from the greater distances, to beg for wives and children. The women to whom these garments have been given generally come in " top-coats," as they call their outside garments of tenting, bagging, blankets, or other refuse of the camps, from which, as they say, they " got right smart of such things ; but the white people came round, and made as though they belonged to them. 230 LETTERS TO JOEL CADBURY, JR. and took most of them away." These garments having been worn now nearly two years without change, are very ragged, or patched in all directions with anything that can be had, without reference to any relation in color or quality, and often, for want of buttons, hooks and eyes, or common pins, fastened together in front with smooth splinters of wood. If one can get a soldier's blouse, or blue cape to cover her shoulders, she is particularly fortunate. All the pieces that were invoiced as rugs were given, and very thankfully received, for shawls. Your last invoice of goods has been a very important aid in relieving severe cases of suffer- ing, and will be a help and comfort to many for a year to come. With many thanks, on behalf of the freed people, to yourself and the friends who have so generously co-operated with me, I remain, yours truly, C. E. McKay. Mr. Joel Cadbury, Phila. THE END. 709 i ^ ^ o>' x*-' ■'■^^ ,0-v <^,<^ ^^> .# cS~^ .0 o ■^^ ,/l .^^^■' v\-^-^' -^^^ x^-^ ^*. .Oo. ^/. v-^^ ,0- %^. ■^^>^*^^ ,-^^' o>^ '^./^b. .^0 C^' ^^. ^O ^^^ ^c.^ .Oo. ^-.'^^^^a, '' - '^_ ^ .«>• ' <- « -^1 \ ,^'^^ .V _ ^^*^-".^' ^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 704 718 4