CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.

CAMPAIGNS

A NON-COMBATANT,

ROMAUNT ABROAD DURING THE ¥AR.

BY
GEO. ALEEED TOWNSEND.

NEW YOEK:
BLELOCK & COMPANY,
19 Beekman Street,
1866.

t-Jcl^

Entered according to net of Congress, In tho year 1806, by
GEOEGE ALFRED TOWNSEND,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
tho Soutliern District of New York.

i - ^

SCRTMGEOIT!, TTlllTCSMR & CO.,
SttriotsiJErs,
15 Water Stuei-.t, HohTos.

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

PREFACE.

In the early part of 18C3, while I was resident in London, — the
first ofthe War Correspondents to go abroad, — I wrote, at the
request of ]\Ir. George Smith, pubhsher of the Cornhill Magazine, a
series of chapters upon the Rebellion, thus introduced : —
' ' Few wars have been so well chronicled, as that now desolating
America. Its official narratives have been copious ; the great news
papers of the land have been represented in all its campaigns;
private enterprise has classified and illustrated its several events, and
delegates of foreign countries have been allowed to mingle freely
with its soldiery, and to observe and describe its battles. The pen
and the camera have accompanied its bayonets, and there has not
probably been any skirmish, however insignificant, but a score of
zealous scribes have remarked and recorded it.
" I have employed some leisure hours afforded me in Europe, to
detail those parts ofthe struggle which I witnessed in a civil capacity.
The Sketches which follow are entirely personal, and dwell less upon
routine incidents, plans, and statistics, than upon those lighter phases
of war which fall beneath the dignity of severe history and are seldom
related. I have endeavored to reproduce not only the adventures,
but the impressions of a novitiate, and I have described not merely
the army and its operations, but the country invaded, and the people
who inhabit it.
" The most that I have hoped to do, is so to simplify a campaign
(7)

8 PEEFACE.
that the reader may realize it as if he had beheld it, travelling at
will, as I did, and with no greater interest than to see how fields were
fought and won."
To those chapters, I have added in this collection, some estimates
of American life in Europe, and some European estimates of Ameri
can life ; with my ultimate experiences in the War after my return to
my own country. I cannot hope that they will be received with the
same favor, either here or abroad, as that which greeted their original
publication." But no man ought to let the first four years of his
majority slip away unrecorded. I would rather publish a tolerable
book now than a possibly good one hereafter.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT,
AND His
I
Eomaunt obroalr irurxng ti^z Ular.

CHAPTEE I.
MY IJIPEESSMENT.

" Here is a piece of James Franklin's printing press, Mr.
Townsend," said Mr. Pratt to me, at Newport the other
day, — " Ben. Franklin wrote for the paper, and set type
upon it. The press was imported from England iii 1Y30, or
thereabouts." He produced a piece of wood, a foot in length, and then
laid it away in its drawer very sacredly.
" I should like to write to that press, Mr. Pratt," I said,
— " there would be no necessity in such a case of getting
oif six columns for to-night's mail."
"Well!" said Mr. Pratt/ philosophically, "I have a
theory that a man grows up to machinery. As your day so
shall your strength be. I believe you have telegraphed up
to A House instrument, haven't you ? "
"Mr. Pratt," cried I, with some indignation, "your
memory is too good. This is Newport, and I have come
down to see the surf. Pray, do not remind me of hot hours
in a newspaper ofSce, the click of a Morse ^ispatch, and
work far into the midnight ! "
So I left Mr. Pratt, of the Newport Mercury, with an

10 CAMPAIGNS OF A KON-COJIBATANT.
ostentation of affront, and bade James Brady, the boatman,
hoist sail and carry me over to Dumpling Eocks.
On the grassy parapet of the crumbling tower which once
served the purposes ofa fort, the transparent water hungering
at its base, the rocks covered with fringe spotting the chan
nel, the «cean on my right hand lost in its own vastness,
and Newport out of mind save when the town bells rang, or
the dip of oars beat in the still swell of Narragansett, 
I lay down, chafing and out of temper, to curse the only
pleasurable labor I had ever undertaken.
To me all places were workshops : the seaside, the
springs, the summer mountains, the cataracts, the theatres,
the panoramas of islet-fondled rivers speeding by strange
cities. I was condemned to look lipon them all with mer
cenary eyes, to turn their gladness into torpid prose, and
speak their praises in turgid columns. Never nepenthe,
never abandonne, always wide-awake, and watching for
saliences, I had gone abroad like a falcon, and roamed at
home like a hungry jackal. Six fingers on my hand, one
long and pointed, and ever dropping gall ; the ineradicable
stain upon my thumb ; the widest of my circuits, with all
my adventure, a paltry sheet of foolscap ; and the world in
which 1 dwelt, no place for thought, or dreaminess, or love-
making, — only the fierce, fast, flippant existence of news !
And with this inward execration, I lay on Dumpling
Eocks, looking to sea, and recalled the first fond hours of
my newspaper life.
To be a subject of old Hoe, the most voracious of men, I
gave up the choice of three sage professions, and the sweet
alternative of idling husbandry.
The day I graduated saw me an attache of the Philadel
phia Chameleon. I was to receive three dollars a week and
be the he-ir to lordly prospects. In the long course- of per
severing yeais I might sit in the cushions of the night-edi
tor, or speak ofthe striplings around me as "m?/ reporters."
" There is nothing which you cannot attain," said Mr.

caSipaigns of a kon-combatant. 11
Axiom, my employer, — "think of the influence you exer
cise! — more than a clergyman ; Horace Greeley was an
editor; so was George D. Prentice ; the first has just been
defeated for Congress ; the last lectured last night and got
fifty dollars for it."
Hereat I was greatly encouraged, and proposed to write
a leader for next day's paper upon the evils of the Fire De
partment. " Dear me," said Mr. Axiom, " you would ruin our circu
lation at a wink ; what would become of our ball column ?
in case of a fire in the building we couldn't get a hose to play
on it. Oh I no, Alfred, writing 1-eaders is hard and danger
ous ; I want you first to learn the use of a beautiful pair of
scissors." I looked blank and chopfallen.
" No man can write a good hand or a good style," he
said, " without experience with scissors. They give your
palm flexibility and that is soon imparted to the mind. But
perfection is attained by an alternate use of the scissors and
the pen ; if a little paste be prescribed at the same time, co-
hesion^and steadfastness is imparted to the man."
His reasoning was incontrovertible ; but I damned his
conclusions. So, I spent one month in slashing several hundred ex
changes a day, and paragraphing all the items. These re
appeared in a column called "the latest information," and
when I found them copied into another journal, a flush of
satisfaction rose to my face.
The editor ofthe Gha-meleon was an old journalist, whose
face was a sealed book of Confucius, and who talked to me,
patronizingly, now and then, like the Delphic Oracle. His
name was Watch, and he wore a prodigious pearl in his
shirt-bosom. He crept up to the editorial room at nine
o'clock every night, and dashed oflf an hour's worth of glit
tering generalities, at the end of which time two or three
gentlemen, blooming at the nose, and with cheeks resem-

12 campaigns of a non-combatant.
bling a map drawn in red ink, sounded the pipe below stairs,
and Mr. Watch said —
" Mr. Townsend, I look to you to be on hand to-night;
I am called away by the Water-Gas Company."
Then, with enthusiasm up to blood-heat, aroused by this
mark of confidence, I used to set to, and scissor and write
till three o'clock, while Mr. Watch talked water-gas over
brandy and water, and drew his thirty dollars punctually on
Saturdays. So it happened that my news paragraphs, sometimes
pointedly turned into a reflection, crept into the editorial
columns, when water-gas was lively. Venturing more and
more, the clipper finally indited a leader ; and Mr. Watch,
whose nose water-gas was reddening, applauded me, and
told me in his sublime way, that, as a special favor, I might
write all the leaders the next night. Mr. Watch was seen
no more in the sanctum for a week, and my three dollars
carried on the concern.
When he returned, he generously gave me a dollar, and
said that he had spoken of me to the Water-Gas Company as
a capital secretary. Then he wrote me a pass for thg Arch
Street Theatre, and told me, benevolently, to go oflf and rest
that night.
For a month or more the responsibility of the Chameleon
devolved almost entirely upon me. Child that I was, know
ing no world but my own vanity, and pleased with those
who fed its sensitive love of approbation rather than with
the just and reticent, I harbored no distrust till one day
when Axiom visited the oflSce, and I was drawing my
three dollars from th^ treasurer, I heard Mr. Watch exclaim,
within tbe publisher's room —
" Did you read my article on the Homestead Bill ? "
"Yes," answered Axiom; "it was quite clever; your
leaders are more alive and epigrammatic than they
were." I could stand it no more. I bolted into the oflSce, and
cried —

campaigns of a non-combatant. 13
" The article on the Homestead Bill is mine, so is every
other article in to-day's paper. Mr. Watch does not tell the
truth ; he is ungenerous ! "
" What's this, Watch ? " said Axiom.
"Alfred," exclaimed Mr. Watch, majestically, "adopts
m.y suggestions very readily, and is quite industrious. I
recommend that we raise his salary to five dollars a week.
That is a largo sum for a lad."
That night the manuscript was overhauled in the compos
ing room. Watch's dereliction was manifest ; but not a
word was said commendatory of my labor ; it was feared I
might take " airs," or covet a further increase of wages. I
only missed Watch's hugh pearl, and heard that he had been
discharged, and was myself taken from the drudgery of the
scissors, and made a reporter.
All this was very recent, yet to me so far remote, that as
I recall it all, I wonder if I am not old, and feel nervously*
of my hairs. For in the five intervening years 1 have ridden
at Hoe speed down the groove of my steel-pen.
The pen is my traction engine ; it has gone through
worlds of fancy and reflection, dragging me behind it ; and
long experience has given it so great facility, that I have
only to fire up, whistle, and fix my couplings, and away
goes my locomotive with no end of cars in train.
Few journalists, beginning at the bottom, do not weary
of the ladder ere they climb high. Few of such, or of others
more enthusiastic, recall the early associations of "the
oflSce" with pleasure. Yet there is no world more gro
tesque, none, at least in America, more capable of fictitious
illustration. Around a newspaper all the dramatis personae
of the world congregate ; within it there are staid idiosyn
cratic folk who admit of all kindly caricature.
I summon from that humming and hurly-burly past, the
ancient proof-reader. He wears a green shade over his eyes
and the gas burner is drawn very low to darken the bald
and wrinkled contour of his forehead. He is severe in
2

14 C.4JMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
judgment and spells rigidly by the Johnsonian standard.
He punctuates by an obdurate and conscientious method,
and will have no italics upon any pretext. He "will lend
you money, will eat with you, drink with you, and encour
age you ; bpt he will not punctuate with you, spell with
you, nor accept any of your suggestions as to typography
or paragraphing whatsoever. He wears slippers and smokes
a primitive clay pipe ; he has everything in its place, and
you cannot offend him more than by looking over any proof
except when he is holding it. A chip of himself is the copy
holder at his side, — a meagre, freckled, matter of fact
youth, who reads your tenderest sentences in a rapid mono
tone, and is never known to venture any opinion or sugges
tion whatever. This boy, I am bound to say, will follow
the copy if it be all consonants, and will accompany it if it
flies out of the window.
The oflSce clerk was -my bane and admiration. He was
presumed bj' the verdant patrons bf the paper to be its
owner and principal editor, its type-setter, pressman, and
Carrier. His hair was elaborately curled, and his ears were
perfect racks of long and dandyfied pens ; a broad, shovel-
shaped gold pen lay forever opposite his high stool ; he had
an arrogant and patronizing address, and was the perpetual
cabbager of editorial perquisites. Books, ball-tickets, sea
son-tickets, pictures, disappeared in his indiscriminate fist,
and he promised notices which he could not write to no end
of applicants. He was to be seen at the theatre every night,
and he was t'he dashing escort of the proprietor's wife, who
preferred his jaunty coat and highly-polished boots to the
less elaborate wardrobe of us writers. That this noble and
fashionable creature could descend to writing wrappers, and
to waiting his turn with a bank-book in the long train of a
sordid teller, passed all speculation and astonishment. He
made a sorry fag of the oflSce boy, and advised us every day
to beware of cutting the files, as if that were the one vice
of authors. To him- we stole, with humiliated faces, aud

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 15
. begged a trifling advance of salary. He sternly requested
us not to encroach behind the counter — his own indisput
able domain — but sometimes asked us to watch the office
while he drank with a theatrical agent at the nearest bar.
He was an inveterate gossip, and endowed with a damnable
love of slipshod argument ; the only oral censor upon our
compositions, he hailed us with all the complaints made at
his solicitation by irascible subscribers, and stood in awe of
the cashier only,' who frequently, to our delight and surprise,
combed him over, and drove him to us for sympathy.
The foreman was still our power behind the throne ; he
left out our copy on mechanical grounds, and put it in for
our modesty and sophistry. In his broad, hot room, all
flaring with gas, he stood at a flat stone like a surgeon, and'
took forms to pieces and dissected huge columns of preg
nant metal, and paid off the hands with fabulous amounts of
uncurrent bank bills. His wife and he went thrice a year
on excursions to the sea-side, and he was forever borrowing
a dollar from somebodv to treat the lender and himself.
The ship-news man could be seen towards the small-hours,
writing his highly imaginative department, which showed
how the Sally Ann, Master Todd, arrived leaky in Bombay
harbor ; and there were stacks of newsboys asleep on the
boilers, fighting in their dreams for the possession of a frag
ment of a many-cornered blanket.
These, like myself, went into the halcyon land of Nod to
the music of a crashing press, and swarmed about it at the
dawn like so many gad-flies about an ox, to carry into the
awakening city the rhetoric and the rubbish I had written.
Andf still they go, and still the great press toils along, and
still am I its slave and keeper, who sit here by the proud,
free sea, and feel like Sinbad, that to a terrible old man I
have sold my youth, my convictions, my love, my life 1

CHAPTEE n.
THE WAU correspondent's FIRST DAY.
Looking back over the four years of the war, and noting
how indurated I have at last become, both in body and in
emotibn, I recall with a sigh that first morning of my cor-
respondentship when I set out so light-hearted and yet so
anxious. It was in 1861. I was accompanied to the War
department by an attache of the United States Senate. The
new Secretary, Mr. Edwin M. Stanton, referred me to a Mr.
Sanford, " Military Supervisor of Army Intelligence," and
after a brief delay I was requested to sign a p'arole and du
plicate, specifying my loyalty to the Federal Government,
and my promise to publish nothing detrimental to its inter
ests, I was then given a circular, which stated explicitly
the kind of news termed contraband, and also a printed pass,
filled in with my name, age, residence, and newspaper con
nection. The latter enjoined upon all guards- to pass me in
and out of camps ; and authorized persons iii Government
employ to furnish me with information.
Our Washington Superintendent sent me a beast, and in
compliment to what the animal might have been, called the
same a horse. I wish to protest, in this record, against any
such misnomer. The creature possessed no single equine
element. Experience has satisfied me that horses stand on
four legs ; the horse in question stood upon three. Horses
may either pace, trot, run, rack, or gallop ; but mine made
all the five movements at once. I think I may call his gait
(16)

C.V3IPAIGXS OF A NON-COilBATANT. 17
an eccentric stumble. That he had endurance I admit ; for
he survived perpetual beating ; and his beauty might have
been apparent to an anatomist, but would be scouted by tbe
v/orld at large. I asked, ruefully, if I was expected to go
into battle so mounted ; but was peremptorily forbidden, as
a valuable property might be endangered thereby. I was
assigned to the Pennsylvania Eeserve Corps in the antici
pated advance, and my friend, the attache, accompanied me
to its rendezvous at Hunter's Mills. We started at two
o'clock, and occupied an hour in passing the city limits. I
calculated that, advancing at the same ratio, we should ar
rive in camp at noon next day. We presented ludicrous
figures to the grim sabremen that sat erect at street corners,
and ladies at the windows of the dwellings smothered with
suppressed laughter as we floundered along. My friend
had the better horse ; but I was the better rider ; and if at
any time I grew wrathful at my sorry plight, I had but to
look at his and be happy again. He appeared to be riding
on the neck of his beast, and when he attempted to deceive
me with a smile, his face became horribly contorted. Di
rectly his breeches worked above his boots, and his bare
calves were objects of hopeless solicitude. Caricatures,
rather than men, we toiled bruisedly through Georgetown,
and falling in the wake of supply teams on the Leesburg
turnpike, rode between the Potomac on one side and the
dry bed of the canal on the other, till we came at last to
Chain Bridge.
There was a grand view from the point of Little Falls
above, where a line of foamy cataracts ridged the river, and
the rocks towered gloomily on either hand : and of the city
below, with its buildings of pure marble, and the yellow
earthworks that crested Arlington Heights. The clouds
over the Potomac were gorgeous in hue, but forests of mel
ancholy pine clcthed the sides of the hills, and the roar of
the river made such beautiful monotone that I almost thought
it could be translated to words, Our passes were now de-
2*

18 CA5IPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
manded by a fat, bareheaded oflScer, and while he panted
through their contents, two privates crossed their bayonets
before us.
" News ? " he said, in the shortest remark of which he
was capable. When assured that we had nothing to reveal,
he seemed immeasurably relieved,^ and added — "Great
labor, reading ! " At this his face grew so dreadfully
purple that I begged him to sit down, and tax himself with
no further exertion. He wiped his forehead, in reply, gasp
ing like a triton, and muttering the expressive direction,
" right ! " disappeared into a guard-box. The two privates
winked as they removed their muskets, and we both laughed
immoderately when out of hearing. Our backs were npw
turned to the Maryland shore, and jutting grimly from the
hill before us, the black guns of Fort Ethan Allen pointed
down the bridge. A double line of sharp abattis protected
it from assault, and sentries walked lazily up and down the
parapet. The colors hung against the mast in the dead
calm, and the smoke curled straight upward from some log-
huts within the fort. .The wildness ofthe surrounding land
scape was most remarkable. Within sight of the Capital of
the Eepublic, the fox yet kept the covert, and the farms
were few and far apart. It seemed to me that little had
been done to clear the country of its primeval timber, and
the war had accomplished more to give evidence of man and
industry, than two centuries of occupation. A military
road had been cut through the solid rocks here ; aud the
original turnpike, whitfh had been little more than a cart
track, was now graded and macadamized. I passed mul
titudes, of teams, struggling up the slopes, and the carcasses
of mules littered every rod of the way. The profanity of
the teamsters was painfully apparent. I came unobserved
upon one who was berating his beasts with a refinement of
cruelty. He cursed each of them separately, swinging his
long-lashed whip the while, and then damned the six in
mass. He would have made a dutiful overseer. The sol-

campaigns of a NON-COMBATANT. 19
diers had shown quite as little consideration for the resi
dences along the way. I came to one dwelling where some
pertinacious Vandal had even pried out the window-frames,
and imperilled his neck to tear out the roof-beams ; a dead
vulture was pinned over the door by pieces of broken bayo
nets. "Langley's," — a few plank-houses, clustering around a
tavern and a church, — is one of those settlements whose
sounding names beguile the reader into an idea of their
importance. A lonesome haunt in time of peace, it had
lately been the winter quarters of fifteen thousand soldiers,
and a multitude of log huts had grown up around it. I tied
my horse to the window-shutter of a dwelling, and picked
my viray over a slimy sidewalk to the ricketty tavern-porch.
Four or five privates lay here fast asleep, and the bar-room
was occupied by a bevy of young oflScers, who were empty
ing the contents of sundry pocket-flasks. Behind the bar
sat a person with strongly-marked Hebrew features, and a
watchmaker was plying his avocation in a corner. Two
great dogs crouched under a bench, and some highly-colored
portraits were nailed to the wall. The floor was bare, and
some-clothing and miscellaneous articles hung from beams
in the ceiling.
" Is this your house? " I said to the Hebrew.
" I keepsh it now."
" By right or by conquest ? "
"By ze right of conquest," he said, laughing; and at
once proposed to sell me a bootjack and an India-rubber
overcoat. I compromised upon a haversack, which he, filled
with sandwiches and sardines, and which I am bound to say
fell apart in the course of the afternoon. The watchmaker
was an enterprising young fellow, who had resigned his
place in a large Broadway establishment, to speculate in
cheap jewelry and do itinerant repairing. He says that he
followed the " Army Paymasters, and sold numbers of
watches, at good premiums, when the troops had money."

20 campaigns of a non-combatant.
Soldiers, he informed me, were reckless spendthrifts ; and
the prey of sutlers and sharpers. When there was nothing
at hand to purchase, they gambled away their wages, and
most of them left the service penniless and in debt. He
thought it perfectly legitimate to secure some silver while
" going," but complained that the value of his stock ren
dered him liable to theft and murder. " There are men in
every regiment," said he, " who would blow out my brains
in any lonely place to plunder me of these watches."
At this point, a young officer, in a fit of bacchanal laugh
ter, staggered rather roughly against me.
" Begurpardon," he said, with an unsteady bow, "never
ran against person in life before."
I smiled assuringly, but he appeared to think the offence
unpardonable. " Do asshu a, on honor of gentlemand oflScer, not in
custom of behaving offensively. Azo ! leave it to my friends.
Entirely due to injuries received at battle Drainesville."
As the other gentlemen laughed loudly here, I took it for
granted that my apologist had some personal hallucination
relative to that engagement.
" What giggling for, Bob ? " he said ; "honor concerned
in this matter. Will 1 Do asshu a, fell under Colonel's horse,
and Company A walked over small of my back." The
other oflScers were only less inebriated and most of them
spoke boastfully of their personal prowess at Drainesville.
This was the only engagement in which the Pennsylvania
Eeserves had yet participated, and few officers, that I met
did not ascribe the victory entirely to their own individual
gallantry. I inquired of these gentlemen the route to the
new encampments of the Eeserves. They lay five miles
south of the turnpike, close to the Loudon and Hampshire
railroad, and along both sides of an unfrequented lane.
They formed in this position the right vsdng of the Army of
the Potomac, and had been ordered to hold themselves in
hourly readiness for an advance. By this time, my friend

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 21
S. came up, and leaving him to restore his mortified body, I
crossed the road to the churchyard and peered through the
open door into the edifice. The seats of painted pine had
been covered with planks, and a sick man lay above every
pew. At the ringing of my spurs in tho threshold, some of
the sufierers looked up through the red eyes of fever, and
the faces of others were spectrally white. A few groaned
as they turned with difficulty, and some shrank in pain from
the glare of the light. Medicines were kept in the altar-
place, and a doctor's clerk was writing requisitions in the
pulpit. The sickening smell of the hospital forbade mQ,:-to
enter, and walking across the trampled yard, 1 crept through
a rent in the paling, and examined the huts in which the
Eeserves had passed the winter. They were built of logs,
plastered with mud, and the roofs of some were thatched
with straw. Each cabin was pierced for two or more
windows ; the beds were simply shelves or berths ; a
rough fireplace of stones and clay eommunicated with the
wooden chimney ; and the floors were in most cases damp
and bare. ¦ Streets, fancifully designated, divided the set
tlement irregularly ; but the tenements were now - all
deserted save one, where I found a whole family of " contra
bands " or fugitive slaves. These wretched beings, seven
in number, had escaped from a plantation in Albemarle
county, and travelling stealthily by night, over two hundred
miles of precipitous country, reached the Federal lines on
the thirteenth day. The husband said that his name was
" Jeems," and that his wife was called "Kitty ; " that his
youngest boy had passed the mature age of eight months,
and that the " big girl, Eosy," was " twelve years Christ
mas comin'." While the troops remained at Langley's, the
man was employed at seventy-five cents a week to attend to
an officer's horse. Kitty and Eose cooked and washed for
soldiers, and the boys ran errands to Washington and return,
— twenty-five miles ! The eldest boy, Jefferson, had been
given the use of a crippled team-horse, and traded in news-

22 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
papers, but having confused ideas of the relative value, of
coins, his profits were only moderate. The nag died before
the troops removed, and a sutler, under pretence of securing
their passage to the North, disappeared with the little they
had saved. They were quite destitute now, but looked to
the future with no foreboding, and huddled together in the
straw, made a picture of domestic felicity that impressed me
greatly with the docility, contentment, and unfailing good
humor of their dusky tribe. The eyes of the children were
large and lustrous, and they revealed the clear pearls be
neath their lips as they clung bashfully to their mother's
lap. The old lady was smoking a clay pipe ; the man run
ning over some castaway jackets andboots. I remarked par
ticularly the broad shoulders and athletic arms of the woman,
whose many childbirths hadleft no traces uponher comeliness.
She asked me, wistfully: "Masser, how fur to de nawf ?"
" A long way," said I, " perhaps two hundred miles."
"Lawd!" she said, buoyantly — "is dat all? Why,
Jeems, couldn't we foot it, honey ? "
"You a most guv out before, ole 'oman," he replied;
"got a good ruflf over de head now. Guess de white massar
won't let um starve."
I tossed some coppers to the children and gave each a
sandwich. " You get up dar, John Thomas ! " called the man vigor
ously ; "you tank de gentleman, Jefferson, boy I I wonda
wha your manners is. Tank you, massar ! know'd you was
a gentleman, sar ! Massar, is your family from ole Vir-
ginny?" It was five o'clock when I rejoined S., and the greater
part of our journey had yet to be made. I went at his
creeping pace until courtesy yielded to impatience, when
spurring my Pegasus vigorously, he fell into a bouncing
' amble and left the attache far behind. My pass was again
demanded above Langley's by a man who ate apples as he
examined it, and who was disposed to hold a long parley.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 23
I entered a region of scrub timber further on, and met with
nothing human for four miles, at the end of which distance I
reached Difficult Creek, flowing through a rocky ravine, and
crossed by a military bridge of logs. Through the thick
woods to the right, I heard the roar of the Potomac, and a
finger-board indicated that I was opposite Great Falls.
Three or four dead horses lay at the roadside beyond the
stream, and I recalled the place as the scene of a recent
cavalry encounter. A cartridge-box and a torn felt hat lay
close to the carcasses : 1 knew that some soul had gone
herrce to its account.
The road now kept to the left obliquely, and much of my
ride was made musical by the stream. Darkness closed
solemnlj" about me, with seven miles of the journey yet to
accomplish, and as, at eight o'clock, I turned from the turn
pike into a lonesome by-road, full of ruts, pools, and quick
sands, a feeling of delicious uneasiness for the first time
possessed me. Some owls hooted in the depth of the woods,
and wild pigs, darting across the road, went crashing into
the bushes. The phosphorescent bark of a blasted tree
glimmered on a neighboring knoll, and as I halted at a
rivulet to water my beast, I saw a solitary star floating
down the ripples. Directly I came upon a clearing where
the moonlight shone through the rents of a crumbling dwell
ing, and from the far distance broke the faint howl of farm
dogs. A sense of insecurity that I would not for worlds
have resigned, now tingled, now chilled my blood. At last,
climbing a stony hill, the skies lay beneath me reddening
with the flame of camps and flaring and falling alternately,
like the beautiful Northern lights. I heard the ring of hoofs
as I looked entranced, and in a twinkling, a body of horse
men dashed past me and disappeared. A little beyond, the
road grew so thick that I could see nothing of my way ; but
trusting doubtfully to my horse, a deep challenge came
directly from the thicket, and I saw the flash of a sabre, as I
stammered a reply. Led to a cabin close at hand, my pass

24 campaigns of a non-combatant.
was examined by candle-light, and I learned that the nearest
camp of the Eeserves was only a mile farther on, and the
regiment of which I was in quest about tvi^o miles distant.
After another half hour, I reached Ord's brigade, whose
tents were pitched in a fine grove of oaks ; the men talking,
singing, and shouting, around open air fires ; and a battery of
brass Napoleons unlimbered in front, pointing significantly
to the West and South. For a mile and a half I rode by the
light of continuous camps, reaching at last the quarters of
the  th, commanded by a former newspaper associate of
mine, with whom I had gone itemizing, scores of times.
His regiment had arrived only the same afternoon, and their
tents were not yet pitched. Their muskets were stacked
along the roadside, and the men lay here and there wrapped
in their blankets, and dozing around the fagots. The
Colonel was asleep in a wagon, but roused up at the sum
mons of his Adjutant, and greeting me warmly, directed the-
cook to prepare a supper of coffee and fried pork. Too
hungry to feel the chafing of my sores and bruises, I fell to
the oleaginous repast with my teeth and fingers, and eating
ravenously ,^asked at last to be shown to my apartments.
These consisted of a covered wagon, already occupied by
four teamsters, and a blanket, which had evidently been in
close proximity to the hide of a horse. A man named
" Goggle," being nudged by the Colonel, and requested to
take other quarters, asked dolorously if it was time to turn
out, and roared " woa," as if he had some consciousness of
being kicked. When I asked for a pillow, the Colonel
laughed, and I had an intuition that the man " Coggle " was
looking at me in the darkness with intense disgust. The
Colonel said that he had once put a man on double duty for
placing his head on a snowball, and warned me satirically
that such luxuries were preposterous in the field. He
recommended me not to catch cold if I could helpTt, but
said that people in camp commonly caught several colds at
once, and added grimly that if I wished to be shaved in the

campaigns of a non-combatant. 25
morning, there was a man close by, who had ground a sabre
down to the nice edge of a razor, and who could be made to
accommodate me. There were cracks in the bottom of the
wagon, through which the cold came like knives, and I was
allotted a space four feet in length, by three feet in
width. Being six feet in height, my relation to these Procrustean
quarters was most embarassing ; but I doubled up, chatter-
ingly, and lay my head on my arm. In a short time I expe
rienced a sensation akin to that of being guillotined, and
sitting bolt upright, found the teamsters in the soundest of
Lethean conditions. As the man next to me snored very
loudly, I adopted the brilliant idea of making a pillow of
his thigh ; which answered my best expectations. I was
aroused filter a while, by what I thought to be the violent
hands of this person, but which, to my great chagrin,
proved to be S., intent upon dividing my place with me.
Eesistance was useless. I submitted to martyrdom with
due resignation, but half resolved to go home in the morn
ing, and shun, for the future, the horrible romance of camps.
3

CHAPTEE in.
A GENERAL UNDER TUB MICROSCOPE.
JWhen I awoke at Colonel Taggert's tent the morning af
terward, I had verified the common experience of camps by
" catching several colds at once," and felt a general sensa
tion of being cut off at the knees. Poor S., who joined me
at the fire, states that ha believed himself to be tied in
knots, and that he should return afoot to Washington. Our
horses looked no worso, for that would have beeri manifestly
impossible. We were made the butts of much jesting at
breakfast ; and S. said, in a spirit of atrocity, that camp wit
was quite as bad as "camp " wittles." I bade him adieu at
five o'clock A. M., when he had secured passage to the city
in a sutler's wagon. Eemounting my own fiery courser, I
bade the Colonel a temporary farewell, and proceeded in the
direction of Meade's and Eeynold's brigades. The drum
and fife were now beating reveille, and volunteers in various
stages of undress were limping to roll-call. Some wore one
shoe, and others appeared shivering in their linen. They
stood ludicrously in rank, and a succession of short, dry
coughs ran up and down the line, as if to indicate those
who should escape the bullet for the lingering agonies of
the hospital. The ground was damp, and fog was rising
from the hollows and fens. Some signal corps officers were
practising with flags in a ploughed field, and negro stewards
were stirring about the cook fires. A few supply wagons
that I passed the previous day were just creaking into camp,
(26)

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 27
having travelled most of the night. I saw that the country
was rude, but the farms were close, aud the dwellings in
many cases inhabited. The vicinity had previously been
unoccupied by either army, and rapine had as yet appropri
ated only the fields for camps and the fences for fuel. I was
directed to the headquarters of Major-General M'Call, — a
cluster of wall tents in the far corner of a grain-field, con
cealed from public view by a projecting point of woods. A
Sibley tent stood close at hand, where a soldier in blue over
coat was reading signals through a telescope. I mistook
the tent for the General's, a,nd riding up to the soldier was
requested to stand out of the way. I moved to his rear,
but he said curtly that I was obstructing the light. I then
dismounted, and led my horse to a clump of trees a rod dis
tant. " Don't hitch there," said the soldier ; " you block up the
view." A little ruflSed at this manifest discourtesy, I asked the
man to denote some point within a radius of a mile where
I would not interfere with his operations. He said in reply,
that it was not his business to denote hitching-stalls for
anybody. I thought, in that case, that I should stay where
I was, and he politely informed me that I might stay and be
— jammed. I found afterward that this individual was
troubled with a kind of insanity peculiar to all headquar
ters, arising out of an exaggerated idea of his own impor
tance. I had the pleasure, a few minutes afterward, of hear
ing him ordered to feed my horse. A thickset, gray-haired
man sat near by, undergoing the process of shaving by a
very nervous negro. The thickset man was also exercising
the privileges of his rank ; but the more he berated his at
tendant's awkwardness, the more nervous the other became.
I addressed myself mutually to master and man, in an in
quiry as to the precise quarters of the General in command.
The latter pointed to a wall tent contiguous, and was cursed
by the thickset man for not minding his business. Tho

28 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
thickset man remarked substantially, that he didn't know
anything about it, and was at that moment cut by the negro,
to my infinite delight. Before the wall tent in question
stood a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman in shirt-sleeves and •
slippers, warming his back and hands at a fire. He was
watching, through an aperture in the tent, the movements ,
of a private who was cleaning his boots. I noticed that he
wore a seal ring, and that he opened and shut his eyes very
rapidly. He was, otherwise, a very respectable and digni
fied gentleman.
"Is this General M'Call?" said I, a little discomposed.
The gentleman looked abstractedly into my eyes, opening
and shutting his own several times, as if doubtful of his
personality, and at last decided that he was General M'Call.
" What is it ? " he said gravely, but without the slightest
curiosity. " I have a letter for you, sir, I believe."
He put the letter behind his back, and went on warming
his hands. Having winked several timesagain, apparently
forgetting all' about the matter, I ventured to add that the
letter was merely introductory. He looked at it, mechan
ically. " Who opened it ? " he said.
" Letters of introduction are not commonly sealed. Gen
eral." " Who are you ? " he asked, indifferently.
I told him that the contents of the letter would explain
my errand ; but he had, meantime, relapsed into abstract
edness, and winked, and warmed his hands, for at least, five
minutes. At the end of that time, he read the letter very
deliberately, and said that he was glad to see me in camp.
He intimated, that if 1 was not already located, I could be
provided with bed and meals at headquarters. He stated,
in relation to my correspondence, that all letters sent from the
Eeserve Corps, must, without any reservations, be submit
ted to him in person. I was obliged to promise compliance,

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 29
but had gloomy forebodings that the General would occupy
a fortnight in the examination of each letter. He invited
me to breakfast, proposed to make me acquainted with his
staff, and was, in all respects, a very grave, prudent, and
affable soldier. I may say, incidentally, that I adopted
the device of penning a couple of gossipy epistles, the
length and folly of which, so irritated General M'Call, that
he released me from the penalty of submitting my composi
tions for the future.
I took up my permanent abode with quartermaster King-
wait, a very prince of old soldiers, who had devoted much
of a sturdy life to promoting the militia interests of the pop
ulous county of Chester. When the war-fever swept down
his beautiful valley, and the drum called the young men
from villages and farms, this ancient yeoman and miller —
for he was both — took a musket at the sprightly age of
sixty-five, and joined a Volunteer company. Neither ridi
cule nor entreaty could bend his purpose ; but the Secre
tary of War, hearing of the case, conferred a brigade quar-
termastership upon him. He threw off the infirmities of
age, stepped as proudly as any youngster, and became, em
phatically, the best quartermaster in the Division. He
never delayed an advance with tardy teams, nor kept the
General tentless, nor penned irregular requisitions, nor
wasted the property of Government. The ague seized him,
occasionally, and shook his grey hairs fearfully ; but he al
ways recovered to ride his black stallion on long forages^
and his great strength and bulk were the envy of all the
young officers.
He grasped my hand so heartily that I positively howled,
and commanded a tall sergeant, rejoicing in the name of
Clover, to take away my horse and split him up for kind
ling wood.
" We must give him the blue roan, that Fogg rides,"
said the quartermaster, to the great dejection of Fogg, a
short stout youth, who was posting accounts. I was glad
3*

30 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
to see, however, that Fogg was not disposed to be angry,
and when informed that a certain iron-gray iiag was at his dis
posal, he was in a perfect glow of good humor. The other
attaches were a German, whose name, as I caught it, seemed
to be Skyhiski ; and a pleasant lad called Owen, whose dis
position was so mild, that I wondered how he had adopted
the bloody profession of arms. A black boy belonged to
the establishment, remarkable, chiefly, for getting close to
the heels of the black stallion, and being frequently kicked ;
he was employed to feed and brush the said stallion, and
the antipathy between them was intense.
The above curious military combination, slept under a
great tarpaulin canopy, originally used for covering com
missary stores from the rain. Our meals were taken in the
open air, and prepared by Skyhiski ; but there was a second
tent, provided with desk and secretary, where Mr. Fogg
performed his clerk duties, daily. When 1 had relieved my
Pegasus of his saddle, and penned some paragraphs for a
future letter, I strolled down the road with the old gentle
man, who insisted upon showing me Hunter's mill, a st(Jtm-
beaten structure, that looked like a great barn. The mill-
race had been drained by some soldiers for the purpose of
securing the fish contained in it, and the mill-wheel was
quite dry and motionless. Difficult Creek ran impetuously
across the road below, as if anxious to be put to some use
again ; and the miller's house adjoining, was now used as a
hospital, for Lieutenant-Colonel Kane, and some inferior
officers. It was a favorite design of the Quartermaster's to
scrape the mill-stone, repair the race, and put the great
breast-wheel to work. One could see that the soldier had
not entirely obliterated the miller, and as he related, with a
glowing face, the plans that he had proposed to recuperate
the tottering structure, and make it serviceable to the atmy,
I felt a regret that such peaceful ambitions should have
ever been overruled by the call to arms.
While we stood at the mill window, watching the long
stretches of white tents and speculating upon the results of

CAMPAIGNS OF A, NON-COMBATANT. 31
war, we saw several men running across the road toward a
hill-top cottage, where General Meade made his quarters.
A small group was collected at the cottage, reconnoitring
something through their telescopes. As I hastened in that
direction, 1 heard confused voices, thus : " No, it isn't!"
."It is!" "Can you make out his shoulder-bar? "
" What is the color of his coat ? " " Gray ! " " No, it's
butternut!" " Has he a.musket!" "Yes, he is level
ling it ! " At this the group scattered in every direction.
" Pshaw ! '-^ said one, " we are out of range ; besides, it is
a telescope that he has. By  , it is a Eebel, reconnoi
tring our camp I " There was a manifest sensation here,
and one man wondered how he had passed the picket.
Another suggested that he might be accompanied by a
troop, and a third convulsed the circle by declaring that
there were six other Eebels visible in a woods to the left.
Mr. Fogg had meantime come up and proffered me a field-
glass, through which I certainly made out a person in gray,
standing in the middle of the road just at the ridge of a
hill. When I dropped my glass I saw him distinctly with
the naked eye. He was probably a mile distant, and his
gray vesture was little relieved by the blue haze of the
forest. " He isgoing," exclaimed a private, excitedly ; " where's
the man that was to try a lead on him? " Several started
impulsively for their pieces, and some officers called for
their horses. "There go his knees!" "His body is be
hind the hill ! " " Now his head  "
"Crack! crack! crack!" spluttered musketry from the
edge ofthe mill, and like as many rockets darted a score of
horsemen through the creek and up the steep. Directly a
faint hurrah pealed from the camp nearest the mill. It
passed to the qext camp and the next ; for all were now
earnestly watching ; and finally a medley of cheers shook
the air and the ear. Thousands| of brave men were shout
ing the requiem of one paltry life. The rash fool hii^
bought with his temerity a bullet in the brain. When/

32 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
saw him— dusty and still bleeding — he was beset by a
full regiment of idlers, to wliom death had neither awe nor
respect. They talked of the delicate shot, as connoisseurs
in the art of murder, — and two men dug him a grave on
the green before the mill, wherein he was tossed like a dog
or a vulture, to be lulled, let us hope, by the music of the
grinding, when grain shall ripen once more.
I had an opportunity, after dinner, to inspect the camp of
the " Bucktails," a regiment of Pennsylvania backwoods
men, whose efficiency as skirmishers has been adverted to
by all chroniclers of the civil war. They wore the ccrmmon
blue blouse and breeches, but were distinguished by squir
rel tails fastened to their caps. They were reputed to be
the best marksmen in the service, and were generally
allowed, in action, to take their own positions and fire at
will. Crawling through thick woods, or trailing ser
pent-like through the tangled grass, these mountaineers
were for a time the terror of the Confederates ; but when
their mode of fighting had been understood, their adversa
ries improved upon it to guch a degree that at the date of
this writing there is scarcely a Corporal's guard ofthe origi
nal Bucktail regiment remaining. Slaughtered on the field,
perishing in prison, disabled or paroled, they have lost both
their prestige and- their strength. I remarked among these
worthies a partiality for fisticuffs, and a dislike for the
manual of arms. They drilled badly, and were reported to
be adepts at thieving and unlicensed foraging.
The second night in camp was pleasantly passed. Some
sociable officers — favorites with Captain Kingwalt — con
gregated under the tarpaulin, after supper-hour, and when a
long-necked bottle had been emptied and replenished, there
were many quaint stories related and curious individualities
revealed. I dropped asleep while the hilarity was at its
height, and Fogg covered me with a thick blanket as I lay.
Tho enemy might have come upon us in the darkness ; but
if death were half so sound as my slumber afield, I should
have bid it welcome.

CHAPTEE IV.
A FORAGING ADVENTURE.
There was a newsboy named " Charley/' who slept at
Captain Kingwalt's every second night, and who returned
my beast to his owner in Washington. The aphorism that
a Yankee can do anything, was exemplified by this lad ; for
he worked my snail into a gallop. He was born in Chelsea,
Massachusetts, and appeared to have taken to speculation
at the age when most children are learning ABC. He was
now in his fourteenth year, owned two horses, and employed
another boy to sell papers for him likewise. His profits upon
daily sales of four hundred journals were about thirty-two
dollars. He had five hundred dollars in bank, and was
debating with Captain Kingwalt the propriety of founding
an army express and general agency. Such a self-reliant,
swaggering, far-sighted, and impertinent boy I never knew.
He was a favorite with the Captain's black-boy, and upon
thorough terms of equality with the Commanding General.
His papers cost him in Washington a cent and a half each,
and he sold them in camp for ten cents each. I have not the
slightest doubt that I shall hear of him again as the propri
etor of an overland mail, or the patron and capitalist of
Greenland emigration.
I passed the second and third days quietly in camp, writ
ing a couple of letters, studying somewhat of fortification,
and making flying visits to various officers. There was but
one other Reporter with this division of the army. He rep-,
(33)

34 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
resented a New York journal, and I could not but contrast
his fine steed and equipments with the scanty accommoda
tions that my provincial establishment had provided for me.
His saddle was a cushioned McClellan, with spangled breast-
strap and plump saddle-bags, and his bridle was adorned
with a bright curb bit and twilled reins. He wore a field-
glass belted about his body, and was plentifully provided
with money to purchase items of news, if they were at any
time difficult to obtain. I resolved inwardly to seize the
first opportunity of changing establishments, so that I
might be placed upon as good a footing. My relations with
camp, otherwise, were of the happiest character ; for the
troops were State-people of mine, and, as reporters had not
yet abused the privileges accorded them, my profession was
held in some repute. I made the round of various "messes,"
and soon adopted the current dissipations of the field, — late
hours, long stories, incessant smoking, and raw spirits.
There were some restless minds about me, whose funds of
anecdote and jest were apparently inexhaustible. I do not
know that so many eccentric, adventurous, and fluent people
are to be found among any other nationality of soldiers, not
excepting the Irish.
The blue roan of which friend Fogg had been deprived,
exhibited occasional evidences of a desire to break my neck.
I was obliged to dispense with the spur in riding him, but
he nevertheless dashed off at times, and put me into an
agony of fear. On those occasions I managed to retain my
seat, and gained thereby the reputation of being a very fine
equestrian. As there were few civilians in camp, and as I
wore a gray suit, and appeared to be in request at head-quar
ters, a rumor was developed and gained currency that I was
attached to the Division in the capacity of a scout. When
my horse became unmanageable, therefore, his speed was
generally accelerated by the cheers of soldiers, and I became
an object of curiosity in every quarter, to my infinite mor
tification and dread.

CAAIPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 35
The Captain was to set off on the fourth day, to purchase
or seize some hay and grain f^at were stacked at neighbor
ing farms. We prepared to g^o' at eight o'clock, but wero
detained somewhat by reason of Skyhiski being inebriated
the night before, and thereby delaying the breakfast, and
afterward the fact that the black stallion had laid open the
black-boy's leg. However, at a quarter past nine, the Cap
tain, Sergeant Clover, Fogg, Owen, and myself, with six
four-horse wagons, filed down the railroad track until we
came to a bridge that some laborers were repairing, where
we turned to the left through some soggy fields, and forded
Difficult Creek. As there was no road to follow, wc kept
straight through a wood of young maples and chestnut-
trees. Occasionally a trunk or projecting branch stopped
the wagons, when the teamsters opened the way with their
axes. After two hours of slow advance, we came to the
end of the wood, and climbed a succession of hilly fields.
From the summit of the last of these, a splendid sweep of
farm country was revealed, dotted with quaint Virginia
dwellings, stackyards, and negro-cabins, and divided by
miles of tortuous worm-fence. The eyes of the Quartermas
ter brightened at the prospect, though I am afraid that he
thought only of the abundant forage ; but my own grew
hazy as I spoke of the peaceful people and the neglected fields.
The plough had furrowed none of these acres, and some
crows, that screamed gutturally from a neighboring ash-
tree, seemed lean and pinched for lack of their plunder of
corn. Many of the dwellings were guarded by soldiers ; but of
the resident citizens only the women and the old men
remained. I did not need to ask where the young men
were . exiled. The residue that prayed with their faces
toward Eichmond, told me the story with their eyes. There
was, nevertheless, no melodramatic exhibition of feeling
among the bereaved. I did not see any defiant postures,
nor hear any melting apostrophies, Marius was not

36 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
mouthing by the ruins of Carthage, nor even Eachel weep
ing for her Hebrew children. But there were on every hand
manifestations of adherence to the Southern cause, except
among a few males who feared unutterable things, and were
disposed to cringe and prevaricate. The women were not
generally handsome ; their face was indolent, their dress
slovenly, and their manner embarrassed. They lopped off
the beginnings and the ends of their sentences, generally
commencing with a verb, as thus : " Told soldiers not to
carr' off the rye ; declared they would ; said they bound do
jest what they pleased. Let 'em go ! "
The Captain stopped at a spruce residence, approached
by a long lane, and on knocking at the porch with his pon
derous fist, a woman came timidly to the kitchen window.
" Who's thar ? " she said, after a moment.
" Come out young woman," said the Captain, soothingly ;
" we don't intend to murder or rob you, ma'am ! "
There dropped from the doorsill into the yard, not one,
but three young women, followed by a very deaf old man,
who appeared to think that the Captain's visit bore some
reference to the hencoop.
" I wish to buy for the use of the United States Govern
ment," said the Captain, " some stacks of hay and corn
fodder, that lie in one of your fields."
" The last hen was toted off this morning before break
fast," said the old man ; " they tooi the turkeys yesterday,
and I was obliged to kill the ducks or I shouldn't have had
anything to eat."
Here Fogg so misdemeaned himself, as to laugh through
his nose, and the man Clover appeared to be suddenly inter
ested in something that lay in a mulberry-tree opposite.
"I am provided with money to pay liberally for your
produce, and you cannot do better than to let me take the
stacks : leaving you, of course, enough for your own horses
and cattle."
Here the old man pricked up his ears, and said that he

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 37
hadn't heard of any recent battle ; for his part, he had never
been a politician ; but thought that both parties were a little
wrong ; and wished that pBuce would return : for he was a
very old man, and was sorry that folks couldn't let quiet folks'
property alone. How far his garrulity might have betrayed
him, could be conjectured only by one of the girls taking
his hand and leading him submissively into the house.
The eldest daughter said that the Captain might take the
stacks at his own valuation, but trusted to his honor as a
soldier, and as he seemed, a gentleman, to deal justly by
them. There could be no crop harvested for a twelve
month, and beggary looked them in the face. I have never
beheld anything more chivalrously gallant, than the sturdy
old quartermaster's attitude. He blended in tone and
face the politeness of a diplomat and the gentleness of a
father. They asked him to return to the house, with his
officers, when he had loaded the wagons ; for dinner was
being prepared, and they hoped that Virginians could be
hospitable, even to their enemies. As to the hay and
fodder, none need be left ; for the Confederates had seized
their horses some months before, and driven off their cows
when they retired from the neighborhood.
I so admired the queer gables and great brick ovens of
the house, that I resolved to tie my horse, and rest under
the crooked porch. The eldest young lady had taken me
to be a prisoner, and was greatly astonished that the Quar
termaster permitted me to go at large. She asked me to
have a chair in the parlor, but when I made my appearance
there, the, two younger sisters fled precipitately. The old
man was shaking his head sadly by the fireplace. Some logs
burned on the andirons with a red flame. The furniture
consisted of a mahogany sideboard, table, and chairs, — pon
derous in pattern ; and a series of family portraitSj in a
sprawling style of art, smirked and postured on the wall.
The floor was bare, but shone by reason of repeated scrub-
4

38 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON^COMBATiUiTT.
bing, and the black mantel-piece was a fine specimen of
colonial carving in the staunchest of walnut-wood.
Directly the two younger gifl's — though the youngest
must have been twenty years of age — came back with
averted eyes and the silliest of giggles. They sat a little
distance apart, and occasionally nodded or signalled like
school children.
" Wish you would stop. Bell ! " said one of these misses,
— whose flaxen hair was plastered across her eyebrows, and
who was very tall and slender.
"See if I don't tell on you," said the other, — a dark
miss with roguish eyes and fat, plump figure, and curls that
shook ever so merrily about her shoulders.
" Declar' I never said so, if he asks me ; declar' I will."
" Tell on you, — you see ! Won't he be jealous ? How
he will car' on ! "
I made out that these young ladies were intent upon pub
lishing their obligations to certain sweethearts of theirs,
who, as it afterward seemed, were in the army at Manassas
Junction. I said to the curly-haired miss, that she was
endangering the life of her enamored ; for it would become
an object with all the anxious troops in the vicinity to shorten
his days. The old man roused up here, and remarked that
his health certainly was declining ; but he hoped to survive
a while longer for the sake of his children ; that he was no
politician, and always said that the negroes were very un
grateful people. He caught his daughter's eye finally,
and cowered stupidly, nodding at the fire.
I remarked to the eldest young woman, — called Prissy
(Priscilla) by her sister, — that the country hereabout was
pleasantly wooded. She said, in substance, that every part
of Virginia was beautiful, and that she did not wish to sur
vive the disgrace of the old commonwealth.
" Become right down hateful since Yankees invaded it ! "
exclaimed Miss Bell. Some Yankee's handsome sister,"
said Miss Bessie, tho proprietor of the curls, " think some
Yankees puffick gentlemen ! "

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 39
" Oh, yoa traitor ! " said the other, — " wish Henry heard
you say that ! "
Miss Bell intimated that she should take the first oppor
tunity of telling him the same, and 1 eulogized her good
judgment. Priscilla now begged to be excused for a mo
ment, as, since the flight of the negro property, the care of
the table had devolved mainly upon her. A single aged
servant, too feeble or too faithful to decamp, still attended
to the menial functions, and 'two mulatto children remained
to relieve them of light labor. She was a dignified, ma
tronly young ladj^, and, as one of the sisters informed me,
plighted to a Major in the Confederate service. The others
chattered flippantly for an hour, and said that the old place
was dreadfully lonesome of late. Miss Bell was sure sho
should die if another winter, similar to the last, occurred.
She loved company, and had always found it so lively in
Loudon before ; whereas she had positivelj' been but twice
to a neighbor's for a twelvemonth, and had quite forgotten
the road to the mill. She said, finally, that, rather than
undergo another such isolation, she would become a Vivan-
diere in the Yankee army. The slender sister was alto
gether wedded to the idea of her lover's. " Wouldn't she
tell Henry ? and shouldn't she write to Jeems ? and oh,
Bessie, you would not dai'e to repeat that before him." In
short, I was at first amused, and afterwards annoyed, by
this young lady, whereas the roguish-eyed miss improved
greatly upon acquaintance.
After a while. Captain Kingwalt came in, trailing his
spurs over the floor, and leaving sunshine in his wake.
There was something galvanic in his gentleness, and infec
tious in his merriment. He told them at dinner of his own
daughters on the Brandywine, and invented stories of Fogg's
courtships, till that young gentleman first blushed, and
afterward dropped his plate. Our meal was a frugal one,
consisting mainly ofthe ducks referred to, some vegetables,
corn-bread, and coffee made of wasted rye. There were

40 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
neither sugar, spices, nor tea, on the premises, and the salt
before us was the last in the dwelling. The Captain prom
ised to send them both coffee and salt, and Fogg volunteered
to bring the same to the house, whereat the Captain teased
him till he left the table.
At this time, a little boy, who was ostensibly a waiter,
cried : " Miss Prissy, soldiers is climbin' in de hog-pen."
" I knew we should lose the last living thing on the prop
erty," said this young lady, much distressed.
The Captain went to the door, and found three strolling
Bucktails looking covetously at the swine. They were a
little discomposed at his appearance, and edged off suspi
ciously. "Halt! " said the old man in his great voice, "where
are you men going ? "
"Just makin' reconnoissance," said one of the freeboot
ers ; " s'pose a feller has a right to walk around, hain't
he?" "Not unless he has a pass," said the Quartermaster;
" have you written permission to leave camp ? "
" Left'nant s'posed we might. Don't know as it's your
business. Never see ijou in the regiment."
" It is my business, as an officer of the United States, to
see that no soldier strays from camp unauthorizedly, or dep
redates upon private property. 1 will take your names, and
report you, first for straggling, secondly for insolence ! "
"Put to it, Bill!" said the speaker of the foragers;
" run. Bob ! go it hearties ! " And they took to their heels,
cleared a pair of fences, and were lost behind some out
buildings. The Captain could be harsh as well as gener
ous, and was about mounting his horse impulsively, to
overtake and punish the fugitives, when Priscilla begged
him to refrain, as an enforcement of discipline on his part
might bring insult upon her helpless household. I availed
myself of a pause in the Captain's wrath, to ask Miss Pris
cilla if she would allow me to lodge in the dwelling. Five

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 41
nights' experience in camp had somewhat reduced my en
thusiasm, and I already wearied of the damp beds, the hard
fare, and the coarse conversation of the bivouac. The
young lady arented willingly, as she stated that the pres
ence of a young man would both amuse and protect the
family. For several nights she had not slept, and had im
agined footsteps on the porch and the drawing of window-
bolts. There was a bed, formerly occupied by her brother,
that I might take, but must depend upon rather laggard at
tendance. I had the satisfaction, therefore, of seeing the
Captain and retinue mount their horses, and wave me a tem
porary good by. Poor Fogg looked back so often and so
seriously that I expected to see him fall from the saddle.
The young ladies were much impressed with the Captain's
manliness, and Miss Bell wondered liaio such a, puffick gen
tleman could reconcile himself to the Yankee cause. She
had felt a desire to speak to him upon that point as she was
sure he was of fine stock, and entirely averse to the inva
sion of such territory as that of dear old Virginia. There
was something in his manner that so reminded her of some
one who should be nameless for the present ; but the " name
less " was, of course, young, handsome, and so brave. 1
ruthlessly dissipated her theory of the Captain's origin, by
stating that he was of humble German descent, so far as I
knew, and had probably never beheld Virginia till preceded
by the bayonets of his neighbors.
After tea Miss Bessie produced a pitcher of rare cider,
that came from a certain mysterious quarter of the cellar.
A chessboard was forthcoming at a later hour, when we
amused ourselves with a couple of games, facetiously dub
bing our chessman Federals and Confederates. Miss Bell,
meanwhile, betook herself to a diary, wherein she minutely
related the incidents and sentiments of successive days.
The quantity of words underscored in the same autobiog
raphy would have speedily exhausted the case of italics, if
the printer had obtained it. I was so beguiled by these pa-

42 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
triarchal people, that I several times asked myself if the cir
cumstances were real. Was I in a hostile country, sur
rounded by thousands of armed men ? Were the incidents
of this evening portions of an historic era, and the ground
about me to be commemorated by bloodshed ? Was this, iu
fact, revolution, and were these simple country girls and
their lovers revolutionists ? The logs burned cheerily upon
the hearth, and the ancestral portraits glowered contempla
tively from the walls. Miss Prissy looked dreamily into
the fire, and the old man snored wheezily in a corner. A
gray cat purred in Miss Bell's lap, and Miss Bessie was
writing some nonsense in my note-book.
A sharp knock fell upon the door, and something that
sounded like the butt of a musket shook the porch without.
The girls turned pale, and I think that Miss Bessie seized
my arm and clung to it. I think also, that Miss Bell at
tempted to take the other arm, to which I demurred.
" Those brutal soldiers again ! " said Priscilla, faintly
"I think one of the andirons has fallen down, darter!"
said the old man, rousing up.
" Tremble for my life," said Miss Bell ; " sure shall die if
it's a man."
I opened the door after a little pause, -when a coupIe_,of
rough privates in uniform confronted me.
"We're two guards that General Meade sent to protect
the house and property," said the tallest of these men ;
" might a feller come in and warm his feet ! "
I understood at once that the Quartermaster had obtained
these persons ; and the other man coming forward, said —
" I fetched some coffee over, and a bag o' salt, with Cor
poral Fogg's compliments."
They deposited their muskets in a corner, and balanced
their boots on the fender. Nothing was said for a time.
" Did you lose yer poultry ? " said the tall man, at length.
" All," said Miss Priscilla.
"Fellers loves poultry!" said the man, smacking his
lips.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 43
"Did you lose yer sheep?" said the same man, after a
little silence.
"The Bucktails cut their throats the first day that they
encamped at the mill," said Miss Priscilla.
" Them Bucktails great fellers," said the tall man ;
" them Bucktails awful on sheep : they loves 'em so ! "
He relapsed again for a few minutes, when he continued :
" You don't like fellers to bag yer poultry and sheep, do
you ? "
Miss Priscilla replied that it was both dishonest and
cruel. Miss Bell intimated that none but Yankees would
do it.
"P'raps not," said the tall soldier, drily; "did you ever
grub on fat pork. Miss ? No ? Did you ever gnaw yer hard
tack after a spell o' sickness, and a ten-hour march ? No ?
P'raps you might like a streak o' mutton arterwards !
P'raps you might take a notion Ibr a couple o' chickens or
so ! No ? How's that, Ike ? What do you think, pard-
ner ? (to me) I ain't over and above cruel, mum. I don't
think the Bucktails is over and above dishonest to home,
mum. But, gosh hang it, I think I would bag a chicken any
day ! I saythat above board. Hey, Ike ? "
When the tall man and his inferior satellite had warmed
their boots till they smoked, they rose, recovered their mus
kets, and bowed themselves into the yard. Soon afterward
I bade the young ladies good night, and repaired to my room.
The tall man and his associate were pacing up and down the
grass-plot, and they looked very cold and comfortless, I
thought. I should have liked to obtain for them a draught
of cider, but prudently abstained ; for every man in the
army would thereby become cognizant of its existence. So
I placed my head once more upon a soft pillow, and pitied
the chilled soldiers who slept upon the turf. I thought of
Miss Bessie with her roguish eyes, and wondered what
themes were now engrossing her. I asked myself if this
was the romance of war, and if it would bear relating to

44 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
one's children when he grew as old and as deaf as the
wheezy gentleman down-stairs. In fine, I was a little sen
timental, somewhat reflective, and very drowsy. So, after
a while, processions of freebooting soldiers, foraging Quar
termasters, deaf gentlemen, Fogg's regiment, and multi
tudes of ghosts from Manassas, drifted by in my dreams.
And, in the end. Miss Bessie's long curls brushed into my
eyes, and I found the morning, ruddy as her cheeks, blush
ing at the window.

CHAPTER V.

WHAT A MARCH IS IN FACT.

I FOUND at breakfast, that Miss Bessie had been placed
beside me, and I so far forgot myself as to forget all other
persons at the table. Miss Priscilla asked to be helped to
the corn-bread, and I deposited a quantity of the same upon
Miss Bessie's plate. Miss Bell asked if I did not love dear
old Virginia, and I replied to Miss Bessie that it had lately
become very attractive, and that, in fact, 1 was decidedly
rebellious in my sympathy with the distressed Virginians.
I did except, however, the man darkly mooted as " Henry,"
and hoped that he would be disfigured — not killed — at
the earliest engagement. The deaf old gentleman bristled
up here and asked who had been killed at the recent engage
ment. There was a man named Jeems Lee, — a distant
connection of the Lightfoots, ¦^- not the Hampshire Light-
foots, but the Fauquier Lightfoots, — who had distinctly
appeared to the old gentleman for several nights, robed in
black, and carrying a coffin under his arm. Since I had
mentioned his name, he recalled the circumstance, and
hoped that Jeems Lightfoot had not' disgraced his ancestry.
Nevertheless, the deaf gentleman was not to be understood
as expressing any opinion upon the merits of the war. For
his part he thought both sides a little wrong, and the crops
were really in a dreadful state. The negroes were very un
grateful people and property should be held sacred by all

belligerents.

(45)

46 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
At this point he caught Miss Priscilla's eye, and was
transfixed with conscious guilt.
I had, meantime, been infringing upon Miss Bessie's feet,
— very pretty feet they were I — which expressive but not
very refined method of correspondence caused her to blush
to the eyes. Miss Bell, noticing the same, was determined
to tell ' Henry ' at once, and I hoped in my heart that she
would set out for Manassas to further that purpose.
The door opened here, and the rubicund visage of Mr.
Fogg appeared like the head of the Medusa. He said that
' Captain ' had ordered the blue roan to be saddled and
brought over to me, but I knew that this was a cunning
device on his part, to revisit the dwelling. Miss Bell,
somehow caught the idea that Fogg was enamored of her,
and the poor fellow was subjected to a volley of tender
innuendos and languishing glances, that by turn mortified
and enraged him.
I bade the good people adieu at eight o'clock, promising
to return for dinner at five ; and Miss Bessie accompanied
me to the lane, where I took leave of her with a secret
whisper and a warm grasp of the hand. One of her rings
had somehow adhered to my finger, which Fogg remarked
with a bilious expression of countenance. I had no sooner
got astride of the blue roan than he darted off like the wind,
and subjected me to great terror, alternating to chagrin,
when I turned back and beheld all the young ladies wa-ving
their handkerchiefs. They evidently thought me an unri
valled equestrian.
I rode to a picket post two miles from the mill, passing
over the spot where the Confederate soldier had fallen.
The picket consisted of two companies or one hundred and
sixty men. Half of them were sitting around a fire con
cealed in' the woods, and the rest were scattered along the
edges of a piece of close timber: I climbed a lookout-tree by
means of cross-strips nailed to the trunk, and beheld from
the summit a long succession of hazy hills, valleys, and

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 47
forests, with the Blue Eidge Mountains bounding the dis
tance, like some mighty monster, enclosing the world in its
coils. This was the country of the enemy, and a Lieutenant
obligingly pointed out to me the curling smoke of their
pickets, a few miles away. The cleft of Manassas was
plainly visible, and I traced the line of the Gap Eailway to
its junction with the Orange and Alexandria road, below
Bull Eun. For aught that I knew, some concealed observer
might now be watching me from the pine-tops on the near
est knoll. Some rifleman might be running his practised
eye down the deadly groove, to topple me from ny perch,
and send me crashing through the boughs. The uncer
tainty, the hazard, the novelty of my position had at this
time an indescribable charm : but subsequent exposures
dissipated the romance and taught me the folly of such
adventures. The afternoon went dryly by : for a drizzling rain fell at
noon ; but at four o'clock I saddled the blue roan and went
to ride with Fogg. We retraced the road to Colonel T  s,
and crossing a boggy brook, turned up the hills and passed
toward the Potomac. Fogg had been a schoolmaster, and
many ofhis narrations indicated keen perception and clever
comprehension. He so amused me on this particular occa
sion that I quite forgot my engagement for dinner, and
unwittingly strolled beyond the farthest brigade.
Suddenly, we heard a bugle-call from the picket-post
before us, and, at the same moment, the drums beat from the
camp behind. Our horses pricked up their ears and Fogg
stared inquiringly. As we turned back we heard approach
ing hoofs and the blue roan exhibited intentions of running
away. I pulled his rein in vain. He would neither be
soothed nor commanded. A whole company of cavalry
closed up with him at length, and the sabres clattered in
their scabbards as they galloped toward camp at the top of
their speed. With a spring that almost shook me from the
saddle and drove the stirrups flying from my feet, the blue

48 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
roan dashed the dust into the eyes of Fogg, and led the
race. Not the wild yager on his gait to perdition, rode so fear
fully. Trees, bogs, huts, bushes, went by like lightning.
The hot breath of the nag rose to my nostrils and at every,
leap I seemed vaulting among the spheres.
I speak thus flippantly now, of what was then the agony
of death. I grasped the pommel of my saddle, mechanically
winding the lines about my wrist, and clung with the tenac
ity of sin clutching the world. Some soldiers looked won-
deringly from the wayside, but did not heed my shriek
of " stop him, for God's sake ! " A ditch crossed the lane,
— deep and wide, — and I felt that my moment had come :
with a spring that seemed to break thew and sinew, the
blue roan cleared it, pitching upon his knees, but recovered
directly and darted onward again. I knew that I should
fall headlong now, to be trampled, by the fierce horsemen
behind, but retained my grasp though my heart was choking
me. The camps were in confusion as I swept past them.
A sharp clearness of sense and thought enabled me to note
distinctly the minutest occurrences. I marked long lines of
meji cloaked, and carrying knapsacks, drummer-boys beat
ing music that I had whistled in many a ramble, — field-
officers shouting orders from their saddles, and cannon lim
bered up as if ready to move, — tents taken down and teams
waiting to be loaded; all the evidences of an advance, that
I alas should never witness, lying bruised and mangled by
the roadside. A cheer saluted me as I passed some of
Meade's regiments. " It is the scout that fetched the
orders for an advance ! " said several, and one man re
marked that "that feller was the most reckless rider he
had ever beheld." The crisis came at length : a wagon
had stopped the way ; my horse in turning it, stepped upon
a stake, and slipping rolled heavily upon his side, tossing
" me like an acrobat, over his head, but without further
injury than a terrible nervous shock and a rent in my panta
loons.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 49
I employed a small boy to lead the blue roan to Captain
Kingwalt's quarters, and as I limped wearily after, some
regiments came toward me through the fields. General
McCall responded to my salute ; he rode in the advance.
The Quartermaster's party was loading the tents and uten
sils. The rain fell smartly as dusk deepened into night, and
the brush tents now deserted by the soldiers, were set on
fire. Being composed of dry combustible material, they
burned rapidly and with an intense flame. The fields in
every direction were revealed, swarming with men, horses,
batteries, and wagons. Some of the regiments began the
march in silence ; others sang familiar ballads as they moved
in column. A few, riotously disposed, shrieked, whistled,
and cheered. The standards were folded ; the drums did
not mark time ; the orders were few and short. The can
noneers sat moodily upon the caissons, and the cavalry-men
walked their horses sedately. Although fifteen thousand
men comprised the whole corps, each of its three brigades
would have seemed as numerous to a novice. The teams
of each brigade closed up the rear, and a quartermaster's
guard was detailed from each regiment to march beside its
own wagons. When the troops were fairly- nnder way, and
the brush burning along from continuous miles of road, the
effect was grand beyond all that I had witnessed. The
country people gathered in fright at the cottage doors, and
the farm-dogs bayed dismally at the unwonted scene. I
refused to ride the blue roan again, but transferred my saddle
to a team horse that appeared to be giveii to a sort of equine
somnambulism, and once or twice attempted to lie down by
the roadside. At nine o'clock I set out with Fogg, who
slipped a flask of spirits into my haversack. Following the
tardy movement of the teams, we turned our faces toward
Washington. I was soon wet to the skin, and my saddle cush
ion was soaking with water. The streams crossing the road
were swollen with rain, and4he great team wheels clogged
on the slimy banks. We were sometimes delayed a half

50 CAI.IPAIGNS OF A non-combata:;t.
hour by a single wagon, the storm beating pitilessly in our
faces the while. During the stoppages, the Quartermaster's
guards burned all the fence rails in the vicinity, and some
of the more indurated sat round the fagots and gamed
with cards.
Cold, taciturn, miserable, I thought of the quiet farm.
house, the ruddy hearth-place, and the smoking supper. I
wondered if the roguish eyes were not a little sad, and the
trim feet a little restless, the chessmen somewhat stupid, and
the good old house a trifle lonesome. Alas ! the intimacy
so pleasantly commenced, was never to be renewed. With
the thousand and one airy palaces that youth builds and
time annihilates, my first romance of war towered to the
stars in a day, and crumbled to earth in a night.
At two o'clock in the morning we halted at Metropolitan
Mills, on the Alexandria and Leesburg turnpike. A bridge ,
had been destroyed below, and the creek was so swollen
that neither artillery nor cavalry could ford it. The mead
ows were submerged and the rain still descended in torrents.
The chilled troops made bonfires of some new panel fence, and
stormed all the henroosts in the vicinity. Some pigs, that
betrayed their whereabouts by inoportune whines and grunts,
were speedily confiscated, slaughtered, and spitted. We
erected our tarpaulin in a ploughed field, and Fogg laid
some sharp rails upon the ground to make us a dry bed.
Skyhiski fried a quantity of fresh beef, and boiled some
coffee ; but while we ate heartily, theorizing as to the desti
nation of the corps, the poor Captain was terribly shaken
by his ague.
I woke in the morning with inflamed throat, rheumatic
limbs, and every indication of chills and fever. Fogg whis
pered to me at breakfast that two men of Eeynold's brigade
had died during the night, from fatigue and exposure. He
advised me to push 'forward to Washington and await the
arrival of the division, as, unused to the hardships of a
march, I might, after another day's experience, become

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 51
dangerously ill. I set out at five o'clock, resolving to ford
the creek, resume the turnpike, and reach Long Bridge at
noon. Passing over some dozen .fields in which my horse
at every step sank to the fetlocks, I travelled along the
brink of the stream till I finally reached a place that seemed
to be shallow. Bracing myself firmly in the saddle, I urged
my unwilling horse into the waters, and emerged half
drowned on the other side. It happened, however, that I
had crossed only a branch ofthe creek and gained an island.
The main channel was yet to be attempted, and I saw that
it was deep, broad, and violent. I followed the margin
despairingly for a half-mile, when I came to a log footbridge,
where I dismounted and swam my horse through the turbu
lent waters. 1 had now so far diverged from the turnpike that
I was at a loss to recover it, but straying forlornly through the
woods, struck a wagon track at last, and pursued it hopefully,
until, to my confusion, it resolved itself to two tracks, that
went in contrary directions. My horse preferred taking to
the left, but after riding a full hour, I came to some felled
trees, beyond which the traces did not go. Eeturning, weak
and bewildered, I adopted the discarded route, which led
me to a worm-fence at the edge of the woods. A house lay
some distance off, but a wheat-field intervened, and I might
bring the vengeance of the proprietor upon me by invading
his domain. There was no choice, however ; so I removed
the rails, and rode directly across the wheat to some negro
quarters, a little removed from the mansion. They were
deserted, all save one, where a black boy was singing some
negro hymns in an uproarious manner.. The words, as I
made them out, were these : —
" Stephen came a runnin'.
His Marster fur to see ;
But Gabriel says he is not yar' ;
He gone to Calvary I
O, — 0, — Stephen, Stephen,
Fur to see ;
Stephen, Stephen, get along up Calvary!"

