FOUR YEARS

IN

REBEL CAPITALS:

AN INSIDE VIEW OF
LIFE IN THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY,
FROM BIRTH TO DEATH

FROM ORIGINAL NOTES, COLLATED IN THE YEARS 1861 TO 1865,

By

T. C. DeLeon,

AUTHOR OF "CREOLE AND PURITAN," "CROSS PURPOSES," "JUNY," ETC.

"In the land where we were dreaming!"

—D. B. Lucas.

"I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign, nations and to the next ages."

—Francis Bacon.

MOBILE, ALA.
THE GOSSIP PRINTING COMPANY.
1890.

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1890,
By THE GOSSIP PRINTING COMPANY,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

TO MY VALUED FRIEND,

MRS. AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON,

AS ONE LITTLE TOKEN OF APPRECIATION OF A LIFE-WORK
DEDICATE TO HER SEX, TO HER SECTION
AND TO TRUTH,

THESE SKETCHES

OF LIFE BEHIND OUR CHINESE WALL
ARE INSCRIBED.

IN PLACE OF PREFACE.

Fortunate, indeed, is the reader who takes up a volume without preface; of which the persons are left to enact their own drama and the author does not come before the curtain, like the chorus of Greek tragedy, to speak for them.

But, in printing the pages that follow, it may seem needful to ask that they be taken for what they are; simple sketches of the inner life of "Rebeldom"—behind its Chinese wall of wood and steel—during those unexampled four years of its existence.

Written almost immediately after the war, from notes and recollections gathered during its most trying scenes, these papers are now revised, condensed and formulated for the first time. In years past, some of their crude predecessors have appeared—as random articles—in the columns of the Mobile Sunday Times, Appleton's Journal, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Philadelphia Times and other publications.

Even in their present condensation and revision, they claim only to be simple memoranda of the result of great events; and of their reaction upon the mental and moral tone of the southern people, rather than a record of those events themselves.

This volume aspires neither to the height of history, nor to the depths of political analysis; for it may still be too early for either, or for both, of these. Equally has it resisted temptation to touch on many topics—not strictly belonging inside the Southern Capitals—still vexed by political agitation, or personal interest. These, if unsettled by dire arbitrament of the sword, must be left to Time and his best coadjutor, "sober second-thought."

Campaigns and battles have already surfeited most readers; and their details—usually so incorrectly stated by the inexpert—have little to do with a relation of things within the Confederacy, as they then appeared to the masses of her people. Such, therefore, are simply touched upon in outline, where necessary to show their reaction upon the popular pulse, or to correct some flagrant error regarding that.

To the vast majority of those without her boundaries—to very many, indeed, within them—realities of the South, during the war, were a sealed book. False impressions, on many important points, were disseminated; and these, because unnoted, have grown to proportions of accepted truth. A few of them, it may not yet be too late to correct.

While the pages that follow fail not to record some weaknesses in our people, or some flagrant errors of their leaders, they yet endeavor to chronicle faithfully heroic constancy of men, and selfless devotion of women, whose peers the student of History may challenge that vaunting Muse to show.

To prejudiced provincialism, on the one side, they may appear too lukewarm; by stupid fanaticism on the other, they may be called treasonable. But—written without prejudice, and equally without fear, or favor—they have aimed only at impartial truth, and at nearest possible correctness of narration.

Indubitably the war proved that there were great men, on both the sides to it; and, to-day, the little men on either—"May profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!"

The sole object kept in view was to paint honestly the inner life of the South; the general tone of her people, under strain and privation unparalleled; the gradual changes of society and character in the struggling nation—in a clear, unshaded outline of things as they were.

Should this volume at all succeed in giving this; should it uproot one false impression, to plant a single true one in its place, then has it fully equaled the aspiration of

THE AUTHOR.

Mobile, Ala., June 25, 1890.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

• CHAPTER I.—The Forehead of the Storm[11-20 ]
• Washington City in 1861. Her two Social Circles. Was she a new Sodom? Lobbyists and Diplomats. Eve of the Storm. Echo from Charleston Harbor. A Dinner and a Ball. Popular Views of the Situation. Buchanan's Policy and the "Peace Congress". Separation a Certainty. Preparations for the Hejira. Precautions for Lincoln's Inauguration. Off for Dixie.
• CHAPTER II.—The Cradle of the Confederacy[21-29 ]
• Through Richmond, the Carolinas and Georgia. Wayside Notes. The Masses Willing but Unprepared. Where were the Leaders? The First Capital. A New Flag. Hotels and their Patrons. Jefferson Davis. The Man and the Government. Social Matters. The Curbstone Congress. Early Views of the Struggle. A Notable "Mess."
• CHAPTER III.—Congress and Cabinet[30-35 ]
• Bloodless Revolution. Glances at the Congress. Its Personnel and its Work. Party Hacks in Place. Wind vs. Work. What People said of the Solons. The New Cabinet. Heads of Departments Sketched. The President's Advisers. Popular Opinion. The First Gun at Sumter.
• CHAPTER IV.—"The Awakening of the Lion."[36-41 ]
• Sumter's Effect on Public Feeling. Would There be a Long War—or any? Organizing an Army. The Will of the People. How Women Worked. The Camps a Novel Show. Mr. Davis handles Congress. His Energy and Industry. Society and the Strangers. Joy over Virginia's Secession.
• CHAPTER V.—A Southern River Boat Race[42-48 ]
• An Alabama Steamer. General Van Dorn. What River Travel is. A Calliope and its Master. Banter for a Race. Excitement of all on Board. A Close Shave. Neck and Neck. How a Race is Won. A Unique Toast.
• CHAPTER VI.—Boat Life Afloat and Aground[49-53 ]
• Time-killers on the River. Negro Boat-hands. Cotton Loading from Slides. Overboard! "Fighting the Tiger". Hard Aground! Delay and Depression. Admiral Raphael Semmes. News of the Baltimore Riot. Speculation as to its Results.
• CHAPTER VII.—Mobile, the Gulf City[54-58 ]
• Echo from Maryland. Alabama's Preparation. Mobile's Crack Corps. John Forsyth on the Peace Commissioners. Mobile Society. Pleasure-lovers and Their Pleasures. A Victim of the Tiger. Two Moral Axioms.
• CHAPTER VIII—New Orleans, the Crescent City[59-68 ]
• Location and Commercial Importance. Old Methods of Business. Relations of Planter and Factor. A typical Brokerage House. Secure Reliance on European Recognition and the Kingship of Cotton. Yellow Jack and his Treatment. French Town and America. Hotels of the day. Home Society and "The Heathen". Social Customs. Creole Women's Taste. Cuffee and Cant. Early Regiments and Crack Companies. Judges of Wine. A Champion Diner.
• CHAPTER IX.—A Change of Base[69-74 ]
• The Pensacola Army. Review by President Davis. Orders for Virginia. Breaking Camp on the Gulf. The Start of the Zouaves. They Capture a Train and a City. Pursuit and Recapture. The Riot and its Lesson. Early Ideas of Discipline.
• CHAPTER X.—En Route for the Border[75-83 ]
• Decision to Move the Capital. Lax Precautions. The New York "Tribune" Dispatch. Montgomery Murmurs. Troops en route, and their Feelings. The Government on Wheels. Kingsville Misnomer. Profanity and Diplomacy. Grimes' Brother-in-law. With the C.S. Mail-bags.
• CHAPTER XI.—On to Richmond[84-92 ]
• A Typical Southron. Sentiment in the Ranks. Glimpse of the new Capital. The Inflowing Caravans. Hotels and Boarding-houses. City and Surroundings. A Southern Poet. A Warning in Statuary. Hollywood Cemetery. The Tredegar Works. Their Importance in the War. 'T'other Consarn!
• CHAPTER XII.—Settling to the Real Work[93-101 ]
• Regulars of the States. Virginia Sentiment. Unanimity of Purpose. Lee and Johnston. Esprit de Corps. Centering on Virginia. Varied Types of Different States. The Marylanders at the South. Mixed Equipments and "Properties". Doubtful Points. Norfolk to Manassas. Where the Battle Ground would be. Missouri's First Move.
• CHAPTER XIII.—The Leaders and the Led[102-110 ]
• General Lee comes to the Front. Mr. Davis' Labors and Responsibilities. His Personal Popularity. Social Feeling at the new Capital. "Pawnee Sunday" Panic. Richmond Society. An After-dinner Object Lesson. How Good Blood did not Lie. Western Virginia. Society's Pets go to the Front. "The Brave at Home."
• CHAPTER XIV.—The Baptism of Blood[111-121 ]
• The First War Bulletin. How Richmond received It. Practical Result of Bethel. Earnest Work in Government Bureaux. Thunder from a Clear Sky. Shadows follow Rich Mountain. Carthago delenda! Popular Comparison of Fighting Qualities. The "On-to-Richmond!" Clangor. The Southern Pulse. "Beware of Johnston's Retreats!" Bull Run. The Day before Manassas. Waiting!
• CHAPTER XV.—After Manassas[122-128 ]
• How Rumors came. Jubilation and Revulsion. Anxiety for News. The Decisive Charge. An Austrian View. The President's Return. His Speech to the People. The First Train of Wounded. Sorrow and Consolation. How Women Worked. Material and Moral Results of Manassas. Spoils and Overconfidence. Singular Errors in Public Mind. General Belief in Advance. The Siesta and its Dreams.
• CHAPTER XVI.—The Spawn of Lethargy[129-138 ]
• Reaction of Sentiment. Conflicting Ideas about Inaction. Popular Wish for Aggressive War. Sentiment settles to Fact. Mr. Davis' Attitude to Johnston and Beauregard. After-battle Confusion. Strategic Reasons. Inaction breeds grave Discontent. Effect on the Army. Sober Second Thought. Government Use of the Lull. Bombast and Sense. A Glance North. The Western Outlook. John B. Floyd.
• CHAPTER XVII.—From Court to Camp[139-146 ]
• A Winter's Inaction and Effects. Comforts and Homesickness. Unseen Foes and Their Victory. Care and Cleanliness. Nostalgia. Camp Morality. Record of the "Cracks". In a Maryland Mess. Mud and Memories. Has History a Parallel? Old Cavaliers and New.
• CHAPTER XVIII.—Society at the Capital[147-157 ]
• Richmond Overflowing. Variety of Visitors. Gradual Growth of Gayety. "Danceable Teas". Amateur Benefits. "Youth at the Helm". A Society Woman's View. Social Theories and Practice. Virginian Hospitality. Quieter Sociability. The Presidential Household. Mr. and Mrs. Davis. Formal Levees. Social Ethics. Dissipation. Disappointing Solons.
• CHAPTER XIX.—Days of Depression[158-165 ]
• Reverses on All Lines. Zollicoffer's Death. Mr. Benjamin, Secretary of War. Transportation Dangers. The Tennessee River Forts. Forrest, and Morgan. Gloom follows Nashville's Fall. Government Blamed by People. The Permanent Government. Mr. Davis' Typical Inaugural. Its Effect and Its Sequence. Cabinet Changes.
• CHAPTER XX.—From Shiloh to New Orleans[166-173 ]
• Sunshine and Shadow. Clouds gather in the West. Island No. 10. Shiloh. Illustrative Valor. Deep Depression. Was Johnston hounded to His Death? Fall of New Orleans. Odd Situation of Her Captors. Butler in Command. His Place in Southern Opinion. Strategic Results. Popular Discontent. Effect on the Fighters. Butler and the Women. Louisiana Soldiers.
• CHAPTER XXI.—The Conscription and Its Consequences[174-188 ]
• The "More Men!" cry. Passage of the Act. State Troops Turned Over. Appointment of Generals. Longings for Home. Exemptions and "Details". The Substitute Law. Mr. Davis' Wisdom Vindicated. Governor Joe Brown kicks. State Traits of the Conscripts. Kentucky's Attitude. Tennessee's "Buffaloes". The "Union Feeling" Fallacy. Conscript Camps. Morals of the "New Ish". Food and Money Scarcer. Constancy of the Soldiers. The Extension Law. Repeal of the Substitute Act. Home-Guards. "The Cradle and the Grave."
• CHAPTER XXII.—Waiting the Ordeal by Combat[189-197 ]
• The North Prepares a New "On to Richmond.". Joe Johnston's Strategy. From Manassas to Richmond. Magruder's Lively Tactics. The Defenders Come. Scenes of the March Through. A Young Veteran. Public Feeling. Williamsburg's Echo. The Army of Specters. Ready! Drewry's Bluff. The Geese Fly South. Stern Resolve!
• CHAPTER XXIII.—Around Richmond[198-206 ]
• Seven Pines. War at the Very Gates. Harrowing Scenes. Woman's Heroism. Crowded Hospitals. A Lull. Jackson's Meteor Campaign. Ashby Dead! The Week of Blood. Southern Estimate of McClellan. What "Might Have Been". Richmond Under Ordeal. "The Battle Rainbow". Sad Sequelæ. Real Sisters of Mercy. Beautiful Self-sacrifice.
• CHAPTER XXIV.—Echoes of Seven Days, North and South[207-214 ]
• Confederates Hopeful, but Not Overconfident. The Cost to the North. McClellan Sacrificed. General Pope and His Methods. He "Finds" Jackson at Cedar Mountain. A Glance Trans-Allegheny. Well-Conceived Federal Programme. General Bragg's Unpopularity. To the Ohio and Back. Would-be Critics. Flashes illumine the Clouds. Kentucky Misrepresented.
• CHAPTER XXV.—The War in the West[215-222 ]
• A Gloomy Outlook. Lone Jack. "The Butcher, McNeil". Corinth and Murfreesboro. Their Bloody Cost. The Cry Wrung from the People. Mr. Davis stands Firm. Johnston relieves Bragg. The Emancipation Proclamation. Magruder's Galveston Amphiboid. The Atlantic Seaboard. Popular Estimate of the Status. Hope for the New Year.
• CHAPTER XXVI.—The Failure of Finance[223-229 ]
• Was Cotton really King? How it Might have been Made So. Government's Policy. Comparison with Northern Finance. Why the South believed in her Advantage. How the North buoyed up her Credit. Contractors and Bondholders. Feeling at the South on the Money Question. Supply and Demand for Paper. Distrust creeps In. Rapid Depreciation.
• CHAPTER XXVII.—Dollars, Cents and Less[230-240 ]
• Results of Inflation. Comparative Cost of Living North and South. How Army and Officials were Paid. Suffering enhances Distrust. Barter Currency. Speculation's Vultures. The Auction Craze. Hoarding Supplies. Gambling. Richmond Faro-banks. Men met There. Death of Confederate Credit. The President and Secretary held to Account. Nothing but Mismanagement.
• CHAPTER XXVIII—Across the Potomac and Back[241-250 ]
• Precedents of the First Maryland Campaign. Jackson strikes Pope. Second Manassas. Why was Victory not Pushed? The People demand Aggressive Warfare. Over the River. Harper's Ferry falls. Elation at the South. Rosy Prophecies. Sharpsburg. The River Recrossed. Gloom in Richmond. Fredericksburg and its Effect on the People. Why on Pursuit? Hooker replaces Burnside. Death of Stonewall Jackson.
• CHAPTER XXIX.—Over Again to Gettysburg[251-258 ]
• Popular Grief for Jackson. Again to the River. Winchester and her Women. The People Rejoice at the Advance. Public Belief in its Result. Washington to Fall; the War to End. The Prelude to Disaster. Second Day at Gettysburg. Pickett's Wonderful Charge. Some one has Blundered? How the Story came South. Revulsion and Discontent. Lee not Blamed. Strictures on Non-retaliation. The Marylanders.
• CHAPTER XXX.—The Confederacy Afloat[259-271 ]
• Who the Southern Sailors were. Regular and Provisional Navy-bills. Popular Estimate of Mr. Mallory. Iron-clads vs. Cruisers. The Parole of "Pirate Semmes". What Iron-clads might have done. Treasury and Navy. The "Merrimac". Virginia Fight in Hampton Roads. The White-flag Violation. Those wonderful Wooden Shells. Other flashing Achievements. Comparison of the two Navies. Doubtful Torpedo Results. Summing up the Hue-and-Cry. Nashville and New Orleans. The Tatnall-"Virginia" Court-martial. Who did More than They?
• CHAPTER XXXI.—The Chinese Wall Blockade, Abroad and at Home[272-287 ]
• Foundation Errors. Lost Opportunity. The Treaty of Paris View. First Southern Commissioners. Doubts. The Mason-Slidell Incident. Mr. Benjamin's Foreign Policy. DeLeon's Captured Despatches. Murmurs Loud and Deep. England's Attitude. Other Great Powers. Mr. Davis' View. "If". Interest of the Powers. The Optimist View. Production and Speculation. Blockade Companies. Sumptuary Laws. Growth of Evil Power. Charleston and Savannah. Running the Fleet at Wilmington. Demoralization and Disgust. The Mississippi Closed. Vicksburg. "Running the Bloc." on the Border. The Spy System. Female Agents.
• CHAPTER XXXII.—Press, Literature and Art[288-301 ]
• Newspapers North and South. Ability Differently Used. Reasons Therefor. Criticism of Affairs; its Effect. Magazines and their Clientele. Prose Writers ante bellum. Rebel War Rhymes. Origin and Characteristics. The Northern "National Hymn". Famous Poets and Their Work. Dirge Poetry and Prison Songs. Father Ryan and the Catholic Church. "Furled Forever!" Musical Taste. How Songs were Utilized. Military Bands. Painters and Paintings. No Southern Art. A Few Noted Pictures.
• CHAPTER XXXIII.—Wit and Humor of the War[302-315 ]
• Strange Laughter. The Confederate "Mother Goose". Travesty and Satire. The "Charles Lamb" of Richmond. Camp Wit. Novel Marriage. A "Skirmisher". Prison Humor. Even in Vicksburg! Sad Bill-of-Fare. Northern Misconception. Richmond Society Wit. The "Mosaic Club" and its Components. Innes Randolph's Forfeit. The Colonel's Breakfast Horror. Post-surrender Humor. Even the Emancipated.
• CHAPTER XXXIV.—The Beginning of the End[316-326 ]
• Gradual Weakening of the South. The Wearing-out Process. Sequelæ of Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Congress vs. President. Mr. Foote and his Following. Drain of Men and Material. Home Guards. The "Speculator Squad". Dire Straits in Camp and Home. Carpet Blankets. Raids and their Results. Breaking down of Cavalry Mounts. Echoes of Morgan's Ohio Dash. His Bold Escape. Cumberland Gap. A Glance at Chickamauga. "The Might Have Been" Once More. Popular Discontent. General Grant Judged by his Compeers. Longstreet at Knoxville. Missionary Ridge. President's Views and People's. Again the Virginia Lines. Skirmish Depletion. Desertions. "Kir-by-Smithdom."
• CHAPTER XXXV.—The Upper and Nether Millstones[327-335 ]
• "Crushing the Spine of Rebellion". Grant's Quadruple Plan. The Western Giant. Why its Back Broke. Delenda est Atlanta! Grant becomes the Upper Millstone. Men and Means Unstinted. Dahlgren's Raid. The South's Feeling. The Three Union Corps. War in the Wilderness. Rumors North and South. Spottsylvania. Still to the Left! Cold Harbor Again. The "Open Door" Closed. Glance at Grant's Campaign. Cost of Reaching McClellan's Base. Sledge-Hammer Strategy. Solemn Joy in Richmond.
• CHAPTER XXXVI.—"The Land of Darkness and the Shadow of Death"[336-346 ]
• Comparison of Numbers. The Ratio of Loss. The Process of Attrition. Stuart's Last Fight. The River Approaches. Beauregard "bottles" Butler. Grant sits down Before Petersburg. "Swapping with Boot". Feeling of the Southern People. The Lines in Georgia. Military Chess. Different Methods of Sherman and Grant. Southern View. Public Confidence in Johnston. Hood relieves Him. How Received by the People. The Army Divided. "The Back Door" Opened at Last! Mr. Davis visits Hood's Army. The Truce and the Chances. On the Rack.
• CHAPTER XXXVII.—Dies Iræ—Dies Illa![347-359 ]
• The Lull at Petersburg. Strain on Army and People. North and South Waiting. Fears for Richmond. After Atlanta. Peace Propositions. Mr. Davis' Attitude. Mr. Stephens' Failure at Fortress Monroe. Hood's Fatal Move. Results of Franklin. Strange Gayeties in Richmond. From the Dance to the Grave. "Starvations" and Theatricals. Evacuation Rumors. Only Richmond Left. Joe Johnston Reinstated. Near Desperation. Grant Strikes. The News in Church. Evacuation Scenes. The Mob and the Stores. Firing Warehouses. The Last Reb Leaves. Fearful Farewells. Dead!
• CHAPTER XXXVIII.—After the Death-Blow was Dealt[360-372 ]
• The Form of Surrender. Federals march In. Richmond in Flames. Blue-Coats fight the Fire. Sad Scenes. Automatic Shelling. Discipline Wins. At the Provost-Marshal's. A City of the Dead. Starvation plus Suspense. The Tin-Can Brigade. Drawing Rations. Rumors and Reality. The First Gray Jacket returns. General Lee re-enters Richmond. Woman, the Comforter. Lincoln's Assassination. Resulting Rigors. Baits for Sociability. How Ladies acted. Lectures by Old Friends. The Emigration Mania. Fortunate Collapse of Agreement. The Negro's Status. To Work, or Starve. Woman's Aid. Dropping the Curtain.

FOUR YEARS IN REBEL CAPITALS.

[ ]

CHAPTER I.

THE FOREHEAD OF THE STORM.

The cloud no bigger than a man's hand had risen.

It became visible to all in Washington over the southern horizon. All around to East and West was but the dull, dingy line of the storm that was soon to burst in wild fury over that section, leaving only seared desolation in its wake. Already the timid and wary began to take in sail and think of a port; while the most reckless looked from the horizon to each other's faces, with restless and uneasy glances.

In the days of 1860, as everybody knows, the society of Washington city was composed of two distinct circles, tangent at no one point. The larger, outer circle whirled around with crash and fury several months in each year; then, spinning out its centrifugal force, flew into minute fragments and scattered to extreme ends of the land. The smaller one—the inner circle—revolved sedately in its accustomed grooves, moving no whit faster for the buzz of the monster that surrounded and half hid it for so long; and when that spun itself to pieces moved on as undisturbed as Werther's Charlotte.

The outer circle drew with it all the outside population, all the "dwellers in tents," from the busiest lobbyman to the laziest looker-on. All the "hotel people"—those caravans that yearly poured unceasing into the not too comfortable caravanserai down town—stretched eager hands toward this circle; for, to them, it meant Washington. Having clutched an insecure grasp upon its rim, away they went with a fizz and a spin, dizzy and delighted—devil take the hindmost! Therein did the thousand lobbyists, who yearly came to roll logs, pull wires and juggle through bills, find their congenial prey.

Who shall rise up and write the secret history of that wonderful committee and of the ways and means it used to prey impartially upon government and client? Who shall record the "deeds without a name," hatched out of eggs from the midnight terrapin; the strange secrets drawn out by the post-prandial corkscrew? Who shall justly calculate the influence the lobby and its workings had in hastening that inevitable, the war between the states?

Into this outer circle whirled that smaller element which came to the Capital to spend money—not to make it. Diamonds flash, point lace flounces flaunt! Who will stop that mighty whirligig to inspect whether the champagne is real, or the turtle is prime?

Allons! le jeu est fait!

Camp-followers and hangers-on of Congress, many of its members from the West, claim agents from Kansas, husbandless married women from California and subterranean politicians from everywhere herein found elements as congenial as profitable. All stirred into the great olla podrida and helped to "Make the hell broth boil and bubble."

The inner circle was the real society of Washington. Half submerged for half of each year by accumulating streams of strangers, it ever rose the same—fresh and unstained by deposit from the baser flood. Therein, beyond doubt, one found the most cultured coteries, the courtliest polish and the simplest elegance that the drawing-rooms of this continent could boast. The bench and the bar of the highest court lent their loftiest intellects and keenest wits. Careful selections were there from Congress of those who held senates on their lips and kept together the machinery of an expanding nation; and those "rising men," soon to replace, or to struggle with them, across the narrow Potomac near by. To this society, too, the foreign legations furnished a strong element. Bred in courts, familiar with the theories of all the world, these men must prove valuable and agreeable addition to any society into which they are thrown.

It is rather the fashion just now to inveigh against foreigners in society, to lay at their door many of the peccadilloes that have crept into our city life; but the diplomats are, with rare exceptions, men of birth, education and of proved ability in their own homes. Their ethics may be less strict than those which obtain about Plymouth Rock, but experience with them will prove that, however loose their own code, they carefully conform to the custom of others; that if they have any scars across their morals, they have also the tact and good taste to keep them decorously draped from sight.

In the inner circle of Washington were those officers of the army and navy, selected for ability or service—or possibly "by grace of cousinship"—to hold posts near the government; and, with full allowance for favoritism, some of these were men of culture, travel and attainment—most of them were gentlemen. And the nucleus, as well as the amalgam of all these elements, was the resident families of old Washingtonians. These had lived there so long as to be able to winnow the chaff and throw the refuse off.

There has ever been much talk about the corruption of Washington, easy hints about Sodom, with a general sweep at the depravity of its social system. But it is plain these facile fault-finders knew no more of its inner circle—and for its resident society only is any city responsible—than they did of the court of the Grand Turk. Such critics had come to Washington, had made their "dicker," danced at the hotel hops, and been jostled on the Avenue. If they essayed an entrance into the charmed circle, they failed.

Year after year, even the Titans of the lobby assailed the gates of that heaven refused them; and year after year they fell back, baffled and grommelling, into the pit of that outer circle whence they came. Yet every year, especially in the autumn and spring, behind that Chinese wall was a round of entertainments less costly than the crushes of the critic circle, but stamped with quiet elegance aped in vain by the non-elect. And when the whirl whirled out at last, with the departing Congress; when the howling crowd had danced its mad carmagnole and its vulgar echoes had died into distance, then Washington society was itself again. Then the sociality of intercourse—that peculiar charm which made it so unique—became once more free and unrestrained.

Passing from the reek of a hotel ball, or the stewing soiree of a Cabinet secretary into the quiet salon of a West End home, the very atmosphere was different, and comparison came of itself with that old Quartier Saint Germain, which kept undefiled from the pitch that smirched its Paris, through all the hideous dramas of the bonnet rouge.

The influence of political place in this country has long spawned a social degradation. Where the gift is in the hands of a fixed power, its seeking is lowering enough; but when it is besought from the enlightened voter himself, "the scurvy politician" becomes a reality painfully frequent. Soliciting the ballot over a glass of green corn juice in the back room of a country grocery, or flattering the cara sposa of the farmhouse, with squalling brat upon his knee, is scarcely calculated to make the best of men more of "an ornament to society." Constant contact with sharpers and constant effort to be sharper than they is equally as apt to blunt his sense of delicacy as it is to unfit one for higher responsibilities of official station. So it was not unnatural that that society of Washington, based wholly on politics, was not found wholly clean. But under the seething surface—first visible to the casual glance—was a substratum as pure as it was solid and unyielding.

Habitues of twenty years remarked that, with all the giddy whirl of previous winters in the outer circle, none had approached in mad rapidity that of 1860-61. The rush of aimless visiting, matinées and dinners, balls and suppers, followed each other without cessation; dress and diamonds, equipage and cards, all cost more than ever before. This might be the last of it, said an uneasy sense of the coming storm; and in the precedent sultriness, the thousands who had come to make money vied with the tens who came to spend it in mad distribution of the proceeds. Madame, who had made an immense investment of somebody's capital in diamonds and lace, must let the world see them. Mademoiselle must make a certain exhibit of shapely shoulders and of telling stride in the German; and time was shortening fast. And Knower, of the Third House, had put all the proceeds of engineering that last bill through, into gorgeous plate. It would never do to waste it, for Knower meant business; and this might be the end of the thing.

So the stream rushed on, catching the weak and timid ones upon its brink and plunging them into the whirling vortex. And still the rusty old wheels revolved, as creakily as ever, at the Capital. Blobb, of Oregon, made machine speeches to the sleepy House, but neither he, nor they, noted the darkening atmosphere without. Senator Jenks took his half-hourly "nip" with laudable punctuality, thereafter rising eloquent to call Mr. President's attention to that little bill; and all the while that huge engine, the lobby, steadily pumped away in the political basement, sending streams of hot corruption into every artery of the government.

Suddenly a sullen reverberation echoes over the Potomac from the South. The long-threatened deed is done at last. South Carolina has seceded, and the first link is rudely stricken from the chain.

There is a little start; that is all. The Third House stays for a second its gold spoon; and, perhaps, a trifle of the turtle spills before reaching its mouth. Madame rearranges her parure and smoothes her ruffled lace; while Mademoiselle pouts a little, then studies her card for the next waltzer. Senator Jenks takes his "nip" just a trifle more regularly; and Blobb, of Oregon, draws a longer breath before his next period. As for the lobby-pump, its piston grows red-hot and its valves fly wide open, with the work it does; while thicker and more foul are the streams it sends abroad.

For awhile there is some little talk around Willard's about the "secesh;" and the old soldiers wear grave faces as they pass to and fro between the War Department and General Scott's headquarters. But to the outer circle, it is only a nine-day wonder; while the dancing and dining army men soon make light of the matter.

But the stone the surface closes smoothly over at the center makes large ripples at the edges. Faces that were long before now begin to lengthen; and thoughtful men wag solemn heads as they pass, or pause to take each other by the buttonhole. More frequent knots discuss the status in hotel lobbies and even in the passages of the departments; careful non-partisans keep their lips tightly closed, and hot talk, pro or con, begins to grow more popular.

One day I find, per card, that the Patagonian Ambassador dines me at seven. As it is not a state dinner I go, to find it even more stupid. At dessert the reserve wears off and all soon get deep in the "Star of the West" episode.

"Looks mighty bad now, sir. Something must be done, sir, and soon, too," says Diggs, a hard-working M.C. from the North-west. "But, as yet, I don't see—what, exactly!"

"Will your government use force to supply Fort Sumter?" asks Count B., of the Sardinian legation.

"If so, it might surely drive out those states so doubtful now, that they may not go to extremes," suggested the Prussian chargé ad interim.

"Why, they'll be whipped back by the army and navy within ninety days from date," remarks a gentleman connected with pension brokerage.

"If part of the army and navy does not go to get whipped with them," growls an old major of the famed Aztec Club. And the scar across the nose, that he brought away from the Belen Gate, grows very uncomfortably purple.

"By Jove! I weally believes he means it! Weally!" whispers very young Savile Rowe, of H.B.M. legation. "Let's get wid of these politics. Dwop in at Knower's; soiwee, you know;" and Savile tucks his arm under mine.

Two blocks away we try to lose uncomfortable ideas in an atmosphere of spermaceti, hot broadcloth, jockey club and terrapin.

"Next quadwille, Miss Wose?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Rowe; and—the third galop—let me see—the fifth waltz. And oh! isn't it nasty of those people in South Carolina! Why don't they behave themselves? Oh, dear! what a lovely color Karmeen Sorser has to-night! Au revoir!" and Miss Rose Ruche glides off, à deux temps, on the arm of the Turkish chargé.

As I stroll through the rooms, there is much glaring light and there are many nude necks. I am jostled by polking damsels and button-holed by most approved bores. But, through the blare of the brass horns and over the steaming terrapin, the one subject rises again and again, refusing burial as persistently as Eugene Aram's old man.

"Try a glass of this punch," Knower chirps cheerily. "Devilish good punch! Good glass, too. See the crest and the monogram blowed in. Put Kansas Coal Contriver's Company proceeds into that glass. But things are looking blue, sir, devilish blue; and I don't see the way out at all. Fact is, I'm getting pretty down in the mouth!" And the lobbyist put a bumper of punch in the same position. "People may talk, sir, but my head's as long as the next, and I don't see the way out. Washington's dead, sir; dead as a hammer, if this secession goes on. Why, what'll become of our business if they move the Capital? Kill us, sir; kill us! Lots of southern members leaving already"—and Knower's voice sunk to a whisper—"and would you believe it? I heard of nine resignations from the army to-day. Gad, sir! had it from the best authority. That means business, I'm afraid." And little by little the conviction dawned on all classes that it did mean business—ugly, real business. What had been only mutterings a few weeks back grew into loud, defiant speech. Southern men, in and out of Congress, banded under their leading spirits, boldly and emphatically declared what they meant to do. Never had excitement around the Capitol run half so high. Even the Kansas-Nebraska furore had failed to pack the Senate galleries so full of men and women, struggling for seats and sitting sometimes through the night. One after another the southern leaders made their valedictories—some calm and dignified, some hot and vindictive—and left the seats they had filled for years. One after another, known and honored names were stricken from the army and navy lists, by resignation. One after another, states met in convention and, by "ordinance of secession," declared themselves independent of the Federal Government. It was as though the train had been prepared and the action of South Carolina was but the lighting of the fuse. Within six weeks from Mr. Buchanan's New Year reception, six states had deliberately gone out of the Union.

When it was too late, the sleepy administration opened its eyes. Not liking the looks of things, it shut them again. When it was too late, there were windy declarations and some feeble temporizing; but all thinking men felt that the crisis had come and nothing could avert it. The earthquake that had rumbled so long in premonitory throes suddenly yawned in an ugly chasm, that swallowed up the petty differences of each side. One throb and the little lines of party were roughly obliterated; while across the gulf that gaped between them, men glared at each other with but one meaning in their eyes.

That solemn mummery, the "Peace Congress," might temporarily have turned the tide it was wholly powerless to dam; but the arch seceder, Massachusetts, manipulated even that slight chance of compromise. The weaker elements in convention were no match for the peaceful Puritan whom war might profit, but could not injure. Peace was pelted from under her olive with splinters of Plymouth Rock, and Massachusetts members poured upon the troubled waters oil—of vitriol!

When the "Peace Commissioners" from the southern Congress at Montgomery came to Washington, all felt their presence only a mockery. It was too late! they came only to demand what the government could not then concede, and every line they wrote was waste of ink, every word they spoke waste of breath. Southern congressmen were leaving by every train. Families of years residence were pulling down their household gods and starting on a pilgrimage to set them up—where they knew not, save it must be in the South. Old friends looked doubtfully at each other, and wild rumors were rife of incursions over the Potomac by wild-haired riders from Virginia. Even the fungi of the departmental desks, seeming suddenly imbued with life, rose and threw away their quills—and with them the very bread for their families—to go South. It was the modern hegira!

A dull, vague unrest brooded over Washington, as though the city had been shadowed with a vast pall, or threatened with a plague. Then when it was again too late, General Scott—"the general," as the hero of Lundy's Lane and Mexico was universally known—virtually went into the Cabinet, practically filling the chair that Jefferson Davis had vacated. Men felt that they must range themselves on one side, or the other, for the South had spoken and meant what she said. There might be war; there must be separation!

I was lounging slowly past the rampant bronze Jackson in Lafayette Square when Styles Staple joined me.

"When do you start?" was his salutation.

"When do I start?" Staple's question was a sudden one.

"Yes, for the South? You're going of course; and the governor writes me to be off at once. Better go together. Eh? Night boat, 4th of March."

Now the governor mentioned was not the presiding executive of a southern state, but was Staple pére, of the heavy cotton firm of Staple, Long & Middling, New Orleans. Staple fils had been for years a great social card in Washington. The clubs, the legations, the avenues and the german knew him equally well; and though he talked about "the house," his only visible transaction with it was to make the name familiar to bill-brokers by frequent drafts. So I answered the question by another:

"What are you going to do when you get there?"

"Stop at Montgomery, see the Congress, draw on 'the house,' and then t' Orleans," he answered cheerfully. "Come with me. Lots to see; and, no doubt, about plenty to do. If this sky holds, all men will be wanted. As you're going the sooner the better. What do you say? Evening boat, March 4th? Is it a go?"

It gave only two days for preparation to leave what had come nearer being home that any other place in a nomadic life. But he was right. I was going, and we settled the matter, and separated to wind up our affairs and take congé.

The night before President Lincoln's inauguration was a restless and trying one to every man in Washington. Nervous men heard signal for bloody outbreak in every unfamiliar sound. Thoughtful ones peered beyond the mist and saw the boiling of the mad breakers, where eight millions of incensed and uncontrolled population hurled themselves against the granite foundation of the established government. Selfish heads tossed upon sleepless pillows, haunted by the thought that the dawn would break upon a great change, boding ruin to their prospects, monetary or political. Even the butterflies felt that there was a something impending; incomprehensible, but uncomfortably suggestive of work instead of pleasure. So Washington rose red-eyed and unrefreshed on the 4th of March, 1861.

Elaborate preparations had been made to have the day's ceremonial brilliant and imposing beyond precedent. Visiting militia and civil organizations from every quarter—North, East and West—had been collecting for days, and meeting reception more labored than spontaneous. The best bands of the country had flocked to the Capital, to drown bad blood in the blare of brass; and all available cavalry and artillery of the regular army had been hastily rendezvoused, for the double purpose of spectacle and security. Still the public mind was feverish and unquiet; and the post commandant was like the public mind.

Rumors were again rife of raids over the Potomac, with Henry A. Wise or Ben McCullough at their head; nightmares of plots to rob the Treasury and raze the White House sat heavy on the timid; while extremists manufactured long-haired men, with air guns, secreted here and there and sworn to shoot Mr. Lincoln, while reading his inaugural.

All night long, orderlies were dashing to and fro at breakneck speed; and guard details were marching to all points of possible danger. Day dawn saw a light battery drawn up on G street facing the Treasury, guns unlimbered and ready for action; while infantry held both approaches to the Long Bridge across the Potomac. Other bodies of regulars were scattered at points most available for rapid concentration; squadrons of cavalry were stationed at the crossings of several avenues; and all possible precautions were had to quell summarily any symptoms of riot.

These preparations resembling more the capital of Mexico than that of the United States, were augury of the peace of the administration thus ushered in! Happily, they were needless. All who remember that inauguration will recall the dull, dead quiet with which the day passed off. The very studiousness of precaution took away from the enjoyment of the spectacle even; and a cloud was thrown over the whole event by the certainty of trouble ahead. The streets were anxious and all gayety showed effort, while many lowering faces peeped at the procession from windows and housetops.

It was over at last. The new man had begun with the new era; and Staple and I had finished our chasse at Wormley's dinner table, when that worthy's pleasant, yellow face peered in at the door.

As we jumped into the carriage awaiting us and Wormley banged the door, a knot of loungers ran up to say good-bye. They were all men-about-town; and if not very dear to each other, it was still a wrench to break up associations with those whose faces had been familiar to every dinner and drive and reception for years. We had never met but in amity and amid the gayest scenes; now we were plunging into a pathless future. Who could tell but a turn might bring us face to face, where hands would cross with a deadly purpose; while the hiss of the Minié-ball sang accompaniment in place of the last galop that Louis Weber had composed.

"Better stay where you are, boys!"—"You're making a bad thing of it!"—"Don't leave us Styles, old fellow!"—"You'll starve down South, sure!"—were a few of the hopeful adieux showered at us.

"Thank you all, just the same, but I think we won't stay," Staple responded. "What would 'the house' do? God bless you, boys! Good-bye, Jim!"

