Wednesday, April 19. — Sheridan evidently did the decisive fighting at Five Forks; but for him it would have been a failure again.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
No. 211 Camp St.,
April 19th, 1865.
“All things are taken from us, and become portions and parcels of the dreadful pasts.” . . .
Thursday the 13th came the dreadful tidings of the surrender of Lee and his army on the 9th. Everybody cried, but I would not, satisfied that God will still save us, even though all should apparently be lost. Followed at intervals of two or three hours by the announcement of the capture of Richmond, Selma, Mobile, and Johnston’s army, even the stanchest Southerners were hopeless. Every one proclaimed Peace, and the only matter under consideration was whether Jeff Davis, all politicians, every man above the rank of Captain in the army and above that of Lieutenant in the navy, should be hanged immediately, or some graciously pardoned. Henry Ward Beecher humanely pleaded mercy for us, supported by a small minority. Davis and all leading men must be executed; the blood of the others would serve to irrigate the country. Under this lively prospect, Peace, blessed Peace! was the cry. I whispered, “Never! Let a great earthquake swallow us up first! Let us leave our land and emigrate to any desert spot of the earth, rather than return to the Union, even as it Was!”
Six days this has lasted. Blessed with the silently obstinate disposition, I would not dispute, but felt my heart swell, repeating, “God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble,” and could not for an instant believe this could end in an overthrow.
This morning, when I went down to breakfast at seven, Brother read the announcement of the assassination of Lincoln and Secretary Seward.
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” This is murder! God have mercy on those who did it!
• • • • • • • •
Charlotte Corday killed Marat in his bath, and is held up in history as one of Liberty’s martyrs, and one of the heroines of her country. To me, it is all murder. Let historians extol blood-shedding; it is woman’s place to abhor it. And because I know that they would have apotheosized any man who had crucified Jeff Davis, I abhor this, and call it foul murder, unworthy of our cause — and God grant it was only the temporary insanity of a desperate man that committed this crime! Let not his blood be visited on our nation, Lord!
Across the way, a large building, undoubtedly inhabited by officers, is being draped in black. Immense streamers of black and white hang from the balcony. Downtown, I understand, all shops are closed, and all wrapped in mourning. And I hardly dare pray God to bless us, with the crape hanging over the way. It would have been banners, if our President had been killed, though!
April 19th.—Just now, when Mr. Clay dashed up-stairs, pale as a sheet, saying, “General Lee has capitulated,” I saw it reflected in Mary Darby’s face before I heard him speak. She staggered to the table, sat down, and wept aloud. Mr. Clay’s eyes were not dry. Quite beside herself Mary shrieked, “Now we belong to negroes and Yankees!” Buck said, “I do not believe it.”
How different from ours of them is their estimate of us. How contradictory is their attitude toward us. To keep the despised and iniquitous South within their borders, as part of their country, they are willing to enlist millions of men at home and abroad, and to spend billions, and we know they do not love fighting per se, nor spending money. They are perfectly willing to have three killed for our one. We hear they have all grown rich, through “shoddy,” whatever that is. Genuine Yankees can make a fortune trading jackknives.
“Somehow it is borne in on me that we will have to pay the piper,” was remarked to-day. “No; blood can not be squeezed from a turnip. You can not pour anything out of an empty cup. We have no money even for taxes or to be confiscated.”
While the Preston girls are here, my dining-room is given up to them, and we camp on the landing, with our one table and six chairs. Beds are made on the dining-room floor. Otherwise there is no furniture, except buckets of water and bath-tubs in their improvised chamber. Night and day this landing and these steps are crowded with the elite of the Confederacy, going and coming, and when night comes, or rather, bedtime, more beds are made on the floor of the landing-place for the war-worn soldiers to rest upon. The whole house is a bivouac. As Pickens said of South Carolina in 1861, we are “an armed camp.”
My husband is rarely at home. I sleep with the girls, and my room is given up to soldiers. General Lee’s few, but undismayed, his remnant of an army, or the part from the South and West, sad and crestfallen, pass through Chester. Many discomfited heroes find their way up these stairs. They say Johnston will not be caught as Lee was. He can retreat; that is his trade. If he would not fight Sherman in the hill country of Georgia, what will he do but retreat in the plains of North Carolina with Grant, Sherman, and Thomas all to the fore?
We are to stay here. Running is useless now; so we mean to bide a Yankee raid, which they say is imminent. Why fly? They are everywhere, these Yankees, like red ants, like the locusts and frogs which were the plagues of Egypt.
The plucky way in which our men keep up is beyond praise. There is no howling, and our poverty is made a matter of laughing. We deride our own penury. Of the country we try not to speak at all.
April 19th. 1865.
Yesterday afternoon we received sad news from our Nation’s Capital; news that caused each soldier’s cheek to blanch, as if in presence of some dire calamity. Our President is murdered; ruthlessly struck down by an assassin’s hand! The demon of Secession, in his dying agony, poured out the vials of its wrath on our Executive. Imagination cannot paint the whirlwind of revengeful wrath that swept over the army; the strong desire, openly expressed, to avenge his death by annihilating the people whose treason brings forth and nourishes such monsters. Woe to the armed Rebel, now and henceforth, who makes the least resistance.