52 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
I learned from this person two mortifying facts, — tljat I
was farther from Washington than at the beginning of my
journey, and that the morrow was Sunday. War, alasf
knows no Sabbaths, and the negro said, apologetically —
" I was a seyin' -some ole hymns, young Mars'r. Sence
dis yer war we don't have no more meetin's, and a body
mos' forgits his pra'rs. Dere hain't been no church in all
Fairfax., sah, fur nigh six months."
Washington was nineteen miles distant, and another
creek was to be forded before gaining the turnpike. The
negro sauntered down the lane, and opened the gate foi: me.
" You jes keep from de creek, take de nlill road, and enqua'
as ye get furder up," said he ; " it's mighty easy, sah, an'
you can't miss de way."
I missed the wa^ at once, however, by confounding the
mill road with the mill lane, and a shaggy dog that lay in a
wagon shed pursued me about a mile. Tte road was full
of mire ; no dwellings adjoined'it, and nothing human was
to be seen in any direction. I came to a crumbling negro
cabin after two plodding hours, and, seeing a figure flit by
the window, called aloud for information. Nobody replied,
and when, dismounting, I looked into the den, it was, to my
confusion, vacant.
The soil, hereabout, was of a sterile red clay, spotted
¦with scrub cedars. Country more bleak and desolate I have
never known, and when, at noon, the rain ceased, a keen
wind blew dismally across the barriers. I reached'a turn
pike at length, and, turning, as I thought, toward Alexan
dria, goaded my horse into a canter. An hour's ride brought
me to a Wretched hamlet, whose designation I inquired of a
cadaverous old woman —
" Drainesville," said she.
" Then I am not upon the Alexandria turnpike ? "
"No. You're sot for Leesburg. This is "the George
town and Chain Bridge road."
With a heavy heart, I retraced my steps, crossed Chain

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 53
Bridge at five o'clock, and halted at Kirkwood's at sevien.
After dinner, falling in with the manager of the Washington
Sunday morning Chronicle, I penned, at his request, a few
lines relative to the movements of the Eeserves ; and, learn
ing in the morning that they had arrived at Alexandria, set ,
out on horseback for that city.
Many hamlets and towns have been destroyed during the
war. But, of all that in some form survive, Alexandria has
most suffered. It has been in the uninterrupted possession
of the Federals for twenty-two months, and has become es
sentially a military city. Its streets, its docks, its ware
houses, its dwellings, and its suburbs, have been absorbed
to the thousajid uses of war. ••
I was challenged thrice onthe Long Bridge, and five times
on the road, before reaching the city. I rode under the
shadows of five earthworks, and saw lines of white tents
sweeping to the horizon. Gayly caparisoned officers passed
me, to spend their Sabbath in Washington, and trains laden
with troops, ambulances, and batteries, sped along the line
of railway, toward the rendezvous at jilexandria. A wag
oner, looking forlornly at his splintered wheels ; a slovenly
guard, watching some bales of hay ; a sombre negro, doz
ing upon his mule ; a slatternly Irish woman gossiping with
a sergeant at her cottage door; a sutler in his "dear-born,"
running his keen eye down the limbs of my beast ; a spruce
civilian riding for curiosity ; a gray-haired gentleman, in a
threadbare suit, going to camp on foot, to say good by to
his boy, — these were some of the personages that I re
marked, and each-was a study, a sermon, and a story. The
Potomac, below me, was dotted with steamers and shipping.
The bluffs above were trodden bare, and a line of dismal
marsh bordered some stagnant pools that blistered at their
bases. At points along tbe river-shore, troops were em
barking on board steamers ; transports were taking in tons
of baggage and subsistence. There was a schooner, laden
to the water-line with locomotive engines and burden car-
5*

54 CAJSIPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
riages ; the^ a brig, shipping artillery horses by a steam
derrick, that lifted them bodily from the shore and depos
ited them in the hold of the vessel. .Steamers, from_ whose
spacious saloons the tourist and the bride have watched the
picturesque margin of the Hudson, were now black with
clusters of rollicking volunteers, who climbed into the yards,
and pitched headlong from the wheel-houses. The " grand
movement," for which the people had waited so long, and
which McClellan had promised so often, was at length to be
made. The Army of the Potomac was to be transferred to
Portress Monroe, at the foot of the Chesapeake, and to ad
vance by the peninsula of the James and the York, upon
the city of Eichmond.
I rode through Washington Street, the seat of some an
cient residences, and found it lined with freshly arrived
troops. The grave-slabs in a fine old churchyard wero
strewn with weary cavalry-men, and they lay in some side
yards, soundly sleeping. Some artillery-men chatted at
doorsteps, with idle house-girls ; some courtesans flaunted
in furs and ostrich feathers, through a group of coarse en
gineers ; some sergeants of artillery, in red trimmings, and
caps gilded with cannon, were reining their horses to leer
at some ladies, who were taking the air in their gardens ; and
at a wide place in the street, a Provost-Major was manoeu
vring some companies, to the Sound of the drum and fife.
Thsre was much drunkenness, among both soldiers and civ
ilians ; and the people of Alexandria were, in many cases,
crushed and demoralized by reason of their troubles. One
man of this sort led me to a sawmill, now run by Govern
ment, and pointed to the implements.
" I bought 'em and earned 'em," he said. " My labor
and enterprise set 'em there ; and while my mill and ma
chinery are ruined to fill the pockets o' Federal sharpers, I
go drunk, ragged, and poor about the streets o' my native
town. My daughter starves in Eichmond ; God knows I
can't get to her. I wish to h — II was dead."

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 55
Further inquiry developed the facts that my acquaint
ance had been a thriving builder, who had dotted all North
eastern Virginia with evidences of his handicraft. At the
commencement of the war, he took certain contracts from
the Confederate government, for the construction of bar
racks at Eichmond and Manassas Junction ; returning
inopportunely to Alexandria, he was arrested, and kept
some time in Capitol-Hill prison ; he had not taken the oath
of allegiance, consequently, he could obtain no recompense
for the loss of his mill property. Domestic misfortunes,
happening at the same time, so embittered his days that he
resorted to dissipation. Alexandria is filled with like ruined
people ; they walk as strangers through their ancient
streets, and their property is no longer theirs to possess,
hut has passed into the hands of the dominant nationalists.
My informant pointed out the residences of many leading
citizens : some were now hospitals, others armories and arse
nals ; others offices for inspectors, superintendents, and civil
officials. The few people that remained upon their properties,
obtained partial immunity, by courting the acquaintance of
Federal officers, and, in many cases, extending the hospitali
ties of their homes to the invaders. I do not know that any
Federal functionary was accused of tyranny, or wantonness,
but these things ensued, as the natural results of civil war ;
and one's sympathies were everywhere enlisted for the poor,
the exiled, and the bereaved.
My dinner at the City Hotel was scant and badly pre
pared. I gave a negro lad who waited upon me a few
cents, but a burly negro carver, who seemed to be his
father, boxed the boy's ears and put the coppers into his
pocket. The proprietor of the place had voluntarily taken
the oath of allegiance, and had made more money since the
date of*Fedej:al occupation than during his whole life pre
viously. He said to me, curtly, that if by any chance the
Confederates should reoccupy Alexandria, he could very
well afford to relinquish his property. He employed a smart

56 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
barkeeper, who led guests by a retired way to the drinking-
rooms. Here, with the gas burning at a taper point, cob
blers, cocktails, and juleps were mixed'^stealthily and swal
lowed in the darkness. The bar was like a mint to the
proprietor; he only feared discovery and prohibition. It
would not accord with the chaste pages of this narrative to
tell how some of the noblest residences in Alexandria had
been desecrated to licentious purposes ; nor how, by night,
¦ the parlors of cosey homes flamed with riot and orgie. I
stayed but a little time, having written an indiscreet para
graph iu the Washington Chronicle, for which I was pursued
by the War Department, and the management of my paper,
lacking heart, I went home in a pet^

CHAPTEE VI.

DOWN THE CHESAPEAKE.

Disappointed in the unlucky termination of my adventures
afield, I now looked ambitiously, toward New York. As
London stands to the provinces, so stands the empire city
to America. Its journals circulate by hundreds of thou
sands ; its means are onlj' rivalled by its enterprise ; it is the
end of every young American's aspiration, and the New
Bohemia for the restless, the brilliant, and the industrious.
It seemed a great way off when I first beheld it, but I did
not therefore despair. Small matters of news that I gath
ered in my modest city, obtained space in the columns of
the great metropolitan journal, the  . After a time
I -was delegated to travel in search of special incidents, and
finally, when the noted Tennessee Unionist, "Parson"
Brownlow, journeyed eastward, I joined his suite, and
accompanied him to New York. The dream of many months
now came to be realized. A correspondent on the  's
staff had been derelict, and I was appointed to his division.
His horse, saddle, field-glasses, blankets, and pistols were
to be transferred, and I was to proceed without delay to
Fortress Monroe, to keep with the advancing columns of
McClellan. At six in the morning I embarked ; at eleven I was
whirled through my own city, without a glimpse of my
friends ; at three o'clock I dismounted at Baltimore, and at
five was gliding down the Patapsco, under the shadows of
(57)

58 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
Fort Federal Hill, and the white walls of Fort McHenry.
The latter defence is renowned for its gallant resistance to
a British fleet in 1813, and the American national anthem,
" The Star-Spangled Banner," was written to commemorate
that bombardment. Fort Carroll, a massive structure of
hewn stonCj with arched bomb-proof and three tiers of
mounted ordnance, its smooth walls washed by the waves,
and its unfinished floors still ringing with the trowel and
the adze, — lies some miles below, at a narrow passage in
the stream. Below, the shores diverge, and at dusk wo
were fairly in the Chesapeake, under steam and sail, speed
ing due southward. ,
The Adelaide was one of a series of boats making daily
trips between Baltimore and Old Point. Fourteen hours
were required to accomplish the passage, and we were
not to arrive till seven o'clock next morning. I was so for
tunate as to obtain a state-room, but many passengers were
obliged to sleep upon sofas or the cabin floor. These boats
monopolized the civil traffic between the North and the
army, although they were reputed to be owned and man
aged by Secessionists. None were allowed to embark unless
provided with Federal passes ; but there were, nevertheless,
three or four hundred people on board. About one fourth
of these were officers and soldiers ; one half sutlers, traders,
contractors, newsmen, and idle civilians, anxious to -witness
a battle, or stroll over the fields of Big Bethel, Lee's Mills,
Yorktown, Gloucester, Williamsburg, or West Point; the
rest were females on missions of mercy, on visits to sons,
brothers, and husbands, and on the way to their homes at
Norfolk, Suffolk, or Hampton. Some of these were citizens
of Eichmond, who believed that the Federals would occupy
the city in a few days, and enable them to resume their pro
fessions and homes. The lower decks were occupied by
negroes. The boat was heavily freighted, and among the
parcels that littered the hold and steerage, I noticed scores
of box coffins for the removal of corpses from the field to

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 59
the North. There were quantities of spirits, consigned
mainly to Quartermasters, but evidently the property of
certain Shylocks, who watched the barrels greedily. An
embalmer was also on board, with his ghostly implements.^
He was a sallow man, shabbily attired, and appeared to
look at all the passengers as so many subjects for the devel
opment of his art. He was called "Doctor" by his admir
ers, and conversed in the blandest manner of the triumphs
of his system.
" There are certain pretenders," he said, " who are at this
moment imposing upon the Government. I regret that it is
necessary to repeat it, but the fact exists that tho Govern
ment is the prey of harpies. And in the art of which I am an
humble disciple, — that of injecting, commonly called em
balming, — the, frauds are most deplorable. There was
Major Montague, — a splendid subject, I assure you, — a
subject that any Pj-q/essor would have beautifully preserved,
— a subject that one esteems it a favor to obtain, — a subject
that I in particular would havebeen proud to receive ! But
what were the circumstances ? I do assure you that a
person named Wigwavt, — who I have since ascertained to
be a veterinary butcher ; in plain language, a doctor of
horses and asses, — imposed upon the relatives of the
deceased, obtained the body, and absolutely ruined it ! —
absolutely mangled it ! I may say, shamefully disfigured
it I He was a man, sir, six feet two, — about your height,
I think I (to a bystander.) About your weight, also ! Indeed
quite like you ! And allow me to say that, if you should fall
into my hands, I would leave your friends no cause for
offence ! (Here the bystander trembled perceptibly, and I
thought that the doctor was about to take his life.) Well !
I should have operated thus : — "
Then followed a description of the process, narrated with
horrible circumstantiality. A fluid holding in solution
pounded glass and certain chemicals, was, by the doctor's
" system," injected into the bloodvessels, and the subject

60 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COltBATANT.
at the same time bled at the neck. Tbe body thus became
hard and stony, and would retain its form for yeara. He
had, by his account, experimented for a lifetime, and said
that little " Willie," the son of President Lincoln, had been
so preserved that his fond parents must have enjoyed his
decease. It seemed to me that the late lamented practitioners, Messrs.
Burke and Hare, were likely to fade into insignificance,
beside this new light of science.
I went upon deck for some moments, and marked the
beating of the waves ; the glitter of sea-lights pulsing on
the ripples ; the sweep of belated gulls through the creak
ing rigging ; the dark hull of a passing vessel with a grin
ning topmast lantern ; the vigilant pilot, whose eyes glared
like a fiend's upon the waste of blackness ; the foam that
the panting screw threw against the cabin windows ; the flap
of fishes caught in the threads of moonlight ; the depths over
which one bent, peering half wistfully, half abstractedly,
almost crazily, till he longed to drop into their coolness,
and let the volumes of billow roll musically above him.
A woman approached me, as I stood against the great
anchor, thus absorbed. She had a pale, thin face, and was
scantily clothed, and spoke with a distrustful," timorous
voice : —
" You don't know the name of the surgeon-general, do
you sir ! "
" At Washington, ma'am ? "
" No, sir ; at Old Point."
I offered to inquire of the Captain : but she stopped me,
agitatedly. " It's of no consequence," she said, — " that
is, it is of great consequence to me ; but perhaps it would
be best to wait." I answered, as obligingly as I could, that
any service on my part would be cheerfully rendered.
" The factis, sir," she said, after a pause, " I am going to
Williamsburg, to — find — the — the body — of my — boy."
Here her speech was broken, and she put a thin, white

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 61
hand tremulously to her eyes. I thought that any person
in the Federal service would willingly assist her, and said
so. " He was not a Federal soldier, sir. He was a Confed
erate ! "
This considerably altered the chances of success, and I
was obliged to undeceive her somewhat. " I am sure it
was not my fault," she continued, "that he joined the
Eebellion. You don't think they'll refuse to let me take his
bones to Baltimore, do you, sir ? He was my oldest boy,
and his brother, my second son, was killed at Ball's Bluff:
He was in the Federal service. I hardly think they will
refuse me the poor favor of laying them in the same grave."
I spoke of the difficulty of recognition, of the remoteness
of the field, and of the expense attending the recovery of
any remains, particularly those - of the enemy, that, left
hastily behind in retreat, were commonly buried in trenches
without headboard or record. She said, sadly, that she had
very little money, and that she could barely afford the jour
ney to the Portress and return. But she esteemed her
means well invested if her object could be attained.
" They were both brave boys, sir ; but I could never get
them to agree politically. William was a Northerner by
education, and took up with the New England views, and
James was in business at Eichmond when the war com
menced. So he joined the Southern army. It's a sad thing
to know that one's children died enemies, isn't it ? And
what troubles me more than all, sir, is that James was at
Ball's Bluff where his brother fell. It makes me shudder
to think, sometimes, that Ms might have been the ball that
killed him."
The tremor of the poor creature here was painful to
behold. I spoke soothingly and encouragingly, but with a
presentiment that she must be disappointed. While I was
speaking the supper-bell rang, and I proposed to get her a
seat at the table. 6

62 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
" No, thank you," she replied, " I shall take no meals on
the vessel ; I must travel economically, and have prepared
some lunch that will serve me. Good by, sir ! "
Poor mothers looking for dead sons ! God help them 1 - 1
have met them often since ; but the figure of that pale, frail
creature flitting about the open deck, — alone, hungry, very
poor, — troubles me still, as I write. I found, afterward,
that she had denied herself a state-room, and intended to
sleep in a saloon chair. I persuaded her to accept my berth,
but a German, who occupied the same apartment, was unwill
ing to relinquish his bed, and I had the power only to give
her my pillow.
Supper was spread in the forecabin, and at the signal to .
assemble the men rushed to the tables like as many beasts of
prey. A captain opposite me bolted a whole mackerel in a
twinkling, and spread the half-pound of butter that was to
serve the entire vicinity upon a single slice of bread. A
Sutler beside me reached his fork across my neck, and
plucked a young chicken bodily, which he ate, to the great
disgust of some others who were eyeing it. The waiter ad
vanced with some steak, but before he reached the table, a
couple of Zouaves dragged it from the tray, and laughed
brutally at their success. The motion of the vessel caused
a general unsteadiness, and it was absolutely dangerous to
move one's coffee to his lips. The inveterate hate with
which corporations are regarded in America was here evi
denced by a general desire to empty the ship's larder.
" Eat all you can," said a soldier, ferociously, — " fare's
amazin' high. Must make it out in grub."
"I always gorges," said another, "on a railroad or a
steamboat. Cause why ? You must eat out your passage,
you know ! "
Among the passengers were a young officer and his bride.
They had been married only a few days, and she had ob
tained permission to accompany him to Old Point. Very
pretty, she seemed, in her travelling hat and flowing robes ;

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBAT.VNT. 63
and he wore a haridsomo new uniform with prodigious
shoulder-bars. There was a piano in the saloon, where
another young lady of the party performed during the
evening, and the bride and groom accompanied her with a
song. It was the popular Federal parody of " Gay and
Happy : " " Then let the South fling aloft what it will, —
We are for the Union still 1
For the TJnion I For the Union 1
We are for the Union still ! "
The bride and groom sang alternate stanzas, and the con
course of soldiers, civilians, and females swelled the chorus.
The reserve being thus broken, the young officer sang the
" Star-Spangled Banner," and the refrain must have called
up the mermaids. Dancing ensued, and a soldier volunteered
a hornpipe. A young man with an astonishing compass of
lungs repeated something from Shakespeare, and the night
passed by gleefully and reputably. One could hardly real
ize, in the cheerful eyes and active figures of the dance, the
sad uncertainties of the time. Youth trips lightest, some
how, on the brink of the grave.
The hilarities of the evening so influenced the German
quartered with me, that he sang snatches of foreign ballads
during most of the night, and obliged me, at last, to call
the steward and insist upou his good behavior.
In the gray of the morning I ventured on deck, and, fol
lowing the silvery line of beach, made out the shipping at
- anchor in Hampton Eoads. The llinnesota flag-ship lay
across the horizon, and after a time I remarked the low
walls and black derricks of the Eip Eaps. The white tents
at Hampton were then revealed, and finally I distinguished
Portress Monroe, the key of the Chesapeake, bristling with
guns, and floating the Federal -flag. As we rounded to off
the quay, I studied with intense interest the scene of so
many historic events. Sewall's Point lay to the south, a

64 CAMPAIGNS OP A. NON-COMBATANT.
stretch of woody beach, around whose western tip the
dreaded Merrimac had so often moved slowly to the en
counter. The spars of the Congress and the Cumberland
still floated along the strand, but, like them, the invulner
able monster had become the prey of the waves. The guns
of the Eip Eaps and the terrible broadsides of the Federal
gunboats, had swept the Confederates from Sewall's Point,
— their flag and battery were gone, — and farther seaward,
at Willoughby Spit, some figures upon the beach marked
the route of the victorious Federals to the city of Norfolk.
The mouth of the James and the York were visible frora
the deck, and long lines of shipping stretched from each
to the Fortress. The quay itself was like the pool in the
Thames, a mass of spars, smoke-stacks, ensigns and swelling
hills. The low deck and quaint cupola of the famous Moni
tor appeared close into shore, and near at hand rose the
thick body of the Galena. Long boats- aud flat boats went
hither and thither across the blue waves :' the grim ports of
the men of war were open and the guns frowned darkly
from their coverts ; the seamen were gathering for muster
on the flagship, and drums beat from the barracks on shore ;
the Lincoln gun, a fearful piece of ordnance, rose like the
Sphynx from the Fortress sands, and the sodded parapet,
the winding stone walls, the tops of the brick quarters
within the Fort, were some of the features of a strangely
animated scene, that has yet to be perpetuated upon can
vas, and made historic.
At eight o'clock the passengers were allowed to land, and
a provost guard marched them to the Hygeia House, — of
old a, watering-place hotel, — where, by groups, they were
ushered intd a small room, and the oath of allegiance admin
istered to them. The young officer who officiated, repeated
the words of the oath, with a broad grin upon his face, and
the passengers were required to assent by word and by
gesture. Among those who took the. oath in this way^ was
a very old sailor, who had been in the Federal service for

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 65
the better part of his life, and whose five sons were now in
the army. He called " Amen " very loudly and fervently,
and there was some perceptible disposition on the part of
other ardent patriots, to celebrate the occasion with three
cheers. The quartermaster, stationed at the Fortress gave
me a pass to go by steamer up the York to White House,
and as there were three hours to elapse before departure,
I strolled about the place with our agent." In times of
peace. Old Point was simply a stone fortification, and one
of the strongest of its kind in the world. Many years and
many millions of dollars were required to build it, but it was,
in general, feebly garrisoned, and was, altogether, a stupid,
tedious locality, except in the bathing months, when the
beauty and fashion of Virginia resorted to its hotel. A few
cottages had grown up around it, tenanted only in "the
season ; " and a little way off, on the mainland, stood the
pretty village of Hampton.
By a strange oversight, the South failed to seize Fortress
Monroe at the beginning of the Eebellion; the Federals
soon made it the basis for their armies and a leading naval
station. The battle of Big Bethel was one ofthe first oc
currences in the vicinity. Then the dwellings of Hampton
were burned and its people exiled. In rapid succession fol
lowed the naval battles in the Eoads, the siege and surren
der of Yorktown, the flight of the Confederates up the
-Peninsula to Eichmond, and finally the battles of Williams
burg, and West Point, and the capture of Norfolk. These
things had already transpired ; it was now the month of
May ; and the victorious army, following up its vantages,
had pursued the fugitives by land and water to " White
House," at the head of navigation on the Pamunkey river.
Thither it was my lot to go, and witness the turning-point
of their fortunes, and their subsequent calamity and repulse.
I found Old Point a weary place of resort, even in the
busy era of civil war. The bar at the Hygeia House was '
" 6*

66 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
beset with thirsty and idle people, who swore instinctively,
and drank raw spirits passionately. The quantity of shell,
ball, ordnance, cJtmp equipage, and war munitions of every
description piled around the fort, was marvellously great.
It seemed to me that Xerxes, the first Napoleon, or the
greediest of conquerors, ancient or modern, would have beheld
with amazement the gigantic preparations at command of
the Federal Government. Energy and enterprise displayed
their implements of death on every hand. One was startled
at the prodigal outlay of means, and the reckless summon
ing of men. I looked at the starred and striped ensign
that flaunted above the Fort, and thought of Madame
Eoland'e appeal to the statue by the guillotine.
Thc settlers were numbered by regiments here. Their
places of business were mainly structures or "shanties " of
rough plank, and most of them were the owners of sloops,
or schooners, for the transportation of freight from New
York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, to their depots at Old
Point. Some possessed a dozen wagons, that plied regu
larly between these stores and camps. The traffic was not
confined to men ; for women and children kept pace with
the army, trading in every possible article of necessity or
luxury. For these — disciples of the dime and the dollar-
war had no terrors. They took their muck-rakes, like the
man in Bunyan, and gathered the almighty coppers, from
the pestilential camp and the reeking battle-field.

CHAPTEE VII.
ON TO RICHMOND.
Yorktown lies twenty-oiie miles northwestward from Old
Point, and thither I turned my face at noon, resolving to
delay my journey to "White House," till next day morn
ing. Crossing an estuary of the bay upon a narrow cause
way, I passed Hampton, — half burned, half desolate, — and
at three o'clock came to " Big Bethel," the scene of the
battle of June 11, 1861. A small earthwork marks the
site of Magruder's field-pieces, and hard by the slain
were buried. The spot was noteworthy to me, since Lieu
tenant Greble, a fellow alumnus, had perished here, and
likewise, Theodore Winthrop, the gifted author of " Cecil
Dreeme " and " John Brent." The latter did not live to
know his exaltation. That morning never came whereon
he "woke, and found himself famous."
The road- ran parallel with the deserted defences of the
Confederates for some distance. The country was flat and
full of s-wamps, but marked at intervals by relics of camps.
The farm-houses were untenanted, the fences laid flat or
destroyed, the fields strewn with discarded clothing, arms,
and utensils. By and by, we entered the outer line of Fed
eral parallels, and wound among lunettes, cremailleres, re
doubts, and rifle-pits. Marks of shell and ball were fre
quent, in furrows and holes, where the clay had been up
heaved. Every foot of ground, for fifteen miles hencefor
ward, had been touched by the shovel and the pick. My
(67)

68 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
companion suggested that as much digging, concentred
upon one point, would have taken the Federals to China.
The sappers and miners had made their stealthy trenches,
rod by rod, each morning appearing closer to their adversa
ries, and finally, completed their work, at less than a hun
dred yards frora the Confederate defences. Three minutes
would have sufficed frora the final position, to hurl columns
up-on the opposing outworks, and sweep thera with the bay
onet. Ten days only had elapsed since the evacuation (May
4), and the siege guns still reraained in some of the bat
teries. McCleUan worshipped great ordnance, and some
of his columbiads, that were mounted in the water battery,
yawned cavernously through their embrasures, and might
have furnished sleeping accommodations to the gunners.
A few raortars stood in position by the river side, and there
were Parrott, Griffin, and Dahlgren pieces in the shore bat
teries. However nuraerous and powerful were the Federal fortifi
cations, they bore no coraparison, in either respect, to those
relinquished by the revolutionists. Miniature mountain
ranges they seemed, deeply ditched, and revetted with sods,
fascines, hurdles, gabions or sand bags. Along the York
riverside there were-water batteries of surpassing beauty, that
seemed, at a little distance, successions of gentle terraces.
Their pieces were likewise of enormous calibre, and their
number alraost incredible. The advanced line of fortifica
tions, sketched from the mouth of Warwick creek, on the
South, to a point fifteen miles distant on the York : one hun
dred and forty guns were planted along this chain of de
fences ; but there were two other concentric lines, mounting,
each, one hundred and twenty, and two hundred and forty
guns. The remote series consisted of six forts of massive
size and height, fronted by swamps and flooded meadows,
with frequent creeks and ravines interposing ; sharp fraise
and aSaiiis planted against scarp and slope, pointed cruelly
eastward. There were two water batteries, of six and four

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 69
thirty-two columbiads respectively, and the town itself,
which stands upon a red clay bluff', was encircled by a series
of iraraense rifled and smooth-bore pieces, including a pow
erful pivot-gun, that one of McClellan's shells struck during
the first day's bombardment, and split it into fragments.
At Gloucester Point, across the York river, the great guns
of the Merrimac were planted, it is said, and a fleet of fire-
rafts and torpedo-ships were moored in the streara. By all
accounts, there could have been no less than five hundred
guns behind the Confederate entrenchments, the greater
portion, of course, field-pieces, and, as the defending army
¦was composed of one hundred thousand raen, we must add
that number of small arms to the list of ordnance. If we
compute the Federals at so high a figure, — and they could
scarcely have had less than a hundred thousand men afield,
— we must increase the enormous amount of their field,
siege, and small ordnance, by the naval guns of the fleet,
that stood anchored in the bay. It is probable that a thou
sand cannon and two hundred thousand muskets were as
sembled in and around Yorktown during this memorable
siege. The mind shudders to see the terrible deductions of
these statistics. The monster, who wished that the world
had but one neck, that he might sever it, would have gloated
at such realization ! How many days or hours would have
here sufficed to annihilate all the races of men ? Happily,
the world was spared the spectacle of these deadly mouths
at once aflame. Beautiful but awful must have been the
scene, and the earth must have staggered with the shock.
One might almost have imagined that man, in his ambition,
had shut his God in heaven, and besieged him there.
While the fortifications defending it amazed me, the vil
lage of Yorktown disappointed rae. I raarvelled .that so
paltry a settlement should have been twice made historic.
Here, in the year 1183, Lord Cornwallis surrendered his
starving command to the American colonists and their French
allies. But the entrenchments of that earlier day had been

70 CAMPAIGNS -OF A NON-COMBATANT.
almost obliterated by these recent labors. The field, where
the Earl delivered up his sword, was trodden bare, and dot
ted with ditches and ramparts ; while a sraall raonument,
that raarked the event, had been hacked to fragments by the
Southerners, and carried away piecemeal. .Yet, strange to
say, relics of the first borabardraent had just been discov
ered, and, among them, a gold-hilted sword.
I visited, in the evening, the late quarters of General
Hill, a small white house with green shutters, and also the
famous " Nelson House," a roomy mansion where, of old,
Cornwallis slept, and where, a few days past, Jefferson
Davis and General Lee had held with Magruder, and his as
sociates, a council of war. It had been also used for hospi
tal purposes, but sorae negroes were now the only occu
pants. The Confederates left behind thera seventy spiked and
shattered cannon, some powder, and a few splintered
wagons ; but in all material respects, their evacuation was
thorough and creditable. Some deserters took the first
tidings of the retreat to the astonished Federals, and they
raised the national flag within the fortifications, in the .gray
of the morning of the 4th of May. Many negroes also es
caped the vigilance of their taskmasters, and remained to
welcome the victors. The fine works of Yorktown are
monuments to negro labor, for they were the hewers and the
diggers. Every slave-owner in Eastern Virginia was obliged
to send one half of his male servants between the ages of
"sixteen and fifty to the Confederate camps, and they were
organized into gangs and set to work. In some cases they
were put to military service and made excellent sharp
shooters. The last gun discharged from the town was said
to have been fired by a negro.
I slept on board a barge at the wharf that evening, and my
dreams ran upon a thousand themes. To every American this
was hallowed ground. It had been celebrated by the pencil
of Trumbull, ttie pen of Franklin, and the eloquence of Jef-

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 71
ferson. Scarce eighty years had elapsed since those great
minds established a fraternal government ; but the site of
their crowning glory was now the scene of their children's
shame. Discord had stolen upon their councils and blood
had profaned their shrine.
I visited next day a bomb-proof postern, or subterranean
passage, connecting the citadel with the outworks, and
loitered about the fortifications till noon, when I took pas
sage on the mail steamer, which left the Fortress at eleven
o'clock, and reached White House at dusk the same evening.
The whole river as 1 ascended was filled with merchant and
naval craft. They made a continuous line from Old Point to
the mouth of York Eiver, and the masts and spars environ
ing Yorktown and Gloucester, reminded one of a scene on
the Mersey or the Clyde. At West Point, there was an
array of shipping scarcely less formidable, and the windings
bf the interminably crooked Pamunkey were marked for
leagues by sails, smoke-stacks, and masts. The landings and
wharves were besieged by flat-boats and sloops, and Zouaves
were hoisting forage and commissary stores up the red
bluffs at every turn of our vessel.
The Pamunkey was a beautiful stream, densely wooded,
and occasional vistas opened up along its borders of wheat-
fields and meadows, with Virginia farm-houses and negro
quarters on the hilltops. Some of the houses on the river
banks appeared to be tenanted by white people, but the ma
jority had a haunted, desolate appearance, the only signs
of life being strolling soldiers, who thrust their legs through
the second story windows, or contemplated the river from
the chimney-tops, and groups of negroes who sunned them
selves on the piazza, or rushed to the margin to gaze and
grin at the passing steamers. There were occasional resi
dences not unworthy of old manorial and baronial times,
and these were attended at a little distance by negro quar
ters of logs, arranged in rows, and provided with mud
chimneys built against their gables. Few of the Northern
navigable rivers were so picturesque and varied.

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

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMIJATANT. 73
just been pitched ; none knew the location of divisions
other than their own, and it was now so dark that I did
not care to venture far. After a vain attempt to find sorae
flat-boats where there were lodgings and meals to be had, I
struck out for general head-quarters, and, undergoing re
peated snnbbings from pert members of staff, fell in at
length, with a very tall, spare, and angular young officer,
who spoke broken English, and who heard ray inquiries,
courteously; he stepped into General Marcy' s tent, but
the Chief of Staff did not know the direction of Smith's
division; he then repaired to Gen. Van Vieet, the chief
Quartermaster, but with ill* success. A party of officers
were smoking under a "fly," and some of these called to
him, thus —
" Captain ! Duke 1 De Chartres I What do you Wish ?
It was, then, the Orleans Prince .who had befriended me,
and I had the good fortune to hear that the division, of which
I was in search, lay a half mile up the river. I never spoke
to the Bourbon afterward, but saw him often ; and that he
was as chivalrous as he was kind, all testimony proved.
A private escorted me to a Captain Mott's tent, and this
officer introduced me to General Hancock. I was at once
invited to mess with the General's staff, and in the course
of an hour felt perfectly at home. Hancock was one of the
handsomest officers in the army ; he had served in the
Mexican war, and was subsequently a Captain in the Quar
termaster's department. But the Eebellion placed stars iu
many shoulder-bars, and few were more worthily designated
than this young Pennsylvanian. His first laurels were
gained at Williamsburg; but the stofy of a celebrated
charge that won him the day's applause, and McClellan's
encomium of the " Superb Hancock," was altogether ficti
tious. The musket, not the bayonet, gave him the victory.
I may . doubt, in this place, that any extensive bayonet
charge has been known during the war. Some have gone
so far as to deny that the bayonet has ever been used at all.
f

74 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
Hancock's regiments were the 5th Wisconsin, 49th Penn
sylvanian, 43d New York, and 6th Maine. They repre
sented widely different characteristics, and I esteemed my
self fortunate to obtain a position where I could so eligibly
study men, habits, and warfare. During the evening 1 fell
in with the Colonel of each of these regiments, and from the
conversation that ensued, I gleaned a fair idea of them
all. The Wisconsin*regiment was frora a new and arabitious
State of the Northwest. The men were rough-mannered,
great-hearted farmers, wood-choppers, and tradesmen. They
had all the impulsiveness of the Yankee, with less selfish
ness, and quite as much bravery. The Colonel was named
Cobb, and he had held some leading offices in Wisconsin.
A part of his life had been adventurously spent, and he had
participated in the Mexican war. He was an ardent
EepubUcan in politics, and had been Speaker of a branch of
the State Legislature. He was an attorney in a spall
county town when the war commenced, and his name had
been broached for the Governorship. In person he Was
sraall, lithe, and capable of enduring great fatigue. His
hair was a little gray, and he had no beard. He did not
respect appearances, and his sword, as I saw, was antique
and quite different in shape from the regulation weapon.
He had penetrating gray eyes, and his manners were generally
reserved. One had not to regard him twice to see that he
was both cautious and resolute. He was too ambitious to
be frank, and too passionate not to be brave. In the for
mula of learning he was not always correct ; biit few were
of quicker perception or more practical and philosophic.
He might not, in an emergency, be nicely scrupulous as to
means, but he never wavered in respect to objects. His
will was the written law to his regiment, and I believed his
executive abilities superior to those of any officer in the
brigade, not excepting the General's.
The New York regiment was commanded by a young
officer named Vinton. He was not raore than thirty-five

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 75
years of age, and was a graduate of the United States
Military Acaderay. Passionately devoted to engineering,
he withdrew frora the array, and passed five years in Paris,
at the study of his art. Eeturning horaeward by way of
the West Indies, he visited Honduras, and projected a fili
bustering expedition to its shores from the States. While
perfecting the design, the Eebellion comraenced, and his
old patron. General Scott, secured him the colonelcy of a
volunteer regiment. He still cherished his scherae of " Col
onization," and half of his raen were promised to accompany
hira. Personally, Colonel Vinton was straight, dark, and
handsome. He was courteous, affable, and brave, — but
wedded to his peculiar views, and, as I thought, a thorough
" Young American."
The Maine regiment was fathered by Colonel Burnham,
a staunch old yeoman and soldier, who has since been made
a General. His probity and good-nature were adjuncts of
, his valor, and his men were of the better class of New Eng
landers. JThe fourth regiraent fell into the hands of a lawyer
from Lewistowh, Pennsylvania. He had been also in the
Mexican war, and was reraarkable raainly for strictness with
regard to the sanitary regulations of his camps. He had
wells dug at every stoppage, and his tents were generally
fenced and canopied with cedar arbors. General Hancock's
staff was composed of a number of young men, most of
whom had been called from civil life. His brigade consti
tuted one of three commanded by General Smith. Four
batteries were annexed to the division so formed ; the entire
number of muskets was perhaps eight thousand. The Chief
of Attillery was a Captain Ayres, whose battery saved the
three months' army at Bull Eun. It so happened that he
came into the General's during the evening, and recited the
particulars of a gunboat excursion, thirty miles up the
Pamunkey, wherein he had landed his men, and burned a
quantity of grain, some -warehouses, and shipping. I pen
cilled the facts at once, made up my letter, and mailed it
earlx in the morning.

CHAPTEE Vni.

RUSTICS IN EEBELLION.

At White House, I met some of the mixed Indians and
negroes from Indiantown Island, which lies among the osiers
in the stream. ' One of these ferried me over, and the people
received me obsequiously, touching their straw hats, and
saying, " Sar, at your service ! " They were all anxious to
hear something of the war, and asked, solicitously, if they .
were to be protected. Some of them had been to. Eichmond
the previous day, and gave me some unimportant items
happening in the city. I found that they bad Eichmond
papers of. that date, and purchased them for a few cents!
They knew little or nothing of their own history, and had
preserved no traditions of their tribe. There was, however,
I understood, a very old woraan extant, named "Mag," of
great repfite at medicines, pow-wows, and divination. I
expressed a desire to speak with her, and was conducted to
a log-house, njore ricketty and ruined than any of the
others. About fifty half-breeds followed me in xespiectful
curiosity, and they formed a semicircle around the cabin.
The old woman sat in the threshold, barefooted, and smoking
a stump of clay,pipe.
" Yaw's bne o' dem Nawden soldiers. Aunt Mag I " said
my conductor. " He wants to talk wid ye."
"Sot down, honey," said the old woman, producing a
wooden stool ; "is you a Yankee, honey ? Does you want
you fauohun told by de ole 'oman ? "
(78).

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 77
I perceived that the daughter of the Delawares smelt
strongly of fire-water, and the fumes of her calumet were
most unwholesome. She was greatly disappointed that I
did not require her prophetic services, and said, appeal
ingly— " Why, sar, all de gen'elmen an' ladies frora Eichmond
has dere fauchuns told. I tells 'em true. All my fauchuns
comes out true. Ain't dat so, chillen ? "
A low murmur of assent ran round the group, and lwas
obviously losing caste in the settleraent.
"Here is a dime," said I, "that I will give you, to tell
me the result of the war. Shall the North be victorious in
the next battle ? Will Eichmond surrender within a week ?
Shall I take my cigar at the Spotswood on Sunday fort
night ? "
"I'se been a lookin' into dat," she said, cunningly;
" I'se had drearas on dat ar'. Le'um see how de armies
8tand!".j- She brought from the house a cup of painted earthen
ware containing sediments of coffee. I saw her crafty
white eyes look up to mine as she muttered some jargon,
and pretended to read the arrangement of the grains.
"Honey," she said, "gi' me de money, and let de de
'oman dream on it once mo' ! It ain't quite clar' yit, young
massar. Tank you, honey I Tank you ! Let de old'oman
dream ! Let de ole 'oman dream ! "
She disappeared into the house, chuckling and chattering,
and the sons of the forest, loitering awhile, dispersed in va
rious directions. As I followed ray conductor to the river
side, and he parted the close bushes and boughs to give us
exit, the glare of the camp-fires broke all at once upon us.
The ship-lights quivered on the water; the figures of men
raoved ' to and fro before the fagots ; the stars peeped tim
orously from the vault ; the woods and steep banks were
blackly shadowed in the riverJ Here was I, among the
aborigines; and as my dusky acquaintance sent his canoe
7*

78 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
skimming across the ripples, I thought how inexplicable
were the decrees of Time and the justice pf. God. Two
lacesjiMiited in these people, and both of them. we had
wronged,: From the one we had taken lands; frora the
other liberties. Two centuries had now elapsed. But the
little remnant of the African and the American were to look
from their Island Horae upon the clash of our armies and
the raurder of our braveS, ,
By the 19th of May th.e skirts of the grand army had
Jjeen gathered up, and on the 20th the march to.Eichraond
was resumed. The troops moved along two main roads, of
which the right led to New Mechanicsville and Meadow
Bridges, ^nd ithe left to the railroad and Bottom Bridges.
My division formed the right- centre, and although the
Chickahominy fords were but eighteen miles distant, we
did not reach them for three days. On the first night we
encamped at Tunstall's, a railroad-station on Bla,ck 'Creek';
on the second at New Cold Harbor, a little country tavern,
kept by a cripple ; and on the' night of the ' third day at
Hogan's fariji, on the nortb hills of the Chickahominy. The
railroad was opened to Despatch, Station at the same tirae,
hut the right and centre were stUl compeUefi to "team"
their supplies .from. .White Ho.nse. Inj the new position, the
army extended ten miles along the Chickahominy hills ; and
while the engine.ers were, driving pile, tressel, pontoon, and
corduroy bridges, the cavalry was scouring the country, oil
both: flanks, far and wide.
, Tbp i^dyaace was full, of incident, and I learned to keep as
far. in front as possible, that I might communicate with
scouts, contrabands, and citizens. Many odd personage^
were revea/led tp; me at the , farni-liouses pn thp way, and I
studied, with curious interest, the native Virginian charac
ter. ; They appeared to be pompounda of the oavajier and
f^Q boor. There was no old gentleman who owned aihou-
sand barren acres, spotted with ^crub tiraber ; vrho lived.in
a .weather-beaten b^rn, with a multiplicity , of. pprch and a

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 79
quantity of chimney ; whose means bore no proportion to
his pride, and neither to his indolence, — that did not talk
of his ancestry, proffer his hospitality, and defy me to an
argument. I was a civilian, — they had no hostility to me,
— but the blue-coats of the soldiers seared their eyeballs.
In some cases their daughters remained upon the property ;
but the sons and the negroes always fled, — though in con
trary directions. The old men used to peep through the
windows at the passing columns ; and as their gates were
wrenched from the hinges, their rails used to pry wagons
out of the mud, their pump-handles shaken till the buckets
splintered in the shaft, and their barns invaded by greasy
agrarians, they walked to and fro, half-weakly, half-wrath-
fuUy, but with a pluck, fortitude, and devotion that wrung
my respect. Sorae aged negro women commonly remained,
but these were rather incumbrances than aids, and they
used the family meal to cook bread for the troops. An old,
toothless, grinning African stood at every lane and gate,
selling buttermilk and corn-cakes. Poor mortal, sinful old
women ! They had worked for nothing through their three
score and ten, but avarice glared from their shrivelled
pupils, and their last but greatest delight lay in the
coppers and the dimes. One would have thought that they
had outlived the greed of gold ; but wages deferred make
the dying miserly.
The lords of the manors were troubled to know the
number of our troops. For several days the columns passed
with their interminable teams, batteries, and adjuncts, and
the old gentlemen were loth to corapute us at less than
seyeral millions.
" Why, look yonder," said one, pointing to a brigade ;
" I declar' to gracious, there ain't no less than ten thousand
in them!"
' " Tousands an' tousands ! " said a wondering negro at
his elbow. " I wonda if dey '11 take Eichmond dis yer
day?"

80 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
Many of thera hung white flags at their gate-posts, imply
ing neutrality ; but nobody displayed the Federal colors. If
there were any covert sympathizers with the purposes of the
army, they remembered the vengeance ofthe neighbors and
made no demonstrations. There was a prodigious number
of stragglers fi'om the Federal lines, as these were the bane
of the country people. They sauntered along by twos and
threes, rambling into all the fields 'and green-apple orchards,
intruding their noses info old cabins, prying in-to smoke
houses, and cellars, looking at the stock in the stables, and
peeping on tij)toe into the windows of dwellings. These
stragglers were true exponents of Yankee chara(?ter, —
always wanting to know, — averse to discipline, eccentric
in their orbits, enteirtaining profound contempt for every
thing that was "not up to the measure of " to hum."
" Look here. Bill, 1 say ! " said one, with a great grin on
his face; "did you ever,- neow ! I swan! they call that a
plough down in these parts.''
" Devilishest people I ever see ! " said Bill, "stick their
meetin'-houses square in the woods ! Build their chimneys
first and move the houses up to 'era ! All the houses
breakin' out in perspiration of porch ! All their machinery
with Noah in the ark ! ' Pump the soil dry ! Go to sleep a
milkin' a keow ! Depend entirely oh Providence and the
nigger 1 " ¦• '
There was a mill on the. New Bridge road, ten miles from
White House, with a tidy farm-house^ stacks, and cabins
adjoining. The road crossed the mill-race by a log bridge^
and a spreading ponder dam lay to the left, —^ the water'
black as ink, the shore sandy, and the stream disappearing
in a grove of straight pines. A youngish woman, with
several small children, occupied the dwelling, and there re
mained, besides, her fat sister-in-law and four or five faithful
negroes. I begged the fa-t^or ofa meal and bed in the place
one night, and shall not forget the- hospitable table with its
steaming biscuit ; the chubby baby, perched upon his high

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 81
stool ; the talkative elderly woman, who took snuff at the
fireplace ; the contented black-girl, who plaj^ed the Hebe ;
and above all, the trim, plump, pretty hostess, wilh her
brown eyes and hair, her dignity and her fondness, sitting at
the' head of the board. When she poured the bright coffee
into the capacious bowl, she revealed the neatest of hands
and arras, and her dialect was softer and more musical than
that of most Southerners. In short, I fell alraost in love
with her ; though she might have been a younger playmate
of my mother's, and though - she was the wife of a Quarter
master in a Virginia regiment. Por, somehow, a woraan
seeras very handsorae when one is afield 'J- and the contact
of rough soldiers, gives him a partiality for females. It
raust have required some courage to remain upon the farra ;
but she hoped thereby to save the property frora spoliation.
I played a garae of whist with the sister-in-law, arguing all
the while ; and at nine o'clock the servant produced some
hard cider, shellbarks, and apples. We drank a cheery
toast: "an early peace and old fellowship!" — to which
the -wife added a sentiraent of " always welconie," and the
baby laughed at her knee. How brightly glowed the fire !
1 wanted to linger for a week, a month, a year, — as I do
now, thinking it all over, — and when I strolled to the
porch, — hearing the pigeons cooing at the bairn ; the water
Streaming dow:n the dara ; the melancholy irionotony of the
pine boughs ; —there only lacked -the huraming mill-wheel,
and the strong grip of the miller's hand, to fill the void
comer of one's happy heart.
But this was a tirae of war, when dreams are rudely
broken, and mine could not last. The next day some great
wheels beat down the bridge, and the teams clogged the
road for miles; the waiting tetimstiBrs saw the miller's
sheep, and the geese, chickens, and pigs, rashly exposed
themselves in the barnyard ; these were killed and eaten,
the mill stripped of flour and meal, and the garden despoiled
of its vegetables. A quartermaster's horse foundered, and

82 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
he demanded the miller's, giving therefor a receipt, but
specifying, upon the same the owner's: relation to tbe- Rebel
lion; and, to crown all, a group pf stragglers, butchered the
cows, and heaped the beef in their, wagons to. feed their
regiraental .friends. When I presented niyselfj late.in the
afternoon, the yard and porches were filled with soldiers.;
the wife sat within, her head thrown upon the window, jher
bright hair unbound, and her eyes re^ with weeping. Tbe
baby had cried itself to sleep, the sister-in-law tppk s»nlf
fiercely, at the fire ; the black girl cowered in a corner.
" There is not bread in the house for my children," she
said; "but I did not think, they could make me shed a
tear,". -,,..„,,-..
If there were Spartan woraen, as the story-books say, I
wonder if their , blood died with .them! I hardly think
BO. . - .,,.,, , ; '.
, If I learned aiiything from my quiet study of this and
subsequent campaigns, it was the heartlessness of war.
War, brutalizes 1 The most pitiful become pitiless afield,
and those who are not callous, must do, cruel duties. If
the quartermaster had not seis^ed the horses, he would have
been accountable for his, conduct;, had, he failed to state
the m.iller's disloyalty in the. receipt, he would have been
punished. The, men were .thieves and brutes, to take the
meal and meat ; but they were perhaps hungry and weary,
and sick of camp fopd ; on the whole, I became a devotee, of
the Qeprge Fox faith, and hated warfare, though I kftew
nothing to substitute for it, in crises.
: Besides, the optimist might have seen much to admire.
Individual merits were developed around rae ; I saw shop
keepers and mechanics in the ranks, and they looked to be
better men. Here were triumphs of engineering ; there
perfections of applied ingenuity. , I saw how the weakest
natures girt themselves for great resolves, and how forti
tude outstripped itself. It is. a noble thing to put by the
fear of death. It was a grand spectacle, this civil soldieiy of

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 83
both sections, supporting their principles, ambitions, or
whatever instigated them, with their bodies ; and their
bones, lie where they will, must be severed, when the plough
share some day heaves them to the ploughman.
One morning a friend asked me to go upon a scout.
" Where are your companies ? " said I.
" There are four behind, and we shall be joined by six at
Old Cold Harbor."
I saw, in the rear, filing through a belt of woods, the
tall figures of the horsemen, approaching at a canter.
" Do you command ? " said I again.
" No !¦ the Maj'or has charge of the scout, and his orders
are secret."
I wheeled beside him, as the cavalry closed up, waved my
hand to Plumley, and the girls, and went forward to the ren
dezvous, about six miles distant. The reraaining companies
of the regiraent were here drawn up, watering their nags.
The Major was a thick, sunburnt man, with grizzled beard,
and as he saw us rounding a corner of hilly road, his voice
rang out —
" Attention ! Prepare to mount ! "
Every rider sprang to his nag ; every nag walked instinc
tively to his place ; every horseman made fast his girths,
strapped his blankets tightly, and lay his hands upon bridle-
rein and pommel.
"Attention! Mount!"
The riders sprang to their seats ; the bugles blew a lively
strain ; the horses pricked up their ears ; and the long array
moved briskly forward, with the Captain, the Major, and
myself at the head. We were joined in a raoraent by two
pieces of flying artillery, and five fresh corapanies of caval
ry. In a moinent more we were underway again, galloping
due northward, and, as I, surmised, toward Hanover Court
House. If any branch ofthe military service is feverish, adven
turous, and exciting, it is that of the cavalry. One's heart
beats as fast as the hoof-falls ; there is no music like the

84 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
winding ofthe bugle, and' no monotone so full of meaning
as the clink bf sabres rising and falling with the dashing
pace. Horse and rider become one, — a new race of Cen
taurs, — and the charge,''the stroke, the crack of carbines,
are so quick, vehement, and dramatic,' that we seera to be
watching the joust of tournaments or following fierce Sala-
dins and Crusaders again. We had ridden two hours at a
fair canter, when we came to a sraall stream that crossed
the road obliquely, and gurgled away through a sandy val
ley into the deepnesses of the woods. A cart-track, half
obliterated, here diverged, running parallel with the creek,
and the Major held Up his sword as a signal to halt ; at the
same moment the bugle blew a quick, shrill note.
" There are hoof-marks here ! " grunted the Major, —
"five of 'era. The Dutchman has gone into the thicket.
Hulloo ! " he added, precipitately ¦ — " there go ¦ the car
bines ! "
I heard, clearly, two explosions in rapid succession ; then
a general discharge, as of several persons firing at once,
and at last, five continuous reports, fainter, but more regu
lar, and like the several emptyings of a revolver. I had
scarcely time to note these things, and the effect produced
upon the troop, when strange noises came from the woods
to the right: the floundering of steeds, the cries and curses
of men, and the ringing of steel striking steel. Directly
the boughs crackled, the leaves quivered, and a horse and
rider plunged into the road, not five rods from ray feet.
The man was bareheaded,' and his face and clothing were
torn with briars and branches. He Was at first riding fairly
upon our troops, when he beheld the uniform and standards,
and with a sharp oath' flung up his sWord and hands.
" I surrender 1 " he said ; " I give in I Don't shoot ! "
The scPres of carbines that were levelled upon hira at
once dropped to their rests at the saddles ; but sorae unseen
avenger had not heededthe shriek ; a ball whistled from the
woods, and the man fell from his cushion like a stone. In

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 85
another instant, the German sergeant bounded through the
gap, holding his sabre aloft in his right hand ; but the left
hung stiff and shattered at his side, and his face was deathly
white. He glared an instant at the dead man by the road
side, leered grimly, and called aloud —
" Corae ou. Major 1 Dis vay 1 Dere are a squad of dera
ahead ! "
The bugle at once sounded a charge, the Major rose in
the stirrups, and thundered "Forward!" I reined aside,
intuitivelyi and the column dashed hotly past me. With a
glance at the heap of mortality littering the way, I spurred
my nag sharply, and followed hard behind. The riderless
horse seemed to catch the fever of the raoment, and closed
up with rae, leaving his master the solitary tenant of the
dell. For perhaps three miles we galloped like the -wind,
and my brave little traveller overtook the hindmost of the
troop, and retained the position. Thrice there were dis
charges ahead ; I caught glimpses of the Major, the Cap
tain, and the wolfish sergeant, far in the advance ; and once
saw, through the cloud of dust that beset them, the pur
sued and their individual pursuers, turning the top of a
hUl. But for the most part, I saw nothing ; I felt all the
intense, consuming, burning ardor of the time and the event.
I thought that my hand clutched a sabre, and despised my
self that it was not there. I stood in the stirrups, and held
sorae invisible enemy by the throat. In a Word, the bloodi
ness of the chase was upon me. I realized'the fierce infatu
ation of matching life with life, and standing arbiter upon
my fellow's body and sDul. It seemed but a raoment, when
we halted, red and panting, in the paltry Court House vil
lage of Hanover ; the field-pieces hurled a few shells at the
escaping Confederates, and the men were ordered to dis
mount. It seemed that a Confederate picket had been occupying
the village, and the creek meraorized by the skirmish was
8

86 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
an outpost merely. Two of the man Otto's party had been
slain in the woods, where also lay as many Southerners.
Hanover Court House is renowned as the birthplace of
Patrick Henry, the colonial orator, called by Byron the
." forest Demosthenes." In a little tavern, opposite the old
Court House building, he began his hurable career as a
measurer of gills to convivials, and in the Court House, ^-
a small Stone edifice, plainly but quaintly constructed, — he
gave the first exhibitions of his matchless eloquence. Not
¦far away, on a by-road, the more modern but not less fa
mous orator, Henry Clay, was born. The region adjacent
•to his father's was called the "Slashes of Hanover," and
thence came his appellation of the "Mill Boy of the
Slashes." I had often longed to visit these shrines ; but
never drearaed that the booming of cannon would announce
me. The soldiers broke into both the 'tavern and courtr
house, and splintered some chairs in the former to obtain
relics of Henry. I secured Eichmond newspapers of the
same morning, and also some items of intelligence. With
these I decided to repair at once to White House, and
formed the rash determination of taking the direct or Pa
munkey road, which I had never travelled, and which might
be beset by Confederates. The distance to White House,
by this course, was only twenty iniles ; whereas it was
nearly as far to head-quarters ; and I believed that my horse
had still the persistence to carry me. It was past four
o'clock ; but I thought to ride six miles an hour while daj^-
light lasted, and, by good luck, get to the depot at nine.
The Major said that it was foolhardiness ; the Captain ban
tered me to go. I turned my back upon both, and bade
thera good by..

CHAPTEE IX.
PUT UNDER AEKEST.
While daylight reraained, I had little reason to repent my
wayward resolve. The Pamunkey lay to my left, and the
residences between it and the road were of a better order
than others that I had seen. This part of the country had
not been, overrun, and the wheat and "young corn were
waving in the river-breeze. I saw few negroes, but the
porches were frequently occupied by woraen and white men,
who looked wonderingly toward me. There were some
hoof-marks ih the clay, and traces of a broad tire, that I
thought belonged to a gun-carriage. The hills of King
William County were but a little way off, and through the
wood that darkened them, sunny glimpses of vari-colored
fields and dwellings now and then appeared. I carae to a
shabby settlement called New Castle, at six o'clock, where
an evil-looking man walked out from a frame-house, and
inquired the meaning of the firing at Hanover.
I explained hurriedly, as some of his neighbors meantime
gathered around me. They asked if I was not a soldier in
the Yankee array, and as I rode away, followed rae sus
piciously with their eyes and wagged their he.ads. To end
the matter, I spurred my pony and soon galloped out of
sight. Henceforward I raet only stern, surprised glances,
and seemed to read "murder." in the faces of the inhab
itants. A wide creek crossed the roa.d abput five miles
further on, where I stopped to water my horse. The shades
(87)

88 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
of night were gathering now ; there was no moon ; and for
the first time I realized the loneliness of my position. Hith
erto, adventure had laughed down fear ; hereafter my mind
was to be darkened like the gloaming, and peopled with
ghastly shadows.
I was yet young in the experience of death, and the top
pled corpse of the slain cavalry-man on the scout, somehow
haunted me. I heard his hoof-falls chiming with my own,
and imagined, with a cold thrill, that his steed was still
following me; then, his white rigid face and uplifted arms
menaced my way ; and, at last, the ruffianly form of his
slayer pursued him along the wood. They glided like shad
ows over the foliage, and flashed actoss the'surfaces of pools
and rivulets. I heard their steel ringing In the underbrush,
and they flitted around rae, pursuing and retreating, till my
brain began to whirl with the motion. Suddenly my horse
stumbled, and I reined him to a halt:
The cold drops were standing on my forehead. I found
my knees a-quiver and my breathing convulsive. With an
expletive upon- ray unmanliness, I touched the nag with my
heel, and whistled encouragingly. Poor pony ! Fifty miles
of almost Uninterrupted travel had broken his spirit. He
leaped into his accustomed pace : but his legs Were unsteady
and he floundered at eveiy bound. There were pools, ruts',
and boughs across the way, with here and there stretche's
of slippery corduroy ; but the' thick blaekhess concealed
these, and I expected momentarily to be thrown frofli the
saddle. By and by he dropped from, a canter into a rock ;
from a rock to an amble ; then into'a walk, and finally to a
slow painful limp. I dismounted and tddk him perplexedly
by the bit. A light shone from the window of a dwelling
across sorae open fields to the left, and I thought of repair
ing thither; but sorae deep-raOuthed dogs 'began to 'bay
directly, and then the lamp went out.' A tiny stream sang
at the roadside, fiowing to'wa;rd Some deeper tributary ;
lighting a cigar, I made out, by its fitful Uluminings; to' wash

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 89
the limbs of the jaded nag. Then I led him for an hour, till
my own limbs were weary, troubled all the time by weird
imaginings, doubts, and regrets. When I resumed the
saddle the horse had a firmer step and walked pleasantly.
I ventured after a time to incite hira to a trot, and was going
nicely forward, when a deep voice, that almost took my
breath, called frora the gloom —
"Who comes there? Halt, or I fire! Guard, turn
out I "
Directly thc road was full of men, and a bull's-eye lan
tern flashed upon my face. A group of foot-soldiery, with
drawn pistols and sabres, gathered around me, and I heard
the neigh of steeds from some iraperceptible vicinity.
" Who is it. Sergeant?" said one. " Is there but one of
'em ? " said another. " Cuss him ! " said a third ; " I was
takin' a bully snooze." " Who are yeou ? " said the Ser
geant, sternly ; " what are yeou deouin' aout at this hour o'
the night ? Are yeou a rebbil ? "
"No!" I answered, greatly relieved; " I am a news
paper correspondent of Smith's division, and there's my
pass ! "
I was taken over to a place in the woods, where some
fagots were smouldering, ahd, stirring thera to a blaze, the
Sergeant read the document and pronounced it right.
" Yeou hain't got no business, nevertheless, to be roamin'
araound outside o' picket ; but seein' as it's yeou, I reckon
yeou may trot along ! "
I offered to exchange my information for a biscuit and a
drop of coffee, for I was wellnigh worn out ; while one of
the privates produced a canteen more wholesome than
cleanly, another gave me a lump of fat pork and a piece of
corn bread. They gathered sleepily about me, while I told
of the scout, and the Sergeant said that ray individual ride
was " garae enough, but nothin' butda,rn nonsense." Then
they fed my horse with a trifle of oats, and after awhile I
8*

90 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
climbed, stiff and bruised, to the saddle again, and bade
them good night.
I knew now that I was at "Putney's," a ford on the'
Paraunkey, and an hour lateri carae un sight of the ship- '
lights at White House, and heard the stearaing of tugs and-
draught-boats, going and coming by night. I hitched my
horse to a tree, pilfered some hay and fodder from two or
three nags tied adjacent, and picked ray way across a gang
way, several barge-decks, and a floating landing, to theraail
Steamer that lay outside. Her deck and cabin were filled
with people, stretched lengthwise and crosswise, tangled,
grouped, and snoring, but all apparently fast asleep. I
coolly .took a blanket from a man that looked as though he
did not need it, and wrapped myself cosily under a bench
in a corner. The cabin light flared dimly, half irradiating
the forms below, and the boat heaved a little on the river-
swells. The night was cold, the floor hard, and I alraost
dead with fatigue. But what of that! I felt the newspa
pers in ray breast pocket, and knew that the mail could not
leave me in the morning. Blessed be the news-gatherer's
sleep ! I think he earned it.
• It was very pleasant, at dawn, to receive the congratula
tions of our agent, with whom I breakfasted, and to whora
I consigned a hastily written letter and all the Eichmond
papers of the preceding day. He was a shrewd,- sanguine,
middle-aged raan, of large experience and good standing in
our establishraent. He -was sent through the South at
the beginning ofthe Eebellion, and introduced into all public
bodies and social circles, that he might fathom the designs
of Secession, and comprehend its ; spirit. Afterward he
accompanied the Hatteras and Port Eoyal expeditions, and
ivitneSsed' those celebrated bombardraents. Such a thorough
individual abnegation I never knew. He was a part of the
establishraent, body and soul. He agreed with its politics,
adhered to all its policies; defended it, upheld it, revered it.
The Federal Governraent was, to his eye, merely an adjunct

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 91
of the paper. Battles and sieges were simply occurrences
for its columns. Good men, brave men, bad, men, died to
give it obituaries. The whole world was to him *a Eeport-
er's district, and all human mutations plain matters of news.
I'hardly think that any city, other than New York, contains
such char9,cters. The journals there are full of fever, and
the profession of journalism is a disease.
He cashed me a draft for a hundred dollars, , and I filled
my saddle-bags with smoking-tobacco, spirits, a meer-
schaura pipe, packages of sardines, a box of cigars, and
some cheap publications. Then we adjourned to the quay,
where the steamer was taking in mails, freight and passenr
gers. The papers were in his side-pocket, and he was
about to corarait thera to a steward for transraission to
Fortress Monroe, when my name was called from the strand
by a young mounted officer, connected with one of the staffs
of my division. I thought that he wished to exchange sal
utations or make some inquiries, and tripped to his side.
" General McClellan wants those newspapers that you
obtained at Hanover yesterday I "
A thunderbolt would not have more transfixed me. I
could' not speak for a moraent. Finally, I stanunered that
they were out of my possession.
" Theji, sirj I arrest you, by order of General McClellan.
Get your horse 1 "
^'Stop ! " said I, agitatedly, " — it m^^y not be too late.
I can recover them yet. Here is our agent, — I gave thera
to hira." . , I
~ I turned,' at the word, to the landing where, he stood a
moment before. To ray dismay, he had disappeared.
" This is some frivolous pretext to escape," said the Lieu
tenant ; you correspondents are slippery fellows, but I shall
take care that you do not play any pranks with rae. The
General is irritated already, and if ypu prevaricate relative
to those papers he may make a signal example of you."
I begged to be.allbwed to look for  ; but he answered

92 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
cunningly, that I had better mount and ride on. An ac
quaintance of mine here interfered, and testified to the ex-
istency of the agent and his probable connection with the
journals. Pale, flurried, excited, I started to discover him,
the Lieutenant following me closely meantime. We entered
every booth and tent, went from craft to craft, sought
among the thick clusters of people, and even at the Com
missary's ahd Quartermaster's pounds, that lay some dis
tance up the railroad.
" I ara sorry for you, old fellow," said the Lieutenant,
"but your accomplice has probably escaped. It's very
sneaking of hira, as it makes it harder for you ; but I- have
no authority to deal with him, though I shall take care to
^report his condudt at head-quarters."
I found that the Lieutenant was greatly gratified with the
duty entrusted to him. He had been at the ca,valry quar
ters on the return of the scouting party, and had overheard
the Major muttering soraething as to McClellan's displeasure
at receiving no Eichmond journals. The Major had added
that one of the correspondents took them to White House,
and, raentioning me by name, this young and aspiring sat
ellite had blurted out that he knew me, and could doubt
less overtake me at the mail-boat in the morning. The Cora-
manding General authorized him to arrest me with the pa
pers, and report at head-quarters. This was then a journey
to recommend him to authority, and it involved no personal
danger. I was not so intimidated that I failed to see how
the Lieutenant would lose his gayest feather by failing to
recover : the journals, and I dexterously insinuated that it
would be well to recommence the search. This time wo
were successful. The shrewd, sanguine, middle-aged man
was coolly conteraplating the river from an outside barge,
concealed frora the shore by piled boxes of amraunition.
He was'roading a phonetic paraphlet, and appeared to take
his appreliension as a pleasant raorning call. I caught one
meaning glance, however, that satisfied me how clearly he
understood the case.

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 93
"Ha! To-wnsend," said he, smilingly, " back already ?
I thought we had , lost you. One of your military friends ?
Good-day, Lieutena,nt,"
" I ara under arrest, ray boy," said I, " and you will rauch
aggravate General McClellan, if you do not consign those
Eichraond journals to his deputy here."
" Under arrest ? You surprise rae I I am sorry. Lieuten
ant that you have had so fatiguing a ride, but the fact is,
those papers have gone down the river. If the General is
not in a great hurry, he will see their colurans reproduced
by us in a few days."
" How did they go ? " said the Lieutenant, with an oath,
" if by the mail-boat I will have General Van Vliet despatch
a tug to overhaul her."
"I. ara very sorry again," said the bland civilian,
smoothing his hands : " but they went by the South Amer
ica at a much earlier hour."
I looked appealingly to hira ; the satellite stared down
the river perplexedly, but suddenly his eye fell upon some
thing that absorbed it ; and he turned like a madman
to  —
" By !  -. — ¦- sir, you are lying to me. There is the
South America moored to a barge, and her steam is not
up ! "
" Those words are utterly uncalled for," said the agent, —
" but you cannot irritate me, my dear sir ! I know that
youth is hot, — particularly military youth yet inexperi
enced ; and therefore I pardon you. I made a mistake. It
was not the South. America, it was — it was — upon my
word I cannot recall the^name I "
" You do not mean to I " thundered the young Ajax, to,
whose vanity, <  's speech had been gall ; " my powers are
discretionary : I arrest you in the name of General
McClellan." " Indeed f Be sure you understand your orders ! It
isn't probable that such a €ery blade is allowed mucb dis-

94 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
cretfoiiary- margin. The General himself would not assume
such airs. Why don't you shoot me'? ' It might contribute
to your promotion, and that is, no doubt, your object. I
know General McClellan very well. He is a personal
friend of raine." -
His raanner was so self-possessed, his tone so cutting,
that the young man of fustian — whose name was Kenty —
fingered his sword hilt, and foamed at the lips.
"March on," said hCi^^"! will report this insolence
word for word."
' He motioned us to the quay ; we preceded him. The
sanguine gentleman keeping ujp a running fire of malevolent
sarcasm. ' '
" Stop 1 " said he quietly, as we reached his tent,; — " I
have not sent thera at all. They are here. And you- have
made all this exhibition of yourself for nothing. I ara the
better soldier, you see. You are a drummBi:-boy, not an
officer. Take off your , shoulder-bars, ahd go- to school
again." .
He disappeared a minute, returned -with two journals,
and looking at me, meaningly, turned to -their titles.
" Let me see ! " he said, smoothly, — '" Eichmond Exam
iner, May 28, Eichmond Enquirer, May 22. There 1 You
have them ! Go in peace ! Give my respects to General
McClellan I Townsend, old fellow, you have done your full
duty. Don't let this young person frighten you. Good
by." He gave me his hand, with a sinister glance, and left
soraething in my palm when his own was withdrawn. I
examined it hastily when I girt up my' saddle. It said:
"Your budget: got offi safe i old fellow." He had given
Eenty some old jouinals that were bf no va;lue to anybody.
When we were mounted and about to start, the Lieutenant
looked witheringly upon his persecutor —
" Allow me to say. Sir," he excfeimed, " that you are the
most unblushing liar I ever knew."

CAMPAIGNS OP A NOl^-COMBATANT. 95
"Thank you, kindly," ^pa{d — , — , taking off his hat,
" you do rae honor 1 "
Our route was silent and weary enough. The young raan
at my side, unconscious of his wily antagonist's deception,
boasted for sorae time that he had attained his purposes. As
I could not undeceive him, I held ra~y tongue ; but feared
that when this trick should be made manifest, the vengeance
would fall on me alone. I heartily wished the unlucky
papers at the bottom of the sea. To gratify an adventurous
whim, and obtain a day's popularity at New York, I had
exposed ray life, crippled my nag, and was now to be dis
graced and punished. What might or might not befall me,
I gloomily debated. The least penalty would be expulsion
from the army ; but imprisonraent till the close of the war,
was a favorite amusement with the War 'Office. How ray
newspaper connection would be embarrassed was a raore
grievous inquiry. It stung me to think that I had blun
dered twice on the very threshold of my career. Was I not
acquiring a reputation for rashness that would hinder all
future promotion and cast me from the courts of the
press. Here the iron entered into my soul ; for be it
known, I Ipved Bohemia ! This roving commission, these
'vagabond habits, this life in the open air among the armies,
the white tents, the cannon, and the drums, they were my
elysium, my heart ! But to be driven away, as one who had
broken his trust, forfeited favor and confidence, and that too
on the eve of grand events, was soraething that would em
bitter ray existence. ^
We passed the familiar objects that I had so often buoy
antly beheld, — deserted encampraents, cross-roads, rills,
farm-houses, fields, and at last carae to Daker's. I called
out to them, and explained my woful circumstances with
rueful conciseness.
It was grcwing dark when we came to general head
quarters, two mUes beyPnd Gaines's Mill. ' The tents Were
scattered oveir the surface of a hill, and most of them were
illumined by candles.