[ ]

CHAPTER II.

"THE CRADLE OF THE CONFEDERACY."

Evening had fallen as evening can fall only in early Washington spring. As we plunged into the low, close cabin of the Acquia Creek steamer of that day, there was a weak light, but a strong smell of kerosene and whisky. Wet, steamy men huddled around the hot stove, talking blatant politics in terms as strong as their liquor. So, leaving the reek below, we faced the storm on deck, vainly striving to fix the familiar city lights as they faded through the mist and rain; more vainly still peering into the misty future, through driving fancies chasing each other in the brain.

The journey south in those days was not a delight. Its components were discomfort, dust and doubt. As we rattled through at gray of dawn, Richmond was fast asleep, blissfully ignorant of that May morning when she would wake to find herself famous, with the eyes of all the civilized world painfully strained toward her. But from Petersburg to Wilmington the country side was wide awake and eager for news. Anxious knots were at every station and water tank, and not overclean hands were thrust into the windows, with the cry: "Airy paper?" Sometimes yellow faces, framed with long, lank hair, peered in at the doors; while occasional voices indescribably twanged: "You'uns got any news from thar 'nauggeration?"

Staple's ready, while not very accurate, replies were hungrily swallowed; proffered papers of any date were clutched and borne as prizes to the learned man of each group, to be spelled out to the delectation of open-mouthed listeners. For the whole country had turned out, with its hands in its breeches pockets, and so far it seemed content to gape and lounge about the stations. The men, to all appearance, were ready and eager; but at that time no idea of such a thing as preparation had entered their minds.

It is difficult, at best, to overcome the vis inertiæ of the lower-class dweller along the South Atlantic seaboard; but when he is first knocked in the head with so knotty a club as secession, and then is told to be up and doing, he probably does—nothing. Their leaders had not been among them yet, and the "Goobers" were entirely at sea. They knew that something had gone wrong, that something was expected of them; but how, where or what, their conception was of the vaguest. The average intelligence of the masses thereabout is not high; the change noticeable before crossing the Virginia line becoming more and more marked as one travels straight south. Whether the monotonous stretches of pine barren depress mentally, or frequent recurring "ager" prostrates physically, who shall say? But to the casual glance along that railroad line, was not presented an unvarying picture of bright, or intellectual, faces.

In Wilmington—not then the busy mart and "port of the Confederacy," she later grew to be—almost equal apathy prevailed. There was more general sense of a crisis upon them; but the escape valve for extra steam, generated therefrom, seemed to be in talk only. There were loud-mouthed groups about the hotel, sundry irate and some drunken politicians at the ferry. But signs of real action were nowhere seen; and modes of organization seemed to have interested no man one met. The "Old North State" had stood ready to dissolve her connection with the Union for some five weeks; but to the looker-on, she seemed no more ready for the struggle to follow her "ordinance of secession," than if that step had not been considered.

But it must be remembered that this was the very beginning, when a whole people were staggered by reaction of their own blow; and all seemed to stand irresolute on the threshold of a vast change. And when the tug really came, the state responded so bravely and so readily that none of her sisters might doubt the mettle she was made of. Her record is written from Bethel to Appomattox, in letters so bright that time can not dim, or conquest tarnish, them.

Through South Carolina and Georgia, men seemed more awake to the greatness of the change and to the imminence of its results. Inland Georgia, especially, showed keener and shrewder. Questions were more to the point; and many a quick retort was popped through the car windows at Staple's wonderful inventions. A strongly asseverated wish to do something, and that at the earliest moment, was generally clinched by a bouncing oath; but where, or how, that something was to be done was never even hinted. Briefly, Georgia seemed more anxious for preparation than her neighbors; withal she was equally far from preparation. It were manifestly unfair to judge the status of a whole people by glimpses from a railway carriage. But from that point of view, the earliest hours of revolution—those hours which, properly utilized, are most fruitful of result—were woefully and weakly wasted by "the leaders."

The people had risen en masse. The flame had spread among them like lava to their lowest depths. Told that their section needed them, they had responded like the Douglas, "Ready, aye, ready!" Beyond this they were told nothing; and during those most precious weeks they waited, while demagoguery flourished and action slept. The entire cotton growing region was in active fermentation; but, until the surface bubbles ceased, no practical deposit could be looked for.

"Devilish strong hands and pretty broad backs these, but I've yet to see the first head among them! I suppose we'll find them at Montgomery!"

After emitting which Orphic utterance at West Point, Styles Staple emptied the partnership's pocket-flask, and then slept peacefully until we reached the "Cradle of the Confederacy."

Montgomery, like Rome, sits on seven hills. The city is picturesque in perch upon bold, high bluffs, which, on the city side, cut sheer down to the Alabama river; here, seemingly scarce more than a biscuit-toss across. From the opposite bank spread great flat stretches of marsh and meadow land, while on the other side, behind the town, the formation swells and undulates with gentle rise. As in most southern inland towns, its one great artery, Main street, runs from the river bluffs to the Capitol, perched on a high hill a full mile away. This street, wide and sandy, was in the cradle days badly paved, but rather closely built up. Nor was the Capitol a peculiarly stately pile, either in size or architectural effect. Still it dominated the lesser structures, as it stared down the street with quite a Roman rigor. The staff upon its dome bore the flag of the new nation, run up there shortly after the Congress met by the hands of a noted daughter of Virginia. Miss Letitia Tyler was not only a representative of proud Old Dominion blood, but was also granddaughter of the ex-President of the United States, whose eldest son, Robert, lived in the new Capital. All Montgomery had flocked to Capitol Hill in holiday attire; bells rang and cannon boomed, and the throng—including all members of the government—stood bareheaded as the fair Virginian threw that flag to the breeze. Then a poet-priest—who later added the sword to the quill—spoke a solemn benediction on the people, their flag and their cause; and a shout went up from every throat that told they meant to honor and strive for it; if need be, to die for it. What was the meaning of the pact, then and there made, had been told by a hundred battle-fields, from Texas to Gettysburg, from Santa Rosa to Belmont, ere the star of the South set forever, and her remnant of warriors sadly draped that "conquered banner."

On the whole, the effect of Montgomery upon the newly arrived was rather pleasing, with a something rather provincial, quite in keeping with its location inland. Streets, various in length, uncertain in direction and impractical as to pavement, ran into Main street at many points; and most of them were closely built with pretty houses, all of them surrounded by gardens and many by handsome grounds. Equidistant from the end of Main street and from each other, stood, in these cradle days, the two hotels of which the Capital could boast. Montgomery Hall, of bitter memory—like the much-sung "Raven of Zurich," for uncleanliness of nest and length of bill—had been the resort of country merchants, horse and cattle-men; but now the Solon of the hour dwelt therein, with the possible hero of many a field. The Exchange—of rather more pretensions and vastly more comfort—was at that time in the hands of a northern firm, who "could keep a hotel." The latter was political headquarters—the President, the Cabinet and a swarm of the possible great residing there.

Montgomery was Washington over again; only on a smaller scale, and with the avidity and agility in pursuit of the spoils somewhat enhanced by the freshness of scent.

"The President is at this house?" I queried of the ex-member of Congress next me at dinner. "But he does not appear, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes; he's waiting here till his house is made ready. But he doesn't have a private table; takes his meals like an everyday mortal, at the ladies' ordinary."

He had scarcely spoken when Mr. Davis entered by a side door and took his seat, with only an occasional stare of earnest, but not disrespectful, curiosity from the more recent arrivals.

Even in the few weeks since I had seen him, there was a great change. He looked worn and thinner; and the set expression of the somewhat stern features gave a grim hardness not natural to their lines. With scarcely a glance around, he returned the general salutations, sat down absently and was soon absorbed in conversation with General Cooper, who had recently resigned the adjutant-generalship of the United States army and accepted a similar post and a brigadier's commission from Mr. Davis.

An after-dinner interview with the President of the Confederacy, to present the "very important" documents from one of the martyrs pining for hanging at Washington, proved them only a prolix report of the inauguration. Mr. Davis soon threw them aside to hear the verbal account from us.

At this time the southern chief was fifty-two years old—tall, erect and spare by natural habit, but worn thin to almost emaciation by mental and physical toil. Almost constant sickness and unremitting excitement of the last few months had left their imprint on face as well as figure. The features had sharpened and the lines had deepened and hardened; the thin lips had a firmer compression and the lower jaw—always firm and prominent—was closer pressed to its fellow. Mr. Davis had lost the sight of one eye many months previous, though that member scarcely showed its imperfection; but in the other burned a deep, steady glow, showing the presence with him of thought that never slept. And in conversation he had the habit of listening with eyes shaded by the lids, then suddenly shooting forth at the speaker a gleam from the stone-gray pupil which seemed to penetrate his innermost mind.

Little ceremony, or form, hedged the incubating government; and perfect simplicity marked every detail about Mr. Davis. His office, for the moment, was one of the parlors of the hotel. Members of the Cabinet and high officials came in and out without ceremony, to ask questions and receive very brief replies; or for whispered consultation with the President's private secretary, whose desk was in the same room. Casual visitors were simply announced by an usher, and were received whenever business did not prevent. Mr. Davis' manner was unvarying in its quiet and courtesy, drawing out all that one had to tell, and indicating by brief answer, or criticism, that he had extracted the pith from it. At that moment he was the very idol of the people; the grand embodiment to them of their grand cause; and they gave him their hands unquestioning, to applaud any move soever he might make. And equally unthinking as this popular manifestation of early hero-worship, was the clamor that later floated into Richmond on every wind, blaming the government—and especially its head—for every untoward detail of the facile descent to destruction.

A better acquaintance with the Confederate Capital impressed one still more with its likeness to Washington toward the end of the session; but many features of that likeness were salient ones, which had marred and debased the older city. The government just organizing, endless places of profit, of trust, or of honor, were to be filled; and for each and every one of them was a rush of jostling and almost rabid claimants. The skeleton of the regular army had just been articulated by Congress, but the bare bones would soon have swelled to more than Falstaffian proportions, had one in every twenty of the ardent aspirants been applied as matter and muscle. The first "gazette" was watched for with straining eyes, and naturally would follow aching hearts; for disappointment here first sowed the dragon's teeth that were to spring into armed opponents of the unappreciative power.

The whole country was new. Everything was to be done—to be made; and who was so capable for both, in their own conceit, as that swarm of worn-out lobbymen and contractors who, having thoroughly exploited "the old concern," now gathered to gorge upon the new. And by the hundred flocked hither those unclean birds, blinking bleared eyes at any chance bit, whetting foul bills to peck at carrion from the departmental sewer. Busy and active at all hours, the lobby of the Exchange, when the crowd and the noise rose to the flood at night, smacked no little of pandemonium. Every knot of men had its grievance; every flag in the pavement was a rostrum. Slowness of organization, the weakness of Congress, secession of the border states, personnel of the Cabinet and especially the latest army appointments—these and kindred subjects were canvassed with heat equaled only by ignorance. Men from every section of the South defended their own people in highest of keys and no little temper; startling measures for public safety were offered and state secrets openly discussed in this curbstone congress; while a rank growth of newspaper correspondents, with "the very latest," swelled the hum into a veritable Babel. And the most incomprehensible of all was the diametric opposition of men from the same neighborhood, in their views of the same subject. Often it would be a vital one, of doctrine, or of policy; and yet these neighbors would antagonize more bitterly than would men from opposite parts of the confederation.

Two ideas, however, seemed to pervade the entire South at this time which, though arrived at by most differing courses of reasoning, were discussed with complacent unanimity. One was that keystone dogma of secession, "Cotton is king;" the second, the belief that the war, should there be any, could not last over three months. The causes that led to the first belief were too numerous, if not too generally understood also, to be discussed here afresh; and upon them, men of all sections and of all creeds based firmest faith that, so soon as Europe understood that the separation was permanent and a regular government had been organized, the power of cotton alone would dictate immediate recognition. The man who ventured dissent from this idea, back it by what reason he might, was voted no better than an idiot; if, indeed, his rank disloyalty was not broadly hinted at.

But the second proposition was harder still to comprehend. There had already been a tacit declaration of war, and overt acts were of frequent commission. As the states seceded, they seized the arsenals, with arms and munitions; the shipping, mints and all United States property, only permitting the officers to go on their parole.

The North was already straining preparation to resent these insults offered to the power and to the flag of the Union. The people were of one race, embittered by long-existent rivalries and jealousies as strangers can never be embittered; and the balance of numbers, of capital and of machinery were on the other side. These causes, as they were without fresh incentives that needs must follow war, seemed sufficient to convince reasoning men that if the storm burst, it would be as enduring as it was terrific. I could realize that to men saturated with pride of section, who knew little of facts and feelings beyond their boundaries, the idea of peaceful separation, or of a short war, could be possible. But that the citizens of the world now congregated at Montgomery, who had sucked in her wisdom as mother's milk, should talk thus, puzzled those who paused to query if they really meant what they said.

Up to this time Montgomery had been scarcely more than a great inland village; dividing her local importance between being the capital of Alabama, the terminus of her principal railroad, and the practical head of navigation for her greatest river. The society had been composed of some planters, cotton men, a few capitalists, some noted professionals and a large class connected with railroad and steamboat interests. There had always been considerable culture, more hospitality and still more ambition, social and civic; but there was still much lacking of what the world expects of a city. Now, however, a future loomed up before the town, which had never before crossed the dreams of its oldest inhabitant. Her choice as the "cradle of the Confederacy," the sudden access of population therefrom, the probable erection of furnaces, factories and storehouses, with consequent disbursement of millions—all these gave the humdrum town a new value and importance, even to its humblest citizen. Already small merchants saw their ledgers grow in size, to the tune of added cash to fall jingling into enlarged tills. In fact, the choice of the Capital had turned a society, provincially content to run in accustomed grooves, quite topsy-turvy; and, perhaps for want of some other escape-valve under the new pressure, the townspeople grumbled consumedly.

Tiring of experimental camping-out in a hotel, a few gentlemen hired a house and established a "mess." They were all notables—General Cooper, General Meyers, Dr. DeLeon, Colonel Deas and others, the three first being adjutant-general, quartermaster-general and surgeon-general of the new army. A chief of department, or two and this writer, completed the occupants of "the Ranche," as it was early christened by "the colonel;" and its piazza soon became the favorite lounging-place in the evening of the better and brighter elements of the floating population. There was sure to be found the newest arrival, if he were worth knowing; the latest papers and news "from across;" and, as the blue smoke of the Havanas floated lazily out on the soft summer night, many a jovial laugh followed it and a not infrequent prediction of scenes to come almost prophetic. And of the lips that made these most are now silent forever—stilled in the reddest glow of battle, with the war-cry hot upon them.

So far the news that came in from all quarters continued cheering. A vague sense of doubt and suspense would creep in when one stopped to think, but nothing terrible, or shocking, had yet happened anywhere. Though the nation was going down to battle, its banners were flaunting gaily and its bands were playing anything but dirges.

[ ]

CHAPTER III.

CONGRESS AND CABINET.

The proposition that, shown who writes the ballads of a country, one may tell who makes its laws, is far from reversible in many instances; and assuredly the lawmakers of the Confederacy looked little like poets.

When the councils of a country are assembled for work, it is but natural to look for a body of grave and reverend—if not most potent—seigniors. And especially, when a new government is forming from selected fragments of the old, might one expect a pure and simple structure, free from those faults and weaknesses which sowed the seeds of disintegration in the elder fabric.

It was too much the fashion to believe that the Confederacy—having sprung full-grown from foam of the angry sea of politics—was full-armed as well. A revolution, unprecedented in the world's history, had already been achieved. A strongly cemented and firmly seated government had been disrupted; and a new one, built from the dissevered fragments, had been erected almost under the shadow of its Capitol. And no drop of blood had been spilled! Six millions of people had uprisen and, by a simple declaration of will, had in a few short weeks undone the work of near a century. Without arms in their hands; without a keel in their waters; without a dollar in their treasury, they arrayed themselves against the mother government with the serious purpose of not only asserting, but maintaining, their independence of it.

So far, all had been accomplished without violence. But, whatever the simpler masses might expect, the initiated politician could scarce have believed that the older government would meekly submit to "Let the erring sisters go in peace." Hence, one might justly have looked to see the executive council of the new nation—to whom had been intrusted its safety and its hopes—with every thought bent, every nerve strained to the one vital point—preparation! One could only have expected measures simple as energetic; laws clear, concise and comprehensive; care only for the arming, organizing and maintenance of the people.

Blessed are they who expect nothing! One glance at the "Congress of the Confederate States of America," as it sat in the Capitol at Montgomery, told the whole story of its organization and of its future usefulness.

The states went out of the union, separately and at different periods, by the action of conventions. These were naturally composed of men who had long been prominently before the people, urging the measures of secession. As a matter of course, the old political workers of each section, by fair means and foul, were enabled to secure election to these conventions; and, once there, they so fevered and worked upon the public mind, amid rapidly succeeding events, that its after-thought could neither be reasonable nor deliberate. The act of secession once consummated, the state connected itself with the Confederacy and representatives had to be sent to Montgomery. Small wonder that the men most prominent in the secession conventions should secure their own election, as little regard to fitness as ability being had by the excited electors.

The House of Representatives at Montgomery looked like the Washington Congress, viewed through a reversed opera-glass. The same want of dignity and serious work; the same position of ease, with feet on desk and hat on head; the same buzzing talk on indifferent subjects; often the very same men in the lobbies—taking dry smokes from unlit cigars; all these elements were there in duplicate, if somewhat smaller and more concentrated. No point in Montgomery was remote enough—no assemblage dignified enough—to escape the swoop of the lobby vulture. His beak was as sharp and his unclean talons as strong as those of the traditional bird, which had blinked and battened so long on the eaves of the Washington edifice. When "the old concern" had been dismembered, limbs had been dragged whole to aid in the construction of the new giant; and scenting these from afar, he hastened hither fierce for his fresh banquet.

Glancing down from the gallery of the House, many were the familiar faces peering over the desks; and, even where one did not know the individual, it was easy to recognize the politician by trade among the rosy and uncomfortable novices. It was constant food for wonderment to thoughtful men, that the South had, in most cases, chosen party hacks to legislate for and to lead her in this great crisis, rather than transfused younger blood and steadier nerves into her councils; rather than grafted new minds upon the as yet healthy body. The revolution was popularly accepted as the result of corruptions and aggressions which these very men had been utterly helpless to correct, or to prevent; even had they not been able actors in them. Yet, worn-out politicians—who had years before been "promoted from servants to sovereigns and had taken back seats"—floated high upon the present surge. Men hot from Washington, reeking with the wiles of the old House and with their unblushing buncombe fresh upon them, took the lead in every movement; and the rank old Washington leaven threatened to permeate every pore of the new government.

It is small wonder that the measures of such a congress, when not vacillating, were weak. If the time demanded anything, that demand was the promptest organization of an army, with an immediate basis of foreign credit, to arm, equip and clothe it. Next to this was the urgent need for a simple and readily managed machinery in the different departments of the government.

Neither of these desiderata could be secured by their few earnest and capable advocates, who thrust them forward over and over again, only to be pushed aside by the sensation element with which the popular will of the new nation—or the want of it—had diluted her councils. There were windy dissertations on the color of the flag, or on the establishment of a patent office; and members made long speeches, bearing on no special point, but that most special one of their own re-election. There were bitter denunciations of "the old wreck;" violent diatribes on the "gridiron" flag; with many an eloquent and manly declaration of the feelings and the attitude of the South. But these were not the bitter need. Declarations sufficient had already been made; and the masses—having made them, and being ready and willing to maintain them—stood with their hands in their pockets, open-mouthed, eager, but inactive. They were waiting for some organization, for some systematized preparation for the struggle even they felt to be surely coming. Not one in three of the congressmen dared look the real issue directly in the face; and these were powerless to accomplish anything practical. But their constant pressure finally forced from the reluctant legislature a few first steps toward reduction of the chaos.

The Government was to consist, after the President, of a vice-President and a secretary for each of the departments of State, War, Navy, Treasury, Post-Office and Justice; the latter being a combination of the responsibilities of the Interior Department and the Attorney-General's office.

Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, had been elevated to the vice-Presidency, as reconciling the oppositions of "original secession" and "anti secession." He had long been a prominent politician; was thoroughly acquainted with all the points of public life; and was, at this time, quite popular with people of all sections, being generally regarded as a man of exceptional capacity and great independence.

The portfolio of State was in the hands of another Georgian, Robert Toombs. In the present posture of affairs, little could be expected from it, as until the nations of Europe should recognize the South, she could have no foreign policy. The honorable secretary himself seemed fully to realize how little onerous was his position. One of the ten thousand applicants for any and every position approached him for a place in his department and exhibited his letters of recommendation.

"Perfectly useless, sir!" responded Mr. Toombs with a thunderous oath. Let us whisper that the honorable secretary was a profound swearer.

"But, sir," persisted the place hunter, "if you will only look at this letter from Mr. ——, I think you can find something for me."

"Can you get in here, sir?" roared the secretary fiercely, taking off his hat and pointing into it—with a volley of sonorous oaths—"That's the Department of State, sir!"

The Post-Office and Department of Justice were, as yet, about as useful as the State Department; but to the War Office, every eye was turned, and the popular verdict seemed to be that the choice there was not the right man in the right place. Mr. Leroy Pope Walker, to whom its administration was intrusted, was scarcely known beyond the borders of his own state; but those who did know him prophesied that he would early stagger under the heavy responsibility that would necessarily fall upon him in event of war. Many averred that he was only a man of straw to whom Mr. Davis had offered the portfolio, simply that he might exercise his own well-known love for military affairs and be himself the de facto Secretary of War.

The selection of Mr. Mallory, of Florida, for the Navy Department, was more popular and was, as yet, generally considered a good one. His long experience as chairman of the committee on naval affairs, in the United States Senate, and his reputation for clearness of reasoning and firmness of purpose, made him acceptable to the majority of politicians and people. Of Mr. Reagan the people knew little; but their fate was not in his hands, and just now they were content to wait for their letters.

The Treasury Department was justly supposed to be the key to national success. It was at least the twin, in importance, with the War Office. Mr. Memminger, of South Carolina, was a self-made man, who had managed the finances of his state and had made reputation for some financiering ability and much common sense. He had, moreover, the advantage of being a new man; and the critics were willing to give him the benefit of common law, until he should prove himself guilty. Still the finance of the country was so vital, and came home so nearly to every man in it, that perhaps a deeper anxiety was felt about its management than that of any other branch.

The Attorney-General, or chief of the Department of Justice, had a reputation as wide as the continent—and as far as mental ability and legal knowledge went, there could be no question among the growlers as to his perfect qualifications for the position. Mr. Judah P. Benjamin was not only the successful politician, who had risen from obscurity to become the leader of his party in the Senate, and its exponent of the constitutional questions involved in its action; but he was, also, the first lawyer at the bar of the Supreme Court and was known as a ripe and cultivated scholar. So the people who shook their heads at him—and they were neither few nor far between—did it on other grounds than that of incapacity.

This was the popular view of that day at the new Capital. The country at large had but little means of knowing the real stuff of which the Cabinet was made. It is true, four of the six were old and thoroughly broken party horses, who had for years cantered around the Washington arena, till the scent of its sawdust was dear to their nostrils. But the people knew little of them individually and took their tone from the politicians of the past. So—as it is a known fact that politicians are never satisfied—the Cabinet and Congress, as tried in the hotel alembic, were not found pure gold.

So the country grumbled. The newspapers snarled, criticised and asserted, with some show of truth, that things were at a dead standstill, and that nothing practical had been accomplished.

Such was the aspect of affairs at Montgomery, when on the 10th of April, Governor Pickens, of South Carolina, telegraphed that the Government at Washington had notified him of its intention to supply Fort Sumter—"Peaceably if we can; forcibly if we must."

Bulletins were posted before the Exchange, the newspaper office and the "Government House;" and for two days there was intense suspense as to what course the South would pursue. Then the news flashed over the wires that, on the morning of the 12th of April, Beauregard had opened the ball in earnest, by commencing the bombardment of Fort Sumter. This caused the excitement to go up to fever heat; and the echo of that first gun made every heart in the breadth of the land bound with quickened throb. Business was suspended, all the stores in the town were closed, while crowds at the hotels and in the streets became larger and more anxious as the day wore on. Various and strange were the speculations as to the issue of the fight and its consequences; but the conviction came, like a thunder clap upon the most skeptical, that there was to be war after all!

[ ]

CHAPTER IV.

"THE AWAKENING OF THE LION."

When tidings came of the fall of Fort Sumter, there was wild rejoicing throughout the South and it culminated at her Capital. All the great, and many of the little men of the Government were serenaded by bands of the most patriotic musical persuasion. Bonfires blazed in every street and, by their red glare, crowds met and exchanged congratulations, amid the wildest enthusiasm; while the beverage dear to the cis-Atlantic heart was poured out in libations wonderful to see!

One-half of the country thought that this victory of a few untrained gunners would prevent further progress of the war; that the Federal Government, seeing how determined was the stand the South had taken—how ready she was to defend her principles—would recede and grant the concessions demanded. The other half felt that, however fair an augury for the future the great and bloodless victory might be—and it will be recollected that the only loss was the death of a few United States soldiers, in the salute Beauregard permitted them to give their flag—the real tug of the struggle was not yet commenced; that the whole power of a government, never yet overstrained, or even fully tested, would be hurled on the new confederation, to crush ere it could concentrate its strength.

The Confederate Government was on the side of this opinion; and now, for the first time, preparations for war began in earnest. Though the people of Montgomery still murmured, as they had done from the beginning, at the influx of corrupting social influences from Sodom on the Potomac, and still held the hordes of unintroduced strangers aloof from their firesides, they continued most strenuous exertions and made most selfless sacrifices to serve the beloved cause. Storehouses were freely offered for the public use; and merchants moved from their places of business, on shortest notice, to turn them over to the Government.

A great, red brick pile, originally built for warehouses and counting-rooms, had early been converted into public offices and popularly named the "Government House." Here the departments were all crowded together; and now, under the pressure of close necessity, the War office was organized into bureaux, at the heads of which were placed the most competent officers of the old service at the disposal of the Executive. Bureaux of Adjutant-General, Ordnance, Engineers and Medicine were soon put in as perfect a state as the condition of the South allowed; and their respective chiefs were tireless in endeavor to collect the very best assistants and material, in their various branches, from every quarter.

Commissioners were sent to all the states that had not already joined the Confederacy, to urge them to speedy action; and the dispatches they sent back were so full of cheer, that day after day a salute of cannon from the street in front of the Government House announced to the roused Montgomerans that another ally had enlisted under the flag; or, that a fresh levy of troops, from some unexpected quarter, had been voted to the cause.

Officers, carefully selected from those who left the United States Army, or who had received military education elsewhere, were promptly sent to all points in the South, to urge and hasten the organization of troops; to forward those already raised to points where they might be most needed; and to establish recruiting stations and camps of instruction. The captured arsenals were put in working order, new ones were started, depots for clothes, ordnance and medicines were prepared; and from one boundary of the Confederacy to the other, the hum of preparation told that the leaders of the nation had at last awakened to its real demands.

The mass of the people—who, from the first, had been willing and anxious, but doubtful what to do—now sprang to their places; moneyed men made large and generous donations of cash; the banks offered loans of any amount, on most liberal terms; planters from every section made proffers of provisions and stock, in any quantities needed; and the managers of all the railroads in the South held a convention at Montgomery and proffered the use of their roads to the Government; volunteering to charge only half-rates, and to receive payment in the bonds of the Confederate States.

Especially did the women go heart and soul into the work; urging the laggards, encouraging the zealous, and laboring with sacrificial zeal upon rough uniforms for the most unprepared of the new troops.

The best blood of the South went cheerfully into the ranks, as the post of honor; and the new regiments endeavored to be perfectly impartial in selecting the best men for their officers, irrespective of any other claim. That they failed signally in their object was the fault, not of their intention, but of human nature in many cases—of circumstance in all.

At this time the plan of filling up the regular army was abandoned. Officers coming from the United States service were, by law, entitled to at least as high rank in it as they had there held; but volunteers were asked for and accepted by companies, or regiments, with the privilege of choosing their own leaders; and these regulars were only given commands where vacancies, or the exigencies of the service, seemed to demand it imperatively.

Every hour of the day could be heard the tap of the drum, as the new troops from depot, or steamer, marched through the town to their camps in the suburbs; or as the better drilled volunteer companies passed through to Pensacola, where Brigadier-General Braxton Bragg already had a considerable force. And toward that point every eye was strained as the next great theater of action.

All day long the churches were open, and crowds of ladies, from town and country, assembled in them and sewed on the tough, ungainly pants and jackets; while their negro maids, collected on the porches, or under the trees, worked as steadily as their mistresses, many a ringing guffaw and not unmusical song rising above them.

Great numbers of the interested and the curious visited the camps, carrying substantial tokens of sympathy for the cause and its defenders in the shape of hams, loaves and sometimes bottles. Nor was such testimony often irrelevant; for as yet the quartermaster and commissary—those much-erring and more-cursed adjuncts to all armies—were not fully aware of what they were to do, or how to do it, even with the means therefor provided. But the South was at last awake! And again the popular voice averred that it was not Congress, or Cabinet; that the President alone was the motive power; that his strong hand had grasped the chaos and reduced it to something like order. Rapidly one needful and pointed law after another emanated from Congress; and what had been a confused mass of weak resolves assumed shape as clear and legible statutes. It was generally said that Mr. Davis had reduced Congress to a pliable texture that his iron fingers could twist at will into any form they pleased. Newspaper correspondents wrote strange stories of the length to which that dignified body allowed him to carry his prerogative. They declared that frequently, the framing of a bill not suiting him, it was simply returned by his private secretary, with verbal instructions as to emendations and corrections, which were obediently carried out.

Some even went to the length of asserting that, before any bill of importance was framed, a rough draft was sent down from the President's office and simply put into form and voted a law by the ductile legislators.

However much of this one may allow for exaggeration of "our correspondent," it is certain that Mr. Davis was the heart and brains of the government; and his popularity with the people was, at this time, unbounded. They were perfectly content to think that the government was in the hollow of his hand; and pronounced any of his measures good before they were tried. His energy, too, was untiring; and it was wonderful to look on the frail body and believe that it endured the terrible physical and mental strain he imposed upon it.

At this time the President and his family, having left their temporary quarters at the hotel, were living at a plain mansion provided for them, but a few steps from the Government House. In the latter building were the executive office and the Cabinet room, connected by an always open door; and in one or the other of these Mr. Davis spent some fifteen hours out of every twenty-four. Here he received the thousands of visitors whom curiosity, or business, brought; consulted with his secretaries, revised bills, or framed new projects for strengthening the defenses of the open and wide frontier. It was said that he managed the War Department, in all its various details, in addition to other manifold labors; finding time not only to give it a general supervision, but to go into all the minutiæ of the working of its bureaux, the choice of all its officers, or agents, and the very disbursement of its appropriations.

His habits were as simple as laborious. He rose early, worked at home until breakfast, then to a long and wearing day at the Government House. Often, long after midnight, the red glow from his office lamp, shining over the mock-orange hedge in front of his dwelling, told of unremitting strain. Thus early in the drama, Mr. Benjamin had become one of its leading actors; having more real weight and influence with Mr. Davis than any, or all, of his other advisers. The President did not believe there was "safety in a multitude of counsellors;" and he certainly chose the subtlest, if not the safest, head of the half-dozen to aid him. With Mr. Mallory, too, he seemed on very friendly and confidential terms. These two he met as friends and advisers; but beside them, the Cabinet—as such—had scarcely a practical existence. Mr. Davis very naturally considered that the War Department had become the government, and he managed it accordingly. The secretaries were, of course, useful to arrange matters formally in their respective branches; but they had scarcely higher duties left them than those of their clerks; while Congress remained a formal body to pass bills and ratify acts, the inspiration for which it derived from the clearest and coolest brain in the South.

The crisis had called in plain terms that it was time for the leading spirit of the revolution to take its management; and he had risen to the occasion and faced the responsibilities, before which the chosen of the new nation had hitherto cowered.

And naturally, under the iron hand, things began to work more smoothly than they had under the King-Log reign of a few weeks previous; and the country felt the change from the Potomac to the Gulf. True, politicians still grumbled, but less loudly; for even they found something to do, where everybody began to be busy. The great crowd that at first collected had thinned greatly, from assignments to duty in divers quarters; and that portion of it left in Montgomery began to settle into a regular routine.

The ladies of the executive mansion held occasional receptions, after the Washington custom, at which were collected the most brilliant, the most gallant and most honored of the South. But the citizens still held aloof from general connection with the alien crowd. They could not get rid of their idea that Sodom had come to be imposed on them; and to their prejudiced nostrils there was an odor of sulphur in everything that savored of Washington society. And yet, while they grumbled—these older people of Montgomery—they wrought, heart and soul for the cause; yielded their warerooms for government use, contributed freely in money and stores, let their wives and daughters work on the soldiers' clothing like seamstresses, and put their first-born into the ranks, musket on shoulder.

Early on the morning of the 18th of April, a salute of seven guns rang out from the street before the public building. The telegraph had brought the most welcome news that, on the evening before, Virginia had passed the ordinance of secession.

Wild was the rejoicing at the southern Capital that day!

The Old Dominion had long and sedately debated the question; had carefully considered the principles involved and canvassed the pros and cons, heedless alike of jeers from without and hot-headed counsels within her borders.

She had trembled long in the balance so tenderly adjusted, that the straining eyes of the South could form no notion how it would lean; but now she turned deliberately and poured the vast wealth of her influence, of her mineral stores and her stalwart and chivalric sons into the lap of the Confederacy.

The victory of the week before paled before this; and men looked at each other with a hope in their eyes that spoke more than the braying of a thousand bands.

And the triumph was a double one; for great as was the accession to the South in boundary, in men and means, greater far was the blow to the Union, when its eldest and most honored daughter divorced herself from the parent hearth and told the world, that looked on with deep suspense, that the cause of her sisters must in future be her own!

[ ]

CHAPTER V.

A SOUTHERN RIVER BOAT RACE.

"Hurry, my boy! Pack up your traps and get ready for the boat," cried Styles Staple, bursting into my room in his usual sudden fashion the day we got the news from Virginia. "All's fixed. The colonel, you and I are to have a trip of a week, stop at Mobile and then run down t' Orleans!"

So by sundown we were quietly smoking our cigars on the topmost deck of the "Southern Republic."

Nowhere in the world can be found just such boats as those that navigate our south-western rivers. Great three or four-storied constructions, built upon mere flats of the lightest possible draught, with length and breadth of beam sufficient to allow storage room for an immense number of cotton bales and barrels upon the lowest deck; with their furnaces, boilers and machinery all above the water line, they look like up-country hotels that, having got out of their element, contemplate a down-trip for the benefit of their health—or cuisine.

The "Southern Republic" was a new boat, built after the most approved plan, on a scale of size and magnificence unequaled on the river. Sitting flat and square upon the water, her four decks rising one above the other—with the thousand doors and windows of her state-rooms seeming to peer like eyes over the balconies around them—she seemed more like some fabled marine monster than a vessel meant for speed and comfort. Her length was immense, and her draught necessarily very light—not four feet when full loaded; for the Alabama is subject to many vagaries and what was a clear channel yesterday may be only a two-foot shoal to-day. Of course, with solidity and strength sacrificed to this extreme lightness, when the powerful engines are put to any strain, the high, thin fabric thrills from stem to stern with their every puff, like a huge card-house.

The speed of a first-class high-pressure boat is very great in the longer "reaches;" but, the Alabama is a most tortuous stream. Often you stand by the pilot-house and see, right under the quarter, a gleaming streak of water across a neck of land over which you might toss a stone; and yet you may steam on miles around the point that juts ahead, before you get into it.

The "Southern Republic," from her immense size and unusually handsome equipment, was a novelty even to the river people; and each afternoon of her starting, crowds came aboard to bid farewell to friends and roam over the vessel, or collected on the bluffs above to see her swing out to the shrill notes of her "calliope," the best and least discordant on the river. A few evenings before we left, a large party had collected in honor of General Earl Van Dorn. He had recently resigned; and the commission as colonel of the only regiment of regular cavalry in the Confederacy was tendered him. Now, on the eve of departure for his well-known expedition to Texas—then considered a momentous and desperate one—numbers of fair women thronged the bluffs to catch a glimpse of the hero of the hour, while friends gathered round to grasp the hand, than which no firmer ever drew blade!

Few men had started in the war with brighter auspices and more ardent well-wishings—none could have had a sadder ending! I remember well the last sight I ever had of his neat but powerfully-knit figure, as he stood with one hand resting on the rail of the upper deck and the other raising his broad sombrero over the clear, sharp features, with the peaked moustache and beard of the cuirassier. A brilliant and handsome staff surrounded him; from the bluffs, the ladies waved their handkerchiefs and the men their hats; the wild notes of the calliope echoed back the "Marseillaise;" but in memory's photograph of the scene, his figure alone—the proud swell of the thin nostril and the deep, smothered flame in the cold gray eye—stands out clear and sharp.

We are aboard the "Southern Republic;" the last bell has sounded, the last belated trunk has been trundled over the plank; and we are off, the calliope screaming "Dixie" like ten thousand devils, the crowds on the bank waving us bon voyage!

The main saloon of the boat was a spacious apartment, a hundred feet long by thirty in breadth, gorgeously decorated with modern paint and brilliantly lighted; the galleries leading to the state-rooms rising tier upon tier entirely around it, while above, a skylight of tinted glass shed a soft, warm light.

There were offices, card-rooms, bar-rooms aboard all these boats; and as the down-trip occupies from forty-eight to one hundred hours—according to the stage of the river and the luck in running aground, a performance to be expected once in each trip—we become quite a mutual amusement community by the time it is over.

This trip the boat was very crowded, and at supper the effect of the line of small tables, filled with officers in uniform, ladies tastefully dressed and a sprinkling of homespun coats—all reflected in the long mirror—was very bright and gay. After meals, there is generally a promenade on the upper deck, where people talk, smoke, inspect each other and flirt. They then adjourn to state-room, saloon or card-room, to lounge or read to kill time; for the Alabama is anything but a picturesque stream, with its low, marshy banks only varied by occasional "cotton slides" and "negro quarters."

This night was splendidly clear, the moon bright as day, and Staple and I with our cigars staid on deck to scrape acquaintance with the pilot and the small, seedy Frenchman who officiated at the calliope. He was an original in his way—"the Professor"—his head like a bullet, garnished with hair of the most wiry blackness, cut close as the scissors could hold it, looking like the most uncompromising porcupine. Of course, he was a political refugee.

"Dixie! Aire nationale! pas bonne chose!" he exclaimed, seating himself at his instrument and twirling a huge moustache. "Voila le Marseillaise! Zat make hymn national for you!" And he made the whistle roar and shriek in a way to have sent the red caps into the air a hundred miles away.

"Grand! Splendid!" roared Styles above the steam. "Why, Professor, you're a genius. Come and take some brandy."

The professor banged the lid of his instrument, led the way instanter down to our state-room; and, once there, did take something; then something else and, finally, something more, till he got very thick-tongued and enthusiastic.