To illustrate the feeling of the men, I will write down an incident that occurred in our regiment. We have one reptile left, and only one, to my knowledge. When the news reached us, he was heard to say, with an oath: “I’m glad of it. If I had been there, I would have helped to do it.”
Before his words had time to cool, he was seized by the men near him; a tent rope was thrown around his neck, and he was hustled toward a tree, with the intent to hang him. The officers interfered, and sent him under guard to the “bull pen.”
Tomorrow is to be observed as a day of mourning throughout the army. Never was man more sincerely mourned than will be Abraham Lincoln, and in history his name will be enrolled beside our Washington.
April 19th, 1865.—It is bedtime and I am writing in my own room; usually I write in the library, where Father sits, but tonight I want to be alone. Oft I have repeated, perhaps repeated boastfully, those brave lines:
“I am the master of my fate;
The captain of my soul.”
And now, I find I am but a broken reed, shaken by the wind. Let me write the day’s happenings while I can.
This morning we sat on the front porch watching the road. Father sat in his big rocker and Mother sat close beside him; Brother Amos and Sister Mag were sitting back in the vines, playing with little Rebecca, who was in her mother’s lap. Mattie was stretched out, full length on one of the porch seats, her beautiful golden curls falling to the floor. I sat on the steps and Eddie was spinning acorns beside me. Sister Mart is at Goodwood. For several days now the front porch has been the favorite place for the family to sit.
Mattie is wild to see her father and she rehearses their meeting, making it different every day.
I was watching Eddie and did not know there was anything to see, when Father said, “There they come.” Entering the front gate, too far for my near-sighted eyes to distinguish one from another, were three Confederate soldiers. Poor fellows; they were pitiful. Thin and so browned by exposure, until they were hardly recognizable. Footsore and weary, on they came, Captain Bernard, stepping quicker than his companions.
We rushed to greet them but Brother Junius, who was next called out, “Do not come near me—send Bill to my room” and then he went rapidly away in the direction of the room which was always known as his.
Mattie burst into tears—”Papa, you are crazy,” she wailed. Cousin Johnnie came last:; his face the saddest you ever saw. Falling on the steps, he put his face in his hands and cried like a child. Cousin Johnnie, who of all men we knew was the most reticent and reserved.
Dear Mother always knows just what is best to do and say and with her sweet words of welcome, her inquiries after the health of each one, the hot coffee and cakes which she has had ready day after day; all this helped to restore the composure of all.
Jordan took Captain Bernard home and Father had his buggy brought to the door and carried cousin Johnnie home himself. Father loves uncle Richard so dearly and I believe his sons are almost as dear to Father as if they were his own.
In the meantime none of us had seen Brother Junius. Bill had made sundry trips back and forth from the room in the yard and the kitchen; several kettles of hot water had been transported and then Bill got a pitch-fork and came out, bearing the clothes Brother Junius had worn, and proceeded to burn them.
An inkling of the truth must have come to Mother for she said, “Come in the house children, Mr. Taylor will be in after awhile.”
Then Bill sent Aunt .Morea to borrow the sharpest scissors. We did not see him until long after Father had returned and when he did get in the house he looked very different from the weary man whom we had caught a fleeting glimpse of. With his golden hair cut as short as Bill could do the work, his face clean shaven, dressed in a suit of civilian clothes, with immaculate linen and a white silk necktie, he was ready to be hugged and kissed and made much of by everyone, from Mother down to little Rebecca; though Mattie of course, came first. She was simply wild with joy.
Mother said he should not tell one word of happenings in Virginia until he had eaten a good, hot supper. She was right, as she always is. After supper we gathered ’round him in the library and he began by telling us of the trying times the army had been exposed to for weeks before the surrender; but not a soldier made complaint and not one listened with any show of patience, to the thought of laying down their arms.
On through the days, his story went until that fateful 9th saw the ragged remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia drawn up in line on either side of the road, to see their beloved Commander pass. He was mounted on “Traveler” and a splendid new uniform added to his fine appearance. His men cheered him all along the line and he acknowledged their greetings. Never had soldiers so loved a chieftain as these men in gray loved Lee.
The army waited; sometime passed and then they saw through unbelieving eyes, their general, riding slowly toward them. His head, usually held so proudly, was low on his breast and not once did he raise his eyes. He made no pause; no need for words to tell them what had happened. When the realization came to them those war-worn veterans wept like David, when the news of Absalom’s death was brought to him.
Gladly would they have followed him into the “jaws of death” but this—it was more than they could bear. After an hour or so officers from General Grant came, with an order to stack arms and prepare to deliver to the United States authorities all army equipment. The entire Army of Northern Virginia were prisoners of war.