96 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
The Lieutenant gave our horses to an orderly, and led the
way through two outer circles of wall-tents, between which
.and the inner circle, guards were pacing, to deny all vulgar
ingress. A staff officer took in our names, and directly returned
with the reply of " Pass in ! " We were now in the
sacred enclosure, secured by flaraing swords. Four tents
stood in a row, allotted respectively to the Chief of Staff,
the Adjutant-General, the telegraph operators, and the
select staff officers. Just behind them, embowered by a
covering of cedar boughs, stood the tent of General Mc
Clellan. Close by, from an open plot or area of ground,
towered a pine trunk, floating the national flag. Lights
burned in three ofthe tents : low voices, as of subdued con
versation, were heard from the first.
A little flutter of my heart, a drawing aside of canvas,
two steps, an uncovfering, and a bow, -r- 1 stood at ray
tribunal I A couple of candles were placed upon a table,
whereat sat a fine specimen of man, with kindly features,
dark, grayish, flowing hair, and slight marks of years upon
his full, purplish face. He looked to be a well-to-do citizen,
whose success had taught him sedentary convivialities. A
fuming cigar lay before him ; some empty champagne bottles
sat upon a pine desk ; tumblers and a decanter rested upon a
camp-stool ; a bucket, filled with water and a great block
of ice, was visible under the table. Five other gentlemen,
each with a star in his shoulder-bar, were dispersed upon
chairs and along a camp bedside. The tall, angular, dig
nified gentleman with corapressed lips and a "character"
nose, was General Barry, Chief of Artillery. The lithe,
severe, gristly, sanguine person, whose eyes flashed even in
repose, was General Stoneman, Chief of Cavalry.. The
large, sleepy-eyed, lymphatic, elderly man, clad in dark,
civil gray, whose ears turned up habitually as from deafness,
was Prince de Joinville, brother to Louis Philippe, King of
France,, The little man with red hair and beard, who moved

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 97
quickly and who spoke sharply, was Seth Williams, Ad
jutant-General. The stout person with florid face, large,
blue eyes, and white, straight hair, was General Van Vliet,
Quartermaster-General. And the man at the table, was
General Marcy, father-in-law to McClellan, and Executive
officer of the army.
Maps, papers, books, and luggage lay around the room ;
all the gentleraen were sraoking and wine sparkled in most
ofthe glasses. Some swords were lying upon the floor, a
pair of spurs glistened by the bed, and three of the officers
had their feet in the air.
" What is it you wish. Lieutenant ? " said General Marcy,
gravely. The boor in uniform at my side, related his errand and
order, gave the particulars of my arrest, declaimed against
our agent, and submitted the journals.. ^ He told his story
stammeringly, and I lieard one of the officers in the back
ground mutter contemptuously when he had finished.
" Were you aware of the order prohibiting correspond
ents from keeping with the advance ? " said the General,
looking up.
" I had not been notified from head-quarters. I have been
with the army only a week."
" You knew that you had no business upon scouts, for
ages, or reconnoissances ; why did you go ? "
" I went by invitation.'.'
" Who invited you ? " ?
" I would prefer not to state, since it would do him an
injury." Here the voices in the background muttered, as I thought,
applaudingly. Gaining confidence as I proceeded, I spoke
more boldly —
" I am sure I regret that I have disobeyed any order of
General McClellan's ; but there can nothing occur in the
rear of an army. Obedience, in this case, would be indo
lence and incompetence ; for only the reliable would stay

98 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
behind and the reckless go ahead. If I am accredited here
as a correspondent, I must keep up with the events. And
the rivalries of our tribe. General, are so many, that the
best of us soraetiraes forget what is right for what is expe
dient. I hope that General McClellan will pass by this
offence." He heard my rambling defence quietly, excused the Lieu
tenant, and whistled for an orderly.
" I don't think that you meant to offend General McClel
lan," he said, "but he wishes you to be detained. Give
me your pass. Orderly, take this gentleman to General
Porter, and tell hira to treat him, kindly. Good night."
When we got outside of the tent, I slipped a silver half-
dollar into the orderly's hand, and asked- hira if he under
stood the General's final remark. He said, in reply, that I
was directed to be treated with courtesy, kindness, and care,
and asked me, in conclusion, if there were any adjectives
that might intensify the rccomraendation. When we came
to General Porter, the Provost-Marshal, however, he pooh-
poohed the qualifications, and said that his business was
merely to put rae under surveillance. This unamiable raan
ordered rae to be taken to Major Willard, the deputy Pro
vost, whose tent we found after a long search. The Major
was absent, but some young officers of his raess were tak
ing supper at his table, and with these lat once engaged
in conversation.
I knew that if I was to be spared an immersion in the
coramon guardhouse, with drunkards, deserters, and prison
ers of war, I raust win the favor of these men. I gave
thera the story of ray arrest, spoke lightly of the offence
and jestingly of the punishraent, and, in fact, so iraproved
my cause that, when the Major appeared, and the Sergeant
consigned me to his custody, one of the young officers took
him aside, and, I am sure, said some good words in my
favor. The Major was a bronzed, indurated gentleman, scrupu-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-^COMBATANT. 99
lously attired, and courteously stern. He looked at me
twice or thrice, to ray confusion ; for I was dusty, wan,
and running over with perspiration. His first reraark had,
naturally, reference to the lavatory, and, so far as my face
and hair were concerned, I was soon rejuvenated. I found
on my return to the tent, a clean plate and a cup of steam
ing coffee placed for me, and I ate with a full heart though
pleading covertly the while. When I had done, and the
tent became deserted by all save hira and rae, he said, sim-
piy— " What ara I to do with you, Mr. Townsend ? "
" Treat me as a gentleman, I hope. Major."
" We have but one place of confinement," said he, "the
guardhouse ; but I am loth to send you there. Light your
pipe, and I will think the raatter over."
He took a turn in front, consulted with some of his asso
ciates, and directly returning, said that I was to be quar
tered in his office-tent, adjoining. A horror being thus lifted
from my mind, I heard -with sincere interest many revela
tions of his military career. He had been a comraon sol
dier in the Mexican war, and had fought his way, step by
step, to repeated commissions. He had garrisoned Fort
Yuma, and other posts on the far plains, and at the begin
ning of the war was tendered a volunteer brigade, which
he modestly declined. His tastes were refined, and a warm
fancy, approaching poetry, enhanced his personal reminis
cences. His face softened, his eyes grew milder, his large,
commanding mouth relaxed, — he was young again, living
his adventures over. We talked thus till almost midnight,
when two regulars appeared in front, — stiff, ramrodish fig
ures, that came to a jerking " present," tapped their caps
with two fingers, and said, explosively; "Sergeant of
Guard, Number Five 1 "
The Major rose, gave me his hand, and said that I would
find a candle in my tent, with waterproof and blankets on
the ground. I was to give myself no concern about the

100 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
nag, and might, if I chose, sit for an hour to write, but
must, on no account, atterapt to leave the canvas, for the
guard would instantly shoot me down. The guard in ques
tion had a doppel-ganger, — counterpart of himself in inflexi
bility, — and both were appendages of their muskets. He
was not probably a sentient being, certainly not a conversa
tional one. He knew the length of a stride, and the raanual
of bayonet exercise, but was, during his natural life, a blind
idolater of a deity, called " Orders." The said " Orders,"
for the present evening, were walking, not talking, and he
was dumb to all conciliatory words. He took a position at
one end of my tent, and his double at the other end. They
carried their muskets at " support arras," and paced up and
down, raeasuredly, like two cloaked and soleran ghosts. I
wrapped myself in the damp blankets, and slept through the
bangs of four or five court-martials and several executions.
At three o'clock, they changed ramrods, — the old doppel-
gangers going away, and two new ones fulfilling their
functions.

CHAPTEE X.

AFTEE THE VICTORY.

The two rararods were still pacing to and fro, when I
aroused in the gray of the morning ; but they looked very
misty and moist, as if they were impalpables that were
shortly to evaporate. The Major poked his head between
the flaps at eight o'clock, and said that breakfast was ready ;
but the ramrod nearest me kept vigilantly alongside, and I
thought he had been invited also. The other ramrod
guarded the empty tent, and I think that he believed me a
droppel-ganger likewise.
I wondered what was to be done with me, as the hours
slipped rapidly by. The guards were relieved again at ten
o'clock, and Quarterraaster's men coraraenced to take down
the tents. Caraps were to be raoved, and I inquired solici
tously if I was to be raoved also. The Major replied that
prisoners were coraraonly made to walk along the road, es
corted by horseraen, and I iraagined, with dread, the com
panionship of negroes, estrays, ragged Confederates, and
such folk, while the whole army should witness my degra.
dation. Finally, all the tents were lifted and packed in
wagons, as well as the furniture. I adhered to a stool, at
which the teamster looked wistfully, and the implacable
sentinels walked to and fro. A rumor becarae current
among the private soldiers, that I was the nephew of the
southem General Lee, whose wife had been meantime cap
tured at Hanover Court House. Curious groups sauntered
9* (101)

102 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
around me, and talked behind their hands. One man was
overheard to say that I had fought desperately, and cov
ered rayself with glory, and another thought that I favored
ray uncle soraewhat, and might succeed to his military
virtues. " I guess I'll take that cheer, if you ain't got no objec
tion," said the teamster, and he slung it into the wagon.
What to do now troubled rae raaterially ; but one of the sol
diers brought a piece of rail, and I "squatted" lugubriously
on the turf. '
" If you ever get to Eichraond," said I, " you shall be
considerately treated." (Profound sensation.)
" Thankee ! " replied the man, touching his cap ; " but
I'm worry well pleased out o' Eichraond, Captain."
Here the Major was seen approaching, a huraorous smile
playing about his eyes.
" You are discharged," said he ; " General Marcy will
return your pass, and perhaps your papers."
I wrung his hand with indescribable relief, and he sent
the " ramrod " on guard, to saddle my horse. In a few
minutes, I was mounted again, rauch to the surprise of the
observers of young Lee, and directly I stood before the
kin(JJy Chief of Staff. At my request, he wrote a note to
the division commander, specifying my good behavior, and
restoring to me all privileges and immunities. He said
nothing whatever as to the mistake in the papers, and told
me that, on special occasions, I raight keep with advances,
by procuring an extraordinary pass at head-quarters. In
short, my arrest conduced greatly to ray efficiency. I inva
riably carried my Eichraond despatches to General Marcy,
thereafter, and, if there was inforraation of a legitiraate de
scription, he gave rae the benefit of it.
My own brigade lay at Dr. Gaines's house, during this
tirae, and we did not lack for exciteraent. Just behind the
house lay several batteries of rifled guns, and these threw
shells at hourly intervals, at certain Confederate batteries

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 103
across the river. The distance was two miles or less ; but
the firing was generally wretched. Crowds of soldiers gath
ered around, to watch the practice, and they threw up their
hats applaudingly at successful hits. Occasionally a great
round shot would bound up the hill, and a boy, one day, see
ing one of these spent balls rolling along the ground, put
out his foot to stop it, but shattered his leg so dreadfully
that it had to be amputated. Dr. Gaines was a rich, aristo
cratic, and indolent old Virginian, whose stables, suraraer-
houses, orchards, and negro-quarters were the finest in
their district. The shooting so annoyed him that he used to
resort to the cellar ; several shots passed through his
roof, and one of the chimneys was knocked off. His family
carriages were five in number, and as his stables were
turned i;)to hospitals, these were all hauled into liis lawn,
where their obsolete trimmings and queer shape constantly
amused the soldiers. About this time I became acquainted
with some officers of the Sth Maine regiment, and by permis
sion, accompanied thera to Mechanicsville. I was here, on
the afternoon of Thursday, May 27, when the battle of Han
over Court House was fought. We heard the rapid growl
of guns, and continuous volleys of rausketry, though the
place was fourteen miles distant. At evening, a report was
current that the Federals had gained a great victory, and
captured seven hundred prisoners. The truth of this was
established next morning; for detachments of prisoners
were from time to time brought in, and the ambulances
carae to camp, laden with the wounded. I took this oppor
tunity of observing the Confederate soldiers, as they lay at
the Provost quarters, in a roped pen, perhaps one hundred
rods square.
It was evening, as I hitched ray horse to a stake near-by,
and pressed up to the receptacle for the unfortunates.
Sentries enclosed the pen, walking to-and-fro with loaded
rauskets; a throng of officers and soldiers had asserabled to
gratify their curiosity ; and new detachraents of captives
came in hourly, encircled by sabremen, the Southerners

104 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
being disarmed and on foot. The scene within the area
was ludicrously moving. It reminded me of the witch-scene
in Macbeth, or pictures of brigands or Bohemian gypsies at
rendezvous, not less than five hundred men, in motley,
ragged costumes, with long hair, and lean, wild, haggard
faces, were gathered in groups or in pairs, around ¦some
fagot fires. In the growing darkness their expressions
were iraperfectly visible ; but I could see that most of them
were weary, and hungry, and all were depressed and
asharaed. Sorae were wrapped in blankets of rag-carpet,
and others wore shoes of rough, untanned hide. Others
were without either shoes or jackets, and their heads were
bound with red handkerchiefs. Sorae appeared in red
shirts ; some in stiff beaver hats ; sorae were attired in
shreds and patches of cloth ; and a few wore the soiled
garraents of citizen gentleraen ; but the mass adhered to
horaespun suits of -"gray, or "butternut," and the coarse
blue kersey coramon to slaves. In places I caught glimpses
of red Zouave breeches and leggings ; blue Federal caps>
Federal buttons, or Federal blouses ; these were the spoils
of anterior battles, and had been stripped fi:om the slain.
Most of the captives were of the appearances denominated
"scraggy" or "knotty." They were brown, brawny, and
wiry, and their countenances were intense, fierce, and ani
raal. They carae from North Carolina, the poorest aud
least, enterprising Southern State, and ignorance, with its
attendant virtues, were the coramon facial manifestations.
Some lay on the bare ground, fast asleep ; others chatted
nervously as if doubtful of their future treatment ; a few
were boisterous, and anxious to beg tobacco or coffee from
idle Federals ; the rest — and they comprehended the
greater number — were silent, sullen, and vindictive. They
raet curiosity with scorn, and spite with imprecations. A
child — not more than four years of age, 1 think — sat
sleeping in a corner upon an older comrade's lap. A gray-
bearded pard was staunching a gash in his cheek with the
tail of his coat. A fine-looking young fellow sat with his

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 105
face in his hands, as if his heart were far off, and he wished
to shut out this bitter scene. In a corner, lying morosely
apart, were a Major, three Captains, and three Lieuten
ants, — young athletic fellows, dressed in rich gjay cassi-
raere, triraraed with black, and wearing soft black hats
adorned with black ostrich-feathers. Their spurs wero
strapped upon elegantly fitting boots, and they looked as
far above the needy, seedy privates, as lords above their
vassals. After a tirae, couples and squads of the prisoners were
raarched off to cut and carry sorae firewood, and water,
for the use of their pen, and then each Confederate received
coffee, pork, and crackers ; they were obliged to prepare
their own raeals, but some were so hungiy that they gnawed
the raw pork, like beasts of prey. Those who were not
provided with blankets, shivered through the night, though
the rain was falling, and the succession of choking coughs
that ran through the ranks, told how ill they could afford
the exposure. Major Willard had charge of these men,
and he sent a young officer to get me admittance to the pen,
that I might speak with thera.
" Good evening. Major," I said, to the ranking Confed
erate officer, and extended my hand. He shook it, embar-
rassedly, and ran me over with his eye, as if to learn ray
avocation. " Can I obtain any facts from you," I con
tinued, "as to the battle of Hanover ? "
"Puh what puhpose?" he said, in his strong southern
dialect. " For publication, sir."
He sat iip at once, and said that he should be happy to
tell me anything that would not be a violation of military
honor. I asked hira, therefore, the Confederate Command
ant at Hanover, the number of brigades, regiraents, and
batt^ies engaged, the disposition of forces, the character
of the battle, and the losses, so far as he knew, upon his
own side. Much of this he revealed, but unguardedly let

106 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
out other matters, that direct inquiry could not have dis
covered. I took notes of the legitimate passages, trusting
to memory for the rest ; and think that I possessed his whole
stock of information, in the course of an hour's manoeu
vring. It seemed that General Branch, forraeriy a meraber
of the Federal congress, had been sent with sorae thousands
of Carolina troops across the upper Chickahorainy, to see
if it would not be possible to turn the Federal right, and
cut off one of its brigades ; but a stronger Federal recon
noissance had gone northward the day before, and discov
ering Branch's carap-fires, sent, during the night, for rein
forceraents. In the end, the " North State " volunteers "were
routed, their cannon silenced or broken, and seven hundred
of their number captured. The Federals lost a large num
ber of men killed, and the wounded upon both sides, were
nuraerous. The Confederate Major was of the class referred to in po
lite Araerican parlance, as a " blatherskite." He boasted
after the raanner of his fellow-citizens from the county of
" Bunkum," but nevertheless feared and trembled, to the
manifest disgust of one of the young -Captains.
" Majuh ! " said this young man, " what you doin' thah I
That fellow's makin' notes of all your slack ; keep your
tongue ! aftah awhile you'll tell the nombah of the feces I
Don't you s'pose he'll prent it all ?"
The Major had, in fact, been telling me how many regi
ments the " old Nawth State, suh," had furnished to the
" suhvice," and I had the names of some thirty colonels,
in order. The young Captain gave me a sketch of General
Branch, and was anxious that I should publish something
in extenuation of North Carolina valor.
" We have lost mo' men," said he, " than any otha' Com
monwealth ; but these Vuhginians, whose soil, by  !
suh, we defend suh I Yes, suh I whose soil we defend ;
these Vuhginians, stigmatize us as cowads ! We, suh 1
yes suh, we, that nevah wanted to leave the Union, — we

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 107
cowads! Look at ou' blood, suh, ou' blood! That's it,
by  ! look at that ! shed on every field of the ole Do
minion, — killed, rauhdud, captued, crippled ! We cow
ads I I want you prent that ! "
1 was able to give each of the officers a drop of whiskey
frora ray flask, and I never saw men drink so thirstily.
Their hands and lips trembled as they took it, and their
eyes shone like lunacy, as the hot drops sank to the cold
vitals, and pricked the frozen blood. Mingling with the
privates, I stirred up some native specimens of patriotism,
that appeared to be in great doubt as to the causes and ends
of the war. They were very much in the political condi
tion of % short, thick, sententious man, in blue drilling
breeches, who said —
" Damn the country ! What's to be done with usf "
One person said that he enlisted for the honor of his
family, that " fit in the American Eevolution ; " and another
came out to " hev a squint et the fightin'." Several were
northern and foreign lads, that were working on Carolina
railroads, and could not leave the section, and some labored-
under the impression that they were to have a " slice " of
land and a " nigger," in the event of Southern independence.
A few comprehended the spirit of the contest, and took up
arms from principle ; a few, also, declared their enmity to
" Yankee institutions," and had seized the occasion to
" polish them off'," and " give them a rbpein' in ; " but many
said it was " dull in our deestreeks, an' the niggers was
runnin' away, so I thought I'ud jine the feces." The
great mass said, that they never contemplated "fhis box,"
or " this fix," or " these suckemstances," and all wanted the
war to close, that they might return to their farailies.
Indeed, ray romantic ideas of rebellion were ruthlessly
profaned and dissipated. 1 knew that there was ranch sel
fishness, peculation, and "Hessianism" in the Federal
lines, but I had imagined a lofty patriotisra, a dignified
purpose, and an inflexible love of personal liberty araong

108 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
the Confederates. Yet here were men who knew little of
the principles for which they staked their lives; — who
enlisted frora the coraraonest motives of convenience, whim,
pelf, adventure, and foray ; and who repented, after their
first misfortune, with the salt rheura in their eyes. I think
that all " great uprisings " resolve to this compljpxion.
With due reverence for raj' own ancestry, I think that they
soraetiraes stooped frora greatness to littleness. I must
confess that certain admissions in my revolutionary text
book are much clearer, now that I have followed a cam
paign. And if, as I had proposed, I could have witnessed
the further fortunes of the illustrious Garibaldi, I think that
some of his compatriots would have been found equally
inconsistent. Let no man believe that the noblest cause is
fought out alone by the unerring motives of duty and devo
tion. The masses are never so constant. They cannot
appreciate an abstraction, however divine. Any of the
gentlemen in question would have preferred their biscuit
and fat pork before the political enfranchisement of the
whole world !
I rode across the fields to the Hogan, Curtis, and Gaines
mansions ; for some of the wounded had raeantirae been
deposited in each of them. All the cow-houses, wagon-
sheds,- hay-barracks, hen-coops, negro cabins, and barns
were turned into hospitals. The floprs were littered with
" corn-shucks " and fodder ; and the maimed, gashed, and
dying lay confusedly together. A few, slightly wounded,
stood at windows, relating incidents of the battle ; but at
the doors sentries stood with crossed muskets, to keep out
idlers and gossips. The mention of my vocation was an
" open sesame," and I went unrestrained, into all the larg
est hospitals. In the first of these an amputation was being
performed, and at the door lay a little heap of human fin
gers, feet, legs, and arms. I shall not soon forget the
bare-armed surgeons, with bloody instruments, that leaned
over the rigid and insensible figure, while the comrades of

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 109
the subject looked horrifiedly at the scene. The grating of
the raurderous saw drove rae into the open air, but in the
second hospital which I visited, a wounded man had just
expired, and I encountered his body at the threshold.
'Within, the sickening sraell of mortality was almost insup-
poftable, but by degrees I becarae accustomed to it. The
lanterns hanging around the room streamed fitfully upon the
red eyes, and half-naked figures. All 'were looking up, and
Saying, in pleading monotone: "Is that you, doctor?"
Men with their arms in slings went restlessly up and down,
smarting with fever. Those who were wounded in the
lower extremities, body, or head, lay upon their backs,
tossing even in sleep. They listened peevishly to the wind
whistling through the chinks of the barn. They followed
one with their rolling eyes. They turned away from the
lantern, for it seeraed to sear thera. Soldiers sat by the
severely wounded, laving their sores with water. In raany
wounds the balls still remained, and the discolored flesh was
swollen unnaturally. There were some who had been shot
in the bowels, and now and then they were frightfully con
vulsed, breaking into shrieks and shouts. Some of them
iterated a single word, as, " doctor," or " help," or " God,"
or " oh ! " comraencing with a loud spasraodic cry, and. con
tinuing the sarae word tifl it died away in cadence. The
act of calling seemed to lull the pain. Many were uncon
scious and lethargic, moving their fingers and lips mechan
ically, but never more to open their eyes upon the light ;
they were already going through the valley and the shadow.
I think, still, with a shudder, of the faces of those who were
told mercifully that they could not live. The unutterable
agony ; the plea for somebody on whom to call ; the longing
eyes that poured out prayers ; the looking on raortal as if
its resources were infinite ; the fearful looking to the iramor
tal as if it were so far off, so implacable, that the dying
appeal would be in vain ; the open lips, through which one
could almost look at the quaking heart below ; the ghastli-
10

110 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
ness of brow and tangled hair ; the closing pangs ; the
awful quietus. I thought of Parrhasius, in the poem, as I
looked at these things : — "Gods I
Could I bat paint a dying groan  "
And how the keen eye of West would have turned from
the reeking cockpit of the Victory, or the tomb of the Dead
Man Eestored, to this old barn, peopled with horrors. I
rambled in and out, learning to look at death, studying the
manifestations of pain, — quivering and sickening at times,
but plying ray avocation, and jotting the naraes for my
column of mortalities.
At eleven o'clock there was music along the high-road,
and a general rushing from caraps. The victorious regi
ments were returning from Hanover, under escort, and all
the bands were pealing national airs. As they turned down
the fields towards their old encampments, the several brig
ades stood under arms to welcome them, and the cheers
were many and vigorous. But the solemn ambulances still
followed after, and the red flag of the hospitals flaunted
bloodily in the blue midnight.
Both the prisoners and the wounded were reraoved be
tween midnight and morning to White House, and as I had
despatches to forward by 'the mail-boat, I rode down in an
ambulance, that contained six wounded raen besides. The
wounded were to be consigned to hospital boats, and for
warded to hospitals in northern cities, and the priso.ners
were to be placed in a transport, under guard, and conveyed
to Fort Delaware, near Philadelphia.
Arabulances, it may be aaid, incidentally, are either two-
wheeled or four-wheeled. Two-wheeled ambulances are
coraraonly called " hop, step, and juraps." They are so con
structed that the forepart is either very high or very low,
and may be both at intervals. The wounded occupants raay
,be compelled to ride for hours in these carriages, with their

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

CHAPTEE XI,

BALLOON BATTLES.

Some days ago, as I was sitting in Central Park, under a
tree no bigger than Jonah's gourd, broiling nicely brown,
and seasoning the process by reading what the lesser week
lies said about rae, I saw at the Park gate a great phantasm,
like a distended sausage, swaying to and fro as if striving
to burst, and directly the horrible thing blew upwards, spill
ing all the stuffing frora the case.
1 saw in a raoraent that the apparition was a balloon, and
that the aeronaut was only eraptying ballast.
Straight toward me the floating vessel carae, so close to
the ground that I could hear the silk crackle and the ropes
creak, till, directly, a man leaned over the side and
shouted —
" Is that you, Townsend ? "
" Hallo, Lowe ! "
" I want you to get on your feet and be spry about it:
we have a literary party here, and wish you to write it up.
I'll let one bag of ballast go, as we touch the grass, and
you must leap in simultaneously. Thump ! "
Here the car collided with the ground, and in another
instant, I found quantities of dirt spilled down ray back, and
two or three people lying beneath me. The world slid
away, and the clouds opened to receive me. Lowe was
opening a bottle of Heidsick, and three or four gentlemen
¦with heads sick were unclosing the petals of their lips to^et
the afternoon dew. (112)

^CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 113
These were the various critics and fugitive writers of the
weekly and daily press. They looked as if they wanted to
put each other over the side of the car, but smothered
their invective ^ at ray advent, as if I were so rauch pearl-
ash. It was just seven o'clock, and the Park lay like a veined
and mottled blood-stone in the red sunset. The city wilted
to the littleness of a rare mosaic pin, its glittering point
parting the blue scarf of the bay, and the white bosom of
the ocean swelling afar, all draped with purple clouds like
golden hair, in which the entangled gems were the sails of
the white ships.
I said this aloud, and all the party drew their lead pen
cils. They forgot the occasion in my eloquence, and wanted
to report rae.
Just here, I drew a field-glass from the aeronaut, and re
connoitred the streets of the city. To my dismay there was
nobody visible on Broadway but gentlemen. I called every
body's attention to the fact, and it was accounted for on the
supposition that the late bank forgeries and defalcations,
growing out of the extravagance of womankind, had
prompted all the husbands to make of their homes nun
neries. We observed, however, close by every gentleman, some
thing that resembled a black dog with his tail curled over
his back.
"Stuff!" said one, "they're hay wagons."
" No ! " cried Lowe, " they're nothing ofthe sort ; they
are waterfalls, and the ladies are, of course, invisible under
thera." We accepted the explanation, and thought .the trip very
raelancholy. No landscape is complete without a woman.
Very soon we struck the great polar current, and passed
Harlem river ; the foliage of the trees, by some strange
anomaly, began to ascend towards us, but Lowe caught two
10*

114 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
or three of the supposed leaves, and they proved to be green
backs. There was at once a treraendous sensation in the car ; we
knew that we were on the track of Ketchum and his carpet
bag of bank-notes.
" Is there any reward out ? " cried Lowe.
" Not yet ! "
" Then we won't pursue him."
As we slowly drifted to the left, the Hudson shone through
the trees, and before dusk we swept across Lake Mahopec.
1 heard a voice singing to the dip of oars, and had to be held
down by five men to restrain an involuntary irapulse to quit
my company.
" Townsend," said Lowe, " have you the copy of that mat
ter you printed about me in England ? This is the time to
call you to account for it. We are two or three miles above
terra firma, and I might like to drop you for a parachute."
I felt Lowe's muscle, and knew myself secure. Then I
unrolled the pages, which I fortunately carried with me,
and told him the following news about himself : —
The aeronaut of the Array of the Potomac was Mr. S. T.
C. Lowe ; he had made seven thousand ascensions, and his
array companion was invariably either an artist, a corre
spondent, or a telegrapher.
A rainute insulated wire reached from the car to head
quarters, and McClellan was thus inforraed of all that could
be seen within the Confederate works. Sometimes they re
mained aloft for hours, raaking observations with powerful
glasses, and once or twice the eneray tested their distance
with shell.
On the 13th of April, the Confederates sent up a balloon,
the first they had eraployed, at which Lowe was infinitely
araused. He said that it had neither shape nor buoyancy,
and predicted that it would burst or fall apart after a week.
It certainly occurred that, after a few fitful appearances, the
stranger was seen no more, till, on the 28th of June, it

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 115
floated, like a thing of oraen, over the spires of Eichmond.
At that time the Federals were in full retreat, and all the
acres were covered with their dead.
On the llth of April, at five o'clock, an event at once
amusing and thrilling occurred at our quarters. The com-
raander-in-chief had appointed his personal and confidential
friend. General Fitz John Porter, to conduct the siege of
Yorktown. Porter was a polite, soldierly gentleraan, and
a native of New Hampshire, who had been in the regular
army since early raanhood. He fought gallantly in the
Mexican war, being thrice proraoted and once seriously
wounded, and he was now forty years of age, — handsome,
enthusiastic, ambitious, and popular. He made frequent
ascensions with Lowe, and learned to go aloft alone. One
day he ascended thrice, and finally seeraed as cosily at
home in the firraaraent as upon the solid earth. It is need
less to say that he grew careless, and on this particular
morning leaped into the car and demanded the cables to be
let out with all speed. I saw with some surprise that the
fiurried assistants were sending up the great straining can
vas with a single rope attached. The enormous bag was
only partially inflated, and the loose folds opened and shut
with a crack like that of a musket. Noisily, fitfully, the
yellow mass rose into the sky, the basket rocking like a
feather in the zephyr ; and just as I turned aside to speak
to a comrade, a sound carae from overhead, like the explo
sion of a shell, and something striking me across the face
laid me flat upon the ground.
Half blind and stunned, I staggered to my feet, but the
air seemed full of cries and curses. Opening my eyes rue
fully, I saw all faces turned upwards, and when I looked
above, — the balloon was adrift.
The treacherous cable, rotted with vitriol, had snapped in
twain ; one fragment had been the cause of my downfall,
and the other trailed, like a great entrail, from the receding
car, where Fitz John Porter was bounding upward upon a
Pegasus that he could neither check nor direct.

116 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
The whole array was agitated by the unwonted occur
rence. From battery No. 1, on the brink of the York, to
the mouth of Warwick river, every soldier and officer was
absorbed. Far "within the Confederate lines the confusion
extended. We heard the enemy's alarm-guns, and directly
the signal flags were waving up and down our front.
The General appeared directly over the edge of the car.
He was tossing his hands frightenedly, and shouting some
thing that we could not comprehend.
"0 — pen — the — valve!" called Lowe, in his shrill
tones ; "climb — to — the — netting — and — reach — the
. — valve — rope."
"The valve I — the valve!" repeated a multitude of
tongues, and all gazed with thrilling interest at the retreat
ing hulk that still kept straight upward, swerving neither to
the east nor the west.
It was a weird spectacle, — that frail, fading oval, gliding
against the sky, floating in the serene azure, the little ves
sel swinging silently beneath, and a hundred thousand mar
tial men watching the loss of their brother in arms, but
powerless to relieve or recover him. Had Fitz John Porter
been drifting down the rapids of Niagara, he could not have
been so far from huraan assistance. But we saw him di
rectly, no bigger than a child's toy, clambering up the net
ting and reaching for the cord.
" He can't do it," muttered a man beside me ; " the wind
blows the valve-rope to and fro, and only a spry,, cool-
headed fellow can catch it."
We saw the General descend, and appearing again over
the edge of the basket, he seemed to be motioning to the
breathless hordes below, the story of his failure. Then he
dropped out of sight, and when we next saw him, he was
reconnoitring the Confederate works through a long black
spy-glass. A great laugh went up and down the lines as
this cool procedure was observed, and then a cheer of ap
plause ran from group to group. For a moment it was

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 117
doubtful that the balloon would float in either direction ; it
seemed to falter, like an irresolute being, and raoved reluct
antly southeastward, towards Fortress Monroe. A huzza,
half uttered, quivered on every lip. All eyes glistened, and
sorae were dira with tears of joy. But the wayward can
vas now turned due westward, and was blown rapidly
toward the Confederate works. Its course was fitfully di
rect, and the wind seeraed to veer often, as if contrary cur
rents, conscious of the opportunity, were struggling for the
possession of the daring navigator. The sCuth wind held
raastery for awhile, and the balloon passed the Federal
front araid a howl of despair frora the soldiery. It kept
right on, over sharpshooters, rifle-pits, and outworks, and
finally passed, as if to deliver up its freight, directly over
the heights of Yorktown. The cool courage, either of hero
ism or despair, had seized upon Fitz John Porter. He
turned his black glass upon the ramparts and masked can
non below, upon the remote' camps, upon the beleaguered
town, upon the guns of Gloucester Point, and upon distant
Norfolk. Had he been reconnoitring from a secure perch
at the tip of the moon, he could not have been more vigi
lant, and the Confederates probably thought this some Yan
kee device to peer into their sanctuary in despite of ball or
shell. None of their great guns could be brought to bear
upon the balloon ; but there were some discharges of raus
ketry that appeared to have no effect, and finally even these
demonstrations ceased. Both arraies in soleran silence
were gazing aloft, while the imperturbable mariner contin
ued to spy out the land.
The sun was now rising behind us, and roseate rays strug
gled up to the zenith, like the arcs made by showery
bombs. They threw a hazy atmosphere upon the balloon,
and the light shone through the network like the sun
through the ribs of the skeleton ship in the Ancient Mari
ner. Then, as all looked agape, the air-craft "plunged,
and tacked, and veered," and drifted rapidly toward the
Federal lines again.

118 CAMPAIGNS OF A N.ON-COMBATANT.
The allelujah that now went up shook the spheres, and
when he had regained our carap liraits, the General was
seen clarabering up again to clutch the valve-rope. This
tirae he was successful, and the balloon fell like a stone, so
that all hearts once, raore leaped up, and the cheers were
hushed. Cavalry rode pell-mell from several directions, to
reach the place of descent, and the General's personal staff
galloped past me like the wind, to be the first at his de
barkation. I followed the throng of soldiery with due
haste, and came up to the horsemen in a few minutes. The
balloon had struck a canvas tent with great violence, felling
it as by a bolt, and the General, unharmed, had disentan
gled himself from innumerable folds of oiled canvas, and
was now the cynosure of an iraraense group of people.
While the officers shook his hands, the rabble bawled their
satisfaction in hurrahs, and a band of music marching up di
rectly, the throng on foot and horse gave him a vociferous
escort to his quarters.
Five miles east of Eichmond, in the middle of May, we
found the balloon already partially inflated, resting behind a
ploughed hill that farmed one of a ridge or chain of hills,
bordering the Chickahominy. The stream was only a half-
mile distant, but the ba,lloon was sheltered from observation
by reason of its position in the hollow.
Heretofore the ascensions had been raade from remote
places, for there was good reason to believe that batteries
lined the opposite hills; but now, for the first time, Lowe
intended to make an ascent whereby he could look into
Eichraond, count the forts encirling it, and note the number
and position of the caraps that intervened. The balloon
was naraed the " Constitution," and looked like a semi-
distended boa-constrictor, as it flapped with a jerking sound,
and shook its oiled and painted folds. It was anchored to
the ground by stout ropes affixed to stakes, and also by
sand-bags which hooked to its netting. The basket lay
alongside ; the generators were contained in blue wooden

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 119
wagons, marked " U. S. ; " and the gas was fed to the bal
loon through rubber and metallic pipes. A tent or two, a
quantity of vitriol in green and wicker carboys, some
horses and transportation teams, and several raen that
assisted the inflation, were the only objects to be remarked.
As some time was to transpire before the arrangements were
completed, I resorted to one of the tents and took a com
fortable nap. The " Professor " aroused rae at three o'clock,
when I found the canvas straining its bonds, and emitting a
hollow sound, as of escaping gas. The basket was raade
fast directly, the telescopes tossed into place ; the Professor
climbed to the side, holding by the network ; and I coiled
up in a rope at the bottom.
" Stand by your cables," he said, and the bags of ballast
were at once cut away. Twelve men took each a rope in
hand, and played out slowly, letting us glide gently upward.
The earth seemed to be falling away, and we poised motion
less in the blue ether. The tree-tops sank downward, the
hills dropped noiselessly through space, and directly the
Chickahominy was visible beyond us, winding like a ribbon
of silver through the ridgy landscape.
Far and wide stretched the Federal caraps. We saw
faces- turned upwards gazing at our ascent, and heard
clearly, as in a vacuum, the voices of soldiers. At every
second the prospect widened, the belt of horizon enlarged,
remote farmhouses came in view ; the earth was like a per
fectly flat surface, painted with blue woods, and streaked
with pictures of roads, fields, fences, and streams. As we
climbed higher,- the river seemed directly beneath us, the
farms on the opposite bank were plainly discernible, and
Eichmond lay only a little way off, enthroned on its many
hills, with the James stretching white and sinuous from its
feet to the horizon. We could see the streets, the suburbs,
the bridges, the outlaying roads, nay, the raoving raasses,
of people. The Capitol sat white and colossal on Shockoe
Hill, the dingy buildings of the Tredegar works blackened

120 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
the river-side above, the hovels of rockets clustered at the
hither liraits, and one by one we made out familiar hotels,
public edifices, and vicinities. The fortifications were
revealed in part only, for they took the hue of the soil, and
blended with it ; but raany caraps were plainly discernible,
and by means of the glasses we" separated tent from tent,
and hut from hut. The Confederates were seen running to
the cover of the woods, that we might not discover their
numbers, but we knew the location of their camp-fires by
the sraoke that curled toward us.
A panoraraa so beautiful would have been rare at any
time, but this was thrice interesting from its past and coming
associations. Across those plains the hordes at our feet
were either to advance victoriously, or be driven eastward
with dusty banners and dripping hands. Those white farm
houses were to be receptacles for the groaning and the
mangled ; thousands were to be received beneath the turf
of those pasture fields ; and no rod of ground on any side,
should not, sooner or later, smoke with the blood of the
slain. " Guess I got 'era now, jest where I want 'em," said
Lowe, with a gratified laugh ; "jest keep still as you mind
to, and squint your eye through my glass, while I make a
sketch of the roads and the country. Hold hard there, and
anchor fast I " he screamed to the people below. Then he
fell imperturbably to work, sweeping the country with
his hawk-eye, and escaping nothing that could contribute
to the completeness of his jotting.
We had been but a few minutes thus poised, when close
below, from the edge of a timber stretch, puffed a volume
of white sraoke. A second afterward, the air quivered with
the peal of a cannon. A third, and we heard the splitting
shriek of a shell, that passed a little to our left, but in exact
range, and burst beyond us in the ploughed field, heaving
up the clay as it exploded.
" Ha I " said Lowe, "they have got us foul I Haul in thjB
cables — quick I " he shouted, in a fierce tone.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATAKT. 121
At the same instant, the puff, the report, and the shriek
were repeated ; but this time the shell burst to our right iu
raid-air, and scattered fragraents around and below us.
" Another shot will do our business," said Lowe, between
his teeth; " it isn't a mile,- and they have got the range."
Again the puff and the whizzing shock. I closed my
eyes, and held my breath hard. The explosion was so close,
that the pieces of shell seemed driven across my face, and
my ears quivered with the sound. I looked at Lowe, to see
if he was struck. He had sprung to his feet, and clutched
the cordage frantically.
" Are .you pulling in there, you men ? " Ije bellowed, with
a loud imprecation.
" Pufi i bang ! whiz-z-z-z ! splutter ! " broke a third shell,
and my heart was -wedged in my throat.
I saw at a glimpse the whole bright landscape again. I
heard the voices of soldiers below, and saw them running
across fields, fences, and ditches, to reach our anchorage.
I saw some drummer-boys digging in the field beneath for
one of the buried shells. 1 saw the waving of signal flags,
the commotion through the camps, — officers galloping their
horses, teamsters whipping their mules, regiments turning
out, drums beaten, and batteries limbered up. I remarked,
last of all, the site of the battery that alarmed us, and, by
a strange sharpness of sight and sense, believed that I saw
the gunners swabbing, ramming, and aiming the pieces.
"Puff! bang I whiz-z-z-z! splutter! crash!"
"Puff! bang! whiz-z-z-z! splutter! crash!"
"My God! " said Lowe, hissing the words slowly and
terribly, " they have opened upon us from another battery! "
The scene seemed to dissolve. A cold dew broke from
my forehead. I grew blind and deaf. I had fainted.
" Pitch some water in his face," said somebody. "He
ain't used to it. Hallo ! jthere he conies to."
I staggered to my feet. There raust have been a thousand
men about us. They were looking curiously . at the
n

122 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
aeronaut and rae. The balloon lay fuming and struggling
on the clods.
"Three cheers for the Union bal-loon!" called a little
fellow at ray side.
" Hip, hip^ — hoorooar ! hoorooar ! hoorooar I "
" Tiger-r-r — yah ! whoop ! "

CHAPTEE XII.

SEVEN PINES AND FAIROAKS.

Eeturning frora White House on Saturday, May 29, I
heard the cannon of" Seven Pines." The roar of artillery
came faintly upon the ear in the dells and woods, but in the
open stretches of country, or from cleared hill-tops, I could
hear also the volleys of musketry. It was the battle sound
that assured rae of bloody work ; for the musket, as I had
learned by experience, was the only certain signification of
battle. It is seldora brought into requisition but at close
quarters, when results are intended; whereas, cannon
raay peal for a fortnight, and involve no other destruction
than that of shell and powder. I do not think that any
throb of my heart was unattended by some volley or dis
charge. Dull, hoarse, uninterrupted, the whole afternoon
was shaken by the sound. It was with a shudder that I
thought how every peal announced flesh and bone riven
asunder. The country people, on the way, stood in their
side yards, anxiously listening. Eiders or teamsters com
ing frora the field, were beset with inquiries ; but in the
main they knew nothing. As I stopped at Daker's for din
ner, the concussion of the battle rattled our plates, and the
girls entirely lost their appetites, so that Gluraley, who lis
tened and speculated, observed that the baby face was
losing all the lines of art, and was quite flat and faded in
color. Eesuraing our way, we encountered a sallow, shab
by person, driving a covered wagon, who recognized rae
(123)

124 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
at once. It was the "Doctor" who had lightened the
journey down the Chesapeake, by a discourse upon em
balming. He pointed toward the field with a long bony-
finger, and called aloud, with a smirk upon his face —
" I have the apparatus here, you see. They will need
me out yonder, you know. There's opportunity there for
the development ofthe ' system.' "
I did not reach my own carap at Gaines's Farm, till late
in the day. The firing had alraost entirely ceased, . but
occasional discharges still broke the repose of evening,
and at night signal rockets hissed and showered in every
direction. Next day the contest recoraraenced ; but although
not farther in a direct line, than seven miles, frora our en
campment, I could not cross the Chickahominy, and was
compelled to lie in my tent all day.
These two battles were offered by the Confederates, in the
hope of capturing that portion of the Federal army that lay
upon the Eichraond side of the river. Some days previ
ously, McClellan had ordered Keyes's corps, consisting of
perhaps twelve thousand men, to cross Bottora Bridge,
eight railes down the Chickahorainy, and occupy an ad
vanced position on the York Eiver railroad, six railes east
of Eichmond. Keyes's two divisions, coramanded by Gen
erals Couch and Casey, were thus encaraped in a belt of
woods reraote from the body of the array-, and little more
¦ than a raile frora the enemy's line. Heintzelma;n's corps
was lying at the Bridge, several miles in their rear, and the
three finest corps in the array were separated from them by
a broad, rapid river, which could be crossed at two places
only. The troops of Keyes were mainly inexperienced,
undisciplined volunteers from the Middle States. When
their adversaries advanced, therefore, in force, on the twen
ty-ninth instant, they made a fitful, irregular resistance, and
at evening retired in panic and disorder. The victorious
enemy followed them so closely, that many- of the Federals
were slain in their tents. During that night, the Chicka-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NOJT-COMBATANT. 125
hominy, swollen by rains, overflowed its banks, and swept
away the bridges. The beaten and disorganized relic of the
fight of" Seven Pines," was thus completely isolated, and
apparently to be annihilated at daybreak. But during the
night, twenty thousand fresh raen of Suraner's corps, ford
ed the river, carrying their artillery, piece by piece across,
and at dawn they assumed the offensive, seconded by the
encouraged columns of Keyes. The fight was one of despe
ration ; at night the Federals reoccupied their old ground
at Fairoaks, and the Confederates retired, leaving their dead
and wounded on the field. They lost, among their prison
ers. General Pettigrew, of South Carolina, who was severely
wounded, and with whom I talked as he lay in bed at
Gaines's Mansion. He appeared to be a chivalrous, gos
sipy old gentleman, and said that he was the last South
Carolinian to stand by the Union.
On the succeeding day, Monday, June 2, 1 rode to " Grape
vine -Bridge," and attempted to force ray horse through
the swamp and stream ; but the drowned mules that momen
tarily fioated down the current, admonished me of the
folly of the hazard. The bridge itself was a swimming
mass of poles and logs, that yielded with every pressure ;
yet I saw many wounded men, who waded through the
water, or stepped lightly frora log to log, and so, gained the
shore, wet from head to foot. Long lines of supply teams
and ambulances were wedged in the depth of the thick
wood, bordpring the river ; but so narrow were the cordu-,
roy approaches to the bridge, and so fathomless the swamp
on either hand, that they could neither go forward, nor
return. The straggling troops brought the unwelcome in
telligence, that their comrades on the other side were starv
ing, as they had crossed with a single ration of food, and
had long ago eaten their last raorsels. While I was stand
ing close by the bridge. General McClellan, and staff, rode
through the swarap, and attempted to make the passage.
The " young Napoleon," urged his horse upon the floating
11*

126 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
tiraber, and at once sank over neck and saddle. His staff
dashed after him, floundering in the sarae way ; and when
they had splashed and shouted, till I believed thera all
drowned, they turned and carae to shore, dripping and dis
comfited. There was another Napoleon, who, I am in
formed, slid down the Alps into Italy ; the present descend
ant did not slide so far, and he shook himself, after the
raanner of a dog. I reraarked with sorae surprise, that he
was growing obese ; whereas, the active labors of the cam
paign had reduced tho dimensions of most of the Gen
erals. I secured ray horse, and placed a druramer-boy beside him,
to prevent abduction or raistake ; then stripping frora top
to toe, and holding my garments above my head, I essayed
the difficult passage ; as a commenceraent, I dropped my
watch, but the guard-hook caught in a log and held it fast.
Afterward, I slipped from the sraooth butt of a tree, and
thoroughly soused myself and clothing ; a lumber-man from
Maine, beheld my ill luck, and kindly took my burden to
the other side. An estuary of the Chickahominy again
intervened, but a rough scow floated upon it, which the Cap
tain of Engineers sent for rae, with a soldier to raan the
oars. I neglected to "trim boat," I ara sorry to add,
although adraonished to that effect repeatedly by the raari-
ner ; and we swaraped in four feet of water. I resembled
a being of one of the antediluvian eras, when I came to land,
finally, and might have been taken for a slimy Iguanodon.
I sacrificed sorae of ray under clothing to the process of
cleansing and drying, and so started- 'with soaking boots,
and a deficiency of dress, in the direction of Savage's.
Passing the "bottom," or swamp-land, I ascended a hill,
and following a lane, stopped after a half hour at a frame-
mansion, unpainted, with some barns and negro-quarters
contiguous, and a fine grove of young oaks, shading the
porch. An elderly gentleman sat in the porch, sipping a
julep, with his feet upon the railing, and conversing with a

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 127
stout, ruddy officer, of decidedly Milesian physiognomy.
When I approached, the latter hurriedly placed a chair be
tween himself and me, and said, with a stare —
" Bloodanowns ! And where have ye been ? Araong the
hogs, I think ? " I assured him that I did not intend to
come to close quarters, and that it would be no object on
my part to contaminate him. The old gentleman called for
" Williara," a tall, consuraptive servant, whose walk rerainded
rae of a stubborn convict's, in the treadmill, and ordered
hira to scrape me, which was done, accordingly, with a case-
knife. The young officer proposed to dip me in the well
and wring me well out, but I demurred, raainly on the
ground that some time would be so consumed, and that my
horse was waiting on the other side. He at once said that
he would send for it, and called " Pat," a civilian servant, in
military blue, who was nursing a negro baby with an eye, it
seeraed, to obtain favor with the mother. The willingness
of the man surprised rae, but he said that it was a short cut
of four miles to the railroad bridge, which had been repaired.
and floored, and that he could readily recover the animal
and return at three o'clock. My benefactor, the officer,
then mixed a julep, which brought a comfortable glow to
my face, and said, without parley —
" You're a reporter, on the  "
He said further, that he had been Coroner's Surgeon in
New York for many years, and had learned to know the
representatives of newspapers, one frora the other, by
generic raanner and appearance. Three correspondents
rode by at the tirae, neither of whora he knew person
ally, but designated them promptly, with their precise con
nections. In short, we became familiar directly, and he told
me that his name was O.'Gamlon, Quartermaster of Meagher's
Irish brigade, Sumner's corps. He was established with
the elderly gentleraan, — whose narae was Michie, — and
had two horses in the stable, at hand. He proposed to send
me to the field, with a note of introduction to the General,

128 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
and another to Colonel Baker, of the New York 88th
(Irish), who could show me the lines and relics of battle,
and g-ive me the lists of killed, wounded, and missing. I
repaired to his roora, and arrayed rayself in a fatigue officer's
suit, with clean underclothing, after which, descending, I
clirabed into his saddle, and dashed off, with a mettlesome,
dapper pony. The railroad track was about a mile from
the house, and the whole country, hereabout, was sappy,
dank, and alraost barren. Scrub pines covered much ofthe
soil, and the cleared fields were dotted with charred stumps.
The houses were small and rude ; the wild pigs ran like deer
through the bushes and across my path ; vultures sailed by
hundreds between me and the sky ; the lane was slippery
and wound about slimy pools ; the tree-tops, in many places,
were splintered by ball and shell. I crossed the railroad,
cut by a high bridge, and saw below the depot, at Savage's,
now the head-quarters of General Heintzelman. Above, in
full view, were the coraraands at Peach Orchard and Fair-
,oaks, and to the south, a few furlongs distant, the Williams
burg and Eichraond turnpike ran, parallel with the railway,
toward the field of Seven Pines. The latter site, was
simply the junction of the turnpike with a roundabout way
to Eichraond, called the " Nine Mile Eoad," and Fairoaks
was the junction of the diverging road with the railroad.
Toward the latter I proceeded, and soon came to the Irish
brigade, located on both sides of the way, at Peach Orchard.
They occupied the site of the most desperate fight
ing. A sraall farra hollowed in the swarapy thicket and wood,
was here divided by the track, and a little farra-house, with
a barn, granary, and a couple of cabins, lay on the left side.
In a hut to the right General Thoraas Francis Meagher made
his head-quarters, and a little beyond, in the edges of the
swarap timber, lay his four regiments, under arms.
A guard admonished me, in curt, lithe speech, that my
horse must corae no further ; for the brigade held the

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 129
advance post, and I was even now within easy musket
range of the imperceptible enemy. An Irish boy volun
teered to hold the rein, while I paid my respects to the Com
raander. I encountered him on the threshold of the hut,
and he welcomed me in the richest and most musical ol
brogues. Large, corpulent, and powerful of body ; plump
and ruddy — or as some would say, bloated — of face ; with
resolute raouth and heavy aniraal jaws ; expressive nose,
and piercing blue-eyes ; brown hair, raustache, and eye
brows ; a fair forehead, and short sinewy neck, a raan of
apparently thirty years of age, stood in the doorway, sraok
ing a cigar, and trotting his sword fretfully in the scabbard.
He wore the regulation blue cap, but triraraed plentifully
with gold lace, and his sleeves were slashed in the sarae
manner. A star glistened in his oblong shoulder-bar ; a
delicate gold cord seamed his breeches frora his Hessian
boots to his red tasselled sword-sash ; a seal-ring shone frora
the hand with which he grasped his gauntlets, and his spurs
were set upon sraall aristocratic feet.
A tolerable physiognomist would have resolved his tem
perament to an intense sanguine. He was fitfully impulsive,
as all his raoveraents attested, and liable to fluctuations of
peevishness, raelancholy, and enthusiasm. This was
" Meagher of the Sword," the stripling who made issue
with the renowned O'Connell, and divided his applauses ; the
"revolutionist," who had outlived exile to become the
darling of the "Young Ireland" populace in his adopted
country ; the partisan, whose fierce, impassioned -oratory
had wheeled his factious element of the Democracy into the
war cause ; and the soldier, whose gallant bearing at Bull
Eun had won hira a brigadiership. He was, to ray mind, a
realization of the Knight of Gwynne, or any of the rash,
impolitic, poetic personages in Lever and Griffin. Ambitious
without a name ; an adventurer without a definite cause ;
an orator without policy ; a General without caution or
experience, he had led the Irish brigade through the hottest

130 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
battles, and associated thera with the raost brilliant episodes
of the war.
Every adjunct of the place was strictly Hibernian. The
eraerald green standard entwined with the red, white, and
blue ; the gilt eagles on the flag-poles held the Shamrock
sprig in their beaks ; the soldiers lounging on guard, had
" 69 " or'" 88 " the nurabers of their regiments, stamped
on a green hat-band ; the brogue of every county from
Down to Wexford fell upon the ear ; one might have sup
posed that the " year '98 " had been revived, and that these
brawny Celts were again afield against their Saxon country
men. The class of lads upon the staff of Meagher, was an
odd contrast to the mass of staff officers in the "Grand
Army." Fox-hunters they all seemed to me, and there was
one, who wore a long, twisted, poraaturaed moustache, who
talked of steeple chases, all the while, and wanted to have
" a healthy dash " of some kind. A class of Irish exquisites,
they appeared to be, — good for a fight, a card-party, or a
hurdle jumping, — but entirely too Quixotic for the sober
requireraents of Yankee warfare. When anything absurd,
forlorn, or desperate was to be atterapted, the Irish brigade
was called upon. But, ordinarily, they were regarded, as a
party of mad fellows, more ornamental than useful, and en
tirely too clannish and factious to be entrusted with power.
Meagher himself seeraed to be less erratic than his subordi
nates ; for he had married a New York lady, and had learned,
by observation, the superiority of the pelfish, plodding
native before his own fitful, impracticable race. His ad
dress was infatuating : but there was a certain airiness,
indicative of vanity, that revealed his great characteristic.
He loved applause, and to obtain it had frittered away his
fine abilities, upon petty, splendid, raoraentary triumphs.
He was generous to folly, and, I have no doubt, maintained
his whole staff.
When I requested to be shown the field, and its relics,
Meagher said, in his musical brogue, that I need only look
around.

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 131
" From the edge of that wood," he said, " the Irish
brigade charged across this field, and fell upon their faces in
the railway cutting below. A regiment of Alabamians lay
in the timber beyond, with other Southerners in their rear,
and on both flanks. They thought that we were charging
bayonets, and reserved their fire till we should approach
within butchering distance. On the contrary, I ordered the
boys to lie down, and load and fire at will. In the end, sir,
we cut thera to pieces, and five hundred of thera were left
along the swamp fence, that you see. There isn't fifty
killed and wounded in the whole Irish brigade."
A young staff officer took rae over the field . We visited
first the cottage and barns across the road, and found the
house occupied by some thirty wounded Federals. They
lay in their blankets upon the fioors, — pale, helpless, hollow-
eyed, raaking low moans at every breath. Two or three
were feverishly sleeping, and, as the files revelled upon their
gashes, they stirred uneasily and moved their hands to and
fro. By the flatness of the covering at the extremities, I
could see that several had only stumps of legs. They
had lost the sweet enjoyment of walking afield, and were
but fragments of men, to limp forever through a painful life.
Such wrecks of power I never beheld. Broad, brawny,
buoyant, a few hours ago, the loss of blood, and the nervous
shock, attendant upon amputation, has wellnigh drained
thera to the last drop. Their faces were as white as the
tidy ceiling ; they were whining like babies ; and only their
rolling eyes distinguished them from mutilated corpses.
Some seeraed quite broken in spirit^ and one, who could
speak, observing my pitiful glances toward his severed thigh,
drew up his mouth and chin, and wept as if with the loss
of comeliness all his ambitions were frustrated. A few at
tendants were brushing off the insects with boughs of cedar,
laving the sores, or adrainistering cooling draughts. The
second story of the dwelling was likewise occupied by
wounded, but in a corner clustered the terrified farmer

132 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
and his family, vainly atterap.ting to turn their eyes from
the horrible spectacle. The farmer's wife had a baby
at her breast, and its little blue eyes were straying over
the roora, half wonderingly, half delightedly. I thought>
with a shudder, of babyhood thus surrounded, and how,
in the long future, its first recollections of existence should
be of booraing guns and dying soldiers ! The cow-shed
contained seven corpses, scarcely yet cold, lying upon their
backs, in a row, and fast losing all resemblance to man.
The farthest reraoved, seeraed to be a dirainutive boy, and I
thought if he had a mother, that she might sometirae like to
speak with rae. "When I took their naraes, I thought what
terrible agencies I was fulfilling. Beyond my record, falsely
spelled, perhaps, they would have no history. And people
call such deaths glorious !
Upon a pile of lumber and some heaps of fence-rails, close
by, sat some dozens of wounded raen, raainly Federals, with
bandaged arms and faces, and torn clothing. There was
one, shot in the foot, who howled at every effort to remove
his boot ; the blood leaked frora a rent in the side, and at
last, the leather was cut, piecemeal from the flesh. These
ate voraciously, though in pain and fear ; for a little soup
and meat was being doled out to them.
The most horrible of all these scenes — which I have
described perhaps too circumstantially — was presented in
the stable or barn, on the premises, where a bare dingy
floor — the planks of which tilted and shook, as one made
his way over thera — was strewn with suffering people.
Just at the entrance sat a boy, totally blind, both eyes
having been torn out by a minnie-ball, and the entire bridge
ofthe nose shot away. He crouched against the gable, in
darkness and agony, tremulously fingering his knees.
Near at hand, sat another, who had been shot through the
middle ofthe forehead, but singular to rekte, he still lived,
though lunatic, and evidently beyond hope. Death had
drawn blue and yellow circles beneath his eyes, and he mut-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 133
tered incoraprehensibly, wagging his head. Two men, per
fectly naked, lay in the middle of the place, wounded in
bowels and loins ; and at a niche in the weather-boarding,
where some pale light peeped in, four mutilated wretches
were gaming with cards. I was now led a little way down
the railroad, to see the Confederates. The rain began to
fall at this time, and the poor fellows shut their eyes to
avoid the pelting of the drops. There was no shelter for
them within a raile, and the raud absolutely reached half
way up their bodies. Nearly one third had suffered ampu
tation above the knee. There were about thirty at this
spot, and I was told that they were being taken to Meadow
Station on hand cars. As soon as the locoraotive could pass
the Chickahorainy, they would be reraoved to White House,
and comfortably quartered in the Sanitary and hospital
boats. Some of thera were fine, athletic, and youthful, and
I was directed to one who had been raarried only three days
before. "Doctor," said one, feebly, "I feel very cold: do you
think that this is death ? It seems to be creeping to my
heart. I have no feeling in my feet, and my thighs are
nurab." A Federal soldier carae along with a bucket of soup, and
proceeded to fill the canteens and plates. He appeared to
be a relative of Mark Tapley, and possessed much of that
estimable person's jollity —
" Come, pardner," he said, " drink yer sup ! now, old
boy, this'ill warm ye ; sock it down and ye'll see yer sweet
heart soon. You .dead, Ally-bammy ? Go way, now.
You'll live a hundred years, you will. That's wot you'll
do. Won't he, lad? What? Not any? Get out!
You'll be slap on your legs next week and hev another shot
at rae the week a'ter that. You know you will ! Oh ! you
Eebil ! You, with the butternut trousers ! Say ! Wake
up and take sorae o' this. Hello ! lad, pardner. Wake up ! "
He stirred hira gently with his foot ; he bent down to
12

134 ^ CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
touch his face. A griraness came over his merriment. The
man was stiff and dumb.
Colonel Baker, comraanding the 88th New York, was a
tall, martial Irishman, who opened his heart and bottle at
the same welcome, and took me into the woods, where some
of tho slain still remained. He had slept not longer than
an hour, continuously, for seventy hours, and during the
past night had been called up by eight alarums. His raen
lay in the dark thickets, without fires or blankets, as they
had crossed the Chickahorainy in light marching order.
" Many a lad," said he, " will escape the bullet for a lin
gering consuraption."
We had proceeded but a very little way, when we came
to a trodden place beneath the pines, where a scalp lay in
the leaves, and the imprint of a body was plainly visible.
The bayonet scabbard lay at one side, the canteen at the
other. We saw no corpses, however, as fatigue parties had
been burying the slain, and the whole wood was dotted with
heaps of clay, where the dead slept below in the oozy
trenches. Quantities of cartridges were scattered here and
there, dropped by the retreating Confederates. Some of
the cartridge-pouches that I examined were corapletely
filled, showing that their possessors had not fired a single
round ; others had but one cartridge missing. There were
fragments of clothing, hair, blankets, murderous bowie and
dirk knives, spurs, fiasks, caps, and plumes, dropped all the
way through the thicket, and the trees on every hand were
riddled with balls. I came upon a squirrel, unwittingly
' shot during the fight. Not those alone who make the war
must feel the war ! At one of the-mounds the burying party
had just completed their work, and the men were throwing
the last clods upon the remains. They had dug pits^of not
raore than two feet depth, and dragged the bodies heedlessly
to the edges, whence they were toppled down and scantily
covered. Much of the interring had been done by night, and
the flare of lanterns upon the discolored faces and dead eyes

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 135
must have been hideously effective. The grave-diggers, how
ever, were practical personages, and had probably little care
for dramatic effects. They leaned upon their spades, when
the rites were finished, and a large, dry person, who appeared
to be privileged upon all occasions, said, grinningly —
" Colonel, your honor, them boys 'ill nivcr stand forninst
the Irish brigade again. If they'd ha' known it was us, sur,
begorra! they 'ud ha' brought coffins wid 'em."
" No, niver ! " " They got their ticket for soup I "
" We kivered thera, fait', will inough ! " shouted the other
grave-diggers." >¦
"Do ye belave, Colonel," said the dry person, again,
" that thira ribals'll lave us a chance to catch thera. Be
me sowl ! I'm jist wishin to war-rum rae hands wid rifle
practice." The others. echoed loudly, that they were anxious to be
ordered up, and some said that "Little Mac'll give 'era his
big whack now." The presence of death seemed to have
added no fear of death to these people. Having tasted
blood, they now thirsted for it, and I asked myself, fore
bodingly, if a return to civil life would find thera less fero
cious. I dined with Colonel Owen of the 69th Pennsylvania (Irish)
volunteers. He had been a Philadelphia lawyer, and was, by
all odds, the most consistent and intelligent soldier in the brig
ade. He had been also a schoolmaster for many years, but
appeared to be in his eleraent at the head of a regiment,
and was generally admitted to be an efficient officer. He
shared the prevailing antipathy to West Point graduates ;
for at this time the arrogance of the regular officers, and
the pride of the volunteers, had embittered each against the
other. His theory of militarj'' education was, the establish
raent of State institutions, and the reorganization of citizen
ship upon a strict railitia basis. Afterdinner, Irodeto "Seven
Pines," and exarained sorae of the rifle pits used during the
engageraent. A portion of this ground only had been retaken,

136 Campaigns op a non-combatant.
and I was warned to keep under cover ; for sharpshooters lay
close by, in the underbrush. A visit to the graves of some
Federal soldiers completed the inspection. Some of the
regiments had interred their dead in trenches ; but the New
Englanders were all buried separately, and smooth slabs
were driven at the heads of the inounds, whereon were
inscribed the names and ages of the deceased. Some ofthe
graves were freshly sodded, and enclosed by rails and logs.
They evidenced the orderly, religious habits of the sons of
the Puritans ; for, with all his hardness of manner and selfish
ness of purpose, I ara inclined to think that the Yankee is
the best raanifestation of Northern character. He loves his
'horae, at least, and he reveres his deceased comrades.
When I returned to Michie's, at six o'clock, the man
"Pat," with a glowing face, came out to the gate.
" That's a splendid baste of yours, sur," he. said, — " and
sich a boi to gallop."
"My horse doesn't generally gallop," I returned, doubt
fully. When I passed to the barn in the rear, I found to my
astonishment, a sorrel stallion, magnificently accoutred.
He thrust his foot at me savagely, as I stood behind him,
and neighed till he frightened the spiders.
"Pat," said I, wrathfully, "you have stolen some Col
onel's nag, and I shall be hanged for the theft."
"Fait, sur," said Pat, "my ligs was gone intirely, wid
long walkin', and I sazed the furst iligant baste I come to."

CHAPTEE XIII.

STUARTS EAID.

The old Chickahominy bridges were soon repaired, and
the whole of Franklin's corps crossed to the south side.
McClellan raoved his head-quarters to Dr. Trent's farm, a
half-mile from Michie's, and the latter gentleman's fields
and lawn were made white with tents. Among others, the
Chief of Cavalry, Stoneman, pitched his canopy nnder the
young oaks, and the whole reserve artillery was parked in
the woods, close to the house. The engineer brigade en
camped in the adjacent peach-orchard and corn-field, and
the wheat was trampled by battery and team-horses.
Smith's division now occupied the hills on the south side of
the Chickahominy, and the Federal line stretched south
eastward, through Fairoaks, to White Oak Swamp, seven
miles away. Porter's corps still lay between Mechanics
ville and New Bridge, on the north bank of the river, and
my old acquaintances, the Pennsylvania Eeserves, had
joined the army, and now forraed its extreme right wing.
This odd arrangement of forces was a subject of frequent
comment : for the right was thus four railes, and the left
fourteen miles, frora Eichraond. The four corps at once
coraraenced to entrench, and from Smith's redoubt on the
river bluffs, to Casey's entrenched hill at White Oak, a con
tinuous line of raoderately strong earthworks extended.
But Porter and the Eeserves were not entrenched at all,
and only a few horsemen were picketed across the long reach
12* (137)

138 campaigns of a non-combatant.
of country from Meadow Bridge to Hanover Court House.
Both flanks, in fact, were open, and the left was a day's
march from the right. We were, raeantirae, drawing our
supplies frora White House, twenty railes in the rear ; there
were no railroad guards along the entire line, and about
five companies protected the grand depot. Two gunboats
lay in the river, however, and as the teams still went to and
fro, a second depot was established at a place called Put
ney's or " Garlic," five miles above White House. I went
often, and at all hours of the day and night, over this ex
posed and lonely route. My horse had been, meantime, re
turned to the Provost Quarters, and the rightful owner had
obtained his stallion in exchange. I rode the said stallion
but once, when he proceeded to walk sideways, and several
tiraes rivalled the renowned Pegasus in his aerial flights.
The man naraed " Pat " essayed to show his paces one day,
but the stallion took hira straight into Stoneman's wall-tent,
and. that officer shook the Irishman blind. My little bob-
tailed brownie was thrice endeared to me by our separation ;
but I warned the raan " Pat "to keep clear of hira there
after. The man "Pat" was a very eccentric person, who
slept on the porch at Michie's, and used to wake up the
house in the sraall hours, with the story that soraebody was
taking the chickens and the horses. He was the most im
pulsive person that I ever knew, and when I entrusted de
spatches to him once, he put them on the hospital boat by
mistake, and they got to New York at the close of the cam
paign. Michie's soon became a correspondents' rendezvous, and
we have had at one time, at dinner, twelve representatives
of five journals. ' The Hon. Henry J. Eaymond, Ex-Lieuten
ant Governor of New York, and proprietor of the Times
newspaper, was one of our faraily for several weeks. He
had been a New Hampshire lad, and, strolling to New York,
took to journalism at the age of nineteen years. His indus
try and probity obtained him both means and credit, and.

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 139
also, what few young journalists obtain, social position.
He was the founder of Harper's Magazine, one of the most
successful serials in Araerica, and many English authors are
indebted to him for ,a trans- Atlantic recognition of their
works. He edited an American edition of Jane Eyre beforo
it had attracted attention in England, and conducted the
Courier and Enquirer with great success for many years.
The Times is now the raost reputable of the great New York
dailies, and Mr. Eayraond has made it influential both at
horae and abroad. He has retained, araidst his social and
political successes, a predilection for " Bohemia," and be
came an indefatigable correspondent. I rode out with him
soraetiraes, and heard, with interest, his accounts of the
Italian war, whither he also went in furtherance of journal
isra. Araong our quill cavalry-raen was a fat gentleraan
frora Philadelphia, who had great fear of death, and who
used to " tear" to White House, if the raan " Pat " shot a
duck in the garden. He was a hearty, humorous person,
however, and an adept at searchingfor news.
O'Ganlon rode with rae several tiraes to White House,
and we have crossed the railroad bridge together, a hun
dred feet in the air, when the planks were slippery, the
sides sloping, and the way so narrow that two horses could
not pass abreast. He was a true Irishman, and leaped bar
ricades and ditches without regard to his neck. He had,
also, a partiality for by-roads that led through swamps and
close timber. He discovered one day a cow-path between
Daker's and an old Mill at Grapevine Bridge. The long
arms of oaks and beech trees reached across it, and young
Absalom might have been ensnared by the locks at every
rod therein. Through this devious and dangerous way,
O'Ganlon used to dash, whooping, guiding his horse with
marvellous dexterity, and bantering me to follow. 1 so far
forgot myself generally, as to behave quite as irrationally,
and once returned to Michie's with a bump above ray right
eye, that rivalled my head in size. At other times I rode

140 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
alone, and ray favorite route was an unfrequented lane called
the " Quaker Eoad," that extended frora Despatch Station,
on the line of- rail, to Daker's, on the New Bridge Eoad.
Much of this way was shut in by thick woods and" dreary
pine barrens ; but the road was hard and light, and a few
quiet farm^ lay by the roadside. There jwas a mill, also,
three miles from Daker's, where a turbulent creek crossed
the route, and at an oak-wood, near by, I used to frighten
the squirrels, so that they started up by pairs and families ;
I have chased thera in this way a full raile, and they seemed
to know me after a tirae. We used to be on the best of
terms, and they would, at length, stand their ground sau
cily, and chatter, the one with the other, flourishing their
bushy appendages, like so many straggling " Bucktails."
When I turned from the beaten road, where th^ ruts were
like a ditch and parapet, and dead horses blackened the
fields ; where teams went creaking day and night, and
squads of sabremen drove pale, barefooted prisoners to and
fro like swine or cattle, the silence and solitude of this by-
lane were beautiful as sleep. . Many ofthe old people living
in this direction had not seen even a soldier or a sutler, save
some mounted scouts that vanished in clouds of dust ; but
they had listened with awe to the music of cannon, though
they did not know either the place or the result ofthe fight
ing. If fate has ordained me to survive the Eebellion, I
shall sorae day revisit these localities ; they are stamped
legibly upon ray mind, and I know alraost every old couple
in New Kent or Hanover counties. I have lunched at all
the little springs on the road, and eaten corn-bread and
bacon at most of the cabins. I have swam the Pamunkey
at dozens of places, and when my finances were low, and
my nag hungry, have organized myself into a company of
foragers, and broken into the good people's granaries. I do
not know any position that admitted of as much adventure
and variety. There was always enough danger to make my
journeys precariously pleasant, and, when wearied of the

CAJVEPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 141
saddle, my friends at Daker's and Michie's had a savory
julep and a comfortable bed always prepared. I had raore
liberty than General McClellan, and a great deal raore com
fort. Mrs. Michie was a warm-hearted, impulsive Virginia lady,
with alraost New England industry, and frora very scanty
materials she contrived to spread a bountiful table. Her
coffee was bubbling with rich cream, and her "yellow pone"
was overrunning with butter. A cleanly black girl shook a
fly-brush over our shoulders as we ate, and the curious
custom was maintained of sending a julep to our bedrooms
before we rose in the mornings. Our hostess was too
hospitable to be a bitter partisan, and during five weeks
of tenure at her residence, we never held an hour's contro
versy. She had troubles, but she endured them patiently.
She saw, one by on^, articles of property sacrificed or
stolen ; she heard the servants speaking impudently ; and
her daughters and son were in- a remote part of the State.
The young man was a Confederate Surgeon at Lynchburg,
and the young ladies had taken refuge in Eockbridge
County. The latter were, from all accounts, pretty and
intelligent, and one day, as I examined some parcels of
books in the parlors, I found a volume of amateur poems
that some laboring bard had dedicated to the youngest of
thera. Mr. Michie was a fine old Virginia gentleraan, who
reraerabered Thoraas Jefferson well, as he had been reared
in that great statesraan's village, Charlottesville. He told
me many anecdotes of Patrick Henry, John Eandolph, and
other distinguished patriots.
I wrote in one of the absent daughter's albums the fol
lowing lines : —
Alas ! for the pleasant peace we knew.
In the happy summers of long ago,
When the rivers 'were bright, and the skies were blue.
By the homes of Henrico :

142 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
We drearaed of wars that were far away,
And read, as in fable, of blood that ran.
Where the James and Chickahominy stray.
Through the groves of Powhattan.
'Tis a dreara come true ; for the afternoons
Blow bugles of war, by our flelds of grain.
And the sabres clink, as the dark dragoons
Come galloping up the lane ;
The pigeons have flown from the eves and tiles,
The oat-blades have grown to blades of steel.
And the Huns swarm down the leafy aisles
,0f tho grand old Commonweal.
They have torn the Indian fisher's nets.
Where flows Pamunkey toward the sea.
And blood runs red in the rivulets.
That babbled and brawled in glee ;
The corpses are strewn in Pairoak glades,
The hoarse guns thunder from Drury's Hidge,
The fishes that played in the cove, deep shades,
Are frightened from Bottom Bridge.
I would that the year were blotted away.
And the strawberry grew in the hedge again ;
That the scythe might swing in the tangled hay.
And the squirrel romp in the glen ;
The walnut sprinkle the clover slopes, '
Where graze the sheep and the spotted steer ;
And the winter restore the golden hopes.
That were trampled in a year.
On Friday, June 13, I made one of my ctistomary trips
to White House, in the corapany of O'Ganlon. The latter
individual, in the course of a " healthy dash " that he made
down the railroad ties, — whereby two shoes shied from his
mare's hoofs, — reined into a quicksand that threatened to
swallow his steed. He afterward left his sword at Surarait
Station, and I, obligingly, rode back three miles to recover
it. We dined at Daker's, where Glumley sat beside the
baby-face, pursuant to his art-duties, and the plump, red-

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 143
cheeked raiss sat beside rae. O'Ganlon was entertained by
the talkative daughter, who drove hira quite mad ; so that,
when we resumed our horses, he insisted upon a second
" healthy dash," and disappeared through a strip of -woods.
I followed, rationally, and had come to a blacksmith's shop,
at the corner of a diverging road, when I was made aware
of some startling occurrence in ray rear. A raounted officer
dashed past me, shouting sorae unintelligible tidings, and he
was followed in quick succession by a dozen cavalry-men,
who rode as if the foul fiend was at their heels. Then came
a teamster, bare-backed, whose rent harness trailed in the
road,- and directly some wagons that were halted before the
blacksmith's, wheeled smartly, and rattled off towards
White House.
" What is the matter, my man ? " I said to one of these
lunatics, hurriedly.
" The Eebels are behind ! " he screamed, with white lips,
and vanished.
I thought that it might be as well to take some other
road, and so struck off, at a dapper pace, in the direction of
the new landing at Putney's or " Garlic." At the same
instant I heard the crack of carbines behind., aud they had a
magical influence upon ray speed. I rode along a stretch of
chestnut and oak wood, attached to the famous Webb estate,
and when I carae to a rill that passed by a little bridge,
under the way, turned up its sandy bed and buried rayself
in the under-brush. A few breathless raoraents only had
intervened, when the roadway seeraed shaken by a hundred
hoofs. The iraperceptible horsemen yelled like a -war-party
of Camanches, and when they had passed, the carbines rang
ahead, as if sorae bloody work was being done at every
rod. I reraained a full hour under cover ; but as no fresh
approaches added to my mystery and fear, I sallied forth,
and kept the route to Putney's, with ears erect and expect
ant pulses. I had gone but a quarter of a mile, when I

144 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMB AT^UJT.
discerned, through the gathering gloom, a black, raissliapen
object, standing in the middle of the road. As it seemed
motionless, I ventured closer, when the thieg resolved^ to a
sutler's wagon, charred and broken, and still smoking from
the incendiaries' torch. Further on, more of these burned
wagons littered the way, and in one place two slain horses
marked the roadside. When I emerged upon the Hanover
road, sounds of shrieks and shot issued from the landing at
"Garlic," and, in a moment, flames rose from the woody
shores and reddened the evening. I knew by the gliding
blaze that vessels had been fired and set adrift, and from my "
place could see the devouring eleraent climbing rope and
shroud. In a twinkling, a second light appeared behind the
woods to my right, and the intelligence dawned upon me that
the cars and houses at Tunstall's Station had been burned.
By the fitful illumination, I rode tremulously to the old
head-quarters at Black Creek, and as I conjectured, the depot
and train were luridly consuming. The vicinity was marked
by wrecked sutler's stores, the embers of wagons, and top
pled steeds. Below Black Creek the ruin did not extend :
but when I carae to White House the greatest confusion
existed. Sutlers were taking down their booths, transports
were slipping their cables, steamers moving down the
stream. Stuart had made the circuit of the Grand Army to
show Lee where the infantry could follow.