"Grand aire of ze Liberte!" he cried at last, mounting again to his perch by the smoke-stack. "Song compose by me for one grand man—ze Van Dorn. I make zees—me, myself—and dedicate to heem!" And he banged at the keys till he tortured the steam into the Liberty duet, from "Puritani."

"How you fine zat, eh? Zat makes ze hymn for ze Souse. Me, I am républicain! Voila! I wear ze moustache of ze revolutionaire—my hairs cut themselves en mécontent! Were zere colere more red as red, I should be zat!"

The professor was so struck by the brilliancy of this idea, that he played the air again, until it rang like a phantom chorus over the still plantations. At last, overcome by emotion and brandy, he slid from the stool and sat at the foot of the smoke-stack, muttering:

"Zat is ze hymn—hic—dedicate to ze general and to ze—hic—countree!" Then he slept the sleep of the just conscience.

"Thar's the 'Senator,' and she's gainin' on us," said the pilot, as we walked forward, pointing to a thin column of smoke rising over the trees just abreast of us.

"How far astern?"

"A matter of two mile round that pint."

"Splendid night for a race," muttered Styles. "Will she overtake us, Cap'n?"

"Wail, maibee!" replied the old river dog, while the most professional grin shot over his hard-wooden features. "Specially ef I ease up this 'ar ole gal."

"Ha! Now we'll have it. We won't turn in just now," chuckled Styles, banging me in the back.

Almost imperceptibly our speed slackens, the thin dark column creeps nearer round the trees on the point in our wake; at last the steamer bursts into sight, not a pistol shot astern.

There is a sharp click of our pilot's bell, a gasping throb, as if our boat took a deep, long breath; and just as the "Senator" makes our wheel we dash ahead again, with every stroke of the piston threatening to rack our frail fabric into shreds.

The river here is pretty wide and the channel deep and clear. The "Senator" follows in gallant style, now gaining our quarter, now a boat's length astern—both engines roaring and snorting like angry hippopotami; both vessels rocking and straining till they seem to paw their way through the churned water.

Talk of horse-racing and rouge-et-noir! But there is no excitement that can approach boat-racing on a southern river! One by one people pop up the ladders and throng the rails. First come the unemployed deck-hands, then a stray gentleman or two, and finally ladies and children, till the rail is full and every eye is anxiously strained to the opposite boat.

She holds her own wondrous well, considering the reputation of ours. At each burst, when she seems to gain on us, the crowd hold their breath; as she drops off again there is a deep-drawn, gasping sign of relief, like wind in the pines. Even the colonel has roused himself from dreams of turtle at the St. Charles, and red fish at Pensacola; coming on deck in a shooting jacket and glengary cap, that make him look like a jaunty Fosco. He leans over the stern rail, smoking his cabana in long, easy whiffs as we gain a length; sending out short, angry puffs at the "Senator" as she creeps up on us.

Foot by foot, we gain steadily until the gap is widened to three or four boat-lengths, though the "Senator" piles her fires till the shores behind her glow from their reflection; and her decks—now black with anxious lookers-on—send up cheer after cheer, as she snorts defiantly after us.

Suddenly the bank seems to spring up right under our port bow! We have cut it too close! Two sharp, vicious clicks of the bell; our helm goes hard down and the engines stop with a sullen jar, as I catch a hissing curse through the set teeth of the pilot.

A yell of wild triumph rises from the rival's deck. On she comes in gallant style, shutting the gap and passing us like a race-horse, before we can swing into the channel and recover headway. It is a splendid sight as the noble boat passes us; her black bulk standing out in the clear moonlight against the dim, gray banks like a living monster; her great chimneys snorting out volumes of massive black smoke that trail out level behind her, from the great speed. Her side toward us is crowded with men, women and children; hats, handkerchiefs and hands are swung madly about to aid the effort of the hundred voices.

Close down to the water's edge—scarce above the line of foam she cuts—her lower deck lies black and undefined in the shadow of the great mass above it. Suddenly it lights up with a lurid flash, as the furnace-doors swing wide open; and in the hot glare the negro stokers—their stalwart forms jetty black, naked to the waist and streaming with exertion that makes the muscles strain out in great cords—show like the distorted imps of some pictured inferno. They, too, have imbibed the excitement. With every gesture of anxious haste and eyeballs starting from their dusky heads, some plunge the long rakes into the red mouths of the furnace, twisting and turning the crackling mass with terrific strength; others hurl in huge logs of resinous pine, already heated by contact till they burn like pitch. Then the great doors bang to; the Yo! Ho! of the negroes dies away and the whole hull is blacker from the contrast; while the "Senator," puffing denser clouds than ever, swings round the point a hundred yards ahead!

There is dead silence on our boat—silence so deep that the rough whisper of the pilot to the knot around him is heard the whole length of her deck: "Damnation! but I'll overstep her yit, or—bust!"

"Good, old man!" responds Styles—"Let her out and I'll stand the wine!"

Then the old colonel walks to the wheel; his face purple, his glengary pushed back on his head, his cigar glowing like the "red eye of battle," as he puffs angry wheezes of smoke through his nostrils.

"Damned hard! sir—hard! Egad! I'd burn the last ham in the locker to overtake her!"—and he hurls the glowing stump after the "Senator," as the Spartan youth hurled their shields into the thick of the battle ere rushing to reclaim them.

On we speed, till the trees on the bank seem to fly back past us; and round the point to see the "Senator," just turning another curve!

On still, faster than ever, with every glass on board jingling in its frame; every joint and timber trembling, as though with a congestive chill!

Still the black demons below ply their fires with the fattest logs, and even a few barrels of rosin are slyly slipped in; the smoke behind us stretched straight and flat from the smoke-stack.

Now we enter a straight, narrow reach with the chase just before us. Faster—faster we go till the boat fairly rocks and swings from side to side, half lifted with every throb of the engine. Closer and closer we creep—harder and harder thump the cylinders—until at last we close; our bow just lapping her stern! So we run a few yards.

Little by little—so little that we test it by counting her windows—we reach her wheel—pass it—lock her bow, and run nose and nose for a hundred feet!

The stillness of death is upon both boats; not a sound but the creak and shudder as they struggle on. Suddenly the hard voice of our old pilot crashes through it like a broadaxe:

"Good-bye, Sen'tor! I'll send yer a tug!"—and he gives his bell a merry click.

Our huge boat gives one shuddering throb that racks her from end to end—one plunge—and then she settles into a steady rush and forges rapidly and evenly ahead. Wider and wider grows the gap; and we wind out of sight with the beaten boat five hundred yards behind us.

The cigar I take from my mouth, to make way for the deep, long sigh, is chewed to perfect pulp. A wild, pent-up yell of half-savage triumph goes up from the crowded deck; such as is heard nowhere besides, save where the captured work rewards the bloody and oft-repeated charge. Cheer after cheer follows; and, as we approach the thin column of smoke curling over the trees between us, Styles bestrides the prostrate form of the still sleeping professor and makes the calliope yell and shriek that classic ditty, "Old Gray Horse, come out of the Wilderness!" at the invisible rival.

I doubt if heartier toast was ever drunk than that the colonel gave the group around the wheel-house, when Styles "stood" the wine plighted the pilot. The veteran was beaming, the glengary sat jauntily on one side; and his voice actually gurgled as he said:

"Egad! I'd miss my dinner for a week for this! Gentlemen, a toast! Here's to the old boat! God bless her —— soul!"

[ ]

CHAPTER VI.

BOAT LIFE AFLOAT AND AGROUND.

The day after the race our trio exhausted all usual resources of boat life. We lounged in the saloon and saw the young ladies manage their beaux and the old ones their children; dropped into the card-rooms and watched the innocent games—some heavy ones of "draw poker" with a "bale better;" some light ones of "all fours," with only an occasional old sinner deep in chess, or solitaire. For cards, conversation, tobacco, yarns and the bar make up boat life; it being rare, indeed, that the ennui is attacked from the barricade of a book. Then we roamed below and saw the negroes—our demons of the night before, much modified by sunlight—tend the fires and load cotton. A splendidly developed race are those Africans of the river boats, with shiny, black skins, through which the corded and tense muscles seem to be bursting, even in repose. Their only dress, as a general thing, is a pair of loose pantaloons, to which the more elegant add a fancy colored bandanna knotted about the head, with its wing-like ends flying in the wind; but shirts are a rarity in working hours and their absence shows a breadth of shoulder and depth of chest remarkable, when contrasted with the length and lank power in the nether limbs. They are a perfectly careless and jovial race, with wants confined to the only luxuries they know—plenty to eat, a short pipe and a plug of "nigger-head," with occasional drinks, of any kind and quantity that fall to their lot. Given these, they are as contented as princes; and their great eyes roll like white saucers and their splendid teeth flash in constant merriment.

As we got further down the river, the flats became less frequent and high, steep bluffs took their place; and at every landing along these we laid-by for cotton and took in considerable quantities of "the king."

Some of the bluffs were from sixty to eighty feet in height; and down these, the cotton came on slides. These, in most cases, were at an angle of forty-five degrees, or less; strongly constructed of heavy beams, cross-tied together and firmly pegged into the hard bluff-clay. A small, solid platform at the bottom completed the slide.

Scarcely would the plank be run out when the heavy bales came bounding down the slide, gaining momentum at every yard of descent, till at the bottom they had the velocity of a cannon-ball. The dexterity and strength of the negroes were here wonderfully displayed.

Standing at the edge of the boat—or at the foot of the slide, as the conformation of the landing indicated—heavy cotton-hook in hand, they watch the descending bale, as it bounds fiercely toward them; and just at the right moment two men, with infinite dexterity of hand and certainty of eye, strike their hooks firmly into the bagging—holding on to the plunging mass and going with it halfway across the boat. Full in front of it a third stands, like a matador ready for the blow; and striking his hook deep in the end, by a sudden and simultaneous twist the three stand the bale upon end. Once stopped, two or three more jerks of the hooks and it is neatly stowed away alongside, or on top of, its fellows.

One constantly sees huge bales of from five to six hundred pounds bound down a slide eighty feet high—scarcely touching the rail more than three times in their steep descent—looking almost round from the rapidity of their motion. Yet two negroes drive their hooks into, and spin along with them; visibly checking their speed, till the third one "heads up" and stops them still, in half a boat's width.

Sometimes a hook slips, the bagging gives, or the footing yields, when the mixed mass of man and bale rolls across the boat and goes under together. But frightful as it looks to unaccustomed eyes, a more serious accident than a ducking seldom occurs; and at that, the banks resound with the yells of laughter Sambo sends after his brother-in-water.

"We've pretty thoroughly done the boat," said Styles, about midday. "Let's go up to the professor's den and see if his head aches from 'ze Van Dorn.'"

So up we mounted, passing on the way the faro bank, that advertises its neighborhood by most musical jingling of chips and half dollars.

"Hello, Spring Chicken," cried Styles, to a youth in a blue sack with shoulder straps, who sat at the door of a state-room near by. "Look out for the tiger! I hear him about."

"No danger, me boy," responded the youth. "I'm too old a stager for that."

"Aye, aye! we seen that before," put in his companion, a buttoned middie of eighteen, innocent of beard. "A confounded pigeon came by here just now, jingling his halves and pretending he'd won 'em. Wasting time! Wasn't he, Styles? We're too old birds to be caught with chaff."

"Look alive, my hearty," answered Staple, "You're pretty near the beast, and mamma doesn't know you're out." With which paternal admonition we ascended.

The professor was still in a deep sleep; having been transferred by the aid of a deck hand, or two, to his bower. This was a box of a state-room six feet by nine, in which was a most dilapidated double-bass, a violin case and a French horn. Over the berth, a cracked guitar hung by a greasy blue ribbon. Staple waked him without ceremony—ordered Congress water, pulled out the instruments; and soon we were in "a concord of sweet sounds," the like of which the mermaids of the Alabama had not heard before.

Suddenly, in the midst of a roaring chorus, there was a short, heavy jar that sent us pellmell across the state-room; then a series of grinding jolts; and, amid the yelling of orders, jangling of bells and backing of the wheels, the boat swung slowly round by the bows. We were hard and fast aground!

Of all the unpleasant episodes of river travel, the worst by far is to be grounded in the daytime. The dreary monotony of bank and stream as you glide by increases ten-fold when lying, hour after hour, with nothing to do but gaze at it. Under this trial the jolliest faces grow long and dismal; quiet men become dreadfully blue and the saturnine look actually suicidal. Even the negro hands talk under their breath, and the broad Yah! Yah! comes less frequently from below decks.

Here we lay, two miles above Selma—hard and fast, with engines and anchors equally useless to move us a foot—until midnight. About sundown an up-boat passed just across our bows. Little is the sympathy a grounded boat gets unless actually in danger. Every soul aboard of her, from captain to cook's boy, seemed to think us fair game, and chaff of all kinds was hailed from her decks. But she threw us a Selma paper of that evening, and a hundred eager hands were stretched over the side to catch it.

It fell at the feet of a slight, wiry man of about fifty, with twinkling gray eyes, prominent features and fierce gray moustache. There was something in his manner that kept the more ardent ones from plucking it out of his fingers, as he stooped quietly to pick it up; but few on board ever knew that their quiet fellow-passenger was the most widely known "rebel of them all."

Many a man has read, with quickening breath, of the bold deeds of Admiral Raphael Semmes; and some have traced his blazing track to the, perhaps, Quixotic joust that ended his wild sea-kingship, never recalling that impassive fellow-passenger. Yet it was he who, seated on the rail of the "Southern Republic," read to the crowd that evening.

"What's the Washington news?"—"Anything more from Virginia!"—"What about Tennessee convention?"—"Has Bragg commenced business?"—and a thousand equally eager questions popped from the impatient crowd.

"There is news, indeed!" answered Captain Semmes. "Listen, my friends, for the war has commenced in earnest."

And here, on the quiet southern river, we first heard how Baltimore had risen to drive out the troops; how there had been wild work made in spite of the police, and how hot blood of her citizens had stained the streets of the town. The account ended with the city still in frightful commotion, the people arming and companies assembling at their armories; and without even hinting the number of those hurt in the fight.

No more ennui on board now. All was as much excitement as if we were racing along again; and, through the buzz and angry exclamations of the knots collected on all hands, we could catch the most varied predictions of the result, and speculations as to President Lincoln's real policy.

"Maryland must act at once. Egad, sir, at once, if she wants to come to us, sir," said the colonel, haranguing his group. "If she doesn't, egad! she'll be tied hand and foot in a week! Facilis descensus, you know!"

"Pshaw, Baltimore's noted for mobs," said an Alabamian. "This is only a little more than usual. In a week she'll forget all about it."

"This is more than a mob," answered a Virginian quietly. "Blood must come out of it; for the people will all go one way now, or make two strong and bitter parties. For my part, I believe Maryland will be with us before the boat gets off."

Late at night we swung loose and rushed past Selma, with the calliope screaming "Dixie" and "ze Van Dorn;" for the professor was himself again and waxed irate and red-patriotic over the news. We could get no more papers, however; so suspense and speculation continued until we reached Mobile.

There we heard of the quelling of the riot; of the course of the citizens; of Mr. Lincoln's pledges to the Baltimore committee, that no more troops should pass through the town; of his statement that those already passed were only intended for the defense of the Capital.

"Pretty fair pledges, Colonel," said Styles, when we got this last news.

"Fair pledges!" responded the colonel, with serious emphasis, "Egad, sir!—we've lost a State!"

[ ]

CHAPTER VII.

MOBILE, THE GULF CITY.

Mobile was in a state of perfect ferment when we arrived. The news from Maryland had made profound sensation and had dissipated the delusive hopes—indulged there as well as in Montgomery—like mists before the sun.

All now agreed that war must come. Many thought it already upon them. Groups, anxious and steadfast, filled the hotels, the clubs and the post-office; and the sense of all was that Maryland had spoken not one hour too soon; having spoken, the simple duty of the South was to prevent harm to a hair of her head for words said in its defense.

Those who had been the hottest in branding the action of Virginia as laggard, looked to her for the steadiest and most efficient aid, now that the crisis faced them; while all felt she would meet the calls of the hour with never a pause for the result. The sanguine counted on Maryland, bound by every community of interest, every tie of sympathy—as already one of the Confederate States. She was no longer neutral, they said. She had put her lance in rest and rallied to the charge, in the avowed quarrel that the troops attacked were on their way to oppress her next sister. And nothing could follow but Virginia's bright falchion must flash out, and the states must lock shields and press between her and the giant she had roused.

The Gulf City had not been idle. The echo of the first gun at Charleston had roused her people; and with a wonderful accord they had sprung to arms. Law books were thrown aside, merchants locked up their ledgers, even students of theology forgot that they were men of peace—and all enrolled themselves in the "crack" companies. No wonder, when the very best blood of the state ran in the veins of the humblest private; when men of letters and culture and wealth refused any but "the post of honor," with musket on shoulder; when the most delicate fingers of their fairest worked the flags that floated over them, and the softest voices urged them to their devoir; no wonder, then, that high on the roll of fame are now written the names of the Mobile Cadets—of the Gulf City Guards—of the Rifles—and enough others to make the list as long as Leporello's. Not one in ten of the best born youth of Mobile remained at home; the mechanics, the stevedores and men of every class flocked to follow their example, so that the city alone gave two full regiments and helped to fill up others. The news from Virginia and Maryland had given but a fresh impetus to these preparations; and, before my return to Montgomery, these regiments had passed through, on their way to the new battle ground on the Potomac frontier.

On the night of our arrival in the Gulf City, that escape valve for all excitement, a dense crowd, collected in front of the Battle House and Colonel John Forsyth addressed them from the balcony. He had just returned from Washington with the southern commissioners and gave, he said, a true narrative of the manner and results of their mission. At this lapse of time it is needless to detail even the substance of his speech; but it made a marked impression on the crowd, as the surging sea of upturned faces plainly told. John Forsyth, already acknowledged one of the ablest of southern leaders, was a veritable Harry Hotspur. His views brooked no delay or temporizing; and, as he spoke, in vein of fiery elegance, shouts and yells of defiant approval rose in full swell of a thousand voices. Once he named a noted Alabamian, whom he seemingly believed to have played a double part in these negotiations; and the excited auditory greeted his name with hisses and execrations. That they did their fellow-citizen injustice the most trying councils of the war proved; for he soon after came South and wrought, with all the grand power in him, during the whole enduring struggle.

Staple was tired of politics, and hated a crowd; so he soon lounged off to the club, an institution gotten up with a delightful regard to the most comfortable arrangement and the most accomplished chef in the South. There one met the most cordial hospitality, the neatest entertainment and the very best wines in the Gulf section. The cook was an artist, as our first supper declared; and play could be found, too, as needed; for young Mobile was not slow, and money, in those days, was plenty.

Altogether, the tone of Mobile society was more cosmopolitan than that of any city of the South, save, perhaps, New Orleans. It may be that its commercial connections, reaching largely abroad, produced the effect; or that propinquity to and constant intercourse with its sister city induced freer mode of thought and action. Located at the head of her beautiful bay, with a wide sweep of blue water before her, the cleanly-built, unpaved streets gave Mobile a fresh, cool aspect. The houses were fine and their appointments in good, and sometimes luxurious, taste. The society was a very pleasure-loving organization, enjoying the gifts of situation, of climate and of fortune to their full. On dit, it sometimes forgot the Spartan code; but the stranger was never made aware of that, for it ever sedulously remembered good taste.

Between the drives, dinners and other time-killers, one week slipped around with great rapidity; and we could hardly realize it when the colonel looked over his newspaper at breakfast and said:

"Last day, boys! Egad! the cooking here is a little different from Montgomery—but we must take the 'Cuba' this evening."

So adieux were spoken, and at dusk we went aboard the snug, neat little Gulf steamer of the New Orleans line. She was a trimmer craft than our floating card-house of river travel, built for a little outside work in case of necessity, or the chances of a norther.

We scudded merrily down the bay towards Fort Morgan, the grim sentinel sitting dark and lonely at the harbor's mouth and showing a row of teeth that might be a warning. The fort was now put in thorough repair and readiness by Colonel Hardee, of the regular army of the Confederate States.

I was following Styles down from the upper deck, when we heard high voices from the end of the boat, and recognized one exclaiming:

"Curse you! I'll cut your ear off!"

Round the open bar we found an excited crowd, in the center of which was our worldly-minded middie of river-boat memory and "Spring Chicken," his colleague; both talking very loud, and the latter exhibiting a bowie-knife half as long as himself. By considerable talk and more elbowing, we made our way to the boys; and, with the aid of a friendly stoker, got them both safely in my state-room.

Once there, the man of the world—who, unlike the needy knife-grinder, had a story—told it. After getting on the boat, Spring Chicken had been taking mint with sugar and something; and he took it once too often. Seeing this, the worldling tried to get him forward to his state-room; but, as we passed the fort, a jolly passenger, who had also taken mint, waved his hat at the fortification and cried out:

"Hurrah for Muggins!"

Spring Chicken stopped, balanced himself on his heels and announced with much dignity—

"Sir, I am Muggins!"

"Didn't know you, Muggins," responded the shouter, who fortunately had not taken fighting whisky. "Beg pardon, Muggins! Hurrah for Peacock! Yah—a-h!"

"See here, my good fellow, I'm Peacock!" repeated Spring Chicken.

"The thunder you are! You can't be two people!"

"Sir!" responded Spring Chicken, with even greater dignity, "I do not—hic—desire to argue with you. I am Peacock!"

The man laughed. "The Peacock I mean is a northern man——"

"I'm a northern man," yelled the now irate Spring Chicken. "Curse you, sir! what are my principles to you? I'll cut your ear off!" And it was this peaceful proposition that attracted our attention, in time to prevent any trouble with the ugly knife he drew from his back.

Spring Chicken had remained passive during the recital of the more sober worldling. Sundry muttered oaths had sufficed him until it was over, when he made the lucid explanation:

"Reas'l didl't—hic—dam decoy—bet ol red—ev'ry cent—hic!"

This the worldling translated and the murder was out. When we lost sight of the boys on the Southern Republic, they had ordered wine. At dinner they had more; and—glowing therewith, as they sat over their cigars on the gallery—did not "stop their ears," but, on the contrary, "listed to the voice of the charmer." When the stool pigeon once more stood in the doorway, rattling his half dollars, they followed him into the den of the tiger.

"Faro" went against them; "odd-and-even" was worse; rouge-et-noir worst of all; and at night they were sober and dead broke, an unpleasant but not infrequent phase of boat life.

"Didl't have aly wash to spout," remarked Spring Chicken, with his head under his arm.

"Yes—we owed our wine bill," continued the middie, whose worldliness decreased as he got sober, "and our trunk was in pawn to the nigger we owed a quarter for taking care of it. So as soon as the boat touched, I ran for'ard and jumped off, while he waited to keep the things in sight till I came back."

"So he was in pawn, too, egad!" said the colonel.

"Thasso, ol' cock!" hiccoughed Spring Chicken.

"And when I got the money and we went up town, we met the cussed decoy again, and we were fools enough to go again——"

"Williz molley—damniz—hic—eyes!" interpolated the other.

"——And we got broke again—and this fellow that hollowed Muggins looked like the decoy, but he wasn't. That's the whole truth, Mr. Styles."

"Mussput—hic—fi dollus on-jack?" remarked Spring Chicken. "See yer, Styse—o'boy, damfattolman—Con'l is!" and he curled from the lounge to the floor and slept peacefully.

"My young friend," remarked Styles gravely to the middie, as we tucked the insensible Spring Chicken into his berth—"If you want to gamble, you'll do it—so I don't advise you. But these amphibious beasts are dangerous; so in future play with gentlemen and let them alone."

"And, my boy," said the colonel, enunciating his moral lesson—"gambling is bad enough, egad! but any man is lost—yes, sir, lost!—who will drink mint—after dinner!"

With which great moral axioms we retired and slept until our steamer reached the "Queen City of the South."

[ ]

CHAPTER VIII.

NEW ORLEANS, THE CRESCENT CITY.

At a first glimpse, New Orleans of those days was anything but a picturesque city. Built upon marshy flats, below the level of the river and protected from inundation by the Levee, her antique and weathered houses seemed to cower and cluster together as though in fear.

But for a long time, "The Crescent City" had been at the head of commercial importance—and the desideratum of direct trade had been more nearly filled by her enterprising merchants than all others in the South. The very great majority of the wealthy population was either Creole, or French; and their connection with European houses may account in some measure for that fact. The coasting trade at the war was heavy all along the Gulf shore; the trade with the islands a source of large revenue, and there were lines and frequent private enterprises across the ocean.

For many reasons, it was then believed New Orleans could never become a great port. Foremost, the conformation of the Delta, at the mouth of the river, prevented vessels drawing over fifteen feet—at most favorable tides—from crossing either of the three bars; and the most practical and scientific engineers, both of civil life and the army, had long tried in vain to remedy the defect for longer than a few weeks. Numerous causes have been assigned for the rapid reformation of these bars; the chemical action of the salt upon the vegetable matter in the river water; the rapid deposit of alluvium as the current slackens; and a churning effect produced by the meeting of the channel with the waves of the Gulf. They could not be successfully removed, however, and were a great drawback to the trade of the city; which its location at the mouth of the great water avenue of the whole West, makes more advantageous than any other point in the South.

The river business in cotton, sugar and syrup was, at this time, immense; and the agents of the planters—factor is the generic term—made large fortunes in buying and selling at a merely nominal rate of percentage. The southern planter of ante-bellum days was a man of ease and luxury, careless of business and free to excess with money; and relations between him and his agent were entirely unique.

He had the same factor for years, drawing when he pleased for any amount, keeping open books. When his crop came in, it was shipped to the factor, the money retained—subject to draft—or invested. But it was by no means rare, when reckoning day came, for the advance drafts to have left the planter in debt his whole crop to the factor. In that case it used to cost him a trip to Europe, or a summer at Saratoga only; and he stayed on his plantation and did not cry over the spilt milk, however loudly his ladies may have wailed for the missing crême-de-la-crême of Virginia springs.

The morning after arrival we at last saw "the house;" which, far from being an imposing edifice, was a dingy, small office, just off the Levee, with the dingier sign of "Long, Staple & Middling" over the door. There were a few stalwart negroes basking in the sun about the entrance, sleeping comfortably in the white glare, or showing glancing ivories, in broad grins—each one keeping his shining cotton hook in full view, like a badge of office. Within was a perfect steam of business, and Staple père was studying a huge ledger through a pair of heavy gold spectacles—popping orders like fire-crackers, at half a dozen attentive clerks. Long, the senior partner, was in Virginia—and Middling, the junior, was hardly more than an expert foreman of the establishment.

"Happy, indeed, to meet you, sir!—93 of Red River lot, Mr. Edds—Heard of you frequently—Terribly busy time these, sir, partner away—13,094 middlins, for diamond B at 16-1/3, Adams—. We dine at seven, you remember Styles—Don't be in a hurry, sir!—1,642 A.B., page 684, Carter—Good day—See you at seven."

And it was only over the perfect claret, at the emphasized hour, that we discovered Mr. Staple to be a man of fine mind and extensive culture, a hearty sympathizer in the rebellion—into which he would have thrown his last dollar—and one of the most successful men on the Levee. Long, his senior partner, was a western man of hard, keen business sense, who had come to New Orleans fifty years before, a barefooted deck-hand on an Ohio schooner. By shrewdness, dogged industry and some little luck, he made "Long's" the best known and richest house in the South-west, until in the crash of '37 it threatened to topple down forever. Then Mr. Staple came forward with his great credit and large amount of spare capital, saved the house and went into it himself; while Middling, the former clerk of all work, was promoted, for fidelity in the trying times, to a small partnership.

Like all the heavy cotton men of the South, Mr. Staple believed firmly that cotton was king, and that the first steamer into a southern port would bring a French and British minister.

"It's against our interest for the present to do so," he said, confidently; "but my partner and I have advised all our planters to hold their cotton instead of shipping it, that the market may not be glutted when the foreign ships come in. And, yet, sir, it's coming down now faster than ever. Everybody prefers, in the disorganized state of things, to have ready money for cotton, that in three months' time must be worth from twenty to thirty cents!"

"Hard to believe, sir, isn't it? Yet our planters, looking at things from their own contracted standpoint, think the English and French cabinets will defer recognition of our Government. As for 'the house,' sir, it will put all it possesses into the belief that they can not prove so blind!"

Like most of the wealthy men in New Orleans, Mr. Staple had a charmingly located villa a mile from the lake and drove out every evening, after business hours, to pass the night.

"Not that I fear the fever," he explained. "What strangers regard as such certain death is to us scarce more than the agues of a North Carolina flat. 'Yellow Jack' is a terrible scourge, indeed, to the lower classes, and to those not acclimatized. The heavy deposits of vegetable drift from the inundations leave the whole country for miles coated four or five inches deep in creamy loam. This decomposes most rapidly upon the approach of hot weather, and the action of the dews, when they begin to fall upon it, causes the miasmata to rise in dense and poisonous mists. Now these, of course, are as bad in country—except in very elevated localities—as in town; but they are only dangerous in crowded sections, or to the enervated constitutions that could as ill resist any other disease."

"You astonish me, indeed," I answered. "For I have always classed yellow fever and cholera as twin destroyers. They must be, from such seasons as you have every few years."

"So all strangers think. But to the resident, who from choice, or business engagements, has passed one summer in the city, 'Jack' loses his terrors. The symptoms are unmistakable. Slight nausea and pain in the back, headache and a soupçon of chill. The workingman feels these. He can not spare the time or the doctor's bill, perhaps. He poohs the matter—it will pass off—and goes to work. The delay and the sun set the disease; and he is brought home at night—or staggers to the nearest hospital—to die of the black vomit in thirty-six hours. Hence, the great mortality.

"Now, I feel these pains, I at once recognize the fever, go right home, bathe feet and back in hot water, take a strong aperient, put mustard on my stomach and pile on the blankets. In an hour I am bathed in sweat till maybe it drips through the mattress. I put on another blanket, take a hot draught with an opiate, and go to sleep. It is not a pleasant thing, with the thermometer at ninety degrees in the shade; but when I wake in the morning, I have saved an attack of fever."

This regimen was constantly repeated to me. In the district crowded with the poorer classes, who are dependent on their daily labor for their daily bread, the fever stalks gaunt and noisome, marking his victims and seldom in vain. All day long, and far into the night in bad seasons, the low, dull rumble of the dead-cart echoed through the narrow streets; and at the door of every squalid house was the plain pine box that held what was left of some one of its loved inmates. Yet through this carnival of death, steadily and fearlessly, the better class of workers walk; not dreading the contagion and secure in their harness of precaution.

To sleep in the infected atmosphere in sickly quarters was thought more dangerous; but any business man considered himself safe, if he only breathed the poisonous air in the daytime. The resident physicians, in their recent treatment, feel the disease quite in their hands, when no other foe than the fever is to be combated. Any preceding excess of diet, drink or excitement is apt to aggravate it; but in ordinary cases, where proper remedies are taken in season, nine out of ten patients recover.

Otherwise, this ratio is just reversed; and in the working classes—especially strangers—to take the fever, in bad years, is to die. The utmost efforts of science, the most potent drugs—even the beautiful and selfless devotion of the "Howard Association" and its like—availed nothing in the wrestle with the grim destroyer, when he had once fairly clutched his hold. And in the crowded quarters, where the air was poison without the malaria, his footing was too sure for mortal to prevail against him.

New Orleans was, at this time, divided into two distinct towns in one corporation—the French and American. In the one, the French language was spoken altogether for social and business purposes, and even in the courts. The theaters were French, the cafés innocent of English, and, as Hood says, the "very children speak it." Many persons grow up in this quarter—or did in years back—who never, to their old age, crossed to the American town or spoke one word of English. In the society of the old town, one found a miniature—exact to the photograph—of Paris. It was jealously exclusive, and even the most petted beaux of the American quarter deemed it privilege to enter it. A stranger must come with letters of the most urgent kind before he could cross its threshold. All the etiquette and form of the ancien régime obtained here—the furniture, the dress, the cookery, the dances were all French.

In the American town the likeness to Mobile was very marked, in the manners and style of the people. The young men of the French quarter had sought this society more of late years, finding in it a freedom from restraint, for which their associations with other Americans in business gave them a taste. The character of the society was gay and easy—and it was not hedged in so carefully as that of the old town. Strangers were cordially—if not very carefully—welcomed into it; and the barriers of reserve, that once protected it, were rapidly breaking down before the inroads of progress and petroleum.

The great hotels—the "St. Charles," "St. Louis" and others—were constantly filled with the families of planters from all points of the river and its branches, and with travelers from the Atlantic border as well. Many of these were people of cultivation and refinement; but many, alas! the roughest of diamonds with a western freedom of expression and solidity of outline, that is national but not agreeable. In the season these people overflowed the hotels, where they had constant hops with, occasionally, splendid balls and even masques. Many of them were "objects of interest" to the young men about town, by reason of papa's business, or Mademoiselle's proper bank account. So the hotels—though not frequented by the ladies of the city at all—became, each year, more and more thronged by the young men; and consequently, each year, the outsiders gained a very gradual, but more secure, footing near the home society and even began to force their way into it.

It must be confessed that some damsels from Red River wore diamonds at breakfast; and that young ladies from Ohio would drive tandem to the lake! And then their laughs and jokes at a soiree would give a dowager from Frenchtown an apoplexy!

Que voulez vous? Pork is mighty! and cotton was king!

There was much difference of opinion as to the morals of the Crescent City. For my own part, I do not think the men were more dissipated than elsewhere, though infinitely more wedded to enjoyment and fun in every form. There was the French idea prevalent that gambling was no harm; and it was indulged to a degree certainly hurtful to many and ruinous to some. From the climate and the great prevalence of light wines, there was less drunkenness than in most southern towns; and if other vices prevailed to any great extent—they were either gracefully hidden, or so sanctioned by custom as to cause no remark, except by straight-laced strangers.

Oh! the delicious memories of the city of old! The charming cordiality to be found in no colder latitude, the cosy breakfasts that prefaced days of real enjoyment—the midnight revels of the bal masqué! And then the carnival!—those wild weeks when the Lord of Misrule wields his motley scepter—leading from one reckless frolic to another till Mardi Gras culminates in a giddy whirl of delirious fun on which, at midnight, Lent drops a somber veil!

Sad changes the war has wrought since then!

The merry "Krewe of Comus" has been for a time replaced by the conquering troops of the Union; the salons where only the best and brightest had collected have been sullied by a conquering soldiery; and their leader has waged a vulgar warfare on the noble womanhood his currish spirit could not gaze upon without a fruitless effort to degrade.

Of the resident ladies, I can only say that to hear of a fast one—in ordinary acceptation of that term—was, indeed, rare.

The young married woman monopolized more of the society and its beaux than would be very agreeable to New York belles; but, if they borrowed this custom from their French neighbors, I have not heard that they also took the license of the Italian.

Public and open improprieties were at once frowned down, and people of all grades and classes seemed to make their chief study good taste. This is another French graft, on a stem naturally susceptible, of which the consequences can be seen from the hair ribbon of the bonne to the decoration of the Cathedral.

The women of New Orleans, as a rule, dress with more taste—more perfect adaptation of form and color to figure and complexion—than any in America. On a dress night at the opera, at church, or at a ball, the toillettes are a perfect study in their exquisite fitness—their admirable blending of simplicity and elegance. Nor is this confined to the higher and more wealthy classes. The women of lower conditions are admirably imitative; and on Sunday afternoons, where they crowd to hear the public bands with husbands and children, all in their best, it is the rarest thing to see a badly-trimmed bonnet or an ill-chosen costume. The men, in those days, dressed altogether in the French fashion; and were, consequently, the worst dressed in the world.

The most independent and obtrusively happy people one noticed in New Orleans were the negroes. They have a sleek, shiny blackness here, unknown to higher latitudes; and from its midst the great white eyeballs and large, regular teeth flash with a singular brilliance. Sunday is their day peculiarly—and on the warm afternoons, they bask up and down the thoroughfares in the gaudiest of orange and scarlet bandannas. But their day is fast passing away; and in place of the simple, happy creatures of a few years gone, we find the discontented and besotted idler—squalid and dirty.

The cant of to-day—that the race problem, if left alone, will settle itself—may have some possible proof in the distant future; but the few who are ignorant enough to-day to believe the "negro question" already settled may find that they are yet but on the threshold of the "irrepressible conflict" between nature and necessity.

To the natural impressibility of the southron, the Louisianian adds the enthusiasm of the Frenchman. At the first call of the governor for troops, there had been readiest response; and here, as in Alabama, the very first young men of the state left office and counting-room and college to take up the musket. Two regiments of regulars, in the state service, were raised to man the forts—"Jackson" and "St. Philip"—that guarded the passes below the city. These were composed of the stevedores and workingmen generally, and were officered by such young men as the governor and council deemed best fitted. The Levee had been scoured and a battalion of "Tigers" formed from the very lowest of the thugs and plugs that infested it, for Major Bob Wheat, the well-known filibuster.

Poor Wheat! His roving spirit still and his jocund voice now mute, he sleeps soundly under the sighing trees of Hollywood—that populous "city of the silent" at Richmond. It was his corps of which such wild and ridiculous stories of bowie-knife prowess were told at the Bull Run fight. They, together with the "Crescent Rifles," "Chasseurs-à-pied" and "Zouaves," were now at Pensacola.

The "Rifles" was a crack corps, composed of some of the best young men in New Orleans; and the whole corps of "Chasseurs" was of the same material. They did yeomen's service in the four years, and the last one saw very few left of what had long since ceased to be a separate organization. But of all the gallant blood that was shed at the call of the state, none was so widely known as the "Washington Artillery." The best men of Louisiana had long upheld and officered this battalion as a holiday pageant; and, when their merry meetings were so suddenly changed to stern alarums, to their honor be it said, not one was laggard.

In the reddest flashings of the fight, on the dreariest march through heaviest snows, or in the cozy camp under the summer pines, the guidon of the "W.A." was a welcome sight to the soldier of the South—always indicative of cheer and of duty willingly and thoroughly done.

It was very unwillingly that I left New Orleans on a transport, with a battalion of Chasseurs for Pensacola. Styles was to stay behind for the present, and then go on some general's staff; so half the amusement of my travel was gone. "The colonel" was desolé.

"Such a hotel as the St. Charles!" he exclaimed, with tears in his voice—"such soups. Ah! my boy, after the war I'll come here to live—yes, sir, to live! It's the only place to get a dinner. Egad, sir, out of New Orleans nobody cooks!"

I suggested comfort in the idea of red snapper at Pensacola.

"Red fish is good in itself. Egad, I think it is good," replied the colonel. "But eaten in camp, with a knife, sir—egad, with a knife—off a tin plate! Pah! You've never lived in camp." And in a hollow, oracular whisper, he added: "Wait!"

And they were real models, the New Orleans hotels of those days, and the colonel's commendations were but deserved. In cuisine, service and wines, they far surpassed any on this continent; and for variety of patrons they were unequaled anywhere.