Again officers came from General Grant; these men must make oath that they would not bear arms against the government of the United States until such time as they should be exchanged. Still they were not disbanded. Another officer issued paroles and told them that a government transport would sail on the 11th from Norfolk to Savannah. They could go to Norfolk the next day and sail, that is as many as the transport would accommodate. A detachment of Grant’s men went with them. The transport was old and did not look sea-worthy but they were hustled on board, until there was hardly standing room. They had no provisions, no money. To add to the misery of the situation the transport was fairly alive with I. F. W.’s and they, too, were hungry.
“This,” he said, “will explain why I needed Bill and so much soap and water. Bill burned everything I wore, even my shoes and hat. Fortunately my trunk was well filled with clothing. Never in all my life have I felt so desperate, and, when those disgusting creatures took possession of me, I completely lost my self respect.”
With this he laid his head on the library table and <em>sobbed</em>. Such sobs as I had never heard—dry, harsh, choking. The room shook with their violence. Oh! it was awful to see that great, strong, splendid man, so completely unstrung. Before his story was ended Mattie had left the room and when we found her she was doubled up on Mother’s bed, and she had cried herself to sleep.
I sit here and wonder, wonder if all the dear “men in gray” feel as crushed and disconsolate as these? Is the home-coming painful to them all? Will they ever be able to forget? Will the time ever come when they can remember the glory, the honor, the magnificent courage they have shown, and take comfort in that? God help them and help us all.
Tomorrow we will take up our every-day life again, and in the little ordinary things of daily life the tension may be loosed. I will do as Father says and try to be like Mother.
April 19th, 1865.—This morning at breakfast Father said, “Ten days since Lee’s surrender and none of our boys home yet.”
We look for them continually but they do not come. A miserable uncertainty hangs over us and we do not know what to expect. Ever since I can remember Father has been trying to teach me “self-control,” as he expresses it. He is teaching me to “fight my nerves.” Mother has no nerves—so everybody says, and in these trying days she is the mainstay of the household; we all look to her for help and Father says I must be just like Mother. I wish I was, she is such a comfort to us all and I will yet conquer nervousness, which Aunt Robinson says I inherit from the Bradford side of the house.
April 19.—The enemy did not come last night; but I expect they will honor us to-day. We are ready to receive them. Dr. Bemiss has gone to Atlanta. I could scarcely bid him good-by; it seems so sad to think of a man like him running from such wretches.
Mrs. F. has tried her best to frighten me; but the more terrible her stories, the stronger my nerves become. This I can not account for. I opened a prayer-book, and my eye fell on the twenty-seventh psalm: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear,” etc. I read it aloud, and from it we both gained strength. I do not think it was accident made me turn to those appropriate and comforting words — however some may laugh and say so. My faith is strong in the belief that there is an unseen hand directing all our ways.
Dr. Horton called this morning with a young lady, Miss Bailey, who requested Mrs. F. and myself to go and stay with her, as she was in a large house, and no one with her but negroes. If she left it, it would be certain to be destroyed by the enemy. Neither of us could go. I felt very sorry for her, as she can get no one in the place to go with her. All are remaining at home to take care of their property. Her parents are on a visit to South-west Georgia; and so, like many other families, they are separated.
Night.—The enemy marched in about 5 P. M. I have just been on the gallery, watching the burning of the warehouse, and the sad work of destruction is still going on. We hear the sound of axes, and suppose they are tearing up the railroad track. I thank the Giver of all good that I have been enabled to look calmly on the destruction without one feeling of revenge. I gazed up at the heavy columns of smoke ascending to heaven as if pleading in our behalf; I felt that it was incense rising from a sacrifice, and ascended with the prayers of the saints, which I knew had been offered up on every altar from the Potomac to the Rio Grande in behalf of our down-trodden and desolated land—and that God in his own good time would avenge our wrongs.
One of the enemy rode coolly through the place with his rifle in front of his saddle. I could not but admire his daring, for he was at least a quarter of a mile away from his band, and if any of our men had felt disposed, they might have made way with him, and his comrades never have known what became of him. I wonder if that would be called murder or self-defense? He came hero to kill and rob, and all have a right to defend themselves and property as best they can. This man called at the back door of a house near by, and asked the negro servant for something to eat, which was given him. After awhile an officer galloped past us and rode up to the college, where Dr. de Yampert and Dr. Burks sat, like stoics, ready to receive their distinguished visitor. Dr. de Y. rose on his approach, and conversed with him awhile. He then rode off, looking behind every now and again, as if expecting a stray bullet from some concealed musket.
Mrs. F. and I wondered what he had said to Dr. de Y. We made up our minds he had come to order the sick away, as he meant to fire the building; or, perhaps, with the pleasing information that Dr. de Y. and all the rest of the men were prisoners. We were left to conjecture, for Dr. de Y. did not have the least pity upon us. He certainly knew that we had inherited at least a little of mother Eve’s frailty.
I went over to the hospital to view the fire from the upper gallery. I asked Dr. de Y. if they were going to burn the building; if so, our house would not escape, and we wished to move our clothes. Ho said he did not know what the enemy intended doing, but advised us not to do any thing, it being too late, as our doing so would attract attention.
This evening Dr. B. called, and told us that the Federal officer merely asked how many patients we had, and passed the compliments of the day. I know they were reciprocated.