CHAPTEE XIV.
FEVER DBJEAMS IN WAE.
A SUBTLE enemy had of late joined the Confederate cause
against the invaders. He was known as Pestilence, and
his footsteps were so soft that neither scout nor picket could
bar his entrance. His paths were subterran"ean, — through
the tepid swamp water, the shallow graves of the dead ;
and aerial, — through the stench of rotting animals, the
nightly miasms of bog and fen. His victims were not pierced,
or crushed, or mangled, but their deaths were not less terri
ble, because more lingering. They seemed to 'wither and
shrivel away ; their eyes became at first very bright, and
afterward lustreless; their skins grew hard and sallow;
their lips faded to a dry whiteness ; all the fluids of the body
were consumed ; and they crumbled to corruption before
Ufe had fairly gone from them.
This visitation has been, by coraraon consent, dubbed
" the Chickahominy fever," and some have called it the
typhus fever. The troops called it the "camp fever," and
it was frequently aggravated by affections of the bowels
and throat. The number of persons that died 'with it was
fabulous. Some have gone so far as to say that the army.
could have better afforded the slaughter of twenty thousand
men, than the delay on the Chickahominy. The embalmers
were now enjoying their raillennium, and a steam coffin
manufactory was erected at White House, where twenty
men worked day and night, turning out jiundreds of pine
13 (145)

146 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. «
boxes. I had, occasion, in dne of my visits to the depot,
to repair to the tent of one of the embalmers. He was a
sedate, grave person, and when I saw him, standing over
the nude, hard corpse, he reminded me of the implacable
vulture, looking into the eyes of Prometheus. His battery
and tube were pulsing, like one's heart and lungs, and the
subject was being drained at the neck. I corapared the
discolored body -with the figure of lanthe, as revealed in
Queen Mab, but failed to see the beautifulness of death.
"If you could only make him breathe. Professor," said
an officer standing by.
The dry skin of the embalmer broke into chalky dimples,
and he grinned very rauch as a corpse might do : —
" Ah I " he said, " then there would be money made."^
To hear these embalmers converse with each other was
like listening to the witch sayings in Macbeth. It appeared
that the arch-fiend of embalming was a Frenchman named
Songa, or something of that kind, and all these worthies
professed to have purchased his " systera." They told
grisly anecdotes of " operations," and experimented with
chemicals, and congratulated each other upon the fever.
They would, I think, have piled the whole earth with cata
combs of stony corpses, and we should have no more green
graves, but keep our dead with us as household ornaments.
The negroes did not suffer with the fever, although their
quarters were close and filthy. Their Elysium had come ;
there was no more work. They slept and danced and
grinned, and these three actions made up the sum of their
existence. Such people to incTrease and multiply I never
beheld. There were scores of new babies every day ; they
appeared to be born by twins and triplets ; they learned to
walk in twenty-four hours ; and their mothers were strong
and hearty in less time. Such soulless, lost, degraded men
and women did nowhere else exist. The divinity they~ never
had ; the human they had forgotten ; they did no great
wrongs, — thieving, quarrelling, deceiving, — but they failed

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 147
to do any rights, and their worship was aniraal, and almost
profane. They sang incongruous mixtures of hymns and
.field songs : —
" Oh ! bruddern, watch an' pray, watch an' pray I
De harvest am a ripenin' our Lord an' Marser say I
Oh I ho ! yo I dat ole coon, de serpent, ho ! oh 1
Watch an' pray ! "
I have heard thera sing such raedleys -with tears in their
eyes, apparently fervid and rapt. A very gray old raan
would lead off, keeping tirae to the words with his head and
hands ; the mass joining in at intervals, and raising a scream
ing alleluja. Directly they would all rise, link hands, and
proceed to dance the accompaniment. The raotion would
be slow at first, and the method of singing maintained ;
after a time they would move more rapidly, shouting the
lines together ; and suddenly becoming convulsed with
strange excitement, they would toss up their arms, leap,
fall, groan, and, seemingly, lose consciousness. Their
prayers were earnest and vehement, but often degenerated
to mere howls and noises. Sorae of both sexes had grand
voices, that rang like bugles, and the very impropriety of
their music made it fascinating. It used to seem to me that
any of the great composers might have borrowed advan
tageously some of those original negro airs. In many
cases, their owners came within the linesr-registered their
allegiance, and recovered the negroes. These were often
veritable Shylocks, that claimed their pounds of flesh, with
unblushing reference to the law. The poor Africs went
back cowed and tearful, and it is probable that they were
afterward sent to the far South, that terrible terra incognita
to a border slave.
Among the houses to which I resorted was that of a Mr.
Hill, one mile from White House. He had a thousand acres
of land and a valuable flshery on the Pamunkey. The
latter was worth, in good seasons, two thousand dollars a

148 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. m
year. He had fished and farmed with negroes ; but these
had leagued to run away, and he sent them across the river
to a second farm that he owned in King William County.
It was at Hill's house that the widow Custis was visiting
when young Washington reined at the gate, on his road to
Williamsburg. With reverent feelings I used to regard the
old place, and Hill frequently stole away from his fprraidable
military household, to talk with me on the front porch.
Perhaps in the same moonlights, with the river shimmering
at their feet, and the grapevine shadowing the creaky
corners, — their voices softened, their chairs drawn very
close, their hands touching with a thrill, — the young soldier
and his affianced had made their courtship. I soraeBmes
sat breathless, thinking that their figures had come back, and
that I heard them whispering.
Hill was a Virginian, — large, hospitable, severe, proud,
— and once I ventured to speak upon the policy of slavery,
with a view to develop his own relation to the "institu
tion." Ho said, with the swaggering raanner of his class,
that slavery was a " doraestic" institution, and that there
fore no political law could reach it. I insinuated, quietly,
that no political law should therefore sustain it, and took
exception to the idea that what was doraestic was therefore
without the province of legislation. When I exarapled poly
gamy. Hill became passionate, and asked if I was an aboli
tionist. I opined that I was not, and he so far relented as
to say that slavery was sanctioned by divine and human
laws ; that it was ultimately to be embraced by all white
nationalities, and that the Caucasian was certain, in the
end, to subjugate and possess every other race. He pointed,
with some shrewdness, to the condition of the Chinese in
California and Australia, and epitomized the gradual enslav
ing of the Mongol and Malay in various quarters of the
world. "As to our treatment of niggers," he said, curtly, "I
never prevaricate, as some masters do, in that respect. I

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 149
whip my niggerS when they want it ! If they are saucy,
or careless, or lazy, I have 'era flogged. About twice a
year every nigger has to be punished. If they ain't roped
over twice a year, they take on airs and want to be gentle
men. A nigger is bound by no sentiment of duty or affec
tion. You must keep hira in trim by fear."
Araong the victims of the swamp fever, were Major Lar
rabee, and Lieutenant-Colonel Emory, of the Fifth Wiscon
sin regiment ; I had been indebted to them for many a meal
and draugdit of spirits. I had talked with each of them,
when the camps were darkened and the soldiery asleep.
Larrabee was a soldier by nature, — adventurous, energetic,
intrepid, aggressive. He had been a country Judge in Wis
consin, ahd afterwards a raeraber of Congress. When the
war commenced, he enlisted as a common soldier, but
public sentiment forced the State Government to make him
a Major. Emory was a mild, reflective, unimpassioned gen
tleraan, — too raodest to be eminent, too scrupulous to be
ambitious. The men were opposites, but both capital com
panions, and they were seized with the fever about the
same time. The Major was removed to' White House, and
^^^isited him one day in the hospital quarters. Surgeon
General Watson, hospital coraraandant, took me through
the quarters ; there was quite a town of sick raen ; they lay
in wall-tents — about twenty in a tent, — and there were
daily deaths ; those that caught the fever, were afterwards
unfit for duty, as they took relapses on resuming the field.
The tents were pitched in a damp cornfield ; for the Fed
erals so reverenced their national shrines, that they forbade
White House and lawn to be used for hospital purposes.
Under the best circumstances, a field hospital is a comfort
less place ; but here the sun shone like a furnace upon the
tents, and the rains drowned out the inmates. If a man can
possibly avoid it, let him never go to the hospital : for he
will be called a " skulker," or a " shyster," that desires to
escape the impending battle. Twenty hot, feverish, tossing
13*

150 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
men, confined in a small tent, like an ov(Si, and exposed to
contumely and bad food, should get a wholesorae horror of
war and glory.
So far as I could observe and learn, the authorities at
White House carried high heads, and covetous hands. In
brief, they lived like princes, and behaved like knaves.
There was one — whose conduct has never been investi
gated — who furnished one of the deserted raansions near
by, and brought a lady frora the North to keep it in order.
He drove a span that rivalled anything in Broadway, and
his wines were luscious. His establishraent reminded -me
of that of Napoleon III. in the late Italian war, and yet, this
man was receiving merely a Colonel's pay. My impression
is that everybody at White House robbed the Government,
and in the end, to cover their delinquencies, these scoun
drels set fire to an immense quantity of stores, and squared
their accounts thus : " Burned on the Pamunkey, June 28,
commissary, quartermaster's, and hospital stores, one
million dollars."
The time was now drawing to a close that I should pass
amid the familiar scenes of this region. The good people^
Daker's were still kindly ; but having climbed into the great
bed one night, I found my legs aching, my brain violently
throbbing, my chest full of pain and my eyes weak. When '
I woke in the raorning my lips were fevered, I could eat
nothing, and when I reached my saddle, it seemed that 1
should faint. In a word, the Chickahominy fever had seized
upon me. My ride to New Bridge was marked by great
agony, and during much of the time I was -.quite blind. 1
turned off, at Gaines's Mill, to rest at Captain Kingwalt's ;
but the old gentleraan was in the grip' of the ague, and I fore
bore to trouble him with a statement of my grievances.
Skyhiski made me a cup of tea, which I could not drink,
and Fogg made me lie on his "poncho." It was like old
times corae back, to hear thera all speak cheerfully, and the
man Clover said that, if there " warn't " a battle soon, he

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 151
knew what he'd do, he did ! he'd go home, straight as a
buck! " Becoz," said the man Clover, flourishing his hands, " I
volunteered to fight. To fight, sir ! not to dig and drive
team. Here we air, sir, stuck in the mud, burnin' with
fever, livin' on hardtack. And thair's Eichmond ! Just
thair ! You can chuck a stone at it, if you mind to. A'ter
awhile them rebbils'll pop out, and fix us. Why ain't we
led up, sa-a-y ? "
The man Clover represented common sentiment among
the troops at this time ; but I told him that in all probability
he would soon be gratified with a battle. My prediction
was so far correct, that when I met the man Clover on the
James Eiver, a week afterward, he said, with a rueful coun
tenance —
" Sa-a-a-y ! It never rains but it pours, does it ? "
As I rode from the carap of the Pennsylvania Eeserves,
at noon, on the 21st of June, I seeraed to feel a gloomy
premonition of the calamities that were shortly to fall upou
the " Array of the Potomac." I passed in front of Hogan
house ; through tbe wood above the mill ; along Gaines's
Lane, between his mansion and his barn ; across a creek,
tributary to the Chickahominy ; and up the ploughed hills
by a military road, toward Grapevine Bridge. Lieutenant-
Colonel Heath, of the Fifth Maine Eegiment, was riding
with me, and we stopped at the tip of an elevated field to
look back upon the scene. I was very sick and weary, and
I lay my head, upon the mane of my nag, while Heath threw
a leg across his saddle pommel, and straightened his slight
figure ; we both gazed earnestly.
The river lay in the hollow or ravine to the left, and a few
farin-houses sat araong the trees on the hill-tops beyond. A
battery was planted at each house, and we could see the
lines of red-clay parapets marking the sites. From the roof
of one of the houses floated a speck of canvas, — the rev
olutionary flag. A horseman or two moved shadow-like

152 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
across a slope of yellow grain. Before and back the woods
belted the landscape, and some pickets of both sides paced
the river brink : they did not fire upon each other.
Our side of the Chickahorainy was not less peaceful. A
couple of batteries lay below us, in the meadows ; but the
horses were dozing in the harness, and the gunners, stand
ing bolt upright at the breech, seemed parts of their
pieces ; the teamsters lay grouped in the long grass. Im
mediately in front, Gaines's Mansion and outhouses spot
ted a hillside, and we could note beyond a few white tents
shining through the trees. The roof of the old mill
crouched between a medley of wavy fields and woods, to
our right, and just at our feet a tiny rill divided Gaines's
Mill from our own. Behind us, over the wilderness of
swamp and bog-timber, rose Smith's redoubj;, with the Fed
eral flag flaunting from the rampart.
" Townsend," said Heath, as he swept the whole country
with his keen eye, " do you know that we are standing
upon historic ground ? "
He had been a poet and an orator, and he seemed to feel
the solemnity of the place.
" It raay becorae historic to-raorrow," I replied.
" It is so to-day," he said, earnestly ; " not from battle as
yet ; thaf may or raay not happen ; but in the pause before
the storm there is soraething grand ; and this is the pause."
He took his soft beaver in his hand, and his short red
hair stood pugnaciously back from his fine forehead.
" The raen that have been here already," he added,
" consecrated the place ; young McClellan, and bluff, bull-
headed Franklin-^; the one-armed devil, Kearney, and hand
some Joe Hooker ; gray, gristly Heintzelman ; white-
bearded, insane Suraner ; Stuart, Lee, Johnston, the
Hills -^-"
"Why not," said I, laughingly, "Eric the red, — the
redoubtable Heath ! "
" Why not ? " he said, with a flourish ; " Pate may have
something in store for me, as well as for these."

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMB.\T.iN^T. 153
I have thought, since, how terribly our light conversation
found verification in fact. If I had said to Heath, that, at
the very moment, Jefferson Davis and his Commander-in-
chief were sitting in the, dwelling opposite, reconnoitring
and consulting ; that, even now, their telescopes were
directed upon us ; that the effect of their counsel was to be
manifest in less than a week ; that one of the bloodiest
battles of modern tiraes was to be fought beside and around
us ; that six days of the most terrible fighting known in
history were to ensue ; that my friend and comrade was
standing upon the same clods which would be reddened, at
his next coming, with his heart's blood ; and that the
trenches were to yawn beneath his hoofs, to swallow him
self and his steed, — if I had foretold these things as they
were to occur, I wonder if the " pause before the storm "
would have been less awful, and our ride carapward less
sedate. Poor Heath! Gallant New Englander ! he- called
at my bedside, the sixth day following, as I lay full,
of pain, fear, and fever, and after he bade me good by, I
heard his horse's hoofs ringing down the lane. Ten minutes
afterward he was shot through the head.
When I reached Michie's, at three o'clock, I had to be
helped from the saddle, and the fever was raging in my
whole body before nightfall. My hands were flushed, ray
face hot, but ray feet were quite cold, and I was seized with
chills that seemed to shake my teeth frora my head. Mrs.
Michie made me a bowl of scorching tea, and one of the
black-girls bathed my limbs in boiling water. The fever
dreams came to me that night, in snatches of burning sleep,
ahd toward morning I lay restlessly awake, moving from
side to side, famishing for drink, but rejecting it, when they
brought it to my lips. The next day, my kind hostess gave
me some nourishing soup, but after a vain effort to partake
of it, I was compelled to put it aside. O'Ganlon procured
some pickled fruit and vegetables from a sutler, which I ate
voraciously, quaffing the vinegar like wine. Sorae of ray

154 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
regimental friends heard of my illness, and they sent me
quiet luxuries, which gladdened me, though I did not eat.
During the day I had some raoraents of ease, when I tried to
read. There was a copy of Wordsworth's poems in the house,
and I used to repeat stanzas frora "Peter Bell," till they rang,
in eddies of rhyme, through my weak brain, and continued to
scan and jangle far into the nights. Some of these fever-
dreams were like delusions in delirium : peopled "With mon
sters, that grinned and growled. Little black globules used
to leer from corners, and after a time they began to revolve
toward mc, increasing as they came, and at length rolling
like mountains of surge. I frequently woke with a
scream, and found my body in profuse perspiration. There
were fiery snakes, also, that, at first, moved slowly around
me, and I followed them with red and terrified eyes. After
awhile they flashed in circles of lightning, and hissed show
ers of sparks, until I becarae quite crazed with fear. The
most horrible apparitions used to corae to ray bedside, and
if I dropped to sleep with any thought half formed or half
developed, the odd half of that thought becarae impregnated,
somehow, and straightway loomed up a goblin, or a giant,
or a grotesque something, that proceeded to torture me,
like a sort of Frankenstein, for having made it. Amid all
these ghastly things, there came beautiful glimpses of form,
scene, and sensation, that straightway changed to horrors.
I reraeraber, for exaraple, that I was gliding down a stream,
where the boughs overhead were as shady as the waters,
and there were holy eyes that seemed to cool my fever ;
but suddenly the streara becarae choked with corpses, that
entangled their dead limbs with mine, until I strangled and
called aloud, — : waking up O'Ganlon and some reporters
who proposed to gi-ve me morphine, that I might not alarm
the house.
How the poor soldiers fared, in the hot hospitals, I shud
der to think ; but a more merciful decree spared ray life,
and kind treatment met me at every hand. Otherwise, Ibe-

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 155
lieve, I should not be alive to-day to write this story ;
for the fever had seized me in its severest form, and I had
almost tutored rayself to look upon my end, far from ray
home and on the very eve of my manhood.
O'Ganlon, at last, resolved to send me to White House,
and started thither one day, to obtain a berth, for me upon
a Sanitary steamer. The next day an ambulance came to
the door. I tried to sit up in bed, and succeeded ; I feebly
robed myself and staggered to the stairs. I crawled,
rather than walked, to the hall belo%v ; but when I took a
chair, and felt the cool breeze from the oaks fanning my
hair, I seemed to know that I should get well.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!" pealed some cannon at the
moment, and all the windows shook with the concussion.
Directly we heard . volleys of musketry, and then the
camps were astir. . Horses went hither and thither ; signal
flags flashed to-and-fro ; a battery of the Eeserve Artillery
dashed down the lane.
I felt my strength coming back with the excitement ; I
oven smiled feebly as the guns thundered past.
" Take away your ambulance, old fellow," I said, " I
shan't go home till I see a battle."

CHAPTEE XV.

TWO DAYS OF BATTLE.

The Confederates had been waiting two months for
McClellan's advance. Emboldened by his delay they had
gathered the whole of their available strength from remote
Tennessee, from the Mississippi, and from the coast, until,
confident and powerful, they crossed Meadow Bridge on the
26th of June, 1862, and drove in our right wing at Mechan
icsville. The reserves of Gen. McCall were stationed here ;
thej' made a wavering resistance, — wherein four companies
of Bucktails were captured bodily, — and fell back at night
fall upon Porter's Corps, at Gaines's Mill. Fitz John
Porter commanded the brigades of Gens. Sykes and Mor
rell, — the forraer raade up solely of regulars. He appeared
to have been ignorant of the strength of the attacking
party, and he telegraphed to McClellan, early on Thursday
evening, that he required no reinforceraents, and that he
could hold his ground.^ The next raorning he was attacked
in front and flank ; Stewart's cavalry fell ou his right, and
turned it at Old Church. He forraed at noon in new line
of battle, frora Gaines's Honse, along the Mill Eoad to New
Coal Harbor ; but stubbornly persisted in the belief that he
could not be beaten. By three o'clock he had been driven
back two miles, and all his energies were unavailing to
recover a foot of ground. He hurled lancers and cavalry
upon the masses of Jackson and the Hills, but the butter
nut infantry formed impenetrable squares, hemmed in with
(15G)

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COLIBATANT. 157
rods of steel, and as the horsemen galloped around them,
searching for previous points, they were swept frora their
saddles with volleys of musketry. He directed the terrible
firo-of his artillery upon them, but though the gray fciotraen
fell in heaps, they steadily advanced, closing up the gaps,
and their lines were like long stretches of blaze and ball.
Their fire never slackened nor abated. They loaded and
moved forward, column on column, like so many imraortals
that could not be vanquished. The scene frora the balloon,
as Lowe informed rae, was awful beyond all comparison, —
of puffing shells and shrieking shrapnel, with volleys that
shattered the hills and filled the air with deathly whispers.
Infantry, artillery, and horse turned the Federal right from
tirae to time, and to preserve their order of battle the whole
line fell back toward Grapevine Bridge. At five o'clock
Slocum's Division of volunteers crossed the creek from the
south side, and made a desperate dash upon the solid col
umns of the Confederates. At the same time Toombs's
Georgia Brigade charged Smith's redoubt frora the south
side, and there was a probability of the whole of both
armies engaging before dark.
My fever of body had so much relinquished to my fever
of miud, that at three o'clock I called for my horse, and
determined to cross the bridge, that I might witness the
battle. It was with difficulty that I could make my way along
the narrow corduroy, for hundreds of wounded were limp
ing from the field to the safe side, and ammunition wagons
were passing the other way, driven by reckless drivers who
should have been blown up momentarily. Before I had
reached the north side of the creek, an immense throng of
panic-stricken people came surging down the slippery
bridge. A few carried muskets, but I saw several wantonly
throw their pieces into the flood, and as the mass were
unarraed, I inferred that they had made similar dispositions.
Pear, anguish, cowardice, despair, disgust, were the predom-
U

158 CASiPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
inant expressions of the upturned faces. The gaunt trees,
towering from the current, cast a solemn shadow upon the
moving throng, and as the evening dimness was falling
around them, it alraost seemed that they were eiigulfed in
sorae cataract. I reined my horse close to the side of a
team, that I raight not be borne backward by the crowd ;
but some of the lawless fugitives seized hira by the bridle,
and others atterapted to pull rae from the saddle.
" Gi' up that boss ! " said one, "what business you got
wi' a boss ? "
"That's my critter, and I ara in for a ride ; so you get
off! " said another.
I spurred my pony vigorously with the left foot, and with
the right struck the man at the bridle under the chin. The
thick column parted left and right, and though a howl of
hate pursued rae, I kept straight to the bank, cleared the
swamp, and took the military route parallel with the creek,
toward the nearest eminence. At every step of the way I
met wounded persons. A horseman rode past rae, leaning
over his poramel, with blood streaming from his mouth and
hanging in gouts from his saturated beard. The day had
been intensely hot and black boys were besetting the
wounded with buckets of cool lemonade. It was a common
occurrence for the couples that carried the wounded on
stretchers to stop on the way, purchase a glass of the bev
erage, and drink it. Sometimes the blankets on the
stretchers were closely folded, and then I knew that the
man within was dead. A little fellow, who used his sword
for a cane, stopped me on the road, and said — ,
"See yer! This is the ball that jes' fell out o' my
boot." He handed me a lump of lead as big as ray thurab, and
pointed to a rent in his pantaloons, whence the drops rolled
down his boots.
"I wouldn't part with that for suthin' handsome," he
said ; " it'll be nice to hev to hum."
As I cantered away he shouted after me —

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 159
" Be sure you spell my name right ! it's Sraith, with an
' E ' — S-M-I-T-H-E. "
In one place I met five drunken men escorting a wounded
sergeant ; the latter had been shot in the jaw, and when he
attempted to speak, the blood choked his articulation.
"You let go him, pardner," said one of the staggering
brutes, " he's not your sergeant. Go 'way ! "
"Now, sergeant," said the other, idiotically, "I'll see
you all right, sergeant. Come, Bill, fetch hira over to the
corn-crib and we'll give him a drink."
Here the first speaker struck the second, and the ser
geant, in wrath, knocked them both down. All this time
the enemy's cannon were booraing close at hand.
I came to an officer of rank, whose shoulder-emblera I
could not distinguish, riding upon a liraping field-horse.
Four raen held hira to his seat, and a fifth led the aniraal.
The officer was evidently wounded, though he did not seem
to be bleeding, and the dust of battle had settled upon his
blanched, stiffening face, like grave-mould upon a corpse.
He was swaying in the saddle, and his hair — for hewas
bare-headed — shook across his white eyeballs. He re
minded rae of the famous Cid, whose body was sent forth to
scare the Saracens.
A mile or raore from Grapevine Bridge, on a hill-top,
lay a frarae farra-house, with cherry trees encircling it, and
along the declivity of the hill were some cabins, corn-sheds,
and corn-bins. The house was now a Surgeon's head
quarters, and the wounded lay in the yard and lane, under
the shade, waiting their turns to be hacked and maimed. I
caught a glimpse through the door, of the butchers and
their victims ; sorae curious people were peeping through
the windows at the operation. As th^ processions of
freshly wounded went by, the poor fellows, lying on
their backs, looked mutely at me, and their great eyes
smote ray heart.
Something has been written in the course of the war

160 CAJSLPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
upon straggling frora the ranks, during battle. But I have
seen nothing that conveys an adequate idea of the number
of cowards and idlers that so stroll off. In this instance,
I met squads, companies, almost regiraents of them. Some
carae boldly along the road ; others skulked in woods, and
made long detours to escape detection ; a few were com
posedly playing cards, or heating their coffee, or discussing
the order and consequences of the fight. The rolling
drums, the constant clatter of file and volley-firing, — noth
ing could remind thera of the requireraents of the time and
their own infamy. Their appreciation of duty and honor
seeraed to have been forgotten ; neither hate, ambition, nor
patriotism could force thera back ; but when the columns
of mounted provosts charged upon them, they sullenly re
sumed their rauskets and returned to the field. At the foot
ofthe hill to which I have referred the ammunition wagons
lay in long lines, with the horses' heads turned from the
fight. A little beyond stood the ambulances ; and between
both sets of vehicles, fatigue-parties were going and re
turning to and from the field. At the top of the next hill
sat many of the Federal batteries, and I was admonished
by the shriek of shells that passed over my head and burst
far behind me, that I was again to look upon carnage and
share the perils of the soldier.
The question at once occurred to me : Can I stand fire ?
Having for some months penned daily paragraphs relative
to death, courage, and victory, I was surprised to find that.
those words were now unusually significant. " Death "
was a syllable to me before ; it was a whole dictionary
now. " Courage " was natural to every man a week ago ;
it was rarer than genius to-day. " Victory " was the first
word in the lexicon of youth yesterday noon ; " discretion"
and "safety" were at present of infinitely raore conse
quence. I resolved, notwithstanding these qualras, to ven
ture to the hill-top : but at every step flitting projectiles
took my breath. The music of the battle-field, I have often

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. IGl
thought, should be introduced in opera. Not the drum,
the bugle, or the fife, though these are thrilling, after
their fashion ; but the rausic of raodern ordnance and pro
jectile, the beautiful whistle of the minie-ball, the howl of
shell that raakes unearthly havoc with the air, the whiz-z-z
of solid shot, the chirp of bullets,^ the screara of grape and
canister, the yell of iraraense conical cylinders, that fall like
redhot stoves and spout burning coals.
All these passed over, beside, beneath, before, behind
me. I seemed to be an invulnerable something at whom
some cunning juggler was tossing steel, with an intent to
impinge upon, not to strike him. I rode like one with his
life in his hand, and, so far as I remember, seemed to think
of nothing. No fear, per se ; no regret ; no adventure ;
only expectancy. It was the expectancy of a shot, a chok
ing, a loud ciy, a stiffening, a dead, dull tumble, a quiver,
and — blindness. But with this was mingled a sort of en
joyment, like that of the daring gamester, who has played
his soul and is waiting for the decision of the cards. I
felt all his suspense, more than his hope ; and withal,
there was excitement in the play. Now a whistling ball
seerned to pass just under my ear, and before I commenced
to congratulate myself upon the escape, a shell, with a
showery and revolving fuse, appeared to take the top off
my head. Then ray heart expanded and contracted, and
soraehow I found myself conning rhymes. At each clip
ping ball, — for I could hear them coming, — a sort of cold
ness and paleness rose to the very .^oots of my hair, and
was then replaced by a hot flush. I caught myself laugh
ing, syllabically, and shrugging my shoulders, fitfully.
Once, the rhyme that came to ray lips — ^-for I ara sure
there was no mind in the iteration — was the simple
nursery prayer —
" Now I lay me down to sleep,"

162 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
and I continued to say " down to sleep," " down to sleep,"
"down to sleep," till I discovered myself, when I ceased.
Then a shell, apparently just in range, dashed toward me,
and the words spasmodically leaped np : " Now's your
time. This is your billet." With the same insane perti
nacity 1 continued to repeat " Now's your time, now's
your time," and "billet, billet, billet," till at last I came
up to the nearest battery, where I could look over the crest
of the hill ; and as if I had looked into the crater of a vol
cano, or down the fabled abyss into hell, the whole grand
horror of a battle burst upon my sight. For a moment I
could neither feel nor think. I scarcely beheld, or behold
ing did not understand or perceive. Only the roar of guns,
the blaze that flashed along a zigzag line and was straight
way smothered in smoke, the creek lying glassily beneath
me, the gathering twilight, and the brownish Mue of woods !
I only knew that some thousands of fiends, were playing
with fire and tossing brands at heaven, — that some pleas
ant slopes, dells, and highlands were lit as if the conflagra
tion of universes had coraraenced. There is a passage of
Holy Writ that coraes to my mind as I write, which explains
the sensation of the time better than I can do : —
"He opened the bottomless pit ; and there arose a smoke out
of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace ; and the sun and
the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
' ' And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth. ' ' —
Kevelation, ix. 2, 3.
In a few moments, -^hen 1 was able to compose rayself,
the veil of cloud blew away or dissolved, and I could see
fragraents of the long colurans of infantry. Then frora the
far end of the lines puffed sraoke, and from man to raan the
puff ran down each line, enveloping the colurans again, so
that they were alternately visible and invisible. At points
between the masses of infantry lay field-pieces, throbbing
with rapid deliveries, and eraitting voluraes of white steam.
Now and then the firing slackened for a short tirae, when I

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 1G3
could remark the Federal line, fringed with bayonets,
stretching from the low meadow on the left, up the slope,
over the ridge, up and down the crest, until its right disap
peared in the gloaming of wood and distance. Standards
flapped here and there above the column, and I knew, from
the fact that the line became momentarily more distinct, that
the Federals were falling stubbornly back. At times a bat
tery would dash a hundred yards forward, unliraber, and
fire a score of tiraes, and directly would return two hundred
yards and blaze again. I saw a regiraent of lancers gather
at the foot of a protecting swell of field ; the bugle rang
thrice, the red pennons went upward like so many song
birds, the mass turned the crest and disappeared, then the
whole artillery belched and bellowed. In twenty minutes a
broken, straggling, feeble group of horseraen returned ; the
red pennOns still fluttered, but I knew that they were redder
for the, blood that dyed them. Finally, the Federal infantry
fell back to the foot of the hill on which I stood ; all the
batteries were clustering around me, and suddenly a column
of men shot up frora the long sweep ofthe abandoned hill,
with batteries on the left and right. Their muskets were
turned towards us, a crash and a whiff of smoke swept from
flank to flank, and the air around rae rained buck, slug,
bullet, and ball !
The incidents that now occurred in rapid succession were
so thrilling and absorbing that my solicitude was lost in
their grandeur. I sat like one durab, 'with ray soul in my
eyes and my ears stunned, watching the terrible column of
Confederates. Each party was now straining every energy,
— the one for victory, the other against annihilation. The
darkness was closing in, and neither cared to prolong the
contest after night. The Confederates, therefore, aimed to
finish their success with the rout or capture of the Fed
erals, and the Federals aimed to raaintain, their ground
till nightfall. The rausketry was close, accurate, and unin
terrupted. Every second was marked by a discharge, —

164 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANl'.
the one firing, the other replying promply. No attempt
was now made to reraove the wounded ; the coolness of the
fight had gone by, and we witnessed only its fury. The
stragglers seemed to appreciate the desperate emergency,
and came voluntarily back to relieve their corarades. The
cavalry was raassed, and collected for another grand charge.
Like a black shadow gliding up»the darkening hillside, they
precipitated theraselves upon the columns : the musketry
ceased for the time, and shrieks, steel strokes, the crack of
carbines and revolvers succeeded. Shattered, humiliated,
sullen, the horse wheeled and returned. Then the guns
thundered again, and by the blaze of the pieces, the clods
and turf were revealed, fitfully strewn with men and
horses. The vicinity oi ray position now exhibited traces of the
battle. A caisson burst close by, and I heard the howl of
dying wretches, as the fires flashed like meteors. A solid
shot struck a field-carriage not thirty yards from my feet,
and one of the flying splinters spitted a gunner as if he had
been pierced by an arrow. An artillery-man was standing
with folded arras so near that I could have reached to touch
him ; a whistle and a thumping shock and he fell beneath
my nag's head. I wonder, as I calmly recall these episodes
now, how I escaped the death that played about me, chilled
me, thrilled me, — but spared rae ! " They are fixing bay
onets for a charge. My God ! See them come down the
hill." In the gathering darkness, through the thick smoke, I
saw or seeraed to see the interminable column roll steadily
downward. I fancied that I beheld great gaps cut in their
ranks though closing solidly up, like the imperishable Gorgon.
I may have heard sorae of this next day, and so confounded
the testiraonies of eye and ear. But I knew that there was
a charge, and that the drivers were ordered to stand by
their saddles, to run off the guns at any raoment. The
descent and bottom below me, were now all ablaze, and

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 165
directly above the din of cannon, rifle, and pistol, I heard a
great cheer, as of some salvation achieved.
" The Eebels are repulsed ! We have saved the guns ! "
A cheer greeted this announcement from the battery-men
around rae. They reloaded, rararaed, swabbed, and fired,
with naked arms, and drops of sweat furrowed the powder-
stains upon 'their faces. The horses stood motionless, quiv
ering not half so much as the pieces. The gristly officers
held to their match-strings, smothering the excitement of
the time. All at once there was a running hither and
thither, a pause in the thunder, a quick* consultation —
" 'Sdeath I They have flanked us again."
In an instant I seeraed overwhelmed with men. For a
moment I thought the enemy had surrounded us.
" It's all up," said one ; " I shall cross the river."
I wheeled my horse, fell in with the stream of fugitives,
and was borne swiftly through field and lane and trampled
fence to the swampy margin of the Chickahominy. At
every step the shell fell, in and among the fugitives, adding
to their panic. I saw officers who had forgotten their regi
ments or had been deserted by them, wending with the
mass. The wounded fell and were trodden upon. Personal
exhibitions of valor and deterraination there were ; but the
main body had lost heart, and were weary and hungry.
As we approached the bridge, there was confusion and al
tercation ahead. The people were borne back upon me.
Curses and threats ensued.
" It is the Provost-guard," said a fugitive, "driving back
the boys."
"Go back!" called a voice ahead. "I'll blow you to
ll — 11, if you don't go back ! Not a man shall cross the
bridge without orders ! "
The stragglers were variously affected by this intelligence.
Some cursed and threatened ; some of the wounded blub
bered as they leaned languidly upon the shoulders of their
corarades. Others stoically threw themselves ^ on the

166 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
ground and tried to sleep. One man called aloud that the
" boys " were stronger than the Provosts, and that, there
fore, the " boys " ought to " go in and win."
"Where's the man that wants to mutiny?" said the
voice ahead ; "let me see hira ! "
The man slipped away ; for the Provost officer spoke as
though he raeant all he said.
"Nobody wants to mutiny ! " called others.
" Three cheers for the Union."
The wounded and well threw up their hats together, and
made a sickly hurrah. The grim officer relented, and he
shouted stentoriously that he would take the responsibility
of passing the wounded. These gathered themselves up
and pushed through the throng ; but raa,ny skulkers plead
injuries, and so escaped. When I attempted to follow, on
horseback, hands were laid upon me and I was refused exit.
In that hour of terror and sadness, there were yet jests and
loud laughter. However keenly I felt these things, I had
learned that modesty amounted to little in the army ; so I
pushed my nag steadily forward and scattered the camp
vernacular, in the shape of imprecations, left and right.
"Colonel," I called to the officer in command, as the line
of bayonets edged me in, " may I pass out ? I am a civil
ian ! "
" No ! " said the Colonel, wrathfully. " This is no place
for a civilian."
" That's why I want to get away."
"Pass out!"
I followed the winding of the woods to Woodbury's
Bridge, — the next above Grapevine Bridge. The ap
proaches were clogged with wagons and field-pieces, and I
understood that some panic-stricken people had pulled up
sorae of the tirabers to prevent a fancied pursuit. Along
the sides of the bridge raany of the wounded were washing
their wounds in the water, aud the cries of the teamsters
echoed weirdly through the trees that grew in the river.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 167
At nine o'clock, we got under way, — horsemen, batteries,
ambulances, amraunition tearas, infantry, and finally sorae
great siege 32s. that had been hauled from Gaines's House.
One of these pieces broke down the timbers again, and my
impression is that it was cast into the current. Wheu we
emerged from the swamp timber, the hills before us were
found brilliantly illuminated with burning caraps. I raade
toward head-quarters, in one of Trent's fields ; but all the
tents save one had been taken down,' and lines of white-cov
ered wagons stretched southward until they were lost in
the shadows. The tent of General McClellan alone
reraained, and beneath an arbor of pine boughs, close at
hand, he sat, with his Corps Commanders and Aides, hold
ing a council of war. A ruddy fire lit up the historical
group, and I thought at the tirae, as I have said a hundred
times since, that the consultation might be selected for a
grand national painting. The crisis, thAour, the adjuncts,
the renowned participants, peculiarly fit it for pictorial cora-
meraoration. ^
The young coraraander sat in a chair, in full uniforra, un
covered. Heintzelraan was kneeling upon a fagot, ear
nestly speaking. De Joinville sat apart, by the fire, exam
ining a map. Fitz John Porter was standing back of
McClellan, leaning upon his chair. Keyes, Franklin, and
Sumner, were listening attentively. Some sentries paced
to and fro, to keep out vulgar curiosity. Suddenly, there
was a nodding of heads, as of some policy decided ; they
threw themselves upon their steeds, and galloped off toward
Michie's. As I reined at Michie's porch, at ten o'clock, the bridges
behind rae were blown up, with a flare that seemed a blaz
ing of the Northern Lights. The family were sitting upon
the porch, and Mrs. Michie was greatly alarmed with the
idea that a battle would be fought round her house next
day. O'Ganlon, of Meagher's staff, had taken the fever, and
sent anxiously for me, to compare our symptoms.

168 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBAT.'i:-,T.
1 bade the good people adieu before I went to bed, and
gave the man " Pat " a dollar to stand by my horse while I
slept, and to awake me at any disturbance, that I. might-be
ready to scamper. The man " Pat," I am bound to say,
woke rae up thrice by the exclamation of —
" Sure, yer honor, there's — well — to pay in the yard 1
I think ye and the Doctor had better ride off."
On each of those occasions, I found that the man Pat had
been lonesome, and wanted somebody to speak -to.
What a sleep was mine that night ! I forgot my fever.
But another and a hotter fever burned my temples, — the
fearful excitement of the time ! Whither were we to go,
cut off from the York, beaten before Eichmond, — perhaps
even now surrounded, — and to be butchered to-morrow, till
the clouds should rain blood ? Were we to retreat one
hundred miles down the hostile Peninsula, — a battle at
every rod, a gra'ro at every footstep ? . Then I remembered
the wounded heaped at Gaines's Mill, and how they were
groaning without remedy, ebbing at every pulse, counting
the flashing drops, calling for water, for raercy, for death.
So I found heart ; for I was not buried yet. And somehow
I felt that fate was to take me, as the great poet took
Dante, through other and greater horrors.

CHAPTEE XVI.
m'clellan's retreat.
The scene presented in Michie's lawn and oak grove, on
Saturday morning, was terribly picturesque, and character
istic ofthe calamity of war. The well was beset by crowds
of wounded men, perishing of thirst, who made frantic
efforts' to reach the bucket, but were bdrne back by the
stronger desperadoes. The kitchen was swarming with
hungry soldiers who begged corn-bread and half-cooked
dough from the negroes. The shady side-yard was dotted
with pale, bruised, and bleeding people, who slept out
their weariness upon the damp grass, forgetful, for the mo
ment, of their sores. Ambulances poured through the
lane, in solemn procession, and now and then, couples of
privates bore by some wounded officer, upon a canvas
"stretcher." The lane proving too narrow, at length, for
the passing vehicles, the gate-posts and fence were torn
up, and finally, the soldiers made a footway of the hall of
the dwelling.
The retreat had been in progress all night, as I had heard
the wagons through my open windows. By daylight the
whole army was acquainted with the facts, that we were to
resign our depot at White House, relinquish the North
bank of the river, and retire precipitately to the shores of
the James. A rumor — indignantly denied, but as often
repeated — prevailed araong the teamsters, surgeons, and
drivers, that the wounded -were to be left in the enemy's
15 (ICO)

170 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
hands. It shortly transpired that we were already cut off
from the Pamunkey. A train had departed for White
House at dawn, and had delivered its cargo of mortality
safely ; but a second train, attempting the passage, at
seven o'clock had been fired into, and compelled to return.
A tremendous explosion, and a shaft of white smoke that
flashed to the zenith, informed us, soon afterward, that the
railroad bridge had been blo'wn up.
About the same tirae, the roar of artillery recommenced
in front, and regiments that had not slept for twenty hours,
were hurried past us, to take position at the entrenchments.
A universal fear now found expression, and helpless people
asked of each other, with pale lips —
" How far have we to walk to reach the James ? "
It was doubtful, at this time, that any one knew the route
to that river, A few members of the signal corps had ad
ventured thither to open communication with the gunboats,
and a small cavalry party of Casey's division had made a
foray to New Market and Charles City Court House. But
it was rumored that Wise's brigade of Confederates was
now posted at Malvern Hills, closing up the avenue of
escape, and that the whole right wing of the Confederate
army was pushing toward Charles City. Malvern Hills,
the nearest point that could be gained, was about twenty
miles distant, and Harrison's Landing — presumed to be
our final destination — was thirty miles away. To retreat
over this distance, encumbered with baggage, the wounded
and the sick, was discarded as involving pursuit, and cer
tain calamity. Cavalry might fall upon us at every turn
ing, since the greater portion of our own horse had been
scouting between White House and Hanover, when the
bridges were destroyed, and was therefore separated from
the main army. At eight o'clock — weak with fever and
scarcely able to keep in the saddle — I joined Mr. Ander
son of the Herald, and rode toward the front, that I might
discover the whereabouts of the new engagement. Wind-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 171
ing through a cart-track in Michie's Woods, we came upon
fully one third of the whole army, or the reranant of all that
portion engaged at Gaines's Mill; — the Eeserves, Porter's
Corps, Slocura's division, and Meagher's brigade, — per
haps thirty-thousand men. They covered the whole of
Tent's farm, and were drawn up in line, heavily equipped,
with their colors in position, field officers dismounted, and
detachments - frora each regiment preparing hot coffee at
certain fires. A very few wagons — and these contain
ing only amraunition — stood harnessed beside each regi
ment. In many cases the men lay or knelt upon the
ground." Such hot, hungry, weary wretches, I never
beheld. During the whole night long they had been cross
ing the Chickahominy, and the little sleep vouchsafed
them had been taken in snatches upon the bare clay. Trav
elling frora place to place, I saw the surviving heroes ofthe
defeat : Meagher looking very yellow and prosaic ; Slo
cum, — small, indomitable, active ; Newton, — a little gray,
a trifle proud, very mercurial, and curiously enough, a
Virginian; Meade, — lithe, spectacled, sanguine ; and final
ly General McCall, as grave, kindly odd and absent, as I
had found him four raonths before. The latter worthy was
one of the first of the Federal Generals to visit Eichmond.
He was taken prisoner the second day afterward, and the
half of his comraand was slain or disabled.
I went to and fro, obtaining the naraes of killed, wound
ed Mid missing, 'with incidents of the battle as well as its
general plan. These I scrawled upon bits of newspaper,
upon envelopes, upon the lining of ray hat, and finally upon
ray shirt wristbands. I was literally filled with notes before
noon, and ifi had been shot at that time, endeavors to ob
tain my narae would have been extremely difficult. I
should have had more titles than sorae of the Chinese prin
ces ; sorae parts of me would have been found fatally
wounded, aud others italicized for gallant behavior. In
deed, I should have been shot in every part, taken prisoner

172 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
at every place, killed outright in every skirmish, and
raarvellously saved through every peril. My tombstone
would have been some hundreds of muster-rolls and my
obituary a fortune to a newspaper. I recollect, with some
amusement, the credit that each regiment took upon itself
for distinguished behavior. There were few Colonels that
did not claira all the honors; I fell in with a New Jersey
brigade, that had been decimated of nearly half its quota,
and a spruce young Major attempted to convey an idea of
the battle to me. He said, in brief, that the New Jersey
brigade, composed mainly of himself and his regiment, and
some few organizations of little consequence, — although
numbering ten thousand odd soldiers, — had received the
whole shock of a quantity of " Eebels." The said " Eebels "
appeared to raake up one fourth part of the population of
the globe. There was no end to them. They seemed to
be several miles deep, longer and more crooked than the
Pamunkey, and stood with their rear against Eichmond, so
that they couldn't fall back, even if they wanted to. In
vain did the New Jersey brigade and his regiment attack
them with ball and bayonet. How the "Eebels" ever
withstood the celebrated charge of his regiment was alto
gether inexplicable.
In the language of the Major, — "the Ne-w Jersey brig
ade, — and my regiment, — fit, and fit, and fit, and give
'em ' get out ! ' But sir, may I be  , well there (ex
pression inadequate), we couldn't budge 'em. No, sir!
(very violently,) not budge 'era, sir! / told the boys to
walk at 'em with cold steel. Says I : ' Boys, steel'ill fetch
'em, or nothin' under heaven ! ' Well, sir, at 'era we went,
— rae and the boys. There ain't been no sich charge in
the whole war ! Not in the whole war, sir ! (intensely fer
vid ;) leave it to any impartial observer if there has been !
We went up the hill, square in the face of all their artillery,
musketry, cavalry, sharpshooters, riflemen, — everything,
sir ! Everything ! (energetically. ) One o' my meh over-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 173
heard the Eebel General say, as we came up : says he, —
' that's the garaest thing I ever see.' Well ! we butchered
'em frightful. We must a killed a thousand or two of 'em,
don't you think so, Adjutant? But, sir, — it was all in
"vain. No go, sir! no, sir, no go! (impressively.) Andthe
New Jersey brigade and my regiment fell back, inch by-
inch, with our feet to the foe (rhetorically.) Is-that so,
boys ? "
The " boys," who had meantime gathered around, ex-
xlairaed loudly, that it was "true as preachin," and the Ma
jor added, in an undertone that his name was spelled * * *.
" But where were Porter's columns ?" said I, " and the
Pennsylvania Eeserves ?"
"I didn't see 'em," said the Major: "I don't think
they was there. If they had a been, why wa'n't they on
hand to save my regiraent, and the New Jersey brigade ? "
It would be wrong to infer from these vauntings, that
the Federals did not fight bravely and endure defeat un
shrinkingly. On the contrary, I have never read of higher
excmplifipations of personal and moral courage, than I wit
nessed during this memorable retreat. And the young
Major's boasting did not a whit reduce my estiraate of his
efficiency. For in America, swaggering does not necessarily
indicate cowardice. I knew a Captain of artillery in Smith's
division, who was wordier than Gratiano, and who exag
gerated like Falstaff. But he was a lion in action, and at
Lee's Mills and Williamsburg his battery was handled with
consuramate skill.
Frora Trent's farm the roadway led by a strip of corduroy,
through sloppy, swampy woods, to an open place, beyond
a brook, where Smith's division lay. The firing had almost
entirely ceased, and we heard loud cheers running up and
down the lines, as we again ventured within cannon range.
On this spot, for the second time, the Federals had won a
decided success. And in so far as a cosmopolitan could
feel elated, I was proud, for a moment, of the valor of my
15*

174 CAMPAIGNS OP A N0N-C03IBATANT.
division. The victors had given me raeals and a bed, and
they had fed my pony when both of us were hungiy. But
the sight of the prisoners and the collected dead, saddened
me somewhat.
These two engagements have received the name of the'
First and Second battles of Gelding's Farm. They re
sulted from an effort of Toombs's Georgia brigade to carry
the redoubt and breastworks of General Smith. Toombs
was a civilian, and formerly a senator frora Georgia. He
had no military ability, and his troops were driven back
with great slaughter, both on Friday and Saturday.
Among the prisoners taken was Colonel Lamar of (I think)
the Tth Georgia regiment. He passed me, in a litter,
wounded, as I rode toward the redoubt.
Lamar was a beautiful man, shaped like a woman, and
his hair was long, glossy, and wavy with ringlets. He was
a tiger, in his love of blood, and in character self-willed
and vehement. He was of that remarkable class of South
em men, of which the noted "Filibuster" Walker was the
great exponent. I think I may call him an apostle of
slavery. He believed it to be the destiny of our pale race
to subdue all the dusky tribes of the earth, and to evangel
ize, -with the sword, the whole Western continent^ *to the
uses of raaster and man. Such people were called disciples
of " manifest destiny." He threw his whole heart into the
war ; but when I saw him, bloodless, panting, quivering,
I thought how little the wrath of man availed against tho
justice of God. From Sraith's on the right, I kept along a
military road, iu the woods, to Sedgwick's and Eichard-
son's divisions, at Fairoaks. Eichardson was subsequently
slain, at the second battle of Bull Eun. He was called
" Fighting Dick," and on this particular morning was talk
ing composedly to his wife, as she was about to climb to
the saddle. His tent had been taken down, and soldiers
were placing his furniture in a wagon. A greater contrast
I never remarked, than the ungainly, awkward, and rough

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 175
General, with his slight, trim,, pretty corapanion. She had
corae to visit hira and had reraained until commanded to
retire. I fancied, though I was separated some distance,
that the little woman wept, as she kissed hira good by,
and he followed her, with frequent gestures of good-hap,
till she disappeared behind the woods. I do not know that
such prosaic old soldiers are influenced by the blandishraents
oflove ; but " Fighting Dick " never wooed death so reck
lessly as in the succeeding engageraents of New Market- and
Malvern Hills.
From Seven Pines to the right of Eichardson's head-quar
ters, ran a line of alternate breastwork, redoubt, and stock
ade. The best of these redoubts was held by Captain
Petit, with a New York Volunteer battery. I had often
talked with Petit, for he embodied, as well as any man in
the army, tlie martial qualifications of a volunteer. He
despised order. Nobody cared less for dress and dirt. I
have seen him, sitting in a hole that he hollowed with his
hands, tossing pebbles and dust over his head, like another
Job. He had profound conterapt for any man and any
system that was not " American." I remember asking
him. one day, the meaning of the gold lace upon the staff'
haTJPof the Irish brigade. —
" Means run like shell ! " said Petit, covering me with
dirt. " Don't the Irish make the best soldiers ? " I ventured.
" No ! " said Petit, raining pebbles, "I had rather have
one American than ten Irishmen."
The fighting of Petit was contrary to all rule ; but I think
that he was a splendid artillery-man. He generally mounted
the rampart, shook his fist at the enemy, flung up his hat,
jumped down, sighted the guns himself, threw shells with
wonderful accuracy, screamed at the gunners, mounted the
rampart again, halloed, and, in short, managed to do more
execution, make more noise, attract raore attention and
throw raore dirt than anybody in the army. His redoubt

176 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
was small, but beautifully constructed, and the parapet was
heaped with double rows of sandbags. It m.ounted rified
field-pieces, and, at most times, the gunners were lying
under the pieces, asleep. Not any of the entrenched posts
among the frontier Indians were raore enveloped in wilder
ness than this. The trees had been felled in front to give
the cannon play, but behind and on each side belts of dense,
dwarf tiraber covered the boggy soil. Tothe left of Petit,
on the old field of Seven Pines, lay the divisions of Hooker
and Kearney, and thither I journeyed, after leaving the re
doubtable volunteer. Hooker was a New Englander, re
puted to be the handsoraest raan in the army. He fought
bravely in the Mexican war, and afterwards retired to
San Francisco, where he passed a Bohemian existence
at the Union Club House. He disliked McClellan, was
beloved by his men, and was generally known as " Old
Joe." He has been one of the most successful Federal
leaders, and seems to hold a charmed life. In all probability
he will become Commander-in-chief of one ofthe grand arraies.
Kearney has passed away since the date of which I speak.
He was known as the " one-armed Devil," and was, by
odds, the best educated of all the Federal military chiefs.
But, singularly enough, he departed from all tactics, -Wlcn
hotly afield. His personal energy and courage have given
him renown, and he loved to lead forlorn hopes, or head
storming-parties, or ride upon desperate adventures. He
was rich from childhood, and spent much of his life in
Europe. For a part of this tirae he served as a cavalry-man
with the French, in Algiers. In private life he was equally
reckless, but his tastes were scholarly, and he was generous
to a fault. Both Kearney and Hooker were kind to the
reporters, and I owe the dead man many a favor. General
Daniel Sickles commanded a brigade in this corps. To the
left, and in the rear of Heintzelman's corps, lay the divisions
of Casey and Couch, that had relapsed into silence since
their disgrace at Seven Pines. General Casey was ,a thin-

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 177
•
haired old gentleman, too gracious to be a soldier, although
I believe that he is still in the service. His division com
prised the extreme left of tho Grand Army, and bordered
upon a deep, impenetrable bog called " White Oak Swamp."
It was the purpose of McClellan to place this swamp
between him and the enemy, and defend its passage till his
baggage ||nd siege artillery had obtained the shelter of tho
gunboats, on the shores of the James. I rode along this
whole line, to renew ray impressions of the position, and
found* that sharp skirmishing was going on at every point.
When I returned to Savage's, where McClellan's head
quarters had temporarily been pitched, I found the last of
the wagons creaking across the track, and filing slowly
southward. The wounded lay in the out-houses, in the trains
of cars, beside the hedge, and in shade of the trees about the
dwelling. A little back, beside a wood, lay Lowe's balloon
traps, and the infantry " guard," and cavalry " escort " of
the Commander-in-chief were encamped close to the new
provost quarters, in a field beyond the orchard. An ambu
lance passed rae, as I rode into the lane ; it was filled with
sufferers, and two raen with bloody feet, crouched in the
trail. From the roof of Savage's house floated the red hos
pital flag. Savage himself was a quiet Virginia farraer, and
a raagistrate. His name is now coupled with a grand
battle. I felt very hungry, at four o'clock, but my weak stomach
revolted at coarse soldier fare, and I determined to ride
back to Michie's. I was counselledrto beware ; but having
learned little discretion afield, I cantered off, through a
trampled tillage of wheat, and an interminable woods. In
a half hour I rode into the familiar j'ard ; but the place was
so ruined that I hardly recognized it. Not a panel of fence
remained : the lawn was a mffiat pool of slime ; the windlass
had been wrenched from the well ; a few gashed and expir
ing soldiers lay motionless beneath the oaks, the fields were
littered with the reraains of camps, and the old dwelling

178 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
•
stood like a haunted thing upon a blighted plain. The
idlers, the teamsters, and the tents were gone, — all was
silence, — and in the little front porch sat Mrs. Michie,
weeping ; the old gentleman stared at the desolation with a
working face, and two small yellow lads lay dolorously upon
the steps. They all seeraed to brighten up as I appteared
at the gate, and when I staggered from my horn, both of
them took ray hands. I think that tears came into all our
eyes at once, and the little Ethiops fairly bellowed.
"My friends," I said, falteringly, " I see how you have
suffered, and sympathize with you, frora ray heart."
"Our beautiful property is ruined," said Mrs. Michie,
welling up.
" Yer's five years of labor, — ray children's heritage, —
the home of our old age, — look at it ! "
The old gentleman' stood up gravely, and cast his eyes
mournfully around.
" I have nobody to accuse," he said; "my grief is too
deep for any hate. This is war ! "
" What wUl the girls say when they corae back? " was
the raother's next sob ; " they loved the- place : do you
think they will know it ? "
I did not know how to reply. They retained my hands,
and for a raoment none of us spokg.
" Don't think, Mr. Townsend," said the chivalrous old
gentleraan again, "that we like you less because some of
your country people have stripped us. Mother, where is
the gruel you made foi»hiin ? "
The good lady, expecting my return, had prepared sorae
nourishing chicken soup, and directly she produced it. I
think she took heart when I ate so plentifully, and we all
spoke hopefully again. Their kindness so touched rae, that
as the evening carae quietb| about us, lengthening the
shadows, and I knew that I must depart, I took both their
hands again, doubtful what to say.
"My friends, — may I say, almost my parents? for you

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 179
have been as kind, — good by ! In a day, perhaps, you
will be with your children again. Eichmond will be open
to you. You may freely go and come. Be comforted by
these assurances. And when the war is over, — God speed
the time! — we may see each other under happier aus
pices." "Good by!" said Mr. Michie; "ifi have a house at
that time, you shall be welcorae."
" Good by," said Mrs. Michie ; " tell your mother that a
strange lady in Virginia took good care of you when you
were sick."
I waved a final adieu, vaulted down the lane, and the
wood gathered its soleran darkness about rae. When I
emerged upon Savage's fields, a succession of terrible
explosions shook the night, and then the fiames flared up,
at points along the railroad. They were blowing up the
locomotives and burning the cars. At the same hour,
though I could not see it. White House was wrapped in
fire, and the last sutler, tearaster, and cavalry-man had dis
appeared from the shores,of the Pamunkey.
I tossed through another night of fever, in the captain's
tent of the Sturgis Eifles, — McClellan's body guard. And
somehow, again, I dreamed fitfully of the unburied corpses
on the field of Gaines's Mill.

CHAPTEE XVII.

A BATTLE SUNDAY.

In the dira of tho morning of our Lord's ^^abbath, the
twenty-ninth of June, 1862, I sat in my saddle at Savage's.
The gloom was very cheerless. A feeling of hopeless vag
abondism oppressed me. I remembered the Disinherited
Knight, the Wandering Jew, Eobinson Crusoe, and other
poor errants in the wide world, and wondered if any of
them ever looked so ruefully as I, when the last wagon of
the Grand Army disappeared through the shadow.
The tent had been taken down at midnight. I had been
dozing in the saddle, with parched lips and throbbing tem
ples, waiting for my comrade. Head-quarters had been
intending to move, without doing it, for four hours, and he
infarraed rae that it was well to sjay with the Commanding
General, as the Comraanding General kept out of danger,
and also kept in provisions. I -vVas sick and petulant, and
finally quarrelled with ray friend. He told me, quietly, that
I would regret my harshness when I should be well again.
I set off for White Oak, but repented at " Burnt Chim
neys," and turned back. In the misty dawn I saw tho
maimed still lying on the ground, wrapped in relics of blank
ets, and in one of the outhouses a grim embalmer stood
amid a family of nude corpses. He dealt with the bodies
of high officers only ; for, said he —
" I used to be glad to prepare private soldiers. They
were wuth a five dollar bill apiece. But, Lord bless you, a
(ISO)

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-C03IBATANT. 41^1
Colonel pays a hundred, and a Brigadier-General two hun
dred. There's lots of thera now, and I have cut the
acquaintance of everything below a Major. I might," he
added, " as a great favor, do a Captain, but he must pay a
Major's price. I insist upon that ! Such windfalls don't
come every day. There won't be another such killing for
a century." A few horsemen of the escort loitered around head-quar
ters. All the tents but one had been removed, and the
staff crouched sleepily upon the refuse straw. The rain
began to drizzle at this time, and I unbuckled a blanket to
wrap about my shoulders. Several people were lying upon
dry places, here and there, and espying sorae planks a little
remote, I tied ray horse to. a peach-tree, and stretched
rayself languidly upon ray back. The bridal couch or the
throne were never so soft as those knotty planks, and the
drops that fell upon ray forehead seemed to cool my fever.
I had passed into a sort of cognizant sleep when a harsh,
loud, cruel voice awakened rae, and I seemed to see a great
Polyphemus, stretching his hands into the clouds, aud
gaping like an earthquake.
"Boy," I heard hira say, to a slight figure, near at hand,
" boy, what are you standing there for? What in — 
do you want ? "
"Nothing!"" Take it, and go,  you ! Take it, and go ! "
I peeped tiraorously from my place, and recognized tne
Provost-General of the Grand Army. He had been sleeping
upon a camp chest, and did not appear to be refreshed
thereby. " Jrfeel sulky as  ! " he said to, an officer adjoining ;
" I feel  bad-humored ! Orderly ! "
" General ! "
" Whose horses are these ? "
" I don't know. General ! "
" Cut every  one of 'em loose. Wake up these
16

18^ CABIPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.

• loafers with the point of your sabre I Every
- one of 'era ! That's what I call 

boldness ! "
He strutted off like the great Bomba or the Czar, and I
thought I never beheld a more exceptional person in any
high position.
With a last look at Savage's white house, the abandoned
wretches in the lawn, the blood-red hospital flag, the torn
track and smouldering cars, I turned my face southward,
crossed some bare plains, that had once been fields, and at
eight o'clock passed down the Williamsburg road, toward
Bottom Bridge. The original roadway was now a bottomless
stretch of sand, -full of stranded wheels, dead horses, shreds
of blankets, discarded haversacks, and mounds of spilled
crackers. Other routes for wagons had been opened across
fields, over bluffs, around pits and bogs, and through thick
ets and woods. The whole country was crossed with
deeply-rutted roads, as if some iraraense city had been lifted
away, and only its interrainably sinuous streets remained.
Near Burnt Chimneys, a creek crossing the road raade a ravine,
and here I overtook the hindmost of the wagons. They had
been stalled in the gorge, and a provost guard was hurrying
the laggard teamsters. The creek was muddy beyond
comparison, and, at the next hill-top I passed " Burnt Chim
neys," a few dumb witnesses that pointed to heaven. A
mile or two further, I came to some of the retreating regi
ments, and also to five of the siege thirty-twos with which
Eichraond was to have been borabarded. ' The main army
still lay back at their entrenchments to cover the retreat,
and at ten o'clock I heard the roar of field guns ; the pur
suit had comraenced, and the Confederates were pouring
over the raraparts at Fairoaks. I did not go back ; battles
were of no consequence to me. I wanted some breakfast.
If I could only obtain a cup of warm coffee and a fragment
of meat, I thought that I raight recover strength. But
nothing could be obtained anywhere, for raoney or charity.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 183
The soldiers that I passed looked worn and hungry, for
their predecessors had swept the country like herds of
locusts ; but one cheerful fellow, whora I addressed, pro
duced a lump of fat pork that I tried to eat, but raade a
signal failure. All my baggage had been left at Michie's,
where it remains to this moment. None cared to be hos
pitable to correspondents at this despondent hour, and a
horrible idea of starvation took possession of my raind. A
mile frora White Oak Swarap, sorae distance back of the
road, lay the Engineer Brigade. They were now on the
eve of breaking carap, and when I reached Colonel McCloud
Murphy's, his chests were packed, 'imd all his provisions
had gone ahead. He gave rae, however, a couple of hard
crackers and a draught of whiskey and quinine, whereby I
rallied for a moment. At General Woodbury's I observed
a middle-aged lady, making her toilet by a looking-glass
hung against the tent-pole. She seemed as careful of her
personal appearance, in this "trying time, as if she had been
at some luxurious court. There were several woraen on
the retreat, and though the guns thundered steadily behind,
they were never fiurried, but could have received corapany,
or accepted offers of marriage, with the utmost compla
cency. If there was any one that rouged, I am sure that
no personal danger would have disturbed her while Ihe
heightened her roses ; and she would have tied up her back
hair in defiance of shell or grape.
At Casey's ancient head-quarters, on the bluff facing
White Oak Swamp, I found five correspondents. We fra
ternized immediately, and they all pooh-poohed the battle,
as such an old story that it would be absurd to ride back
to the field. We knew, however, that it was occurring at
Peach Orchard, on a part of the old ground at Fairoaks.
These gentlemen were in rather despondent moods, and
there was one who opined that we were all to be made
prisoners of war. In his own expressive way of putting it,
we were to be " gobbled up." This person was stout and

184 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
inclined to panting and perspiration. He Wore glasses upon
a most pugnacious nose, and his large, round head was cov
ered with short, .bristly, jetty hair.
" I promised my wife," said this person, who may be
called Cindrey, "to stay at home after the Burnside busi
ness. The Burnside job was very nearly enough for me.
In fact I should have quite starved on the Burnside job, if I
hadn't took the fever. And the fever kept me so busy that
I forgot how hungry I was. So 1 lived over that."
At this point he took off his glasses and wiped his face ;
the water was running down his cheeks like a miniature
cataract, and his greaf neck seemed to emit jets of perspirar
tion. " Well," he continued, " the Burnside job wasn't enough
for rae ; I raust come out again. I must follow the young
Napoleon. And the young Napoleon has made a pretty
mess ofit. I never expect to get home any more ; I know
1 shall be gobbled up ! "
A youngish, oldish, oddish fellow, whora they called
"' Pop," here told Mr. Cindrey to keep his pulse up and take
a drink. A tall, large person, in semi-quaker garb, who
did not look unlike George Fox, run to seed, said, with a
flourish, that these battles were nothing to Shiloh. He was
atfached to the provincial press, and had been with the
army, ofthe West until recently. Without any exception,
he was the " fussiest," raost impertinent, most disagreea
ble man that I ever knew. He always made a hero of him
self in his reports, and if I remember rightly, their headings
ran after this fashion : —
Tremendous Battle at Eoanoke ! The Correspondent of
THE Blundeebuss hoists the National Flag above the EEBEL
EAMPAETS ! ! ! " or again— Grand Victory at Shiloh!
Mr. Twaddle, our Special Correspondent, TAKEN PEIS-
ONEE ! ! I He escapes ! 1 1 He is fieed upon'! ! ! He ¦wrig
gles through four swamps and SEVEN HOSTILE CAMPS !
.He is again CAPTUEEn ! He STRANGLES fhe sentry! He

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COaiBATANT. 185
drinks fhe Rebel Commander, Philpot, BLIND! Philpot
gives him fs.'E passwoed I ! ^i^ Philpot compliments the
Blunderbuss. .^:S OUE Correspondent gains flie Ganboals!
He is TAKEN aboaed ! His welcome I Description of HIS
BOOTS ! Remarks, etc., etc., ETC ! ! ! "
This man was anxious to regulate not only his own news
paper, but he aspired to control the entire press. And his
self adulatfon was incessant. He rung all the changes
upon Shiloh. Every remark suggested some incident of
Shiloh. He was a thorough Shilohite, and I regretted in
my heart that the "Eebels" had not shut him away at
Shiloh, that he might have enjoyed it to the end of his
days. The man " Pop " produced some apple whiskey, and we
repaired to a spring, at the foot of the hill, where the raan
"Pop" mixed a cold punch, and we drank in rotation. I
don't think that Cindrey enjoyed his draught, for it filtered
through his neck as if he had sprung aleak there ; but the
man Twaddle might have taken a tun, and, as the man'
"Pop " said, the effect would have been that of " pouring
whiskey through a knot-hole." It was arranged araong
our own reporters, that I, being sick, should be the first of
the staff to go to New York. The man "Pop" said jo
cosely, that I might be allowed to die in the bosom of my
family. The others gave me their notes and lists, but none
could give me what I most needed, — a morsel of food.
At eleven o'clock our little party crossed White Oak Oreek.
There was a corduroy bridge upon which the teams trav-
' elled, and a log bridge of perilous unsteadiness for foot pas
sengers. But the soldiers were fording the stream in great
numbers, and I plunged my horse into the current so that
he spattered a group of fellows, and one of them lunged at
me with a bayonet. Beyond the creek and swamp, on the
hillsides, baggage wagons and batteries were parked in im
mense numbers. The troops were taking positions along
the edge of the bottom, to oppose incursions of the eneray,
10*

186 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
when they atterapted pursuit, and I was told that the line
extended several miles westward, to New Market Cross
Eoads, where, it was thought, the Confederates would
march out frora Eichraond to offer battle. The roadway,
beyond the swarap, was densely massed with horse, foot,
cannon, and teams. The latter still kept toward the James,
but the nags suffered greatly frora lack of corn. Only in
dispensable material had been hauled from the Chickahom
iny, and the soldiers who fought the ensuing protracted
battles were exhausted from hunger. Everything had an
uncomfortable, transient, expectant appearance, and the
feeble people that limped toward the ultima thule looked
fagged and wretched.
There were sorae with balls in the groin, thigh, leg, or
ankle, that made the whole journey, dropping blood at
every step. They were afraid to lie down, as the wounded
limbs might then grow rigid and stop their progress. While
I pitied these maimed persons, I held the sick in greater
syrapathy. The troubles of the one were local ; the others
were pained in every bone. Bullets are fearful tenants, but
fevers are worse. And sorae of the flushed, staggering
folk, that reeled along the roadside, were literally out' of
their minds. They muttered and talked incoherently, and
shouted ribald songs till my blood curdled to see them. At
the first house on the right of the road, a half-mile past the
Creek, I noticed many idle soldiers climbing the white pal
ings, to watch soraething that lay in the yard. A gray-
haired man was expiring, under the coolness of a spreading
tree, and he was even now in the closing pangs. A com
rade at his side bathed his brow with cool water, but I saw
that he would shortly be with Lazarus or Dives. His hands
were stretched stiffly bj his sides, his feet were rigidly ex
tended, and death was hardening into his bleached face.
The white eyeballs glared sightlessly upward : he was look
ing into the other world.
The heat at this tirae was so intolerable that our party,

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 187
in lieu of any other place of resort, resolved to go to the
woods. The sun set in heaven like a fiery furnace, and we
sweat at every pore. I was afraid, raoraentarily, of sun
stroke, and ray horse was bathed in foam. Some compa
nies of cavalry were sheltered in . the edges of the woods,
and,«having secured our nags, we penetrated the~ depths,
and spread out our blankets that we might lie down. But
no breath of air stirred the foliage. The "hot and copper
sky " found counterpart in the burning earth, and innuraer
able flies and insects fastened their fangs ia our flesh.
Cindrey was upon the rack, and it seeraed to rae that he
possessed a sort of capillary perspiration, for the drops
stood at tips of each separate bristle. He appeared to be
passing frora the solid to the fluid state, and I said, ungen
erously, that the existing temperature was his liquifying
point. " Then," said the man " Pop," with a youngish, oldish
smile, " we raay as well liquor up."
"¦ I don't drink I " said Twaddle, with a flourish. "Dur
ing all the perilous hours of Shiloh, I abstained. But I am
willing to admit, in respect to heat, that Shiloh is nowhere
at present. And, therefore, I drink with a protest."
" No man can drink from my bottle, with a protest," said
"Pop." "It isn't regular, and implies coercion. Now I
¦don't coerce anybody, particularly you."
" Oh I " said Twaddle, drinking like a fish, or, as " Pop "
remarked, enough to float a gunboat ; " oh ! we often
chaffed each other at Shiloh."
" If you persist in reminding me of Shiloh," blurted Cin
drey, "you'll be the ruin of me, — you and the heat and the
flies. You'll have me dissolving into a dew."
Here he wiped his forehead, and killed a large blue fly,
that was probing his ear. We all resolved to go to sleep,
and Twaddle said that he slept like a top, in ithe heat of
action, at Shiloh. "Pop" asked him, youngishly, to be
kind enough to capture no redoubts while we slumbered.