Two distinct sets inhabited the larger ones, as antagonistic as oil and water. The habitués, easy, critical to a degree, and particular to a year about their wines, lived on comfortably and evenly, enjoying the very best of the luxurious city, and never having a cause for complaint. The up-river people flocked in at certain seasons by the hundred. They crowded the lobbies, filled the spare bed-rooms, and eat what was put before them, with but little knowledge save that it was French. These were the business men, who came down for a new engagement with a factor, or to rest after the summer on the plantation. One-half of them were terribly busy; the other half having nothing to do after the first day—they always stay a week—and assuming an air of high criticism that was as funny to the knowing ones as expensive to them.

At our hotel, one evening, as favored guests, we found ourselves on an exploring tour with mine host. It ended in the wine-room.

The mysteries of that vaulted chamber were seldom opened to the outer world; and passing the profanum vulgus in its first bins, we listened with eager ears and watering mouths to recital of the pedigree and history of the dwellers within.

Long rows of graceful necks, golden crowned and tall, peered over dust and cobwebs of near a generation; bottles aldermanic and plethoric seemed bursting with the hoarded fatness of the vine; clear, white glass burned a glowing ruby with the Burgundy; and lean, jaundiced bottles—carefully bedded like rows of invalids—told of rare and priceless Hocks.

From arch to arch our garrulous cicerone leads us, with a heightened relish as we get deeper among his treasures and further away from the daylight.

"There!" he exclaims at last with a great gulp of triumph. "There! that's Sherry, the king of wines! Ninety years ago, the Conde Pesara sent that wine in his own ships. Ninety years ago—and for twenty it has lain in my cellar, never touched but by my own hand"—and he holds up the candle to the shelf, inch deep in dust, while the light seems to dart into the very heart of the amber fluid, and sparkle and laugh back again from the fantastic drapery the spiders had festooned around the bottles. "Yes, all the Pesaras are dead years gone; and only this blood of the vine is left of them."

"But you don't sell that wine!" gasps the colonel. "Egad! you don't sell it to those—people—up stairs!"

"I did once"—and mine host sighs. "A great cotton man came down. He was a king on the river—he wanted the best! Money was nothing to him, so I whispered of this, and said twenty dollars the bottle! And, Colonel, he didn't—like it!"

"Merciful heaven!" the colonel waxes wroth.

"So Francois there sent him a bottle of that Xeres in the outer bin yonder—we sell it to you for two dollars the bottle—and he said that was wine!"

But of the other family—who live in an American hurry and eat by steam—was the goblin diner of whom a friend told me in accents of awe. One day, at the St. Charles, a resident stopped him on the way to their accustomed table:

"Have you seen these people eat?" he asked. "No? Then we'll stop and look. This table is reserved for the up-river men who have little time in the city and make the most of it. While they swallow soup, a nimble waiter piles the nearest dishes around them, without regard to order or quality. They eat fish, roast and fried, on the same plate, swallowing six inches of knife blade at every bolt. Then they draw the nearest pie to them, cut a great segment in it, make three huge arcs therein with as many snaps of their teeth; seize a handful of nuts and raisins and rush away, with jaws still working like a flouring-mill. Ten minutes is their limit for dinner." My friend only smiled. The other adding:

"You doubt it? Here comes a fine specimen; hot, healthy and evidently busy. See, he looks at his watch! I'll bet you a bottle of St. Peray he 'does' his dinner within the ten."

"Done"—and they sat opposite him, watch in hand.

And that wonderful Hoosier dined in seven minutes!

[ ]

CHAPTER IX.

A CHANGE OF BASE.

Whatever activity and energetic preparation there may have been elsewhere, Pensacola was the first organized camp in the South. General Bragg and his adjutant-general were both old officers, and in the face of the enemy the utmost rigor of discipline prevailed. There had been no active operations on this line, yet; but the Alabama and the Louisiana troops collected—to the number of about nine thousand—had already become soldiers, in all the details of camp life; and went through it in as cheerful a spirit as if they had been born there.

In popular view, both Bragg and Beauregard were on probation as yet; and it was thought that upon the management of their respective operations depended their status in the regular army. All was activity, drill and practice in this camp; and if the army of Pensacola was not a perfectly-disciplined one, the fault certainly was not with its general.

The day we reached camp the President and Secretary of the Navy came down from Montgomery on a special train for an inspection. They were accompanied only by one or two officers, and had a long and earnest conference with General Bragg at his headquarters. After that there was a review of the army; and the then novel sight was made peculiarly effective by surroundings.

On the level, white beach, glistening in the afternoon sun, were drawn up the best volunteer organizations of the South—line upon line, as far as the eye could reach—their bright uniforms, glancing muskets and waving banners giving color to the view. Far in the rear the fringed woods made dim background; while between, regular rows of white tents—laid out in regiments and company streets—dotted the plain.

Out in the foreground stretched the blue waters of Pensacola harbor—the sun lighting up the occasional foam-crests into evanescent diamonds—the grim fortress frowning darkly on the rebellious display, while a full band on the parapet played the "Star Spangled Banner." Over to the left, half hidden under the rolling sand hills, stood Pensacola, with the navy yard and hospitals; and yellow little Fort McRea, saucy and rebellious, balanced it on the extreme right.

As the President, with the general and his staff, galloped down the line, the band of each regiment struck up; and the wildest huzzas—not even restrained by the presence of their "incarnate discipline"—told how firm a hold Mr. Davis had taken upon the hearts of the army.

By the time the review was over twilight had fallen; and a thousand camp-fires sprang up among the tents, with flickering, uncertain light. In it sat groups preparing their suppers and discussing what the visit and review might mean. Some said it was for the secretary to inspect the navy yard; some to examine into the defenses of the fort; and some said that it meant scaling ladders and a midnight assault.

That night we had a jolly time of it in an Alabama captain's tent—with songs, cards and whisky punch, such as only "Mac" could brew. Even "the colonel" confessed himself beaten at his great trick; and in compliment drank tumbler after tumbler. As we walked over to our tent in the early mist before dawn, he said:

"Egad! there's mischief brewing—mischief, sir! The seat of war's to be removed to Virginia and the capital to Richmond!"

I stopped and looked at the colonel. Was it the punch?

"That's what the council this evening meant?"

"Just so. Bragg remains, but part of his garrison goes to Beauregard, in Virginia. Trains to Montgomery will be jammed now, so we'd better be off. And, egad, sir! I'm to get ready for the field. Yes, sir, for the field!"

Next morning the information that had filtered to me through the colonel's punch was announced in orders, and enthusiastic cheers greeted the news that some of the troops were to go to a field promising active service and speedily at that.

The routine of camp life had already begun to pall upon the better class of men, and all were equally anxious to go where they could prove more clearly how ready they were to do their devoir.

Some Alabamians, two Georgia regiments, the Chasseurs-à-pied, the "Tigers" and the Zouaves were to go to Virginia; and through the courtesy of the officers of the latter corps, we got seats to Montgomery in their car; two days later.

Meantime, all was hum and bustle through the whole camp, and as the limited rolling stock on the still unfinished railroad could only accommodate a regiment at a time, they left at all hours of the day, or night, that the trains arrived. Constantly at midnight the dull tramp of marching men and the slow tap of the drum, passing our quarters, roused us from sleep; and whatever the hour, the departing troops were escorted to the station by crowds of half-envious comrades, who "were left out in the cold." And as the trains started—box cars, flats and tenders all crowded, inside and out—yell after yell went up in stentorian chorus, echoing through the still woods, in place of

"That sweet old word, good-bye!"

One gray dawn, six hundred Zouaves filed out of the pines and got aboard our train. They were a splendid set of animals; medium sized, sunburnt, muscular and wiry as Arabs; and a long, swingy gait told of drill and endurance. But the faces were dull and brutish, generally; and some of them would vie, for cunning villainy, with the features of the prettiest Turcos that Algeria could produce.

The uniform was very picturesque and very—dirty. Full, baggy, scarlet trowsers, confined round the waist by the broad, blue band or sash, bearing the bowie-knife and meeting, at mid-leg, the white gaiter; blue shirt cut very low and exhibiting the brawny, sunburnt throat; jacket heavily braided and embroidered, flying loosely off the shoulders, and the jaunty fez, surmounting the whole, made a bright ensemble that contrasted prettily with the gray and silver of the South Carolinians, or the rusty brown of the Georgians, who came in crowds to see them off.

But the use of these uniforms about the grease and dust of Pensacola camp-fires had left marks that these soldiers considered badges of honor, not to be removed.

Nor were they purer morally. Graduates of the slums of New Orleans, their education in villainy was naturally perfect. They had the vaguest ideas of meum and tuum; and small personal difficulties were usually settled by the convincing argument of a bowie-knife, or brass knuckle.

Yet they had been brought to a very perfect state of drill and efficiency. All commands were given in French—the native tongue of nearly all the officers and most of the men; and, in cases of insubordination, the former had no hesitancy in a free use of the revolver. A wonderful peacemaker is your six-shooter.

They might be splendid fellows for a charge on the "Pet Lambs," or on a—pocket; but, on the whole, were hardly the men one would choose for partners in any business but a garroting firm, or would desire to have sleep in the company bedroom.

Their officers we found of a class entirely above them; active, bright, enthusiastic Frenchmen, with a frank courtesy and soldierly bearing that were very taking. They occupied the rear car of the train, while the men filled the forward ones, making the woods ring with their wild yells, and the roaring chorus of the song of the Zou-Zou.

We had crossed the gap at Garland, where the road was yet unfinished, and were soon at the breakfast house, where we mounted the hill in a body; leaving our car perfectly empty, save a couple of buglers who stood on the platform. As I looked back, the elder musician was a most perfect picture of the Turco. He had served in Algiers, and after the war in Italy brought a bullet in his leg to New Orleans. He was long past fifty—spare, broad-shouldered and hard as a log of oak. His sharp features were bronzed to the richest mahogany color, and garnished with a moustache and peak of grizzled hair "a cubit and a span"—or nearly—in length. And the short, grizzled hair had been shaved far back from his prominent temples, giving a sinister and grotesque effect to his naturally hard face. Turc was a favorite with the officers, and his dress was rather cleaner than that of the others; a difference that was hardly an improvement.

We were just seated at breakfast—and having a special train we took our time—when a wild scream of the whistle, succeeded immediately by the heavy rumble of cars, came up the hill. We rushed to the windows, just in time to see a column of smoke disappearing round the curve and the officers' car standing solitary and empty on the road.

The Zouaves had run away with the train!

The language the officers used, as we surrounded the "sole survivors"—the two buglers—was, at least, strong; and short, hard words not in the church service dropped frequently from their lips.

It was no use; the train had gone and the men with it, and the best we could do was to speculate on the intention of the runaways, while we waited the result of the telegrams sent to both ends of the line for another engine. At last it came puffing up, and we whirled at its full speed into Montgomery.

Meanwhile the Zou-Zous had several hours' start. Led by one ardent spirit—whose motto had been similia similibus, until he lost his balance of mind—they had uncoupled the officers' car and forced the engineers to take them on. On arriving at Montgomery, they wandered over the town, "going through" drinking houses until they became wild with liquor; then bursting open the groceries to get whisky, threatening the citizens and even entering private houses. The alarm became so great, as the Zouaves became more maddened, that the first Georgia regiment was ordered out and stationed by platoons, with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, across the streets where the rioters were. Serious trouble was beginning, when the car with their officers dashed into the depot.

The charge of the Light Brigade was surpassed by those irate Creoles. With the cars still in rapid motion, they leaped off, revolver in hand; and charged into the quarter where their drunken men were still engaged in every sort of excess. The old bugler still trotted at their head, his black eyes gleaming at the prospect of a row, and his bugle occasionally raised to sound the "rally." Into the midst of the drunken and yelling crowd dashed the officers; crackling French oaths rolling over their tongues with a snapping intonation, and their pistols whirling right and left like slung-shot, and dropping a mutineer at every blow. Habit and the rough usage overcame even the drunken frenzy of the men, and they dropped the plunder from their arms, snatched muskets from the corners they had been whirled into, and rapidly dressed into line in the street.

I saw one beardless boy, slight and small, rush to a huge sergeant and order him into ranks. The soldier, a perfect giant, hesitated to drop the handful of shoes he had seized, only for a second. But that was enough. The youth had to jump from the ground to seize his throat; but, at the same moment, the stock of the heavy revolver crashed over his temple, and he fell like a stricken ox.

"Roll that carrion into the street!" said the lieutenant to another soldier near; and before his order was obeyed the store was empty.

In a half hour from the officers' arrival the battalion was mustered on Main street, and only nine absentees were reported at roll-call; but many a fez was drawn far down over a bleeding forehead, and many a villainous countenance was lighted by one eye, while the other was closed and swollen.

The colonel and I had jumped from the car and run on with our French friends; but the colonel was not the son of Atalanta, and by reason of a soupçon of gout his feet were not beautiful upon Zion or any other place. Neither could he make them "swift to shed blood."

As we entered the street where the rioters were, I turned and saw him, perfectly breathless, bear his two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois against a door. It was not closed, but had only been slammed by the score of Zou-Zous enjoying the whisky within; and as I looked I saw a dignified colonel in the C.S. army turn a complete somersault into a group of red-legged devils, who immediately closed around him.

Gabriel Ravel, though a lighter man, never made a cleaner leap through the third story in the side-scene; but there was no time to waste and I went back at speed. I had scarcely turned when I saw the colonel's huge form tower among the red-legs. By the time I reached the door my apparition, revolver in hand, completed what he had begun; and they slipped by and vanished.

Luckily the bar of the door had fallen with him, and the old gymnastics of other days coming back like a flash, he had seized it, made two rapid blows and laid as many of his assailants at his feet; roaring, meanwhile, oaths as thunderous as they were unintelligible.

"Sacré-é nom!" he shouted as he saw me; "shoot 'em, me boy! Poltrons, egad! Laugh at me! D——n their eyes! Can-n-naille!"

There was a wicked light in my fat friend's eye, and he had recovered his second wind; so we sallied out, the colonel still clinging to his weapon of chance.

"Good enough for these dogs!" he roared, wrathfully shaking the bar. "Saves the pistol."

That night at "the Ranche," as later about many a camp-fire, our French visitors declared that the colonel's bar had done more effective service than their revolvers; and, as it stood dented and blood-smeared in the corner of that vine-clad porch, it did not belie their praise.

[ ]

CHAPTER X.

EN ROUTE FOR THE BORDER.

Very soon after their state went out of the Union, and it became settled that the policy of the central Government was to take possession of the border states by force, the people of Virginia decided that the battle was to be fought on her soil. Her nearness to Washington, the facility of land communication, and the availability of her waterways for transportation purposes, all pointed to this; and the southern Government also became aware that the Potomac boundary of the Confederacy was the one to be most jealously guarded. Under these circumstances, when the tender of the use of the state capital at Richmond was made to the Montgomery Government, the advantages of the move were at once apparent, and the proffer was promptly accepted.

When we returned to Montgomery, preparations for removal were in such state of progress that the change would be made in a few days. Archives and public property not in daily use had already been sent on, and some of the force of the executive departments were already in the new capital, preparing for the reception of the remainder. Troops in large bodies had already been forwarded to Virginia from all parts of the South, and all indications were that, before the summer was over, an active campaign on the soil of the Old Dominion would be in progress.

About this time, a telegram from Montgomery appeared in the New York Tribune, which created as much comment at the South as at the North. It stated, in so many words, that the whole South was in motion; that a few days would see Mr. Davis in Virginia at the head of thirty thousand men, Beauregard second in command. With the two sections in a state of open hostility, and with armies already in the field and manœuvering for position, it was somewhat singular that the avowed correspondent of a northern journal should be allowed in the southern Capital; but, when his dispatches bore on their face some signs of authoritative sanction, it became stranger still.

The correspondent of the Tribune was a well-known lobby member of years standing, but avowedly a southern man. His intercourse with the leaders of the government was, at least, friendly, and his predictions and assertions in the columns of that newspaper were generally borne out in fact. The state of the country was an anomalous one, but this method of waging war was still more so.

The history of the dispatch in question was simply this: There had been much jubilation in Montgomery over the news from Virginia. Serenades had been made, speeches delivered, and the invariable whisky had not been neglected.

Late at night, I was shown a copy of this dispatch, as one about to be sent. On my doubting it, I was credibly informed that it had been shown to at least one cabinet officer, and received his approval. And it went!

When it was finally settled that the Capital was to be moved to Virginia, the city of Montgomery began to wail. It had all along been utterly and most emphatically opposed to the location of the government there. It would ruin the trade, the morals and the reputation of the town. Dowagers had avowed their belief that the continuance of the Congress there for one year would render the city as perfect a Sodom as Washington—would demoralize the society beyond purification.

Men of business had grumbled at being disturbed from their fixed routine of many years. But now that the incubus was to be removed, there was a strong pressure to prevent—and bitter denunciations of—the outrage!

Leaders came out in the papers, advising against the practicability; scathing articles about perfidy sometimes appeared; and it was, on all hands, prophesied that the government would lose caste and dignity, and become a traveling caravan if the change were made. Where will the nations of Europe find it when they send their ministers to recognize the Confederate Government?—was the peroration of these eloquent advocates.

Now, as there was no contract made or implied, in locating the provisional government at Montgomery, that it was to be the permanent Capital; or that the exigencies of the war might not necessitate a change to some point more available, this was at least unnecessary. True, the people had made sacrifices, and had inconvenienced themselves. But what they had done was for the country, and not for the Government; and had, besides, been done equally elsewhere. And the location, even temporarily, of the Government there had aided the town greatly. It had become the converging point of railroad and contract business for the Confederacy; and the depots and storehouses located there would be of course continued, throwing a vast amount of business activity and money into it. So, though the people might be somewhat morbid on the subject, their arguments against the change were, on the whole, if natural, not founded on fact.

But, perfectly regardless of the thunders of the press and the growlings of the people, the preparations for removal and the change of base to Virginia went steadily on. By the 20th of May, everything had been completed—the President and Cabinet left Montgomery—the fact, that had for some time been a real one, was formally consummated; and Montgomery became again the Capital of Alabama.

I had nothing to keep me in town longer, so I started for a leisurely trip to Richmond. But man proposes; and in this instance, the Quartermaster's Department disposed that travel was to be anything but practicable.

Trains, crowded with troops from all directions, met at the junctions, and there had to lay over for hours, or days. Burden trains, with supplies for the army, munitions of war, or government property from Montgomery, blocked the road in all directions; and trains running "not on time" had to proceed much more carefully than ordinarily. In fact, there was not the amount of transportation at the disposal of the roads that the greatly enhanced demands required; and at every station nearer Richmond, the pressure of passengers and freight became greater.

Through Georgia I bore the troubles of the transit like a philosopher; but under three detentions between Augusta and Columbia, of from nine to thirteen hours, patience and endurance both gave way.

South Carolina had gone into the war with her eyes wider open than those of her sisters; and while she had yet time, was straining every nerve to utilize all her available resources and to make new ones. Her factories, tanneries and foundries were all in constant and active operation; she was making bountiful preparation for the future.

Everywhere in the South was earnest endeavor and heartfelt enthusiasm for the cause; but I saw it nowhere directed into such practical and productive channels, thus early, as in South Carolina. Charleston, Pensacola and Virginia had drained her of younger and more active men; but the older ones and her vast resources of slave labor made up for the loss, and neither time nor energy seemed to be misapplied.

After a rest, I found a freight train with a philanthropic conductor, and started for Kingsville. Væ Victis!

I reached that station—what a misnomer!—in a driving mist and a very bad humor. Neither was a fine preparation for the news that a train had smashed seventeen miles above, tearing up the track and effectually blocking the road. The down train, with which we were to connect, could not come through; not a car was visible; no one knew when we could get off, and the engine we had left was just disappearing around a curve—Charlestonward.

One hopeful individual ventured a mild suggestion that we should have to stay all night. He weighed a hundred and eighty pounds, at least—not a fraction less—so I remained passive; but ten pounds subtracted from his avoirdupois would have brought him a black eye. Stay all night! The idea was an ague!

Kingsville was a splendid aggregation of one house and a long platform. The town—i.e., the house—had, even in palmy days, been remarkable on the road for great dirt, wretched breakfasts and worse whisky. You entered at one door, grabbed a biscuit and a piece of bacon and rushed out at the other; or you got an awful decoction of brown sugar and turpentine in a green tumbler. Constant travel and crowds of passing soldiers had not improved it in any particular. The very looks of the place were repugnant enough in the daytime, but

"Bold was he who hither came

At midnight—man or boy!"

I felt that a night in the rain under the pines, with my bag for a pillow, would be endurable; but no mortal with a white skin could dare those bloated and odorous feather-beds, where other things—in the shape of mordants, vivacious, active and gigantic—besides

"Wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleeper."

To mend matters, Gartrell's regiment of Georgians, eight hundred and fifty strong, and three other companies of Georgians from Pensacola, had been left here to meet a way-train, which failing, they bivouacked by the roadside. In all there were over eleven hundred tobacco-and-gin redolences, remarkably quiet for them; shooting at a mark, going through squad drill, drinking bad liquor by the canteen and swearing in a way that would have made the "Army in Flanders" sick with envy.

In the latter amusement I joined internally; and it did me so much good that I bought the anti-administration newspaper of Charleston and, getting out of bullet range, put my back against a tree and tried to read. Mercury was ever a blithe and sportive god, and his gambols on Mount Olympus were noted in days of yore; but the modern namesake—or else my present position—had soporific tendencies; and fear of the target shooters growing dimmer and dimmer, I lost myself in sleep.

It was near sundown when I was awakened by the snort of a locomotive, and a freight train hove in sight. The drums rolled, the troops formed in line, each packing his household on his back as he trotted along; and, as the cars backed up, the men broke ranks and jumped aboard, filling every crack and corner, and seeming to pile on top of each other.

A berth there was utterly impracticable to any man with any of his senses in active operation. That squirming, dense mass of humanity was more than the oldest traveler could stand, and I gave up my place in the rush. Luckily, there was an express car along, and I found the agent. He was very busy; and eloquence worthy of Gough, or Cicero, or Charles Sumner got no satisfaction. Desperation suggested a masonic signal, with the neck of a black bottle protruding from my bag. The man of parcels melted and invoked terrible torments on the immortal part of him if he didn't let me "g'long wi' the 'spress," as he styled that means of locomotion.

The accommodation was not princely—six feet by ten, cumbered with packages of all shapes and sizes and strongly flavored with bacon and pipe. Yet, "not for gold or precious stones" would I have exchanged that redolent corner. The agent waxed more and more polite as the bottle emptied, regretted the want of room, regaled himself with frequent "nips," and me with anecdotes of a professional nature.

From him was learned that he was with the train that had carried my old friends, the Zouaves, to their fresh fields of glory in Virginia. They retained a lively recollection of their lesson at Montgomery, and had kept rather quiet till reaching Columbia. There the devil again got unchained among them, and they broke out in a style to make up for their enforced good behavior.

"Sich a shooting of cattle and poultry, sich a yelling and singing of ther darned frenchy stuff—sich a rolling of drums and a damning of officers, I ain't hear yit"—said the agent. "And they does ride more on the outside of the cars than the inside, anyhow."

Beyond Weldon a knot were balancing themselves on the connecting beams of the box-cars. Warned by their officers, they laughed; begged by the conductors, they swore. Suddenly there was a jolt, the headway of the cars jammed them together, and three red-legged gentlemen were mashed between them—flat as Ravel in the pantomime.

"And I'm jest a-thinkin'," was his peroration, "ef this yere reegement don't stop a-fightin' together, being shot by the Georgians and beat by their officers—not to mention a jammin' up on railroads—they're gwine to do darned leetle sarvice a-fightin' of Yanks!"

After this period the agent talked, first to himself and then to the black bottle; while I, seated on a box of cartridges, lit my pipe and went into a reverie as to the treatment the surgeons would use in the pneumonia sure to result from the leaks in the car.

In the midst of an active course of turpentine and stimulants, I was brought to myself by a jolt and dead halt in mid-road. The engine had blown off a nut, and here we were, dead lame, six miles from a station and no chance of getting on.

My Express friend advised very quietly to "quit this and walk onter Florence."

"'Taint but a small tramp after all," he said. "And ye'll jest catch the A.M. up train and miss the sojers. Jest hand this yere to the A. & Co.'s agent, and he'll help yer ef she's crowded. Here's luck!" and he took a long pull at the bottle and handed it back—rather regretfully—with a dingy note on the back of an Express receipt.

For the benefit of literature in ages yet unborn, I give a careful transcription of this document:

"Deer bil this gentilman Is a verry peerticular frend of mine—also My brother-en-law. And you must give him sum Help ef he needs any cos Our engen she's run of the track And I won't be long afore to morrer.

"Yours trewly,

"Grimes."

Thus armed, I shouldered my bag and started on my tramp over the wet and slippery track, reaching Florence at gray dawn. As I came in sight, there stood the train, the engines cold and fires unlit. I had full time, but my good luck—the first since I started—put me in a glow, and I stepped out in a juvenile pace that would have done credit to "the Boy" in training days. As I came nearer, my mercury went rapidly down to zero. Every car was jammed, aisles packed and box-cars crowded even on top. The doorways and platforms were filled with long rows of gray blankets that smelt suggestively human! Crowds of detained passengers and three companies of the "Crescent Guard" had taken their places at midnight, and slept with a peacefulness perfectly aggravating. As I walked ruefully by the windows, there was no hope! Every seat was filled, and every passenger slept the sleep of the just; and their mixed and volleyed snoring came through,

"Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme."

There was no sort of use. I'd have to try the Express, and deep was my chuckle as I reread my friend Grimes' remarkable production. It would be an oasis in this desert—that Express car; but lo! when I went to look for it there was none on the train!

Dead beat I sat on the platform and awaited day. When a fireman began operations on the engine, I meekly queried where the Express was.

"Be n't none," was the surly rejoinder.

I was wet and tired and generally bewildered. Was it a wonder that I then and there swore at that fireman, as only meek and long-suffering men, when aroused, can swear? The volley was effective, however, and he very politely told me the agent would "be roun'" before the train started. Presently he pointed out the desired individual, to whom I hastened to hand my note. Now the terrible denunciations my former friend had made on his own soul were as nothing to what the present representative of Adams & Co. called down upon his own and everybody else's immortal function.

"Well, I hope to be eternally —— —— by ——! But it ain't no use! —— —— my —— soul, ef yer shan't ride somehow!" remarked this profane expressman. "Yer be Hector Grimes' brother, and by ——! go yer shell! Yer married his sister Cynthy—the one as squints? Why —— —— me! I knowed her when she wasn't knee high—and yer done —— —— well, by ——! Here, Potty!" and he addressed a greasy man just mounting the mail car—"Here be Grimes' brother, as must git to Weldon, by —— ——! So hist him along, will yer?"

"O.K. Jump in, Mr. Grimes," agreed the mail agent; and by this time I was so wet and disgusted I didn't care who I was. So in I went, playing Grimes "for this night only."

"Here's luck, Potty! may —— —— me, but I'm glad I met yer, Grimes," remarked my profane friend, taking a long pull at the bottle I handed him in my gratitude. "Here's to your wife, Grimes!" and the cars starting just then, "deer bil" took another pull and, with great absence of mind, put the bottle in his pocket and waved us adieu.

The Mail car, like the Express, was a box ten feet by six—one-half the space filled with counter and pigeon-holes, and the other half with mail-bags. Into the remainder were crammed the agent—specific gravity equal to that of two hundred and ninety pounds of feathers—a friend of his and myself. The friend I soon found was what is known as "a good traveling companion;" i.e., a man who keeps himself primed with broad stories and bad whisky, and who doesn't object to a song in which the air always runs away with the harmony. After we started I tried to sleep. It was no use. Lying on one mail-bag with another for a pillow, that is liable to be jerked out at any station to the near dislocation of your neck, with a funny man sitting nearly on you, are not sedatives. My bottle was gone, so I drank gin out of the funny man's. I hate gin—but that night I hated everything and tried the similia similibus rule.

We missed connection at Weldon. Did anybody ever make connection there? We were four hours late, and with much reason had, therefore, to wait five hours more. If Kingsville is cheap and nasty, Weldon is dear and nastier. Such a supper! It was inedible even to a man who had tasted nothing but whisky, gin and peanuts for forty-eight hours. Then the landlord—whose hospitality was only equaled by his patriotism—refused to open his house at train time. We must either stay all night, or not at all—for the house would shut at ten o'clock—just after supper. So a deputation of the Crescents and I waited on him, and after a plain talk concluded to "cuss and quit." So we clambered into some platform cars that were to go with the train, and, after a sumptuous supper of dried-apple pies and peanuts, slept the sleep of the weary.

[ ]

CHAPTER XI.

"ON TO RICHMOND!"

Of course, Petersburg was reached two hours after the train for Richmond had left, but in full time to get half a cold breakfast, at double price. For, about the first development one noted in the South was the growth of an inordinate greed in the class who had anything to sell, or to do, that was supposed to be indispensable. The small hotels and taverns along the railways peculiarly evidenced this; for, demands of passengers must be supplied, and this was the moment for harvest full and fat. Disgust, wetting, gin and detention had made me feel wolfish; but I wanted none of that breakfast. Still, I gave the baldheaded man, with nose like a vulture—collecting nimbly the dollars of the soldiers—a very decided expression of my opinion. He seemed deeply pained thereat; but no one ever mentioned that he had put down the price.

At the depot was Frank C., an old chum of Washington "germans," in the new dress of first sergeant of a Georgia battery. He was rushing a carload of company property to Richmond, and was as eager as I and the Crescents to get to that goal. So, between us, the railroad superintendent was badgered into an extra engine; and, mounting Frank's triumphal car, we bumped away from fellow travelers, wandering dolefully through the mud in vain attempt at time-killing until the evening train. That freight-car—piled as it was with ammunition, wheels and harness—was a Godsend, after the past three days. Cicero, Frank's ancient and black Man Friday, dispensed hot coffee and huge hunks of bread and ham; and a violin and two good voices among the Crescents made the time skim along far faster than since starting.

"How is it you haven't your commission?" one of the Creoles asked the Georgian. "When we parted at Montgomery it was promised you."

"Pledges are not commissions, though," was the careless reply. "I got tired of waiting the Secretary's caprices, when there was real work to be done; so one day I went to the War Department and demanded either my sheepskin, or a positive refusal. I got only more promises; so I told the Sec. I needed no charity from the government, but would present it with a company! Then, to be as good as my word, I sold some cotton and some stock, equipped this company and—voila tout!"

"But you are not commanding your company?"

"Couldn't do it, you see. Wouldn't let the boys elect me an officer and have the Sec. think I had bought my commission! But, old fellow, I'll win it before the month is out; and, if God spares me, mother shall call her boy Colonel Frank, before Christmas!"

Poor Frank! Before the hoped-for day his bones were bleaching in front of Fort Magruder. One morning the retreat from Yorktown—a pitiful roadside skirmish—a bullet in his brain—and the tramp of McClellan's advancing hosts packed the fresh sods over his grave, herois monumentum! He was one of many, but no truer heart or readier hand were stilled in all the war.

Passing out of the cut through the high bluff, just across the "Jeems" river bridge, Richmond burst beautifully into view; spreading panorama-like over her swelling hills, with the evening sun gilding simple houses and towering spires alike into a glory. The city follows the curve of the river, seated on amphitheatric hills, retreating from its banks; fringes of dense woods shading their slopes, or making blue background against the sky. No city of the South has grander or more picturesque approach; and now—as the slant rays of the sun kissed her a loving good-night—nothing in the view hinted of war to come, but all of holy peace.

Just here the James narrows its bed between high banks, and for some three miles—from Hollywood cemetery down to "Rockett's" landing—the shallow current dashes over its rocky bed with the force and chafe of a mountain torrent; now swirling, churned into foamy rapids, again gliding swiftly smooth around larger patches of islands that dot its surface. On the right hand hills, behind us, rises the suburb village of Manchester, already of considerable importance as a milling town; and the whole coup d'œil—from the shining heights of Chimborazo to the green slopes of the city of the silent, the grim, gray old capitol as a centerpiece—makes a Claud landscape that admits no thought of the bloody future!

The railroad bridge—then a frail, giddy structure, wide enough for a track and footway—spans near a mile across the boiling current. From the car-platform, the treetops far below and the rugged, foam-crowned rocks look inhospitably distant. I have whirled round the high trestles on the Baltimore & Ohio when the work swayed and rattled under the heavy train, threatening each moment to hurl us down the precipitous mountain into the black, rocky bed of the Cheat, hundreds of feet below; have dashed at speed round steep grades hewn in the solid rock, where the sharp, jagged peaks rose a thousand feet beneath us; and I have raced in pitchy nights on the western rivers in tinder-box boats, that seemed shaking to pieces away from their red-hot furnaces; but I do not recall any piece of travel that gave the same sense of the instability of railroad affairs as that James river bridge.

The city was thoroughly jammed—its ordinary population of forty thousand swelled to three times that number by the sudden pressure. Of course, all the Government, with its thousand employés, had come on; and in addition, all the loose population along the railroad over which it had passed seemed to have clung to and been rolled into Richmond with it. Not only did this mania seize the wealthier and well-to-do classes, but the queerest costumes of the inland corners of Georgia and Tennessee disported themselves with perfect composure at hotels and on the streets. Besides, from ten to fifteen thousand troops were always collected, as a general rendezvous, before assignment to one of the important points—Norfolk, the Peninsula, or the Potomac lines. Although these were in camp out of town, their officers and men thronged the streets from daylight to dark, on business or pleasure bent; and the variety of uniforms—from the butternut of the Georgia private to the three stars of the flash colonel—broke the monotony of the streets pleasingly to the eye.

Hotel accommodations in Richmond were always small and plain, and now they were all overflowing. The Spotswood, Exchange and American held beds at a high premium in the parlors, halls and even on the billiard-tables. All the lesser houses were equally packed, and crowds of guests stood hungrily round the dining-room doors at meal-times, watching and scrambling for vacated seats. It was a clear case of "devil take the hindmost," for their cuisine decreased in quantity and quality in exact ratio to augmentation of their custom. The Richmond hotels, always mediocre, were now wretched. Such a thing as a clean room, a hot steak, or an answered bell were not to be bought by flagrant bribery. I would fain believe that all concerned did their best; but rapid influx absolutely overwhelmed them; and resources of the neighboring country—ample to support one-third the numbers now collected—were quickly exhausted under suddenly tripled demand. No transportation for private supplies was available in the overtaxed condition of the railroads; so the strangers, perforce, had to "grin and bear it," dry soever as the grin might be. Private boarding-houses sprang up like mushrooms on every block; bereaved relicts and ambitious spinsterhood equally clutching the chance to turn an honest penny. And naturally, ordinary trials of boarding-house life were aggravated by circumstance. Discomfort of the hotels was great enough; but, desiccated into the boarding-house can, it became simply unendurable. In this strait many private families were induced to open their doors to the better class of strangers; and gradually the whole dense population settled down, wedged into comparative quiet. Happily, my lines fell in these pleasanter places; and, whatever the unavoidable trials, it were base ingratitude in an experimental pilgrim among the mail-bags to indite a new Jeremiad thereon.

Suites of rooms had been reserved at the Spotswood hotel for the President and some of his Cabinet; so that house naturally became headquarters. Mr. Davis' office, the "Cabinet-room" with the State and Treasury Departments were located in the custom-house; and the other bureaux of the Government were relegated to the "Mechanics' Institute," an ungainly pile of bricks, formerly used as library and lecture-rooms.

The State of Virginia, though not at all on pleasure bent in inviting the Government to her capital, had yet been of frugal enough mind not to commence preparations in advance of acceptance; and the hejira followed so swiftly upon it that we plumped down into their very midst. Miss Bremer—who declared Alexandria entirely finished because she never heard the sound of a hammer—would have been more than amused at Richmond. The great halls of the Institute were cutting up into offices, with deafening clatter, day and night; and one of the Cabinet secretaries—who did not exhibit, if indeed he possessed, that aspiration ascribed to the devil when ill—swore himself almost to a shadow.

Both these public offices faced upon Capitol Square; a large, iron-fenced space, beautifully undulating and with walks winding under grand old trees. On the central hill stood the old State Capitol, picturesque from the river, but grimly dirty on close inspection. It is a plain, quadrangular construction, with Grecian pediment and columns on its south front and broad flights of steps leading to its side porticoes. Below were the halls of the legislature, now turned over to the Confederate States Congress; and in the small rotunda connecting them stood Houdon's celebrated statue of Washington—a simple but majestic figure in marble, ordered by Dr. Franklin from the French sculptor in 1785—of which Virginians are justly proud. In the cool, vaulted basement were the State officials; and above the halls the offices of the governor and the State library. That collection, while lacking many modern works, held some rare and valuable editions. It was presided over by the gentlest and most courteous littérateur of the South. Many a bedeviled and ambitious public man may still recall his quiet, modest aid, in strong contrast to the brusquerie and "insolence of office," too much the general rule; and his touching, heart-born poems were familiar at every southern hearth and camp-fireside. Soon after, the familiar voice of friendship was dulled to him—exul patriæ—by the boom of the broad Atlantic; and now his bones rest far away from those alcoves and their classic dust.

John R. Thompson, the editor of the famous "Southern Literary Messenger," went to London to edit "The Index," established in the never-relinquished hope of influencing European opinion. On reaching New York, when the cause he loved was lost, the staunch friendship of Richard Henry Stoddard and the appreciation of William Cullen Bryant found him congenial work on "The Post." But the sensitive spirit was broken; a few brief years saw the end, and only a green memory is left to those who loved, even without knowing, the purest southern poet.

From the roof of the Capitol is had the finest view of Richmond, the surrounding country lying like a map for a radius of twenty miles. Only from this bird's-eye view can a perfect idea be gained of the elevation of the city, perched above a rolling country—its stretches of meadowland below cut by the valley of the James; the river stealing in sluggish, molten silver through it, or heaving up inland into bold, tree-bearded hills, high enough to take the light from the clouds on their tops, as a halo. Far northward alternate swells of light and depressions of shadow among the hills; the far-off horizon making a girdle of purple light, blended into the blue of undefined woods. On clear days, a splendid ozone fills the air at that high perch, the picture having, as far as the eye can travel, stereoscopic clearness.

Immediately beneath lies the Square; its winding walks, rare old trees and rich sweep of sod filled with children, so full of enjoyment that one is half-minded to drop down and roll over the grass with them. On the central walk, midway between the Capitol and St. Paul's church, stands Crawford's equestrian Washington in bronze, resting upon a circular base and pedestal of plain granite, in which are bases for statues of the mighty Virginians of the past. Only the three southern ones were now occupied; but those figures—Jefferson, Mason and Henry—were accepted as surpassing in merit the central work. The Washington is imposing in size and position, but its art is open to criticism. The horse is exaggeration of pose and muscle; being equally strained, though not rampant, as that inopportune charger on which Clark Mills perched General Jackson, at the national Capital. Nor is this "first in peace" by any means "the first" on horseback; the figure being theatric rather than dignified, and the extended arm more gymnastic than statuesque.

An irate senator once told the august body he addressed that it was a warning to them—"pointing straight to the penitentiary!" So, as a whole, the group, if not thoroughly classic, may be admirably useful.

From Capitol Square, open, wide streets—neatly built up and meeting each other at right angles—stretch away on all sides; an occasional spire or dome, and frequent houses larger than the rest, breaking the monotony. Below, toward the river, lie the basins, docks and rows of warehouses; and further still is the landing, "Rockett's," the head of river navigation, above which no vessels of any size can come. Just under the Capitol—to the East—stands the governor's house, a plain, substantial mansion of the olden time, embosomed in trees and flower-beds. Further off, in the same line, rise the red and ragged slopes of Church Hill. It takes its name from the old church in which Patrick Henry made his celebrated speech—a structure still in pretty good preservation. And still further away—opposite the vanishing point of the water view—are seen the green tops of Chimborazo Heights and Howard's Grove—hospital sites, whose names have been graven upon the hearts of all southern people by the mordant of sorrow!

Just across the river, to the South, the white and scattered village of Manchester is prettily relieved against the green slopes on which it sits. There the bridge cuts the shining chafe of the river like a black wire; and just under it, the wind sighs softly in the treetops of Belle Isle, afterward to become so famous in the newspaper annals of the North, as a prison for the Union soldiers captured in the long struggle for the city.

Far to the west, higher shafts of Hollywood Cemetery gleam among the trees; and the rapids, dancing down in the sunlight, break away into a broader sheet of foam around its point. Except, perhaps, "Bonnie Venture" (Buona Ventura), at Savannah, there is no site for a cemetery in the South, naturally so picturesque and at the same time solemn, as this. Rising from comparatively level ground in the rear, it swells and undulates in a series of gentle hills to the river, that embraces it on three sides. Rows of magnificent old trees in many places arch quite across the walk—giving, even at midday, a half-twilight—and the sigh of the river breeze in their tops, mingling with the constant roar of the rapids, seems to sing a Te Deum for the dead. The graves are simple and unpretending—only an occasional column of any prominence rearing itself above the humbler surroundings.

On a hill—just behind the point where the river curves round the extreme point—rest the ashes of Monroe, enclosed in a large and ornate mausoleum, where they were laid when escorted south by the New York Seventh Regiment. That escort was treated with all the generous hospitality Virginia can so well use; and numerous and deep were the oaths of amity between the citizen-soldiers. Though the Seventh were not notoriously deadly, in the war that followed, only the shortest of memories—or, indeed, the most glowing of patriotism—could have erased the brother-love, then and there bumpered down!

Under the hills of the cemetery—the dirty, dull canal creeping between them—stand the buildings, dam and powerful pumps of the water service; ordinarily more than adequate for all uses. Usually, the water was pure and clear; but when heavy rains washed the river lands, the "noble Jeems" rushed by with an unsavory and dingy current, that might have shamed the yellow Tiber and rivaled the Nile itself. Sometimes the weary and worn patriot took his whisky and mud, thick enough to demand a fork; and for days

"The water is muddy and dank

As ever a company pumped."

The outskirts of Richmond are belted by bold crests, near enough, together to form a chain of natural forts. These were now fortifying; the son of wealth, the son of Erin and the son of Ham laboring in perspiration and in peace side by side. Later these forts did good turn, during cavalry raids, when the city was uncovered and the garrison but nominal.

Gamble's hill, a pretty but steep slope, cuts the river west of the bridge. Rising above its curves, from the Capitol view-point, are the slate-roofed Tredegar Works; their tall chimneys puffing endless black smoke against the sunshine, which reflects it, a livid green, upon the white foam of the rapids. So potent a factor in the aggressive power of the Confederacy was this foundry that it overtopped the regular government agencies. When the war began, this was the only rolling-mill of great capacity, of which the South could boast; the only one, indeed, capable of casting heavy guns. Almost the first decisive act of Virginia was to prevent, by seizure, the delivery to United States officers of some guns cast for them by the Tredegar Works; and, from that day, there were no more earnest and energetic workers for the cause of southern independence than the firm of Jos. R. Anderson & Co. It was said, at this time, that the firm was in financial straits. But it thrived so well on government patronage—spite of sundry boards to consider if army and navy work was not paid for at ruinously low rates—that it greatly increased in size; added to its utility by importations of costly machinery, through the blockade; stood loss of one-third of its buildings, by fire; used a ship of its own for importation; and, at the close of the struggle, was in better condition than at the commencement. The senior partner was, for a time, in the field at head of his brigade; but affairs were so well managed, in the interval, by the Messrs. Tanner—father and son, who were partners with General Anderson—that his absence was not appreciable in the work.

It was at the Tredegar Works that the famous "Brooke gun"—a rifled 7-inch—was cast, tested and perfected. Here the plates for the iron-clads, in almost all southern waters, were rolled or made ready for use. Here heavy ordnance for the forts was cast, together with shells and shot; and here the torpedoes—sometimes so effective, and usually so useless—were contrived and made. Indeed, the Tredegar Works so greatly aided the Confederacy, that the lengthening of the war may be, in large measure, attributed to their capacity, and to the able zeal with which they were managed.

So great and effective an agent could not fail to receive, from the Richmond government, every aid in obtainance of supplies, labor and transportation. "The Works" had mines, mills and pork-packeries in various sections of the South; thus obtaining coal and metals, as well as food—at reduced rates, within reach of their wages—for an army of employés. So great was the necessary number of these—whites, skilled, in labor—that even closest conscription left the junior of the firm a full battalion of infantry. This, drilled and equipped from his own shops, Major Tanner led in person, when raids or other straits made their soldiering paramount to other occupation. And—even when greatest scarcity of provisions came—the agents of "the Works" proceeded with those of the commissary of the Confederacy, pari passu.

An odd incident, coming to mind just here, will point the general estimate of the importance of the Tredegar Works. A special train was crossing the bridge, en route for Petersburg, at a time when transportation was rare. A huge negro, blacker than the soot upon his face, sat placidly on the platform of the rear car.

"What are you doing here?" was asked by the officer in charge.

"Rid'n' t' Petesbug," was the placid reply.

"Have you paid your fare?"

"Don' got nun t' pay, boss. Rides onner pass, I does!"

"Work for the government?"—this rather impatiently.

Ebo rolled his eyes, with expression of deep disgust, as he responded, grandly:

"No—sah! Fur t'uther consarn!"

[ ]

CHAPTER XII.

SETTLING TO THE REAL WORK.

Notwithstanding the haste of removal from Montgomery, the vast amount of work to be reduced to regular order, and the apparent confusion of the executive departments, affairs rapidly shaped themselves into working form soon after the arrival in Richmond.

That city, as the terminus of railway travel from the South and West, was naturally the rendezvous for all troops coming from the various quarters of the Confederacy; and, at the date of the change of government, some fifteen thousand were already collected in the camps about the town. These comprised levies from every section of the ten states that had adhered to the southern government—regulars, volunteers and militia and of all arms.

South Carolina and Louisiana had immediately on their secession organized regular armies, on a more perfect and permanent basis than their sister states, and had garrisoned their forts—and points then supposed most vulnerable—with them. The call of the Confederate Government for more troops had not interfered with these organizations, but had brought into the field new material in the shape of volunteer regiments and battalions of cavalry, artillery and infantry.

While, as a general thing, the rank and file of the state regulars were composed of the laboring classes, foreigners and the usual useless and floating portion of their populations, officered by gentlemen of better position and education, appointed by the governors, the volunteers had in their ranks men of all conditions, from the humblest laborer to the scholar, the banker and the priest.

They were commanded by men they themselves elected, as being the most competent and acceptable, either by reason of greater ability, or military education.

Upon the action of her convention, Virginia was found to have been in nowise behind the other states in her preparations. In fact, she had anticipated its somewhat tardy movement and had marshaled into order an array of her stout yeomanry that was in itself no contemptible army. When she joined the Confederacy, she offered to its acceptance over twenty full regiments, and parts of others sufficient to make eight or ten more.

Almost all the officers of the United States Army and Navy, from her borders, had promptly resigned and tendered their swords and services to her governor. Robert E. Lee—with his great family influence and connection—Joseph E. Johnston, Magruder, Stuart, and a host of others whose names shine bright in the annals of war, had even anticipated the formal act of secession; and its passage found them busily working, with any rank and in any way that could best conduce to the good of the state. With their aid, Virginia, too, had organized a regular army; and, feeling the necessity for prompt action to be imminent, had armed, drilled and equipped it to the limit of her straightened means; and had already begun to put her frontiers into a state of defense.

General Lee was made commander-in-chief, and the flower of Virginia, from the old army, were made generals and subordinate officers under him.

The gentlemen of the Old Dominion were not slow to show a good example to the lower classes. Crack companies that had been unused to any more dreadful war than the blank cartridge of a holiday pageant, went in to a man; whole battalions were formed from which no drop of blood might be spilled, that did not flow straight from one of the known and honored of her history.

Who has not heard of the First Virginia? a name that brings back the grand old days of chivalric devotion and doughty deed! Who in the South does not honor it? though scarce a dozen of the noble hearts that first flocked to its proud banner can now gather round the grim and shattered old lion, who bought with many a wound in front the right to lead it to the fray. And "Co. F," in whose ranks were the brilliant advocate, the skillful surgeon, the man of letters and the smooth-faced pet of the Mayday gathering—all that made the pride, the boast and the love of, Richmond!

The beacon had been lighted on the mountain top, and had gleamed by her river sides! The sturdy hunter from the West, and the dashing horseman from the East; the merchant at his till, and the farmer, with hard hand on the plough-handle—all heard the voice of the bugle and answered with a shout!

Men of all classes—from the highest-born and richest to the humblest and poorest—from the grandsire with his flint-lock to the sunny-haired stripling scarcely in his teens—with one accord

"——Came forth at the call

With the rush of their rivers when tempests appall,

And the torrents their sources unseal!"

Thus, when the Government first felt that Virginia was to be the battle-ground and decided to lash its fortunes to hers amid the black billows that were surging around it, an army was already in the field; partially armed, already somewhat proficient in drill and learning, by the discipline of camp and bivouac, to prepare for the stern realities of war.

In many instances, the posting of their regulars by the respective state governments had been considered so judicious, that the War Department made no change; as, for instance, in garrisoning the forts in Charleston harbor by the South Carolina Regular Artillery, and those at New Orleans by the 1st and 2d Louisiana Regulars. But after the necessary garrison had been left in the most exposed points, every available man was ordered to Virginia. Here the work of organization went on with a smoothness and regularity scarcely to have been looked for. Occasionally a hitch occurred that threatened to get the threads of preparation into an ugly knot; but it was ever unraveled without the Gordian treatment.

Fresh troops from every quarter were collecting rapidly. First came Gregg's regiment of South Carolinians; and they were met with open arms by the Virginians, soldiery and citizens. They received the first gush of the new brotherhood of defiance and of danger; and their camp—constantly visited by the ladies and even children of Richmond—had more the air of a picnic than of a bivouac. Many of the men and most of the officers in the First Carolina bore

"Names,

Familiar in their mouths as household words."

They were descendants from that other revolution, the political celebrities, or the watering-place beaux; and the houses of Richmond were opened to them at once. Dinners, parties and rides were improvised, and the first comers were voted, especially by the ladies, a "joy forever." Gradually, as regiment after regiment marched in and the city filled to overflowing with the still welcome strangers, the novelty wore off; and, though the feeling of fellowship and kindliness was just as strong, the citizens found that their hearts were larger than their houses, and that even Virginia hospitality must have a limit. Varied, indeed, were the forms one met on every street and road about Richmond. Here the long-haired Texan, sitting his horse like a centaur, with high-peaked saddle and jingling spurs, dashed by—a pictured guacho. There the western mountaineer, with bearskin shirt, fringed leggings, and the long, deadly rifle, carried one back to the days of Boone and the "dark and bloody ground." The dirty gray and tarnished silver of the muddy-complexioned Carolinian; the dingy butternut of the lank, muscular Georgian, with its green trimming and full skirts; and the Alabamians from the coast, nearly all in blue of a cleaner hue and neater cut; while the Louisiana troops were, as a general thing, better equipped and more regularly uniformed than any others in the motley throng.

But the most remarked dress that flashed among these varied uniforms was the blue-and-orange of the Maryland Zouaves. At the time of the riot of the 19th of April, there had just been perfected a splendid organization of the younger gentlemen of the Monumental City—a veritable corps d'élite—known as the "Maryland Guard." It was as remarkable for excellence of discipline and perfection of equipment, as for containing the very best blood of the city; and, though taking no part—as an organization—in the riot, it was immediately afterward put by its officers at the disposal of the Baltimore authorities.

When it became apparent that Maryland could take no active part in the struggle, many members of this corps promptly left the luxuries of their homes, their early associations, and even the very means of livelihood, to go south and battle for the principles they held. They unhesitatingly expatriated themselves, and gave up all they held dear—except honor—to range themselves under that flag for which they had declared. Many of them had been born and reared southerners—many had only the chivalric intention to fight for the cause they felt right. Their sympathies all went with the South, and their blood leaped to help her in this her hour of sore trial.

Was it strange that the generous Virginian should have opened his arms to give these men the embrace of fellowship and brotherhood; that they should have been honored guests at every hospitable board; that bright eyes should have glanced brighter at a glimpse of the orange and blue?

Much has been said and much written of the Marylanders in the South; of their demoralized condition, their speculative tendencies, and their wild dissipations. Not a few of them came for plunder—some left their country for their country's good:—but in the veins of such only a muddy current ran! Where the Maryland gentleman was found on the stranger soil, it was musket in hand, battling for it; and so well was his devoir done, that he rapidly changed the bayonet for the sword; and more than one general, whose name will live in the South, came from their number.

Almost all the soldiery wore the broad, soft slouch, in place of the more military, but less comfortable, kepi. There was something about it characteristic of the race—it seemed to suit exactly the free, careless port of the men—and it was equally useful as a protection from the fierce June sun, or beating rain, and as a night-cap.

Arms, too, were as varied as the uniforms. Many whole regiments were armed with the Belgian or Springfield musket—light, and carrying a large ball an immense distance; others had only the Mississippi rifle; while some again sported a mixture of rifles, muskets and shot-guns. The greatest variety was in the cavalry—if such it could be called. Men accustomed from infancy to the saddle and the rifle had seized whatever weapon they were possessed of; and more at home on horseback than on foot, they were, no doubt, ugly enemies in a bush fight, or an ambuscade. Many whole companies had no sabers but those their officers carried, and the very individuality and self-reliance of the men acted as an invincible opponent to drill and discipline. Mounted on horses of all sizes and colors; equipped with all varieties of trappings; and carrying slung at their backs every known game-killer—from rifle to duck gun—they would have been a strange picture to the European officer to which their splendid horsemanship and lithe, agile figures could have added no varnish to make him believe them cavalry.

But every man you met, mounted or footman, carried in his belt the broad, straight, double-edged bowie-knife, useful alike for war-like, or culinary purposes; and few, indeed, did not balance it with the revolver. In some of the crack corps this was strictly prohibited; for the difficulty has ever been in armies to teach the men to use efficiently the one weapon belonging to them; and that there is no safety in a multitude.

Long before the first scene of the bloody drama was done—and stern realities had taken the gilt from the pomp and circumstance of war—the actors had cast aside all the "properties" they did not absolutely need. The exhaustion of their first few battles, or a couple of Jackson's marches, taught them that in this race for life and limb, there was no need to carry extra weight. I constantly had brought to mind the anecdote of the Crimean Zouaves, about to charge a redan, who answered their officer's query as to the number of cartridges they had by tapping their saber bayonets.

The arriving regiments were inspected, mustered into the Confederate service and drilled by competent officers; vacancies were filled; and such wanting equipments, as could be supplied, bestowed upon them. They were then brigaded, and after time enough to become accustomed to their commanders and to each other, were forwarded to points where, at the moment, troops appeared most needed.

The three points in Virginia, considered as vital, were the Peninsula, formed by the James and York rivers, Norfolk, and the open country around and about Orange Courthouse to the Potomac. Fortress Monroe impregnable to assault, by the land side, and so easily provisioned and garrisoned by sea, was looked upon as the most dangerous neighbor. From its walls, the legions of the North might, at any moment, swoop down upon the unprotected country around it and establish a foothold, from which it would be hard to dislodge them, as at Newport's News. Its propinquity to Norfolk, together with the vast preponderance of the United States in naval power, made an attack upon that place the most reasonable supposition. The State of Virginia had already put it in as good defense as the time permitted. General Huger, a distinguished officer of Ordnance from the U.S. service, had at once been sent there; and his preparations had been such that an unfinished earth work, at Sewell's Point, stood for four hours, on the 19th of May, the bombardment of the U.S. ships "Minnesota" and "Monticello."

The Confederate War Department felt such confidence in the engineering and administrative ability of General Huger, that it endorsed the action of Virginia by giving him a brigadier's commission and instructions to put Norfolk and the avenues of its approach in complete state of defense. A sufficient garrison of picked troops—among them the Third Alabama and some of the best Richmond companies—was given him; and Norfolk was soon declared securely fortified.

The Peninsula was even more exposed to land attack from Fortress Monroe; and General John B. Magruder had been sent there with a part of the Virginia army, with headquarters at Yorktown. General Magruder had long been a well-known officer of the U.S. Army, where his personal popularity and a certain magnificence of manner had gained him the sobriquet of "Prince John." He possessed energy and dash in no mean degree; and on arriving at his sphere of duty, strained every nerve to put the Peninsula in a state of defense. His work, too, was approved by the Confederate War Department; the commission of brigadier conferred upon him, and re-enforcements—sufficient in its judgment, though not in his—were sent at once to his command.

While Fortress Monroe threatened the safety of Norfolk, and, by the Peninsula of the lower approaches to Richmond, Alexandria could hold a formidable army, ready at any moment to swoop down by the upper and more accessible approaches around Orange Courthouse. The occupation of Alexandria by the Union forces on the 24th of May was looked upon by Confederate leaders as the most decided act of war yet ventured upon by their wary adversary. Whatever may have been done within the non-seceded states, the South deluded herself that it was simply an exposition of the power of the government—a sort of Chinese warfare of gongs and tom-toms. The passage of the Potomac and seizure of a city under the ægis of the Confederate Government was actually crossing the Rubicon and carrying the war directly into the southern territory. Fortress Monroe and other fortified points still held by the United States, in the South, were conceded to be in a measure hers, at least by the right of possession; but Alexandria was considered part and parcel of the Confederacy, and as such sacred from invasion. Hence no means were taken to prevent its occupation. On Virginia soil—many of its' citizens already in the rebel ranks, and its houses a rendezvous for the cavalry of the Virginia army, its seizure was construed to mean real invasion.

The possession of this key to the land approaches of Richmond; its great facilities of re-enforcement and supply by propinquity to the depots at Washington and elsewhere; and the determined intention of the Federals to hold and use it, could not be misunderstood.

And while the Southern Government felt the advantages its possession gave the Union troops for concentrating and advancing, the people were aroused to a pitch of high indignation by the choice of the troops sent to first invade their soil.

The war, too, was yet young enough to leave all the romance about it; scenes of violence were as yet rare; and the death of Jackson, with the circumstances attending it, caused a deep and general feeling of bitterness. While the southern public opened its arms and took to its sympathy and protection the widow and orphans of the first Virginian whose blood was shed in her cause, many and bitter were the vows made around the bivouac to avenge his untimely end. The men who made the grim vow were of the stuff to keep it; the name of "Jackson, the Martyr," became a war-cry, and the bloody tracks of Manassas

"How that oath was kept can tell!"

On the 23d of May, Joseph E. Johnston received his commission as General in the Regular Army, and went to Harper's Ferry in command of all troops in that region—known as the Army of the Shenandoah. Beauregard, with the same grade, was recalled on his way to the West, and sent to command at Manassas.

From the great ease of putting troops across the fords of the Potomac into Virginia, it was considered necessary to concentrate, at points from which they could be easily shifted, a sufficient reliable force to meet any such movement; and the two officers in whom the government had greatest confidence as tacticians, were sent to watch for and checkmate it.

Meanwhile, Missouri had risen, the governor had declared the rights of the State infringed; and the movements of Generals Lyon and Blair—culminating in the St. Louis riots between the citizens and the Dutch soldiery—had put an end to all semblance of neutrality. Governor Jackson moved the state archives, and transferred the capital from Jefferson City to Boonesville. On the 13th of June he issued a proclamation calling for fifty thousand volunteers to defend the State of Missouri from Federal invasion; and appointed Sterling Price a major-general, with nine brigadiers, among whom were Jeff Thompson, Clark and Parsons. Perhaps no state went into open resistance of the United States authority as unprepared in every way as Missouri. Her population was scattered; one-half Union, and utterly ignorant of drill, discipline, or any of the arts of war. They were, besides, perfectly unarmed, except with their hunting pieces, and the state Capital, the arsenals and all the larger towns were in possession of the Union troops. These laughed at the attempt of Missouri to shake off the grasp of the government, and their generals boldly proclaimed that "she was under the paws of the lion, and her first movement would cause them to close and crush her life out."

Still, Price, seconded by his brigadiers, went to work with great activity to collect their scattered adherents and put them into form. In a country held by superior forces, with communications cut up and no means of information, the task was Herculean, indeed. Yet they endeavored by zeal and energy to make amends for these deficiencies and for the want of supplies. Price's name was a tower of strength in itself; his hardy compatriots flocked around him, and nearly every day there were collisions between them and the United States troops. These skirmishes, though unimportant in themselves, gave the new soldiers lessons in war; and not infrequently added to their scanty stock of arms and equipments. They were but the first dashes in the grand tableaux of war that Price was yet to hew, with the bold hand of a master, from the crude mass of material alone in his power to use.

[ ]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LEADERS AND THE LED.

Thus much of detail arranged, General Lee was, for the present, detained in Richmond by the President, as consulting and organizing officer; and to aid the Adjutant-General—Samuel Cooper, senior general of the five—in the location of armies, distribution of troops, and assignment of officers. General Lee's perfect knowledge of the materiel of the Virginia army and of the topographical features of the state, peculiarly fitted him for this work; but every step was taken subject to the decision of Mr. Davis himself. The appointments of officers, the distribution of troops—in fact, the minutiæ of the War Department—were managed by him in person.

He seemed fully alive to the vital importance of making the groundwork of the military system solid and smooth. Real preparations had begun so late that only the strong hand could now avail; and though Mr. Walker still held the empty portfolio of the secretaryship, he, and the army, and the country knew who, in fact, did the work. But to do Mr. Davis justice, he did not make his fantoccini suffer if he pulled the wires the wrong way. He was not only President and secretary of five departments—which naturally caused some errors; but that spice of the dictator in him made him quite willing to shoulder the responsibilities of all the positions.

Now, as in Montgomery, I wondered that the frail body—that could not bend—did not break beneath the load of anxiety and bodily labor he imposed upon it. His energy and industry were untiring; and every afternoon the declining sun found him in the saddle, inspecting and reviewing the troops, at one of the many camps near town. Sometimes the hard, stolid face of the Postmaster-General appeared at his side; again Senator Wigfall galloped along, with his pants stuck in his boots and seeming to enjoy the saddle much more than the curule chair; and often "Little Jeff"—the Benjamin of Mr. Davis' household—trotted at his side. But there was never a suite, seldom a courier; and wherever he went, plain, stirring syllables of cheer—and strong, grave words of incentive—dropped from his lips among the soldiery. They were treasured as the truth, too, by that rough auditory; for as yet, Mr. Davis was in the zenith of his popularity—a perfect idol with army and people. The first sight of the tall, erect figure, swaying so easily to the action of the powerful gray, was a signal for the wildest cheers from the camps; and the people in the streets raised their hats and stood uncovered while the representative man passed.

Cavil, jealousy and partisan intrigue, in which he and the cause finally went down together, had not yet done their work. There were many murmurers at real, many growlers at supposed, errors; but no opposition party—truer to itself and its interests than to the cause—had yet been organized on a basis strong enough to defy and thwart "the man."

Every one connected with the government remarked the vast difference of its reception by the Richmond and Montgomery people. The Alabamians came forward with decision and alacrity to offer their lives and fortunes to the cause. They made any sacrifices to the government, as such; but, privately, they regarded the individuals connected with it as social brigands come to rob their society of all that was good and pure in it.

Richmond, on the contrary, having given the invitation, made the best of it when accepted. The people united in sincere effort to show a whole-souled hospitality to all strangers deserving of it. Gentlemen in the government were received with frank and free-handed kindness; and even a wretch, who had wintered in the shade of the Washington upas, was allowed to flutter about and not be gunned for by the double-barreled spectacles of every respectable dowager!

Richmond was always a great place for excitements; but with the great addition of inflammable material recently, it required but a very small spark to raise a roaring, if not dangerous, flame.

On a bright Sunday in April, when

"The beams of God's own hallowed day

Had painted every spire with gold,

And, calling sinful men to pray,

Long, loud and deep the bell had tolled"—

the citizens were worshipping quietly and a peaceful stillness reigned everywhere. Suddenly, as if a rocket had gone up, the rumor flew from mouth to mouth that the "Pawnee" was steaming up the river to shell the city. The congregations, not waiting to be dismissed, rushed from the churches with a single impulse; the alarm bell in the Square pealed out with a frightened chime. For once, even the women of Richmond were alarmed. The whole population flocked toward "Rocketts"—every eye strained to catch a first glimpse of the terrible monster approaching so rapidly. Old and young men, in Sunday attire, hastened along with rusty muskets and neat "Mantons" on their shoulders; groups of bareheaded ladies were at the corners, asking the news and repeating every fear-invented tale; and more than one of the "solid men" was seen with hand-baskets, loaded with rock, to dam the river! Late in the evening, the veterans of six hours were dismissed, it turning out that there was no cause whatever for the alarm; and when after events showed them that vessel—so battered and badgered by the river batteries—"Pawnee Sunday" became a by-word among the citizens.

Richmond was not cosmopolitan in her habits or ideas, and there was, in some quarters, a vague, lingering suspicion as to the result of the experiment; but the society felt that the government was its guest, and as such was to be honored. The city itself was a small one, the society was general and provincial; and there was in it a sort of brotherly-love tone that struck a stranger, at first, as very curious. This was, in a great measure, attributable to the fact that the social circle had been for years a constant quantity, and everybody in it had known everybody else since childhood.

The men, as a general thing, were very cordial to the strangers, and some very delightful and some very odd acquaintances were made among them. Chief among the latter was one, whom we may call—as he would say "for euphony"—Will Wyatt; the most perfect specimen of the genus man-about-town in the city. He was very young, with wealth, a pleasing exterior, and an absolute greed for society. His naturally good mind had been very prettily cultivated—by himself rather than his masters—and he had traveled just enough to understand, without despising, the weaknesses of his compatriots. He and the omniscient Styles were fast friends, and a card to Wyatt, signed "Fondly thine own, S. S.," had done the business for me. His house, horses and friends were all at my service; and in the few intervals that anxiety and duty left for ennui, he effectually drove the monster off.

"I'm devilish sorry, old man," he said, one day, after we got well acquainted, "that there's nothing going on in the social line. Drop in on me at six, to dinner; and I'll show you a clever fellow or two, and maybe have some music. You understand, my dear boy, we don't entertain now. After all, it's so late in the season there'd be little doing in peace times; but this infernal war has smashed us up completely. Getting your nose red taking leave of your tender family is the only style they vote at all nobby now—À diner!"

The dinner and music at Wyatt's were not warlike—and particularly was the wine not of that description; but the men were. Over cigars, the conversation turned upon the organization of the army; and, accustomed as I was to seeing "the best men in the ranks," the way these young bloods talked rather astounded me.

"Private in 'Co. F,'" answered John C. to my query—he represented one of the finest estates on the river—"You've heard of 'F,' of course. We hang by the old company. Wyatt has just refused a captaincy of engineers to stick as third corporal."

"Neat that, in John," put in Wyatt, "when he was offered the majority of a regiment of cavalry and refused it to stay in."

"And why not?" said George H. shortly. "Pass the Madeira, Will. I wouldn't give my place in 'F' for the best majority going. As far as that goes it's a mere matter of taste, I know. But the fact is, if we of the old organizations dodge our duty now by hunting commissions, how can we hope that the people will come to time promptly?" George H. had a quarter of a million to his credit, and was an only son—"Now, I think Bev did a foolish thing not to take his regiment when Uncle Jeff offered him the commission."

"I don't see it," responded Beverly I. in an aggrieved tone. "You fellows in 'F' were down on your captain when he took his colonelcy; and I'm as proud of my junior lieutenancy in the old First, as if I commanded 'F' company itself!"

"But is it usual," I queried, "for you gentlemen to refuse promotion when offered—I don't mean to not seek it—to remain with your old companies? Would you stay in the ranks as a private when as a captain or major you might do better service?"

"Peutêtre for the present," responded Wyatt—"Don't misunderstand us; we're not riding at windmills, and I sincerely hope you'll see us all with wreaths on our collars yet. But there's a tacit agreement that just now we can do more good in the ranks than anywhere else. For myself, I don't delight in drill and dirt, and don't endorse that sentimental bosh about the 'post of honor.' But our duty is where we can do most good, and our example will decide many doubtful ones and shame the laggard."

"And we'll all go out after a few fights, if we don't get popped off," put in George H., "and then we'll feel we've won our spurs!"

"Well, I'm not too modest to say that I think we are pretty expensive food for powder," said John C., "but then we're not worth more than the 'Crescents,' the 'Cadets,' or 'Hampton's Legion.' The colonel's sons are both in the ranks of the Legion, and refused commissions. Why should the best blood of Carolina do more than the best blood of Virginia?"

"And see those Baltimore boys," said Adjutant Y., of a Georgia legion. "They've given up home, friends and wealth to come and fight for us and the cause. They don't go round begging for commissions! If my colonel didn't insist I was more useful where I am, I'd drop the bar and take a musket among them. That sort of stock I like!" But if Lieutenant Y. had taken the musket, a stray bullet might have spoiled a most dashing major-general of cavalry.

"I fear very much," I answered, "that the war will be long enough for all the really good material to come to the surface. The preparations at the North are on a scale we never before dreamed of, and her government seems determined to enforce obedience."

"God forbid!" and Wyatt spoke more solemnly than I ever heard him before. "But I begin to believe as you do. I'd sooner risk my wreath than that 'the good material' you speak of should have the 'chance to come to the surface.' Think how many a good fellow would be under the surface by that time!"

"It sometimes sickens me on parade," said George H., "when I look down the line and think what a gap in our old set a volley will make! I think we are pretty expensive food for powder, John. Miniés are no respecters of persons, old fellow; and there'll be many a black dress in Richmond after the first bulletin."

"God send we may all meet here after the war, and drink to the New Nation in Wyatt's sherry!" said Lieutenant Y. "It's better than the water at Howard's Grove. But the mare'll have hot work to get the adjutant into camp before taps. So, here's how!" and he filled his glass and tossed it off, as we broke up.

I have recorded the spirit of a private, everyday conversation, just as I heard it over a dinner-table, from a party of giddy young men. But I thought over it long that night; and many times afterward when the sickening bulletins were posted after the battles.

Here were as gay and reckless a set of youths as wealth, position and everything to make life dear to them could produce, going into a desperate war—with a perfect sense of its perils, its probable duration and its rewards—yet refusing promotion offered, that their example might be more beneficial in calling out volunteers.

And there was no Quixotism. It was the result of reason and a conviction that they were only doing their duty; for, I believe every man of those I had just left perfectly appreciated the trials and discomforts he was preparing for himself, and felt the advantages that a commission, this early in the war, would give him!

It may be that this "romance of war" was not of long duration; and that after the first campaign the better class of men anxiously sought promotion. This was natural enough. They had won the right to it; and the sacrifice of their good example had not been without effect. But I do think it was much less natural that they should have so acted in the first place.

Industry and bustle were still the order of the day in camp; and, in town, the activity increased rather than abated. There were few idlers about Richmond, even chronic "do-nothings" becoming impressed with the idea that in the universal work they must do something.

The name of Henry A. Wise was relied upon by the Government as a great power to draw volunteers from the people he had so frequently represented in various capacities. The commission of brigadier-general was given him, with authority to raise a brigade to be called the "Wise Legion," to operate in Western Virginia. Though there was no reason to think Wise would make a great soldier, his personal popularity was supposed to be sufficient to counterbalance that objection; for it was of the first importance to the Government that the western half of the State should be saved to the Confederate cause. In the first place, the active and hardy population was splendid material for soldiers, and it was believed at Richmond that, with proper pressure applied, they would take up arms for the South in great numbers; otherwise, when the Federal troops advanced into their country, they might go to the other side. Again, the products of the rich western region were almost essential to the support of the troops in Virginia, in view of contracted facilities for transportation; and the product of the Kanawha Salines alone—the only regular and very extensive salt works in the country—were worth a strenuous effort. This portion of Virginia, too, was a great military highway for United States troops, en route to the West; and once securely lodged in its almost impregnable fastnesses, their ejection would be practically impossible.

General Garnett—an old army officer of reputation and promise—was already in that field, with a handful of troops from the Virginia army; among them a regiment from about Richmond, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Pegram. The Federals, grasping at once the full importance of this position, had sent to meet this demonstration an army under General McClellan, with Rosecrans commanding the advance. There had been no collision, but its approach could not be long delayed; and the South wanted men.

In this posture of affairs, General Wise received his commission and orders. The old politician donned his uniform with great alacrity; called about him a few of the best companies of Richmond, as a nucleus; and went to work with all the vim and activity expected by those who knew him best. The "Richmond Light Infantry Blues"—the oldest company in Richmond, commanded by his son—was foremost among them. "Co. F" was to go West, too; and though its members, one and all, would have preferred a more promising sphere of duty, at Yorktown, or on the Potomac, every man acquiesced with cheerful spirit.

"Sair was the weeping" of the matrons and maidens of Richmond, when told their darlings were to go; but their sorrow did not prevent the most active demonstrations toward the comfort of the outer and inner man.

"Not a pleasant summer jaunt we're to have, old man," Wyatt said when he bade me good-bye. "I've been to that country hunting and found it devilish fine; but 'tisn't so fine by half when you're hunting a Yank, who has a long-range rifle and is likewise hunting for you. Then I've an idea of perpetual snow—glaciers—and all that sort of thing. I feel like the new John Franklin. But I'll write a book—'Trapping the Yank in the Ice-fields of the South.' Taking title, eh? But seriously, I know we can't all go to Beauregard; and there'll be fighting enough all round before it 'holds up.' God bless you! We'll meet somewhere; if not before, when I come down in the fall to show you the new stars on my collar!"

Thus "Co. F" went into the campaign. Its record there is history. So is that of many another like it.

As I have tried to show, this spirit pervaded the whole South to an almost universal extent. Companies like these, scattered among the grosser material of the army, must have been the alloy that gave to the whole mass that true ring which will sound down all history! The coarse natures around could but be shamed into imitation, when they saw the delicately nurtured darlings of society toiling through mud knee deep, or sleeping in stiffening blankets, without a murmur! And many a charge has been saved because a regiment like the First Virginia or the Alabama Third walked straight into the iron hail, as though it had been a carnival pelting!

The man who tells us that blood has little effect must have read history to very little purpose; or have looked very carelessly into the glass that Nature hourly holds up to his view.

Wyatt was right when he said "there was nothing doing" socially. But there was much doing otherwise. The war was young yet, and each household had its engrossing excitement in getting its loved ones ready for the field. The pets of the ball-room were to lay aside broadcloth and kids; and the pump-soled boots of the "german" were to be changed for the brogan of the camp.

The women of the city were too busy now to care for society and its frippery; the new objects of life filled every hour. The anxieties of the war were not yet a twice-told tale, and no artificial excitements were needed to drive them away. The women of Virginia, like her men, were animated with a spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice. Mothers sent their youngest born to the front, and bade them bear their shields, or be found under them; and the damsel who did not bid her lover "God speed and go!" would have been a finger point and a scoff. And the flags for their pet regiments—though many a bitter tear was broidered into their folds—were always given with the brave injunction to bear them worthily, even to the death!

The spirit upon the people—one and all—was "The cause—not us!" and under the rough gray, hearts beat with as high a chivalry as—

"In the brave, good days of old,

When men for virtue and honor fought

In serried ranks, 'neath their banners bright,

By the fairy hands of beauty wrought,

And broidered with 'God and Right!'"

[ ]

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BAPTISM OF BLOOD.

On the afternoon of June 10, 1861, Richmond was thrown into a commotion—though of a different nature—hardly exceeded by that exciting Sabbath, "Pawnee Sunday." Jubilant, but agitated crowds collected at the telegraph offices, the hotels and the doors of the War Department, to get the news of the first fight on Virginia soil.

That morning the enemy had pressed boldly forward, in three heavy columns, against Magruder's lines at Big Bethel Church. He had been sharply repulsed in several distinct charges, with heavy loss, by D. H. Hill's regiment—the first North Carolina, and two guns of the Richmond Howitzers, commanded by Major John W. Randolph—afterward Secretary of War.

Naturally there was great and deep rejoicing over this news in all quarters and from all classes. None had expected a different general result; for the confidence in Magruder's ability at that time, and in the pluck of his troops, was perfect; but the ease and dash with which the victory had been achieved was looked upon as the sure presage of great success elsewhere.

Although the conduct of the fight had been in the hands of Colonel D. H. Hill—afterward so well known as a staunch and hard fighting officer—and his North Carolinians had illustrated it by more than one act of personal daring; still the cannon had done the main work and it was taken as a Richmond victory.

The small loss, too, where the home people had been so deeply interested, added a cheering glow to the news that nothing else could have given. Bowed and venerable men, little girls and tremulous old women spoke of the fight "we won." And why not? Were not their sons, and husbands, and brothers, really a part of them?

It was curious to see how prone the women were to attribute the result to a special interposition of Divine aid, and to share the laurels, gathered that bright June day, with a higher Power than rested in a Springfield rifle, or a 12-pr. howitzer.

"Don't you tell me one word, cap'n!" I heard an old lady exclaim in great ire, at the door of the War Department, "Provi-dence is a-fightin' our battles for us! The Lord is with us, and thar's his handwritin'—jest as plain!"

"Don't say nothin' agin' that, marm," answered the western captain, with Cromwellian sagacity; "but ef we don't help Providence powerful hard we ain't agoin' ter win!"

There was a perfect atmosphere of triumph all over the state. Troops lying in camp began to get restless and eager to go at once—even half-prepared as many of them were—to the front. Perfect confidence in the ability of the South to beat back any advance had been before the too prevalent idea of army and people; and the ease of the victory added to this conviction a glow of exultation over the invincibility of the southern soldier.

But the confidence begotten by the result had, as yet, a beneficial rather than a bad effect. Enlistments were stimulated and camps of instruction vied with each other in energy of preparation and close attention to drill. Every soldier felt that the struggle might be fierce, but would certainly be short; and the meanest private panted to have his share in the triumphant work while there was yet a chance. The women worked harder than ever; and at every sewing-circle the story of the fight was retold with many a glowing touch added by skillful narration. And while soft eyes flashed and delicate cheeks glowed at the music of the recital, needles glanced quicker still through the tough fabric for those "dear boys!"

Along the other army lines, the news from Magruder's inspired the men with a wild desire to dash forward and have their turn, before the whole crop of early laurels was gathered. An aide on General Beauregard's staff came down from Manassas a few days after Bethel, in charge of prisoners; and he told me that the men had been in a state of nervous excitement for an advance before, but now were so wild over the news, it was hard to restrain them from advancing of their own accord.