188 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COilBATANT.
and not to raise the national flag over any ramparts for fif
teen minutes. Then he grinned oldishly, and comraenced
to snore, with his fiask in his bosom. I ara certain that no
body ever- felt a tithe of the pain, hunger, heat, and weari
ness, which agonized rae, when 1 awoke from a half-hour's
sweltering nap. My clothing was soaking with wat«r ; I
was almost blind ; somebody seemed to be sawing a section
out of my head ; my throat was hot and crackling ; my
stomach knew all the pangs of emptiness ; 1 had scarcelj'
strength to motion away the pertinacious insects. A sol
dier gave me a trifle of boiling water from his canteen ; but
I gasped for air ; we were living in a vacuum. Sahara
could not have been so fierce and burning. T'Wo of us
started off to find a spring. We made our way from shade
to shade, expiring at every step, and finally, at the base of
the hill, on the brink of the swamp, discovered a rill of
tepid water, that evaporated before it had trickled a hun
dred yards. If a sleek and venomous water-snake — for
there were thousands of them hereabout — had coiled in
the channel, I would still have sucked the draught, bending
down as I did. Then I bethought me of my pony. He had
neither been fed nor watered for twenty hours, and I has
tened to obtain hira frora his place along the woodside. To
my terror, he was gone. Forgetful of m'y weakness, I
passed rapidly, hither and, thither, inquiring of cavalry-men,
and entertaining suspicions of every person in the vicinity.
Finally, I espied him in charge of a rough, thievish sabre-
man, who afl'ected not to see me. I went up to the animal,
and pulled the reins from his shoulder, to discover the
brand mark, — " U. S." As I surmised, he had not been
branded, and I turned indignantly upon the fellow : —
" My friend, how came you by this horse ? "
" Quartermaster! " said the man, guiltily.
"No sir! He belongs to me. Take off that cavalry-
saddle, and find mine, immediately."
" Not ifthe court knows itself," said the man — " and it
thinks it do ! "

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMB.\TANT. 189
" Then," said I, white with rage, " I shall report you at
once, for theft."
"You raay, if you want to," replied the man, carelessly.
I struck off at once for the new Provost Quarters, at a
farm-house, close by. The possible failure to regain ray
animal, filled me with rueful thoughts. How was I, so
dismounted, to reach the distant river ? I should die, or
starve, on the way. I thought I should faint, when I came
to the end- of the first field, and leaned, tremblingly, against
a tree. I caught myself sobbing, directly, like a girl, and
my raind ran upon the coolness of ray home with my own
breezy bedroom, soft paintings, and pleasant books. These
themes tortured me with a consciousness of my folly. I
had forsaken them for the wickednesses of this unhappy
campaign. And my body was to blacken by the road-side, —
the sable birds of prey were to be my mourners.
But, looking through my tears, a moving something
passed between me and the sky. A brownish bay pony,
trailing a fence-rail by his halter, and browsing upon patches
of oats. I whistled thrice and the faithful animal trotted
to ray feet, and extended his great nose to be rubbed. I
believe that this horse was the only living thing in the arm.y
that syrapathized with rae. He knew that I was sick, and
I thought once, that, like the great dogs of Saint Bernard,
he was about to get upon his knees, that I might the more
readily climb upon his back. He did, however, stand
quietly, while I mounted, and I gave him a drink at the
foot of the hill. Eeturning, I saw the soldier, wrongfully
accused, eyeing me from his haunt beneath the trees. I at
once rode over to him, and apologized for my mistake.
" Never mind," said the man, complacently. " You was
all right. I might a done the same thing. Fact is," he
added," "I did hook this boss, but I knew you wan't the
party." During the rest of the day I travelled disconsolately, up
and down the road, winding in and out oftho lines of teams.

190 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
I was assured that it would be impossible to get to tho
James till next day, as no portion of that array had yet ad
vanced so far. The raoody minutes of that afternoon made
the longest part of my life, while the cannon at Peach
Orchard and Savage's, roared and growled incessantly.
Toward the close of the day I fell in with Captain Hill, of
the New York Saratoga regiment, who ^ave rae the outline
of the fight.
The Confederates had discovered that we -were falling
back, by raeans of a balloon, of home manufacture, — the
first they had been able to employ during the entire war.
They appeared at our entrenchments on Sunday morning,
and finding them deserted, comraenced an irregular pursuit,
whereby, they received terrible volleys of rausketry from
ambuscaded regiments, and retired, in disorder, to the ram
parts. This was the battle of "Peach Orchard," and was
disastrous to the Southerners. In the afternoon, they
again essayed to advance, but more cautiously. The
Federals, mearftime, lay in order of battle upon Savage's,
Dudley's, and Crouch's farms, their right resting on the
Chickahominy, their centre on the railroad, and their left-
beyond the Williamsburg turnpike. For a time, an artillery
contest ensued, and the hospitals at Savage's, where the
wounded lay, were thrice fired upon.' The Confederates
finally penetrated the dense woods that belted this country,
and the battle, at nightfall, becarae fervid - and sanguinary.
The Federals held their ground obstinately, aud fell back,
covered by artillery, at midnight. The woods were set on
fire, in the darkness, and conflagration painted fiery terrors
on the sky. The dead, littered all the fields and woods.
The retreating army had marked its route with corpses.
This was the battle of " Savage's," and neither party has
called it a victory.
During the rest of the night the weary fugitives were
crossing White Oak Creek and Swamp. Toward daybreak,
the last battery had accomplished the passage ; the bridge

CA5IPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 191
was destroyed ; and preparations were raade to dispute tho
pursuit in the raorning.
I noted these particulars and added to my lists of dead and
captured. At dusk I was about to sleep, supperless, upon
the bare ground, when my patron. Colonel Murphy, again
came in sight, and invited me to occupy a shelter-tent, on
the brow of the hill at White Oak. To my great joy, he
was able to offer me some stewed beef, bread and butter,
and hot coffee. I ate voraciously, seizing the food in my
naked fingers, and rending it like a beast.
The regiment of Colonel Murphy was composed of
laborers, and artificers of every possible description. There
were blacksmiths, moulders, masons, carpenters, boat-
builders, joiners, miners, raachinists, riggers, and rope?
makers. They could have bridged the Mississippi, rebuilt
the Tredegar works, finished the Tower of Babel, drained
the Chesapeake, constructed the Great Eastern, paved
Broadway, replaced the Grand Trunk railroad, or tunnelled
the Straits of Dover. I have often thought that the real
greatness of the Northern army lay in its ingenuity and
industry, not in its military qualifications.
Our conversation turned upon these matters, as we sat
before the Colonel's tent in the evening, and a Chaplain
represented the feelings ofthe North in this manner : " We
must whip them. We have got more money, more raen,
more ships, more ingenuity. They are bound to knuckle at
last. If we have to lose man for man with thera, their host
will die out before ours. And we wont give up the Union,
— not a piece of it big enough for a bird or a bee to cover,
— though we reduce these thirty millions one half, and
leave only the woraen and children to inherit the land."
The heart of the army was now cast down, though a large
portion of the soldiers did not know why we were falling
back. I heard moody, despondent, accusing mutterings,
around the camp-fires, and my own mind was full of grief
and bitterness. It seemed th&,t our old flag had descended

J92 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
to a degenerate people. iLwas not now, as formerly, a
proud recollection that I was an American. If I survived
the retreat, it would becorae my mission to herald the evil
tidings through the length and breadth of the land. If I
fainted in their pursuit, a loathsome prison, or a grave in the
trenches, were to be my awards. When I lay doWn in a
shelter-tent, rolling from side to side, ?" reraerabered that this
was the Sabbath day. A battle Sabbath ! How this din
and slaughter contrasted with my dear old Lord's days in
the prayerful parsonage 1 The chimes in the white spire,
where the pigeons cooed in the hush of the singing, were
changed to cannon peals ; and the boys that dozed in the
"Amen corner," were asleep forever in the trampled grain-
fields. The good parson, whose clauses were not less
truthful, because spoken through his nose, now blew the
loud trumpet for the babes he had baptized, to join the Cap
tains of .fifties and thousands ; and while the feeble old
women in the side pews raade tremulous responses to the
prayer for " thy soldiers fighting in thy cause," the banners
of the Eepublic were craped, dusty, and bloody, and the
scattered regiments were resting upon their arms for the
shock of the coming dawn.
Thus I thought, tossing and talking through the long
watches, and toward morning, when sleep brought fever-
dreams, a monstrous something leered at me from the black
ness, saying, in a sort of music —
" Gobbled up 1 Gobbled up I "

CHAPTEE XVIII.
BY THE EIVEESIDE.
A CEASH and a stunning shock, as of a falling sphere,
aroused me at nine o'clock. A shell had burst in front of
our tent, and the enemy's artillery was thundering from
Casey's old hill, beyond the swamp. As I hastily drew on
my boots, — for I had not otherwise undressed, — I had
opportunity to remark one of those unaccountable panics
which develop araong civilian soldiers. The camps were
plunged into disorder. As the shells dropped here and
there, among the tents and teams, the wildest and most
fearful deeds were enacted. Here a caisson blew up, tear
ing the horses to pieces, and whirling a cannoneer among
the clouds. There an ammunition wagon exploded, and the
air seemed to be filled with fragments of wood, iron, and
flesh. A boy stood at one of the fires, combing out his
matted hair ; suddenly his head flew off, spattering the
brains, and the shell — which we could not see — exploded
in a piece of woods, mutilating the trees. The effect upon
the people around me was instantaneous and appalling.
Sorae, that were partially dressed, took to their heels, hug
ging a medley of clothing. The teamsters climbed into the
saddles, and shouted to their nags, whipping them the
while. If the heavy wheels hesitated to revolve, they left
horses and vehicles to their fate, taking themselves to the
woods ; or, as in some cases, cut traces and harness, and
galloped away like madmen. In a twinkling our caraps
17 (193)

194 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
were almost deserted, and the fields, woods, and roads were
alive with fugitives, rushing, swearing, falling, and tram
pling, while the fierce bolts fell momentarily among'them,
making havoc at every rod.
To join this flying, dying mass was my first impulse ; but
after-thought reminded me that it would be better to remain.
I must not leave my horse, for I could not walk the whole
long way to the James, and the fever had so reduced me
that I hardly cared to keep the little life reraaining. I
alraost marvelled at my coolness ; since, in the fulness of
strength and health, I should have been one of the first of
the fugitives ; whereas, I now looked interestedly upon the
exciting spectacle, and wished that it could be daguerreo-
typed. Before our artillery could be brought to play, the enemy,
emboldened at his success, pushed a column of infantry
down the hill, to cross the creek, and engage us on our
camping-ground. For a time 1 believed that he would be
successful, and in that event, confusion and ruin would have
overtaken the Unionists. The gray and butternut lines
appeared over the brow of the hill, — they wound at double
quick through the narrow defile, — tbey poured a volley
into our camps when half-way down, and under cover ofthe
sraoke they dashed forward impetuously, with a loud huzza.
The artillery beyond thera kept up a steady fire, raining
shell, grape, and canister over their heads, and ploughing
the ground on our side, into zigzag furrows, — rending the
trees, shattering the arabulances, tearing the tents to tat
ters, slaying the horses, butchering the raen. Directly
Captain Mott's battery was brought to bear ; but before he
could open fire, a solid shot struck one of his twelve-
pounders, breaking the trunnion and splintering the wheels.
In like raanner one of his caissons blew up, and I do not
think that he was able to make any practise whatever. A
division of infantry was now marched forward, to engage
the Confederates at the creek side; but two ofthe regi-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COJIBATANT. 195
ments — and I think that one was the 20tlrNew York —
turned bodily, and could not be rallied. The moment was
full of significance, and I beheld these failures with breath
less suspense. In five minutes the pursuers would gain the
creek, and in ten, drive our dismayed battalions, like chaff
before the wind. I hurried to my horse, that I might be
ready to escape. The shell and ball still made music around
me. I buckled up ray saddle with treraulous fingers, and
put ray foot upon the stirrup. But a cheer recalled rae and
a great clapping of hands, as at sorae clever performance
in the amphitheatre. I looked again. A battery from our
position across the road, had opened upon the Confederate
infantry, as they reached the very brink of thc swamp.
Por a moment the bayonets tossed wildly, the dense col
umn staggered like a drunken man, the flags rose and fell,
and then the line fell back disorderly. At that instant a
body of Federal infantry, that I had not seen, appeared, as
by invocation ; their steel fell flashingly, a column of sraoke
enveloped thera, the hills and skies seeraed to split asunder
with the shock, — and when I looked again, the road was
strewn with the dying and dead ; the pass had been der
fended. As the batteries still continued to play, and as the pros
pect of uninterrupted battle during the day was not a whit
abated, I decided to resume my saddle, and, if possible,
raake my way to the Jaraes. The geography of the coun
try, as I had deciphered it, satisfied me that I must pass
" New Market," before I could rely upon my personal
safety. New Market was a paltry cross-road's hamlet,
some miles ahead, but as near to Eichmond as White Oak
Oreek. The probabilities were, that the Confederates would
endeavor to intercept us at this point, and so attack ns in
flank and rear. As I did. not witness either of these battles,
though I heard the discharge of every rausket, it may be as
well to state, in brief, that June 30 was marked by the
bloodiest of all the Richmond struggles, excepting, possibly,

196 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COJIBATANT.
Gaines's Mill. While the Southern artillery engaged
Franklin's corps, at White Oak Crossing, and their left
made several unavailing attemps to ford the creek with in
fantry, — their entire right and centre, marched out the
Charles City Eoad, and gave impetuous battle at New
Market. The accounts and the I'esults indicate that the
Federals won the day at New Market, sheerly by good
fighting. They were parching with thirst, weak with hun
ger, and it might have been supposed that reverses had
broken their spirit. On the contrary they did not fall back
a rod, during the whole day, and at evening Heintzelman's
corps crowned their success by a grand charge, whereat
the Confederates broke and were pursued three miles
toward Eichmond. The gunboats Galena ahd Aroostook,
lying in the James at Turkey Bend, opened fire at three
o'clock, and killed proraiscuously. Federals and Confeder
ates. But the Southern soldiers were superstitous as to
gunboats, and they could not 'be raade to approach within
range of the Galena's raonstrous projectiles.
I shall always recall my journey from White Oak to Har
rison's Bar, as marked by constantly increasing beauties of
scenery, and terrors of event. At every hoof-fall I was
leaving the low, boggy, sparsely settled Chickahominy
region, for the high fafm-lands of the James. The dwell
ings, as I progressed, became handsome ; the negro quar
ters were less like huts and cattle-sheds ; the ripe wheat-
fields stretched almost to the horizon ; the lawns and lanes
were lined with ancient shade-trees ; there were picturesque
gates and lodges ; the fences were straight and white
washed, there were orchards, heavy with crimson apples,
where the pumpkins lay beneath, like globes of gold, iri
the rows of amber corn. Into this patriarchal and luxuri
ant country, the retreating army wound like a great devour
ing serpent. It was to rae, the coraing back of the beateh
jetters through Midgards, or the repulse of the fallen angels
from heaven, trampling down the river-sides of Eden.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 197
They rode their teara-horses into the wavy wheat, and in
some places, where the reapers had been at work, they
dragged the sheaves from the stacks, and rested upon them.
Hearing of the coming of the army, the proprietors had
vainly endeavored to gather their crops, but the negroes
would not work, and they had not raodern implements,
whereby to mow the grain rapidly. The profanation of
those glorious stretches of corn and rye were to me some
of the most melancholy episodes of the war. No raind can
realize how the grain-fields used to ripple, when the fresh
breezes blew up and down the furrows, and the hot suns
of that alraost tropical climate, had yielded each separate
head till the whole landscape was like a bright cloud, or a
golden sea. The tall, shapely stalks seemed to reach out
imploringly, Uke sunny-haired virgins, waiting to be gathered
into the arms of the farmer. They were the Sabine woraen,
on the eve of the bridal, when the insatiate Eoraans tore
thera away and trampled them.- The Indian corn was yet
green, but so tall that the tasselled tops showed how cun
ningly the young ears were ripening. There were melons
in the corn-rows, that a week would have developed, but
the soldiers dashed thera open and sucked the sweet water.
They threw clubs at the hanging apples till the ground was
littered with thera, and the hogs came afield to gorge ;
they slew the hogs and divided the fresh pork among
themselves. As 1 saw, in one place, dozens of huge
Gerraan cavalry-raen, asleep upon bundles of wheat, I
recalled their Prankish forefathers, swarraing down the
Apennines, upon Italy.
The air was so sultry during a part of the day, that one
was constantly athirst. But there was a belt of country,
four miles or more in width, where there seemed to be
neither rills nor wells. Happily, the roads were, in great
part, enveloped in stately timber, and" the shade was very
grateful to men and horses. The wounded still kept with
us, and many that were fevered. They did not complain
17*

198 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
with words ; but their red eyes and painful pace told all the
story. If we carae to rivulets, they used to lie upon their
bellies, along the raargins, with their heads in the flowing
water. The nags were so stiff and hot, that, when they
were reined into creeks, they refused to go forward, and my
brown animal once dropped upon his knees, and quietly
surveyed me, ' as I pitched upon my hands, floundering in
the pool. I reraeraber a stone dairy, such as are found
upon Pennsylvania grazing farms, where I stopped to drink.
It lay up a lane, some distance frora the road, and two enor
mous tulip poplar trees sheltered and half-concealed it. A
tiny creek ran through the dairy, over cool granite slabs,
and dozens of earthen milk-bowls lay in the water, with the
mould of the cream brimming at the surface. A pewter
drinking-mug hung to a peg at the side, and there were
wooden spoons for skiraming, straining pails, and great
ladles of gourd and cocoanut. A cooler, tidier, trimmer
dairy, I had not seen, and I stretched but my body upon the
dry slabs, to drink frora one of the milk-bowls. The cream
was sweet, rich, and nourishing, and I was so absorbed di
rectly, that I did not heed the footf^^lls of a tall, broad, vig
orous raan, who said in a quiet way, but with a deep, sono
rous voice, and a decided Northern twang —
" Friend, you might take the mug. Some of your com
rades will want to drink from that bowl."
I begged his pardon hastily, and said that I supposed he
was the proprietor.
" I reckon that I must give over my ownership, while the
army hangs around here," said the man ; " but I must en
dure what I can't cure."
Here he srailed griraly, and reached down the pewter
cup. Then he bent over a fresh bowl, and dexterously
dipped the cup full- of milk, without' seeming to break the
creara. " Drink that," he said ; " and if there's any better milk
in these parts, I want to know the man."

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 1<J9
He looked at me critically, while I emptied the vessel,
and seemed to enjoy ray heartiness.
"If you had been smart enough to come this way, victo
rious," added the man, straightforwardly, "instead of being
out-generalled, whipped, and driven, I should enjoy the loss
of my property a great deal more ! "
There was an irresistible heartiness in his tone and man
ner. He had, evidently, resolved to bear the misfortunes
of war bravely.
" You are a Northern man? " I said, inquiringly.
"How do you know ?"
" There are no such dairies in Virginia ; a Virginian never
dipped a mug of milk after your fashion ; you haven't the
Virginia inflection, and very weak Virginia principles."
The man laughed dryly, and filled himself a cup, which
he drank sedately.
" I reckon you are correct," he said ; "pretty much cor
rect, any way. I'm a New Yorker, frora the Mohawk
Valley, and I have been showing these folks how they can't
farra. If there's anybody that farms better than I do, I
want to know the man ! "
He looked at the flowing water, the clean slabs and walls,
the shining tins, and smacked his lips satisfactorily. I
asked him if he farmed with negroes, and if the prejudices
of the country affected either his social or industrial inter
ests. He answered that he was obliged to eraploy negroes,
as he had thrice tried the experiraent of working with
whites, but with ill success.
" / would have kept 'era," he added, in his great voice,
closing a prodigious fist, "but the raen would not stay. I
couldn't raake the neighbors respect thera. There was no
body for 'era to associate with. They were looked upon as
niggers, and they got to feel it after a while. So I have
had only niggers latterly ; but I get raore work frora them
than any other raan in these parts. If there's anybody that
gets raore work out of niggers than I do; I want to know
the man ! "

200 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
There was a sort of hard, hearty defiance about hira, typ
ical of his severe, angular race, and I studied his large limbs
and grim, full face with curious admiration. He told rae
that he hired his negro hands frora the surrounding slave
owners, and that he gave them premiums upon excess of
work, approximating to wages. In this way they were en
couraged to habits of economy, perseverance, and spright-
liness. " I don't own a nigger," he said, " not one ! But I don't
think a nigger's much too good to be a slave. 1 won't be
bothered with owning 'em. And I won't be conquered
into ' the institution.' I said, when I commenced, that I
should not buy niggers, and I won't buy niggers, because
I said so ! As to social disadvantages, every Northern mau
has 'em here. They called rae an abolitionist ; and a fel
low at the hotel in Eichraond did so to ray face. I knocked
him into a heap, and nobody has meddled with me since.
"Of course," he said, after a moment, "it won't do to in
flame these people. These people are like my bulls, and
you mustn't shake a red stick at 'em. Besides, I'm not a
fanatic. I never was. My wife's' one of these people, and
I let her think as she likes. But, if there's anybody in
these parts that wants to interfere with me, I should like to
know the raan ! "
The conteraptuous tone in which he mentioned " these
people " amused me infinitely, and I believed that his reso
lute, indomitable manner would have made hira popular in
any society. He was shrewd, withal, and walked beside
me to his gate. When the regiraents halted to rest, by the
wayside, he invited the field officers to the dairy, and so
obtained guards to rid hira of depredators. He would have
escaped very handsomely, but the hand of war was not
always so merciful, and a part of the battle of Malvern Hills
was fought upon his property. I have no doubt that he
submitted unflinchingly, and sat more stolidly amid the
wreck than old Marius in battered Carthage.

CAIMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 201
Until two o'clock in the afternoon I rode leisurely south
ward, under a scorching sky, but still bearing up, though
aflame with fever. The guns thundered continuously be
hind, and the narrow roads were filled, all the way, with
hurrying teams, cavalry, cannon, and foot soldiers. I
stopped, a while, by a white frame church, — primly,
squarely built, — and read the inscriptions upon the tombs
uninterestedly. Some of the soldiers had pried open the
doors, and a wounded Zouave was delivering a mock ser
raon frora the pulpit. Sorae of his corarades broke up the
meeting by singing —
"John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave,"
and then a Major ordered thera out, and put a guard upon
the building. The guard played cards upon the door sills.
I was frequently obliged, by the crowded state of the
roads, to turn aside into woods, fens, and fields, and so
raake precarious progress. Soraetiraes I strayed, unwit
tingly, a good way frora the array, and recovered the route
with difficulty. On one of these occasions, I was surprised
by a person in civil dress, who seeraed to shoot up out of
the ground. He was the queerest, griraest, fearfulest man
that I have ever known, and, at first, I thought that the
arch fiend had appeared before me. The wood was very
deep here, and there were no wayfarers but we two. It
was quite still ; but now and then we heard the rurable of
wagons, and the crack of teamster's whips. The raan in
question wore dead black beard, and his eyebrows were of
the same intense, lustreless hue. So were his eyes and his
hair ; but the latter formed a circle or cowl around his head.
He had a pale skin, his fingers were long and bony, and he
rode dexterously in and out, among the tree boles, with his
hat in his hand. His horse was as black as himself, and,
together, they made a half-brigandish, half-satanic appear
ance.

202 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COSIBATANT.
I reined in sharply, when I saw this person, and he looked
at me like the evil-eye, through his great owlish orbs;
" Good day," he said, in profound basso, as low I think
as " double G," and when he opened his mouth, I saw that
his teeth were very white.
I saluted hira gravely, and, not without a shudder, rode
beside him. He proved to be a sort of Missionary, from
the Evangelical religious denominations of the North, to in
quire into the spiritual condition of the soldiers. Camps
were full of such people, but I had not found any man who
appeared to be less qualified for his vocation ; to have such
a figure at one's deathbed, would be like a foretaste of the
great fiend. He had a fashion of working his scalp half
way down to his eyes, as he spoke, and when he smiled, —
though he never laughed aloud, — his eyelashes did not con
tract, as -with most people, but rather expanded, till his eye
balls projected from his head. On such occasions, his
white teeth were revealed like a row of fangs, and his lep
rous skin grew yet paler,
"The army has not even the form of godliness," said
this man. In the course of his reraarks, he had discovered
that I was a correspondent, and at once turned the conver
sation into a politico-religious channel.
" The forra of godliness is gone," said the raan again in
" double G." " This is a calamitous fact ! I would it were
not so ! I grieve to state it ! But inquiry into the fact,
has satisfied me that the forra of godliness docs not exist.
Ah!" When the man said " Ah ! " I thought that my horse
would run away, and really, the tone was like the deep con
juration in Hamlet : " swear-r-r-r ! "
"For example," said the man, who told rae that his
name was Dimpdin, — "I made sorae remarks to the 1st
New Jersey, -on Sabbath week. The field offi.cers directed
the men to attend; I opened divine service with a feeling
hymn ; a very feeling hymn ! A long measure hyran ! By

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 203
Montgomery ! I commenced earnestly in prayer. In appro
priate prayer ! I spoke advisedly for a short hour. What
were the results ? The deplorable results ? There were
men, sir, in that assembly, who went to sleep. To
sleep ! "
He must have gone a great way below " double G," this
tirae, and I did not see how he could get back. He drew
his scalp quite down to the bridge of his nose, and, seeing
that my horse pricked up his ears, timorously smiled like
the idol of Baal.
" There were raen, sir, who did worse. Not siraply fail
ing to be hearers of the word ! But doers of evil ! Men
who played cards during the service. Played cards ! Gam
bled ! Gambled ! And some, — abandoned wretches ! —
who mocked me ! Lifted up their voices and mocked I
Mockers, gamblers, slumberers ! "
I never heard anything so awful as the man Dimpdin's .
voice, at the iteration of these three words. They seemed
to come from the bowels of the earth, and rang through the
wood like the growl of ^ lion. He told me that he was en
gaged upon a Meraorial to the Evangelical Union, which
should state the nuraber of unconverted men in the ranks,
and the nuraber of castaways. He accredited the loss of
the campaign to the prevailing wickedness, but was unwill
ing to admit that the Southern troops were more religious.
His theory of reforra, if I reraeraber it, embraced the rais
ing of Chaplains to the rank of Major, with proportionate
pay and perquisites, the establishraent of a railitary re
ligious bureau, and a Chaplain-General with Aides. Each
soldier, officer, teamster, and drummer-boy was to have a
Testament in his knapsack, and services should be held on
the eve of every battle, and at roll-call in the mornings.
There was to be an inspection of Testaments as of muskets.
For swearing, a certain sura should be subtracted frora the
soldier's pay, and conferred upon the Chaplains.
" In fact," said Dimpdin, tragically, — scalping hiraself

204 CAJIPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
meanwhile, — the church must be recognized in every
department, and if my Meraorial be acted upon favorably,
we shall have such victories, in three months, as will sweep
Eebellion into the grave. Yes! Into the grave! The
grave ! "
I was obliged to say, here, that ray horse could not stand
these sepulchral noises, and that ray nerves, being shattered
by the fever, -were inadequate to bear the shock. So the
man Dimpdin smiled, like a window-rauraray, and contented
himself with looking like Apollyon. We reached a rill
directly, and he produced a wicker flask, with a Britannia
drinking-case. " Young men love stimulating drinks," said Dimpdin, —
strong drinks I alcholic drinks ! Here is a portion of
Monongahela ! old Monongahela ! We will refresh our
selves ! "
He found a lemon, accidentally, in his saddle-bag, and
contrived an inforraal punch, with wonderful dexterity. 1
took a draught, raodestly, and he eraptied the rest, with an
"Ah ! " that shook the woods.
I wondered if the man Dimpdin would suggest the
apportionment of fiasks to soldiers, in his Evangehcal
i-eport I
He left me, when we regained the road, to ride with a
Uthe, bronchial person, in white neckcloth and coat cut
close at the collar. They looked like the fox and the fiend,
in the fable, and I seemed to hear the man Dimpdin's voice
for three succeeding weeks.
At three o'clock, I clirabed a gentle hill, — and lwas
now very weary and weak, — and frora the sumrait, looked
upon the river Jaraes, flowing far off to the right, through
woods, and bluffs, and grainfields, and reedy islands. At^
last, I had gained the haven. The bright waters below rae
seeraed to cool my red, fiery eyes, and a sort of blessed
blindness fell for a tirae upon me, so that, when I looked
again my lashes were wet. The prospect was truly beauti-

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 205
ful. Far to the west, standing out from the chalky bluffs,
were scattered the white camps of Wise's Confederate
brigade. Beyond, on the remote bank of the river, lay
farm-lands, and stately mansions, and some one showed me,
rising faintly in the distance, " Drury's Blufl'," tho site of
Fort Darling, where the gunboats were repulsed in the
middle of May. Below, in the river, lay the Galena, and a
little way astern, the Aroostook. Signal-men, with flags,
were elevated upon the masts of each, and the gunners
stood upon the decks, as waiting some emergency. The
vessels had steara up, and seeraed to be ready for action at
any moraent. This was Grand Turkey Bend, and the rising
ground on which I stood, was known as " Malvern Hills."
A farm-house lay to my left, and repairing thither, I cast
myself frora the nag, and lay down in the shady yard,
thankful that I had reached the haven, and only solicitous
now to escape the further privations of McClellan's Penin
sular Carapaign.

CHAPTEE XIX.

THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORT.

An earnest desire now took possession of me, to be the
first of the correspondents to reach New York. The scenes
just transpired had been unparalleled in the war, and if,
through me, the  should be the first to make them
public, it would greatly redound to my credit. Perhaps no
profession imparts an enthusiasra in any raeasure kindred to
that of the Araerican Newsgatherer. I was careless^of the
"lost lives and iraperilled interests, the suff«Ting, the defeat :
no emotions either of the patriot or. the man influenced me.
I only thought of the eclat of giving the story to the world,
and nurtured an insane desire to raake to Fortress Monroe,
by some other than the common expedient. That this was
a paltry ambition I know ; but I write what happened, and
to the completion of my sketch of a correspondent, this is
necessary to be said. I found Glumley at the old mansion
referred to, and stealthily suggested to him the seizing of
an open boat, whereby we raight row down to the Fortress.
He rejected it j,s impracticable, but was willing to hazard a
horseback ride down the Peninsula. I knew that this would
not do, and after a short tirae I continued my journey down
the riverside, hopeful of finding some transport or Despatch
boat. I was now in Charles City County, and the river
below me was dotted with woodland islands. I soon got
upon the raain road to Harrison's Point or Bar, and followed
the streara of ambulances and supply teams for more-4han
(20G)

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 207
an hour. At last we reached a diverging lane, through
which we passed to a landing, close to a fine dwelling,
whose style of architecture I may denominate, the " Gothic
run mad." An old cider-press was falling into rottenness on
the lawn ; four soldiers were guarding the well, that the
mob might not exhaust its precious contents, and between
some negro-huts and the brink of the bluff, stood a cluster
of broad-armed trees, beneath whose shade the ambulance-
drivers were depositing the wounded. •
I have made these chapters sufficiently hideous, without
venturing to transcribe these new horrors. Suffice it to
say that the men whom I now beheld had been freshly
brought from the fight of New Market, and were suffering
the first agonies of their wounds. One hour before, they
had felt all the lustiness of life and adventure. Now, they
were -whining like babes, and sorae had expired in the ara
bulances. The act of lifting them to the ground so irritated
their wounds that they howled dismally, and, yet were so
exhausted that after lying upon the ground awhile, they
quietly passed into sleep. Such are the hardening results
of war, that sorae soldiers, who were unhurt, actually re
fused to give a trifle of river water from their canteens to
their expiring comrades. At one time a brutal wrangle oc
curred at the well, and the guard was compelled to seek
reinforceraent, or the thirsty people would have massacred
thera. I was now momentarily adding to my notes of the bat
tles, and the wounded men very readily gave me their
names ; fer they were anxious that the account of their
raisfortunes should reach their farailies, and I think also,
that sorae martial vanity lingered, even among those who
were shortly to crumble away. A longboat came in frora
the Galena, after a time, and General McClellan, who had
ridden down to the pier, was taken aboard. He looked to
be very hot and anxious, and while he remained aboard the
vessel, his staff dispersed themselves around the banks and

208 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
talked over the issues of the contest. As the General re
ceded frora the strand, every sweep of the long oars was
responded to from the hoarse cannon of the battle-field, and
when he climbed upon deck, the steamer moved slowly up
the narrow channel, and the signal-man in the foretop flour
ished his crossed flag sturdily. Directly, the Galena opened
fire frora her immense pieces of ordnance, and the roar was
so great that the explosions of field-guns were fairly
drowned. She fired altogether by the direction of the sig
nals, as nothing could be seen of the battle-field frora her
decks. I ascertained afterward that she played havoc
with our own colurans as well as the enemy's, but she
brought hope to the one, and terror to the other. The very
narae of gunboat affrighted the Confederates, and they were
assured, in this case, that the retreating invaders had at
length reached a haven. The Galena kept up a steady fire
till nightfall, and the Federals, taking courage, drove their
adversaries toward Eichmond, at eve. Meanwliile the
Comraanding General's escort and body-guard had encamped
around us, apd'during the night the teams and much of the
field cannon fell back. I obtained shelter and meals from
Quartermaster Le Duke of Iowa, whose canvas was pitched
a raile or raore below, and as I tossed through the watches
I heard the splashing of water in the river beneath, where
the tired soldiers were washing away the powder of the
battle. In the morning I retraced to head-quarters, and vainly
endeavored to learn something as to the means of going
down the river. Coraraanders are always anxiotie to grant
correspondents passes after a victory ; but they wish to
defer the unwelcome publication of a defeat. I was advised
by Quarterraaster-General Van Vliet, however, to proceed
to Harrison's Bar, and, as I passed thither, the last day's
encounters -.- those of " Malvern Hills " — occurred. The
scenes along the way were reiterations of terrors already
described, — creaking arabulances, staggering foot soldiers.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 209
profane wagoners, skulking officers and privates, officious
Provost guards, defiles, pools and steeps packed with teams
and cannon, wayside houses beset with begging, gossiping,
or malicious soldiers, and wavy fields of wheat and rye
thrown open to man and beast. I was amused at one point,
to sec some soldiers attack a beehive that they might, seize
the honey. But the insects fastened themselves upon some
ofthe marauders, and after indescribable cursing and strug
gling, the bright nectar and comb were relinquished by the
toilers, and the ravishers gorged upon sweetness.
Harrison's Bar is simplj'- along wharf, extending into the
river, close by the famous mansion, where William Henry
Harrison, a President of the United States, was born, and
where, for two centuries, the scions of a fine old Virginia
family have made their homestead. The house had now
become a hospital, and the wounded were being conveyed
to the pier, whence they were delivered over to some
Sanitary steamers, for passage to Northern cities. I tied
my horse to the spokes of a wagon-wheel, and asked a
soldier to watch hira, while I repaired to the quay. A half
drunken officer was guarding the wharf with a squad of
men, and he denied me admittance, at first, but when I had
said something in adulation of his regiment — a trick com
mon to correspondents — : he passed me readily. The ocean
steamer Daniel Webster was about being cast adrift when I
stepped on board, and Colonel Ingalls, Quartermaster in
charge, who freely gave me permission to take passage iu
her, advised rae not to risk returning to shore. So, reluc
tantly, I resigned my pony, endeared to me by a hundred
adventures, and directly I was floating down the James,
with the white tearas and the tattered groups of raen, re
ceding frora me, and each moment the guns of Malvern
Hills growing fainter. Away ! praised be a merciful God !'
away frora the accursed din, and terror, and agony, of my
second campaign, — away forever from the Chickahorainy.
For awhile I sat meditatively in the bow of the boat, full
IS*

210 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
of strange perplexities and thankfulness. I had escaped
the bullet, and fever, and captivity, and a great success in
my profession was about to be accorded to me, but there
was much work yet to be done. The rough material I had
for a grand account of the closing of the campaign ; but
these fragmentary figures and notes must be wrought into
narrative, and to avail myself of their full significance, I
must lose no moment of application. I found that I was
one of four correspondents on board, and we resolved to
district the boat, each correspondent taking one fourth of
the names of the sick and wounded. The spacious saloons,
the clean deck, the stairways, the gangways, the hold, the
halls, — all were filled with victims. They lay in rows upon
straw beds, they limped feverishly here, and there ; some
were crazed frora sunstroke, or gashes ; and one raan that I
reraeraber counted the rivets in the boilers over the whole
hundred miles of the journey, while another, — a teamster,
— whipped and cursed his horses as if he had raistaken the
motion of the boat fer that of his vehicle.
The Daniel Webster was one of a series of transports
supplied for the uses of the wounded by a national comrait
tee of private citizens. Her wood work was shining and
glossy, her steel shone like rairrors, and she was cool as
Paradise. Out of the smoke, and turmoil, and suffocation
of battle these wretched raen had eraerged, to enjoy the
blessedness, unappreciated before, of shelter, and free air
and cleanliness. There was ice in abundance on board,
and savory lemonade lay glassily around in great buckets.
Women fiitted frora group to group with jellies, bonbons,
cigars, and oranges, and the grateful eyes of the prostrate
people raight have melted one to tears. These woraen were
enthusiasts of all ages and degrees, who proffered them
selves, at the beginning of the war, as stewardesses and
nurses. From the fact that some of them were of mascu
line natures, or, in the vocabulary of the times, " strong-
minded," they were the recipients of raany coarse jests.

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 211
and iraputations were made upon both their raodesty and
their virtue. But I would that any satirist had watched
with me the good offices of these Florence Nightingales of
the West, as they tripped upon merciful errands, like good
angels, and left paths of sunshine behind them. The sol
diers had seen none of their countrywomen for months, and
they followed these ambassadors -with looks half-idolatrous,
half-downcast, as if consciously unworthy of so tender re
gard. " If I could jest die, now," said one of the poor fellows
to rae, " with one prayer for my country, and one for that
dear young lady ! "
There was one of these daughters of the good Samaritan
whose face was so full of coolness, and her robes so airy,
flowing, and graceful, that it would have been no rairacle
had she transrauted herself to soraething divine. She was
very handsome, and her features bore the imprint of that
high enthusiasm which may have animated the maid of Arc.
One of the raore forward of the correspondents said to her,
as she bore soothing delicacies to the invalids, that he
missed the satisfaction of being wounded, at -which she
presented an orange and a cigar to each of us in" turn.
Among the females on board, I remarked one, very large,
angular, and sanguine, who sat at a small table, dispensing
luxuries with the manners of a despot and the charity of a
child. She had a large vessel of boiling coffee, from which
she drew spicy quantities at intervals ; and when the troops
thronged around eagerly, she rebuked the more forward,
and called up sorae eraaciated, bashful fellows, giving thera
the preference. Every soldier who accepted coffee was
obliged to take a religious tract, and she gave thera away
with a grira satisfaction that was infinitely amusing and in
teresting. I ventured to ask this imperative person for a
bottle of ink, and after some difficulty, — arising out of
a mistaken notion on her part that I was dangerously
wounded, — she vaulted over a chair, and disappeared

212 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
into a state-roora. When she returned, her arras were
filled with a perfect wilderness of stationery, and having
supplied each of us in turn, she addressed herself to me in
the following sententious manner : ^-
" See here! You reporter! (There's ink!) I want to
be put in the newspapers I Look at me ! Now! Eight
straight ! (Pens ? ) Here I ara ; thirteen months at work ;
been everywhere ; ^done good ; country ; church ; never
noticed. Never! — Now! I want to be put in newspa
pers." At this .point the Imperatress was called off by some sol
diers, who presuraed to draw coffee Without her consent.
She slapped one of thera soundly, and at once overpowered
hira with kindnesses, and tracts ; then she returned and
gave me a photograph; representing herself with a basket
of fruit, and a quantity of good books. I took note of her
name, but unfortunately lost the memorandum, and unless
she has been honored by some more careful scribe, I fear
that her labors are still unrecognized.
During rauch of the trip, I wrote raaterial parts of my
report, copied portions of ray lists, and raanaged before
dusk,-**© get fairly underway with my narrative. From the
deck of the steamer I beheld at five o'clock, what I had
long wished to see, — the famous island of Jamestown, cele
brated in the early annals of the New World, as the horae
of John. Smith, and of Nathaniel Bacon, and as the resort
of the Indian Princess, Pocahontas. A single^ fragment of
a tower, the remnant of the Colonial church, was the
only ruin that I could see.
At seven o'clock we dropped anchor in Hampton Eoads,
and a boat let down from the davits. Some of ray wily
compeers endeavored to fill all the stern seats, that I might
not be pulled to shore ; but I swung' down by a rope, and
raade havoc with their shins, so that they gained nothing ;
the surf beat so vehemently against the pier at Old Point,
that we were compelled to beach the boat, and I ran rapidly

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 213
through the ordnance yard to the " Hygeia House," where
our agent boarded ; he had gone into the Fortress to pass
the night, and when I attempted to follow him thither, a
knot of anxious idlers, who knew that I had just returned
frora the battle-fields, atterapted to detain me by sheer force.
I dashed rapidly up the plank walk, reached the portal, and
had just vaulted into the area, when the great gates swung
to, and the tattoo beat ; at the same instant the sergeant
of guard challenged me : —
" Who coraes there ? Standfast! Guard prime ! "
A dozen bright musket-barrels were levelled upon me,
and I heard the click of the cocks as the fingers were laid
npon the triggers. When I had explained, I was shown
the Coraraandant's roora, and hastening in that direction,
encountered Major Larrabee, ray old patron of the fifth
Wisconsin regiment. He took me to the barracks, where a
German officer, commanding a battery, lodged, and the
latter accommodated me with a camp bedstead. Here I
related the incidents of the engagements, and before I con
cluded, the room was crowded with people. I think that I
gave a sorabre narration, ,and the hearts of those who heard
me were cast down. Still, they lingered ; for the bloody
story possessed a hideous fascination, and I was cross-
examined so pertinaciously that my host finally arose,
protesting that I needed rest, and turned the party out of
the place. Theold fever-dreams returned to me that night,
and my brain spun round for hours before I could close my
eyes.

CHAPTEE XX.

ON FURLOUGH AWHILE.

Counter winds and tides had so delayed the Adelaide, on
which I departed for New York with ray despatches, that
it became a doubtful question as to whether we could make
connection with the early train for New York. The cap
tain shook his head distrustfully when he had looked at his
watch, and told me that he frequently failed to land his
passengers in time. The bitterness ofthe doubt so troubled
me, that I paced the decks, looking at the approaching
city, and thinking that all my labor was to be disappointed
in the end. I could not telegraph my narrative and lists,
for Governraent controlled the wires; and raoreover, the
Associated Press regulations forbade any newspaper to
telegraph exclusive news frora any point but Washington.
I half resolved to hire a special locoraotive, but it was
doubtful that the railway authorities could procure one, at
so short notice. Unless I overtook the eight o'clock a. m.
train, I could not g^et to New York before two o'clock next
morning, — too late for the press. Besides, how did I know
that some correspondent had not reached Washington, by
way of one of the Potoraac vessels, and so forestalled me ?
Here was an opportunity to be the first of all our corre
spondents to publish the incidents and results of six days'
stupendous warfare, — but escaping at the very moment of
realization. The seconds were hours as we swept past
Fort Carroll, rounded Fort McHenry, and swung toward
our moorings, under Fort Federal Hill.
- (214)

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 215
" If we raake a prorapt landing," said the Captain, " you
may barely get the train."
I stood with my bundles of notes upon the high deck,
and signalled a cab-driver. He caught the precious manu
script, and bolted for his cab. In another second he was
dashing like a runaway up the pier, over the bridge, through
Pratt Street, and — out of sight. Slowly the great hulk
turned awkwardly about ; one turn of her paddles brought
us close enough to fling a rope, a second drew her very
near fhe shore ; the distance was fearful, but I braced myself
for the leap.
" Stand clear 1 " I called to the score of hackmen.
A little run, a spring, — and I fell upon ray feet, rolled
over upon ray face, gathered myself to the arms of all the
Jehus, and was carried off bodily by a man with a great
knob on his forehead as big as the end of his whip-handle.
"G'lang! Who-o-o-oh I Swis-s-s ! "
I think that I promised that man everything under the
sun to catch the train. I recollect that the knob on his
forehead grew black and bulging as he lashed his horse. I
found myself standing up in the cab, screaming like the
driver. We were both insane, and the horse must have
been of the breed of Pegasus, for I could feel the vehicle
gyrating in the air. Now we turned a lamp-post, and the
glass splintered somewhere ; a dog howled as we drove over
his appendage ; a woraan with a baby gave a short screara
and disappeared into the earth ; a policeraan ga^ve chase,
but we laughed hira to scorn.
Huzza ! Here we are ! The train stands puffing at the
long platform. "Your bundle, yer honor! Wasn't I the
*boy to raake the keers ? " " Didn't I projuce yer honor in
good tirae, sur ? " I only know that I flung a greenback to
the two, — that I vainly besought the ticket agent to give
me no change, but consign it to the first engineer who
failed to raake tirae, — that I wrote on the back of my hat
for four hours, — t!iat I devoured a chicken and as many

216 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-CO^IBATANT.
eggs as she had laid in a lifetime, at Havre de Grace, —
that I leaped upon the platform at Broad and Prime streets,
Philadelphia,- at noon, — that I plunged into a cab, and
said, significantly —
" New York Ferry ! "
It chafed me to pass through the promenade street of my
home-city, without a moment to spare for my family or
friends. The cab-horse slipped in Chestnut Street, and I
went over the rest of the route on foot, at ar dog-trot pace,
passing in various quarters for a sportsraan, a professional
runner, and a lunatic. I was greatly aggravated between
Amboy and Camden, by persons making inquiries for
brothers, sons, and acquaintances. At last, when I attained
the steamer, the Captain kindly shut me up in his office, and
I went on with ray narrative till my eyes were burning and
my hands failed in their function. Kill von Kull and its
picturesque shores went by ; we emerged into the beautiful
bay, and winding among its buoys, harbor lights, and ship
ping, carae to, at length, at the foot of Christopher Street.
I repaired to the office at once, and wrote far into the night,
refraining, finally, frora sheer blindness and exhaustion, and
dropped asleep in the carriage as I was taken toward the
Metropolitan Hotel.
The -next day was Friday, July 4, the anniversary of
American Independence, and my version of the six-days'
battles caused universal gloom and grief. I had furnished
five pages or forty columns of closely printed matter, and
thousands of tremulous fingers were tracing out the names of
their dead dear ones, while I sipped my wine and rehearsed
for the hundredth tirae, the incidents of the retreat to a
raultitude of men. Cards and letters came to me by the
gross, from bereaved countrymen, and I was obliged,_final-
ly, to add a postscript to my account, and a protest that I
knew no more, and could answer no interrogatories. A bath,
fresh clothing, and rich food so far improyed ray appearance

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 217
in a few days, that I presented no other traces of sickness
and travel than a sunburnt face, and a rheumatic walk.
With restoration came a revival of old desires, appetites,
and attachraents. It required one additional campaign to •
sober me in these respects, and I was not a little relieved,
to receive an order on the fourth day, to proceed to Wash
ington, and attach myself to the " Army of Virginia " at the
head of which Major-General John Pope had just been
placed. After two quieter days' enjoyment, in the Quaker
City, I reported myself at the Capital, but was debarred
from taking the field at once, owing to the tardiness of the
new Comraander. For two weeks or more, I loitered around
Washington, and Although the tirae passed raonotonously,
I saw many persons and events which have much to do
with the history of the Eebellion. The story of " Wash
ington During the War " has yet to be written in all its
vividness of enterprise, devotion, and infamy. It has been,
in periods of peace, a dull, dolorous town, of mammoth
hotels, paltry dwellings, empty lots, prodigiously wide
avenues, a fossil population, and a series of gigantic public
buildings, which seemed dropped by accident into a fifth-
rate backwoods settleraent. During the sessions Washing
ton was overrun with " Smartness " : Smart pages, smart
messengers, smart cabmen, smart publicans, smart politi
cians, smart women, smart scoundrels ! Greatness became
commonplace here, and Mr. Douglas might drink at Wil
lard's Bar, with none so poor to do hira reverence, or Gen
eral Winfield Scott strut like a colossus along "the Ave
nue," and the sleepy negroes upon their hacks would give
hira the attention of only one eye. It was interesting, to
notice how rapidly provincial erainence lost caste here.
Slipkins, who was "Honorable" at horae, and of whom his
county newspaper said that "this distinguished fellow citi
zen of ours will be heard frora, among the greatest of the
free," — Slipkins moved to and fro unnoticed, and voted
19

¦218 CAMPAIGNS OR A NON-COMBATANT.
with his party, and drank much brandy and water, and left
no other record at the Capital than some unpaid bills, and
perhaps an unacknowledged heir. A gaping rustic and
his new bride, or a strolling foreigner, marvelling and
making notes at every turn, might be observed in th»
Patent Office examining General Washington's breeches,
but these were at once called " greenies," and people put
out their tongues and winked at thera. The , Secretaries'
ladies gave parties now and then, attended by the folks
who sold them horses, or carpets, or wines ; the President
gave a " levee," whereat a wonderfully Democratic horde
gathered to pinch his hands and ogle his lady ; the Marine
band (in red coats), played twice a week in the Capital
grounds, and Senators, Cyprians, Ethiops, and children
rallied to enjoy ; a theatre or two played time-honored
dramas with Thespian companies ; a couple of scholars
lectured in the sombre Smithsonian Institution ; an intrigue
and a duel filled some most doleful hiatus ; and a clerk
absconded with half a million, or an Indian agent robbed
the red men and fell back to the protection of his " party."
A very disraal, a very dirty, and a very Democratic settle
raent was the American Capital, till the war came.
Even the war lost half its interest in Washington. A
regiment marching down Broadway was something to see,
but the sarae regiment in Pennsylvania Avenue looked
mean and matter-of-fact. A General in the field, or riding
uncovered through Boston or Baltimore, or even lounging
at the bar of the Continental or the Astor House or the
Tremont, was invested with an atmosphere half heroic, half
poetic ; but Generals in Washington may be counted by
pairs, and I used to sit at dinner with eight or a dozen of
them in my eye. There was the new Commander-in-Chief,
Halleck, a short, countryfied person, whose blue coat was
either threadbare or dusty, or lacked some buttons, and who
picked his teeth walking up and down the halls at Willard's,
and argued through a white, bilious eye and a huge mouth.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 219
There was General Mitchel, also, who has since passed
away, — a little, knotty gentleman, with stiff, gray, Jack-
sonian hair. And General Sturgis passed in and out
perpetually, with impressive, individual Banks, or some less
prominent person, all of -them wearing the gold star upon
their shoulders, and absolute masters of some thousands of
souls. The town, in fact, was overrun with troops.
Slovenly guards were planted on horseback at crossings,
and now and then they dashed, as out of a profound sleep,
to chase some galloping cavalier. Gin and Jews swarmed
along the Avenue, and I have seen gangs of soldiers of
rival regiments, but oftener of rival nationalities, pummelling
each other in the highways, until they were marched off by
the Provosts. The number of houses of ill-farae was very
great, and I have been told that Generals and Lieutenants
of the sarae organization often encountered and recognized
each other in them. Contractors and "jobbers" used to
besiege the offices of the Secretaries of War and Navy, and
the venerable Welles (who rerainded me of Abraham in the,
lithographs), and the barnacled Stanton, seldom appeared in
public. Simple-rainded, straightforward A. Lincoln, and his
ambitious, clever lady, were often seen of afternoons in their
barouche ; the little old-fashioned Vice-President walked
unconcernedly up and down ; and when some of the Eich
mond captives came horae to the Capital, iraraense meetings
were held, where patriotisra bawled itself hoarse. A dining
hour at Willard's was often wondrously adapted for a his^
toric picture, when accoutred officers, and their beautiful
wives, — or otherwise, — sat at the table d'-hote, and sunip
tuous dishes flitted here and there, while corks popped like
so many Chinese crackers, and champagne bubbled up' like
blood. At night, the Provost Guard enacted the farce of
coming by deputations to each public bar, which was at
once closed, but reopened five minutes afterward. Con
gress water was in great deraand for weak heads of morn
ings, and many a young lad, girt up for war, wasted his

220 CAJVIPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
strength in dissipation here, so that he was worthless afield,
and perhaps died in the hospital. The curse of tivil war
was apparent everywhere. One had but to turn his eye
frora the bare Heights of Arlington, where the soldiers of
the Eepublic lay deraoralized, to the fattening vultures who
sraoked and swore at the National, to see the true cause of
the North's shortcomings, — its inherent and almost univer
sal corruption. Huraan nature was here so depraved, that
raan lost faith in his kind. Death lurked behind ambuscades
and fortifications over the river, but Sin, its mother,
coquetted here, and as an American, I often went to bed,
loathing the Capital, as but little better than Sodom, though
its danger /had called forth thousands of great hearts to
throb out, in its defence. For every stone in the' Capitol
building, a raan has laid down his life. For every ripple on
the Potomac, some equivalent of blood has been shed.
I lodged for some time in Tenth Street, and took my meals
at Willard's. The legitimate expenses of living in this
manner were fourteen dollars a week ; but one could board
,at Kirkwood's or Brown's for seven or eight dollars, very
handsomely. A favorite place of excursion, near the city,
was " Crystal Spring," where some afternoon orgies were
enacted, which should have raade the sun go into eclipse.
I repaired once to Mount Vernon, and looked dolorously
at the torab of the Pater Patris, and once to Annapolis, on
the Chesapeake, which the war has elevated into a fine naval
station. At length Pope's forces were being raassed along the line
of the Eappahannock, below the Occoquan river, and upon
the "Piedraont" highlands. "Piedmont" is the name
applied to the fine table-lands of Northern Virginia, and the
ensuing campaign has received the designation of the
" Piedraont Campaign." Pope's army proper was coraposed
of three corps, coramanded respectively by Generals Irvin
McDowell, Franz Siegel, and Nathaniel P. Banks. But a
portion of General McClellan's peninsular army had mean-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 221
time returned to the Potomac, and the corps of General
Burnside was stationed at Fredericksburg, thirty miles or
more below Pope's head-quarters at Warrenton.
I presented myself to General Pope on the 12th of July,
at noon. His Washington quarters consisted of a quiet
brick house, convenient to the War office, and the only
tokens of its importance were some guards at the threshold,
and a nuraber of officers' horses, saddled in the shade of
sorae trees at the curb. The lower floor of the dwelling
was appropriated to quartermasters' and inspectors' clerks,
before whora a nuraber of people were constantly present
ing theraselves, with applications for passes ; — sutlers, in
great quantities, idlers, relic-hunters, and adventurers in
still greater ratio, and, last of all, citizens of Virginia,
solicitous to return to their farras and farailies. The raass
of these were rebuffed, as Pope had inaugurated his cara
paign with a show of severity, even threatening to drive all
the non-corabatants out of his lines, unless they took the
Federal oath of allegiance. He gave me 9, pass willingly,
and chatted pleasantly for a time. In person he was dark,
martial, and handsorae, — r inclined to obesity, richly garbed
in civil cloth, and possessing rf fiery black eye, with luxuri
ant beard and hair. He sraoked incessantly, and talked
imprudently. Had he comraenced his career raore raodestly,
his final discomfiture would not have been so galling ; but
his vanity was apparent to the most shallow observer, and
although he was brave, clever, and educated, he inspired
distrust by his rauch proraising and general love of gossip
and story-telling. He had all of Mr. Lincoln's garrulity
(which I suspect to be the cause of their affinity), and
none of that good old raan's unassuraing coraraon sense.
The next morning, at seven o'clock, I embarked for Alex
andria, and passed the better half of the forenoon in
negotiating for a pony. At eleven o'clock, I took ray seat
in a bare, filthy car, and was soon whirled due southward,
ever the line of the Orange and Alexandria railroad. The
10*

222 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
country between Alexandria and Warrenton Junction, or,
indeed, between Washington and Eichraond, was not
unlike those raasterly descriptions of Gibbon, detailing the
regions overrun by Hyder Ali. The towns stood like ruins
in a vast desert, and one might write musing epitaphs at
every wind-beaten dwelling, whence the wretched denizens
had fied in cold and poverty to a doubtful hospitality ,in the
far South. Fences there were none, nor any living animals
save the braying hybrids which limped across the naked
plains to eke out existence upon some secluded patches of
grass. These had been discharged frora the array, and they
added rather than detracted frora the lonesoraeness of the
wild. Their great mournful eyes and shaggy heads glared
from copses, and in places where they had lain down
beside the track to expire. If we sometimes pity these
dumb beasts as they drag loaded wains, or heavy omni
buses, or sub-soil ploughs, we may also bestow a tender '
sentiraent upon the army mules. Flogged by teamsters,
cursed by quartermasters, ridiculed by roaring regiments
of soldiers, strained and spavined by fearful draughts,
stalled in bogs and fainting upon hillsides, — their bones
will evidence the .sites of armies, when the skeletons of men
have crumbled and becorae reabsorbed. I have seen them
die like martyrs, when the inquisitor, with his bloody lash,
stood over them in the closing pangs, and their last trerau
lous howl has alraost moved to tears. Some of the dwell
ings seemed to be occupied, but the tidiness of old tiraes
was gone. The woraen seemed sunburnt and hardened by
toil. They looked from their thresholds upon the fiying
train, with their hair unbraided and their garters ungyved,
— not a negro lefj; to till the fields, nor a son or brother
who had not travelled to the wars. They must be now
hewers of wood, and drawers o£ water, and the fingers
whereon diamonds used to sparkle, must clench the axe and
-the hoe.
At last we came to Bull Eun, the dark and bloody ground

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 223
where thp first grand armies fought and fied, and again to
be consecrated by a baptism of fire. The railway crossed
the gorge upon a tall trestle bridge, and for sorae distance
the track followed the windings of the streara. A black,
deep, turgid current, flowing between gaunt hills, lined with
cedar and beech, crossed here and there by a ford, and van
ishing, above and below, in the windings of wood and rock ;
while directly beyond, lie the v/ide plains of Manassas
Junction, stretching in the far horizon, to the undulating
boundary of the Blue Eidge. As the Junction reraains to
day, the reader must imagine this splendid prospect, un
broken by fences, dwellings, or fields, as if intended prime-
vally to be a place for the shock of colurans, with redoubts
to the left and right, and fragments of stockades, dry rifle
pits, unfinished or fallen breastworks, and, close in the fore-_
ground, a medley of log huts for the winter quartering of
troops. The woods to the north mark the course of Bull
Eun ; a line of telegraph poles going westward points to
Manassas Gap ; while the Junction proper is simply a point
where two single track railways unite, and a few frame
" shanties " or sheds stand contiguous. These are, for ex
ample, the "New York Head-quarters," kept by a person
with a hooked nose, who trades in cakes, lemonade, and
(probably) whiskey, of the brand called""" rotgut ;" or the
" Union Stores," where a person in semi-military dress
deals in India-rubber overcoats, underclothing, and boots.
As the traiu. halts, lads and negroes propose to sell sand
wiches to passengers, and soldiers ride up to take mail-bags
and bundles for imperceptible camps. In the distance some
teams are seen, and a solitary horseman, visiting vestiges
of the battle ; sidelings beside the track are packed with
freight cars, and a sraall raountain of pork barrels towers
near by ; there are blackened reraains of locomotives a little
way off, but these have perhaps hauled regiments of Con
federates to the Junction ; and over all — men, idlers, ruins,
railway, huts, entrenchments — floats the star-spangled
banner from the roof of a plank depot.

224 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
The people in the train were rollicking and well-disposed,
and black bottles circulated freely. 1 was invited to drink
by many persons, but the beverage proffered was intoler
ably bad, and severalconvivials becarae stupidly drunk. A
woraan in search of her husband was one of the passengers,
and those contiguous to her were as gentleraanly as they
knew how to be. " A pretty woman, in war-time," said
a Captain, aside, to me, "is not to be sneezed at." At
" Catlett's," a station near Warrenton Junction, we nar
rowly escaped a collision with a train behind, and the occu
pants of our train, woraen included, leaped down an erabank-
ment with marvellous agility. Here we switched off to the
right, and at four o'clock disraounted at the pleasant vil
lage of Warrenton.

CHAPTEE- XXI.
CAMPAIGNING WITH GENERAL POPE.
The court-house village of Fauquier County contained a
population of twelve or fifteen hundred at the coramence
ment of the war. Its people embraced the revolutionary
cause at the outstart, and furnished some companies of foot
to the Confederate service, as well as a mounted company
known as the " Black Horse Cavalry." The guns of Bull
Eun were heard here on the day of battle, and hundreds of
the wounded carae into town at nightfall. Thenceforward
Warrenton became prominently identified with the struggle,
and the churches and public buildings were transrauted to
hospitals. After the ConfcTlerates retired from Manassas
Junction, the vicinity of Warrenton was a sort of neutral
ground. At one time the Southern cavalry would ride
through the raain street, and next day a body of mounted
Federals would pounce upon the town, the inhabitants,
raeanwhile, being apprehensive of a sabre combat in the
heart of the place. Some people were ruined by the war ;
some made fortunes. The Mayor of the village was named
Bragg, and he was a trader in horses, as well as a wagon-
builder. There were two taverns, denominated respec
tively, the "Warrenton Inn," and the "Warren Green
Hotel." I obtained a room at the former. A young man
named Dashiell kept it. He was a fair-complexioned,
clever, high-strung Virginian, and managed to obtain a
great deal of paper money from both republics. It is au
(225)

226 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
encomium in Araerica, to say that a man " Can keep a
hotel," but what shall be said of the man who can keep a
hotel in war-time ? I observed young Dashiell's raoveraents
frora day to day, and I am satisfied that his popularity arose
from his fairness and frankness. He charged nine dollars
a week for room, and "board," of three meals, but could,
with difficulty, obtain meat and vegetables for the table.
His mother and his brother-in-law lived in the house. The
latter was a son of Mayor Bragg, and had been twice in
the Confederate service. He was engaged both at Bull
Eun and at Fairfax Court House, and raade no secret of his
activity at either place. But he was treated considerately,
though he vaunted intolerably. The " Inn " was a frame
dwelling, with a first floor of stone, surrounded by a double
portico. The first room (entering from the street) was the
office, consisting of a bare floor> some creaking benches,
some chairs with whittled and broken arras, a high desk,
where accounts were kept, a row of bells, nurabered, com
municating with the rooms. Hand-bills were pinned to the
walls, announcing that William Higgins was paying good
prices for "likely" field hands, that Tiraothy Ingersoll's
stock of dry goods was the finest in Piedmont, that Jaraes
Mason's raulatto woraan, naraed Eachel, had decamped on
the night of Whitsuntide, and that one hundred dollars
would be paid by the subscriber for her return. Most of
these bills were out of date, but some recent one^s were-ex- "
hibited ,to me calling for volunteers, labelled, "'Ho ! for
winter-quarters in Washington ; " " Sons of tho South
arise ! " — " Liberty, glory, and no Yankeedom ! " A bell-
cord hung against the " office " door, communicating with
the stables, where a deaf hostler might noi be rung up. In
the back yard, suspended from a beara, and upright, hung a
large, bell, which called the boarders to meals. It com
monly rung thrice, and I was told on inquiry, by the cook —
"De fust bell, sah, is to prepah to prepah for de table ;
dat bell, when de fust cook don't miss it, is rung one hour

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 227
befo' mealtime. De second bell, sah, is to prepah for de
table ; de last bell, to come to de table."
I should have been better pleased with the ceremony, if
the food had been more cleanly, more wholesorae, and more
abundant. We used to clear the plates in a twinkling, and
if a person asked twice for beef, or butter, he was stared at
by the negroes, as if he had eaten an entire cow. I soon
brought the head-waiter to terms by proraising hira a dollar
a week for extra attendance, and could even get ice after a
tirae, which was a luxury. There was a bar Ujpon the
preraises, which opened stealthily, when there were liquors
to be sold. Cider (called champaigne) could bo purchased
for three dollars a bottle, and whiskey came to hand occa
sionally. There were cigars in abundance, and I used to
sit on the upper porch of evenings, puffing long after mid
night, and watching the sentinels below.
There was some female society in Warrenton, but the
blue-coats engrossed it all. The young women were ardent
partisans, but also very pretty ; and treason, soraehow,
heightened their beauty. Disloyalty is always pardonable
in a woman, and these ladies appreciated the fact. They
refused to walk under Federal flags, and stopped their ears
when the bands played national music ; but every evening
they walked through the raain street, arra in arm with dash
ing Lieutenants and Captains. Many flirtations ensued,
and a great deal of gossip was elicited. In the end, some
of the misses fell out araong themselves, and hated each
other more than thc coramon eneray. I overheard a young
lady talking in a low tone one evening, to a Captain in the
Ninth New York regiment.
"If you knew my brother," she said, "I am sure you
would not fire upon him."
As there were plain, square, prira porches to all the
dwellings, the ladies coraraonly took positions therein of
evenings, and a grand proraenade cornmenced of all the
young Federals in the town. The streets were pleasantly

228 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
shaded, and a leafy coolness pervaded the days, though
soraetiraes, of afternoons, the still heat was alraost stifling.
A jaunt after supper often took rae far into the country, and
the starlights were softer than one's peaceful thoughts. To
be a civilian was a distinguished honor now, and I enjoyed
the staring of the citizens, who pondered as to my purposes
and pursuits, as only villagers can do. There is a quiet
pleasure in being a strange person in a country town, and
so far from objecting to the inquisitiveness of the folk, I
rather like it. One may be passing for a young duke, or
tourist, or clergyman, or what not ?
The-Ninth New York (railitia) regiraent guarded Warren
ton, and it was coraposed of clever, polite young fellows,
who had taken to volunteering before there was any
proraise of war, and who turned out, pluckily, when the
strife began. Perhaps public sentiraent or pride of organi
zation influenced them. They were all good-looking and
tidy, and their dress-parades, held in the main street, were
handsorae affairs. I have never seen better disciplined
colurans, and the youthful faces of the soldiers, with the
staid locality of the exhibition, — young woraen, negroes,
dogs and babies, and old raen looking on, — seeraed to con
tradict the bloody raission of the troops. The old men,
referred to, were villagers of such long standing that had
the Court of Saint Jaraes, or the Vatican, or the battle of
Waterloo been moved into their country, they would have
still been villagers to the last. They met beside the Warren
ton Inn, under the shade of the trees, at eleven o'clock
every morning, and borrowed the New York papers of the
latest date. One individual, slightly bald, would read
aloud, and the rest crouched or stood about him, making
grunts and reraarks at intervals. They did not wish to
believe the Federal reports, but they raust needs read, and
as raost of thera had sons in the other array, their pulses
were constantly treraulous with anxiety. I think that
Pope's resolve to transport these harraless old people beyond
his lines was very barbarous, and the soldiers denounced it

C.VMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 229
in similar terms. They spoke of Pope, as of some terrible
despot, and wished to know when he was coming to town,
as they had appointed a comraittee, and drafted a petition,
asking his forbearance and charity. When these villagers
found rae out to be a Newspaper Correspondent, they
regarded rae with amusing interest, and marvelled what I
would say of their town. A villager is very sensitive as to
his place of residence, and these' good people read the 
daily, confounding me with all the paper, — editorial, cor
respondence, and, I verily believe, advertiseraents. One of
thera wished rae to board at his residence, and I was, after
a tirae, invited out to dinner and tea frequently.
The negroes remained in Warrenton, in great numbers,
and held carnival of evenings when the bands played.
" Contrabands " were coraing daily into town, and idleness
and vice soon characterized the raass of thera. They were
ignorant, degraded, aniraal beings, and raany of them loved
rura ; it was the last link that bound thera to huraan kind.
Servants could be hired for four dollars a raonth and
" keep ; " but they were " shiftless " and unprofitable. The
Provost-Marshal of the place was a Captain Hendrickson.
His quarters were in the Court House building, and he kept
a zealous eye upon sutlers and citizens. The forraer tres
passed in the sales of liquors to soldiers, and the latter
were accused of raaintaining a contraband mail, and of con
spiring to corarait divers offences. There were a nuraber of
churches in the village, all of which served as hospitals,
and in the quiet cemetery west ofthe town, two hundred slain
soldiers were interred. A stake of white pine was driven
at the head of each grave. Here lay some of the men who
had helped to change the destinies of a continent. No
public worship was held in the place. The Sundays were
busy as other days : trains carae and went, tearas raade
dust in the streets, cavalry passed through the village,
music arose from all the outlying caraps ; parades and in
spections were raade, and all the preparations for killing
20

230 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
men were relentlessly forwarded. A pleasant entertain
ment occurred one evening, when a plot of ground adjoin
ing the Warrenton Inn, was appropriated for a camp
theatre. Candle footlights were arranged, and the stage
was canopied with national flags. The citizens congre
gated, and the performers deferred to their prejudices by
singing no Federal songs. The negroes clirabed the trees
to listen, and their gratified guffaws made the night quiver.
The war lost half its bitterness at such times ; but I thought
with a shudder of Stuart's thundering horseraen, charging
into the village, and closing the night's rahnicry with a hor
rible tragedy.
Some of the dwellings about the place were elegant and
spacious, but many of these were closed and the owners
reraoved. Two newspapers had been published here of old,
and while .ransacking the office of one of theni, I discovered
that the type had been buried under the floor. The planks were
speedily torn away, and the cases dragged to light. I ob
tained sorae curious relics, in the shape of " cuts " of recruit
ing officers, runaway negroes, etc., as well as a column ofa
leader, in type, describing the first battle of Bull Eun. For
two weeks I had little to do, as the campaign had not yet
fairly commenced, and I passed raany hours every day read
ing. A young lawyer, in the Confederate service, had left
an ample library behind'him, and the books passed into the
hands of every invader in the town.
Pope finally arrived at Warrenton, and as the troops
seemed to be rapidly concentrating, I judged it expedient to
procure a horse at once, and canvassed the country with
that object. By paying a quartermaster the Government
price ($130), I could select a steed frora the pound, but in
spection satisfied rae that a good saddle nag could not be
obtained in this way. -After much parleying with Hebrews
and chaffing with country people, I heard that Mayor
Bragg kept §ome fair animals, and when I stated roy pur
pose at his house, he commenced the business after a fash
ion immemorial at the South, by producing some whiskey.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 231
When Mayor Bragg had asked me pertinently, if I knew
much about the " pints ofa boss," and what " figger in the
way of price " would suit me, he told an erudite negro
named " Jeems " to trot out the black colt. The black
colt made his appearance by vaulting over a gate, and play
fully shivering a panel offence with his " off" hoof Then
he executed a flourish with his tail, leaped thrice in the air,
and bit savagely at the raan " Jeems."
When I asked Mayor Bragg if the black colt was suffi
ciently gentle to stand fire, he replied that he was gentle as
a lamb and offered to put me astride him. I had no sooner
taken my seat, however, than the black colt backed,
neighed, flourished, and stood erect, and finally ran away.
A second animal was produced, less raettlesome, but also
black, finely strung, daintily hoofed, and as Mayor Bragg
said, "just turned four year." The price of this charger
was one hundred and ninety dollars ; but in consideration
of my youth and pursuit. Mayor Bragg proposed to take
one hundred and seventy-five ; we compromised upon a
hundred and fifty dollars. Major Bragg throwing in a halter,
and by good luck I procured a saddle the same evening, so
that I rode triumphantly through the streets of Warren
ton, and fancied that all the citizens were admiring my new
purchase. I was struck with the fact, that Mayor Bragg, though an
ardent patriot, would accept of neither Confederate nor Vir
ginia money ; he required payment for his animal, in Father
Chase's " greenbacks."
Mounted anew, I fell into ray former active habits, and
raade two journeys, to Sperryv'ille and Little Washington,
in one direction, to Madison in another ; each place was
probably twenty railcsdistant ; the latter was merely a cav
alry outpost, where Generals Hatch and Bayard were sta
tioned, and the former villages were the head-quarters,
respectively, of General Banks and General Siegel.
Madison was, at this tirae, a precarious place for a long
tarrying.' I went to sleep in the inn on tho night of ray

232 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
arrival, and at that tirae the place was thronged with cav
alry and artillery-men. Next raorning, when I aroused, not
a blue-coat could be seen. They had fallen back in the
darkness, and prudently abstaining frora breakfast, I gal
loped northward, as if the whole ConfederatS army was at
my heels. These old turnpike roads were now marked by
daily chases and rencontres. A few Virginians, fleetly
mounted, would provoke pursuit from a squad of Federals,
and tho latter would be led into ambuscades. A quaint in
cident happened in this raanner, near Madison.
Captain T. was chasing a party of Confederates one after
noon, when his corapany was Suddenly fired upon frora a
wheatfield, parties rising up on both sides of the road, and
discharging carbines through the fence rails. Three or four
men, and as many horses were slain ; but the ambushing
body was outnumbered, and several of its merabers killed.
Araong others, a young lieutenant took deliberate aira at
Captain T. at the distance of twelve yards ; and, see
ing that he had missed, threw up his carbine to surrender.
The Captain had already drawn his revolver, and, amazed
at the murderous purpose, he shot the assassin in the
head, killing him instantly. Nobody blamed Captain
T., but he was said to be a humane person,' and the affair
preyed so continually upon his raind, that he comraitted sui
cide one night in carap.
At Sperry ville I saw, and talked with Franz Siegel, the
idol of the Gerraan Araericans. He had been a lieutenant
in his native country, but subsided, in St. Louis, to the rank
of publican, keeping a beer saloon. When the war cora
raenced, he was appointed to a colonelcy, in deference to
the large German republican population of Missouri. His
abilities were speedily manifested in a series of engage
ments which redeemed the Southern border, and he finally
fought the terrible battle of Pea Eidge, Arkansas, which
broke the spirit of.the Confederates west of the Missis
sippi. The man who fought " mit Siegel " in those days,
was always told in St. Louis : " Py tam I you pays not'ing

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 233
for your lager." Siegel now coraraanded one of Pope's
corps. He was a dirainutive person, but welf-knit, eraaci
ated by his active career, feverish and sanguine of face,
and, as it appeared to me, consuming with energy and am
bition. As a General he was prorapt to decide and do, and
his raanner of dealing with Confederate property was se
verer than that of any Araerican. He battered the splendid
mansion hotel of White Sulphur Springs to the ground, for
exaraple, when soraebody discharged a rifle from its window.
He preferred to fight by retreating, and if pursued, gener
ally unmasked his guns and raade raassacre with the scat
tered opponents. Another German commander was Blen-
ker, whose corps of Germans might have belonged to the
free bands of the Black forest. They were the most law
less men in the Federal service, and what they did not
steal they destroyod. Such volunteers were mercenaries,
in every sense of the word. I have been told that they
slaughtered sheep and cattle in pure wantonness, and the
rats of Ehrenfels did not raake a cleaner sweep of provis
ions. The Gerraans, as a rule, lacked the dash of the Irish
troops and the tact of the Americans. They thought and
fought in masses, had little individuality, and were thick-
skulled ; but they were persevering and had their hearts in
the cause.
General Banks was a fine representative of the higher
order of Yankee. Originally a machinist in a sraall manu
facturing town near Boston, he educated himself, and was
elected successively Legislator, Governor, Congressraau,
and General of volunteers. His personal graces were
equalled by his energy, and his ability was considerable.
He has been very successful in the field, and has conducted
a retreat unparalleled in the war ; these things being always
reckoned araong Araerican successes. The country here
about was raountainous, healthy, and well adapted for cara-
paigning. Strearas and springs were numerous, and there
were fine sites for camps. The deserted toll-houses along
20*

234 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
the way glowered mournfully through the rent windows,
and I fancied thera, sometimes, as I rode at night, haunted
by the shambling tollman.
Ancient road that wind'st deserted,
Through the level of the rale, —
Sweeping toward the crowded market.
Like a stream without a sail,
— *
Standing by thee, I look backward.
And, as in the light of dreams.
See the years descend and vanish.
Like thy tented wains and teams. — T. B. Bead.
To provide myself with thorough equipment for Pope's
campaign, I returned to Washington, and purchased a
patent camp-bed, which strapped to my saddle, saddle bags
of large capacity, India-rubber blankets, and a full suit of
waterproof cloth, — hat, coat, genoulUeres, and gauntlets.
I had. my horse newly shod, I drew upon my establishment
for an ample sum of money, and, to properly inaugurate the
campaign, I gave an entertainment in the parlor of the
inn. Pipes, cold ham, a keg of beer, and a demijohn of whis
key comprised the attractions of the night. The guests
were three Captains, two Adjutants, two Majors, a Colonel,
four Correspondents, several Lieutenants, and a signal offi
cer. There was some jesting, and rauch laughing, consider
able story-telling, and (toward the small hours) a great deal
of singing. Much heroism was evolved ; all the guests
were devoted to death and their country ; and there was
one person who took off his coat to fight an imaginary
something, but changed his mind, and dropped asleep di
rectly. At length, a gallant Captain, to demonstrate his
warlike propensities, fired a pistol through the front win
dow ; and soraebody blowing out the candles, the whole
party retired to rest upon the floor. In this delightful way
my third campaign comraenced, and next evening I set off
for the advance.