The clear-headed generals in command, however, looked over the flash and glitter of the first success, to the sterner realities beyond; and they drew the bands of discipline only tighter—and administered the wholesome tonic of regular drill—the nearer they saw the approach of real work.

The Government, too, hailed the success at Bethel as an omen of the future; but rather that it tested the spirit of the troops and their ability to stand fire, than from any solid fruits of the fight. They understood that it was scarcely a check to the great advance to be made; and though perhaps not "only a reconnaissance that accomplished its intention," as the Federal officers declared, it was yet only the result of such a movement. True, eighteen hundred raw troops, never under fire, had met more than double their number and fought steadily and well from nine o'clock till two; and had, besides, accomplished this with the insignificant loss of one killed and seven wounded!

But this was not yet the test that was to try how fit they were to fight for the principles for which they had so promptly flown to arms. The great shock was to come in far different form; and every nerve was strained to meet the issue when made.

The Ordnance Department had been organized, and already brought to a point of efficiency, by Major Gorgas—a resigned officer of the United States Artillery; and it was ably seconded by the Tredegar Works. All night long the dwellers on Gamble's Hill saw their furnaces shine with a steady glow, and the tall chimneys belch out clouds of dense, luminous smoke into the night. At almost any hour of the day, Mr. Tanner's well-known black horses could be seen at the door of the War Department, or dashing thence to the foundry, or one of the depots. As consequence of this energy and industry, huge trains of heavy guns, and improved ordnance of every kind, were shipped off to the threatened points, almost daily, to the full capacity of limited rolling stock on the roads. The new regiments were rapidly armed; their old-style muskets exchanged for better ones, to be in their turn put through the improving Tredegar process. Battery equipments, harness works, forges—in fact, all requirements for the service—were at once put in operation under the working order and system introduced into the bureaux. The efficiency of the southern artillery—until paralyzed by the breaking down of its horses—is sufficient proof how this branch was conducted.

The Medical Department—to play so important and needful a part in the coming days of blood—was now thoroughly reorganized and placed on really efficient footing. Surgeons of all ages—some of first force and of highest reputation in the South—left home and practice, to seek and receive positions under it. These, on passing examination and receiving commission, were sent to points where most needed, with full instructions to prepare to the utmost for the comfort of the sick and wounded. Medicines, instruments, stretchers and supplies of all sorts were freely sent to the purveyors in the field—where possible, appointed from experienced surgeons of the old service; while the principal hospitals and depots in Richmond were put in perfect order to receive their expected tenants, under the personal supervision of the Surgeon-General.

The Quartermaster's Department, both for railroad transportation and field service, underwent a radical change, as experience of the early campaign pointed out its imperfections. This department is the life of the army—the supplies of every description must be received through its hands. Efficiently directed, it can contribute to the most brilliant results, and badly handled, can thwart the most perfectly matured plans of genius, or generalship.

Colonel A. C. Myers, who was early made Acting Quartermaster-General, had the benefit of the assistance and advice of an able corps of subordinates—both from the old service and from the active business men of the South; and, whatever may have been its later abuses, at this time the bureau was managed with an efficiency and vigor that could scarcely have been looked for in so new an organization.

The Commissariat alone was badly managed from its very inception. Murmurs loud and deep arose from every quarter against its numerous errors and abuses; and the sagacity of Mr. Davis—so entirely approved elsewhere—was in this case more than doubted. Colonel Northrop had been an officer of cavalry, but for many years had been on a quasi sick-leave, away from all connection with any branch of the army—save, perhaps, the paymaster's office. The reason for his appointment to, perhaps, the most responsible bureau of the War Department was a mystery to people everywhere.

Suddenly the news from Rich Mountain came. It fell like a thunderbolt from the summer sky, that the people deluded themselves was to sail over them with never a cloud! The flood-tide of success, upon which they had been floating so gaily, was suddenly dammed and flowed back upon them in surges of sullen gloom.

The southern masses are essentially mercurial and are more given to sudden extremes of hope and despondency than any people in the world—except, perhaps, the French. Any event in which they are interested can, by a partial success, carry them up to a glowing enthusiasm, or depress them to zero by its approach to failure. The buzz and stir of preparation, the constant exertion attending it and their absorbing interest in the cause, had all prepared the people, more than ordinarily even, for one of these barometric shiftings. The news from Bethel had made them almost wild with joy and caused an excessive elation that could ill bear a shock. The misfortune at Rich Mountain threw a corresponding gloom over the whole face of affairs; and, as the success at Bethel had been overrated from the Potomac to the Gulf, so this defeat was deemed of more serious importance than it really was.

This feeling in Richmond was much aggravated by her own peculiar loss. Some of her best men had been in the fight, and all that could be learned of them was that they were scattered, or shot. Garnett was dead; the gallant DeLagnel was shot down fighting to the last; and Pegram was a prisoner—the gallant regiment he led cut up and dispersed!

Only a few days before, a crowd of the fairest and most honored that Richmond could boast had assembled at the depot to bid them God speed! Crowds of fellow soldiers had clustered round them, hard hands had clasped theirs—while bright smiles of cheer broke through the tears on softest cheeks; and, as the train whirled off and the banner that tender hands had worked—with a feeling "passing the love of woman"—waved over them, wreathed with flowers, not a heart was in the throng but beat high with anticipation of brave deed and brilliant victory following its folds.

Scarcely had these flowers withered when the regiment—shattered and beaten—was borne down by numbers, and the flag itself sullied and torn by the tramp of its conquerors. And the shame of defeat was much heightened to these good people, by the agonies of suspense as to the fate of their loved ones. It was three days after the news of the disaster reached the War Department before the death of Garnett was a certainty; and longer time still elapsed ere the minor casualties were known. When they did come, weeping sounded through many a Virginia home for its stay, or its darling, stark on the distant battle-field, or carried into captivity.

The details of the fight were generally and warmly discussed, but with much more of feeling than of knowledge of their real bearings. Public opinion fixed the result decidedly as the consequence of want of skill and judgment, in dividing the brigade at a critical moment. There was a balm in the reflection, however, that though broken and beaten, the men had fought well in the face of heavy odds; and that their officers had striven by every effort of manhood to hold them to their duty. General Garnett had exposed himself constantly, and was killed by a sharp-shooter at Carrock's Ford—over which he had brought the remnant of his army by a masterly retreat—while holding the stream at the head of a small squad. Pegram fought with gallantry and determination. He felt the position untenable and had remonstrated against holding it; yet the admirable disposition of his few troops, and the skill and courage with which he had managed them, had cost the enemy many a man before the mountain was won. Captured and bruised by the fall of his horse, he refused to surrender his sword until an officer, his equal in rank, should demand it. DeLagnel cheered his men till they fell between the guns they could no longer work; then seized the rammer himself and loaded the piece till he, too, was shot down. Wounded, he still fought with his pistol, till a bayonet thrust stretched him senseless.

These brilliant episodes illustrated the gloomy story of the defeat; but it still caused very deep and general depression. This was only partly relieved by the news that followed so closely upon it, of the brilliant success of General Price's army at Carthage. Missouri was so far away that the loudest shouts of victory there could echo but dimly in the ears at Richmond, already dulled by Rich Mountain. Still, it checked the blue mood of the public to some extent; and the Government saw in it much more encouragement than the people.

There had been much doubt among the southern leaders as to the materiel of the western armies, on both sides. Old and tried officers felt secure, ceteris paribus, of success against the northern troops of the coast, or Middle States; but the hardy hunters from the West and North-west were men of a very different stamp. The resources of the whole country had been strained to send into Virginia such an army in numbers and equipment as the preparation for invasion of her borders seemed to warrant. This had left the South and South-west rather more thinly garrisoned than all deemed prudent. The grounds for security in Virginia were that the mass of the southern troops were thoroughly accustomed to the use of arms and perfectly at home on horseback; and no doubts were felt that the men of the North-eastern States, there opposed to them, were far below them in both requirements. The superior excellence of the latter in arms, equipment, and perhaps discipline, was more than compensated to the former by their greater familiarity with the arms they carried and their superiority of physique and endurance. Any advantage of numbers, it was argued, was made up by the fact of the invading army being forced to fight on the ground chosen by the invaded; and in the excellence of her tacticians, rather more than in any expected equality of numbers, the main reliance of the southern government was placed. Hence it was full of confidence as to the result in the East.

In the West, it was far different. There the armies of the United States were recruited from the hardy trappers and frontiersmen of the border; from the sturdy yeomen of the inland farms; and, in many instances, whole districts had separated, and men from adjoining farms had gone to join in a deadly fight, in opposing ranks. Though the partisan spirit with these was stronger than with other southern troops—for they added the bitterness of personal hate to the sectional feeling—yet thinking people felt that the men themselves were more equally matched in courage, endurance and the knowledge of arms.

It is an old axiom in war, that when the personnel of armies is equal, victory is apt to rest with numbers. In the West, the United States not only had the numbers in their favor, but they were better equipped in every way; and the only hope of the South was in the superiority of its generals in strategic ability.

Thus, the fight at Carthage was viewed by the Government as a test question of deep meaning; and Sterling Price began at once to rank as a rising man. The general gloom through the country began to wear off, but that feeling of overweening confidence, in which the people had so universally indulged, was much shaken; and it was with some misgivings as to the perfect certainty of success that they began to look upon the tremendous preparations for the Virginia campaign, to which the North was bending its every effort, under the personal supervision of General Scott. The bitterness that the mass of the people of the South—especially in Virginia—felt against that officer did not affect their exalted opinion of his vast grasp of mind and great military science. The people, as a body, seldom reason deeply upon such points; and it would probably have been hard to find out why it was so; but the majority of his fellow-statesmen certainly feared and hated "the general" in about an equal degree. It was a good thing for the South that this was the case; and that the mighty "On to Richmond!"—the clang of which was resounding to the farthest limits of the North and sending its threatening echoes over the Potomac—was recognized by them as a serious and determined attempt upon the new Capital.

Every fresh mail, through "the blockade," brought more and more astounding intelligence of these vast preparations. Every fresh cap that was exploded, every new flag that was broidered, was duly chronicled by the rabid press. The editors of the North seemed to have gone military mad; and when they did not dictate plans of battles, lecture their government and bully its generals, they told wondrous stories of an army that Xerxes might have gaped to see.

All the newspaper bombast could easily be sifted, however; and private letters from reliable sources of intelligence over the Potomac all agreed as to the vast scale and perfection of arrangement of the onward movement. The public pulse in the South had settled again to a steady and regular beat; but it visibly quickened as the time of trial approached.

And that time could not be long delayed!

The army of Virginia was in great spirits. Each change of position—every fresh disposition of troops—told them that their leaders expected a fight at any moment; and they panted for it and chafed under the necessary restraints of discipline, like hounds in the leash.

When General Johnston took command of the "Army of the Shenandoah" at Harper's Ferry, he at once saw that with the small force at his command the position was untenable. To hold it, the heights on both sides of the river commanding it would have to be fortified, and a clear line of communication maintained with his base.

General McClellan, with a force equal to his, was hovering about Romney and the upper Valley, ready at any moment to swoop down upon his flank and make a junction with Patterson, who was in his front, thus crushing him between them. Patterson was threatening Winchester, at which point he would be able to cut Johnston's supplies and at the same time effect his desired junction with McClellan.

To prevent this, about the middle of June, General Johnston evacuated Harper's Ferry, destroying the magazines and a vast amount of property, and fell back to Winchester. Then, for one month, Patterson and he played at military chess, on a field ranging from Winchester to Martinsburg, without advantage on either side. At the end of that time—on the 15th of July—the former made his grand feint of an advance, which Colonel Jeb Stuart—who was scouting in his front—declared to be a real movement; warning General Johnston that the blow was at last to fall in earnest. This warning the clear-headed and subtle tactician took in such part, that he at once prepared to dispatch his whole force to Manassas to join Beauregard. Well did General Scott say, "Beware of Johnston's retreats;" for—whatever the country may have thought of it at the time—the retreat from Harper's Ferry culminated in the battle of Manassas!

Meanwhile, in Richmond the excitement steadily rose, but the work of strengthening the defenses went steadily on. Fresh troops arrived daily—from the South by cars—from the West by railroad and canal; and from the country around Richmond they marched in. Rumors of the wildest and most varied sort could be heard at any hour. Now Magruder had gained a terrible victory at Big Bethel, and had strewn the ground for miles with the slain and spoils! Then Johnston had met the enemy at Winchester and, after oceans of blood, had driven him from the field in utter rout! Again Beauregard had cut McDowell to pieces and planted the stars-and-bars over Alexandria and Arlington Heights! Such was the morbid state of the public mind that any rumor, however fanciful, received some credit.

Each night some regiments broke camp noiselessly and filed through the streets like the army of specters that

"Beleaguered the walls of Prague,"

to fill a train on the Central, or Fredericksburg road, en route for Manassas. Constantly, at gray dawn the dull, rumbling sound, cut sharply by the clear note of the bugle, told of moving batteries; and the tramp of cavalry became so accustomed a sound, that people scarcely left their work even to cheer the wild and rugged-looking horsemen passing by.

Then it began to be understood, all over the country, that the great advance would be over the Potomac; that the first decisive battle would be joined by the Army of the Shenandoah, or that of Manassas.

A hushed, feverish suspense—like the sultry stillness before the burst of the storm-brooded over the land, shared alike by the people and government.

My old friend—the colonel of the "Ranche" and "Zouave" memory—was stationed at Richmond headquarters. Many were the tribulations that sorely beset the soul of that old soldier and clubman. He had served so long with regulars that he could not get accustomed to the irregularities of the "mustangs," as he called the volunteers; many were the culinary grievances of which he relieved his rotund breast to me; and numerous were the early bits of news he confidentially dropped into my ear, before they were known elsewhere.

The evening of the 18th of July—hot, sultry and threatening rain—had been more quiet than usual. Not a rumor had been set afloat; and the monotony was only broken by a group of officers about the "Spotswood" discussing Bethel, Rich Mountain and the chances of the next fight. One of them, with three stars on his collar, had just declared his conviction:

"It's only a feint, major! McDowell is too old a soldier to risk a fight on the Potomac line—too far from his base, sir! He'll amuse Beauregard and Johnston while they sweep down on Magruder. I want my orders for Yorktown. Mark my words! What is it, adjutant?" The colonel talked on as he opened and read a paper the lieutenant handed him—"Hello! Adjutant, read that! Boys, I'm off for Manassas to-night. Turning my back on a fight, by ——!"

Just then I felt a hand on my shoulder; and turning, saw my colonel with his round face—graver than usual—near mine. The thought of some devilish invention in the pudding line flashed across me, but his first word put cooks and dinners out of my mind.

"The ball's open, egad!" he said seriously. "We whipped McDowell's advance at Bull Run to-day, sir! Drove 'em back, sir! Did you hear that mustang colonel? Turning his back on a fight! Egad, he'll turn his stomach on it before the week's out!"

It was true. How McDowell's right had essayed to cross at Blackburn's Ford; how Longstreet's Virginians and the Washington Artillery met them; and how, after a sharp fight, they retired and gave up the ford is too well known history to be repeated here.

In an hour the news was public in Richmond and—though received with a deep, grave joy—braced every nerve and steadied every pulse in it. There was no distaste to face the real danger when it showed itself; it was only the sickening suspense that was unbearable. No one in the city had really doubted the result, from the first; and the news from the prelude to the terrible and decisive fight, yet to come, but braced the people, as a stimulant may the fevered patient.

The heavy pattering of the first drops had come, and the strained hush was broken.

Beauregard telegraphed that the success of Bull Run was complete; that his men had borne their baptism of fire, with the steadiness of veterans; and that a few days—hours, perhaps—must bring the general assault upon his lines.

He urged that every available man should be sent him; and within twenty-four hours from the receipt of his despatch, there was not a company left in Richmond that had arms to carry him.

Surgeons were sent up; volunteer doctors applied by dozens for permission to go; ambulance trains were put upon the road, in readiness at a moment's warning. Baskets of delicacies and rare old wines and pure liquors; great bundles of bandages and lint, prepared by the daintiest fingers in the "Old Dominion;" cots, mattresses and pillows—all crowded in at the medical purveyor's. Then Richmond, having done all she could for the present, drew a deep breath and waited.

But she waited not unhopefully!

Every eye was strained to Manassas plains; every heart throbbed stronger at the mention of that name. All knew that there the giants were soon to clinch in deadly wrestle for the mastery; that the struggle was now at hand, when the flag of the South would be carried high in triumph or trampled in the dust!

But no one doubted the true hearts and firm hands that had gathered there to uphold that banner!

No one doubted that, though the best blood of the South might redden its folds, it would still float proudly over the field—consecrated, but unstained!

[ ]

CHAPTER XV.

AFTER MANASSAS.

By noon on the 21st of July the quidnuncs found out that the President had left that morning, on a special train and with a volunteer staff, for Manassas. This set the whole tribe agog, and wonderful were the speculations and rumors that flew about. By night, certain news came that the battle had raged fiercely all day, and the sun had gone down on a complete, but bloody, victory. One universal thrill of joy went through the city, quickly stilled and followed by the gasp of agonized suspense. The dense crowds, collected about all probable points of information, were silent after the great roar of triumph went up at the first announcement. The mixed pressure of grave, voiceless thankfulness and strained anxiety, was too deep for words; and they stood still—expectant.

By midnight the main result of the day's fight was known beyond a doubt; how the enemy, in heavy masses, had attacked the Confederate left, and hurled it back and around, entirely flanking it; how the raw troops had contested every inch of ground with stubborn valor, but still gave way until the change of front had made itself; how the supports brought up from the right and center—where a force had to be maintained to face the masses threatening them—came only to meet fresh masses that they could only check, not break; how the battle was at one time really lost!

When science had done all it could to retrieve the day, but the most obstinate even of the southern troops—after doing more than desperate courage and determined pluck could warrant—were breaking and giving way, then the wild yell of Elzey's brigade broke through the pines like a clarion! On came that devoted band, breathless and worn with their run from the railroad; eight hundred Marylanders—and only two companies of these with bayonets—leading the charge! On they came, their yells piercing the woods before they are yet visible; and, as if by magic, the tide of battle turned! The tired, worn ranks, all day battered by the ceaseless hail of death, catch that shout, and answering it, breast the storm again; regiment after regiment hears the yell, and echoes it with a wild swelling chorus! And ever on rush the fresh troops—past their weary brothers, into the hottest of the deadly rain of fire—wherever the blue coats are thickest! Their front lines waver—General Smith falls, but Elzey gains the crest of the plateau—like a fire in the prairie spreads the contagion of fear—line after line melts before the hot blast of that charge—a moment more and the "Grand Army" is mixed in a straining, struggling, chaotic mass in the race for life—the battle is won!

I have heard the fight discussed by actors in it on both sides; have read accounts from northern penny a-liners, and English correspondents whose pay depended upon their neutrality; and all agree that the battle was saved by the advent of Kirby Smith, just at that critical moment when the numbers of the North were sweeping resistlessly over the broken and worn troops of the South. Elzey's brigade no doubt saved the day, for they created the panic.

"But I look upon it as a most causeless one," once said an Austrian officer to me, "for had the Federals stood but half an hour longer—which, with their position and supports, there was no earthly reason for their not doing—there could have been but one result. Smith's forces could not have held their own that much longer against overwhelming numbers; and the weary troops who had been fighting all day could not even have supported them in a heavy fight. Had Smith reached the scene of action at morning instead of noon, he, too, might have shared the general fate, and a far different page of history been written. Coming as he did, I doubt not the battle turned upon his advent. The main difference I see," he added, "is that the Confederates were whipped for several hours and didn't know it; but just as the Federals found it out and were about to close their hands upon the victory already in their grasp, they were struck with a panic and ran away from it!"

By midnight the anxious crowds in Richmond streets knew that the fight was over,

"And the red field was won!"

But the first arrivals were ominous ones—splashed and muddy hospital stewards and quartermaster's men, who wanted more stretchers and instruments, more tourniquets and stimulants; and their stories threw a deeper gloom over the crowds that—collected at departments, hotels and depots—spoke in hushed whispers their words of solemn triumph, of hope, or of suspense. They told that almost every regiment had been badly cut up—that the slaughter of the best and bravest had been terrible—that the "Hampton Legion" was annihilated—Hampton himself killed—Beauregard was wounded—Kirby Smith killed—the first Virginia was cut to pieces and the Alabama troops swept from the face of the earth. These were some of the wild rumors they spread; eagerly caught up and echoed from mouth to mouth with a reliance on their truth to be expected from the morbid anxiety. No one reflected that these men must have left Manassas before the fighting was even hotly joined; and could only have gained their diluted intelligence from the rumors at way-stations. As yet the cant of camp followers was new to the people, who listened as though these terrible things must be true to be related.

There was no sleep in Richmond that night. Men and women gathered in knots and huddled into groups on the corners and doorsteps, and the black shadow of some dreadful calamity seemed brooding over every rooftree. Each splashed and weary-looking man was stopped and surrounded by crowds, who poured varied and anxious questioning upon him. The weak treble of gray-haired old men besought news of son, or grandson; and on the edge of every group, pale, beseeching faces mutely pleaded with sad, tearless eyes, for tidings of brother, husband, or lover.

But there was no despairing weakness, and every one went sadly but steadily to work to give what aid they might. Rare stores of old wines were freely given; baskets of cordials and rolls of lint were brought; and often that night, as the women leaned over the baskets they so carefully packed, bitter tears rolled from their pale cheeks and fell noiselessly on bandage and lint. For who could tell but that very piece of linen might bind the sore wound of one far dearer than life.

Slowly the night wore on, trains coming in occasionally only to disappoint the crowds that rushed to surround them. No one came who had seen the battle—all had heard what they related. And though no man was base enough to play upon feelings such as theirs, the love of common natures for being oracles carried them away; and they repeated far more even than that. Next day the news was more full, and the details of the fight came in with some lists of the wounded. The victory was dearly bought. Bee, Bartow, Johnson, and others equally valuable, were dead. Some of the best and bravest from every state had sealed their devotion to the flag with their blood. Still, so immense were the consequences of the victory now judged to be, that even the wildest rumors of the day before had not told one half.

At night the President returned; and on the train with him were the bodies of the dead generals, with their garde d'honneur. These proceeded to the Capitol, while Mr. Davis went to the Spotswood and addressed a vast crowd that had collected before it. He told them in simple, but glowing, language that the first blow for liberty had been struck and struck home; that the hosts of the North had been scattered like chaff before southern might and southern right; that the cause was just and must prevail. Then he spoke words of consolation to the stricken city. Many of her noblest were spared; the wounded had reaped a glory far beyond the scars they bore; the dead were honored far beyond the living, and future generations should twine the laurel for their crown.

The great crowd listened with breathless interest to his lightest word. Old men, resting on their staves, erected themselves; reckless boys were quiet and still; and the pale faces of the women, furrowed with tears, looked up at him till the color came back to their cheeks and their eyes dried. Of a truth, he was still their idol. As yet they hung upon his lightest word, and believed that what he did was best.

Then the crowd dispersed, many mournfully wending their way to the Capitol where the dead officers lay in state, wrapped in the flag of the new victory. An hour after, the rain descending in torrents, the first ambulance train arrived.

First came forth the slightly wounded, with bandaged heads, arms in slings, or with painful limp.

Then came ugly, narrow boxes of rough plank. These were tenderly handled, and the soldiers who bore them upon their shoulders carried sad faces, too; for happily as yet the death of friends in the South was not made, by familiarity, a thing of course. And lastly—lifted so gently, and suffering so patiently—came the ghastly burdens of the stretchers. Strong men, maimed and torn, their muscular hands straining the handles of the litter with the bitter effort to repress complaint, the horrid crimson ooze marking the rough cloths thrown over them; delicate, fair-browed boys, who had gone forth a few days back so full of life and hope, now gory and livid, with clenched teeth and matted hair, and eyeballs straining for the loved faces that must be there to wait them.

It was a strange crowd that stood there in the driving storm, lit up by the fitful flashes of the moving lanterns.

The whole city was there—the rich merchant—the rough laborer—the heavy features of the sturdy serving-woman—the dusky, but loving face of the negro—the delicate profile of the petted belle—all strained forward in the same intent gaze, as car after car was emptied of its ghastly freight. There, under the pitiless storm, they stood silent and still, careless of its fury—not a sound breaking the perfect hush, in which the measured tramp of the carriers, or the half-repressed groan of the wounded, sounded painfully distinct.

Now and then, as a limping soldier was recognized, would come a rush and a cry of joy—strong arms were given to support him—tender hands were laid upon his hair—and warm lips were pressed to his blanched cheek, drenched with the storm.

Here some wife, or sister, dropped bitter tears on the unconscious face of the household darling, as she walked by the stretcher where he writhed in fevered agony. There

"The shrill-edged shriek of the mother divided the shuddering night,"

as she threw herself prone on the rough pine box; or the wild, wordless wail of sudden widowhood was torn from the inmost heart of some stricken creature who had hoped in vain!

There was a vague, unconscious feeling of joy in those who had found their darlings—even shattered and maimed; an unbearable and leaden weight of agonizing suspense and dread hung over those who could hear nothing. Many wandered restlessly about the Capitol, ever and anon questioning the guard around the dead generals; but the sturdy men of the Legion could only give kindly and vague answers that but heightened the feverish anxiety.

Day after day the ambulance trains came in bearing their sad burdens, and the same scene was ever enacted. Strangers, miles from home, met the same care as the brothers and husbands of Richmond; and the meanest private was as much a hero as the tinseled officer.

It is strange how soon even the gentlest natures gain a familiarity with suffering and death. The awfulness and solemnity of the unaccustomed sight loses rapidly by daily contact with it; even though the sentiments of sympathy and pity may not grow callous as well. But, as yet, Richmond was new to such scenes; and a shudder went through the whole social fabric at the shattering and tearing of the fair forms so well known and so dear.

Gradually—very gradually—the echoes of the fight rolled into distance; the wildest wailing settled to the steady sob of suffering, and Richmond went her way, with only here and there a wreck of manhood, or pale-faced woman in deepest mourning, to recall the fever of that fearful night.

Though the after effect of Manassas proved undoubtedly bad, the immediate fruits of the victory were of incalculable value. Panic-struck, the Federals had thrown away everything that could impede their flight. Besides fifty-four pieces of artillery of all kinds, horses and mules in large numbers, ammunition, medical stores and miles of wagon and ambulance trains, near six thousand stand of small arms, of the newest pattern and in best condition, fell into the hands of the half-armed rebels.

These last were the real prize of the victors, putting a dozen new regiments waiting only for arms, at once on an effective war-footing. Blankets, tents and clothing were captured in bulk; nor were they to be despised by soldiers who had left home with knapsacks as empty as those of Falstaff's heroes.

But the moral effect of the victory was to elate the tone of the army far above any previous act of the war. Already prepared not to undervalue their own prowess, its ease and completeness left a universal sense of their invincibility, till the feeling became common in the ranks—and spread thence to the people—that one southern man was worth a dozen Yankees; and that if they did not come in numbers greater than five to one, the result of any conflict was assured.

Everything was going smoothly. The first rough outlines had been laid in, with bold effectiveness, a rosy cloud floated over the grim distance of the war; and in the foreground—only brilliant and victorious action.

The Confederate loss, too, was much smaller than at first supposed, not exceeding eighteen hundred; and many of the slightly wounded began already to hobble about again, petted by the communities and justly proud of their crutches and scars. The Federal loss was harder to estimate. Many of their wounded had been borne away by the rush of the retreat; the Government, naturally anxious to calm the public mind of the North, made incomplete returns; while large numbers of uncounted dead had been buried on the field and along the line of retreat, both by the victorious army and country people. From the best data obtainable, their loss could not have been much short, if at all short, of five thousand. The army was satisfied, the country was satisfied, and, unfortunately, the Government was satisfied.

Among the people there was a universal belief in an immediate advance. The army that had been the main bulwark of the National Capital was rushing—a panic-stricken herd—into and beyond it; the fortifications were perfectly uncovered and their small garrisons utterly demoralized by the woe-begone and terrified fugitives constantly streaming by them. The triumphant legions of the South were almost near enough for their battle-cry to be heard in the Cabinet; and the southern people could not believe that the bright victory that had perched upon their banners would be allowed to fold her wings before another and bloodier flight, that would leave the North prostrate at her feet. Day after day they waited and—the wish being father to the thought—day after day the sun rose on fresh stories of an advance—a bloody fight—a splendid victory—or the capture of Washington. But the sun always set on an authoritative contradiction of them; and at last the excitement was forced to settle down on the news that General Johnston had extended his pickets as far as Mason's and Munson's hills, and the army had gone into camp on the field it had so bloodily won the week before.

[ ]

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SPAWN OF LETHARGY.

Considering the surroundings, it seems inevitable that the lull after the first great victory should have been followed by reaction, all over the South; and that reasons—as ridiculous as they were numerous—should have been assigned for inaction that appeared so unwarranted.

Discontent—at first whispered, and coming as the wind cometh—gradually took tongue; and discussion of the situation grew loud and varied. One side declared that the orders for a general advance had been already given, when the President countermanded them upon the field, and sent orders by General Bonham to withdraw the pursuit. Another version of this reason was that there had been a council of the generals and Mr. Davis, at which it was agreed that the North must now be convinced of the utter futility of persisting in invasion; and that in the reaction her conservative men would make themselves heard; whereas the occupation of Washington would inflame the North and cause the people to rise as one man for the defense of their capital. An even wilder theory found believers; that the war in the South was simply one of defense, and crossing the Potomac would be invasion, the effect of which would retard recognition from abroad. Another again declared that there was a jealousy between Generals Johnston and Beauregard, and between each of them and the President, that prevented concert of action.

The people of the South were eminently democratic and had their own views—which they expressed with energy and vim—on all subjects during the war; so these theories, to account for the paralysis after Manassas, were each in turn discussed, and each found warm defenders. But gradually it came to be generally conceded that none of them could be the true one. The President took no command on his visit to Manassas, for he reached the field only after the battle had been won and the flight commenced. Any suggestions that occurred to him were naturally made to General Johnston. There is good authority for stating that he did not make any criticism on one material point, stating to both generals that the whole plan, conduct and result of the battle met his fullest approval; and on reflection the whole people felt that their chief was too much a soldier to have committed the gross breach of discipline indicated. The story of the council came to be regarded as a silly fabrication. The fear of inflaming the North, coming on the heels of a complete and bloody victory, was about as funny as for a pugilist whose antagonist's head was "in chancery" to cease striking lest he should anger him; and events immediately following Manassas showed there could be little jealousy or pique between the generals, or between them and the President. General Johnston, with the magnanimity of the true knight his whole career has shown him to be, declared that the credit of the plan and choice of the field of battle was due to General Beauregard; and Mr. Davis' proclamation on the success was couched in language that breathed only the most honest commendation of both generals and of their strategy. The fear of invasion prejudicing opinion abroad was as little believed as the other stories, for—outside of a small clique—there grew up at this time all over the South such a perfect confidence in its strength and its perfect ability to work its own oracle, that very little care was felt for the action of Europe. In fact, the people were just now quite willing to wait for recognition of their independence by European powers, until it was already achieved. So, gradually the public mind settled down to the true reasons that mainly prevented the immediate following up of the victory.

A battle under all circumstances is a great confusion. With raw troops, who had never before been under fire, and who had been all day fiercely contending, until broken and disordered, the confusion must necessarily have been universal. As they broke, or fell back, brigade overlapped brigade, company mixed with company, and officers lost their regiments. The face of the country, covered with thick underbrush, added to this result; so that when the enemy broke and the rout commenced, it was hard to tell whether pursuers or pursued were the most disorganized mass. The army of Manassas was almost entirely undisciplined, and had never before felt the intoxication of battle. On that terrible day it had fought with tenacity and pluck that belonged to the race; but it had largely been on the principle prevalent at weddings in the "ould country"—when you see a head, hit it! The few officers who desired a disciplined resistance soon saw the futility of obtaining it, and felt that as the men, individually, were fighting bravely and stubbornly, it were better only to hold them to that. When the pursuit came, the men were utterly worn and exhausted; but, burning with the glow of battle, they followed the flying masses fast and far—each one led by his own instincts and rarely twenty of a company together.

A major-general, who left his leg on a later field, carried his company into this fight. During the pursuit he led it through a by-path to intercept a battery spurring down the road at full speed. They overtook it, mastered the gunners and turned the horses out of the press. In the deepening twilight, he turned to thank the company, and found it composed of three of his own men, two "Tiger Rifles," a Washington artilleryman, three dismounted cavalry of the "Legion," a doctor, a quartermaster's clerk, and the Rev. Chaplain of the First ——!

This was but a specimen of the style of the pursuit. There was but little cavalry—one regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart and a few single companies. No one brigade could be collected in anything like order; night was deepening and the enemy's flight was approaching what was reasonably supposed to be his reserve. Under these circumstances it was apparent that prudence, if not necessity, dictated calling in the pursuit by the disordered troops. General Bonham—the ranking officer in front—saw this plainly; and on his own authority gave the order that appeared most proper to him. I never heard that, at this time, it was objected to by his superior officers.

Moreover, it was not only the demoralization caused by the pursuit that was sufficient reason for not following up Manassas. The army, ordinarily, was not in a condition to advance into an enemy's country, away from its regular communications. In the first place, there was no transportation, and the arms were bad. It was a work of time to utilize the spoils; to distribute arms where most needed; to put the captured batteries in condition for use; and to replace with the splendid ambulances and army wagons, that had been prepared for the holiday march to Richmond, the hastily and clumsily-constructed ones already in use; and to so give out the captured horses as best to utilize them. This latter was of the utmost moment before an advance could be attempted. The Confederates were shorter of transportation—even of defective character—than of anything else; and for days after the fight the flood-gates of heaven seemed to stand open, to deluge the country around Manassas until it became a perfect lake of mud. Roads already bad were washed into gullies; holes generally knee-deep became impassable. It is perfectly easy, therefore, to understand why, for a week after the battle, delay was necessary; but as week after week passed, and there was still no forward movement, it ceased to be strange that the people should murmur, and ask why it was the army was satisfied with laurels easily won when fresh ones were within its grasp. All felt that veteran officers handling raw troops had to be more careful in their management, and to count more closely before putting them into the new and dangerous position of an invading army, than would meet with the concurrence of a populace naturally ardent and doubly heated by triumph.

But it is equally true that for ten days after the battle, Washington lay perfectly at the mercy of the South; and by that time the army of Manassas was in better condition than could be expected later; and it was anxious to move forward.

But the auspicious moment was not seized; time was given for the broken fragments of the Union army to be patched again into something like organization. Fresh forts and earthworks were hastily thrown up; a perfect chain of defenses formed around Washington, and strongly garrisoned. The pickets of the opposing armies were near enough to exchange constant shots, and even occasional "chaff."

Still there was no movement; the summer wore away in utter inactivity. The camp at Orange Courthouse began to be looked upon as a stationary affair; while the usual difficulties of camp life—aggravated by the newness of the troops and the natural indisposition of the southron to receive discipline—began to show themselves. The army at this time was principally composed of the better educated and better conditioned class, who were the first to volunteer; and as I have already said, many of the privates were men of high position, culture and wealth. Thus composed, it was equal to great deeds of gallantry and dash. Elan was its characteristic—but it was hard to reduce to the stratified regularity of an army. Napier has laid down as an axiom that no man is a good soldier until he has become a perfect machine. He must neither reason nor think—only obey. Critics, perhaps equally competent, in reviewing the Crimean war, differ from this and declare the main advantage of the French troops over the Russian was a certain individuality—a pride in themselves and their army that had been entirely drilled out of their stolid adversaries. Be this as it may, the esprit de corps of the Frenchman was in his corps only as such; and he would no more have discussed the wisdom, or prudence of any order—even in his own mind—than he would have thought of disobeying it.

The steady-going professional men who sprung to arms throughout the South could face a deadly fire, without blenching, for hours; but they could not help reasoning, with nothing to do for twenty hours out of every twenty-four.

The gay young graduates of the promenade and ball-room could march steadily, even gaily, into the fiery belching of a battery, but they could not learn the practice of unreasoning blindness; and the staunch, hard-fisted countryman felt there was no use in it—the thing was over if the fighting was done—and this was a waste of time. Nostalgia—that scourge of camps—began to creep among the latter class; discontent grew apace among the former. Still the camp was the great object of interest for miles around; there were reviews, parades and division dinners; ladies visited and inspected it, and some even lived within its lines; but the tone of the army went down gradually, but steadily. During the summer more than one of Beauregard's companies—though of the best material and with a brilliant record—had to be mustered out as "useless and insubordinate." Excellence in drill and attention to duty both decreased; and it was felt by competent judges that rust was gradually eating away the fabric of the army. This was certainly the fault to a great extent of the officers, though it may, in part, have been due to the men themselves. In the beginning these had tried honestly to choose those among them best fitted for command; but like all volunteers, they fell into the grave error of choosing the most popular. Almost all candidates for office were equally eligible and equally untried; so personal considerations naturally came into play. Once elected, they did their duty faithfully, in the field; but were either too weak, or too inexperienced, to keep the strict rules of discipline applied during the trying inactivity of camp; and they were too conscious of the social and mental equality of their men to enforce the distinction between officer and private, without which the command loses half its weight. In some instances, too, the desire for popularity and for future advancement at the hands of friends and neighbors introduced a spirit of demagogism hurtful in the extreme.

For these combined reasons the army of Manassas, which a few weeks before had gone so gaily "into the jaws of death," began rapidly to mildew through warp and woof; and the whole texture seemed on the point of giving way.

Thoughtful men—who had waited calmly and coolly when the first burst of impatience had gone up—began now to ask why and how long this lethargy was to continue. They saw its bad effects, but believed that at the next blast of the bugle every man would shake off the incubus and rise in his might a patriot soldier; they saw the steady stream of men from North and West pouring into Washington, to be at once bound and held with iron bands of discipline—the vast preparation in men, equipments, supplies and science that the North was using the precious days granted her to get in readiness for the next shock. But they felt confident that the southern army—if not allowed to rust too long—would again vindicate the name it had won at Manassas.

These thinkers saw that some branches of the Government still kept up its preparations. Throughout the length of the land foundries were going up, and every improvement that science or experience could suggest was making in the construction of arms and ammunition; water-power, everywhere off the line of attack, was utilized for powder-mills and rope-walks; every cloth factory in the country was subsidized; and machinery of great variety and power was being imported on Government account. Over Richmond constantly hung a dense cloud of coal smoke; and the incessant buzz of machinery from factories, foundries and lathes, told of increased rather than abated effort in that branch of the Government. Then, too, the most perfect confidence was felt in the great strategic ability of General Johnston—who had already found that high level in the opinion of his countrymen, from which neither the frowns of government, the combination of cliques, nor the tongues of slanderers could afterward remove him.

They believed, too, in the pluck and dash of Beauregard; and, combining this with the outside activity, evident in every direction, felt there must be good and sufficient reason for the—to them—inexplicable quiet about the Potomac.

But perhaps the very worst feature was the effect of the victory upon the tone of the people at large. The very tongues that had wagged most impatiently at the first delay—that had set in motion the wild stories by which to account for it—had been the first to become blatant that the North was conquered. The minutest details of the fight were carried over the land, repeated at country courts and amplified at bar-room assemblages, until the common slang was everywhere heard that one Southron was equal to a dozen Yanks. Instead of using the time, so strangely given by the Government, in making earnest and steady strides toward increasing the army, improving its morale and adding to its supplies, the masses of the country were upon a rampage of boastfulness, and the notes of an inflated triumph rang from the Potomac to the Gulf.

In this regard the effect of the victory was most injurious; and had it not been for the crushing results—from a strategic point of view—that would have followed it, partial defeat might have proved a blessing in its place.

The one, while it threw a gloom over the country, would have nerved the people to renewed exertion and made them look steadily and unwaveringly at the true dangers that threatened them. The other gave them time to fold their hands and indulge in a complacency, ridiculous as it was enervating.

They ceased to realize the vast resources of the Union in men, money and supplies; and more than all, they underrated the dogged perseverance of Yankee character. It was as though a young boxer, in a deadly conflict with a giant, had dealt a staggering blow; and while the Titan braced his every muscle for a deadlier gripe, the weaker antagonist wasted his time lauding his strength and feeling his biceps.

Meantime, the keen, hard sense of the Washington Government wasted no time in utilizing the reaction on its people. The press and the public clamored for a victim, and General Scott was thrown into its maw unhesitatingly. The old hero was replaced by the new, and General McClellan—whose untried and inexperienced talent could hardly have augured his becoming, as he did, the best general of the northern army—was elevated to his place to please the "dear public."

The rabid crowds of men and men-women—whose prurient curiosity had driven them to follow the great on-to-Richmond, with hopes of a first view of the triumphant entry of the Grand Army—soon forgot their uncomfortable and terrified scramble to the rear. They easily changed their whine of terror to a song of triumph; and New England Judiths, burning to grasp the hair of the Holofernes over the Potomac, pricked the flagging zeal of their male companions.

The peculiar error that they were fighting for the Union and the flag—so cruelly dissipated of late—threw thousands into the ranks; heavy bounties and hopes of plunder drew many more; and the still frequent interstices were filled with many an Irish-German amalgam, that was supposed to be peculiarly good food for powder.

And so the summer wore on, the demoralizing influence of the inaction in the camps of the South increasing toward its close. The affair at Leesburg, occurring on the 20th of October, was another brilliant success, but equally barren of results. It showed that the men would still fight as readily and as fiercely, and that their officers would lead them as gallantly, as before; it put a few hundred of the enemy hors de combat and maintained "the right of way" by the river to the South. But it was the occasion for another shout of triumph—perfectly incommensurate with its importance—to go up from the people; and it taught them still more to despise and underrate the power of the government they had so far successfully and brilliantly defied.

Elsewhere than on the Potomac line, the case had been a little different. Magruder, on the Peninsula, had gained no success of note. A few unimportant skirmishes had taken place and the Confederate lines had been contracted—more from choice than necessity. But the combatants were near enough—and respected each other enough—for constant watchfulness to be considered necessary; and, though the personnel of the army was, perhaps, not as good as that of the Potomac, in the main its condition was better.

At Norfolk nothing had been done but to strengthen the defenses. General Huger had striven to keep his men employed; and they, at least, did not despise the enemy that frowned at them from Fort Monroe, and frequently sent messages of compliment into their camps from the lips of the "Sawyer gun." The echo of the pæans from Manassas came back to them, but softened by distance and tempered by their own experience—or want of it.

In Western Virginia there had been a dull, eventless campaign, of strategy rather than action. General Wise had taken command on the first of June, and early in August had been followed by General John B. Floyd—the ex-U.S. Secretary of War.

These two commanders unfortunately disagreed as to means and conduct of the campaign; and General R. E. Lee was sent to take general command on this—his first theater of active service. His management of the campaign was much criticised in many quarters; and the public verdict seemed to be that, though he had an army of twenty thousand men, tolerably equipped and familiar with the country, Rosecrans out-manœuvered him and accomplished his object in amusing so considerable a Confederate force. Certain it is that, after fronting Lee at Big Sewell for ten or twelve days, he suddenly withdrew in the night, without giving the former even a chance for a fight.

The dissatisfaction was universal and outspoken; nor was it relieved by the several brilliant episodes of Gauley and Cotton Hill, that General Floyd managed to throw into his dark surroundings.

It is hard to tell how much foundation the press and the public had for this opinion. There had been no decisive disaster, if there had been no actual gain; and the main result had been to maim men and show that both sides would fight well enough to leave all collisions matters of doubt.

It may not here be out of place to correct a false impression that has crept into the history of the times regarding General Floyd. The courteous press of the North—and not a few political enemies who felt safety in their distance from him—constantly branded him as "traitor" and "thief." They averred that he had misused his position and betrayed the confidence reposed in him as U.S. Secretary of War, to send government arms into the South in view of the approaching need for them. Even General Scott—whose position must have given him the means of knowing better—reiterates these calumnies, the falsity of which the least investigation exposed at once.

Mr. Buchanan, in his late book, completely exonerates General Floyd from this charge; and the committee to whom it was referred reported that of 10,151 rifles distributed by him in 1860, the Southern and South-Western states received only 2,849!

Followed by the hate of one government to receive the coldness of the other, John B. Floyd still strove with all his strength for the cause he loved.

"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well"

in his dear Virginia soil; and whatever his faults—whatever his errors—no honest man, North or South, but must rejoice that his enemies even acquitted him of this one.

Then the results elsewhere had not been very encouraging when compared with the eastern campaign; though Sterling Price had managed to more than hold his own against all obstacles, and Jeff Thompson had been doing great things with little means in south-western Missouri.

Still, since Rich Mountain, no serious disaster had befallen Confederate arms, and the people were fain to be satisfied.

[ ]

CHAPTER XVII.

FROM COURT TO CAMP.

The winter of '61-2 set in early, with heavy and continued rains. By Christmas the whole surface of the country had been more than once wrapped in heavy snow, leaving lakes of mud over which no wheeled thing could work its way.

Active operations—along the whole northern frontier at least—were certainly suspended until spring; and both armies had gone into winter quarters. Military men agree that a winter in camp is the most demoralizing influence to which any troops can be subjected. To the new soldiers of the South it was a terrible ordeal—not so much from the actual privations they were called upon to endure as from other and more subtle difficulties, against the imperceptible approaches of which they could not guard. The Government had used every effort to make the men comfortable, and to supply them with all necessaries at its disposal; but still there were numerous articles it could not command.

The good caterers at home spared no pains, no exercise of ingenuity, and no pinching from fireside supplies, to make the loved ones in camp comfortable. The country had not begun to feel the effects of actual want in any quarter; but increased demand had lessened supplies on hand and somewhat enhanced prices; so the men were comfortably clothed, fed with plain, but plentiful and wholesome food, and supplied with all the absolute necessaries of camp life. In addition to these, boxes of all sizes, shapes and contents came into the camps in a continuous stream; and the thousand nameless trifles—so precious because bearing the impress of home—were received daily in every mess from the Rio Grande to the Potomac. Still, as the winter wore on, news from the armies became gloomier and gloomier, and each successive bulletin bore more dispiriting accounts of discontent and privation, sickness and death. Men who had gone into their first fight freely and gaily; who had heard the whistling of bullets as if it had been accustomed music, gave way utterly before the unseen foes of "winter quarters."

Here and there, a disciplinarian of the better sort—who combined philosophy with strictness—kept his men in rather better condition by constant watching, frequent and regular drills, rapid marches for exercise, and occasional change of camp. But this was the exception, and the general tone was miserable and gloomy. This could in part be accounted for by the inexperience of the men, and of their immediate commanders—the company officers—in whose hands their health and spirits were in no small degree reposed. They could not be brought to the use of those little appliances of comfort that camp life, even in the most unfavorable circumstances, can afford—strict attention to the utmost cleanliness in their persons and huts; care in the preparation of their food, and in its cookery; and careful adherence to the simple hygienic rules laid down in constant circulars from the medical and other departments. Where men live and sleep in semi-frozen mud, and breathe an atmosphere of mist and brush smoke—and every one knows the wonderfully penetrating power of camp-fire smoke—it is not to be expected that their comfort is enviably great; especially where they have left comfortable homes, and changed their well-prepared, if simple, food for the hard and innutritious army ration. But such creatures of habit are we that, after a little, we manage by proper care to make even that endurable.

Soldiers are like children, and require careful watching and constant reminding that these small matters—which certainly make up the sum of camp life—should be carefully attended to for their own good. Rigid discipline in their enforcement is necessary in the beginning to get novices properly started in the grooves. Once set going, they soon become matters of course. But once let soldiers get accustomed to careless and slovenly habits, and no amount of orders, or punishment, can undo the mischief. Unfortunately, the armies of the South began wrong this first winter, and the descent was easy; and they made the new road upon which they had entered far harder than necessary, by neglecting landmarks so plainly written that he who runs may read. Nostalgia—that scourge of camps—appeared in stubborn and alarming form; and no exertion of surgeon, or general, served to check or decrease it. Men, collected from cities, accustomed to stated hours of business and recreation, and whose minds were accustomed to some exercise and excitement, naturally drooped in the monotony of a camp knee in mire, where the only change from the camp-fire—with stew-pan simmering on it and long yarns spinning around it—was heavy sleep in a damp hut, or close tent, wrapped in a musty blanket and lulled by the snoring of half a dozen comrades.

Hale, sturdy countrymen, accustomed to regular exercise and hard work, with nothing to do all day but sun themselves and polish their bayonets, naturally moped and pined for the homes that were missing them so sorely. They, too, found the smoky blaze of the camp-fire but a sorry substitute for the cheerful hearth, where memory pictured the comely wife and the sturdy little ones. The hardy mountaineer, pent and confined to a mud-bound acre, naturally molded and panted for the fresh breezes and rough tramps of his far-away "roost."

The general morality of the camps was good, but praying is a sorry substitute for dry homes and good food; and, though chaplains were earnest and zealous, the men gradually found cards more exciting than exhortations. They turned from the "wine of life" to the canteen of "new dip" with a spiteful thirst. There were attempts by the higher officers—which proved abortive—to discountenance gambling; and the most stringent efforts of provost-marshals to prevent the introduction of liquor to camp reduced the quantity somewhat, but brought down the quality to the grade of a not very slow poison.

Being much in the numerous camps that winter, I was struck with the universal slouch and depression in ranks where the custom had been quick energy and cheerful faces. Through the whole army was that enervating moldiness, lightened only by an occasional gleam from those "crack companies" so much doubted in the beginning of the war.

It had been thought that the gay young men of cities, used to the sedentary life of profession, or counting-room—and perhaps to the irregularities of the midnight dinner and next-morning ball—that these men, steady and unflinching as they might be under fire—and willing as they seemed to undertake "what man dare" in danger or privation, would certainly break down under the fatigues of the first campaign.

They had, on the contrary, in every instance that came under my ken, gone through that campaign most honorably; had borne the marches, the most trying weather and the greatest straits of hunger, with an elasticity of mind and muscle that had long since astounded and silenced their most active scoffers. Now, in the bitter depths of winter, they went through the dull routine of camp, cheerful and buoyant, at all times ready for their duty, and never grumbling at the wearing strain they felt to be necessity. When I say that in every Confederate camp the best soldiers of that winter were "crack companies" of the gay youths of the cities, I only echo the verdict of old and tried officers. Where all did their duty nobly, comparison were invidious; but the names of "Company F," the Mobile Cadets, the Richmond Blues, and Washington Artillery, stand on the record of those dark days as proof of the statement. Many men from the ranks of these companies had already been promoted to high positions, but they had not yet lost their distinctive characteristics as corps d' élite; and admission to their ranks was as eagerly sought as ever. A strange fact of these companies was frequently stated by surgeons of perfect reliability: their sick reports were much smaller than those of the hardiest mountain organizations. This they attributed to two causes: greater attention to personal cleanliness and to all hygienic precautions; and the exercise of better trained minds and wills keeping them free from the deadly "blue devils." Numbers of them, of course, broke down at once. Many a poor fellow who would have achieved a brilliant future perished mid the mud of Manassas, or slept under the snowy slopes of the western mountains. The practice was kill or cure, but it was in a vast majority of cases, the latter; and men who stood the hardship thrived upon it.

The Marylanders, too, were a marvel of patience. Self-made exiles, not only from the accustomed comforts of home, but cut off from communication with their absent ones and harrowed by vague stones of wrong and violence about them—it would have been natural had they yielded to the combined strain on mind and matter. At midwinter I had occasion to visit Evansport and Acquia creek. It had been bitter cold; a sudden thaw had made the air raw and keen, while my horse went to his girths at every plunge. More than once I had to dismount in mire girth-deep to help him on. Suddenly I came upon a Maryland camp—supports to a battery. Some of the soldiers I had known as the gayest and most petted of ball-room and club; and now they were cutting wood and frying bacon, as if they had never done anything else. Hands that never before felt an ax-helve plied it now as if for life; eyes that were accustomed to look softly into

"The sweetest eyes that ever were,"

in the pauses of a waltz, now peered curiously in the reeking stew-pan. Many of their names recalled the history of days long gone, for their father's fathers had moved in stately pageant down its brightest pages; and blood flowed in their veins blue as the proudest of earth's nobility. They had left affluence, luxury, the caresses of home—and, harder than all, the habits of society—for what?

Was it thoughtlessly to rush foremost in the delirious shock of battle; to carelessly stand unflinchingly where the wing of death flapped darkest over the glare of the fight; to stand knee-deep in Virginia mud, with high boots and rough shirts, and fry moldy bacon over fires of wet brush? Or was it that the old current in their veins bounded hotly when they believed a wrong was doing; that all else—home—luxury—love—life!—faded away before the might of principle?

It was an odd meeting with the crowd that collected about me and anxiously asked the news from Richmond, from abroad, but above all, from home. Bronzed and bearded, their huge boots caked with Potomac mud and rough shirts open at their sunburnt throats; chapped hands and faces grimy with smoke and work, there was yet something about these men that spoke them, at a glance, raised above the herd. John Leech, who so reveled in the "Camps at Cobham," would here have found a companion-piece for the opposition of the picture.

"Hello, old boy! any news from home?" yelled a whiskered sergeant, jumping from a log where he was mending a rent in his pants, and giving me a hand the color of his favorite tan gloves in days lang syne—"Pretty tight work up here, you see, but we manage to keep comfortable!"—God save the mark!

"What do you think Bendann would give for a negative of me?" asked a splendid fellow leaning on an ax, the rapid strokes of which he stilled at my approach—"Not a half bad thing for a fancy ball, eh?" Charles street had no nattier man than the speaker in days gone; and the tailors had found him their pearl beyond price. But Hilberg's best was now replaced by a flannel shirt with many a rent, army pants and a jacket that had been gray, before mud and smoke had brought it near the unity of Joseph's best garment.

"I'd show well at the club—portrait of a gentleman?" he added lightly.

"Pshaw! Look at me! There's a boot for a junior assembly! Wouldn't that make a show on a waxed floor?" and little Charley H. grinned all the way across his fresh, fair face, as he extended a foot protruding from what had been a boot.

"D——l take your dress! Peel those onions, Charley!" cried a baldheaded man from the fire—"Don't your heart rise at the scent of this olla, my boy? Don't it bring back our dinners at the Spanish legation? Stay and dine with us—if Charley ever has those onions done—and you'll feast like a lord-mayor! By the way, last letters from home tell me that Miss Belle's engaged to John Smith. You remember her that night at Mrs. R.'s fancy ball?"

"Wouldn't mind having a bottle of Mrs. R.'s sherry now to tone up these onions," Charley said ruefully. "It would go well with that stew, taken out of a tin cup—eh, cookey?"

"We had lots better at the club," the cook said, thoughtfully stirring the mess on the fire—"It was laid in before you were born, Charley. Those were days, boys—but we'll drink many a bottle of it yet under the stars and bars!"

"That we will, old man! and I'll carry these boots to a junior assembly yet. But I would like a bottle of old Mrs. R.'s to drink now, faute de mieux, to the health of the Baltimore girls—God bless 'em!"

"That I would, too," said the sergeant. "But that's the hard part of it!"—and he stuck his needle viciously through the pants—"I always get savage when I think of our dear women left unpro——"

"No particular one, sergeant? You don't mean Miss Mamie on Charles street, do you? Insatiate archer!" cried Charley.

"Do your cooking, you imp! I mean my dear old mother and my sick sister. D——n this smoke! It will get in a fellow's eyes!"

When Miss Todd gave her picnic in the valley of Jehoshaphat and talked London gossip under the olives, it was an odd picture; it is strange to see the irrepressible English riding hurdles in the Campagna, and talking of ratting in the shadow of the Parthenon, as though within the beloved chimes of Bow; but it was stranger still to see those roughened, grimed men, with soleless boots and pants tattered "as if an imp had worn them," rolling out town-talk and well-known names in such perfectly natural manner.

And this was only a slice from any camp in the service. The gentlemen troops stood hardships better, and bore their troubles and difficulties with lighter hearts, than any of the mixed corps. It is true that few of them were left as organizations at the end of the war.

As the army increased, men of ability and education naturally sifted to higher place; but they wore their spurs after they had won them. They got their commissions when they had been through the baptism of blood and fire, and of mud and drudgery as well. They never flinched. The dreariest march—the shortest rations—the deepest snow and the midnight "long roll"—found them ready and willing. History furnishes no parallel. The bloods of the cavalier wars rode hard and fought long. They went to the battle with the jest upon their lips, and walked gaily to the scaffold if need be. But they not only died as gentlemen—they lived as they died. Their perfumed locks were never draggled in the mire of the camp, and their silken hose never smirched but in the fray. Light songs from dainty lips and brimming goblets from choice flacons were theirs; and they could be merry to-night if they died to-morrow.

The long rapiers of the Regency flashed as keen in the smoke of the fight as the jest had lately rung in the mistress' bower; and how the blasé club man and the lisping dandy of Rotten Row could change to the avenging war god, the annals of the "Light Brigade" can tell.

But these lived as gentlemen. In the blackest hour, when none believed "the king should have his own again;" in the deadliest fray and in the snow-bound trench, they waved the sword of command, and the only equality they had with their men was who should fight the furthest.

But here were gentlemen born—men of worth and wealth, education and fashion—delving side by side with the veriest drudge; fighting as only gentlemen can fight, and then working as gentlemen never worked before!

Delicately bred youths who had never known rougher work than the deux temps, now trudged through blinding snows on post, or slept in blankets stiff with freezing mud; hands that had felt nothing harder than billiard-cue or cricket-bat now wielded ax and shovel as men never wielded them for wages; the epicure of the club mixed a steaming stew of rank bacon and moldy hard-tack and then—ate it!

And all this they did without a murmur, showing an example of steadfast resolution and unyielding pluck to the hardier and tougher soldiers by them; writing on the darkest page of history the clear axiom: Bon sang ne peut mentir!

[ ]

CHAPTER XVIII.

SOCIETY AT THE CAPITAL.

But while everything was dull and lifeless in the camps of the South, a far different aspect was presented by its Capital. There was a stir and bustle new to quiet Richmond. Congress had brought crowds of attachés and hangers-on; and every department had its scores of dependents. Officers from all quarters came in crowds to spend a short furlough, or to attend to some points of interest to their commands before the bureaux of the War Department. The full hotels showed activity and life unknown to them. Business houses, attracted by the increased demands of trade and the new channels opened by Government necessities, sprang up on all sides; and the stores—though cramped by the blockade—began to brush off their dust and show their best for the new customers. Every branch of industry seemed to receive fresh impetus; and houses that had for years plodded on in moldy obscurity shot, with the rapidity of Jonah's gourd, up to first-class business.

The streets presented a scene of unwonted activity; and Franklin street—the promenade par excellence, vied with "the avenue" in the character and variety of the crowds that thronged its pavement. The majority of the promenaders were officers, their uniforms contrasting brightly with the more quiet dresses around. While many of them were strangers, and the peculiarities of every State showed in the faces that passed in rapid panorama, yet numbers of "Richmond boys" came back for a short holiday; almost every one bringing his laurels and his commission.

My friend, Wyatt, had kept his laughing promise, and showed me a captain's bars. General Breckinridge had found him hiding in the ranks, and had added A.A.G. to his title.

"Knew it, old man!" was his comment—"Virtue must be rewarded—merit, like water, will find its level. Captain Wyatt, A.A.G.—demnition neat, eh? Now, I'll be here a month, and we must do something in the social line. I find the women still industry mad; but the sewing-circles get up small dullabilities—'danceable teas,' as papa Dodd abroad calls them. They're not splendid to a used-up man, like you—not Paris nor yet Washington, but they'll show you our people."

And Wyatt was right. The people of Richmond had at first held up their hands in holy horror at the mere mention of amusement! What! with a war in the land must people enjoy themselves? Never! it would be heartless!

But human nature in Virginia is pretty much like human nature everywhere else; and bad as the war was, people gradually got used to "the situation." They had lost friends—a relation or two was pretty badly marked perhaps—but what glory the tens and hundreds left had gained! There was no fighting now; and the poor fellows in camp would be only too glad to know that their brothers-in-arms were being paid for their toils by the smiles of the fair. The great majority of the strangers, too, were young men who had been recommended to the mercy of the society by these very sufferers in camp.

Gradually these influences worked—the younger and gayer people indulged in the "danceable teas," Wyatt spoke of, after their sewing-circles. Imperceptibly the sewing was left for other times; and by Christmas there was a more constant—if less formal and general—round of gaiety than had been known for years. This brought the citizens and strangers more together, and naturally the result was a long season of more regular parties and unprecedented gaiety. Many still frowned at this, and, as usual, made unhappy Washington the scapegoat—averring that her pernicious example of heartlessness and frivolity had worked the evil.

These rigid Romans staid at home and worked on zealously in their manufacture of warm clothing, deformed socks and impossible gloves for the soldier boys. All honor to them for their constancy, if they thought they were right, and the harmless gaiety wrong; and they fought the good fight, from behind their abatis of knitting needles, only with the innocent weapons of tongue and precept. But human nature and inclination still held their own; and there were many defections from the ranks of the elect, to those of the more practical—and probably equally well-intentioned—pleasure-seekers.

But parties were by no means the only resource for pleasure-lovers. Anything that combined amusement and put dollars in the treasuries of charitable societies became the rage; and here the rigidly virtuous and the non-elect met on neutral ground. Among the amateurs of the city were some who would have taken high rank in any musical circle, and these gave a series of concerts for the benefit of distressed families of the soldiers. The performers were the most fashionable of the society; and, of course, the judgment of their friends—who crowded to overflowing the churches where the concerts were held—was not to be relied on. But critics from New Orleans and all parts of the South declared the performances creditable to any city. After them the audience broke up into little cliques and had the jolliest little suppers the winter produced, with the inevitable "lancers" until the smallest of small hours.

Then, there were charades and tableaux parties; while a few—more ambitious of histrionic fame—got up private theatricals. Altogether, in the gay set, the first winter of the war was one to be written in red letters, for old Richmond rang with a chime of merry laughter that for the time drowned the echo of the summer's fights and the groans of the wayside hospitals.

One unique point in the society of Richmond struck me with a constantly recurring surprise. I could not get accustomed to the undisputed supremacy of the unmarried element that almost entirely composed it. It constantly seemed to me that the young people had seized the society while their elders' heads were turned, and had run away with it for a brief space; and I always looked to see older people come in, with reproof upon their brows, and take charge of it again. But I looked in vain. One day at a dinner, I remarked this to my next neighbor; suggesting that it was only because of the war. She was one of the most charming women the society could boast—scarcely more than a bride, just out of her teens, beautiful, accomplished and very gay.

"Strangers always remark this," she answered; "but it is not the result of the war, or of the influx of strangers, as you suppose. Since I can remember, only unmarried people have been allowed to go to parties by the tyrants of seventeen who control them. We married folks do the requisite amount of visiting and teaing-out; and sometimes even rise in our wrath and come out to dinner. But as for a party—no! As soon as a girl is married, she must make up her mind to pay her bridal visits, dance a few weeks upon sufferance and then fold up her party dresses. No matter how young, how pretty, or how pleasant she may be, the Nemesis pursues her and she must succumb. The pleasant Indian idea of taking old people to the river bank and leaving them for the tide, is overstrictly carried out by our celibate Brahmins. Marriage is our Ganges. Don't you wonder how we ever dare to declare ourselves old enough?"

I did wonder; for it had always been a hobby of mine that a certain amount of the married leaven was necessary in every society to give it tone and stamina. Though the French principle of excluding young ladies from all social intercourse, and giving the patent of society to Madame, may be productive of more harm than good, the converse seems equally objectionable. I can recollect no society in which some of the most pleasant memories do not center around the intercourse with its married portion. Richmond is no exception to the rule. In the South, women marry younger than in the colder states; and it often happens that the very brightest and most attractive points of character do not mature until an age when they have gotten their establishment. The education of the Virginia girl is so very different in all essential points from that of the northerner of the same station, that she is far behind her in self-reliance and aplomb. There is, doubtless, much in native character, but more in early surroundings and the habit of education. The southerner, more languid and emotional, but less self-dependent—even if equally "up in" showier accomplishments—is not formed to shine most at an early stage of her social career. Firmer foothold and more intimate knowledge of its intricacies are necessary to her, before she takes her place as a woman of the world.

Hence, I was much puzzled to account for the patent fact that the better matured of its flowers should be so entirely suppressed, in the Richmond bouquet, by the half-opened buds. These latter, doubtless, gave a charming promise of bloom and fragrance when they came to their full; but too early they left an effect of immaturity and crudity upon the sense of the unaccustomed. Yet Richmond had written over the portals of its society: Who enters here no spouse must leave behind! and the law was of the Medan. A stranger within their gates had no right to cavil at a time-honored custom; but not one could spend a winter week in the good old town, and fail to have this sense of unfinishedness in her society fabric.

The fair daughters of the Capital are second to none in beauty, grace and the higher charm of pure womanhood. Any assembly showed fresh, bright and gentle faces, with constant pretty ones, and an occasional marked beauty. There is a peculiar, lithe grace, normal to the South, that is hard to describe; and, on the whole, even when not beautiful, there is a je ne sais quoi that renders her women very attractive.

The male element at parties ranged from passé beau to the boy with the down still on his cheek—ancient bachelors and young husbands alike had the open sesame. But if a married lady, however young in years or wifehood, passed the forbidden limits by accident—Væ victis!

She was soon made to feel that the sphere of the mated was pantry or nursery—not the ball-room. To stranger dames—if young and lively—justice a little less stern was meted; but even they, after a few offenses, were made to feel how hard is the way of the transgressor.

In a community like Richmond, where every one in the circle had played together in childhood, or was equally intimate, such a state of things might readily obtain. In a larger city, never. It spoke volumes for the purity and simplicity of the society that for years it had gone on thus, and no necessity for any matronage had been felt. But now the case was different—a large promiscuous element of military guests was thrown into it; and it struck all that society must change its primitive habit.

The village custom still prevailed in this—a gentleman could call for a lady—take her in his charge alone and without any chaperone—to a party and bring her back at the "we sma' hours." This was not only well, as long as the "Jeanette and Jenot" state of society prevailed, but it told convincingly the whole story of the honest truth of men and women. But with the sudden influx—when a wolf might so readily have imitated the guise of the lamb—a slight hedge of form could in no manner have intimated a necessity for it. Yet Richmond, in the proud consciousness of her simple purity, disdained all such precautions; and the informalities of the country town obtained in the salons of the nation's Capital.

But parties were not the only hospitalities the wanderers received at the hands of the Virginians. In no state in the country one becomes domesticated so soon as in the Old Dominion. You may come to any of its towns a perfect stranger, but with a name known to one prominent citizen, or fortified with a few letters from the right source, and in a time astonishingly short you find yourself at home. This has been time out of mind Virginian custom; and as Richmond is but a condensation of all that is Virginian, it prevailed here as well. If the stranger did not give himself up to the whirl and yield himself, "rescue or no rescue," to the lance of the unmarried, he could find, behind the chevaux de frise of clashing knitting-needles, the most genial welcome and most whole-souled hospitality.

"Stupid party last night—too full," criticised Wyatt, as he lounged in my room one morning. "You seemed bored, old man, though I saw you with Nell H. Desperate flirt—pretty, too! But take my advice; let her alone. It don't pay to flirt."—The ten years between the captain and myself were to my credit on Time's ledger—"It's all very well to stick up your pennon and ride gaily into the lists to break a lance with all comers. Society cries laissez aller! and her old dowagers shower largesse. Presto! my boy, and you find your back on the grass and your heels in the air. But I've some steady-going cousins I want to introduce you to. Suit you exactly."

Confound the boy! Where did he get that idea? But I was introduced to the "steady-going cousins" and to me now the Richmond of memory begins and ends in their circle. The jovial, pleasant family dinner around the old-time board; the consciousness of ready welcome to the social fireside, or partake of the muffin at eight, or the punch—brewed very near Father Tom's receipt—at midnight. Then the never-to-be-forgotten coterie of the brightest women of the day under the shaded droplight, in the long winter evenings! And none were excluded by the "steady goers" because they had committed matrimony. They did quantities of work that season; baskets of socks, bales of shirts and boxes of gloves, in numbers marvelous to see, went from that quiet circle to warm the frozen hands and feet, keeping watch and ward for them. And the simple words of cheer and love that went with them must have warmed hearts far colder than beat under the rough shirts they sent.

And never did the genial current of talk—sometimes chatty, sometimes brilliant—flag for a moment. The foremost men of government and army were admitted, and I doubt if ever the most ardent of the unmarried—wilting in the lancers, or deliquescing in the deux temps—found very much more genuine enjoyment than the "easy goers," over their distorted socks and impracticable gloves.

They talked of books, events and people, and no doubt gossiped hugely; but though some of the habitués were on the shady side of thirty and were sedately walking in the quiet parts of spinsterhood, I never heard one bitter—far less one scandalous, word!

Ferat qui meruit palmam! Let the green leaves adorn those wonderful women!

But the novelty most remarked in the society of this winter was the household of President Davis. Soon after the Government was firmly established in Richmond, the State of Virginia placed at his disposal a plain but comfortable house; and here—with only the ladies of his family and his private secretary—he lived with the quiet simplicity of a private citizen.

It will hardly be invading her sacra privata to say that the President's lady did everything to remove false ideas that sprung up regarding the social atmosphere of the "Executive Mansion." She was "at home" every evening; and, collecting round her a staff that numbered some of the most noted men and brilliant women both of the stranger and resident society, assured all her varied guests a warm welcome and a pleasant visit. In this circle Mr. Davis would, after the trying business of the day, give himself an hour's relaxation before entering on labors that went far into the night; and favored friends and chance visitors alike here met the man, where they expected the official.

Austere and thoughtful at all times, rarely unbending to show the vein of humor hidden deep under his stern exterior, and having besides "the divinity that doth hedge" even a republican president, Mr. Davis was never calculated for personal popularity. Even in the early days of his career he forced by his higher qualities—rather than sought by the arts of a trickster—the suffrages of his people; and they continued to cast their shells for him, even while they clamored that he was "the Just."

Whatever grave errors reflecting criticisms may lay at his door; whatever share in the ruin of the South, the future historians may ascribe to his unswerving self-will and unvarying faith in his own power—no one who traces his career from West Point to the New Saint Helena—will call them failings of the demagogue.

In these informal receptions of his lady, Mr. Davis said little; listening to the varied flow of talk that showed her equally cognizant and appreciative of social, literary and sterner topics. For the edification of the gayer visitor, she related odd experiences of her public life, with rare power of description and admirable flashes of humor. She discussed the latest book with some of the small littérateurs with whom she was infested; or talked knowingly of the last picture, or the newest opera, faint echoes from which might elude the grim blockaders on the coast.

Mr. Davis spoke little, seeming to find a refreshing element in her talk, that—as she pithily said of some one else—was like tea, that cheers but not inebriates. Occasionally he clinched an argument, or gave a keener point to an idea by a short, strong sentence.

After all had partaken of the cup of tea handed round informally, Mr. Davis retired to his study and once more donned his armor for battle with the giants without and the dwarfs within his territory.

These informal "evenings" began to grow popular with the better class of Virginians, and tended to a much more cordial tone between the citizens and their chief. They were broken by bi-monthly "levees," at which Mr. and Mrs. Davis received "the world and his wife."

But the formal "levee" was a Washington custom and smacked too much of the "old concern" to become very popular, although curiosity to see the man of the hour and to assist at an undress review of the celebrities of the new nation, thronged the parlors each fortnight. A military band was always in attendance; the chiefs of cabinet and bureaux moved about the crowd; and generals—who had already won names to live forever—passed, with small hands resting lightly on their chevrons, and bright eyes speaking most eloquently that old truism about who best deserve the fair.

More than once that winter General Johnston moved through the rooms—followed by all eyes and calling up memories of subtle strategy and hard-won victory. Sometimes the burly form of Longstreet appeared, ever surrounded by those "little people" in whom he delighted; and the blonde beard of Hood—whose name already began to shine with promise of its future brilliance—towered over the throng of leading editors, "senior wranglers" from both houses of Congress, and dancing men wasting their time in the vain effort to talk.

But not only the chosen ten thousand were called. Sturdy artisans, with their best coats and hands scrubbed to the proper point of cleanliness for shaking the President's, were always there. Moneyed men came, with speculation in their eyes, and lobby members trying to throw dust therein; while country visitors—having screwed their courage up to the desperate point of being presented—always dropped Mr. Davis' hand as if its not over-cordial grasp burned them.

But the "levees" on the whole, if odd exhibitions, were at least useful in letting the "dear public" have a little glimpse of the inner workings of the great machine of government. And they proved, even more than the social evenings, the ease of right with which Varina Howell Davis wore her title of "the first lady in the land."

The men of Richmond have spoken for themselves. They wrote the history of their class when they came forward—one and all, to sacrifice ease—affluence—life for the cause they felt to be just. There were some, as I shall hereafter endeavor to show, who were dwellers with them, but were not of them. These did nothing and gave nothing willingly for a cause in which they saw only a speculation. This is not the place to speak of such. They belong not to the goodly company of those who—whatever their weaknesses, or even their errors—proclaimed themselves honest men and chivalric gentlemen.

The young men of the whole South are off-hand and impulsive; either naturally careless in pecuniary matters, or made so by habit. Sowing wild oats is an almost universal piece of farming; and the crop is as luxuriant in the mountains of Virginia as in the overflowed lands of Louisiana.

Perhaps in Richmond they were not now seen from the most advantageous point of view. They were generally young planters from the country, reckless, jovial and prone to the lighter dissipations; or the young business and professional men, who rebounded from the routine of their former lives into a little extra rapidity. One and all—for the eyes they sought would not have looked upon them else—they had gone into the army; had fought and wrought well; and now with little to do, boon companionship and any amount of petting, they were paying for it. The constant strain of excitement produced much dissipation certainly—but it seldom took the reprehensible form of rowdyism and debauch. Some men drank deeply—at dinners, at balls and at bar-rooms; some gambled, as Virginians always had gambled—gaily, recklessly and for ruinous stakes. But find them where you would, there was about the men a careless pervading bonhomie and a natural high tone resistlessly attractive, yet speaking them worthy descendants of the "Golden Horse Shoe Knights."

As yet the influence of the Government was little felt socially. The presence of a large congregation of army men from the various camps had given an impetus to gaiety it would not otherwise have known; but this was all. There was little change in the habits and tone of social intercourse. The black shadow of Washington had not yet begun to spread itself, and its corrupt breath had not yet polluted the atmosphere of the good old town.

The presence of Congress, with its ten thousand followers, would hardly be considered as elevating anywhere. There is an odor of tobacco—of rum—of discredit—of anything but sanctity about the American politician that makes his vicinage unpleasant and unprofitable.

Congress had met in the quiet halls of the Virginia legislature. At first all Richmond flocked thither, crowding galleries and lobbies to see the might and intellect of the new nation in its most august aspect; to be refreshed and strengthened by the full streams that flowed from that powerful but pure and placid fountain; to hear words that would animate the faint and urge the ready to braver and higher deeds.

Perhaps they did not hear all this; for after a little they stopped going, and the might and majesty of the new giant's intellect was left severely to itself. Of the herd of camp-followers who over-flowed the hotels and filled the streets, little note was taken. An occasional curious stare—a semi-occasional inquiry as to who they were—and they passed even up Franklin street without more remark. To the really worthy in government or army, the cordial hand of honest welcome was extended.

The society unvaryingly showed its appreciation of excellence of intellect or character, and such as were known, or found to possess it, were at once received on the footing of old friends. But on the whole, the sentiment of the city was not in favor of the run of the new comers. The leaders of society kept somewhat aloof, and the general population gave them the sidewalk. It was as though a stately and venerable charger, accustomed for years to graze in a comfortable pasture, were suddenly intruded on by an unsteady and vicious drove of bad manners and low degree. The thoroughbred can only condescend to turn away.

Willing as they were to undergo anything for the cause, the Virginians could not have relished the savor of the new importations; nor can one who knows the least of the very unclean nature of our national politics for a moment wonder.

Montgomery had been a condensed and desiccated preparation of the Washington stew, highly flavored with the raciest vices. Richmond enjoyed the same mess, with perhaps an additional kernel or two of that garlic.

[ ]

CHAPTER XIX.

DAYS OF DEPRESSION.

The proverb that misfortunes never come singly soon became a painful verity in the South; and a terrible reaction began to still the high-beating pulses of her triumph.

The merry echoes of the winter had not yet died away, when it became oppressingly apparent that proper methods had not been taken to meet the steady and persevering preparations of the North. Disaster after disaster followed the arms of the South in close succession; and the spirits of all classes fell to a depth the more profound, from their elevation of previous joyance.

As early as the 29th of the previous August, a naval expedition under Commodore Stringham had, after a short bombardment, reduced the forts at Hatteras Inlet. In the stream of gratulation following Manassas, this small event had been carried out of sight; and even the conquest of Port Royal, South Carolina, by Admiral Dupont's fleet, on the 7th of November, had been looked upon as one of those little mischances that only serve to shade all pictures of general victory.

They were not taken for what they really were—proofs of the entirely defenseless condition of an immense sweep of coast, in the face of the heavy and increasing naval armament of the United States. They were considered reverses merely; inquiry went but little deeper and the lesson they should have taught was lost; while the inexplicable tardiness of the War Department left still more important points equally defenseless.

But the news of General Crittenden's utter defeat at Mill Springs, on the 17th of January—of the disastrous results of his miscalculation, or misguided impetuosity, and of the death of Zollicoffer—came with stunning effect; opening wide the eyes of the whole country to the condition in which apathy, or mismanagement, had left it.

As usual, too, in the popular estimate of a success, or a reverse, the public laid much stress on the death of Zollicoffer, who was a favorite both with them and the army. He was declared uselessly sacrificed, and his commanding general and the Government came in for an equal share of popular condemnation.