CHAPTEE xxn.

ARMY MORALS.

Some of General McDowell's aides had invited rae to pass
a night with thera at Warrenton Springs. Fully equipped,
I joined Captain Ball, of Cincinnati, and we rode southward,
over a hard, picturesque turnpike, under a clear moonlight.
The distance was seven miles, and a part M this route was
enlivened by the fires, halloos, and the music of camps.
Volunteers are fond of serenading their officers ; and this
particular evening was the occasion of rauch merry-making,
since a majority of tho brass bands were to be mustered out
of the service to-morrow. We could hear the roll of drums
from iraperceptible localities, and the sharp winding of
bugles broke upon the silence like the trumpet of the Arch
angel. Stalwart shapes of horsemen galloped past us, and
their hoofs made monotone behind, till the cadence died so
gradually away that we did not know when the sound
ceased and when the silence began. The streams had a
talk to themselves, as they strolled away into the meadow,
and an owl or two challenged us, calling up a corporal
hawk. This latter fellow bantered and blustered, and
finally we fell into an arabush of wild pigs, which charged
across the road and plunged into the woods. There were
despatch stations at intervals, where horses stood saddled,
and the couriers waited for hoof-beats, to be ready to ride
fleetly toward head-quarters. Anon, we saw wizard lights,
as of Arctic skies, where reraote caraps built conflagration ;
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236 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
arid trudging wearily down the stony road, poor ragged,
flying negroes, with their farailies and their worldly all,
carae and went — God help them ! — and touched their hats
so obsequiously that my heart was wrung, and I felt a
nervous impulse to put them upon ray steed and take their
burdens upon ray back. Little sable folk, asleep and ahun-
gered, drawn to that barefoot woraan's breast ; and the
tired boy, weeping as he held to his father's hand ; and the
farther with the sweat of fatigue and doubt upon his fore
head, — children of Ishraael all ; war raging in the land, but
God overhead ! These are the "wandering Jews" of our
day, hated North and South, because they are poor and
blind, and do no harm ; but out of their wrongs has arisen
the abaseraent of their wrongers. Is there nothing over
all ?
We entered the beautiful lawn of the Springs' hotel, at
ten o'clock, and a negro carae up to take our horses. By
the laraplight and raoonlight I saw McDowell's tent, a
sentry pacing up and down 'before it, and the thick, power
ful figure of the General seated at a writing-table within.
Irvin McDowell was one of the oldest officers in the service,
and when the war coraraenced he becarae a leading com
mander in the Eastern army. At Bull Eun he had a
responsible place, and the ill success of that battle brought
him into unpleasant notoriety.- Though he retained a lead
ing position he was still mistrusted and disliked. None
bore ingratitude so stolidly. He may have flinched, but he
never replied ; and though ambitious, he tried to content
hiraself with subordinate coraraands. Sorae called him a
traitor, others an incompetent, others a plotter. If McClel
lan failed, McDowell was cursed. If Pope blundered,
McDowell received half the contumely. But ho loosened
no cord of discipline to raake good will. Iraplacable, duti
ful, soldierly, rigorous in discipline, sententious, brave, —
the most unpopular raan in Araerica went on his way, and
I think that he is recovering public favor again. The Gen-

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 237
eral of a republic has a thorny path to tread, and almost
every public raan has been at one tirae disgraced during the
civil war. McDowell, I think, has been treated worse than
any other.
Our nags being reraoved, we repaired to one of the rustic
cottages which bounded the lawn, and I was introduced to
several members of the staff; among others, to a Count
Saint Alb, an Austrian. He had been an officer in his
native country ; but carae to Araerica, anxious for active
service, and was appointed to Gen. McDowell's Staff with
the rank of Captain. I understood that he was writing a
book upon America. There are many such adventurers in
the Federal service, but the present one was clever and
amusing, and he spoke English fluently.
Our tea was plain but abundant, consisting of broiled
beef, fresh bread, butter, and cheese ; and the inveterate
whiskey was produced afterward, when we asserabled on
the piazza, so that the hours passed by pleasantly, if not
profitably, and we retired at two o'clock.
In the raorning I bathed in the clear, cold sulphur spring,
where thousands of invalid people had come for healing
waters. A canopy covered the spring, and a soldier stood
on guard at the top of the descending steps, to preserve the
property in its original cleanliness. This was one of the
most famous medical springs on the Araerican continent ;
the water was so densely irapregnated that its peculiarly
offensive sraell could be detected at the distance of a mile.
The place was going to ruin now. All the bathing-rooms
were falling apart, the pipes had been carried off to be
raoulded into bullets, and the great hotel was desolate. I
walked into the ball-roora ; but the large gilded mirrors had
been splintered, and lewd writings defaced the wall. Some
idlers were asleep upon the piazzas, and the furniture was
removed or broken. Some rustic cottages dotted the lawn,
but these were now inhabited by officers and their servants.
A few days were to finish the work of rapine, and a heajp

238 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
of ashes was to raark the scene of tournament, coquetry,
and betrothal. I witnessed a review of troops in a field
contiguous, at nine o'clock. The heat was so intense that
many raen fell out of line and were carried off to their
caraps. McDowell passed exactingly from raan to man,
examined muskets, clothing, and knapsacks, and the inspec
tion was proceeding, when I bade my friends good by and
set out for Culpepper.
I crossed the North Eappahannock, or Hedgemain river,
upon a precarious bridge of planks. A new bridge for
artillery was being constructed close by ; for the river
beneath had a swift, deep current, and could with difficulty
be forded. Patches of wagons, squads of horse, and now
and then a regiment of infantry, varied the monotony of the
journey. The country was high, woody, and sparsely
settled. At noon I overtook Tower's brigade, and observ
ing the 94th N. Y. Eegiment resting in the woods, I dis
mounted and made the acquaintance of its Colonel. He was
- at this juncture greatly enraged with sorae of his soldiers
who had been plucking green apples.
" Boy," he said to one, " put down that fruit ! Drop it,
or I'll blow your head off! Directly you'U double up,
pucker, and say that you have the " di-o-ree," and require
an arabulance. Orderly ! "
A sergeant carae up and touched his cap.
" Take your musket," said theXlolonel ; " go out to that
orchard, and order those men away. If they hesitate or
object, shoot them 1 "
A few such colonels would marvellously improve the
volunteer organization.
The Hazel or North Anne river, a branch of the Hedge-
raain, interposed a few miles further on, and passing through
a covered bridge, I turned down the north bank, crossed
sorae spongy fields, and at length carae to a dry place in
the edge of a woods, where I tied my nag, spread out my
bed, and prepared to dine. A box of sardines, a lemon, and

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-CO.IIBATANT. 239
some fresh sandwiches constituted the repast, and being
dusty and parched I stripped afterward and swam across
the river. Seeing that my horse plunged and neighed, with
swollen eyeballs, and every evidence of terror, I hastened
toward hira and discovered a black snake, six feet or more
in length, which seeraed about to coil itself around the nag's
leg. The size and contiguity of the reptile at first appalled
me, and my raind was not more composed when the serpent,
at ray approach, manifested an inclination to assume the
offensive. Its folds were thicker than my arm, and it cora
raenced to revolve rapidly, at length running up a sapling,
suspending itself by the tail, and hissing veheraently. It
belonged to the family of "racers," and was hideous and
powerful beyond any specimen that I had seen. I blew it
into halves at the second discharge of my pistol, and at
once resumed my saddle, indisposed to remain longer amidst
such acquaintances.
At four o'clock I saw Culpepper, a trim little village,
lying in the hollow of several hills. A couple of steeples
added to its picturesqueness, and a swift creek, crossed by
a small bridge, interposed between myself and the main part
of the place. It looked like Sunday when I rode through
the principal street. The shutters were closed in the shop
windows, the dwellings seeraed tenantless, no citizens were
abroad, no sutlers had invaded the country ; only a few
cavalry-raen clustered about an ancient pump to water their
nags, and some military idlers were sitting upon the long
porch of a public house, called the Virginia Hotel. I tied
ray horse to a tree, the bole of which had been gnawed bare,
and found the landlord to be an old gentleraan named Paine,
who appeared to be somewhat out of his head. Two days
before the Confederate cavalry had vacated the village, and
the army had been encamped about the town for many
months. A sabre conflict had taken place in the streets ;
and these events, happening in rapid succession, combined
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240 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
the host that his memory was guite gone, and he could not
perform even the slightest function. There is a panacea for
all these things, which the faculty and philanthropy alike
forbid, but which my experience in war-matters has invari
ably found unfailing. I produced my flask, and gently
insinuated it to the old gentleman's lips. He possessed
instinct sufficient to uncork and apply it, and the results
were directly apparent, in a partial recovery of raeraory.
He said that meals were one dollar each, board four dollars
a day, or by the week twenty-five dollars. These terms
are unknown in America ; but when Mr. Paine added that
horse provender was one dollar per "feed," I loeked aghast,
and required some stiraulant rayself to appreciate the
enorraity of fhe reckoning. I discovered, however, that the
people of the village were alraost starving ; that beef had
been fifty cents a pound during the whole winter, flour
twenty-five dollars per barrel, coffee one dollar and a quar
ter a pound, and corn one dollar per bushel. The army had
swept the country like faming, and the citizens had pinched,
pining faces, with little to eat to-day and nothing for to
morrow. I acquiesced in the charge, as no choice reraained, and
asked to be shown to my room. A burly negro, apparently
suffering deliriuvfi tremens, seized my baggage with quaking
' hands, and lifting a pair of red eyes upon me, shuffled
through a bare hall, up a stairway, and into a bedroom. I'
never saw a more hideous being in my life, and when he had
flung ray luggage upon the floor, he sank into a chair, and
glared wofully into ray face, breathing like one about to ex
pire. " Young Moss," said he, " cant you give a po' soul a
-drop o' sperits ? Do for de good Lord's sake ! Do, Moss,
fo' de po' nigga's life. Do ! do ! Moss."
I poured hiin out a little in a turabler, less from charity
than from fear ; for he knew that I was provided with a
bottle, and I seemed to read murder in his eyes.

CAiUPAIONS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 241
He drank like one athirst aud scant of breath, making a
dry, chuckling noise with his throat. When he had fin
ished, he leaned his powerful neck and head upon the bed
and groaned terribly.
" Moss," he said again, " ain't you got no tobacco.
Moss ? I haint had none since Christraas. I's mos dead
I'm po' sinful nigga'. Do give some tobacco to po' crea
ture, do ! "
I told him that I did not chew' the weed, but gave hira a
crushed cigar, and he thrust it into his mouth, as if it was
food and he was perishing. This wretched animal per
formed the duties of a chambermaid upon the premises ; he
raade the beds, attended to the toilets, answered the bells,
etc. He finally became so offensive that I forbade him my
roora, and he revenged hiraself by paltry - thefts. There
were two other servants, a woraan with a baby, and a
shrewd, dishonest raulatto man, who was the steward and
carver. This fellow secreted pro-vender in the kitchen and
sold it stealthily to hungry soldiers. A public house so
misraanaged I had nowhere raet. Sometimes we could get
no breakfast till noon, and finally .the price of dinner went
up to one dollar and a half, with nothing to eat. The table
was protected from flies by a series of paper fans, pendant
frora the ceiling and connected by a cord, which an ebony
boy pulled, at the foot of the roora to keep thera in motion.
This boy being worked day and night, often fell asleep
upon his stool, when the yellow man boxed his ears, or
knocked him down.; and then he would fan with such vigor
that a perfect gale swept down the table. The landlord
was a kindly old raan, but he could not " keep a hotel,"
and the strong-rainded part of the house consisted of his
wife and four daughters. Gen. Ben Butler would have sent
these young woraen to Ship . Island, five tiraes of a day.
They were very bad-raannered and always sat apart at one end
ofthe cloth, talking against the " Yankees." As there was
no direct provocation to do so, this boldness was gratuitous,
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242 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
and detracted rather than added to ray estiraate of the hero-
isra of Southem woraen. 1 have known them to burst into
the office, crowded with blue-coats, and scream —
" Pop, Yankees thieving in garden ! " or, " Pop, drive
these Yankees out of parlor ! "
Every afternoon when the pavement was unusually patron
ized by young officers, these women would sally out, prom
enade in crinoline, silk stockings, and saucy hoods, and the
crowd would fall respectfully back to let them pass. A
flag hung frora a hospital over the sidewalk, and with a
pert flourish, the landlord's daughters filed off the pave
ment, around the ensign, and back again. This was amus
ing, I thought, but not very clever, and rather iraraodest.
Had they been handsorae, sorae roraance might have at
tached to the act ; but being homely and not raarriageable,
I srailed at the occurrence and entered it in ray diary as
" patriotism run mad." The stable arrangeraents were, if
possible, worse. One had to be certain, frora actual pres
ence, that his horse was fed at all, and during the first three
days of my tenure, the black hostler lost me a breast strap,
a halter, a crupper strap, and finally emptied my saddle
bags. Now and then a woman made her appearance at a front
window, stealthily peeping into the street, or a neighboring
farmer ventured into town upon a lean consumptive mule.
The very dogs were skinny and savage for want of suste
nance, and when a long, cadaverous hog emerged from no
where one day, and tottered up the main street, he was
chased, killed, and quartered so rapidly, that the famous
steam process seemed to have been applied to him, of being
dropped into a hopper, and tumbling out, a raedley of haras,
ribs, lard, and penknives. The stock of provisions at the
hotel finally gave out, and I was compelled to purchase
morsels of meat from the steward. Dreadful visions of fam
ishing ensued, but ultimately the railway was opened to
town, and a sutler started a shop in the village. I lived

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 243
upon sardines and crackers for two days, and a Major Fi-
field, Superintendent of Military Eailroads, gave me savory
breakfasts of hara afterward. Troops were now concentrat
ing in the neighborhood of Culpepper, and a bevy of camps
encircled the little village. Crawford's Brigade, of Banks's
Corps, garrisoned the place, and a Provost Marshal occu
pied the quaint Court House. Eeconnoissances were made
southward daily, and I joined one of these, which left the
¦village on the .second of August, at three o'clock, for
Orange Court House, seventeen miles .on the way to Eich
mond. Detachments of a Vermont and a New York cav
alry regiment composed the reconnoitring party, and the
whole was commanded by Gen. Crawford, a clever and un
ostentatious soldier. We bivouacked that night near Eac
coon Ford, on the river Eapidan. No fires were built ; for
we knew that the enemy was all around us, and we slept
coldly and imperfectly till the gray of Sunday raorning. At
daylight we galloped into the raain street of Orange Court
House, having first sent a squadron around the village, to
ride in at the other end. At the very moment of our entry,
a company or more of Confederate horse was also trotting
into town. Both parties sounded the charge simultane
ously, and the carbines exploded in the very heart of the
village. For a rainute or more a sabre fight ensued, alter
nated by the firing of revolvers ; but the defenders were
overmatched, and several of them having been slain, they
turned to escape. At that raoment, however, our other
squadron charged upon them, effectually blocking up the
street, and the whole party surrendered. A major, who ex
hibited some obstinacy, was felled from the saddle by a ter
rible cut, which clove his skull, and a very dexterous young
fellow, who attempted to escape by a side street, dodged
a bevy of pursuers and saved his head by the loss of both
his ears. The disfigured corpses of those freshly slain were
laid along the sidewalk in a row ; and after some invasion
of henroosts and private pantries, we remounted, and with

244 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
fifty or raore prisoners crossed the Eapidan, and were
welcoraed into Culpepper with cheers. The prisoners were
lodged in the loft ofthe Court House, -and their officers
were paroled, and boarded araong the neighbors. They
coraplied with the terms of their parole very honorably, and
bore testimony to the courtesy of their captors. I talked
with them often upon the tavern porch, but an undue inti
macy with any of them raight have brought me into disre
pute. Although the larders of the village were supposed
to be erapty, savory meals were nevertheless sent daily to
these cavalry-men, and it was evident that the people on all
hands syrapathized with their soldiery.
The stringent orders of Pope, relative to reraoving the
disaffected beyond his lines, were never enforced. I doubt
if the veritable coraraander himself meant to do more than
intimidate evil doers ; but I saw frequent evidences of scru
pulous humanity on the part of his general officers.
One day, when I was negotiating with the Provost for
the purchase of some port wine, stored upon the preraises
ofa village druggist, a sergeant elbowed his way into the
presence ofthe Marshal, and pushed forward two very dirty
lads, who gave their ages respectively, as ten and thirteen
years. They were of Hibernian parentage, . and belonged
to the class of newsboys trading with the different brigades.
The younger lad was wiping his nose and eyes with a relic
of a coat sleeve, and the elder was studying the points of
the case, with a view to an elaborate defence. The ser
geant produced a thick roll of bills and laid thera upon the
desk. " Gineral Crawford," said he, " orders these boys to be
locked up in the jail. They have been passing this stuff
upon the country folks, and belong to a gang of young var
mints who foUers the ' lay.' The Gineral is going to have
'em brought up at the proper tirae and punished."
The bills were fair imitations of Confederate currency, and
were openly sold in the streets of Northern cities at the

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 245
rate of thousands of dollars for a penny. These lads prob
ably purchased horses, swine, or fowls with thera, or per
haps paid some impoverished widow for board in the worth
less counterfeit.
The younger lad sobbed and howled when the order for
his incarceration had been announced, but the elder made a
stout remonstrance.
He didn't know the Gineral would arrest hira. Everybody
else passed the bills. He thought they wos good bills ;
sorae raan gave 'em to him. They wan't passed, nohow,
upon nobody but Rebels! He could prove that! He
"know'd" a quartermaster that passed 'era. Wouldn't
they let hira and Sam off this v/unst ?
They were both sent to Coventry, despite their tears,
and down to the last day of our tenure in Culpepper, I saw
these wicked urchjns peeping through the grates of the old
brick jail, where they lay in the steam and vapor, araong
negroes, drunkards, and thieves, — an evidence of justice,
which it is a pleasure to record, in this free narrative.
I joined a raess in the Ninth New York regiraent finally,
and contrived to exist till the fifth of the raonth; when Pope
raoved his head-quarters to a hill back of Culpepper, and
thereafter I lived daintily for a little while. On the Sth of
August, however, an event occurred, which disturbed the
wisest calculations of the correspondent and the Generals,
The Battle of Cehar Mountain.
21*

CHAPTEE XXIII.
GOING INTO ACTION.
While General Pope's army was concentrating between
the Eappahannock and Eapidan rivers, the army of Gen
eral Stonewall Jackson was lying upon the south bank of
the Eapidan, and that renowned commander's head-quarters
were at Gordonsville, about thirty miles from Culpepper. It
was generally presumed that Jackson had fortified Gordons
ville, intending to lie in wait there, or possibly to oppose
the crossing of Pop'e upon the banks of the river. It was
not-believed that Jackson's force was very great, because
the main body of the Confederates were held below Rich
mond, where McClellan's army still remained. The South
em capital seemed to be menaced both from the North and
the South ; but in reality, the Grand Army was re-embark
ing at Harrison's Bar, and sailing up the Chesapeake in de
tachments, to effect a junction with Pope on the plains of
Piedmont. So important a movement could not be con
cealed frora the Confederates, and they had resolved to an
nihilate Pope before McClellan's reinforceraents could ar
rive. It was the work of two weeks to transport eighty or
a hundred thousand raen three hundred miles, and finding
that Burnside's corps had already landed upon the Potomac,
Stonewall Jackson determined to cross the Eapidan and
cripple the fragment of Pope's forces stationed at Culpep
per. Stonewall Jackson is one of the many men whose ex-
(246)

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 247
traordinary military genius has been developed by the civil
war. But unlike the raass who have becorae faraous in a
day, and lost their laurels in a week, Jackson's glory has
steadily increased. He was first brought into notice at
Winchester, where he fought a fierce battle with Banks, and
derived the sobriquet which he has retained to the present
time. Soon afterward, he chased Banks's army down the
Shenandoah Valley, and across the Potoraac. Afterward,
he bore a conspicuous part in the engageraent below Eich
raond, and was now to becorae prominent in the raost dar
ing episodes of the whole war. His excellence was activ
ity. He scrupled at no fatigue, marched his troops over
steep and circuitous roads, was everywhere when unex
pected, a id nowhere when sought, and his boldness was
equal to his energy. He did not fear to attack overpower
ing numbers, if the situation demanded it. All that Gen
eral Lee might plan. General Jackson would dare to exe
cute ; and he has been, above all others, the Soult of the
Southern war, while Stuart was its Murat, and Lee its Na
poleon. We first had intimation of the advance of Jackson on
the afternoon of the '7th of August. Two regiments of cav
alry, picketed upon the Eapidan, rode pell-mell into Culpep
per, reporting a large Southern force at the fords, and rap
idly advancing. Pope at once ordered the whole of one of
these regiments under arrest, and it was the opinion of the
array that the approach was a feint, or, at raost, a recon
noissance in force. Subsequent inforraation satisfied the in
credulous, however, that a considerable body of troopt
were raarching northward, and their outriding scouts had
been seen at Cedar Mountain, only six railes frora Culpep
per. The latter is one of the raany woody knobs or heights
that environ the village, but it is nearer than any other, and
should have been occupied by Pope, siraultaneously with
his arrival. It is scarcely a mountain in elevation, but so
high that thc clouds often envelope its crest, and it com-

248 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COM 3 ATjVNT.
mands a view of all the surrounding country. There are
cleared patches up its sides, and the highest of these con
stitutes the farm of a clergyraan, after whom the erainence
is soraetiraes called " Slaughter's Mountain." At its base
lie a few pleasant farms ; and a shallow rivulet or creek,
called Cedar Eun, crosses the road between the mountain
and Culpepper. Upon the mountain side Jackson had
placed his batteries, and his infantry lay in dense thickets
and belts of woods before the hill and on each side of it.
The position was a powerful, though not an impregnable
one ; for batteries might readily be pushed up the slope, and
our infantry had often ascended steeper eminences. But an
opposing army scattered about the meadow lands below,
would find its several components exposed to shot and
shell, thrown from points three or four hundred feet' above
them. When it had been discovered that the enemy had -antici
pated us in seizing this strong position, word was at once
despatched to Banks and Siegel to bring up their columns
without delay. The brigade of General Crawford was
raarched through Culpepper at noon on Friday ; and that
afternoon, foot-sore, but enthusiastic, regiments began to
arrive in rapid succession. ^
I had been passing the morning of Friday with Colonel
Bowman, a modest and capable gentleman, when the seren
ity of our converse was disturbed by a sergeant, who rode
into camp with orders for a promi)t advance in light march
ing order. In a twinkling all the camps in the vicinity were
ffeserted, and the roads were so blocked with soldiers on my
return, that I was obliged to ride through fields.
I trotted rapidly into the village, and witnessed a scene
exciting and martial beyond anything which I had remarked
with the Army of Virginia. Eegiraents were pouring by all
the roads and lanes into the main street, and the spectacle
of thousands of bayonets, extending as far as the eye could
reach, was enhanced by the music of a score of bands.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 249
throbbing all at the same moraent with wild rausic. The
orders of officers rang out fitfully in the din, and when the
steel shifted frora shoulder to shoulder, it was like looking
down a long sparkling wave. Above the confusion of the
time, the various nativities of volunteers roared their na
tional ballads. " St. Patrick's Day," intermingled with the
weird refrain of " Bonnie Dundee," and snatches of Gerraan
sword-songs were drowned by the thrilling chorus of the
" Star-Spangled Banner." Then sorae stentor would strike
a stave of —
" John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave,"
and the wild, raournful rausic would be caught up by all, —
Gerraans, Celts, Saxons, till the little town rang with the
thunder of voic(^, all uttering the narae of the grira old
Moloch, whora — more than any one save Hunter — Vir
ginia hates. Suddenly, as if by rehearsal, all hats would
go up, all bayonets toss and glisten, and huzzas would
deafen the winds, while the horses reared upon their
haunches and the sabres rose and fell. Then, column by
column, the raasses passed eastward, while the prisoners in
the Court-House cupola looked down, and the citizens
peeped in fear through crevices of windows.
Being unattached to the staff of any General at the tirae,
and therefore at liberty as a raere spectator, I rode rapidly
after the troops, passed the foreraost regiraents, and unwit
tingly kept to the left, which I did not discover in the ex
citeraent of the ride, till my horse was foaming and my face
furrowed with heat drops. I saw that the way had been
little travelled, and inquiry at a log farra-house, some dis
tance further, satisfied me that I had raistaken the way.
Two men in coarse brown suits, were chopping wood here,
and they informed me, with an oath, that the last soldiers
seen in the neighborhood, had been Confederate pickets. A
by-road enabled me to recover the proper route, and from

250 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
the top of a hill overlooking Culpepper, I had a view of
the hamlet, nestling in its hollow ; the roads entering it,
black with troops, and all the slopes covered with wagon-
trains, whose white canopies seemed infinite. The skies
were gorgeously dyed over the snug cottages and raodest
spires ; sorae far woods were folded in a pleasant haze ;
and the blue raountains lifted their huge backs, voluming in
the distance, like some boundary for humanity, with a hap
pier land beyond. Here I raight have stood, a few raonths
before, and heard the church Ijells ; and the trees around
me might have been" musical with birds. But now the par
sons and the choristers were gone ; the scaffold was erected,
the axe bare, and with a good by glance at the world and
man, some hundreds of -wretches were to drop into eter
nity. We have all read of the guillotine in other lands ; it
was now before me in my own. 0
As I passed into the highway again, and riding through
narrow passages, grazing officers' knees, turning vicious
battery horses, winding in and out of woods, making de
tours through pasture fields, leaping ditches, and so mak
ing perilous progress, I passed many friends who hailed me
cheerfully, — here a brigadier-general who waved his hand,
or a colonel who saluted, or a staff officer who rode out and
exchanged inquiries or greetings, or a sergeant who winked
and laughed. These were sorae of the men whose bodies
I was to stir to-morrow with my foot, when the eyes that
shone upon me now would be swollen and ghastly.
Sorae of the privates seeing me in plain clothes, as I had
joined the array nierely as a visitor and with no idea of see
ing imraediate service there, mistook me for a newspaper
correspondent, which in one sense I was ; and I was greeted
with such cries as —
" Our Special Artist 1 "
" Our Own Correspondent ! "
" Give our Captain a setting up, you sir I "
"Puff our Colonel!"

/
CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 251
" Give me a good obituary ! "
" Where's your pass, bub ? "
" Halloo ! Jenkins. Three cheers for Jenkins ! "
I shall not soon forget one fellow, who planted hiraself
in ray path (his regiraent had halted), aud leaning upon his
rausket looked steadily into my eyes.
" Ef I had a warrant for the devil," he said, " I'd arrest
that feller."
Many of the soldiers were pensive and thoughtful ; but
the raass were marching to their funerals with boyish out
cries, apparently anxious to forget the responsibilities of
the time.
"Let's sing, boys." "Oh! Get out, or I'll belt you
over the snout." " Halloo ! Pardner, is there water over
there?" " Three groans for old Jeff!" "Hip-hip — hoo-
roar ! Hi ! Hi 1 "
A continual explosion of small arras, in the shape of epi
thets, jests, imitations of the cries of sheep, cows, raules,
and roosters, and snatches of songs, enlivened the raarch.
If soraething interposed, or a halt was ordered, the raen
would throw theraselves in the dust, wipe their foreheads,
drink frora their canteens, gossip, grin, and shout confus
edly, and some sought opportunities to straggle off, so that
the regiments were raaterially decimated before they reached
the field. The leading officers maintained a dignity and a
reserve, and reined their horses together in places, to
confer. At one tirae, a private soldier came out to me,
presenting a scrap of paper, and asked me to scrawl him a
line, which he would dictate. It was as follows : —
" My dear Mary, we are going into action soon, and I send
-you my love. Kiss baby, and if I am not Icilled Iwill write to
you after fhe fight." The raan asked me to mail the scrap at
the first opportunity ; but the same post which carried his
simple billet, carried also his name among the rolls of the
dead. At five o'clock I overtook Crawford's brigade, drawn up

252 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
in front of a fine girdle of tiraber, in a grass field, and on
the edge of Cedar Creek. Their arabulances had been un
hitched, and ranged in a row against the woods and the
soldiers were soon forraed in line of battle, extending across
the road, with their faces toward the mountain. In this
order they moved through: the creek, and disappeared be
hind the ridge of a cornfield. The hill towered in front, but
with the naked eye I could distinguish only a speck of float
ing something above the roof of Slaughter's white house.
This was said to be a flag, though I did not believe it ; and
as there were no evidences of any enemy, which I could de
termine, I turned my attention to the immediate necessities
of myself and my horse. A granary lay at a little distance,
and-as I was hastening thither, a trooper came along with a
blanket full of corn. Fortuitously, he dropped about a
dozen ears, which I secured, and hitched my animal to a
tree, where he munched until I had fallen asleep. The
latter event happened in this wise.
I had observed a slight person in the uniform of a sur
geon. He was dividing a large lump of pork at the time,
and three great crackers lay before hira. I approached and
introduced rayself, and in a few rainutes I was a partial
proprietor of the meat, and he a recipient of sorde drink.
The same person directed me to occupy a shelf of the am
bulance, and when we lay down together he narrated some of
his experiences in Martinsburg, when the Confederates occu
pied the place after Banks's retreat. He had charge ofa hos
pital at that time, and witnessed the entrance of the Confed
erate army. The wildness of the people was unbounded, he
said, and all who had given so rauch as a drop of cold water
to the invaders were pointed out and execrated. The proper
ties of a few, said to be Unionists, were endangered ; and
ruffianly soldiers clirabed to the windows of the hospital,
hooting and taunting the sick. Not to be outdone in bitter
ness, the tenants flung up their crutches and cheered for
the "Union," — that darling idea, which has marshalled a

CAMPAIGNS OP A , NON-COMBATANT. 253
million of men and filled hecatombs with its champions. In
a few days the Federals took possession of the town anew,
and the Southern element was in turn oppressed. This is
Civil War, — raore cruel than the excesses of hereditary
enemies. • A year before these people of the Shenandoah
were fellow-countrymen of the soldiery they conteraned.
23

CHAPTER XXIV.

CEDAR MOUNTAIN.

There being nothing to eat in the vicinity of the ambu
lances, I mounted anew at five o'clock and rode back toward
Culpepper. No portion of the troops of Crawford were
visible now, and only some gray smoke moved up the side
of the mountain. A few stragglers were bathing their faces
in Cedar Creek, and some railes in the rear lay several of
McDowell's brigades under arras. Their rauskets were
stacked along the sides of the road, the men lay sleepily
upon the, ground, — company by company, each in its
proper place, — the field-officers gossiping together, and the
colors upright and unfurled. I was stopped, all the way
along the lines, and interrogated as to what was happening
in front.
" Any Eeb-bils out yonder ? " asked a grim, snappish
Colonel. " Guess they don't mean to fight before breakfast ! "
blurted a Captain. '
" Wish they'd cut away, anyway, if they goin' to ! "
muttered a chorus of privates.
At the village there was nothing . to be purchased,
although some sutlers' stores lay at the depot, guarded by
Provost officers. I persuaded a negro to give me a mess of
almost raw pork,'-and a woman, with a child at the breast,
cooked rae sorae biscuit. There were raany civilians and
idle officers in the town, and the streets were lined with
(254)

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 255
cavalry. Mr. Paine, the landlord, was losing the reranant
ofhis wits, and the young ladies were playing the " Bonnie
Blue Flag," and laughing satirically at some young officers
who listened. The correspondents began to show thera
selves. in force, and a young fellow whora I may call Chitty,
representing a provincial journal, greatly araused me, with
the expression of fears that there might be no engagement
after all. Chitty was an attorney, who had forsaken a very
moderate practice, for a press connection, and he inforraed
rae, in confidence, that he was gathering materials for a his
tory of the war. By reason of his attention to this weighty
project, he failed to do any reporting, and as his mind was
not very well balanced, he was commonly taken to be a
simpleton. As there was nobody else to talk to, I amused
rayself with Chitty during the forenoon, and he narrated to
me some doubtful intrigues which had varied his career in
Piedmont. But Chitty had mingled in no battles, and now
that a contest was about to take, place, his heart warmed in
anticipation. He asked me if the hottest fighting would not
probably occur on the right, and intimated, in that event,
his desire to carry despatches through the thickest of the
fray. Death was welcome to Chitty if he could so distin
guish himself. Between Chitty and a nap in a wagon, 1
raanaged to loiter out the morning, and at three o'clock, a
cannon peal, so close that it shook the houses, brought my
horse upon his haunches. For awhile I did not leave the
village. Cannon upon cannon exploded ; the young ladies
ceased their mirth ; the landlord staggered with white lips
into the air, and after a couple of hours, I heard the signal
that I knew so well  a volley of musketry. Full of all
the old impulses, I climbed into the saddle, and spurred my
horse towards the battle-field.
The ride over six miles of clay road was a capital school
for my pony. Every hoof-fall brought him closer to the
cannon, and the sound had become familiar when he reached
the scene. At four o'clock, the musketry was close and

256 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
effective beyond anything I had known, and now and then
I could see, from secure places, the spurts of white cannon-
sraoke far up the side of the mountain. The action was
commenced by emulous skirmishers, who crawled from the
woodsides, and annoyed each other from coverts of ridge,
stump, and stone heap. A large number of Southern rifle
men then threw themselves into a corner of wood, consid
erably advanced from their raain position. Their flre was
so destructive that General Banks felt it necessary to order
a charge. Two brigades, when the signal was given,
marched in line of battle, out of a wood, and charged across
a field of broken ground toward the projecting comer. As
soon as they appeared, sharpshooters darted up from a
stretch of scrub cedars on their right, and a battery mowed
them down by an oblique fire from the left. The guns up
the raountain side threw shells with beautiful exactness, and
the concealed rifle-raen in front poured in deadly showers
of bullet and ball. As the men fell by dozens out of line,
the survivors closed up the gaps, and pressed forward gaU
lantly. The ground was uneven, however, and solid order
conld not be observed throughout. At length, when they
had gained a brookside at the very edge of the wood, the
column staggered, quailed, fell into disorder, and then fell
back. Sorae of the raore desperate dashed singly into the
thicket, bayoneting their enemies, and falling in turn in
the fierce grapple. Others ofthe Confederates ran from the
wood, and engaged hand to hand with antagonists, and, in
places, a score of combatants raet sturdily upon the plain,
lunging with knife and sabre bayonet, striking with clubbed
musket, or discharging revolvers. But at last the broken
lines regained the shelter of the timber, and there was a
raoraentary lull in the thunder.
For a time, each party kept in the edges of the timber,
firing at will, but the Confederates were moving forward in
masses by detours, until some thousands of them stood in
the places of the few who were at first isolated. Distinct

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 257
charges were now made, and a large body of Federals at
tempted to capture the battery before Slaughter's house,
while separate brigades charged by front and flank upon the
impenetrable timber. The horrible results of the previous effort
were repeated ; the Confederates preserved their position,
and, at nightfall, the Federals fell back a mile or more.
From fifteen hundred to two thousand of the latter were
slain or wounded, and, though the heat of the battle had
lasted not raore than two hours, nearly four thousand men
upon both sides were maimed or dead. The valor of the
combatants in either cause was unquestionable. But no
troops in the world could have driven the Confederates out
of the impregnable mazes of the wood. It was an error ttT
expose columns of troops upon an open plain, in the face of
iraperceptible sharpshooters. The batteries should have
shelled the thickets, and the infantry should have retained
their concealraent. The raost disciplined troops of Europe
would not have availed in a country of bog, barren, ditch,
creek, forest, and mountain. Compared to the bare plain of
Waterloo, Cedar Mountain was like the antediluvian world,
when the surface was broken by volcanic fire into chasms
and abysses. In this battle, the Confederate batteries,
along the mountain side, were arranged in the form of a
crescent, and, when the solid masses charged up the hUl,
they were butchered by enfilading fires. On the Confeder
ate part, a thorough knowledge of the country was mani
fest, and the best possible disposition of forces and means ;
on the side of the Federals, there was zeal -without discre
tion, and gallantry without generalship.
During the action, "Stonewall" Jackson occupied a
commanding position on the side of the mountain, where,
glass in hand, he observed every change- of position, and
directed all the operations. General Banks was indefatig
able and courageous ; but he was left to fight the whole
battle, and not a regiraent of the large reserve in his rear,
carae forward to succor or relieve him. As usual, McDow-
22*

258 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
ell was cursed by all sides, and some of Banks's soldiers
threatened to shoot him. But the unpopular Commander
had no defence to make, and said nothing to clear up the
doubts relative to hira. He exposed himself repeatedly,
and so did Pope. The latter rode to the front at nightfall,
— for what purpose no one could say, as he had been in
Culpepper during the whole afternoon, — and he barely
escaped being captured. The loss of Federal officers was
very heavy. Fourteen coraraissioned officers were killed
and" captured out of one regiment. Sixteen commissioned
officers only reraained in four regiraents. One General was
taken prisoner and several were wounded. A large
Uuraber of field-officers were slain.
During the progress of the fight I galloped from point to
point along the rear, but could nowhere obtain a panoraraic
view. The coraraon sentiraent of civilians, that it is always
possible to see a battle, is true of isolated contests only.
Even the troops engStged, know little of the occurrences
around them, and I have been assured by many soldiers
that they have fought a whole day without so much as a
glimpse of an enemy. The sraoke and dust conceal objects,
and where the greatest execution is done, the antagonists
have frequently fired at a line of sraoke, behind which
colurans may, or may not have been posted.
It was not till nightfall, when the Federals gave up the
contested ground, and fell back to some cleared fields, that
I heard anything of the manner of action and the resulting
losses. As soon as the firing ceased, the ambulance corps
went ahead and began to gather iip the wounded. As
many of these as could walk passed to the rear on foot, and
the spectacle at eight o'clock was of a terrible character.
The roads were packed -with ambulances, creaking under
fearful weights, aud rod by rod, the teams were stopped, to
accommodate other sufferers who had fallen or fainted on the
walk. A crippled man would cling to the tail of a wagon,
while the tongue would be burdened with two, sustaining

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 259
themselves by the backs of the horses. Water was sought
for everywhere, and all were hungry. I met at sundry
times, friends who had passed me, hopeful and humorous
the day before, now crawling wearily with a shattered leg
or durab with a stiff and dripping jaw. To realize the
horror of the night, iraagine a coramon clay road, in a quiet,
rolling country, packed with bleeding people, — the fences
down, horsemen riding through the fields, wagons blocking
the way, reinforcements in dark columns hurrying up, the
shouting of the well to the ill, and the feeble replies, — in a
word, recall that elder time when the " earth was filled with
violence," and add to the idea that the tirae was in the
night. I assumed my old role of writing the names of the
wounded, but when, at nine o'clock, the 10th Maine regi
raent — a fragraent of the prou.d column which passed me
in the morning — returned, I hailed Colonel Beale, and
reined with him into a clover-field, the files following
wearily. Tramping, through the tall garbage, with few
words, and those spoken in low tones, we stopped at length
in a sort of basin, with the ground rising on every side of
us. The men were placed in line, and the Company Ser
geants called the rolls. Sorae of the replies were thrilling,
but all were prosaic : —
" Sraith ! "
"Smithe fell at the first fire. Sergeant. Bill, here, saw
him go down."
"Sturgis!" " Sam's in the ambulance, wi' his thigh broke. I don't
believe he'll live. Sergeant ! "
"Thompson!"
"Dead."" Vinton ! "
" Yar ! (feebly said) four fingers shot off! "
In this way, the long lists were read over, while the sur-
¦vivors chatted, laughed, and disputed, talking of the inci-

260 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
dents of the day. Most of the men lay down in the clover,
and some started off in couples to procure water. The
field-officers gave me some items relative to the confiict, and
as they were ordered to remain here, I resolved to pass the
night with them. Obtaining a great fence-rail, I lashed my
horse to it by his halter, and, reraoving his saddle and.
bridle, left hira free to graze in the vicinity. Then I un
folded my camp-bed, covered myself with a rubber blanket,
and continued to listen to the conversation. Of course, ac
cusations, bitter mutterings, moodiness, and raelancholy,
prevailed. I heard these for sorae time, interspersed with
sententious eulogies upon particular persons, and references
to isolated events. The evening was one of the pleasantest
of the year, in all that nature could contribute ; a fine star
light, a transparent atmosphere, a coolness, and a fragrance
of sweet-clover blossoms. 1 had laid my head upon my
arm, and shut my eyes, and felt drowsiness come upon rae,
when something hurtled through the air, and another gun
boomed on the stillness. A shell, describing an arc of fire,
fell sorae distance to our left, and, in a moraent, a second
shell passed directly over our heads.
"  !" said an officer; "have they raoved a battery
so close ? See ! it is just at the end of this field ! "
I looked back ! At the top of the basin in which we lay,
soraething fiashed up, throwing a glare upon the woody
background, and a shell, followed l^ a shock, crashed ric
ochetting, directly in a line with us, but leaped, fortunately,
above us, and continued its course far beyond.
"They mean 'em for us," said the same voice; "they
see these- lights where the fools have been warming their
coffee. Halloo ! "
Another glare of fire revealed the grouped men and
horses around the battery, and for a moment I thought the
missile had struck among us. There was a splutter, as of
shivering raetal flying about, and, with a sort of intuition,
the whole regiraent rose and ran. I started to my feet and

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 261
looked for my horse. His ears were erect, his eyeballs dis
tended, and his nostrils were tremulous with fright. A
fifth shell, so perfectly in range that I held my breath, and
felt ray heart grow cold, carae toward and passed rae, and,
with a toss of his head, the nag flung up the rail as if it had
been a feather. He seeraed literally to juggle it, and it
fiitted here and there, so that I dared not approach hira. A
favorable opportunity at length ensued, and I seized the
aniraal by his halter. He was now wild with panic, and
sprang toward rae as if to traraple rae. In vain I endeav
ored to pull hira toward the saddle. Fresh projectiles
darted beside and above us, and the last of these seeraed to
pass so close that I could have reached and touched it.
The panic took possession of rae. I grasped ray carap-bed,
rather by instinct than by choice, and, holding it desperately
under my arra, took to ray heels.
It was a long distance to the bottora of the clover-field,
and the swift iron followed rae remorselessly. At one mo
ment, when a shell burst full in my face, half blinding rae,
I felt weak to faintness, but still I ran. I had wit enough
to avoid the high road, which I knew to be packed with fu
gitives, and down which, I properly surmised, the enemy
would send his steady messengers. Once I fell into a ditch,
and the breath was knocked out of my body, but I rolled
over upon ray feet with marvellous sprightliness, till, at
last, when I gained a corn-field, my attention was diverted
to a strange, rattling noise behind rae. I turned and looked.
It was my horse, the rail dangling between his legs, his
eyes on fire in the night. As we regarded each other, a
shell burst between us. He dashed away across the inhos
pitable fields, and I fell into the high road among the routed.
Expletives like these ensued : —
" Sa-a-ay ! Hoss ! Pardner I Are you going to ride over
this wounded feller ? "
"Friend, have you a drop of water for a man that's
fainted here ? "

262 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
" Halloo ! Buster I Keep that bayonit out o' my eye, if
you please ! "
" Where's Gen. Banks ? I hearn say he's a prisoner."
"I do' know!"
" Was we licked, do you think ? "
"No! We warn't nothin' o' the kind. Siegel's out
flanked 'era and okkepies the field. A raan jus' told me
so." "Huzza! Hearties, cheer up ! Siegel's took the field,
and Stonewall Jackson's dead."
"Three cheers for Siegel."
"Hoorooar, hoor  "
"Oh! Get out! That's all blow. Don't try stuff me I
We're lathered ; that's the long and shawt of it."
" Is that so ? Boys, I guess we're beat ! "
Such was the character of exclamations that ran here and
there, and after a little volley of them had been let off, a
long pause succeeded, when only the sighs of the injured
and the tramp of men and nags broke the silence. Over
head the starlight and the blue sky ; on either side the roll
ing, shadowy fields ; and wrapping the horizon in a gray,
grisly girdle, the reposing woods plentiful with dew. Na
ture was putting forth all her still, sweet charms, as if to
make men witness the damned contrast of their own wrath,
violence, and murder. Even thus, perhaps, — I reasoned,
— in the days of old, did the broken multitudes of Xerxes
return by the shores of the golden Archipelago ; and the
Hellespont shone as peacefully as these silvernesses of
earth and firmament. The dulness of history became in
vested with new intelligence. I filled in the details of a
thousand routs conned in school-days, when only the dry
outlines lay before me. They were mysteries before, and
lacked the warmness of life' and truth ; but now I saw
them 1 The armor and the helraets fell away, with all other
trappings of custom, language, and ceremony. This pale
giant, who walked behind the ambulance, leaning upon the

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 263
footboard, was the limping Achilles, with the arrow of
Paris festering in his heel. This ancient veteran, with his
back to the field, was the fugitive ^neas, leaving Troy be
hind. And these, around me, belonged to the columns of
Barbazona, scattered at Legnano by the revengeful Mila
nese. Cobweb, and thick dust, and faded parchment had
somewhat softened those elder events ; but in their day
they were tangible, practical, and prosaic, like this scene.
Years will roll o-i^er this, as over those, and folks will read
at firesides, half doubtfully, half wonderingly, the story of
this bafflement, when no fragment of its ruin remains. It
was a profound feeling that I should thus be walking down
the great retreat of time, and that the occurrences around
me should be remembered forever !
There were a few prisoners in the mass, walking before
cavalry-men. Nobody interfered with them, and they were
not in a position to feel elated. Now and then, when we
reached an ambulance, the fugitives would press around it
to inquire if any of their friends were within. Eough
recognitions would ensue, as thus : —
" Bobby, is that you, back there ? — Bobby Baker ? "
" Who is it ? " (feebly uttered.)
"Me, Bobby — Josh Wiggins. Are you shot bad, Bob
by?" " Shot in the thigh ; think the bone's broke. You
haven't got a drop of water, have you ? "
"No, Bobby; wish I had. Have any more of our boys
been hurt that you know of ? "
" Switzer is dead ; Bill Cringle and Jonesy are prisoners ;
' Pud ' White is in the arabulance ahead ; ' Fol ' Thompson's
lost an arra ; that's all I know."
When we had gone two railes or raore, we found a pro
vost coluran drawn across the road, and a mounted officer
interrogating all who attempted to pass : —
" Stop there ! You're not wounded."
" Yes, I ara."

264 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
" Pass on ! Halt boy 1 Go back. Men, close up there.
Stop that boy."
"I am sun-struck, Major."
" You lie ! Drive him back. Go back, now ! "
Beyond this the way was comparatively clear ; but as I
knew that other guards held the road further on, I passed
to the right, and with the hope of finding a rill of water,
went across some grass fields, keeping toward the low
places. The fields were very still, and I heard only the
subdued noises wafted frora the road ; but suddenly I found
myself surrounded by raen. They were lying in groups in
the tall grass, and started up suddenly, like the clansmen of
Eoderick Dhu. At first I thought myself a prisoner, and
these some cunning Confederates, who had lain in wait.
But, to my surprise, they were Federal uniforms, and were
simply skulkers from various regiments, who had been hid
ing here during the hours of battle. Some of these miser
able wretches asked me the particulars of the fight, and
when told of the defeat, rauttered that they were not to be
hood-winked and slaughtered.
"I was sick, anyway," said one fellow, "and felt like
droppin' on the road."
" I didn't trust ray colonel," said another ; " he ain't no
soldier." " I'ra tired of the war, anyhow," said a third, " and ray
time's up soon ; so I shan't have my head blo-wn off."
As I progressed, dozens of these men appeared ; the fields
were strewn with them ; a true man would rather have been
lying with the dead on the field of carnage, than here,
araong the craven and base. I carae to a spring at last, and
the stragglers surrounded it in levies. One of thera gave
me a cup to dip sorae of the crystal, and a prayerful feeling
came over me as the cooling draught fell over ray dry palate
and parched throat. Eegaining the road, I encountered
reinforceraents coraing rapidly out of Culpepper, and araong
thera was the Qth New York. My friend. Lieutenant Dra-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 265
per, recognized me, and called out that he should see rae on
the morrow, if he was not killed meantime. Culpepper was
filling with fugitives when I passed up the main street, and
they were sprinkled along the sidewalks, gossiping with
each other. The wounded were being carried into some of
the dwellings, and when I reached the Virginia Hotel, many
of thera lay upon the porch. I placed my blanket on a
clean place, threw myself down exhaustedlj, and dropped
to sleep directly.

CHAPTEE XXV.
OUT -WITH A BURYING PAETY.
When I rose, at ten o'clock on the raorning of Sunday,
August 10, the porch was covered with wounded people.
Some fierce sunbeams were gliding under the roof, shining
in the poor fellows' eyes, and they were stirring wearily,
though asleep. Picking my way among the prostrate
figures, I resorted to the pump in the rear ofthe tavern for
the purpose of bathing ray face. • A soldier stood there on
guard, and he refused to give rae so much as a draught of
water. The wounded needed every drop, and there were
but a few wells in the town. I strolled through the main
street, now crowded with unfortunates, and pausing at the
Court House, found the seat of justice transrauted to a head
quarters for surgeons, where amputations were being per-
f6rmed. Continuing by a street to the left, I carae to the
depot, and here the ambulances were gathered with their
scores of inmates. A tavern contiguous to the railway was
also a hospital, but in the basement I found the transpor
tation agents at breakfast, and they gave me a bountiful
meal. It was here arranged between rayself and an old friend
— a newspaper correspondent who had recently married,
and whose wife awaited hira at Willard's in Washington —
that he should proceed at once to New York with the out
line of the fight, and that I should follow hira next day
(having, indeed, to report for duty and fresh orders at
(266)

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 267
Head-quarters of the array in Washington, ) with particulars
and the lists of killed. I coraraenced ray part of the labors
at once, employing three persons to assist me, and we dis
tricted Culpepper, so that no one should interfere with the
grounds of the other. My own part of the work embraced
both hotel-hospitals, the names and statements of the prison
ers of the Court House loft, and interviews with some of the
generals and colonels who lay at various private residences.
The business was not a desirable one ; for hot hospital rooms
were now absolutely reeking, and many of the victims were
asleep. It would be inhuman to awaken these ; but in
many cases those adjacent knew nothing, and with all as
siduity the rolls must be iraperfect. I found one raan who
had undergone a sort of mental paralysis and could not tell
me his own narae. However, I groped through the several
charabers where the bleeding littered the bare floors. Some
of them were eating voraciously, and buckets of' ice-water
were being carried to and fro that all might drink. Some
male nurses were fanning the sleeping people with boughs
of cedar ; but the flies filled the ceiling, and, attracted by
the wounds, they kept up a constant buzzing. I imagined
that mortification would rapidly ensue in this - broiling at
mosphere. A couple of trains were being prepared below,
to transport the sufferers to Washington, and frora time to
time individuals were carried into the air and deposited in
common freight-cars upon the hard floors. Here they were
compelled to wait till late in the evening, for no trains were
allowed to leave the village during the day. At the Vir
ginia Hotel, I visited, among others, the room in which I
had lodged when I first came to Culpepper. Eight persons
now occupied it, and three of thera lay across the bed. I
took the first raan's narae, and as the man next to him
seemed to be asleep, I asked the first man to nudge hira
gently. " I don't think he is alive," said the raan ; " he hi^sn't
moved since midnight. I've spoken to him already."

268 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
I pulled a blanket frora the head of the figure, and the
tangled hair, yellow skin, and stiffened jaw told all the
story. The other raan looked uneasily into the face of the
corpse and then lay down with his back toward it.
" I hope they'll take it out," said he, "I don't want to
sleep beside it another night."
The guard at the Court House allowed rae to ascend to
the loft, and the prisoners — forty or fifty in nuraber —
clustered around me. They had received, a short time be
fore, their day's allotment of crackers and bread, and some
of thera were sitting iu the cupola, with their bare legs
hanging over the rails. They were anxious to have their
naraes printed, and I learned frora the less cautious the
naraes of the brigades to which they belonged. Before I left
the roora I had obtained the nuraber of regiments in Jack
son's coraraand and the naraes of his brigadier-generals.
Some prisoners arrived while I was noting these matters.
They had been sent to pick up arms, canteens, cartridge-
boxes, etc., from the battle-field, and sorae of our cavalry
had ridden them down and captured them. They were a
little discomposed, but said, for the raost part, that they
were weary of the war and glad to be in custody. As a
rule, Northern and Southern troops have the same general
raanners and appearances. These were more ragged than
any Federals I had ever known, and their appetites wero
voracious. I found General Geary, a Pennsylvania brigade Com
mander, in the dwelling of a lady near the end ofthe town.
He had received a bullet in the arm, and, I believe, submit
ted to amputation afterward. He was a tall, athletic man,
upwards of six feet in height, and a citizen of one of the
mountainous interior counties of the Quaker State. His life
had been raarked by rauch adventure, and he had been
elevated to many important civil positions in various quar
ters of the Eepublic. He occupied a leading place in the
Mexican war, and was afterward Mayor of San Francisco

CAJVIPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 269
and Governor of Kansas. He acted with the Southern wing
of the Democratic party, and was discreetly arabitious, pro
raoting the agricultural interests of his commonwealth, and
otherwise fulfilling useful civil functions. He was a fine
exemplar of the American gentleraan, preserving the better
individualities of his countrymen, but discarding those
grosser traits, which have given us an unenviable name
abroad. Geary could not do a mean thing, and his courage
came so naturally to him that he did not consider it any
cause of pride. The bias of party, which in America dis
eases the best natures, had in some degree affected the
General. He was prone to go with his party in any event,
when often, I think, his fine intelligence would have
promped hira to an independent course. But I wish that all
our leading men possessed his manliness, for then more dig
nity and self-respect, and less "smartness," might be ap
parent in our social and political organizations.
He was lying on his back, with his shattered arm band
aged, and resting on his breast. Twitches of keen pain
shot across his face now and then, but he received me with
a simple courtesy that made his patience thrice heroic. He
did not speak of himself or his services, though I knew both
to be eminent ; but McDowell had insulted him, as he rode
disabled frora the field, and Geary felt the sting of the word
raore than the bullet. He had ventured to say to McDowell
that the Eeserves were badly needed in front, and the
proud " Eegular " had answered the officious " Volunteer,"
to the effect that he knew his own business. Not the least
araong the causes of the North's inefficiency will be found
this ill feeling between the professional and the civil soldiery.
A Eegular conterans a Volunteer ; a Volunteer hates a
Eegular. I visited General Augur — badly wounded — in
the drawing-room of the hotel, and paused a moment to
watch Colonel Donnelly, mortally wounded^ lying on a
spread in the hall. The latter lingered a day in fearful
agony ; but he W9,s a powerful mah in physique, and he
23*

270 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
fought with death through a bloody sweat, never moaning
nor complaining, till he fell into a blessed torpidity, and so
yielded up his soul. The shady little town was a sort of
Golgotha now. Feverish eyes began to burn into one's
heart, as he passed along the sidewalks. Eed hospital flags,
hung like regalia from half the houses. A table for ampu
tations was set up in the open air, and nakedness glared
hideously upon the sun. How often have they brought out
corpses in plain boxes of pine, and shut them away without
sign, or cereraony, or tears, driving a long stake above the
headboard. The ambulances carae and went, till the line
seemed stretching to the crack of doom ; while, as in con
teraplation of further raurder, the white-covered araraunition-
teams creaked southward, and mounted Provosts charged
upon the skulkers, driving them to a pen, whence they were
forwarded to their regiments. Old Mr. Paine, the landlord,
tottered up to me, with a tear in his eye, and said —
" My good Lord, sir ! Who is responsible for this ? "
He did not mean to suggest argument. It was the lan
guage of a human heart pitying its brotherhood.
At twelve o'clock I started anew for the field,- and fell in
with Captain Chitty on the way. He stated that his cour
age during the fight surpassed his most heroic expectations,
and added, in an undertone, that he was deliberating as to
whether he should allow his name to be mentioned officially,
since several military men were urging that honor upon hira.
I dissuaded Chitty from this intent, upon the ground that
his reputation for modesty might be sacrificed. Chitty at
once said that he would take my advice. We encountered
Surgeon Ball, of Ohio, after a tirae, and he inforraed us that
a day's arraistice had been agreed upon, to allow for the
burial of the dead. The work of interment was already
commenced in front, and the surgeon had been ordered to
see to the wounded, sorae of whora still lay on the places
where they fell. Hfe allowed us to '^accorapany hira in the
capacity of cadets, but we first diverged a little frora the

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 271
road, that he might obtain his portmanteau of instruraents.
I fell into a little difficulty here, by unwittingly asking
aloud of the 28th Pennsylvania regiment, if that was not
the organization which hid itself during the fight ? The
28th had been ordered, on the raorning of Saturday, to oc
cupy Telegraph Mbuntain, — an elevation in the rear of
Cedar Mountain, — which was used for a Federal signal-
post. Nobody having notified the 28th to return to camp,
they remained on the raountain, passively witnessing the
carnage, and came away in the night. But although my
remark was jestingly said, the knot of soldiers who heard
it were intensely excited. They spoke of taking me " off
that hoss," and called me a New York " Snob," who
" wanted his head punched." This irate feeling may be
attributed to the rivalry which exists between the " Era
pire " and the " Keystone " States, the latter being very
jealous of the forraer, and clairaing to have sent raore troops
to the war than any other comraonwealth. The 28th volun
teers doubtless expected a terrific onslaught frora the next
issue of the Philadelphia papers.
The reserve, which had lain sorae miles in the rear the
previous evening, were now raassed close to the field, but
in the woods, that the eneray might not count their num
bers from his high position. Stopping at times to chat with
brother officers, at last I reached the meadow whence I had
been driven the previous evening. I looked for my nag in
vain. One soldier told me that he had seen him at daylight
liraping along the high road ; but after sundry wild-goose
chases, I gave up the idea of recovering hira.
At last I passed the outlying batteries,, with their black
muzzles scanning the battle-ground, and ascending the clo
ver field, came upon the site of the battery which had so
discomfited us the previous night. A signal vengeance
had overtaken it. Some splinters of wheel and an over
turned caisson, with eight horses lying in a group, — their
hoofs extended like index boards, their necks elongated

272 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
along the ground, and their bodies swollen — were the re
sults of a single shell trained upon the battery by a cool
artillerist. Beyond, the road and fields were strown with
knapsacks, haversacks, jackets, canteens, cartridge-boxes,
shoes, bayonets, knives, buttons, belts, blankets, girths, and
sabres. Now and then a mule or a horse lay at the road
side, with the clay saturated beneath him ; and some of the
tree-tops, in the depth of the woods, were scarred, split,
and barked, as if the lightning had blasted them. Now
passing a disabled wagon, bow marking a dropped horse
shoe, now turning a capsized ambulance, now regarding a
perfect -wilderness of old clothes, we emerged frora the tira
ber at last, and carae to the place where I had slept on the
eve of the battle. A hurricane had apparently swept the
country here, and thc fences had been transported bodily.
Sometimes the ground looked, for limited areas, as if there
had been a rain of kindling-wood ; and there were furrows
in the clay, like those made by some great mole which had
ploughed into the bowels of the earth. All the tree boles
were pierced and perforated, and boughs had been severed
so that they littered the way. Cedar Creek ran merrily
across what had been the road, — the waters limpid and cool
as before, — and when I passed beyond, I entered the region
of dead men. Some poisonous Upas had seemingly grown
here, so that adventurers were prostrated by its exhalations.
A tributary rivulet formed with the creek a triangular en
closure of ground, where raost of the Federals had fallen.
To the left of the road stood a cornfield ; to the right a
stubble-field, dotted with stone heaps : deep woods formed
the background to these, and scrub-timber, irregularly dis
posed, the foreground. On the right of the stubble lay a
great stretch of "barren," spotted with dwarf cedars, and
on the left of the cornfield stood a white farm-house, with
orchards and outbuildings ; beyond, the creek had hollowed
a ravine among the hills, and the far distance was bounded
by the mountains on the Eapidan. In the immediate front.

CABIPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 273
towered Cedar Mountain, with woods at its base ; and the
roadway in which I stood, lost itself a little way on in the
mazes of the thicket. Looking down one of the rows of
corn, I saw the first corpse — the hands flung stiffiy back,
the feet set stubbornly, the chin pointing upward, the fea
tures losing their sharpness, the skin blackening, the eyes
great and white —
" A heap of death — a chaos of cold clay."
Tfuming into the cornfield, we came upon one man with a
spade, and another man lying at his feet. He was digging
a grave, and when we paused to note the operation, he
touched his cap : —
"Pardner o' mine," he said, indicating the body ; "him
and I fit side by side, and we agreed, if it could be done,
to bury each other. There ain't no sich man as that lost
out o' the array, private or officer, — -with all respect to
you." It was a eulogy that soundeii as if raore deserved, be
cause it was horaely. There are sorae that I have read,
much finer, but not as honest. At little distances we saw
parties of ten or twenty, opening trenches, the tributary
brook, only, dividing the Confederate and Federal fatigue
parties. Close to this brook, in the cornfield, lay a fallen
trunk of a tree, and four men sat upon it. Two of them
wore gray uniforras, two wore blue. The latter were Gens.
Eoberts and Hartsuff of the Federal array. They were
waiting for Gens. Stuart and Early, of the Confederate
array : and the four were to define the period of the armis
tice. The men in gray were Major Hinthain of Mississippi,
and Lieut. Elliott Johnston of Maryland. Hintham^was a
lean, fiery, familiar man, who wore the uniform of several
field-marshals. An ostrich feather was stuck in his soft hat
and clasped by a silver star upon a black velvet ground. A
golden cord formed his hat-band, and two tassels, as huge
as those of drawing-room curtahis, fell upon his back. His

274 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
collar was plentifully embroidered as well as his coat-
sleeves, and a black seam ran down his trousers. He wore
spurs of prodigious size, and looked, in the main, like a tra
gedian about to appear upon the stage. The other man
was young, stout, and good humored ; and he talked sen-
tentiously, with a little vanity, but much courtesy. The
Federals had nothing to say to these, they dealt only with
equals in rank. It became a matter ctf professional ambi
tion, now, to obtain the greatest amount of information
from these Confederates, without appearing to depart from
any conventionality of the armistice. I got along very well
till Chitty came up, and his interrogatives were so pert and
pointed that he very nearly spoiled the entire labor. Young
Johnston was a Baltimorean, and wished his people to know
something of hira ; he gave rae a card, stated that he was
one of Gen. Garnett's aids, and had opened the arraistice,
early in the day, by riding into the Federal lines with a flag
of truce. By detachments, new bodies of Confederate offi
cers joined us, most of them being young fellows in gray
suits : and at length Gen. Early rode down the hillside and
nodded his head to our party.
It was the custom of our newspapers to publish, with its
narrative of each battle, a plan of the field ; and in further
ance of this object, having agreed to act for my absent
friend, I moved a -little way frora the place of parley, and
laying my paper on the pommel of my saddle proceeded to
sketch the relative positions of road, brook, mountain, and
woodland. While thus busily engaged, and congratulating
myself upon the fine opportunities afforded me, a lithe, in
durated, severe-looking horseman rode down the hill, and
reining beside rae, said —
" Afe you making a sketch of our position ? "
" Not for any military purpose."
"For what?"
" For a newspaper engraving."
" Umph ! "

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 275
The man rode past me to the log, and when I had finished
my transcript, I resumed my place at the group. The new
comer was Major General J. E. B. Stuart, one ofthe raost fa
mous cavalry leaders in the Confederate array. He was
inquiring for General Hartsuff, with whom he had been
a fellow-cadet at West Point ; but the Federal General had
stroUed off", and in the interval Stuart entered into farailiar
converse with the party. He described the Confederate
uniforra to rae, and laughed over sorae reminiscences of his
raid around McClellan's army.
"That performance gave me a Major-Generalcy, and my
saddle cloth there, was sent from Baltimore as a reward, by
a lady whom I never knew."
Stuart exhibited what is known in Araerica as " airi
ness," and evidently loved to talk ofhis prowess. Directly
Gen. Hartsuff returned, and the forager rose, with a grim
smile about his mouth —
" Hartsuff, God bless you, how-de-do ? "
" Stuart, how are you ? "
They took a quiet turn together, speaking of old school
days, perhaps ; and when they carae back to the log. Sur
geon Ball produced a bottle of whiskey, out of which all the
Generals drank, wishing each other an early peace.
" Here's hoping you raay fall into our hands," said
Stuart ; " we'll treat you well at Eichmond ! '
" The same to you ! " said Hartsuff, and they all laughed.
It was a strange scene,— this lull in the hurricane. Early
was a North Carolinian, who lost nearly his whole brigade
at Williamsburg. He wore a single star upon each shoul
der, and in other respects resembled a horaely farraer. He
kept upon his horse, and had little to say. Crawford was
gray and mistrustful, calmly measuring Stuart with his eye,
as if he intended to challenge him in a few minutes. Hart
suff was fair and burly, with a boyish face, and seeraed a
little ill at ease. Stuart sat upon a log, in careless posture,
working his jaw till the sandy gray beard brushed his chin
and became twisted in his teeth. Around, on foot and on

276 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
horse, lounged idle officers of both armies ; ' and the little
rill that trickled behind us was choked in places with
corpses. A pleasanter meeting could not have been held,
if this were a county training. The Surgeon told Gen.
Stuart that some of his relatives lived near the Confederate
'Capital, and as the General knew them, he related trifling
occurrences happening in their neighborhoods, so that the
meeting took the form of a roadside gossip, and Stuart
might have been a plain farraer jaunting horae frora raarket.
The General, who was called " JEB " by his associates, so
far relented finally as to give rae leave to ride within the
Confederate outer lines, and Lieut. Johnson accompanied
me. The corpses lay at frequent points, and some of the
wounded who had not been gathered up, remained at the
spots where they had, fallen. One of these, whose leg had
been broken, was incapable of speaking, and could hardly
be distinguished from the lifeless shapes around him. The
nuraber of those who had received their death wound on the
edge of the brook, while in the act of leaping across was very
great. I fancied that their faces retained the mingled ardor
and agony of the endeavor and the pang. There seemed to
be no systera in the manner of interment, and many of the
Federals had thrown down their shovels, and strolled across
the boundary, to chaff and loiter with the " Butternuts."
No one, whom I saw, exhibited any emotion at the strewn
spectacles on every side, and the stories I had read of the
stony-heartedness during the plague, were more than
rivalled by these charnel realities. , Already corruption was
violating the " temples of the living God." The heat ofthe
day and the general deraor/ilizing influences of the climate,
were raaking havoc with the shapely raen of yesterday, and
nature seemed hastening to reabsorb, and renew by her
marvellous processes, what was now blistering and bur
dening her surface. Enough, however, of this. Satiated
with the scenes of war, ray ambition now was to extend my
observations to the kingdoms of the Old World.

CHAPTEE XXVI.
OUR 0"WN CORRESPONDENT IN ENGLAND.
The boy's vague dreara of foreign adventure had passed
away ; ray purpose was of a tamer and raore practical cast ;
it was resolved to this problera: "How could I travel
abroad and pa^ my expenses ? "
Evidently no raoney could be made by horae correspond
ence. The new order of journals had no charity for fine
raoral descriptions of church steeples, ruined castles, and
picture galleries ; I knew too little of foreign politics to give
the Eepublic its serai-weekly " sensation ; " and exchange
was too high at the depreciated value of currency to yield
me even a tolerable reward. But might I not reverse the
policy of the peripatetics, and, instead of turning my
European experiences into American gold, make my knowl
edge of America a bill of credit for England ?
What capital had I for this eesay ? I was twenty-one
years of age ; the last three years of .my rainority had been
passed araong the newspapers ; I knew indifferently well
the distribution of parties, the theory of the Government,
the personalities of public men, the causes of the great civil
strife. And I had mounted to my saddle in the beginning
of the war, and followed the armies of McClellan and Pope
over their sanguinary battle-fields. The possibility thrilled
me like a novel discovery, that the Old World might be
willing to hear of the New, as I could depict it, fresh from
the theatre of action. At great expense foreign correspond-
24 (277)

278 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
ents had been sent to our shores, whose ignorance and con
fidence had led them into egregious blunders ; for their
travelling outlay raerely, I would have guaranteed thrice
the inforraation, and my sanguine conceit half persuaded me
that I could present it as acceptably. I did not wait to
ponder upon this suggestion. The guns of the second
action of Bull Eun growled a farewell to me as I resigned
my horse and equipraents to a successor. With a trifle of
raoney, I took passage on a steamer, and landed at Liver
pool on the first of October, 1862.
Among ray acquaintances upon the ship was a semi-
literary adventurer from New England. I surmised that his
funds were not more considerable than my own ; and
indeed, when he comprehended ray plans, he confessed as
rauch, and proposed to join enterprises with me.
" Did you ever raake a public lecture ? " he asked.
Now I had certain blushing recollections Of having enter
tained a suburban congregation, long before, with didactic
critiques upon Byron, Keats, and the popular poets. I re
plied, therefore, misgivingly, in the affirmative, and Hipp,
the interrogator, exclairaed at once —
" Let us make a lecturing tour in England, and divide the
expenses and the work ; you will describe the war, and I
will act as your agent."
With true Yankee persistence Hipp developed his idea,
and I consented to try the experiraent, though with grave
scruples. It would require rauch nerve to talk to strange
people upon an excitable topic ; and a camp fever, which
among other thirigs I had gained on the Chickahorainy, had
enfeebled rae to the last degree.
However, 1 went to work at once, inditing the pages in a
snug parlor of a raodest Liverpool inn, while Hipp sounded
the patrons and landlord as to the probable success of our
adventure. Opinions differed; public lectures in the Old
World had been generally gratuitous, except in rare cases,
but the genial Irish proprietor of the Posf advised me td go
on without hesitation.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 279
We selected for the initial night a Lancashire sea-side
town, a sumraer resort for the people of Liverpool, and
filled at that time with invalids and pleasure-seekers. Hipp,
who was a sort of American Crichton, managed the business
details with consumraate tact. I was announced as the
eye-witness and participator of a hundred actions, fresh
from the bloodiest fields and still smelling of saltpetre. My
horse had been shot as I carried a General's orders under
the fire of a score of batteries, and I was connected with
journals whose reputations were world-wide. Disease had
compelled me to forsake the scenes of ray heroisra, and 1 had
consented to enlighten the Lancashire public, through the
solicitation of the nobility and gentry. Sorae of the latter
had indeed honored the affair with their patronage.
We secured the three village newspapers by writing them
descriptive letters. The parish rector and the dissenting
preachers were waited upon and presented with family
tickets ; while we placarded the town till it was scarcely
recognizable to the oldest inhabitant.
On the morning of the eventful day I arrived in the place.
The best room of the best inn had been engaged for rae,
and waiters in white aprons, standing in rows, bowed me
over the portal. The servant girls and gossips had fugitive
peeps at rae through the cracks of ray door, and I felt for
the first tirae all the oppressiveness of greatness. As I
walked on the quay where the crowds were strolling, look
ing- out upon the raisty sea, at the donkeys on the beach,
and at the fishing-sraacks huddled under the far-reaching
pier, I saw ray name in huge letters borne on the banner of
a bill-poster, and all the people stopping to read as they
wound in and out among them.
How few thought the thin, sallow young raan, in -wide
breeches and square-toed boots, who sharabled by thera so
sharaefacedly, to be the veritable Mentor who had crossed
the ocean for their benefit. Indeed, the embarrassing
responsibility I had assumed novv appeared to me in all its
vividness.

280 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
My confidence sensibly declined ; my sensitiveness
amounted to nervousness ; 1 had half a mind to run away
and leave the show entirely to Hipp. But when I saw that
child of the Mayflower stolidly, shrewdly going about his
business, working the wires like an old operator,- making
the largest amount of thunder from so small a cloud, I was
rebuked of my faintheartedness. In truth, not the least of
ray misgivings was Hipp's extraordinary zeal. He gave
the townsmen to understand that I was a prodigy of ora
tory, whose battle-sketches would harrow up their souls
and thrill them like a martial sumraons. It brought the
blush to my face to see him talking to knots of old men
after the fashion of a town crier at a puppet-booth, and I
wondered whether I occupied a raore reputable rank, after
all, than a strolling gymnast, giant, or dwarf.
As the twilight came on my position becarae ludicrously
unenviable. The lights in the town-hail were lit. I passed
pallidly twice or thrice, and would have given half my for
tune if the whole thing had been over. But the minutes
went on ; the interval diminished ; I faced the crisis at last
and entered the arena.
There sat Hipp, taking money at the head of the stairs,
with piles of tickets before hira ; and as he rose, gravely
respectful, the janitor and some loiterers took off their hats
while I passed. I entered the little bare dressing-room ;
my throat was parched as fever, my hands were hot and
tremulous;, I felt ray heart sag. How the rurable of ex
pectant feet in the audience-roora shook rae ! I called ray
self a poltroon, and fingered my jieck-tie, and smoothed my
hair before the rairror. Another burst of irapatient expec
tation raade rae start ; I opened the door, and stood before
ray destiny.
The place was about one third filled with a representative
English audience, the males preponderating in number.
They watched me intently as 1 mounted the steps of the
rostrum and arranged my port-folio upon a rausical tripod ;

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 281
then 1 seated myself for a moraent, and tried to still the
beating of ray foolish heart.
How strangely acute were ray perceptions of everything
before rae ! I looked frora face to face and analyzed the ex
pressions, counted the lines down the corduroy pantaloons,
measured the heavily-shod English feet, numbered the rows
of benches and the tubes of the chandeliers, and figured up
the losing receipts frora this unremunerative audience.
Then 1 rose, coughed, held the house for the last time in
severe review, and repeated —
"Ladies and Gentlemen — A grand contest agitates
Araerica and the world. The people of the two sections of
the great North Araerican Eepublic, having progressed in
harraony for alraost a century, and become a formidable
power among the nations, are now divided and at enmity ;
they have consecrated with blood their fairest fields, and
built monuments of bones in their most beautiful val
leys," etc.
For perhaps five minutes everything went on smoothly.
I was pleased with the clearness of my voice ; then, as 1 re
ferred to the origin of the war, and denounced the traitorous
conspiracy to disrupt the republic, faint mutterings arose,
araounting to interruptions at last. The sympathies of ray
audience were, in the main, with the secession. There were
cheers and. counter cheers; storms of "Hear, hear," and
" No, no," until a certain youth, in a sort of legal monkey-
jacket and with ponderously professional gold seals, so dis
tinguished himself by exclamations that I singled hira out
as a mark for my bitterest periods.
But while I was thus the main actor in this curious scene,
a strange, startling consciousness grew apace upon me ;
the roora was growing dark ; ray voice replied to me like a
far, hollow echo ; I knew — I knew that I was losing my
consciousness — that I was about to faint ! Words cannot
describe my hurailiation at this discovery. I set ray lips
hard and straightened ray limbs ; raised my voice to a
24*

282 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
shrill, defiant pitch, and struggled in the dimming horror to
select ray adversary in the monkey-jacket and overwhelm
him with bitter apostrophes. In vain ! The novelty, the
excitement, the enervation of that long, consuraing fever,
raastered ray overtaxed physique. I knew that, if I did not
cease, I should fall senseless to the floor. Only in the last
bitter instant did I confess ray disability with the best grace
I could assurae.
"My friends," I said, gaspingly, "this is ray first ap
pearance in your country, and I am but just convalescent ;
ray head is a little weak. Will you kindly bear with me a
moraent while the janitor gets me a glass of water ? ''
A hearty burst of applause took the sting from my mor
tification. A bald old gentleraan in the front row gravely
rose and said, " Let rae send for a drop of brandy for our
young guest." They waited patiently and kindly till my
faintness passed away, and when I rose, a genuine English
cheer shook the place.
I often hear it again when, here in my own country, I
would speak bitterly of Englishmen, and it softens the
harshness of ray conderanation.
But I now addressed rayself feverishly to my task, and
my disgrace raade rae veheraent and corabative. I glared
upon the individual in the monkey-jacket as if he had been
Mr. Jefferson Davis himself, and read hira a scathing indict
ment. Tbe man in the monkey-jacket was not to be scathed.
He retorted more frequently than before ; he was guilty of
the most hardy contempt of court. He was determined not
to agree with rae, and said so.
" Sir," I exclaimed at last, " pray reserve your remarks
till the end of the lecture, and you shall have the plat
form." " I shall be quite willing, I ara sure," said the raan in the
monkey-jacket -with .imperturbable effrontery.
Then, as I continued, the contest grew interesting ; ex
plosions of "No, no," -were interrupted with volleys of "Ay,

CAMPAIGNS OF A N0N-C031BATANT. 283
ay," from my adherents. Hipp, who had squared accounts,
made all the applause in his power, standing in the main
threshold, and the little auditory becarae a ringing arena,
where we fought without flinching, standing foot to foot
and drawing fire for fire. The man in the monkey-jacket
broke his word : silence was not his forte ; he hurled de
nials and counter-charges vociferously ; he was full of gall
and bitterness, and when I closed the last page and
resumed my chair, he sprang from his place to claira the
platforra- " Stop," cried Hipp, in his hard nasal tone. Striding for
ward ; " you haye interrupted the lecturer after giving
your parole ; we recall our proraise, as you have not stood
by yours. Janitor, put out the lights ! "
The bald old gentleman quietly rose. " In England," he
said, " we give everybody fair play ; tokens of assent and
dissent are commonly made in all our public raeetings ; let
us have a hearing for our townsraan."
" Certainly," I replied, giving him my hand at the top of
'the stairs ; " nothing would afford rae raore pleasure."
The man in the monkey-jacket then made a sweeping
speech, full of loose charges against the Araericans, and
expressive of sympathy with the Eebellion ; but, at the fin
ishing, he proposed, as the sentiment of the raeeting, a
vote of thanks to me, which was amended by another to in
clude himself. Many of the people shook hands with rae
at the door, and the bald old gentleman led me to his wife
and daughter, whose benignities were almost parental.
"Poor young man!" said the old lady; " a raust take
care of 'is 'ealth ; will a corae boom wi' Tumraas and me
and drink a bit o' tea ? "
I strolled about the place for twenty-four hours on good
terms with many townsmen, while Hipp, full of pluck and
business, was posting me against all the dead walls- of a
farther village. Again and again I sketched the war-epi
sodes I had followed, gaining fluency and confidence as by

284 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
degrees my itinerant profession lost its novelty, but we as
steadily lost raoney. The houses were invariably bad ; we
had the same fiery discussions every evening, but the same
meagre receipts, and in every market town of northwestern
Lancashire we buried a portion of our little capital, till once>
after talking myself hoarse to a respectable audience of
empty benches, Hipp and I looked blankly into each other's
faces and silently put oiir last gold pieces upon the table.
We were three thousand miles from home, and the pos
sessors of ten sovereigns apiece. I reached out my hand
with a pale smile : —
" Old feUow," I said, " let us comfort ourselves by the
assurance that we have deserved success. The time has
corae to say good by."
"As you will," said Hipp: "it is all the fault of this
pig-headed nation. Now I dare say if we had brought a
panorama of the war along, it would have been a stunning
success ; but standing upon high literary and forensic
ground, of course they can't appreciate us. Confound
'em!" I think that Hipp has since had but two notions, — the
exhibition of that panoraraa, or, in the event of its failure,
a declaration of war against the British people. He fol
lowed me to Liverpool, and bade me adieu at Birkenhead, I
going Londonward with scarcely enough money to pay my
passage, and he to start next day fbr Belfast, to lecture
upon his own hook, or, failing ( as he afterward did), to re
cross the Atlantic in the steerage of a ship.
My feelings, as. the trains- bore me steadily through the
Welsh border, by the clustering smoke-stacks of Birming
ham, by the castled tower of Warwick, and along the head
waters of the Thames and Avon, were not of the most en
thusiastic description. I had no money and no friends ; I
had sent to America fora remittance, but in the interval of
six weeks required for a reply, must eat and drink and
lodge, and London was wide and pitiless, even if I dared
stoop to beg assistance,

CAMPAIGNS. OP A NON-COMBATANT. 285
Let no young man be tempted to put the sea between his
home and himself, how seductive soever be the experiences
of book-makers and poetic pedestrians. One hour's con
templation of poverty in foreign lands will line the boy's
face with the wrinkles of years, and burn into his soul that
withering dependency which will rankle long after his pri
vations are forgotten.
In truth, my circumstances were so awkward that ray
very desperation kept rae calra. I had a formal letter to
one English publisher, but not any friendly line whatever to
anybody ; and as the possibilities of sickness, debt, ene
mies, came to raind, I felt that I was no longer the hero of
a romance, but face to face with a hard, practical, terrible
reality. It was night when I landed at the Paddington
Station, and taking an omnibus for Charing Cross, watched
the long lines of lamps on Oxford Street, and the glitter of
the Haymarket theatres, and at last the hard plash of
the fountains in Trafalgar Square, with the stony statues
grouped so rigidly about the column to Nelson.
I walked down Strand with my carpet-bag in my hands,
through Fleet Street and under Temple Bar, till, weary at
last from sheer exercise, I dropped into a little ale-house
under a great, grinning lantern, which said, in the crisp tone
of patr on age, the one word, "beds." They put me under
the tiles, with the chimney-stacks for my neighbors, and I
lay awake all night meditating expedients for the raorrow :
so far frora regret or foreboding, I longed for the daylight
to corae that I might comraence my task, confident that I
could not fail where so many had succeeded. They were,
indeed, inspirations which looked in upon rae at the dawn.
The dorae of St. Paul's guarding Paternoster Eow, with
Milton's school in the background, and hard by the Play
er's Court, where, in lieu of Shakespeare's corapany, the
Araerican presses of the Times shook the kingdora and the
continent. I thought of Johnson, as I passed Bolt Alley,
of Chatterton at Shoe Lane, of Goldsraith as I put my foot
upon his grave under the caves ofthe Temple.

286 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
The public has nothing to do with the sacrifices by which
my private embarrassment received temporary relief.
Though half the race of authors had been in similar straits,
I would not, for all their success, undergo again such self-
humiliation. It is enough to say that I obtained lodgings
in Islington, close to the home of Charles Larab, and near
Irving's Canterbury tower ; and that between writing arti
cles on the Araerican war, and strategic efforts to pay my
board, two weeks of feverish loneliness drifted away.
I made but one friend ; a young Englishman of radical
proclivities, who^had passed sorae years in Araerica among
books and newspapers, and was now editing the foreign
coluran of the Illustrated London News. He was a brave,
needy fellow, full of heart, but burdened with a wife^ and
children, and too honestly impolitic to gain money with his
fine abihties by writing down his own unpopular sentiraents.
He helped me with advice and otherwise.
" If you mean to work for the journals," he said, " I fear
you will be disappointed. I have tried six years to get
upon some daily London paper. The editorial positions are
always filled ; you know too little of the geography and so
ciety of the town to be a reporter, and such miscellaneous
recollections of the war as you possess will not be available
for a mere newspaper. But the magazines are always
ready to purchase, if you can get access to them. In that
quarter you might do well."
I found that the serials to which my friend recommended
me shared his own advanced sentiments, but were unfortu
nately without money. So I made ray way to the counter
of the Messrs. Charabers, and left for its junior partner an
introductory note. The reply was to this effect. I violate
no confidence, I think, in reproducing it : —
" Sir, — I shall be glad to see any friend of  , and may be
found," etc., etc. " I fear that articles ujion the American war, written
by an American, will not, however, be acceptable in this journal, as the

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 287
public here take a widely different view of the contest from that enter
tained in your own country, and tho feeling of horror is deepening
fast." Undeterred by this frank avowal, I waited upon the pub
lisher at the appointed time, — a fine, athletic, white-haired
Scotchman, whose' narae is known where that of greater
authors cannot reach, and who has written with his own
hand as much as Dumas ph'e. He met rae with warm
cordiality, rare to Englishmen, and when I said —
" Sir, 1 do not wish the use of your paper to circulate my
opinions, — only ray experiences," he took me at once to
his editor, and gave me a personal introduction. Fortu- -
nately 1 had brought with rae a paper which I submitted on
the spot ; it was entitled, " Literature of the American
War," collated from such carapaign ballads as I could
reraeraber, eked out with ray own, and strung»together with
explanatory and critical paragraphs. The third day follow
ing, I received this announceraent in shockingly bad hand
writing : — " D'r S'r, " Y'r article frill suit us.
"Theed. C. J."
,-
For every word in this coraraunication,' I afterward ob
tained a guinea. The money not being due till after the
appearance of the article, I anticipated it with various
sketches, storieg, etc., all of which were largely fanciful or
descriptive, and contained no .paragraph which 1 wish to
recall. In other directions, I was less successful. Of two
daily journals to which I offered my services, one declined
to answer my letter, and the other deraanded a quarto of
credentials. So I lived a fugitive existence, a practical illustration of
Irving's " Poor Devil Author," looking as often into pastry-
shop windows, testing all manner of cheap Pickwickian
veal-pies, breakfasting upon a chop, and supping upon a

288 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMB ATANTr
herring in ray suburban residence, but keeping up pluck and
chique so deceptively, that nobody in the place suspected me
of poverty.
I went for some American inventors, to a rifle ground,
and explained to the Lords of the Admiralty the merits of a
new projectile ; wrote letters to all the Continental sover
eigns for an itinerant and independent erabassador, and w_as
at last so poor that my only writing papers were a druggist's
waste bill-heads. An article with no other " backing" than
this was fortunate enough to stray into the Cornhill Maga-
zine. I found that its proprietor kept a banking-house
in Pall Mall, and doubtful of my welcome on Cornhill, ven
tured one day in my unique Araerican costume, — slouched
hat, wide garraents, and squared-toed boots, — to send to
him directly my card. He probably thought from its face
that a relative of Mr. Mason's was about to open an exten- ,
sive account with him. As it was, once admitted to his
presence, he could not escape me. The manuscript lay in
his hands before he fully comprehended my purpose. He
was a fine specimen of the English publisher, — robust,
ruddy, good-naturedly acute, — and as he said with a smile
that he would waive routine and take charge of my copy, I
knew that the sarae hands had fastened upon -the crude
pages of Jane Eyre, and the best labors of Hazlitt, Euskin,
Leigh Hunt, and Thackeray.
Two more weary weeks elapsed ; I found it pleasant to
work, but very trying to wait. At the gnd my courage
very nearly failed. I reached the era of self-accusation ; to
make myself forget myself I took long, ardent marches into
the open country ; followed the authors I had worshipped
through the localities they had raade reverend ; los1^ rayself
in drearainesses, — those precursors of death in the snow, — ^
and wished rayself back in the ranks of the North, to go
down in the frenzy, rather than thus drag out a life of civil
indigence, robbing at once my brains and my stomach.
One morning, as I sat in my little Islington parlor, wish-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 289
ing that the chop I had just eaten had gone farther, and
taking a melancholy inventory of the threadbare carpet and
rheumatic chairs, the door-knocker fell ; there were steps in
the hall ; ray name was mentioned.
A tall young gentleman approached rae with a letter : I
received him with a strange nervousness ; was there any
crime in my record, I asked fitfully, for which I had been
traced to this obscure suburb for condign arrest and decapi
tation ? Ha ! ha I it was my heart, r^Qt ray lips, that
laughed. I could have cried out like Enoch Arden in his
dying apostrophe : —
' "A sail! a sail!
I am saved ! "
for the note, in the publisher's own handwriting, said this,
and more : —
"Deab Sir, — I shall be glad to send you flfteen guineas immedi
ately, in return for your article on General Pope's Campaign, if the
price will suit you."
But I suppressed my enthusiasm. I spoke patronizingly
to the young gentleman. Dr. Johnson, at the brewer's
vendue, could not have been more learnedly sonorous.
" You may say in return, sir, that the sum naraed will re-
raunerate me."
At the same tirae the instinct was intense to seize thc
youth by the throat, and tell him that if the remittance was
delayed beyond the morning, I would have his heart's-
blood ! I should have liked to thrust him into the coal
hole as a hostage for its prompt arrival, or send one of his
ears to the publishing house with a warning, after the man
ner of the Neapolitan brigands.
That afternoon I walked all the way to Edmonton, over
John Gilpin's route, and boldly invested two-pence in beer
at the time-honored Bell Inn. I disdained to ride back upon
. 25 '

290 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
the omnibus for the sum of threepence, but returned on
foot the entire eight miles, and thought it only a league.
Next day my check came duly to hand, — a very formidable
check, with two pen-marks drawn across its face. I carried
it to Threadneedle Street by the unfrequented routes, to
.avoid having my pockets picked, and presented it to the
cashier, wondering if he knew me to be a foreign gentleman
who had written for the Cornhill Magazine. The cashier
looked rather eotitemptuous, I thought, being evidently a
soulless character with no literary affinities.
" Sir," he said, curtly, " this check is crossed."
"Sir!"" We can't cash the check ; it is crossed."
" What do you mean by crossed ? "
"Just present it where you got it, and you will find
out." The cashier regarded me as if I had offered a ticket of
leave rather than an order for the considerable amount of
seventy-five dollars. I left that banking-house a broken
man, and stopped with a long, long face at a broker's to ask
for an explanation.
" Yesh, yesh," said the little raan, whose Gerraan silver
spectacles sat upon a bulbously Oriental nose ; " ze raonish
ish never paid on a crossed shequc. If one hash a bank-ac
count, you know, zat ish different. Ze gentleraan who gif
you dis shequc had no bishness to crosh it if you have no
banker." I was too vain to go back to Cornhill and confess that I
had neither purse nor purser ; so I satisfied the broker that
the affair was correct, and he cashed the bill for five shil
lings. That was the end of ray necessities ; money carae frora
horae, from this and that serial ; my published articles were
favorably noticed, and opened the market to me. What
ever I penned found sale ; and some correspondence that I
had leisure to fulfil for America brought me steady re
ceipts.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 291
Had I been prudent with my means, and prompt to ad
vantage myself of opportunities, I might have obtained ac
cess to the best literary society, and sold my corapositions
for correspondingly higher prices. Social standing in Eng
lish literature is of equal consequence with genius. The
poor Irish governess cannot find a publisher, but Lady Mor
gan takes both critics and readers by storm. A duchess's
name on the title-page protects the fool in the letter-press ;'
irreverent republicanism is not yet so great a respecter of
persons. I was often invited out to dinner, and went to
the expense of a dress-coat and kids, without which one
passes the genteel British portal at his peril ; but found
that both the expense and the stateliness of " society "
were onerous. In this departraent I had no perseverance ;
but when, one evening, I sat with the author of " Vanity
Fair," in the concert rooras at Covent Garden, as Colonel
Newcorae and Clive had done before rae, and took ray beer
and mutton with those kindly eyes measuring me through
their spectacles, I felt that such grand companionship lifted
me from the errantry of ray career into the dignity of a re
nowned art.
I raoved ray lodgings^ after three months, to a pleasant
square of the West End, where I had for associates, among
others, several American artists. Strange men were they
to be so far from horae ; but I have since found, that the
poorer one is the farther he travels, and the majority of
these were quite destitute. Two of them only had permar
nent eraployraent ; a few, now and then, sold a design to a
raagazine ; the raass went out sketching to kill time, and
trusted to Providence for dinner.' But they were good fel
lows for the most part, kindly to one another, and meeting
in their lodgings, where their tenure was uncertain, to score
Millais, or praise Eosetti, or overwhelm Frith.
My own life meantime passed smoothly. I had no rivals
of my own nationality ; though one expatriated person,
whose name I have not heard, was writing a series of

292 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
prejudiced articles for Fraser, which he signed " A White
Eepublican." I thought him a very dirty white. One or
two English travellers at the same time were making
amusingly stupid notices of Araerica in sorae of the second-
rate monthlies ; and Maxwell, a bustling Irishman, who
owns Temple Bar, the Saint James, and Sixpenny Magazine,
and some half dozen other serials, was employing a man to
invent all varieties of rubbish upon a country which he had
never beheld nor comprehended.
After a few months the passages of the war. with which I
was cognizant lost their interest by reason of later occur
rences. I found rayself, so to speak, wedged out of the
market by new literary importations. The enforceraent of
the draft brought to Europe many naturalized countrymen
of mine, whose dislike of Araerica was not lessened by their
unceremonious mode of departure frora it ; and it is to
these, the raass of whora are farailiarly known in the jour
nals of this country, that we owe the most insidious, because
the best informed, detraction of us. Macmillan's Magazine
did us sterling service through the papers of Edward Dicey,
the best literary feuilletonist in England ; and Professor
Newman, J. Stuart Mill, and others, gave us the limited
influence of the Westminster Beview. The Cornhill was
neutral ; Chambers's respectfully inimical ; Bentley and Col
burn antagonistically flat ; Maxwell's tri-visaged publica
tions grinningly abusive ; Good Words had neither good nor
bad words for us ; Once a Week and All the Year Bound
gave us a shot now and then. Blackwood and Fraser dis
liked our form of Government, and all its manifestations.
The rest of the reviews, as far as I could see, pitied and
berated us pompously. It was more than once suggested
to me to write an experimental paper upon the failure of
republicanism ; but I knew only one American — a New
York correspondent — who lent hiraself to a systematic
abuse of the Government which permitted him to reside in
it. He obtained a newsboy's fame, and, I suspect, earned

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 293
considerable. He is dead : let, any who love hira shorten
his biography by three years.
•However, I at last concluded a book, — if I may so call
what never resulted in a volume, — at which, from the first,
I had been pegging away. I called it " The War Corre
spondent," and raade it the literal record of ray adventures
in the saddle. When sorae six hundred MS. pages were
done I sent it to a publisher ; he politely sent it back. I
forwarded it to a rival house ; in this respect only both
houses were agreed. Having some dim recollection of the
early trials of authors I perseveringly gave that copy the
freedom of the city ; the verdict upon it was marvellously
identical, but the manner of declension was always sooth
ing. They separately advised me not to be content with
one refusal, but to try some other house, though I carae at
last to think, by the regularity of its transit to and fro, that
one house only had been its recipient from the first.
At last, assured of its positive failure, I took what seemed
to be the most philosophic course, — neither tossing it into
the Thames, after the fashion of a famous novelist, nor litter
ing my floor with its fragments, and dying amidst thera like
a chiffonnier in his den : I cut the best paragraphs out ofit,
strung them together, and published it by separate articles
in the serials. My name failed to be added to the British
Museura Catalogue ; but that circumstance is, at the pres
ent time, a raatter of no regret whatever.
When done with the war I took to story-writing, using
raany half-forgotten incidents of Araerican police-reporting,
of border warfare, of the developraent of civilization araong
the pioneers, of thraldora in the South, and the gold search
on the Pacific. The majority of these travelled across the
water, and were republished. And when Araerica, in the
garb of either fact or fiction, lost novelty, I entered the wide
field of miscellaneous literature araong a thousand com
petitors. An author's ticket to the British Museura Eeading-room
25-*

294 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
put the whole world so close around me that I could touch
it everywhere. I never entered the noble rotunda of that
vast collection without an emotion of littleness and awe.
Lit only from the roof, it rerainded me of the Eoman
Pantheon ; and truly all the gods whom I had worshipped
sat, not in statue, but in substance, along its radiating.
tables, or trod its noiseless floors. Half the literature of
our language flows from thence. One may see at a glance
grave naturalists knee-deep in ichthyological tomes, or buzz
ing over entomology ; pale zealots copying Arabic charac
ters, with the end to rebuild Bethlehem or the ruins of
Mecca ; biographers gloating over some rare original letter ;
periodical writers filching from two centuries ago for their
next "new" article. The Marquis of Lansdowne is dead ;
you may see the Times reporter yonder running down the
events of his career. Poland is in arras again, and the
clever compiler farther on means to make twenty pounds
out of it by suraraing up her past risings and ruins. The
bruisers King and Mace fought yesterday, and the plodding
person close by frora Bell's Life is gleaning their antecedents.
Half the literati of our age do but like these bind the present
to the past. A great library dirainishes the nuraber of think
ers ; the grand fountains of philosophy and science ran
before types were so facile or letters becarae a trade.
The novelty of this life soon wore away, -and I found my
self the creature of no romance, but plodding along a prosy
road with very practical people.
I carried my MSS. into Paternoster Eow like anybody's
book-keeper, and accused the world of no particular ingrat
itude that it could not read my name with my articles, and
that it gave itself no concern to discover me. Yet there
was a private pleasure in the congeniality of my labor, and
in the consciousness that I could float upon my quill even
in this vast London sea. Once or twice my articles went
across the Channel and returned in foreign dress. I wonder
if I shall ever again feel the thrill of that first recognition of

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 295
my offspring coming to my knee with their strange French
prattle. 1 was not uniformly successful, but, if rejected, my MSS.
were courteously returned, with a note from the editor. As
a sample I give the following. The original is a litho
graphed fac-similo of the handwriting of Mr. Dickens,
printed in blue ink, the date and the title of the manuscript
being in another handwriting.
OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR EOUND."
A WEEKLY JOURNAL CONDUCTED BT CHARLES DICKENS.
No. 26 Wellington Street, Strand, London, W. C.
Ja-num-y 27, 1803.
Mr. Chr.rles Dickens begs to thank the writer of the paper entitled
" A Battle Sunday " for having done him the favor to offer it as a con
tribution to these pages. He much regrets, however, that it is not
suited to thc requirements of " All the Year Eound."
The manuscript will be returned, under cover, if applied for as
above. The prices of miscellaneous articles in London are rerau-
nerative. Twenty-four shillings a magazine page is the
common valuation : but specially interesting papers rate
higher. Literature as a profession, in England, is raore cer
tain and more progressive than with us. It is not debased
with the heavy leaven of journalisra. Among the many
serial publications of London, ability, tact, and industry
should always find a liberal market. There is less of the
vagrancy of letters, — Bohemianism, Mohicanisra, or what
not, — in London than in either New York or Paris.
I think we have the cleverer fugitive writers in Araerica,
but those of England seemed to rae to have raore self-respect
and conscientiousness. The soul of the scribe need never
be in pledge if there are many masters.
While a good writer in any departraent can find work
across the wate^ I would advise no one to go abroad with
this assurance solely. My success — if so that can be

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called which yielded me life, not profit — was circumstan
tial, and cannot be repeated. I should be loth to try it
again upon purely literary merits.
After nine months of experiment I bade the insular me
tropolis adieu, and returned no more. The Continent was
close and beckoning ; I heard the confusion of her tongues,
and saw the shafts of her Gothic Babels probing the clouds,
and for another year I roaraed araong her cities, as ardent
and errant as when I went afield on ray pony to win the
spurs of a War Correspondent.

CHAPTER xxvn.
SPUES IN THE PICTURE GALLERIES.
Floeence, city of my delight ! how do I thrill at the recol
lection of the asylum afforded rae by thee in the Via Parione.
The room was tiled, and cool, and high, and its single win
dow looked out upon a real palace, where the family of
Corsini, presided over by a porter in cocked hat and an exu
berance of gold lace, gave me frequent glimpses of gauze
dresses and glorious eyes, whose owners soraetiraes carae
to the caseraent to watch the poor little foreigner, 'writing
so industriously.
Every young traveller has two or three subjects of unrest.
Mine were girls and art. The copyists in the galleries were
more beautiful studies to me than the paintings. The next
time I go to Europe, I shall take enough money along to
give all the pretty ones an order ; this will be an introduc
tion, and I shall know how they live, and how much money
they raake, and what passions have heaved their beautiful
bosoras, to make their slow, quiet lives forever haunted and
longing. Love, love ! There are only two grand, unsatiated pas
sions, which keep us forever in freshness and fever, — love
and art.
In Italy I breathed the purest atmosphere ; all the world
was a landscape picture ; all the skies were spilling blue
ness and crirason upon the mountains ; all the faces were
Madonnas ; all the perspectives were storied architecture.
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Westward the star of Empire takes its way, but that of art
shines steadily in the East. Thither look our American
young men, no matter at which of its altars they make their
devotions, — painting, sculpture, or architecture. And I,
who had known some fondness for the pencil till lured into
the wider, wilder field of letters, felt almost an artist's joy
when I stood in the presence of those solemn masters whose
works are inspired and imperishable, like religion.
Having passed the first thrill and disappointment, — for
pure art speaks only to the pure by intuition or initiation,
and I was yet a novice, — my old newspaper curiosity re
vived to learn of the successful living rather than of the
grand dead.
Correspondents, like poets, are born, not made : the ven
erable associations around me — monuraents, cloisters, pal
aces, the horaes and graves of great men whom I revered,
the aisles where every canvas bore a spell narae — could
not wean rae frora that old, reportorial habit of asking ques
tions, peeping into private nooks, and making notes upon
contemporary things, just as I had done for three years, in
cities, on routes, on battle-fields. And as the old world
seeraed to me only a great art museura, I longed to look be
hind the tapestry at the Ghobelin weavers, pulling the beau
tiful threads.
" Where dwell these gay and happy students, who quit
our hard, bright skies, and land of angularities, to inhale
the dews of these sedative mosses, and, by attrition with
masterpieces, glean something of the spirit of the mas
ters ? "
Straightway the faery realm opened to rae, and two
raonths of Italian rarabling were spent in association with
the folk I esteeraed only less than my own exemplars.
Art, in all ages, is the flowery way. No pursuit gives so
great joy in the achieving, none achieved yields higher
meed of corapetence, contentment, and repute. Its ambi
tion is more genial and subdued than that of literature, its

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 299
rivalry more courteous and exalting ; its daily life should be
pastoral and doraestic, free from those feverish mutations
and adventures which cross the incipient author, and it is
forever surrounded by bright and beautiful objects which
linger too long upon the eye to stir the raind to more than
emulation. Is it harsh to say that artists have been too well re
warded, and thinkers and writers too ill ? Vasari dines at
the ducal table, while Galileo's pension is the rack ; the
mob which carries Cimabue's canvas in triuraph, drives
Dante into exile ; Eubens is a king's ambassador, and Gro
tius is sent to jail ; to Eeynolds's levees, poor, bankrupt
Goldsmith steals like an unwelcome guest, and Apelles's
gold is paid to him in measures, while Homer, singing im
mortal lines, goes blind and begging.
Art students take rank in Italy among the best^of trav
ellers, but Bohemianisra in art is at one's peril. There are
many wasted lives among the clever fellows who go abroad
ostensibly for study. I recall Jimman, who was an expert
with the pencil, and who colored with excellent discrimina
tion. He went to Dusseldorf at first, and became known
to Leutze, who praised his sketches. He began to asso
ciate at once with students and tipplers, and dissipated less
by drinking than by talking. I have a theory that more
men are lost to theraselves and the age by a love of " gab
bing " than by drinking. It is not hard to eschew cognac
and claret, but there is no cure for " buzzing." There is a
drunkenness of talk which takes possession of one, and
Jiraraan would have had the delirium tremens in a week,
with nobody to listen to hira. To my mind the Trappiste
takes the severest of monastic vows.
Jiraraan used to rise in the raorning betiraes, full of inflex
ible resolution. Having stretched his canvas, and carefully
prepared his pigraents, he went to breakfast, pondering
great achievements. Here he fell in with a lot of Germans,
— the most incurable race of gossipers in the world, — and

300 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
while they discussed, in a learned Way, every subject under
the sun, the meal extended into the afternoon, and Jimman
concluded that it was then too late to undertake anything.
In this way his ambition burnt away, his money was squan
dered, he lost facility of manipulation, and came back to
Paris at the age of twenty-eight, to pursue the same list
less, garrulous existence ; debts and grisettes, buzzing and
brandy, the utterance of resolves which expired in the ut
terance, and Jimman finally became, perforce, a comraon
apprentice to a moulder, that he might not entirely, starve.
I saw hira, for the last tirae, in the Louvre, looking at
Zurbaran's "Kneeling Monk."
" Ah, Townsend," he said, " I might have done some
thing like that. All my zeal is gone."
And he began to chat in the same loose, farailiar way.
Durabness and deafness would have been endowments
rather than deprivations for hira.
I had rooras in Florence with Gypsura and Stagg. The
former was a young, industrious fellow, of German descent,
who worked hard, but not wisely. He spent half a year in
copying a face by Paul Veronese, and the other half in
sketching an old convent yard. But he did not visit, and
an artist, to get orders and take rank, must be seen as well
as be earnest. He need not be hail-fellow, but should keep
well in the circle of respectable travellers ; for these are to
be his patrons, if he pleases them. Gj'psum was over-
modest and too conscientious ; he had only a trifle of money,
and was careless of his attire. So he disregarded society,
and society forgot him. Therefore, at dawn, he betook hira
self to the old convent-yard, and stood at his easel bravely,
never so unhappy as when one of the church's innumerable
holy days arrived, for then he was forbidden to work upon
the convent premises. With all his conscientiousness he
received no orders ; while Stagg, who was not more clever,
proportioned to his longer experience, was befriended on
every hand, because he went to the Araerican chapel
regularly and wore a dress-coat at the sociables.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 301
Stagg used the old studio of Buchanan Eead, just off the
Via Seragli.
I stumbled upon him one morning, and saw raore than 1
anticipated. A young, plump girl, without so much as a fig-leaf upon
her, was posing before his easel, so motionless that she
scarcely winked, one hand extended and clasping her
loosened tresses, and bending upon one white and dimpled
knee. She had the large dark eyes of the professional modello,
and a bosom as ripe as Titian's Venus. Her feet were
small, and her hands very white and beautiful. But of rae
she toolmo raore notice than if I had been a bird alighting
upon the window, or a raouse peeping at her frora the edge
of his knot-hole.
Old Stagg, who was coramonly grave as a clergyman,
now and then left his easel to alter her position, and when
he was done, she gathered up her clothes, which had lain in
a heap on the floor, and took her few silver pieces with a
"Mille grazie, Signore!" and went home to take dinner
with her little brothers.
A studio in Florence costs only fifteen or twenty francs a
month, — seldom so much. There are a series of excellent
ones in the sarae Via Seragli, in a very large disraantled
convent. There is a well in the centre of its great court
yard, and innumerable ropes lead from it to the various high
windows of the building, on which buckets of water are for
ever ascending. All this of which I speak refers to a year
ago, when Florence was not a capital ; doubtless, studios
command more at present.
The models at Florence were to me strange personages.
There was a drawing-school which I sometimes attended,
v/here one old woman kept three daughters, aged respec
tively twenty, seventeen, and thirteen years. They lived
pretty much as they were born, and while they posed upon
a high platform, the old woman took her seat near the door
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302 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
and looked on with grira satisfaction. She was very care
ful of their raoral habits, but the second one she lost by an
excess of greed. She resolved to make them useful by day,
as well as by night, and put thera to work at the studios of
individual artists. But as no one artist wanted three raod
els, the girls had to separate, and, out of the mother's vigi
lance, the second one, Orsolo, went to the atelier of a
-wicked and handsome fellow, and met with the usual ro
mance of her class.
The oldest girl, Luigia, married a man-model, and their
nuptials must have been of a most prosaic character.
Among the many raen who thus stood for the artists, was
one old fellow, tall, and bearded, and massively character
ized, who used to remain motionless for hours, untU he
seeraed to be dead. He had been a raodel in every stage of
life, from childhood to the grave, and represented every
subject from Garibaldi to Moses.
The walks in and around Florence occupied all my Sab
baths. Stagg and I used to stroll up to Fiesole, by the
villa where Boccaccio's party of story-tellers met, and look
up old pictures in the village church ; we measured the pro
portions of the chapel on the hill of Saint Miniato, and he
endeavored in vain to iraitate the hue of the light as it fell
through the veined raarble of Serravezza ; we spent con
templative afternoons in the house of Michael Angelo, and
went up to Vallambrosa, at the risk of our necks, to look at
a Giotto no bigger than a tea-plate. In Florence there is
enough out-of-door statuary to raake one of the finest gal
leries in the world. The raajesty of Donatello's " Saint
George " arises before rae when I would conceive of any
noble huraanity, and the sweep of Orgagna's great arches
give rae an idea of vastness like the sea ; in the Pitti palace
only giants should abide ; the Carapanile goes up to heaven
as beautiful as Jacob's ladder, and in the perpetual twi
light of the Duomo I was not of half the stature I believed
when roaming under the loftier sky.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 303
I saw a jail in Florence, and it troubled me ; who in that
beautiful city could do a crime ? How Should old age, or
bad passions, or sickness, or shame, exist in that limpid at
mosphere, in the shadow of such architecture, in the pres
ence of those pictures ?

CHAPTEE xxvm.
A CORRESPONDENT ONCE MOEE.
Again on the way to Washington I I have made the trip
more than sixty times. I saw the Gunpowder Bridge in
flames when Baltimore was in arms and the Capital cut off
frora the North. I saw from Perryville the State flag of
Maryland waving at Havre de Grace across the Susque
hanna. I saw at the Washington Navy Yard the blackened
body of Ellsworth, manipulated by the surgeons. I moved
through the city with McClellan's onward army toward the
transports which were to carry it to the Peninsula. The
awful tidings of the seven days' retreat came first through
the Capital in my haversack, and before Stonewall Jackson
fell upon the flank of Pope, I crossed the Long Bridge with
the story of the disaster of Cedar Mountain. In like man
ner the crowning glory of Five Forks made me its earliest
emissary, and the murder of the President brought me hot
from Eichmond to participate in the pursuit of Booth and
chronicle his midnight expiation.
Again ara I on the way to the city of centralization, to
paint by electricity the closing scenes of the conspirators,
and, as I pass the Pennsylvania line, the recollection of
those frequent pilgrimages — pray God this be the last ! —
comes upon me like the sequences of delirium.
As I look abroad upon the thrifty fields and the rich glebe
of the ploughman, I wonder if the revolutions of peace are
not as sweeping and sudden as those of war. He who
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CAJTPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 305
wrote the certain downfall of this Nation, did not keep his
eye upon the steadily ascending dome of the capitol, nor
remark, during the thunders of Gettysburg, the as energetic
stroke of the pile-drivers upon the piers of the great Sus
quehanna bridge. We built while we desolated. No fa;tal-
ist convert to Mohammed had so sure faith in the eternity
of his institutions. More masonry has been laid along the
border during the war than in any five previous years. We
have finished the Treasury, raised the bronze gates on the
Capitol, double-railed all the roads between New York and
the Potoraac, and gone on as if architecture were iraperish-
able, while thrice the Eebels swept down toward the
Eelay. And we have done one strategic thing, which, I think,
will corapare with the passing of Vicksburg or the raid of
Sherraan ; we have turned Philadelphia.
This raodern Porapeii used to be the sturabling-block on.
the great highway. It was to the direct Washington route
what Hell-gate was to the Sound Channel. We were for
bidden the right of way through it, on the ground that by
retarding travel Philadelphia would gain trade, and had to
cross the Delaware on a scow, or lay up in sorae inn over
night. New Jerseyraen, I hear, pray every morning for
their daily stranger ; Philadelphia has much sinned to en
trap its daily customer. But Maillefert — by which narae
I designate the ine-vitable sledge which spares the grand
and pulverizes the little — has built a road around the
Quaker City. It is a very curious road, going by two hy-
pothenuses of about fifteen railes to raake a base of three or
four, so that we lose an hour on the way to the Capital, all
because of Philadelphia's overnight toil.
The bridge at Perryville will be one of the staunchest
upon our continent : the forts around Baltiraore make the
outlying landscapes scarcely recognizable to the returning
Maryland Eebels. At last, — woe be the necessity I we
have garrisoned our cities. The Eelay House is the most
26*

306 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
picturesque spot between the two foci of the country.
Wandering through the woods, I see the dirty blouses of
the remnant of "the boys" and the old abatis on the
height looks sunburnt and rusty ; away through the gorge
thunders the Baltimore and Ohio train, over what ruins and
resurrections, torn up a hundred times, and as obstinately
relaid, until all its engineers are veteran officers, and can
stand fire both of the furnace and the musket. Everybody
in the country is a veteran ; the contractor, who ran his
schooner of fodder past^the Eebel batteries ; the correspond
ent, whose lean horse slipped through the crevices of drop
ping shells ; the teamster, who whipped his mule out of the
mud-hole, while his ammunition wagbn behind grew hot
with the heaviness of battle ; -the old farraer, who took to
his cellar while the fight raged in his chiraneys, but ven
tured out bet-(veen the bayonet charges to secure his fatted
calf. Annapolis Junction has still the sterile guise of the cam
paign, where the hills are bare around the hospitals, and the
railway taverns are whittled to skeletons. I have really
seen whole houses, little more than shells, reduced to mea
greness by the pocket-knife. The narae of alraost every
body on the continent is cut soraewhere in the South ;
Virginia has raore than enough names carved over her fire
side altars to inscribe upon all her multitudinous graves.
There are close to the city fine bits of landscape, where
the fields dip gracefully into fertile basins, and rise in swells
of tilled fields and orchard to some knoll, enthroning a por-
ticoed home. Two years ago all these fields were quag-
raires, where stranded wheels and the carcasses of hybrids,
looked as if a mud-geyser had opened near by. The grass
has spread its covering, as the birds spread their leaves
over the poor babes in the wood, and we walk we know not
where, nor over what struggles, and shadows, and sor
rows. I pity the army mule, though he never asked me for sym-

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 307
pathy. Who ever loved a raule ? You can love a lion, and
make him lick your hand : some people love parrots, and
owls ; and I once knew a person who could catch black
snakes and carry them lovingly in his bosora ; but I never
knew a beloved mule. Yet this war has been fought and
won by hj'brids. They ha-ve pulled us out of ruts and fed
us, and starved for us. The mule is the great quartermas
ter. See him and "his brethren yonder in corral, — misera
ble veterans of no particular race, slab-sided, and capable
of holding ink between their ribs. They mounch, and
raounch, and wear the same stolid eye which you have seen
under the driver's lash, and in the vaulting moment of vic
tory. No stunning receptions greet them, no cheers and
banquets when Muley comes marching home ; over at
Giesboro they corae in crippled, die by the rausket with
out a murmur, and are immediately boiled down and for
gotten, I was once beaten by a rival correspondent upon a prora
inent battle, by riding a mule with my despatches. He
walked into a mud-puddle just half way between the field
and the post-ofiBce, and stopped there till raorning.
Here we are, at Washington. I have been in raost of
the cities of Europe : some of them have dirty suburbs, but
the first impression of the Capitol City is dreary in the ex
treme ; a number of the lost tribes have established booths
contiguous to the terminus, wherein the filthiest people in
the world eat the filthiest dishes ; a man's sense of cleanli
ness vanishes when he enters the District of Colurabia. I
have been astonished to reraark how greatness loses its
stature here. Mr. Charles Suraner is a handsorae raan on
Broadway or Beacon Street, but eating dinner at Thorap-
son's, his shoulders seera to narrow and his fine face to grow
commonplace. Above the squalid wideness of ungraded streets and the
waste of shanties propped upon poles above abysses of
vacant lots, where two drunken soldiers are pummelling

308 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
each other, towers the marvellous dome with its airy genius
firmly planted above, like the ruins of Palrayra abov^ con
temporary meanness. Moving up the streets, in dust and
mud-puddle, you see shabbily ambitious churches, with
wooden towers ; hotels, the curbs whereof are speckled with
human blemishes, sustaining like hip-shotten caryatides the
sandstone-wooden colurans. Within there is a pandemo
nium of legs in the air, and an agglomeration of saliva,
ending with an impertinent clerk and two crescents of lazy
waiters, who shy whisks, and are arabitious to run superflu
ous errands, for the warrant to rob you. Of people, you see
squads ; of residents, none. The public edifices have not
picked their corapany, neither have the public functionaries.
There is a quantity of vulgar statuary lying around, horses
standing on their tails, and impossible Washingtons imbed
ded in arm-chairs ; but the noble facade of the treasury
always suggests to me Couture's great picture ofthe Deca
dence, where, under a pure colonnade, some tipplers are
carousing. If we are to have statues at the Capital, let us
make them with uplifted hands, and shame upon their
grave, contemplative faces.
Shall we ever raake Washington the representative Capi
tal of the country ?
Certainly all efforts to iraprove the site worthy of the
seat of gigantic legislation have hitherto failed. The sword
and the raalaria have attacked it. Every year sees the
President driven frora his Mansion by pestilential vapors,
and the sanitary condition ofthe city is extraordinarily bad.
The carcasses of slain horses at (jiesboro send their efSuvia
straight into Washington on the wind, and the " Island,"
or that part of the city between the river and the canal, is
dangerous almost all the year.
Moreover, the entire river front of the city seeras to be
untenable, except for negroes ; the Washington monument
stands on the yielding plain in the rear of the Chief Magis
trate's, a stunted ruin, finding no foundation ; and much of

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 309
' the great Capital reserve near by, would be a dead weight,
if any effort were raade to dispose of it, as building lots.
The sraall portion of Washington lying upon Capitol Hill, is
the raost salubrious and covetable ; but it is a lonesorae
journey by night around the Capitol grounds to the city.
The finest residences lie north of the President's house, but
the nuraber of these grows apace, and the quantity of
capital invested in private real estate, reraains almost
stationary. We recall but two or three citizens of Washington who
have spent their money on the spot where they have made
it. Corcoran was the most generous ; he erected a museura
of art, and Government has made it a Comraissary depot I
But how few of the illustrious Senators, Chief Justices,
Generals, etc., who draw their sustenance frora the Capital,
care a penny to decorate it ? Corapare the horae of Gover
nor Sprague on 6th Street, to his splendid mansion at
Providence, or the Club House of the Secretary of State,
to his place at Auburn. Washington has power, but it
cannot attract. It is the solitary monarch, at whose feet all
kneel, but by none beloved. Strangers repair to it, grow
rich, and quit it with their earnings. Government works
nobly to imitate the Palaces of the Csesars, and the public
edifices leave our municipal structures far beneath, but these
marble and granite piles seem to mock the littleness of in
dividual ambition. Two hotels have been built during the
war, both of the,, caravansary class, but the city, for four
years, has been miserably incompetent to entertain its guests,
or to coramand their respect.
Washington, to be a city, lacks three elements, — com
merce, representation, health ; the environs are picturesque,
and the new forts on the hill-tops little injure the land
scape. But the question is not premature, whether Washington
city will ever answer the purposes of a stable seat of gov
ernment, and reflect the enterprise, patriotism, and taste of
the American people.

310 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
I have soraetiraes thought that these huge public build
ings, — now inadequate to accommodate the machinery of
the Government, — would, at some future day, be the
nucleus ofa great lycee, and that Washington would become
the Padua of the Eepublic, its University and Louvre, while
legislation and adrainistration, despairing of giving dignity
to the place, would depart for a raore congenial locality.
At any rate, the old Federal theory of a sylvan seat of
governraent has failed.
For a sequestered and virtuous retreat of legislation, we
have corruption augmented by dirt, and business stagnation
aggravated by disease. There are virtues in the town ; but
these must be searched for, and the vices are obvious.

CHAPTER XXIX.

FIVE FORKS.

I COMMENCE my account on the battle-field, but must soon
raake the long and lonely ride to Humphrey's Station, where
I shall continue it.
I am sitting by Sheridan's camp-fire, on the spot he has
just signalized by the most individual and complete victory
of the war. All his veterans are around him, stooping by
knots over the bright fagots, to talk together, or stretched
upon the leaves of the forest, asleep, with the stains of
powder yet upon their faces. There are dark masses of
horses blackened into the gray background, and ambulances
are creaking to and fro. I hear the sobs and howls of the
weary, and note, afar off, araong the pines, moving lights
of burying parties, which are tumbling the slain into the
trenches. A cowed and shivering silence has succeeded
the late burst of drums, trumpets, and cannon ; the dead
are at rest ; the captives are quiet ; the good cause has won
again, and I shall try to tell you how.
Many months ago the Array of the Potoraac stopped be
fore Petersburg, driven out of its direct course to Eich
mond. It tried the Dutch Gap and the powder-ship, and
shelled and shovelled till Sherman had cut five States in
half, and only timid financiers, sutlers, and congressional
excursionists paid the least attention to the armies on the
Jaraes. We had fights without much purpose at our breast
works, and at Hatcher's Eun, but the dashing achievements
(311)

312 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
of Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley overtoppped all our
dull infantry endeavors, and he shared with Sherman the
entire applause of the country. No one knows but that
behind these actors stood the invisible prompter, Grant ;
yet prorapters, however assiduous, never divide applauses
with the dramatis personce ; and, therefore, when Sheridan,
the other day, by one of those slashing adventures which
hold us breathless, appeared on the Paraunkey and crossed
the peninsula to City Point, even the arraies of the Poto
raac and James were agitated. The personnel of the man,
not less tha,n his renown, affected people. A very Punch
of soldiers, a sort of Eip Van Winkle in regimentals, it as
tonished folks, that with so jolly and grotesque a guise, he
held within hira energies like lightning, the bolts of w'hich
had splintered the fairest parts of the border. But nobody
credited General Sheridan with higher genius than activity ;
we expected to hear of hira scouring the Carolina boundary,
with the usual destruction of railways and mills, and there
fore said at once that Sheridan would cut the great South-
side road. But in this -last chapter Sheridan must take
rank as one of the finest militai-y men of our century. The
battle of " Five Forks " was, perhaps, the most ingeniously
conceived and skilfully executed that we have ever had on
this continent. It matches in secretiveness and shrewd
ness the cleverest efforts of Napoleon, and shows also
much of that soldier's broadness of intellect and capacity
for great occasions.
Sheridan had scarcely time to change his horses' shoes
before be was off, and after him much of our infantry also
moved to the left. We passed our ancient breastworks at
Hatcher's Eun, and extended our lines southwestward till
they touched Dinwiddie Court House, thirty miles from
City Point. The Eebels fell back with but little skirmish
ing, until we faced northward and reached out toward their
idolized Southside Eailway ; then they grew uneasy, and,
as a hint of their opposition, fought us the sharp battle of

CAJIPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 313
Quaker Eoad on Thursday. Still, we reached farther and
farther, marvelling to find that, with his depleted array, Lee
always overmatched us at every point of attack ; but on
Friday we quitted our intrenchments on the Boydtown
plank-road, and raade a bold push for the White Oak road.
This is one of the series of parallel public ways running
east and west, south of the Southside, the Vaughan road
being the first, the Boydtown plank-road the second, and
the old Court-House road the third. It becarae evident to
the Eebels that we had two direct objects in view : the sev
ering of their railway, and the occupation of the "Five
Forks." The latter is a raagnificent strategic point. Five
good roads meet in the edge of a dry, high, well-watered
forest, three of them radiating to the railway, and their
tributaries unlocking all the country. Farther south, their
defences had been paltry, but they fortified this erapty soli
tude as if it had been their capital. Upon its principal
road, the "White Oak," aforenaraed, they had a ditched
breastwork with embrasures of logs and earth, reaching
east and west three miles, and this was covered eastward
and southeastward by rifle-pits, masked works, and felled
timber; the bridges approaching it were broken; all the
roads picketed, and a desperate resolve to hold to it
averred. This point of " Five Forks " may be as much
as eight miles from Dinwiddie Court House, four frora the
Southside road, and eighteen from Humphrey's, the nearest
of our military railway stations. A crooked stream called
Gravelly Eun, which, with Hatcher's, forms Eowanty
Creek, and goes off to feed the Chowan in North Carolina,
rises near "Five Forks," and gives the name of Gravelly
Eun Church to a little Methodist meeting-house, built in
the forest a raile distant. That meeting-house is a hospital
to-night, running blood, and at "Five Forks" a victor's
battle-flags are flying.
The Fifth Army Corps of General Warren, has had all of
the flank fighting of the week to do. It lost five or six
27

314 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
hundred raen in its victory of Thursday, and on Friday
rested along the Boydtown plank-road, at the house of one
Butler, chiefly, which is about seven railes from Five Forks.
On Friday morning. General Ayres took the advance with
one of its three divisions, and inarched three-quarters of a
mile beyond the plank-road, through a woody country,
following the road, but crossing the ubiquitous Gravelly
Eun, till he struck the enemy in strong force a mile and a
half below White Oak road. They lay in the edge of a
wood, with a thick curtain" of timber in their front, a battery
of field-pieces to the right, mounted in a bastioned earth
work, and on the left the woods drew near, encircling a little
farm-land and negro-buildings. General Ayres's skirmish-
line being fired upon, did not stand, but fell back upou his
main column, which advanced at the order. Straightway
the enemy charged headlong, while their battery opened a
cross fire, and their skirmishers on our left, creeping down
through the woods, picked us off in flank. They charged
with a whole division, making their raeraorable yell, and
soon doubled up Ayres's line of battle, so that it was forced
in tolerable disorder back upon General Crawford, who cora
raanded the next division. Crawford's men do not seem to
have retrieved the character of their predecessors, but raade
a feint to go in, and, falling by dozens beneath the raurder
ous fire, gave up the ground. Griffin's division, past which
the fugitives ran, halted awhile before taking the doubtful
way ; the whole corps was now back to the Boydtown plank-
road, and nothing *had been done to anybody's credit par
ticularly. General Griffin rode up to General Chamberlain in this
extreraity. Charaberlain is a young and anxious officer, who
resigned the professorship of raodern languages in Bowdoin
College to embrace a soldier's career. He had been
wounded the day before, but was zealous to try death
again. " Chamberlain," said Griffin, " can'tyou save the honor
of the Fifth corps?"

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 3l5
The young General formed his men at once, — they had
tasted powder before, — the One Hundred and eighty-fifth
New York and the One Hundred and ninety-eighth Pennsyl
vania. Down they went into the creek waist deep, up the
slope and into the clearing, muskets to the left of thera,
rauskets in front of thera, cannon to the right of thera ; but
their pace was swift, like their resolve ; raany of them were
cut down, yet they kept ahead, and the Eebels, who seemed
astonished at their own previous success, drew off and gave
up the field. Alraost two hours had elapsed between the
loss and the recovery of the ground. The battle might be
called Dabney's Farra, or more generally the fight of Grav
elly Eun. The brigades of Generals Bartlett and Gregory
rendered material assistance in the pleasanter finale of the
day. An order was soon after issued to hasten the burial
of the dead and quit the spot, but Chamberlain petitioned
for leave to charge the Eebel earthwork in the rear, and the
enthusiasm ofhis brigade bore down General Warren's more
prudent doubt. In brief. Griffin's division charged the fort,
drove the Eebels out of it, and took position on the White
Oak road, far east of Five Forks. While Griffin's division
raust be credited with this result, it may be said that their
luck was due as rauch to the tirae as the raanner of their
appearance ; the Eebel divisions of Pickett and Bushrod
Johnston were, in the raain, by the time Griffin came up, on
their way westward to attack Sheridan's cavalry. Ayres
and Crawford had charged as one to four, but the forces
were quite equalized when Charaberlain pushed on. The
corps probably lost twelve hundred men. In this action,
the Eebels, for the first time for many weeks, exhibited all
their traditional irresistibility and confidence. The merit
of the affair, I am inclined to think, should be awarded to
them ; but a terrible retribution remained for them in the
succeeding day's decrees.
The ill success of the earlier efforts of Sheridan, show
conclusively the insufficiency of ever so good cavalry

316 CAMPAIGNS OF a" NON-COMBATANT.
to resist well organized and resolute infantry. Concen
trating at Dinwiddie Court House, he proceeded to scour so
rauch of the country that he almost baffled conjecture as to
where his quarters really were. As raany thousand cavalry '
as constitute his powerful force seera magnified, thus mount
ed and ever moving here and there, to an incredible number.
The Court House, where he- remained fittingly for a couple
of days, is a cross-road's patch, numbering about twelve
scattered buildings, with a delightful prospect on every
side of sterile and monotonous pines. This is, I believe,
the largest village in the district, though Dinwiddie stands
fourth in population among Virginia counties. At present
there is alraost as great a population underground as the
ancient county carried on its census. Indeed, one is per
plexed at every point to know whence the South draws its
prodigious armies. Some English officers have been visiting
Dinwiddie during the week, and one of them said, curtly :
" Blast the country ! it isn't worth such a row, you know.
A very good place to be exiled, to be sure, but what can
you ever make of it ! "
This soulless. Briton had never read any of the "poems
about the "boundless continent/'' and had no distinct con
ception of " size."
From Dinwiddie fields, Sheridan's men went galloping,
by the aid of maps and cross-examination, into every by
road ; but it was soon apparent that the Eebel infantry meant
to give them a push. This came about on Friday, with a
foretaste on Thursday.
Little Five Forks, is a cross-road not far from Dinwiddie'
Court House, in the direction of Petersburg. Big Five
Forks, which, it must be borne in mind, gives name to the
great battle of Saturday, is farther out by many miles, and
does not lie within our lines. But, if the left of the army be
at Dinwiddie, and the right at Petersburg, Little Five Forks
will be first on the front line, though when Sheridan fought
there, it was neutral ground, picketed but not possessed.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 317
Very early in the week, when the Eebels became aware of
the extension of our lines, they added to the regular force
which encamped upon our flank line at least a division of
troops. These were directed to avoid an infantry fight, but
to seek out the cavalry, and, by getting it at disadvantage,
rid the region both of the harmfulness of Sheridan, and that
prestige of his name, so terrifying to the Virginia house
wife. So long as Sheridan remained upon the far left, the
Southside road^was unsafe, and the rapidity with which his
coramand could be transferred frora point to point rendered
it a forraidable balance of ]30wer. The Eebels knew the
country well, and the peculiar course of the highways gave
them every advantage. The cavalry of Sheridan's army
proper, is divided into two corps, commanded by Generals
Devin and Custer; the cavalry of the Potomac is com
manded by General Crook ; Mackenzie has control of the
cavalry of the James. On Friday, these were under sep
arate orders, and the result was confusion. The infantry
was beaten at Gravelly Eun, and the cavalry raet in flank
and front by overwhelming nurabers, executed sorae raove
raents not laid down in the raanual. The centre of the
battle was Little Five Forks, though the Eebels struck us
closer to Dinwiddie Court House, and drove us pell raell up
the road into the woods, and out the old Court House road
to Gravelly Eun. We rallied several tiraes, and charged
them into the woods, but they lay concealed in copses, and
could go where sabres were useless. The plan of this battle
field will show a series of irregular advances to puzzle any
body but a cavalry-man. The full division of Bushrod
Johnston and General Pickett, were developed against us,
with spare brigades frora other corps. Our cavalry loss
during the day was eight hundred in killed and wounded ;
but we pushed the Eebels so hard that they gave us the
field, falling back toward Big Five Forks, and we intrenched
immediately. Two thousand men comprise our losses of
27*

318 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
Friday in Warren's corps and Sheridan's command, includ
ing many valuable officers. We shall see how, under a
single guidance, splendid results were next day obtained
with half the sacrifice.
On Friday night General Grant, dissatisfied, like most
observers, with the day's business, placed General Sheridan
in the suprerae coraraand of the whole of Warren's corps
and all the cavalry. General Warren reported to hira at
nightfall, and the little array was thus coraposed : —
General Sheridan's Forces, Saturday April 1, 1865;>
Three divisions of infantry, under Generals Griffin, Ayres,
and Crawford.
Two divisions of cavalry, forraeriy constituting the Army
of the Shenandoah) now commanded by General Merritt,
under Generals Devin and Ouster.
One division cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, under
General Crook.
Brigade or more cavalry Army of the James, under Gen
eral Mackenzie.
In fhis composition the infantry was to the cavalry in the
proportion of about two to one, and the entire force a consid
erable army, far up in the teens. Sheridan was absolute, and
his oddly-shaped body began to bob up and down straightway ;
he visited every part of his line, though it stretched from Din
widdie Court House to the Quaker road, along the Boydtown
Plank and its adjuncts. At daybreak on Sa,turday he fired
four signal-guns, to admonish Warren he was off; and his
cavalry, by diverging roads, struck their camps. Just
south of Culpepper is a certain Stony creek, the tributaries
to which wind northward and control the roads. Over
Stony creek went Crook, making the longest detour. Cus
ter took a bottom called Chamberlain's bed; and Devin
advanced from Little Five Forks, the whole driving the
Eebels toward the left of their works on White Oak road.
We must start with the supposition that our own men far

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 319
outnumbered the Eebels. The latter were widely separated
from their comrades before Petersburg, and the adjuStraent
of our infantry as well as the great raovable force at Sheri
dan's disposal, renders it doubtful that they could have re
turned. At any rate they did not da so, whether frora
choice or necessity, and it was a part of our scheme to push
them back into their entrenchments. This work was dele
gated to the cavalry entirely, but, as I have said before,
mounted carbineers, are no match for stubborn, bayoneted
infantry. So when the horsemen were close up to the Eeb
els, they were dismounted, and acted as infantry to all in
tents. A portion of them, under Gregg and Mackenzie,
still adhered to the saddle, that they might be put in-rapid
motion for flanking and charging purposes ; but fully five
thousand indurated men, who had seen service in the Shen
andoah and elsewhere, were formed in line of battle on foot,
and by charge and deploy essayed the difficult work of
pressing back the entire Eebel column. This they were to
do so evenly and ingeniously, that the Eebels should go no
farther than their works, either to escape eastward or to
discover the whereabouts of Warren's forces, which were
already forming. Had they espied the latter they might
have become so discouraged as to break and take to the
woods ; and Sheridan's object was to capture them as well
as to rout them. So, all the afternoon, the cavalry pushed
them hard, and the strife went on uninterruptedly and ter
rifically. I have no space in this hurried despatch to ad
vert either to individual losses or to the many thrilling
episodes of the fight. It was fought at so close quarters
that our carbines were never out of range ; for had this been
otherwise, the long rifles of the enemy would have given
them every advantage. With their horses within call, the
cavalry-men, in line of battle, stood together like walls of
stone, swelling onward like those gradually elevating ridges
of which Lyell speaks. Now and then a detachment of
Eebels would charge down upon us, swaying the lines and

320 CAJIPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
threatening to annihilate us ; for at no part of the action,
till its crisis, did the Southern men exhibit either doubt or
dismay, but fought up to the standard of the most valiant
treason the world has ever had, and here and there show
ing some of those wonderful feats of individual courage
which are the rairacles ofthe tirae.
A colonel with a shattered regiraen-t carae down upon us
in a charge. The bayonets were fixed ; the men came on
with a yell ; their gray uniforms seemed black amidst the
smoke ; their preserved colors, torn by grape and ball,
waved yet defiantly ; twice they halted, and poured in vol
leys, but came on again like the surge frora the fog, de
pleted, but determined ; yet, in the hot faces of the carbi
neers, they read a purpose as resolute, but more calra, and,
while they pressed along, swept all the while by scathing
volleys, a group of horseraen took thera in flank. It was an
awful instant ; the horses recoiled ; the charging column
trembled like a single thing, but at once the Rebels, with
rare organization, fell into a hollow square, and with solid
sheets of steel defied our centaurs. The horseraen rode
around them in vain ; no charge could break the shining
squares, until our dismounted carbineers poured in their
volleys afresh, raaking gaps in the spent ranks, and then in
their wavering time the cavalry thundered down. The
Eebels could stand no more ; they reeled and swayed, and
feU back broken and beaten. And on the ground their col
onel lay, sealing his devotion with his life.
Through wood and brake and swamp, across field and
trench, we pushed the fighting defenders steadily. For a
part of the tirae, Sheridan himself was there, short and
broad, and active, waving his hat, giving orders, seldom
out of fire, but never stationary, and close by fell the long
yellow locks of Custer, sabre extended, fighting like a Vi
king, though he was worn and haggard with much work.
At four o'clock the Eebels were behind their wooden walls at
Five Forks, and still the cavalry pressed them hard, in feint

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 321
rather than solemn effort, while a battalion disraounted,
charged squarely upon the face of their breastworks which
lay in the raain on the north side of the White Oak road.
Then, while the cavalry worked round toward the rear, the
infantry of Warren, though commanded by Sheridan, pre
pared to take part in the battle.
The genius of Sheridan's moveraent lay in his disposition
of the infantry. The skill with which he arranged it, and
the difficult manoeuvres he projected and so well executed,
should place him as high in infantry tactics as he has here
tofore shown himself superior in cavalry. The infantry
which had marched at 2i p. m. from the house of Boisseau,
on the Boydtown plank-road, was drawn up in four battle
lines, a mile or more in length, and in the beginning facing
the White Oak road obliquely ; the left or pivot was the
division of General Ayres, Crawford had the center and
Griffin the right. These advanced from the Boydtown
plank-road, at ten o'clock, while Sheridan was thundering
away with the cavalry, mounted and dismounted, and de
luding the Eebels with the idea that he was the sole attack
ing party ; they lay concealed in the -woods behind the
Gravelly Eun raeeting-house, but their left was not a half-
mile distant from the Eebel works, though their right
reached so far off that a novice would have criticized the
position sharply. Little by little, Sheridan, extending his
lines, drove the whole Eebel force into their breastworks ;
then he dismounted the mass of his cavalry and charged the
works straight in the front, still thundering on their flank.
At last, every Eebel was safe behind his intrenchments.
Then the signal was given, and the concealed infantry, mahy
thousand strong, sprang up and advanced by eghelon to the
right. Imagine a great barndoor ehutting to, and you have
the raovement, if you can also iraagine the door itself, hinge
and all, moving forward also. This was the door : —
ATKES — - CRAWFORn  GRIFFIN.
Stick a pin through Ayres and turn Griffin and Crawford

322 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
forward as you would a spoke in a wheel, but move your
pin up also a very little. In this way Ayres will advance,
say half a mile, and Griffin, to describe a quarter revolution,
will move through a radius of four miles. But to compli
cate this raoveraent by eghelon, we raust iraagine the right
when half way advanced cutting across the centre and re-
forraing, while Crawford becarae the right and Griffin the
middle of the line of battle. Warren was with Cra-wford on
this march. Gregory coraraanded the skirmishers. Ayres
was so close to the Eebel left that he might be said to hinge
upon it; and at 6 o'clock the whole corps column came
crash upon the full flank of the astonished Eebels. Now
came the pitch of the battle.
We were already on the Eebel right in force, and thinly
in their rear. Our carbineers were making feint to charge in
direct front, and our infantry, four deep, hemmed in their
entire left. All this they did not for an instant note, so
thorough was thSir confusion ; but seeing it directly, they,*so
far from giving up, concentrated all their energy and fought
like fiends. They had a battery in position, which belched
incessantly, and over the breastworks their musketry raade
one unbroken roll, while against Sheridan's prowlers on
their left, by skirraish and sortie, they stuck to their sinking
fortunes, so as to win unwilling applause from mouths of
wisest censure.
It was just at the coming up of the infantry that Sheri
dan's little band was pushed the hardest. At one time,
indeed, they seeraed about to undergo exterraination ; not
that they wavered, but that they were so vastly over
powered. It will remain to the latest tirae a raatter of
marvel that so paltry a cavalry force could press back six
teen thousand infantry ; but when the infantry blew like a
great barndoor — the simile best applicable — upon the'
enemy's left, the victory that was to come had passed the
region of strategy and resolved to an affair of personal
courage. We had met the enemy ; were they to be ours ?

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 323
To expedite this consumraation every officer fought as if he
were the forlorn hope. Mounted on his black pony, the
same which he rode at Winchester, Sheridan galloped
everywhere, his flushed face all the redder, and his plethoric,
but nervous figure all the more ubiquitous. He galloped
once straight down the Eebel front, with but a handful of
his staff. A dozen bullets whistled for him together ; one
grazed his arm, at which a faithful orderly rode ; the black
pony leaped high, in fright, and Sheridan was untouched,
but the orderly lay dead in the field, and the saddle dashed
afar empty. General Warren rode with Crawford most of
the afternoon, mounted likewise, and making two or three
narrow escapes. He was dark, dashing, and individual as
ever, but for sorae reason or other was relieved of big cora
raand after the battle, and Griffin -was instated in his place.
General Sheridan ordered Warren to report to General'
Grant's head-quarters, sending the order by an aid. Warren,
on his own hook, did not meet on Friday with his general
success, and on Saturday Sheridan was the master-spirit ;
but Warren is a General as well as a gentleman, and is only
overshadowed by a greater genius, — not obliterated.
Ayres, accounted the best soldier in the Fifth corps, but too
quietly raodest for his own favor, fought like a lion in this
pitch of battle, raaking all the faint-hearted around him
asharaed to do ill with such an exaraple contiguous. General
Bartlett, keen-faced and active like a fiery scimitar, was lead
ing his division as if he were an iraraortal ! He was closest
at hand in the most gallant episodes, and held at nightfall a
bundle of captured battle-flags. But Griffin, tall and slight,
was the master-genius of the Fifth corps, to which by right
he has temporarily succeeded. He led the charge on the
flank, and was the first to mount the parapet with his horse,
riding over the gunners as May did at Cerro Gordo, and
cutting thera down. Bartlett's brigade, behind hira,
finished the business, and the last cannon was fired for the
day against the conquering Federals. General Crawford

324 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
fulfilled his full share of duties throughout the day, amply
sustained by such splendid brigade coraraanders as Baxter,
Coulter, and Kellogg, while Gwin and Boweryraan were- at
hand in the division of General Ayres ; not to omit the
fallen Winthrop, who died to save a friend and win a new
laurel. What shall I say for Chamberlain, who, beyond all
question, is the first of our brigade coraraanders, having
been the hero of both Quaker Eoad and Gravelly Eun, and
fri this action of Five Forks making the air ring with the
applauding huzzas of his soldiers, who love - him ? His is
one of the names that will survive the common wreck of
shoulder-straps after the war.
But I ara individualizing ; the fight, as we closed upon
the Eebels, was singularly free from great losses on our side,
though desperate as any contest ever fought on the conti
nent. One prolonged roar of rifle shook the afternoon ; we
carried no artillery, and the Eebel battery, until its capture,
raked us like an irrepressible demon, and at every foot of
the intrenchments a true man fought both in front and be
hind. The birds ofthe forest fled afar ; the sraoke ascended
to heaven ; locked in so raad frenzy, none saw the sequel
of the closing day. Now Eichmond rocked in her high
towers to watch the irapending issue, but soon the day be-
o-an to look gray, and a pale raoon came tremulously out to
watch the meeting squadrons. Iraagine along a line of a
full raile, thirty thousand men struggling foi; life and pres
tige ; the woods gathering about them — but yesterday the
home of hermit hawks and chipmonks — now ablaze with
bursting shells, and showing in the dusk the curl of flaraes
in the tangled grass, and, rising up the boles of the pine
trees, the scaling, scorching tongues. Seven hours this
terrible spectacle had been enacted, but the finale of it had
almost corae.
It was by all accounts in this hour of victory when the
modest and brave General Winthrop of the first brigade,
Ayres division, was mortally wounded. He was riding

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 325
along the breastworks, and in the act as I am assured, of
saving a friend's fife, was shot through to the left lung.
He fell at once, and his men, who loved him, gathered around
and took him tenderly to the rear, where he died before the
stretcher on which he lay could be deposited beside the
meeting-house door. On the way frora the field to the hos
pital he wandered in raind at tiraes, crying out, "Captain
Weaver how is that line? Has the attack succeeded?"
etc. When he had been resuscitated for a pause he said :
" Doctor,. I ara done for." His last words were : " Straighten
the line ! " And he died peacefully. He was a cousin of
Major Winthrop, the author of " Cecil Dreerae." He was
twenty-seven years of age. I had talked with hira before
going into action, as he sat at the side of General Ayres,
and was permitted by the guard of honor to uncover his
face and look upon it. He was pale and beautiful, marble
rather than corpse, and the uniforra cut away from his
bosom showed how white and fresh was the body, so pulse
less now.
General Griffin said to me : " This victory is not worth
Winthrop's life."
Winthrop went into the service as a simple color-bearer.
He died a brevet brigadier. ,
At seven o'clock the Eebels came to the conclusion that
they were outflanked and whipped. They had been so
busily engaged that they were a long tirae finding out how
desperate were their circurastances ; but now, wearied with
persistent assaults in front, they fell back to the left, only
to see four close lines of battle waiting to drive thera across
the field, decimated. At the right the horseraen charged
thera in their vain attempt to fight " out," and in the rear
straggling foot and cavalry began also to assemble ; slant fire
cross fire, and direct fire, by file and volley rolled in perpet
ually, cuttin'g down their bravest officers and strewingthe
fields with bleeding raen ; groans resounded in the -intervals
28

32_6 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
of exploding powder, and to add to their terror and despair,
their own artillery, captured from thera, threw into their
own ranks, frora its old position, ungrateful grape and can
ister, enfilading their breastworks, whizzing and plunging
by air line and ricochet, and at last bodies of cavalry fairly
mounted their intrenchments, and charged down the para
pet, slashing and trampling them, and producing inexplica
ble confusion. They had no commanders, at least no or
ders, and looked in vain for some guiding hand to lead them
out of a toil into which they had fallen so bravely and so
blindly. A few more volleys^ a new and irresistible charge,
a shrill and warning comraand to die or surrender, and,
with a sullen and tearful impulse, five thousand muskets
are flung upon the ground, and five thousand hot, exhausted,
and impotent raen are Sheridan's prisoners of war.
Acting with his usual decision, Sheridan placed his cap
tives in care of a provost-guard, and sent them at once to
the rear. Those which escaped, he ordered the fiery Custer
to pursue with brand and vengeance ; and they were pressed
far into the desolate forest, spent and hungry, many falling
by the way of wounds or exhaustion, many pressed down
by hoof or sabre-stroke, and mai^y picked up in raercy and
sent back to rejoin their brethren in bonds. We captured
in all fully six thousand prisoners. General Sheridan esti
raated them modestly at five thousand, but the provost-mar
shal assured rae that he had a line four abreast a full mile
long. I entirely bear him out, having ridden for forty min
utes in a direction opposite to that they were taking, and
growing weary at last of counting or of seeing them. They
were fine, hearty fellows, almost all Virginians, and seemed
to take their capture not unkindly. They wore the gray
and not very attractive uniforra of the Confederacy, but
looked to be warm and fat, and passing along in the night,
under the fir-trees, conveyed at raost a roraatitic idea of
grief and tribulation. They were put in a huge pen, mid
way between Big and Little Five Forks, for the night, the

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 327
officers sharing the same fare with the soldiers, from whom,
indeed, they were undistinguishable.
Thus ended the splendid victory of Five Forks, the least
bloody to us, but the most successful, proportionate tp
numbers engaged, that has been fought during the war.
One man out of every three engaged took a prisoner. We
captured four cannon, an ambulance train and baggage-
tearas, eight thousand rauskets, and twenty-eight battle-
flags. General Longstreet, it is thought, coramanded.
Neither he nor Pickett nor Bushrod Johnston, division com
manders, were taken ; they were wise enough to see that
the day was lost, and imitated Bonaparte after Waterloo.
I attribute this victory alraost entirely to Sheridan ; it
was won by strategy and persistence, and in great part by
meri who would not stand fire the day before. The happy
distribution of duties between cavalry and infantry excited
a fine rivalry, and the consciousness of Sheridan's guidance
inspired confidence. Has any battle so successful ever been
fought in Virginia ? or, indeed, in the East ? I think not.
It has opened to us the enemy's flank, so that we can sweep
down upon .the Appomattox and inside of his breastworks,
enabling us to shorten our lines of intrenchments one half,
if no raore, and putting out of Lee's service fifteen thou
sand of his choicest troops. And all this, General Sheridan
tells rae, has cost hira personally no more than eight hun
dred men, and the service no more than fifteen hundred.
Compare this with Chancellorsville, Williamsburg, the Wil
derness, Bull Eun, and what shall we say ? The eneray
must have lost in this fight three thousand in killed and
wounded. The scene at Gravelly Eun meeting-house at 8 and at 10
o'clock on Saturday night, is one of the solemn contrasts
of the war, and, I hope, the last of them. A little frame
church, planted among the pines, and painted white, with
cool, green window-shutters, holds at its foot a gallery for
the negroes, and at the head a varnished pulpit. I found its

328 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
pews raoved to the green plain over the threshold, and on
its bare floors the screaming wounded. Blood ran inlittle
rills across the planks, and, human feet treading in them,
had made indelible prints in eveiy direction ; the pulpit-
lamps were doing duty, not to shed holy light upon holy
pages, but to show the pale and dusty faces of the beseech
ing ; and as they moved in and out, the groans and curses
of the suffering replace the gush of peaceful hymns and the
deep responses to the preacher's prayers. Federal and
Confederate lay together, the bitterness of noon assuaged
in the common tribulation of the night, and all the while
came in the dripping stretchers, to place in this golgotha
new recruits for death and sorrow. I asked the name of
the church, but no one knew any more than if it had been
the site of some obsolete heathen worship. At last, a grin
ning sergeant smacked his thumbs as if the first idea of his
life had occurred to hira, and led rae to the pulpit. Beneath
some torn blankets and rent officers' garments, rested the
hyran book and Bible, which he produced. Last Sunday
these doled out the praises of God, and the frightened con
gregation worshipped at their dictation. Now. they only
served by their fly leaves to give me my whereabouts, and
said : —
Presented to Gravelly Bun 4^eeizngi House by the Ladies.
Over the portal, the scenes within were reiterated, except
that the greatness of a starry night replaced the close and
terrible arena of the church. Beneath the trees, where the
Methodist circuit-rider had tied his horse, and the urchius,
during class-meeting, had wandered away to cast stones
at the squirrels, and raeasure strength at vaulting and run
ning, the gashed and fevered lay irregularly, sorae soul
going out at each whiff of the breeze in the fir-tops ; and
the tearas and surgeons, and straggling soldiers, and gal
loping orderlies passed all the night beneath the old and
gibbous moon and the hushed stars, and by the trickle of
Gravelly Eun stealing off, afeared. But the wounded had

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 329
no thought that night ; the victory absorbed all hearts ; we
had n.0 losses to notice where so much was won.
A raile past the church, going away from head-quarters
all the time, lies Five Forks, the object and name of the
battle. A large open field of perhaps thirty acres, inter
poses between the church and the commenceraent of the
Eebel works. Their left is only sorae rails and logs to raask
marksmen, but the work proper is a very long stretch of
all ol)structions of a raan's height in relief.
The White Oak road runs directly in front of these in
trenchments, and was, at the time I passed, the general
highway for infantry returning from the field and cavalry
men concentrating at General Sheridan's bivouac. Eiding a
mile I came upon the Five Forks proper, and just to the
left, at the foot of sorae pines, the victor and his assistants
were congregated. Sheridan sat by some fagots, exam
ining a topographical map of the country he had so well
traversed ; possibly with a view to design further aggres
sive movements in the morning. He is opposite me now
as I pen these paragraphs by the imperfect blaze of his
bivouac fire. He is good humored and talkative, like all
meri conscious of having achieved a great work, and has
been good enough to sketch for me the plan of the day's
operations, frora which I have corapiled rauch ofthe stateraent
alDOve. Close by lies Custer, trying to sleep, his long yel
low hair covering his face ; and General Griffin, now com
manding the Fifth corps, goes here and there issuing orders,
while aides and orderlies rode in and out, bearing further
fresh messages of deeds consuraraated or proposed. We
shall have a hot night no doubt, for away off to the right,
continue volleys of musketry and discharges of artillery,
intermixed with what seera to be thunderbolts of our raen-
of-war at anchor in the Apporaatox and Jaraes, — if such
can be heard at this great distance, — which tell us that the
lines are in motion. 28*-

CHAPTEE XXX.

RICHMOND DESOLATE.

The scenes of entering the doomed stronghold, when
Grant had burst its gates, ought to be made vivid as the
spectacle of death. With my good and talented associate,
Mr. Jerome B. Stillson, I hold the Spotswood Hotel,-and
from this caravansary of the late capital as thoroughly iden
tified with Eebellion as the inn at Bethlehem with the gos
pel, we date our joint paragraphs upon the condition of the
city. A week cannot have exhausted the curiosity of the
North to learn the exact appearance of a city which has
stood longpr, raore frequent, and raore persistent sieges,
than any in Christendom. This town is the Eebellion ; it
is all that we have directly striven for ; quitting it, the
Confederate leaders have quitted their sheet-anchor, their
>roof-tree, their abiding hope. Its history is the epitome of
the whole contest, and to us, shivering our thunderbolts
against it for more that four years, Eichmond is still a mys
tery. Know then, that, whether coming from Washington or
Baltiraore, the two points of erabarkation, all bound hither-
ward must rendezvous at Fortress Monroe ; thence, in such
excellent steamers as the Dictator, start up the broad James
Eiver. To own a country-house upon the "Jeems" river
is the Virginia gentleman's riltimate aspiration. There,
with a tobacco-farm, and wide wheatlands, his feet on his
front-porch rails, a Havana cigar between his teeth, and a
(330)

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COME .-VTANT. 331
colored person to bring hira frequent juleps, the Virginia
gentleraan, confident in the divinity of slavery, hopes in his
natural, refined idleness, to watch the little family grave
yard close up to his threshold, till it shall kindly open and
give him sepulture.
Elsewhere raen aira to be successful, or enterprising, or
eloquent, or scholarly, but that nobleness of hospitality,
high spirit, dignity, and affability which constitute our idea
of chivalry is everywhere save here an exotic. We say
that chivalry is "played out," and that the prestige of
"first farailies" is gone with the hurried retreat before
Grant's salaraanders. Not so. Secession as a cause is past
the range of possibilities. But no people in their subjuga
tion wear a better front than these brave old spirits, whose
lives are not their own. Fire has ravaged their beautiful
city, soldiers of the color of their servants, guard the cross
ings and pace the paveraent with bayoneted muskets. But
gentlemen they are stillj in every pace, and inch, and sylla
ble, — such men as we weire wont to call brothers and
countryraen. However, the Jaraes Eiver, at which we cora
raenced, has not a town upon it between the sea and the
head of navigation. It is a strong coramentary upon this
patriarchal civilization, judged by our gregarious tastes,
that one of the noblest strearas in the world should show to
the traveller only here and there a pleasant mansion, flanked
by negro cabins, but nowhere a church-spire nor a steam-
raill. All that we see from Fortress Monroe to City Point
are ridges of breastworks, rifle-pits, and forts, lying bare,
yellow, and deserted, to defend its passage, excepting at
James Island, where the solitary and broken tower of the
ancient colony holds guard over some bramble and ruin.
Here Smith founded the celebrated settlement, which wooed
to its threshold the gentle Pocahontas, and fell to fragraents
at the behest of the fiery Bacon. The raraparts on the
James will remain forever ; great as they are, they would
hardly hold the bones of the slain in the capture and defence.

332 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
Four hours from Fortress Monroe we pass Harrison's -Land
ing, where two grand armies, beaten aside from Eichmond,
sought the shelter of the river, and at City Point quit our
large craft, to be transferred to a light draught vessel,
which is to carry the first mail going to Eichmond under the
national flag since the beginning of the war.
City Point is still a populous place, and the millions of
mules upon it bray hoarsely ; but we leave all these behind,
as well as the national standard, which flaunts over General
Grant's late head-quarters, and steara past tbe raouth of the
- Appomattox to go through the enemy's lines.
Henceforward every foot of the way is freshly interesting.
The Eebel ram Atlanta in tow of a couple of tugs, goes past
us with a torpedo boat at the rear. She is raking, slant,
and forraidable ; but " old glory " is waving on her. Di
rectly our own leviathan, the Boanoke drifts up, and all her
storm-throated tars cheer like the belch of her guns. . We
see to the right, the tip of Malvern Hill, ever sorrowful and
sacred, and soon a great unfinished ram careens by, which
never grew to battle-size ; the true colors shine above her
bulwarks like a flower growing in a carcass. Then at little
intervals there are frequent prizes from the docks of Eich
mond, tugs, transports, barges, some of which show_under
our beautiful banner the Eebel cross, pale and contemptible.
These malcontents coraraitted as great crirae against good
taste in substituting for our starry erablera this artistic
abomination, as against law and policy in changing the
configuration of the Union. There is another flag, however,
which we see, half exultantly, half vindictively, — the cross
of St. George, — flying from a British cutter.
By and by we come to our intrenchments upon the upper
James and at Bermuda Hundred. Now they are very list
less and half empty. The boys have gone off to tread, on
Lee's shanks. Only a few vessels stand at the landings,
and the few remnants have laid down the rifle, and taken up
the fishing-pole. One should come up this river to get

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 333
a conception of our splendid navy. Sharp-pointed gun
boats, with bullet-proof; crows' nests and swivels that are
the gentlest murderers ever polished ; monitors through
whose eyeholes a ball a big as a cook-stove squints from a
columbiad socket ; ferry-boats which are speckled with brass
cannon, and all sorts of craft that can float_ and manoeuvre,
provided they look at us through deadly muzzles are there
to the number of fifty or sixty, as many as make the entire
navies of all other Araerican nations. After the war we
raust have a great naval review, and invite all the crowned
headslio attend it. Soon we reach Dutch Gap, where lies
Butler's canal, or " Butler's gut," as the sailors call it.
The river at this point is so crooked that Butler must have
laid it out by the aid of his wrong eye. The canal is meant
to cut on a long elbow ; but being almost at right angles to
the course of the river, only the most obliging tide would
run through it. As a consequence, it is a sort of a sluice
merely, of insufficient width, and as a "sight "very disap
pointing to great expectations. Between the points of
debouch of this canal crosses a drawbridge of pontoons, for
the use of our troops, and just beyond it Aiken's Landing,
where the flag of truce boat stopped. A fine brick mansion
stands in shore, -with a wharf abreast it. The banks around
it are trodden here with many feet. These are the traces
of the poor prisoners who reached here, fevered, and starv
ing and naked, to catch for the first tirae the sight of cool
waters and friends, and the bright flag which they had fol
lowed to the edge of the grave. How they threw up their
hats, and cheered to the feeblest, and wept, and danced,
and laughed. Long be the place remembered, as holy,
neutral ground, where death never trod, and multitudes
passed from suffering, to freedom and home. Beyond this
point, the raost formidable Eebel works we have seen, line
the high bluffs and ridges. They are raonuraents of patient
labor, and make of themselves hills as great as nature's.
But the siege pieces, which often bellowed upon them like

334 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
thunderbolts along the mountain-tops, are gone now, and
only straggling, meddling fellows pass them at all. The
highest of these works commands both ends of the Dutch
Gap canal, and while our lads were digging they often hid
theraselves in caves which they dug in the cliff-sides.
We reach the first torpedo at length ; a little red flag
marks it, by which the boat slips tremulously, though
another and another are before, at the sight of which our
nervous folks are agitated. Here is a monitor with a drag
behind it, which has just fished up one ; and the sequel is
told by a bloody and motionless figure upon the deck.
These torpedoes are the true dragon teeth of Cadmus, which
spring up armed men.
Happily for us, the Eebels have sown but few of them,
and the position of these was pointed out by one of their
captains who deserted to our side. In the midst of these
lie the obstructions. Great hulks of vessels and chained
spars, and tree-tops which reach quite across the river, ex
cept where our pioneers have hewn a little gap to let the
steamer through. Upon these obstructions a hundred
cannon bear frora the cliffs before us, and as we go further
we see the whole river-bed sprinkled with strange contriv
ances to keep back our thunder-bearers. We think it abso
lutely impossible, under any circumstances, that our fleet
could have got to Eichraond so long as the Eebels contested
the passage ; each step forward finds new and greater ob
stacles. The channel is as narrow as Harlera Eiver and as
crooked as a walk in the ramble of Central Park. Each
elbow of the stream is muscular with snag and snare wher
ever the swift stream swoops around abruptly. Jagged
abatis, driven piles, and artificial lumber, bar the way be
fore us. To the- right of us, to the left of us, behind us,
stand up the bare parapets, crowned with airy lookout
towers, where, at the coraing of a nautilus, the whole hori
zon and foreground would rain crossfires of shell and iron
bolts, to sweep into annihilation the tiniest or the staunchest

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 335
opposition from the earth's surface, and under the earth and
above the earth death waited to leap up and draw the daring
to its bosom. Not one, nor two, nor three lines of defences
frowned down as we cautiously steamed along, but every
precipice was bristling with defiance, as if the deep subter
ranean fires underlying our race had burst here fitfully and
frequently, heaving up the swells of the hills till they
lay hard and barren for huraan ingenuity to garnish them
with anxious artillery. All along were the deep funnel-
shaped cases of the torpedoes just disentombed. But at
nightfall Drury's Bluff flitted by like the battleraented wall
of a city, and then we saw no more.
The band that greeted us from a distance stops playing
as the boat nears the wharf.
There is a stillness, in the raidst of which Eichmond, with
her ruins, her spectral roof, afar, and her unchanging spires,
rests beneath a ghastly, fitful glare, — the night stain which
a great conflagration leaves behind'it for weeks,^ struggling
silently with colossal shadows along the foreground, two
hideous walls alone arise in front, shutting these gleams.
They are the Libby Prison and Castle Thunder. Eight and
left, and far in the moonlighted perspective beyond, there
is a soft glitter upon cornices and domes. A haggard glow
of candles, faintly defines the thoroughfares that have not
suffered ruin ; while massive, and upon a height overlooking
all, stands the Capitol, flying its black shadow frora the
sinking moon across a hundred crumbling walls^^ntil its
edges touch the windows of the Libby.- .'^^k ^v ,-
But over its massive roof, dimly seen throu^^fel^hg mists
ofthe river, and, as before, " through the mists of f^^depp,"
' the banner of the Union, banished for four years, ^^b^ken
out again, broad and beautiful, by the breath of sfli April
night. Upon the face of every leaning figure on the steara-
er's deck, in sight of that radiant signal, is the same half-
melancholy, half-triumphant smile.
The thought ofthe battle which has passed, of the army.

33G CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
which, after struggling through years for this majestic pro
cession, has swept by and beyond without the view for
which its straining eyes have yearned, is sad and strange.
There coraes back dimly suggestive, a story of Iran and his
host; thundering at the gates of Tupelo, for the possession of
a wondrous jewel, and awakening once upon a dawn to
learn that Tupelo was an empty casket, — to turn back
longing, " wondering eyes upon the city, and to hunt the
fleeing prize afar." Yet unto those legions of the republic
which have emptied Eichraond of a prize which yet they may
have easily clutched, there go out reverence and blessing
even larger than might be bestowed upon them resting in
camp, upon these overlooking hills. That true allegiance,
that calm and stern self-sacrifice which impels an army for
ward past the sweet applauses and rewarding calms to
which great victories might entitle it, are the purest sources
of its glory and its fame. God bless the army that has per
mitted us to consumraate this journey and to. gaze upon this
spectacle, while it does not impress us too proudly, too tri
umphantly. Both pride and triumph have, of course, a
place in the tumultuous feeling that surges through the hearts
of all ; yet as in every true man is born an instinct of com
passion for a fallen foe, we prefer that the shout should go
up in honor of our victory alone, and not because these
have suffered.
The boat touches the shore at Eockett's, the foot of Eich
mond. A few minutes' walk and we tread the pavements
of the capital. There are no noisy and no beseeching run
ners ; there is no sound of life, but the stillness of a cata
comb, only as our footsteps fall dull on the deserted side
walk, and a funeral troop of echoes bump their elfin heads
against the dead walls and closed shutters in reply, and this
is Eichraond. Says a melancholy voice : " And this is
Eichraond." We are under the shadow of ruins. Frora the paveraents
where we walk far off into the gradual curtain of the night.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 337
stretches a vista of desolation. The hundreds of fabrics,
the millions of wealth, that crumbled less than a week ago
beneath one fiery kiss, here topple and moulder into rest.
A white smoke-wreath rising occasionally, enwraps a shat
tered wall as in a shroud. A gleam of flarae shoots a gro
tesque picture of broken arches and ragged chiraneys into
the brain. Huge piles of debris begin to encuraber the
sidewalks, and even the pavements, as we go on. The
streets in some places are quite choked up frora walking.
We are among the ruins of half a city. The wreck, the
loneliness, seem interrainable. The memory of lights in
houses above, beheld while upon the steamer, alone keeps
despondency frora a victory over hope ; and although tbe
continued existence of the Spottswood Hotel is vouched
for by authority, my lodge in such a wilderness seems next
to irapossible. Away to the right, above the waste of
blackened walls, around the phantom-looking flag upon the
capitol, — the only sign betwixt heaven and earth, or upon
the earth, that Eichmond is not wholly deserted, — beyond
and out of the ruins, we walk past one of two open door
ways where the raoon serves as candle to a group of talk
ing negroes. The gas works, injured by fire, are not work
ing, and "ile" has not been struck in the Confederacy.
Not a white man appears until we reach the Spottswood, —
there before the entrance is a conclave of officers, — then, at
last, entering, we stand in that most famous of Southern
hotels, the interior of which is filled with the very aroma of
the Eebellion. A thankful yielding up of carpet-bags and
valises to the indignant negro waiters, and then a brief
moonlight stroll toward the capitol.
Within the ga,tes of the Square, that swing on their
hinges silent as the hour we pass alone, before us stands
the magnificent monuraent crowned with Crawford's eques
trian statue of Washington. The right hand of the rider,
lifted against the sky, points a prophetio finger toward th^
southwest. Dark, and motionless, a,nd grand, it is the one
29

338 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
syrabol belonging solely to the Union, which they have not
dared to desecrate ; which they have strangely chosen to
consider neither as an insult nor a rebuke.
Gazing beyond at the capitol itself, and back again at the
figure which overlooks the building, it is not hard to' imag
ine that, while the noisy debates of a congress of traitors
to the Union that he founded were in progress, those bronze
lips soraetiraes smiled in scorn.
Leaving Eichmond proper, and descending into the low,
squalid portion of the town known as Eocketts, one sees
araong the many large warehouses, used without exception
for the storage of tobacco, a certain one more irregular than
the rest. An archway leads into it, and upon the outside
of the second story windows runs a long ledge or footway,
whereupon sentries used to stride, guarding the miserable
people within. This is the jail of Castle Thunder, aud it was
the civil or State prison ofthe capital. Ul as were the accom
modations of prisoners of war, the treatment of their own
unoffending citizens by the Eebel government was ten times
more infaraous. We could not repress indignation, nor by
any philosophic or charitable effort excuse the atrocious
tyranny which here lashed, chained, handcuffed, tortured,
shot, and hung, hundreds of people whora it could not stul
tify or irapress. We raay grant that the Confederacy had
becorae a governraent ; that, in its perilous incipiency, it
had apology for severity and rigor with all malcontents ;
that, in its own struggle for death or life, it raight, in self-
defence, absorb all private liberty ; but even thus the ter
rible testimony of this Castle Thunder is an everlasting
stigma upon the Southern cause. We entered its strong
portal, and there in the new coraraandant's room lay the
record left behind by the Confederates. Its pages made
one shudder.
These are some of the entries : —
" George Barton, — giving food to Federal prisoners of

CAJIPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 339
war ; forty lashes upon the bare back. Approved. Sen
tence carried into effect July 2.
"Peter B. Innis, — passing forged government notes;
chain and ball for twelve months ;" forty lashes a day. Ap
proved. " Arthur Wright, — atterapting to desert to the eneray ;
sentenced to be shot. Approved. Carried into effect,
March 26.
" John Morton, — coraraunicating with the enemy ; to be
hung. Approved. Carried into effect, March 26."
In an inner room are some fifty pairs of balls and chains,
with anklets and handcuffs upon thera, which have bent the
spirit and body of many a resisting heart. Within are two
conderaned cells, perfectly dark, — a faded flap over the
window peep-hole, — the sraell frora which would knock a
strong raan down.
For in their centre lies the sink, ever open, and the floors
are sappy with uncleanliness. To the right of these, a door
leads to a walled yard not forty feet long, nor fifteen wide,
overlooked by the barred windows of the raain prison rooms,
and by sentry boxes upon the wall-top. Here the wretched
were shot and hung in sight of their trembling comrades.
The brick wall at the foot ofthe yard is scarred and crushed
by balls and bullets which first passed through some human
heart and wrote here their damning testimony. The gal
lows had been suspended from a wing in the ledge, and in
mid-air the impotent captive swung, none daring or willing
to say a good word for him ; and not for any offence against
God's law, not for wronging his neighbor, or shedding
blood, or making his kind miserable, but for standing in the
way of an upstart organization, which his impulse and his
judgment alike impelled hira to oppose. This little yard,
bullet-raarked, close, and shut from all sympathy, is to us
the ghastliest spot in the world. Can Mr. Davis visit it,
and pray as he does so devoutly afterward ? When men

340 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
plead the justice of the South, and arguraents are prorapt to
favor them, let this prison yard rise up and say that no such
crimes in liberty's name have ever been committed, on this
continent, at least. Up stairs, in Castle Thunder, there are
two or three large rooms, barred and dimly lit, and two or
three series of condemned cells, pent-up and pitchy, where,
by a refinement of cruelty, the ceiling has been built low so
that no man can stand upright. Here fifteen or twenty were
crowded together, and, in the burning atmosphere, they
stripped themselves stark naked, so that when in the morn
ing the cell-doors were opened, they came forth as from the
grave, begging for death. There are women's cells too ;
for this great and valiant govemment recognized women as
belligerents, and locked them up close to a sentry's cart--
ridge, so that, in the bitterness of solitude, they were un-
sexed, and railed, and blasphemed, like wanton things. On
the paveraents before the jail, were hidden numberless
guards, who shot at every rag fluttering from the cages, and
all this little circle of death and terror was enacted close to
the bright river, and airy pediment of that high capitol, where
bold raen hoped by war to wring from a reluctant Union, ac
knowledgment of arrogant independence to rein civilization
as it pleased, and warp the destinies of our race.

CHAPTEE XXXI.
THE RUINS OF THE REBELLION.
When Eichmond was a plain city, a county seat, and
the residence of a governor and comraonwealth legislature,
its enterprise was as gradual as its hospitality and private
probity were steadfast. It was always a fierce political
arena, and its two great journals, the Whig and Enquirer,
were not raore violently partisan than its hustings. In the
latter its debaters were wide-faraed. No such " sturap "
has ever existed in Araerica, coraraencing with Patrick
Henry, whose eloquence was as intense and telling as his
statesmanship was errant and inconsistent, and passing
through the shrill and bitter apostrophies of John Eandolph
down to the latest era of Henry A. Wise, the most suffer
able and interrainable carapaign orator extant, and John
Minor Botts, scarcely his inferior. With us, out of door
rhetoric is dry, studied, and argumentative ; here an inspira
tion, based upon feeling rather than reason, and so earnest
that it knew no personal friendship where its political affini
ties stopped. Whig and Democrat were not raen of the
same race or faraily in Eichraond ; they passed each other
on the sidewalk with a sneer or a scowl, and knew no coali
tion even in the house of God. Even when the Whig
party as an organization deceased, the Whigs, as individu
als, retained their traditional antipathy, and the advent of
secession was decried by these, not because they loved the
Union more, but the triumphant Democracy the less. Sep-
29* (311)

342 CAMPAIGNS OP A KTON-COMBATANT.
aration was a feature of the hated faith, and no good could
come out of Nazareth. The Union men of Eichmond who
have hungered in Castle Thunder, and been driven, needy
and naked, from the South, were all old line Whigs, dis
trusting the North, but disliking Democracy. However,
the war burst at last, heralded by that raysterious lunatic
who appeared like a warning gi^nt in the twilight day of
the Union, — old John Brown ; and as the Gulf States
wheeled into line and pulled down the old colors, the Old
Dorainion, Southern and slaveholding, was too irapulsive
not to follow the whirlwind. She did not go for policy's
sake, nor for principle's sake, but for eraotion's sake. How
wild and jubilant, and confident, were those Eichraond raass
meetings, at which separation was counselled I How. awful
seems their levity at this distance, with the city conquered
and in ruins ! On the Capitol Hill the raad orators in
veighed ; within the Capitol raet the disunion asserably in
secret and prolonged session ; before the Araerican, the Ex
change, and the Spottswood hotels, visiting coraraissioners
harangued the crowd ; the people went to ballot on the day
of State suicide, with laughing and wagging, and at the de
cree that Virginia and her people had, resolved to quit the
fabric of their fathers, bonfires and illurainations lit up the
river and the sky.
Done, these were the men to stand fast. Done in dream,
the first acts were mirages rather than comprehensible
events. They marched upon Harper's Ferry ; they sup
pressed the Unionists in their midst ; they erased the sacred
mottoes of amity and unity from their monuments, and won
to the new cause they so blindly embraced every inch of
their soil except Old Point, where Fortress Monroe still
stood defiant, to be in the end the source of their downfall.
Gayly went the populace of Eichraond, and splendid parties
raade the nights lustrous. When they heard that their town
was mentioned,, araong many others, as the probable Con
federate capital, they threw their hearts into the suggestion

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 343
and offered lands and edifices as free gifts for the honor of
being the centre of the South. A few, more interested,
beheld in the coming of the seat of government higher rents
and increased patronage, crowded hotels, and railway stock
at a preraium ; but the raass, with the enthusiasra of women
or children, thought only of their beloved city growing in
rank and power; the horae of legislators, orators, and
savans ; the seat of all rank and the depository of archives.
At last the good news carae ; Eichmond was the capital of
a great nation ; that courtesy bound all grateful Virginian
hearts to the common cause forever ; the heyday and gratu
lation were renewed ; the new ' President, and the reverend
senators appeared on Eichmond streets ; the citizens were
proud ani happy.
There was no spectre of the mighty North, slowly rising
from lethargy like those Medicean figures of Michael Angelo,
whicli leap frora stone to avengers. There was no mutter
of coming storm, no clank of coraing sabres and bayonets,
no creak of great wheels rolling southward, and war in its
extreraest and most deadly phase. Eichmond and Virginia
laughed at these, flushed in the present, and invincible in
the past. They only held high heads, — and trade, with
vanity, grew strong, till every citizen wondered why all this
glory had been so long delayed, and despised the ten years
preceding the rupture, if not, indeed, the whole past of the
Union. The President of the United States proclaimed war ; an
army marched upon the city. Not until the battle of Bull
Eun, when the dead and mangled carae by hundreds into
the town, did any one discover the consequences of Eich-
raond's new distinction; but by this tirae the Eebel gov
ernraent had absorbed Virginia, and was raaster of the city.
Thenceforward Eichraond was the scene of all terrors, the
prey of all fears and passions. Carapaign after carapaign
was directed against her ; she lived in the perpetual thun
der of cannon ; raiders pressed to her gates ; she was a

344 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-C03IBATANT.
great garrison and hospital only, besieged and cut off from
her own provinces ; armies passed through her to the sound
of drums, and retui:ned to the creak of ambulances. Sho
lost her social prestige, and became a barrack-city, filled
with sutlers, adventurers, and refugees, till, bearing bravely
up araid doraestic riot and horrible deraoralization, — a jail,
a navy-yard, a base of operations, — she grew pinched, and
base, and haggard, and, at last, deserted. Given over to
sack and fire, the wretches who used her retreated in the
night, and the eneraies she had provoked marched over her
defences, and laid her — spent, degenerate, and disgraced-^
under martial law.
The outline of the scenes iramediately associated with the
evacuation of Eichraond has been told by telegraph. Ne-w
that the stupefied citizens have recovered reason and raera
ory so well as to tell us^-the story, it seeras the most dra
matic and fearful of the war. On Saturday the city was
calm and trusting ; Lee, its idol, held Grant, at Petersburg,
fast ; the daily journals came out as usual, filled with
-soothing accounts ; that night carae vague rumors of re
verses ; in the raorning vaguer rumors of evacuation ; by
Sunday- night the public records were burned in the streets,
and the only remaining railway carried off the specie of
the banks; before daylight on Monday, the explosions of
bridges and half-built ships of war shook the houses ; in the
imperfect day, woraen, and old raen, and children began to
sway and surge before the guarded depot, which refused to
adrait them ; then the town fell afire ; no remonstrance
could pacify the incendiaries ; the spring wind carried the
flarae from the burning boats on the canal to the great Gal-
ligo Mills, to files of massive warehouses groaning with
tobacco, into the heart of the town, where stores, and
vaults, and banks, and factories lined the wide, undulating
streets ; it filled the gray concave with flame till the stars
of the dawn shrank to pale invisibility in the advancing
glare, and the crackle of hot roofs and beams, and the crash

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 345
of walls and timbers, drowned the cries of the frightened
and bankrupt, who beheld their fortunes wither in an hour,
and the inheritance of their children fall to ashes. By the
red, consuming light, poured past the straggling Confeder
ate soldiers, dead to the acknowledgment of private rights,
and sacking shop and home with curses and ribaldry ; the
suburban citizens and the menial negroes adopted their ex
amples ; carrying off whatever carae next their hands, and
with arras full of "swag," dropping it in the Inghway,
lured by sorae dearer plunder. Negroes, with baskets of
stolen champagne and rare jars of tamarinds, sought their
dusky quarters to swill and carouse ; and whites of the
middle, and even of the higher class, lent themselves to
theft, who, before this debased era, would have died before
so surrendering their honor. All was peril, terror, and li
cense ; ^all who had nothing to lose were thieves ; all who
had anything left to lose were cowards. The conflagration
swept through the densest, proudest blocks, driving off, not
only the resident worthy, but the resident corrupt. Where
were the lewd contractors, who had hoarded Confederate
scrip by the basest exactions ? With the fall of the capital
their dollars d-windled to dust ; four years of crime had re
sulted in beggary ; still, -with grasping palms, they adhered
to their valueless paper, bearing it away. But of all the
wretched, the Cyprians were the foremost. These inhabited
the dense and business part of the town, where their bouses
were serried and compact ; and, driven forth by the fire,
they sought the street in their plumes and calicoes, to
spend a cold and shivering bivouac in the square of the
Capitol. From afar, the rich men of Sunday watched the
flames of Monday sweeping on in terrible impetuosity,
knowing that every tongue of light which leaped on high
carried with it the competence they had sinned to acquire.
Arid behind all, plunderer, incendiary, and straggler, came
the one vague, overlapping, dreadful fear of ^ the eneray.
Would they finish what friends had coraraenced, — the sack.

346 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
the desolation, the slaughter of the place ? Eichraond had
eost thera half a million of lives, a raountain of blood and
wealth, four years of deadly struggle; would they not
coraplete its ruin ?
The morning carae ; the Confederates were gone ; cavalry
in blue galloped up the streets ; a brigade of white infantry
filed after thera ; then carae the detested negroes. Behold !
the victors, the subjugators; assist to quench the flaraes, —
and Eichraond is captured, but secure !
Many of the churches were open on the Sunday of April
9, 1865, and were thinly attended by the raore adventurous
bf the citizens, with a sprinkling of soldiers and Northern
civilians. Mr. Woodbridge, at the Monuraent Church,
built on the site of a famous burnt theatre, prayed for " all
in authority," and held his tongue upon dangerous topics.
The First Baptist Negro Church has been occupied all the
week by Massachusetts chaplains, and Northern negro
preachers, who have talked the gospel of John Brown to
gaping audiences of wool, white-eyeball, and ivory, telling
them that the day of deliverance has corae, and that they
have only to possess the land which the Lord by the bayonet
has given thera. To-day, Mr. Allen, the regular white
preacher, occupied the pulpit, and told the negroes that
slavery was a divine institution, which would continue for
ever, and that the duty of every good servant was to stay
at horae and raind his raaster. Half of the enlightened
Africans got up midway of the discourse and left ; the rest
were in doubt, and two or three black class-leaders, whom
the parson had wheeled over, prayed lustily that the Lord
would keep Old Virginny from new ideas and all Yankee
salvations ; so that in the end the population were quite
tangled up, as much so as if they had read the book of
Eevelation. I attended Saint Paul's, the fashionable Episco
palian church, where Lee, Davis, Meraminger, and the rest
had been coraraunicants, and heard Doctor Minnegerode
discourse. He was one of the Prussian refugees of 1848,

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 347
and, though a hot Jacobin there, becarae a more bitter
secessionist here. He is learned, fluent, and thoughtful,
but speaks with a slight Teutonic accent. Jeff Davis's pew
was occupied by nobody, the door thereof being shut. Jeff
was a very devout raan, but not so much so as Lee, who
made all the responses fervently, and knelt at every require
ment. This church is capable of " seating " fifteen hun
dred persons, has galleries running entirely around it, and
is sustained at the roof within by composite pilasters of plas
ter, and at the pulpit by columns of raongrel Corinthian ;
the tout ensemble is very excellent ; a darkey sexton gave us
a pew, and there were sorae handsome ladies present, dark
Eichmond beauties, haughty and thinly clothed, with only
here and there a jockey-feathered hat, or a velvet mantilla,
to tell of long siege and privation. We saw that those who
dressed the sKKbbiest had yet preserved some little article
of jewelry — a finger-ring, a brooch, a bracelet, showing
how the last thing in woman to die is her vanity. Poor,
proud souls ! Last Sunday many of them were heiresses ;
now raany of thera could not pay the expenses of their own
funerals. There were some Confederate officers in the
house. They reminded me of the captive Jews holding
worship in their gutted Temple. Some ruffians broke into
this church after the occupation, and wrote ribaldry in the
Bible and hymn-book. Dr. Minnegerode dared not pray for
-the Confederate States, and his serraon was trite, based
upon the text of the eleventh chapter of the Acts — "The
disciples were first called Christians in Antioch." In the
opening lesson, however, he aimed poison at the North,
selecting the forty-fourth and following Psalras, coraraenc
ing, "We have heard with our ears, 0 God! our fathers
have told us, what work Thou didst in their days, in the
times of old." Then it spoke of the heathen being driven
out and the chosen people planted ; afflicted by God's dis
favor, the forefathers held the territory, and the generation
extant would yet rout its enemies. But now the old stock

348 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
were put to shame, a reproach to their neighbors and those
that dwelt round about thera. " Thou hast broken us in the
place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death,"
going not forth with our armies, bowing our souls to the
dust till our bellies cleave unto the earth ; we are killed all
the day long, and counted as sheep for the slaughter.
Let all who would drink the essence of sorrow and
anguish, read this wonderful Psalm, to learn how after this
recapitulation, the parson said aloud the thrilling invoca
tion. " Arise ! for our help, and redeem us for thy mercies'

Then came the next Psalm, light and tripping, full of
praise for the king and his bride, coming to the nuptials
with her virgin train : " instead of thy fathers, shall be thy
children, whom thou mayst raake princes in'^.H the earth."
A poetic parallel might be drawn between all this and .the
early hopes of Eichraond ; but the third Psalm came iu like
a beautiful peroration.
" God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in
trouble, — the Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob
is our refuge. Selah ! He raaketh wars to cease unto the
end of the earth; he breaketh the bow and cutteth the
spear in sunder ; he burneth the chariot in the fire."
Clear, direct, and in meaning monotone, the captive high-
priest read all this, so fearfully applicable to the subjugated
and ruined town, and then the organ threw its tender music
into the half-empty concave, sobbing like a far voice of
multitudes, until the sweet singing of Madarae Euhl, the
chorister, swept into the moan of pipes, and rose to a grand
peal, quivering and trilling, like a nightingale wounded,
raaking more tears than the sublimest operatic effort and the
house reeled and trembled, as if Miriam and her chanting
virgins were lifting praises to God in the midst of thc
desert. .
That part of the New Testament read, by some strange

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATant. g^tg
fatuity, touches also the despair of the city, it told f
Christ betrayed by Iscariot, deserted by his disciples, say
ing to his few trusty ones : "I will smite the shepherd
and "the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad."
"Can ye not watch with me one hour?" he says to the
timid and sleeping; and turning to his conquerors, avers
that the Son of Man shall return to Jerusalem, " sitting
on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of
heaven." All this, of course, was the prescribed lesson for
the Sunday before Easter, which to-day happened to be ; but
had the pastor searched it out to meet the exigencies of the
place and time, it could not have been more apropos. He
read also from Daniel, where the king's dreara was inter
preted ; his realra, like a tree worn down to the root, and
the king himself making his dwelling with the wild asses,
but in the end " thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after
that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule."
Again the organ rang, and the wonderful voice of the
choristers alternated with deep religious prayers, whose
refi-ain was, " Have mercy upon us."
¦: Only one Sunday gone by, the church was densely packed
with Eebel officers and people ; Mrs. Lee was there, and the
president, in his high and whitened hairs. Midway of the
discourse a telegram came up the aisle, borne by a rapid
orderly. The president read it, and strode away; the
preacher read it, and faltered, and turned pale ; it said :
My lines are broken ; Eichmond muit be evacuated by midnight.
EOBBKT E. LbB.
Ill news travels without words ; the whole house felt that
the great calamity had come ; they broke for the doors, and
left the rector, alone and frightened, to finish the solemn -
Services. , . -i i.
Now the enemy is here; the music and the prayer are
not interrupted. God is over all, whether Davis or Lincoln
be uppermost. 30

350 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
This campaign, so gloriously and proraptly finished, has
consuraed just eleven days. It took three to flank the Eebel
army, one to capture Petersburg, one to occupy Eichmond,
and six to pursue, overtake, and capture the Army of
Northern Virginia. No such memorable fighting has ever
been known on our continent, and it parallels the Italian,
the Austerlitz, and the Jena campaigns ; in breadth of con
ception, it outrivals them all ; it took less raen to do it than
the last two ; it shows equal sagacity with any of thera, but
none of their brilliant episodes ; and, unlike thera, we can
not trace its full credit to any single personality. It has
made the army iraraortal, but the lustre of it is diffused, not
concentrating upon any single head. Grant must be cred
ited with most of the combinations ; yet without the genius
and activity of Sheridan, the bewildering rapidity of Sher
man, and the steadfastness of such reliable men as Wright,
Parke, and Griffin, these combinations would have fallen
apart. It is said that Stoneman and Sheridan were to have
joined their separate cavalry commands at Lynchburg, and
effect a simultaneous junction with the Army of the Poto
mac. This failed, through a miscalculation of distance or
time ; but had they succeeded, we should have been less
than three days in turning Lee's right, and so made the
carapaign even raore concise. But Grant's talent has been
marked and signal. He is the long-expected "coraing
raan." None can be lukewarm in surveying the nice ad
justment of so many separate and converging routes to a
grand series of victories. Sherman leaves the Eebellion no
Gulf city to inhabit, and cuts off Lee's retreat while be ab
sorbs Johnston ; the navy closes the last seaport ; Sheridan
severs all communication with Eichmond, and swells the
central forces; then the' Eebels are lured from their lines
and scattered on their right ; the same night the intrench
ments of Petersburg are stormed, Eichmond falls as this
prop is rejnoved, being already hungry-hearted, and the
flushed army falls, upon Lee and finishes tho war. Is not

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. ' 351
this work for gratulation ? Glory to the array, perfect at
last, and to Grant, to Sheridan, to each of its coraraanders I
Let us not do injustice to Lee. His tactics at the close
of his career were as brilliant as necessity would permit.
He could not feed Eichmond, even though its impregnable
works were behind him to retire to. So he gave his govern
raent time to evacuate, and, with his thinned and famishing
ranks, raade a bold push to join Johnston, sorae of whose
battalions had already reinforced hira ; overtaken on the
way, and punished anew, he did as any great and huraane
comraander would do, — stopped the effusion of blood use
lessly, and gave up his sword.
Unless Davis has been captured, we would think it ira
probable that he had given up the Eebel cause. He was
born to revolutionize, containing within hiraself all the ele
ments ofa Eebel leader, and too proud to yield, even when,
like Macbeth, pursued to his castle-keep. 1 ara assured by
those who know hira best that he has been, throughout, the
absolute raaster of the Confederacy, overawing Lee, who,
from the first, was a reluctant Eebel ; and his design was,
until abandoned by his army, to hold Eichmond, even
through starvation, making, behind its tremendous fortifica
tions, a defence like that of Leyden or Genoa.
There is no raore faith in the Eebellion ; it will be a long
tirae before the United States is greatly beloved, but it will
be always obeyed. Our soldiers look well, most of them
being newly uniformed, and behave like gentlemen. Cour
tesy will conquer all that bayonets have not won. The
burnt district is still hideously yawning in the heart of the
town, a monuraent to the sternness of those bold revolu
tionists who are being hunted to their last quarry. Des
potisra, under the plea of necessity, has raet with its end
here as it raust everywhere. We shall have no raore ex
periments for liberty out of the Union, if the new Union
-will grant all that it gave before. Yesterday, when our
splendid levies were paraded in the street, with foot, cav-

6o2 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
airy, and cannon, in admirable order, and kindly-eyed men
in command, I looked across their cleanly lines, tipped with
bayonets, to the Capitol they had won, bearing at last the
tri-color we all love and honor, as the symbol of our homes
and the hope of the world, and thought how more grandly,
even in her ruin, Eichmond stood in the light of its crowd
ing stars, rather than the den of a desperate cabal, whose
banner was known in no city nor sea, but as the ensign of
corsairs, and hailed only by fustian peers, now rent in the
grip of our eagle, and without a fane or an abiding-place.
Let us go on, not conquerors, but Eepublicans, battering
down only to rebuild more gloriously, — not narrowing the
path of any man, but opening to high and low a broader
destiny and a purer patriotism.

CHAPTEE xxxn.

WAR EXECUTIONS.

To have looked upon seventeen beings of huraan organ
ism, ambition, sense of pain and of disgrace, brought for
ward with all the solemnities of a living funeral, and
launched frora absolute cognition to direct death, should
put one in the category of Calcraft, Ketch, and Isaacs.
Yet, I do not think it would be right to so classify me.
I know an excellent clergyman,, who has seen and assisted
in fifty odd executions. He says, as I say, that each new
one is an augraented terror. But he is upon tbe spot to
sraooth the felon's troubled spirit, and I am with him to
teach the felon's boon companions the direness of the pen
alty. Without either the Chaplain or myself, capital pun
ishment would lose half its effectiveness.
And this is why I write the present article, — to relieve
rayself frora the pertinacious inquiries with which I have
been assailed since my return from the melancholy episodes
of the executions at Washington. I am button-holed at
every corner, and put through a cross-examination, to
which Holt's or Binghara's had no searchingness : " How
did Mrs. Suratt die ? " " Was the rope attached to her
left ear?^" "What sort of rope was it, for exaraple?"
"Do her pictures look like her?" "Pray describe how
Payne twisted, and whether you think Atzeroth's neck was
dislocated ? "
And, after answering these questions, replete as they are
30* (353)

354 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
with horrible curiosity,, the questioner turns away, saying,
"Dear me ! I wouldn't see a man hung for a thousand dol
lars." I am weary of such hypocrisy, and I shall, in this paper,
' speak of some executions I have witnessed.
I was quite a small boy, at school, when ray chura and
raodel. Bill Everett, dragged me off to Wayland's Mill, to
see old Mrs. Kitty White suspended. She was a very in
famous old woman, who had been in the habit of kidnap
ping black children, and running them by night from the
Eastern shore across the bay to Virginia, where they were
sold. If they became noisy and obstreperous before they
left her house, and suspicion fell upon her, she clove their
skulls with a hatchet, and buried them in her garden.
When finally discovered, the remains of nearly a score
marked how wholesale had been her wickedness.
This old woman was very drunk when she came to be
hanged, and so was the sheriff who assisted her. She
called him impolite names, and carried a pipe in her mouth,
and went off sraoking and cursing. I remember that I cried
very loudly, so that Bill Everett had to choke me, and saw
ghosts for so many nights succeeding, that Crouch, our
maid of all work, had to sit at my bedside till I fell
asleep. The atrocity of a crime makes great difference in one's
desire to see its after tragedy ; and the next-hanging I
attended was almost world-faraed. Four men were sus
pended for shooting down an entire family in cold blood.
They had embarked on a raid of robbery, and emerging from
the barren scrub of Delaware Forest, fell upon a snug and
secluded Maryland farra-house, where the farraer's faraily
were taking their supper. They fired through the ruddy
windows, and brought the raan down at his wife's feet ; she,
in turn, fell upon her threshold, rushing forth into the dark
ness, and the reranant of the faraily perished except two
little boys, who slipped away and gave the alarm.

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 355
The jailer's boys of Chestertown went to school with rae,
and I was invited by the least of thera to visit the jail, —
a tumble-down old structure with goggly windows, and so
unsafe that ihe felons had to be ironed to almost their own
Weight. And into the cell where the four fiends were
lying, the jailer's big boy, for a big joke, pushed me, and
locked the door upon me.
I was alone with the same bloodj'-handed men who had
so recently, and for a trifle of gold, made the flreside a
shamble, and the night a howling terror.
They appreciated the joke, and drew me to thera, while
their chains clanked, and pressed to my face their wild and
prickly beards. There was one of thera, naraed Druraraond,
who swore he would cut ray heart out, and they executed a
sort of death-tune on the floor with their balls and links. I
lost all knowledge and perception in my fright, and cannot,
at this interval, remember anything succeeding, but the
execution. They were put to death upon a single long
scaffold, the counterpart of that erected for the Booth con
spirators, and the rope attached to the neck of the least
guilty, broke when the drop fell, and cast him upon the
ground, lacerated, but conscious, to be picked up and again
suspended, while he liegged for life, like a child.
The sixth miscreant murdered frora revenge, which is just
a trifle better than avarice : his girl preferred another, and
the disappointed raan, Bowen, went to sea. Eeturning, he
found the united lovers in the exultation of happiness ; a
child had just been born to thera, and, touched by their con
tent, Bowen gave the old rival his hand, and asked hira out
to accept a bumper. They drsfak again and again, — the
Spirits burning their blood to fire, and reviving again the
bitter story of Bowen's love and shame. Within the hour,
the husband lay at the jilted man's feet ! He was con
demned to death, and I undertook to describe his exit for a
weekly newspaper.
Still I see him, broad and muscular, climbing the gallows

356 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
stair with his peaked cap, deathly white, and looking up at
the sun as if he dreaded its eye. There was the muttering
of prayers; the spasm of one spectator taken sick at the
crisis, and the dull thurap of the scaffold falling in.
The preacher Harden, who fondled his wife on his knee,
and fed her the while with poison, passed away so re
cently, that I need not revive the scene into which all his
bad life should have been prolonged.
The death of Arrastrong, expiating a hypocrite's life
at Philadelphia, is not so well remembered : he killed an
old raan in the heart of the city, riding in a wagon, and
dumped him out when he reached the suburbs. His life, to
the end, was marked by all insolence and infamy, and on
the day of the execution, he made a pretended confession,
inculpating two innocent persons. One hour after this, he
made the following speech : —
My Friends : I have a few words to say to you ; I ara
going to die ; and let rae say, in passing, I die in peace with
my Maker ; and if, at this moment, a pardon was offered
rae on condition of giving up ray Maker, I would not take
it ; and I die in peace with all the world, and forgive all my
enemies. I desire you to take warning by my fate. Sab
bath-breaking was the first cause. I bid you fare-well, gen
tlemen, (here he mentioned various officers), and I bid you
all farewell. I die in peace with everybody.
The Sheriff, very nervous, gave a signal to the drop-man
too soon, and a serious accident very nearly occurred. The
props were readjusted, all but the main support reraoved,
and that unhinged ; the Sheriff waved his handkerchief, and
with the dead thump of the trap-lids against their cushions>
and the heavy jerking of the noose knot against the vic
tim's throat, the young murderer hung dangling in the air,
not a limb quivering, and only a convulsive raoveraent of
the shoulders, to indicate the struggle which life raaintained
when giving up its place in the body.

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 357
There was a rush forward. The doctors grasped his
wrist. Sorae spectators passed their hands across his
knees to feel the tremulous sinews ; one or two felt a
faintness, and a dozen-made coarse jokes ; and one or raore
speculated as to the issue of his immortal part, or the de
gree of his pain, or the probability of his cognizance. In
seven minutes he was beyond the reach of execution or exe
cutioner, and a hurdle being wheeled from the stable, they
cut down his body, while a few scrambled for the rope, and
it was wheeled on a run into the convict's corridor for his
old father to claim. The neck was not broken, nor the flesh
discolored. Some said that he died " game ; " and all went
away, leaving the old man and a brother to sit by the re
mains and weep, that so great calamity had darkened their
home and blighted their lives. Few laraented him, for he
had youth, but none of its elements of sympathy; and
those who would make, even of his dying speech, a text
and a lesson, are instancing a lie more grievous than the
murder which he did.
In Engfend, I saw two men and a woman suffer death on
the coramon sidewalk ; just as if we were to hang people in
New York on the pavement before the Tombs.
No man, anxious to see an execution in London, need be
disappointed. Once or twice a month the Wolves are
brought to the slaughter, and all the people are invited to
enjoy the spectacle. A woman, one Catharine Wilson, was
to be hanged for poisoning. She was middle aged, and had
been reputable. Her manner of making way with folks was
to act as sick-nurse, and mingling poison with their medi
cine, possess herself of the trifles upon their persons. She
had sent six souls to their account in this way ; but, dis
covered in the seventh attempt, all the other cases leaked
out. She was condemned, of course, and on the Sunday
evening previous to the execution, as I was returning from
Spurgeon's Tabernacle, the omnibus upon which I sat
passed through the Old Bailey. There were the carpenters

358 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
joining the tirabers of the scaffold, and building black
barricades across the street. A raurrauring crowd stood
around in the solemn night, and the funereal walls of old
Newgate glowered like a horrible vault upon the dimly-lit
street. The public houses across the'way were filled up with
guests. All the front parlors and front bedrooras had been
let at fat prices, and suppers were spread in thera for th6
edification of their tenants. Do you reraerabei: the thrilling
chapter of "The Jew's last night alive," in " Oliver Twist ? "
Well, this was the scene ! These were the same beams and
uprights. There, huge-, massive, and blackened with smoky
years, rose the cold, impervious stones ; and yonder, cast
ing its sharp pinnacles into the sky, is the tower of St.
Sepulchre's Church, where the bell hangs muffled for the
morrow's tolling away of a sinner's life. Old Fagin heard
it, though it was no new sound to him ; for Field Lane,
where he kept his "fence," lies a very little way off, —
little more than a stone's throw, and when, in the morning,
I dressed at an early hour and hurried to the place of exe
cution, I saw Charley Bates, and the Dodger, aild Nancy,
and Toby Crackit, and the rest, shying men's hats in the air,
and looking out for the "wipes" and the "tickers." All
the streets leading' to Newgate were like great conduits,
where human currents babbled along, eraptying theraselves
into the Old Bailey. Mothers by the dozen were out with
their infants, holding them aloft tenderly, to show them the
noose and the cross-beam. Fathers came with their sons,
and explained very carefully to them the method of strangu
lation. Little girls, on their way to workshops, had turned
aside to see the playful affair, and traders in fancy soap and
shoe-blacking, pea-nuts and shrimps, Banbury cakes, and
Chelsea buns, and Yarraouth bloaters, were making the
morning hilarious with their odd cries and speeches. Along
the chimney-pots of Green Arbour Court, where Goldsmith
penned the " Vicar of Wakefield," lads and maidens were
climbing, that they raight have commanding places.' There

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COJIBATANT. 359
was one young woraan who had sorae difficulty in clirabing
over a battlement, and the raob hailed her failure with roars
of rairth. But she persevered, though there was a high
wind blowing, and then called loudly for her male attendant
to follow her. He obeyed dutifully, and they both seated
theraselves upon a chimney-top, — a picture of love re
warded, — and waited for the show. The moraents, as
marked upon St. Sepulchre's clock, went grudgingly, as
if the index-hands were unwilling to shoulder the responsi
bility of what was to come. Meantirae, the police had their
hands full ; for sorae raerry urchins were darting between
their legs, and it was dangerous to keep one's hat on his
head, for it hazarded plucking off and shying here and there.
At the chamber-windows aforesaid, crowded the tipsy occu
pants, men and women, red-eyed with drinking, and leering
stupidly upon the surging heads below. Some asked if Cal
craft did the "job," and others volunteered sketches of Cal-
craft's life. One man boasted that he had taken a pot of
beer with him, and another added that the hangman's chil
dren and his own went to school together. " He pockets,"
said the man, " two-pun ten for every one he drops, besides
his travelling expenses, and he has put away three hundred
and twenty folks. He is a clever fellow, is Calcraft, and he
is going to retire soon."
So the hours passed ; the great clock-hands journeyed on
ward ; all eyes watched' them attentively ; suddenly the
deep bells struck a terrible one — two — three — four —
five — six — seven — eight, and the bells of the neighbor
hood answered, some hoarsely, others musically, others
faintly, as if asharaed.
Before the tones had died away, three persons appeared
upon the scaffold, — a woraan, pinioned and wearing a long,
sharp, snowy, shrewdy, death-cap ; a raan in loose black
robes with a white neckhandkerchief, and a burly, surly
fellow, in black cloth, bareheaded, and having a curling
jetty beard around his heavy jaws. It is but a moment.

360 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
that, standing on tiptoe, you catch this scene. The priest
stretches his hand toward the people, and says some unin
telligible words ; those of the mob curse each other, and
sorae scream out that they are dying in the press. Then
the scaffold is clear ; the woman stands alone, — God for
give her ! — and when you look again, a bundle of old
clothes, tipped with a sugar-loaf, is all that is visible, and
the gallows-cord is very straight and tight. For^the last
chapter, consult the graveyard within the jail walls !
The guillotining which I witnessed in Paris, in the month
of June, 1864, may be deemed worthy of an extended de
scription : —
Couty de la Pomraerais was a young physician of Paris,
descended frora a fine faraily, and educated beyond the re
quirements of a French Faculty. He was handsome and
manly, and gave evidences of ambition at an early age.
He was popularly called the Comte de la Pomraerais, and
at the time of his apprehension, was expecting a decoration
frora the Papal Governraent, with the rank he desired.
Like all French students, he was incontinent, and had seve
ral mistresses. The last of these was a widow named Pauw,
who appears to have loved him sincerely. She had some
little fortune, which they consuraed together ; and then la
Pomraerais married a rich young lady, with whom he lived
one year. Her mother died suddenly at the end of that
time, and as la Pomraerais was interested in getting certain
moneys which the elder lady controlled, the manner of her
death led to suspicions of poisoning. However, the woman
was interred, but the son-in-law was not so fortunate as ho
supposed, and he ceased to live with his wife, but returned
to Madarae Pauw, who still adored him. Upon this fond,
foolish woman he seems to have premeditated a deep and
intricate crirae ; and it was for this that he suffered death.
She raust have been dishonest like hiraself, for she consented
to a scheme of swindling the insurance companies ; but, un
like himself, she lacked the wit to be silent, and was heard

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT. 361
to hint mysteriously that she should soon be grand and
happy. La Pomraerais persuaded her to have her life in
sured,' which was done for 515,000 francs, or upward of
$100,000. When the raatter had transpired sorae time, he
persuaded her to feign sickness. The simple woman asked
why she should do so.
" The insurance people," he replied, "will, whenthey
consider that you are dangerously ill, prefer to give you
100,000f , rather than pay the 515,000f in the certainty of
your death. You can give them up your policy, accept
the compromise, get well again, and be rich."
Yet this counterfeited sickness was raeant by the villian
to prepare the neighbors of Mrae. Pauw for the death
which he intended to ensue. He was to raake it known to
all, that she was dangerously ill ; she was to uphold his
testiraony ; and he was to kill her in due time, and take the
whole of the insurance. At length, the farce was finished.
La Pomraerais gave to Mme. Pauw, a poison difficult to de
tect, called digitalline, the essential principle of our comraon
foxglove; she died unconscious ofhis deception, loving
hira to the last, and he clairaed the 515,000 francs at the in
surance office. He was suspected, accused, and tried.
The old suspicions relative to his raother-in-law were re
vived ; the bodies were exhuraed and exarained ; upon evi
dence entirely circurastantial and technical, he was con-
evicted, and sentenced to be guillotined. His learning and
standing made the trial a famous one ; his bearing during
the long proceedings was calm and collected ; he was
handsome, and had much syrapathy : but the jury found
him guilty, and the Eraperor refused to extend his cleraency
to the case. He was put in a strait jacket and locked up
in La Eoquette, the prison for the conderaned.
The prison of La Boquette (or the Eocket Prison) is situ
ated in the eastern suburbs of Paris, a raile beyond the
Bastile. It does not look unlike our Araerican jails ; a high
exterior wall of rough stone, over the top of which one
31

362 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT,
gets a glirapse of the prison gables, with a huge gate in
the arched portal, guarded forever by sentinels. Before
this gate is a small open plot of ground, planted with trees.
B'ue de la Boquette passes between it and a second prison,
imraediately facing the first, called the Prison des Jeunes
Detenus, or, as we would say in Araerica, the " House of
Eefuge." Standing between the two jails, and looking
away frora Paris, one will see the great metropolitan cem
etery of Pere la 'Chaise, scarcely a stone's throw distant,
and behind him will be the great abbatoir or public slaugh
ter-house of Menilmontant, with the vast area of roofs and
spires of Paris stretching beyond it to the horizon. It
was to this region of vacant lots and lonesome, glowering
houses, that thousands of Parisians bent their steps the
night before the execution. The news had gone abroad
that la Poraraerais would not be pardoned. It was also
generally credited that this would be the last execution
ever held in Paris, since there is a general desire for the
abolition of capital punishraent in France, and a conviction
that the Legislature, at its next session, will substitute life-
iraprisonraent. This, with the rarity of the event, and that
terrible allureraent of blood which distinguishes all popu
laces, brought out all the excitable folk of the town ; and
at dusk, on the night before the expiation, the whole neigh
borhood of La Eoquette was crowded with raen and woraen.
All classes of Parisians were there, — the blouses, or work
ingmen, standing first in number; the students from the
Latin Quartier being well represented, and idlers, and well-
dressed nondescripts without enumeration, — distributing
themselves among women, dogs, and babies.
Venders of gateaux, rauscles, and fruit were out in force.
The " Savage of Paris," clothed in his war plumes, paint,
greaves, armlets, and moccasins, was selling razors by gas
light ; here and there ballad-raongers were singing the
latest songs, and boys, with chairs to let, elbowed into the
intricacies of the crowd, which amused itself all the night

CAJIPAIGNS OP A NON-COJIBATANT. 363
long by smoking, drinking, and hallooing. At last, tbS
mass becarae forraidable in numbers, covering every inch
of ground within sight of the prison, and many soldiers
and sergeants de ville, raounted and on foot, pushed through
the dense raass to restore order.
At raidnight, a body of cavalry forced back the people
from the square of La Eoquette. A nuraber of workmen,
issuing from the prison-gates, proceeded to set up the instru
raent of death by the light of blazing torches. The flame
lit up the dark jail walls, and shone on the helmets and
cuirasses of the sabre-men, and flared upon spots of the up
turned faces, now bringing thera into strong, ruddy relief,
now plunging them into shadow. When the several pieces
had been framed together, we had a real guillotine in view, —
the same spectre at which thousands of good and bad men
had shuddered ; and the folks around it, peering up so
eagerly, were descendants of those who stood^on the Place
de la Concorde to witness the head of a king roll into the
coraraon basket. Iraagine two tall, straight timbers, a foot
apart, rising fifteen feet from the ground. They are
grooved, and spring frora a wide platforra, approached by a
fiight of steps.. At the base, rests a spring-plank or bascule,
to which leather thongs are attached to buckle down the
victim, and a basket or pannier filled with sawdust to
receive the severed head. Between thesa, at their summit,
hangs the shining knife in its appointed grooves, and a cord,
which may be disconnected by a jerk, holds it to its posi
tion. Two men will be required to work the instrument
promptly, — the one to bind the condemned, the other to
drop the axe. The bascule is so arranged that the whole
weight and length of the trunk will rest upon it, leaving the
head and neck free, and when prone it will reach to the
grooves, leaving space for the knife to pass below it. The
knife itself is short and wide, with a bright concave edge,
and a rira of heavy steel ridges it at the top ; it raoves
easily in the greased grooves, and may weigh forty pounds.

364 CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT.
It has a terrible fascination, hanging so high and so lightly
in the ^laze of the torches, which play and glitter upon it,
and cast stains of red light along its keen blade, as if by
their brilliance all its past blood-marks had become visible
again. A child raay send it shimmering and crashing to
the scaffold, but only God can fasten together the warm and
throbbing parts which it shall soon dissever. And now that
the terrible creature has been recreated, the workmen slink
away, as if afraid of it, and a body of soldiers stand guard
upon it, as if they fear that it might grow thirsty and in
satiate as in the days of its youth. The multitude press up
again, reinforced every hour, and at last the pale day climbs
over the jail-walls, and waiting people see each other by its
glimmer. The bells of Notre Dame peal out; a hundred'
towers fall into the raarch of the music ; the early jour
nals are shrieked by French newsboji-s, and folks begin to
count the minutes on their watches. There are men on the .
ground who saw the first guillotine at work. They describe
the click of the cleaver, the steady march of victims'upon the
scaffold-stairs, the rattle of the death-cart turning out of the
Bue Saint Honore, the painted executioners, with their drip
ping hands, wiping away the jets of blood frora the hard, rough
faces ; nay ! the step of the young queen, white-haired with
care, but very beautiful, who bent her body as she had
never bent her knee, and paid the penalty of her pride with
the 'neck which a king had fondled.
At four minutes to six o'clock on Thursday morning, the
wicket in the prison-gate swung open ; the conderaned ap
peared, with his hands tied behind his back, and his knees
bound together. He walked with difficulty, so fettered ;
but other than the artificial restraints, there was no hesita
tion nor terror in his iriovements. His hair, which had been
long, dark, and wavy, was severed close to his scalp ; his
beard had likewise been clipped, and the fine raoustache
and goatee, which had set off his most interesting face, no
longer appeared to enhance his romantic, expressive physi-

CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COJJBATANT. 365
ognomy. Yet his black eyes and cleanly cut mouthj nos-
^trils, and eyebrows, demonstrated that Couty de la Pom
raerais was not a beauty dependent upon small accessories.
There was a dignity even in his painful gait ; the coarse
prison-ehirt, scissored low in the neck, exhibited the
straight columnar throat and swelling chest ; for the rest,
he wore only a pair of black pantaloons and his ov/n
shapely boots. As he eraerged from the wicket, the chill
morning air, laden with the dew of the truck gardens near
at hand, blew across the open spaces of the suburbs, and
smote hira with a cold chill. He was plainly seen to trem
ble ; but in an instant, as if by the mere force of his will,
he stood motionless, and cast a first and only glance at the
guillotine straight before hira. It was the glance of a raan
who raeets an enemy's eye, not shrinkingly, but half-defiant,
as if even the bitter retribution could not abash his strong
courage. The draraatic raanner which is characteristic of
the most real and earnest incidents of French life had its
fascination for la Pomraerais, even at his death-hour. Not
Mr. Booth nor Mr. Forrest could have expressed the rally
ing, startling, alraost thrilling recognition of an instrument
of death, better than this actual crirainal, whose last winkful
of daylight was blackened by the guillotine. It rerainded
one of Daraon, in the pitch of the tragedy : —
" I stand upon the scaffold — I am standing on my throne."
His dark eye was scintillant ; his nostril grew full ; his
shoulders fell back as if to exhibit his broad, compact figure
in manlier outline ; he seemed to feel that forty thousand
men and woraen, ani young children were looking upon hira
to see how he dared to die, and that for a generation his
bearing should go into fireside descriptions. Then he
moved on between the files of soldiers at his shuffling pace,
and before him went the aumonier or chaplain, swaying the
* 31*

366 CAMPAIGNS OP A NOX-COJJBATANT.
crucifix, behind him the executioner of Versailles — a rough
and bearded man — ¦ to assist in the final horror.
It was at this intense moraent a raost wonderful spectacle.
As the prisoner had first appeared, a single great shout had
shaken the multitude. It wasthe French word " Voila!"
which means " Behold ! " " See ! " Then every spectator
stood on tiptoe ; the silence of death succeeded ; all the
close street was undulant with huraan raotion ; a few house
roofs near by were dizzy with folks who gazed down frora
the tiles ; all the way up the heights of Pere la Chaise, among
the pale chapels and monuments of the dead, the thousands
of stirred beings swung and shook like so many drowned
corpses floating on the sea. Every eye and raind turned to
the little structure raised among the trees, on the space
before La Boquette, and there they saw a dark, shaven, dis
robed young man, going quietly toward his grave.
He mounted the steps deliberately, looking toward his
feet ; the priest held up the crucifix, and he felt it was
there, but did not see it ; his lips one moment touched the
image of Christ, but he did not look up nor speak ; then, as
he gained the last step, the bascule or swingboard sprang
up beftire hira ; the executioner gave him a single push, and
he fell prone upon the plank, with his face downward ; it
gave way before him, bearing hira into the space between
the upright beams, and he lay horizontally 'beneath the
knife, presenting the back of his neck to it. Thus resting,
he could look into the pannier or basket, into whose saw
dust lining his head was to drop in a moment. And in that
awful space, while all the people gazed with their fingers
tingling, the legitimate Parisian executioner gave a jerk at
the cord which held the fatal knife. With a quick, keen
sound, the steel became detached ; it fell hurtling through
the grooves ; it struck soraething with a dead, durab thump ;
a jet of bright blood spurted into the light, and dyed the
face of an attendant horribly red ; and Couty de la Ppmrae-
rais's head lay in tho sawdust of thc pannier, while every

CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT. 367
vein in the lopped trunk trickled upon the scaffold-floor !
They threw a cloth upon the carcass and carried away the
pannier ; the guillotine disappeared beneath the surround
ing heads ; loud exclamations and acclaims burst from the
raultitude ; the venders of trash and edibles resuraed their
cheerful cries, and a hearse dashed through the raass, car
rying the warra body of the guillotined to the cemetery of
Mt. Parnasse. In thirty minutes,_newsboys were hawking
the scene of the execution upon all the quays and bridges.
In every cafd of Paris some witness was telling the incidents
of the show to breathless listeners, and the crowds which
stopped to see the funeral procession of the great Marshal
PeKssier divided their attention between the warrior and
tho poisoner, — the latter obtaining the preponderance of
fame. I wonder sometimes, if the ultiraate penalty, however
enforced, greatly assists exaraple, or dignifies justice. But
this would involve a very long controversy, over which
raany sage heads have sadly ached. >
In the open daylight, when ray face is shining, and my
life secure, I take the humanitarian side, and denounce the
barbarities of the gibbet.
But when I corae down the dark stairs of the daily paper
office, after raidnight, and see three or four stealthy fellows
hiding in the shadows, and go up the black city unarmed
with my pocket full of greenbacks, I think the gallows
quite essential as a warning, and indorse it, even aftei*
seventeen executions.
So end my desultory chapters of desultory life. It has
been, in the arranging of thera, difficult to reject raaterial, —
not to select it. I ara amazed to find what a world of dead
leaves lies around my feet, as if I were a tree that blos-
soraed and shed its covering every day. There are baskets-
full of copy still reraaining, frora which the temptation is
great to gather. It is sad to have written so rauch at
twenty-five, and yet to have only drifting convictions. I

368 CAMPAIGNS OP A NON-COMBATANT.
may have succeeded in depicting the lives of certain young
gentlemen who reported the war. All of us, who were
young, loved the business, and wero glad to quit it. Foi
myself, I am weary of travel ; rather than publish again
from these fragments of my fugitive life, let me weave their
material into a more poetic story, softened by sorae years
cf stay at home.

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