Mr. Davis soon afterward relieved Secretary Walker from the duties of the War Office; putting Mr. Benjamin in his seat as temporary incumbent. The latter, as before stated, was known as a shrewd lawyer, of great quickness of perception, high cultivation, and some grasp of mind; but there was little belief among the people that he was fit to control a department demanding decision and independence, combined with intimate knowledge of military matters. Besides Mr. Benjamin personally had become exceedingly unpopular with the masses. Whether this arose from the unaccountable influence he—and he alone—had with his chief, or whether the busy tongues of his private enemies received too ready credence, is hard to say. But so the fact was; and his elevation gave rise to scurrilous attacks, as well as grave forebodings. Both served equally to fix Mr. Davis in the reasons he had believed good enough for his selection.

Suddenly, on the 7th of February, Roanoke Island fell!

Constant as had been the warnings of the press, unremittingly as General Wise had besieged the War Department, and blue as was the mood of the public—the blow still fell like a thunder-clap and shook to the winds the few remaining shreds of hope. General Wise was ill in bed; and the defense—conducted by a militia colonel with less than one thousand raw troops—was but child's play to the immense armada with heaviest metal that Burnside brought against the place.

Roanoke Island was the key to General Huger's position at Norfolk. Its fall opened the Sounds to the enemy and, besides paralyzing Huger's rear communications, cut off more than half his supplies. The defeat was illustrated by great, if unavailing, valor on the part of the untrained garrison; by a plucky and determined fight of the little squadron under Commodore Lynch; and by the brilliant courage and death of Captain O. Jennings Wise—a gallant soldier and noble gentleman, whose popularity was deservedly great.

But, the people felt that a period must be put to these mistakes; and so great was their clamor that a congressional committee investigated the matter; and their report declared that the disaster lay at the door of the War Department. The almost universal unpopularity of the Secretary made this a most acceptable view, even while an effort was made to shift part of the blame to General Huger's shoulders. But wherever the fault, the country could not shake off the gloom that such a succession of misfortunes threw over it.

This feeling was, if possible, increased, and the greatest uneasiness caused in all quarters, by Burnside's capture of Newbern, North Carolina, on the 4th of March. Its defenses had just been completed at heavy cost; but General Branch, with a garrison of some 5,000 men, made a defense that resulted only in complete defeat and the capture of even his field artillery. Here was another point, commanding another supply country of great value to the commissariat, lost to the South. But worse still, its occupation gave the Federals an easy base for striking at the Weldon railroad.

Nowhere was the weakness of the South throughout the war shown more fully than in her utterly inefficient transportation. Here were the demands of the army of Virginia and of a greatly-increased population in and around Richmond, supplied by one artery of communication! Seemingly every energy of the Government should have been turned to utilizing some other channel; but, though the Danville branch to Greensboro'—of only forty miles in length—had been projected more than a year, at this time not one rail had been laid.

It is almost incredible, when we look back, that the Government should have allowed its very existence to depend upon this one line—the Weldon road; running so near a coast in possession of the enemy, and thus liable at any moment to be cut by a raiding party. Yet so it was. The country was kept in a state of feverish anxiety for the safety of this road; and a large body of troops diverted for its defense, that elsewhere might have decided many a doubtful battle-field. Their presence was absolutely necessary; for, had they been withdrawn and the road tapped above Weldon, the Virginia army could not have been supplied ten days through other channels, and would have been obliged to abandon its lines and leave Richmond an easy prey.

Meanwhile the North had collected large and splendidly-equipped armies of western men in Kentucky and Tennessee, under command of Generals Grant and Buell. The new Federal patent, "the Cordon," was about to be applied in earnest. Its coils had already been unpleasantly felt on the Atlantic seaboard; General Butler had "flashed his battle blade"—that was to gleam, afterward, so bright at Fort Fisher and Dutch Gap—and had prepared an invincible armada for the capture of New Orleans; and simultaneously the armies under Buell were to penetrate into Tennessee and divide the systems of communication between Richmond and the South and West.

General Albert Sidney Johnston was sent to meet these preparations, with all the men that could be spared from Western Virginia and the points adjacent to his line of operations. Still his force was very inadequate in numbers and appointment; while to every application for more men, the War Department replied that none could be spared him.

The Federal plan was to advance their armies along the watercourses, simultaneously with their gunboats—light draught constructions prepared expressly for such service; and, penetrating to any possible point, there form depots with water communication to their base. The Tennessee and Cumberland rivers were plainly their highways. The only defenses of these streams were Forts Henry and Donelson—weak works inefficiently garrisoned; for the half million appropriated by Congress for their defense at the eleventh hour could not have been used in time, even had the money been forthcoming from the treasury.

With scarcely a check to their progress, the Federals reduced and passed Fort Henry on the 4th of February, pressing on to Donelson, into and supporting which work, General Johnston had thrown General J. B. Floyd with some ten thousand troops under Pillow and Buckner. After three days' hard fighting, Floyd found the position untenable and further resistance impossible. He, therefore, turned over the command to Buckner—who refused to abandon the part of the garrison that could not escape—and, with General Pillow and some five thousand men, withdrew in the night and made good his escape.

During the siege of Donelson, Johnston evacuated Bowling Green and awaited its issue opposite Nashville. The result being known, it naturally followed that this city—undefended by works of any description and with an army inadequate to its protection—had to be abandoned. The retreat was at once commenced; and it was on that gloomy march that Forrest first made the name that now stands with so few rivals among the cavalry leaders of the world. Commanding a regiment of cavalry from his own section, he seemed as ubiquitous as untiring. Keeping a constant front to the enemy—now here, now there, and ever cool, dauntless and unflinching—he gave invaluable aid in covering the rear of that retreat. About this time, also, John H. Morgan began to make his name known as a partisan chief; and no more thrilling and romantic pages show in the history of the times, than those retailing how he harassed and hurt the Federals while in Nashville.

During the progress of these events on the Tennessee and Cumberland, Richmond had been shaken by alternate spasms of suspense and premature exultation.

Her citizens could scarcely yet realize that the hitherto despised Yankees had been able to march, almost unchecked, into the heart of a territory protected by southern forts, southern troops, and the noblest names in all her bright array. Feeling thus, they still placed some credence in any rumors that came.

One morning, news reached Richmond of a brilliant victory at Donelson, and it was received with wild rejoicing. Next night the War Department issued the stunning bulletin of the fall of Nashville! When this was generally believed, a gloom settled over the Capital, such as no event of the war had yet produced. The revulsion was too sudden and complete to be met by reason, or argument; the depression was too hopeless and despairing to be removed by any declaration of the valor of the defense, of the orderly character of the retreat, or of the far stronger position Johnston had gained by a concentration of his force on a ground of his own choice.

The very name of gunboat began to have a shuddering significance to the popular mind. A vague, shadowy power of evil far beyond that of any floating thing, ancient or modern, was ascribed to it; and the wild panic constantly created in the Federal mind the year before by the dreaded name of "Black Horse," or the mere mention of masked battery—was re-enacted by the South in deferential awe of those floating terrors.

Under this morbid state of gloom, the Government fell into greater and greater disfavor. Without much analytical reasoning, the people felt there must have been a misuse of resources, at least great enough to have prevented such wholesale disaster. Especial odium fell upon the War Department and reacted upon the President for retaining incapable—or, what was the same to them, unpopular—ministers in his council at such vital moment. The press—in many instances filled with gloomy forebodings and learned disquisitions on the I-told-you-so principle, fanned the flame of discontent. Mr. Davis soon found himself, from being the idol of the people, with nearly half the country in open opposition to his views.

At this moment, perhaps, no one act could have encouraged this feeling more than his relieving Floyd and Pillow from command, for abandoning their posts and leaving a junior officer to capitulate in their stead. Certainly the action of these generals at Donelson was somewhat irregular in a strictly military view. But the people argued that they had done all that in them lay; that they had fought nobly until convinced that it was futile; that they had brought off five thousand effective men, who, but for that very irregularity, would have been lost to the army of the West; and, finally, that General Johnston had approved, if not that one act, at least their tried courage and devotion.

Still, Mr. Davis remained firm, and—as was his invariable custom in such cases—took not the least note of the popular discontent. And still the people murmured more loudly, and declared him an autocrat, and his cabinet a bench of imbeciles.

Thus, in a season of gloom pierced by no ray of light; with the enemy, elated by victory, pressing upon contracting frontiers; with discontent and division gnawing at the heart of the cause—the "Permanent Government" was ushered in.

The 22d of February looked dark and dismal enough to depress still more the morbid sensibilities of the people. A deluge of rain flooded the city, rushed through the gutters in small rivers, and drenched the crowds assembled in Capitol Square to witness the inauguration.

In the heaviest burst of the storm, Mr. Davis took the oath of office at the base of the Washington statue; and there was something in his mien—something solemn in the surroundings and the associations of his high place and his past endeavor—that, for the moment, raised him in the eyes of the people, high above party spite and personal prejudice.

An involuntary murmur of admiration, not loud but heart-deep, broke from the crowds who thronged the drenched walks; and every foot of space on the roof, windows and steps of the Capitol. As it died, Mr. Davis spoke to the people.

He told them that the fortunes of the South, clouded and dim as they looked to-day, must yet rise from the might of her united people, to shine out as bright and glorious as to-morrow's sun.

It was singularly characteristic of the man, that even then he made no explanation of the course he had seen fit to take—no excuses for seeming harshness—no pledge of future yielding to any will but his own. The simple words he spoke were wholly impersonal; firm declaration that he would bend the future to his purpose; calm and solemn iteration of abiding faith that a united South, led by him, must be unconquerable.

There was a depth in the hearts of his hearers that discontent could not touch:—that even discontent had not yet chilled. They saw in him the representative man of their choice—headstrong certainly, erring possibly. But they saw also the staunch, inflexible champion of the South, with iron will, active intellect, and honest heart bent steadily and unwearyingly to one purpose; and that purpose the meanest one among them clasped to his heart of hearts!

Then, through the swooping blasts of the storm, came a low, wordless shout, wrenched from their inmost natures, that told, if not of renewed faith in his means, at least of dogged resolution to stand by him, heart and hand, to achieve the common end.

It was a solemn sight, that inauguration.

Men and women left the square with solemn brows and serious voices. There was none of the bustle and pride of a holiday pageant; but there was undoubtedly a genuine resolve to toil on in the hard road and reach the end, or fall by the wayside in the effort.

Having laid out a fixed line of policy, Mr. Davis in no way deviated from it. There were no changes of government measures and no changes of government men, except the elevation of General George W. Randolph to the Secretaryship of War. This gentleman—a clear-headed lawyer, a tried patriot and soldier by education and some experience—was personally very popular with all classes. He was known to possess decision of character and a will as firm as the President's own; and the auguries therefrom were, that in future the chief of the War Office would also be its head. His advent, therefore, was hailed as a new era in military matters.

But Mr. Benjamin, who became daily more unpopular, had been removed from the War Department only to be returned to the portfolio of State, which had been kept open during his incumbency of the former. This promotion was accepted by the Secretary's enemies as at once a reproof to them, and a blow aimed at the popular foreign policy. They boldly averred that, though the foreign affairs of the Government might not call for very decided measures, Mr. Benjamin would not scruple—now that he more than ever had the ear of his chief—to go beyond his own into every branch of the Government, and to insert his own peculiar and subtle sophisms into every recess of the Cabinet.

To do the Secretary justice, he bore the universal attack with most admirable good nature and sang froid. To all appearance, equally secure in his own views and indifferent to public odium, he passed from reverse to reverse with perfectly bland manner and unwearying courtesy; and his rosy, smiling visage impressed all who approached him with vague belief that he had just heard good news, which would be immediately promulgated for public delectation.

The other members of the Cabinet, though not equally unpopular, still failed fully to satisfy the great demands of the people. Two of them were daily arraigned before the tribunal of the press—with what reason, I shall endeavor, hereafter, to show.

Mr. Reagan's administration of the Post-office, while very bad, was possibly as good as any one else could have inaugurated, with the short rolling-stock and cut roads of ill-managed, or unmanaged systems; and the Attorney-General was of so little importance for the moment as to create but little comment.

Thus the permanent government of the struggling South was inaugurated amid low-lowering clouds. Every wind from the North and West threatened to burst them into overwhelming flood; while, within the borders of the nascent Nation, no ray of sunshine yet reflected from behind their somber curtain.

And through the gloom—with no groping hand and with unfaltering tread;—straight to the fixed purport of its own unalterable purpose, strode the great, incarnate Will that could as little bend to clamor, as break under adversity!

[ ]

CHAPTER XX.

FROM SHILOH TO NEW ORLEANS.

Within two weeks of his inauguration, the strongly hopeful words of President Davis seemed to approach fulfillment, through the crushing victory of the "Merrimac" in Hampton Roads, on the 8th March. There was no doubt of the great success of her first experiment; and the people augured from it a series of brilliant and successful essays upon the water. The late bugbear—gunboats—began to pale before the terrible strength of this modern war-engine; and hopes were cherished that the supremacy afloat—which had been the foundation of the claim of Federal victory—was at an end.

On the 23d of the same month, Jackson—who was steadily working his way to the foremost place in the mighty group of heroes—struck the enemy a heavy blow at Kernstown. His success, if not of great material benefit, was at least cheering from its brilliance and dash.

But the scale, that trembled and seemed about to turn in favor of the South, again went back on receipt of the news of Van Dorn's defeat, on the 7th March, in the trans-Mississippi. Price and his veterans—the pride of the whole people, and the great dependence in the West—had been defeated at Elk Horn. And again the calamity assumed unwonted proportions in the eyes of the people from the death of Generals Ben McCollough and McIntosh—the former a great favorite with Government, army and public.

This news overshadowed the transient gleam from Hampton Roads and Kernstown; plunging the public mind into a slough of despond, in which it was to be sunk deeper and deeper with each successive despatch.

After Nashville, Island No. 10—a small marsh-surrounded knob in the Mississippi river—had been selected by General Beauregard, and fortified with all the appliances of his great engineering skill, until deemed well-nigh impregnable. It was looked upon as the key to the defenses of the river, and of the line of railroad communication between New Orleans and the West with the Capital. In the middle of March the Federal flotilla commenced a furious bombardment of that station; and though a stubborn defense was conducted by its garrison, some boats succeeded in running its batteries on the 6th April. It was then deemed necessary at once to abandon the post, which was done with such precipitate haste that over seventy valuable guns—many of them perfectly uninjured; large amounts of stores, and all of the sick and wounded, fell into the hands of the captors.

On the same day was joined the hardest and bloodiest battle that had to this time drenched the land with the best blood in it.

General Grant, with an army of not less than 45,000 fresh and well-equipped soldiers, had been facing General A. S. Johnston, seeking to amuse him until a junction with Buell could surely crush his small force—not aggregating 30,000 effective men. To frustrate this intent, Johnston advanced to the attack on the plains of Shiloh, depending upon the material of his army, and his disposition of it, to equalize the difference of numbers.

At early dawn on Sunday, the 6th April, General Hardee, commanding the advance of the little army, opened the attack. Though surprised—in many instances unarmed and preparing their morning meal—the Federals flew to arms and made a brave resistance, that failed to stop the onward rush of the southern troops. They were driven from their camp; and the Confederates—flushed with victory, led by Hardee, Bragg and Polk, and animated by the dash and ubiquity of Johnston and Beauregard—followed with a resistless sweep that hurled them, broken and routed, from three successive lines of entrenchments. The Federals fought with courage and tenacity. Broken, they again rallied; and forming into squads in the woods, made desperate bush-fighting.

But the wild rush of the victorious army could not be stopped! On its front line swept!—On, like the crest of an angry billow, crushing resistance from its path and leaving a ghastly wreck under and behind it!

While leading a charge early in the afternoon, General Johnston received a Minié-ball in his leg. Believing it but a flesh wound, he refused to leave the ground; and his falling from his horse, faint with the loss of blood, was the first intimation the staff had of its serious nature; or that his death, which followed almost immediately, could result from so slight a wound.

The loss of their leader was hidden from the men; and they drove the enemy steadily before them, until sunset found his broken and demoralized masses huddled on the river bank, under cover of the gunboats.

Here Grant waited the onset, with almost the certainty of annihilation. But the onset never came; that night Buell crossed upward of 20,000 fresh troops; the broken army of Grant was reformed; Wallace's division of it joined the main body; and next day, after a terrible and disastrous fight, the southrons slowly and sullenly retired from the field they had so nobly won the day before.

A horrid scene that field presented, as foot by foot the fresh thousands of the Federals wrenched it from the shattered and decimated Confederates; the ground furrowed by cannon, strewn with abandoned arms, broken gun-carriages, horses plunging in agony, and the dead and dying in every frightful attitude of torture!

The battle of Shiloh was the bloodiest of the war. The little army of the South had lost near one-third of its whole number; while the Federals had bought back their camp with the loss of not less than 16,000 men.

And, while the bloodiest field, none had so splendidly illustrated the stubborn valor of the men and the brilliant courage of their leaders. Gladden had fallen in the thickest of the fight—the circumstances of his death sending a freshened glow over the bright record he had written at Contreras and Molino del Rey. The names of Bragg, Hardee and Breckinridge were in the mouths of men, who had been held to their bloody work by these bright exemplars. Wherever the bullets were thickest, there the generals were found—forgetful of safety, and ever crying—"Come!"

Governor Harris had done good service as volunteer aid to General Johnston; and Governor George M. Johnson, of Kentucky, had gone into the battle as a private and had sealed his devotion to the cause with his blood. Cheatham and Bushrod Johnson bore bloody marks of the part they took; while Breckinridge, who had already won undying fame, added to his reputation for coolness, daring, and tenacity, by the excellence with which he covered the rear of the army on its retreat to Corinth.

The results of the battle of Shiloh—while they gave fresh cause for national pride—were dispiriting and saddening. It seemed as though the most strenuous efforts to marshal fine armies—and the evacuation of city after city to concentrate troops—were only to result in an indiscriminate killing, and no more; as if the fairest opportunities for a crushing blow to the enemy were ever to be lost by error, or delay.

The death of General Johnston, too—seemingly so unnecessary from the nature of his wound—caused a still deeper depression; and the public voice, which had not hesitated to murmur against him during the eventful weeks before the battle, now rose with universal acclaim to canonize him when dead. It cried out loudly that, had he lived through the day of Shiloh, the result would have been different.

It must be the duty of impartial history to give unbiased judgment on these mooted points; but the popular verdict, at the time, was that Beauregard had wasted the precious moment for giving the coup-de-grace. The pursuit of the Federals stopped at six o'clock; and if, said people and press, he had pushed on for the hour of daylight still left him, nothing could possibly have followed but the annihilation, or capitulation, of Grant's army.

On the other hand, Beauregard's defenders replied that the army was so reduced by the terrible struggle of twelve hours—and more by straggling after the rich spoils of the captured camp—as to render further advance madness. And in addition to this, it was claimed that he relied on the information of a most trusty scout—none other than Colonel John Morgan—that Buell's advance could not possibly reach the river within twenty-four hours. Of course, in that event, it was far better generalship to rest and collect his shattered brigades, and leave the final blow until daylight.

An erroneous impression prevailed in regard to this fight, that Johnston had been goaded into a precipitate and ill-judged attack by the adverse criticisms of a portion of the press. No one who knew aught of that chivalric and true soldier would for an instant have believed he could lend an ear to such considerations, with so vast a stake in view; and the more reasonable theory came to be accepted—that he desired to strike Grant before the heavy columns that Buell was pouring down could join him.

At an events, the sad waste of position and opportunity, and the heavy loss in brilliant effort and valuable lives, caused equal dissatisfaction and gloom. Beauregard's new strategic point commanded a valuable sweep of producing territory, protected the communications, and covered Memphis. Still people were not satisfied; and tongues and pens were busy with the subject, until an event occurred that wrapped the whole country in wondering and paralyzing grief.

On the 26th April New Orleans surrendered to Admiral Farragut!

The Federal fleet had long been hovering about the twin forts at the mouth of the river; and daily telegrams of the progress of the bombardment and of their impregnability had schooled the country into the belief that the city was perfectly secure. Day after day the wires repeated the same story of thousands of shell and nobody hurt, until inquiry ceased to be even anxious; and the people were ready to despise this impotent attempt upon the most important point of the far South.

So secure had the Government been in her defenses, that regiment after regiment had been withdrawn from New Orleans and sent to Corinth, until General Lovell found his command reduced to less than three thousand effective men—and more than half of these local militia and volunteer organizations.

Suddenly came the despatch that the fleet had passed the forts at dawn on the 24th! All was consternation in the city. The confidence had been so great that daily avocations went on as usual; and the news found every one as unprepared for it, as though no enemy had been near.

Confusion ruled the hour. General Lovell reached the city from below; and, feeling that his handful of men could effect nothing and might only offer an excuse for bombardment, he yielded to the desire of the city authorities and withdrew to Camp Moore. He carried with him all the munitions and supplies that were capable of transportation; and held himself ready to return at a moment's notice from the Council.

Meanwhile, the Federal fleet had engaged the Confederate flotilla—consisting of an incomplete iron-clad, a plated tow-boat ram, and eight or ten useless wooden shells—and after a desperate fight had driven them off only to be blown up, one by one, by their own commanders.

The water-batteries then offered no effective resistance. The obstructions had been opened to remove accumulated raft, and could not be closed; and the fleet moved slowly up to seize the rich prize that lay entirely within its grasp.

On the 26th April, the "Hartford" leading the van, it anchored off the city to find it hushed as death and wrapped in the eddying smoke-clouds from fifteen thousand burning bales of cotton. After the first burst of consternation, the people took heart; and even at the sight of the enemy's shipping did not lose all hope. There were no soldiers aboard; Butler's army could not dare the passage of the forts in the shells of transports that contained it; the fleet, cut off as it was from all re-enforcement and supply, could, at worst, only shell the city and retire—again running the gauntlets of the two forts; and then the only loss to the city—for the flotilla in its incomplete state could not have been made effective as a defense—would have been the cotton and the trifling damage done by the shells.

So the people hoped on. A long correspondence, coupled with reiterated threats of bombardment, ensued between Mayor Monroe and Admiral Farragut, relative to the State flag that still floated over the Custom House. Still the city was not in Federal power and there might yet be a chance.

But on the 28th, the news of the fall of the forts in consequence of the surrender of their garrisons—took the last support from the most hopeful. The city yielded utterly; the marines of the "Hartford" landed, took formal possession, raised the stars and stripes over the City Hall; and the emblem of Louisiana's sovereignty went down forever!

Three days after, General Butler landed and took command of the city, for which he had not struck a blow. He stationed his garrison in the public buildings, the hotels, and even in private houses; and then commenced a system of oppression and extortion, that—while it made the blood boil in the veins of every southron—has sent his name to the honest thinkers of the future linked with a notoriety which all history proves to be unique.

The annals of the war are not free from small pilferers and vicious imbeciles; but high above the tableau they form, this warrior has perched himself upon a pinnacle—let us hope—unattainable again!

It is hard to overrate the consequences of the fall of New Orleans. The commercial city and port of the whole South-west—its depot and granary—the key to communication with the trans-Mississippi, and the sentinel over vast tracts of rich and productive territory—her loss was the most stunning blow that had yet been dealt the cause of the South.

It opened the whole length of the Mississippi as a new base for operations against the interior; and gave opportunities for establishing a series of depots, from which the Federal armies—if ever beaten and shattered—could be rapidly and effectively recruited.

Not the least disastrous effect of this blow was its reception by the people. After the first bitter wail went up over the land, inquiry came from every quarter how long this state of things could last. Position after position—fortress after fortress—city after city—declared impregnable by the Government up to the very last moment, fell suddenly and mysteriously; only to expose, when too late, the chain of grievous errors that inseparably linked the catastrophe with the Government.

The public demanded at least an explanation of these things—a candid exposé of the condition to which they were reduced. If told they were battling hopelessly for their frontiers; that the enemy was too strong and the extent of territory too large for sure defense; if told, even, there were grave reason to doubt the ultimate issue—they were yet willing to battle for the hope, and to go uncomplainingly to the front and face the gloomy truth.

But to be buoyed day by day with high-sounding protestations of invincibility, only to see their strongest points dropping, one by one, into the lap of the enemy; to be lulled into security to find, too late, that the Government had deceived them, while it deceived itself; and thus to imbibe a deep distrust of the hands in which their hopes and the future were placed—this was more than they could bear; and "a thick darkness that could be felt" brooded over the land.

But as yet this feeling had not begun in any way to react upon the army. The hardy soldiers had enough to do to keep them busy; and besides had laid up a stock of glorious reminiscences, upon which to fall back when bad news reached them. Only the bare facts of these rapid and terrible blows reached the camps; and stubborn, hard-fisted "Johnny Reb," looked upon them smilingly as reverses to be made up to-morrow, or the next time he caught "Mr. Yank."

To the Louisiana soldiers, the news of the fall of their beautiful city had a far deeper and more bitter import. Some of the business men of New Orleans, who remained in the city, yielded to the promptings of interest and fell to worshipping the brazen calf, the Washington high priest had set up for them. Some refused to degrade themselves and remained to be taught that might is right; and that handcuffs are for the conquered. Others collected what little they could and fled to Europe; while nobler spirits eluded the vigilance of their captors and came by scores into the Confederate camps.

But the women of New Orleans were left behind. They could not come; and against them the Pontiff of Brutality fulminated that bull, which extorted even from the calm and imperturbable British Premier the exclamation—"Infamous!"

The intended insult fell dead before the purity of southern womanhood; but the malignancy that prompted it seared deep into their hearts. Though their defenders were away, the women of New Orleans rose in their majesty of sex; and, "clothed on with chastity," defied the oppressor and called on manhood everywhere to judge between him and them. As

"When the face of Sextus was seen amid the foes"—

in those earlier days when Roman womanhood was roused to defy that elder traducer—

"No women on the housetops

But spat toward him and hiss'd;

No child but scream'd out curses

And shook its little fist!"

And the cry echoed in the hearts of the Louisianians in the battle's front. It mattered not so much to them if the defenses had been neglected; if the proper precautions had not been taken, and their firesides and families sacrificed, while they were battling so nobly far away. They only felt that those dear homes—their wives, and sisters, and sweethearts—were now in the relentless grasp of a hero who burned to war against women.

And deep in their souls they swore a bitter oath to fight in the future, not only for the cause they loved, but for themselves; to strike each blow, nerved by the thought that it was for the redemption of their homes and their loved ones; or, if not for this—for vengeance!

Gradually this spirit inoculated their fellow-soldiers. The bitter feelings of the struggle, strong enough before, became intensified; and in every Confederate camp was brewing a sullen and somber war-cloud, the sudden flashes from which were to strike terror to the heart of the North before that summer was done.

[ ]

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CONSCRIPTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

In the midst of the gloom, weighing upon the country about the days of Shiloh, the Confederate Congress moved on a point of vital import to its cause. Weak and vacillating as that body had proved; lacking as it was in decision, to force its views on the executive, or to resist popular clamor, backed by brutum fulmen of the press—a moment had come when even the blindest of legislators could not fail to see.

More men, was the cry from every general in the field. With more men, the army of Manassas could have carried the war over the Potomac frontier; perhaps have ended it there. With more men, Nashville would have been saved and Shiloh won. With more men, the enemy, pouring over the daily contracting frontiers, if not checked in their advance, might be restrained from, or chastised for, the brutal and uncivilized warfare that now began to wage, away from all great army centers.

Great as was the need for new blood and new brains, in the council of the nation—still more dire was the need for fresh muscle in its armies. Levies must be raised, or all was lost; and the glories that had wreathed the southern flag, even when it drooped lowest—priceless blood that had been poured as a sacrament to consecrate it—would all be set at naught by the imbecility of the chosen lawgivers of the people. Thus, after a pressure of months from cooler heads in government, the more thoughtful of the people, and the most farsighted of the press, the few live men in Congress wrung from it the "Conscription Act" on the 16th day of April.

The reader may have gained some faint idea of the alacrity with which men of all classes rushed into the ranks; of the steady endeavor and unmurmuring patience with which they bore the toils and dangers of their chosen position; of their unwavering determination to fight the good fight to the end. That the same spirit as genuinely pervaded the masses of the army now, there is little doubt; but the South—instead of husbanding her resources, had slept during these precious months the North utilized to bring a half million of men against her.

Now, when she woke to the plain fact that her existence depended—not only on keeping in the ranks every man already there, but of adding largely to their numbers—it was but natural that the Government's torpor had, in a slight degree, reacted upon its soldiers.

When the Government had assumed more form and regularity with increased proportions and the conviction, forced upon the most obtuse mind, that a struggle was at hand demanding most perfect organization, the looseness of a divided system had become apparent. The laws against any State maintaining a standing army were put into effect; and the combined military power was formally turned over, as a whole, to the Confederate authorities. This change simply meant that complete organizations were accepted as they stood, as soldiers of the Confederacy instead of soldiers of the states; the men were mustered into the Confederate service and the officers had their state commissions replaced by those from the Confederate War Department. From that date, the troops were to look to the central Government for their pay, subsistence, and supplies.

In mustering in, all troops—with only exceptions where their contracts with state governments demanded—were received "for three years of the war." At Montgomery, many admirable organizations had been tendered to the Government for one year; and much discussion had ensued on the subject of their reception. It was then generally believed, even by the longest heads in the Cabinet, that the war would be only a campaign. I have elsewhere alluded to the tenacity with which its supporters clung to this idea; and Mr. Davis was almost alone in his persistent refusal to accept the troops for less than three years, or the war. To the one campaign people he said, very justly, that if the troops were taken for twelve months, and the war were really over in six, here was the Government saddled with the incubus at a standing army, infinitely greater than its needs; and here large bodies of men who might be of incalculable service elsewhere, tied to the vitiating and worse than useless influences of a peace camp. On the other hand, should the war last longer, in its very climax a large body of educated soldiers, just trained to a point of usefulness, would have the right to demand their discharge, when their places would be difficult to fill even with raw levies. There was much dissatisfaction among the one campaign people; but their own argument—that, if received for the war, the troops would get home before their proposed twelve months expired—was unanswerable. Now, when the same arguments were used to enforce the passage of the Conscription Act, the enemies that Mr. Davis had by this time gathered around him, little recked that in their wisdom, they were quoting him.

This transfer to the Confederate Government covered all the troops of the several states, except the militia. This, of course, remained under the authority of their respective governors.

Naturally, with the addition to the force originally contemplated by "the assembled wisdom of the land," the five brigadier-generals allowed by Congress proved totally inadequate. A law had subsequently been forced from them, granting the appointment of five generals—a rank paramount to that of field-marshal in European armies—of the regular army, who were to command volunteers; and allowing the President to appoint such number of brigadiers of volunteers as the necessities of the service demanded.

There had been little hesitancy in the selection of the generals—all of them men who had served with distinction in the army of the United States; and who had promptly left it to cast their lot with the new Government. So little difference could be found in their claims for precedence, that the dates of their old commissions decided it. They were Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston and Pierre G. T. Beauregard.

These nominations had been received with unanimity by the Senate, and with profound satisfaction by the people. Had fitness and right been consulted equally in other appointments, much priceless blood might have been saved to the South.

Still, at the time, it was believed that the commissions of brigadier of volunteers were conferred upon the most meritorious of the resigned officers; or, where there was reason to hope good results to the service—upon the best of those men the troops had chosen as commanders. Strong pressure was, of course, brought to bear upon the President, regarding these appointments; but the verdict of army and people was that these first selections were made with as much judgment and impartiality as the untried state of the army permitted.

But fifteen months' quiet endurance of hardship, danger and doubt; the universal wail from homes that had never before known, a dark hour, but where unaccustomed toil now fought vainly against misery and disease; a pervading sense of insecurity for any point, and that those homes—broken and saddened as they were—might meet a yet worse fate—all these causes had done their work. Undaunted and unconquered as the men were, the bravest and most steadfast still longed for a sight of the dear faces far away.

The term of service of more than a hundred regiments would expire soon, enlistments had become slow and were not to be stimulated by any inducements legislation could offer. The very danger that had been pointed out in refusing more "twelve months' men" became too imminent to evade.

The soldiers of the South were more anxious than ever to meet the foe. Added to their love for the cause, many now felt bitter personal incentive to fight; and every blow was now struck alike for country and for self. But while panting for the opportunity, they had a vague feeling that they must fight nearer home and—forgetting that the sole protection to their loved ones lay in a union, closer and more organized than ever—each yearned for the hour when he would be free to go and strike for the defense of his own hearthstone.

The intent of the conscription was to put every man in the country, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, into the army; restricting "details" from the field within the narrowest limits of absolute necessity. It retained, of course, every man already in the field; and, had its spirit been vigorously carried out, would have more than doubled the army by midsummer.

It provided for the separate enrollment of each state under a "Commandant of Conscripts;" and for collecting new levies at proper points in "Camps of Instruction," under competent officers, that recruits might go to the army prepared in drill and knowledge of camp life for immediate service.

But, the Conscription Act, like all other congressional measures, was saddled with a companion, "Bill of Exemptions." This—while so loosely constructed as almost to nullify all good effect of the law—opened the door to constant clashing of personal and public interests, and to great abuses of the privilege.

It would, of course, have been folly to draw every able-bodied male from districts already so drained of effective population as to have become almost non-producing. Such a course would have put thousands of additional mouths into the ranks, and still further have reduced the straitened means for feeding them. And it would have been equally suicidal to draw from forge and from lathe, those skilled artisans who were day and night laboring to put weapons in the hands of those sent to wield them.

But the "Bill of Exemptions" left possible both of these things, at the same time that it failed to restrain abuses of privileges in certain high quarters. The matter of "details" was, of course, essential; and it was only to be supposed that generals in the field could best judge the value of a man in another position than the front.

But the most objectionable feature to the army was the "Substitute Law," which allowed any one able to buy a man, not subject to the action of conscription, to send him to be shot at in his place. Soldiers who had endured all perils and trials of the war, naturally felt that if they were retained in positions they objected to, those who had been comfortably at home—and in many instances coining that very necessity into fortunes—should be forced at the eleventh hour to come and defend themselves and their possessions. Besides, the class of men who were willing to sell themselves as substitutes were of the very lowest order. All citizens of the South were liable to conscription; and the "exempts" open to purchase, were either strange adventurers, or men over and under age, who—argued the soldiers—if fit for service should come of their own free will.

Veteran troops had a low enough opinion of the "conscript" as a genus; but they failed not to evince, by means more prompt than courteous, their thorough contempt for the "substitute."

These causes produced much discontent, where men would cheerfully have acquiesced in a law essential to the preservation of the fabric they had reared and cemented with their blood. To quell this feeling, a reorganization of the army was effected. A certain time was allowed for any liable man to volunteer and choose his branch of the service and, if practicable, his regiment; and so great was the dread of incurring the odium of conscription, that the skeleton veteran regiments rapidly filled up to a point of efficiency. They were then allowed to choose their own officers by election; and, though this lost to the service many valuable men who had become unpopular, still the army was better satisfied within itself.

The refilled regiments were re-brigaded by states when practicable, a general from a different state being sometimes placed in command; and the whole army was divided into corps, of three divisions each, commanded by a lieutenant-general.

Whatever the weakness of its construction—and the abuses of the exemption and detail power in carrying it out—there can be little doubt that the conscription at this time saved the country from speedy and certain conquest; and credit should be given to the few active workers in the congressional hive who shamed the drones into its passage.

Had the men whose term expired been once permitted to go home, they could never again have been collected; the army would have dwindled into a corporal's guard here and there; the masses the North was pouring down on all sides would have swept the futile resistance before it; and the contest, if kept up at all, would have degenerated into a guerrilla warfare of personal hatred and vengeance, without a semblance of confederation, or nationality.

Once passed, the people of the whole country acquiesced in and approved the conscription, and gave all the aid of their influence to its progress. Here and there a loud-mouthed demagogue would attempt to prejudice the masses against the measure; but scarcely a community failed to frown down such an effort, in the great extremity of the country, as vicious and traitorous. The opposition that the project had met in the administration—from doubt as to its availability—was removed by its very first working. What had been in its inception an unpopular measure, received now the approbation of all classes; and the governors of every state—save one—went to work with hearty good will to aid its carrying out.

This exception was Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, who entered into a long wrangle with the administration on the constitutional points involved. He denied the right of Congress to pass such an act, and of the Executive to carry it out within the limits of a sovereign state; averred—with much circumlocution and turgid bombast—that such attempt would be an infringement of the State Rights of Georgia, which he could not permit.

Mr. Davis replied in a tone so reasonable, decorous and temperate as to wring unwilling admiration even from his opponents. He pointed out briefly the weak points that rendered the governor's position utterly untenable, ignored the implied warning of resistance to the law; and succinctly stated that he relied upon the patriotism of Georgians to grasp the full meaning of the crisis their executive failed to comprehend; and he closed by stating that the conscription must go on.

Governor Brown found no supporters for his extreme views, even in the anti-administration party. The people felt the imminence of the danger; and here, as in all matters of deep import, they placed the conservation of the cause high above partisan prejudices, or jealousies of cliques. Utterly silenced by the calm dignity and incisive logic of Mr. Davis, and abandoned by the few supporters his defiance of the administration had at first collected around him, Governor Brown was forced to yield; achieving only the conviction that he had the general condemnation of the popular voice.

Once set in motion, the machinery of conscription worked rapidly and somewhat smoothly. The Camps of Instruction in all states not possessed by the enemy filled rapidly, and the class of conscripts on the whole was fairly good. By early summer they began to arrive in Richmond and "Camp Lee"—the station where they were collected—became a point equally of curiosity to the exempt and of dread to the liable.

It was curious to note the prevalence of the various state-traits, showing in the squads of conscripts from time to time passing through the city. The sturdy farmers from the interior, especially those from Virginia, Georgia and Alabama, though lacking the ease and careless carriage of the veteran soldier, had a determined port that spoke for their future usefulness. They were not merry naturally. Called from accustomed avocations and leaving behind them families defenseless and without means of support, they could scarcely have marched gaily, even when willingly, into the Carnival of Death. But they were resolute men, earnest in their love for the South and honest in their wish to serve her—with the musket, if that were better than the plough.

Tall and lank, but long-limbed and muscular, the Georgians had a swinging stride of their own; and, even when the peculiar dialect did not ring out over their ranks, something in their general style gave the idea that these were the men who would one day be fellow-soldiers of the famous "fighting Third."

Ever and anon came a dejected, weary squad with slouching gait and clayey complexions. Speaking little and then with a flat, unintoned drawl that told of the vicinage of "salt marsh;" bearing the seeds of rice-field fevers still in them, and weakly wondering at the novel sights so far from home, the South Carolina conscripts were not a hopeful set of soldiers. As soon as the tread of hostile battalions had echoed on her soil, the sons of the Palmetto State flew to their posts. State regulars went to the coast, picked volunteer corps came to Virginia. None stayed behind but those really needed there by the Government, or that refuse class which had determined to dodge duty, but now failed to dodge "the conscript man." The former were, of course, as much needed now as ever; the latter did not ride into the battle with defiance on their brows, but, on the contrary, seemed looking over their shoulders to find a hole in the mesh that implacable conscription had drawn about them.

Their next neighbors of the Old North State were hardly better in the main, but some men among them seemed not unlike the militia that had fought so well at Roanoke Island. Green and awkward; shrinking away from the chaff of passing regulars; looking a little sheepish for being conscripts, "Zeb Vance's boys" yet proved not unworthy the companionship of the men of Bethel, of Manassas and of Richmond.

At first the border states, or those overrun by the enemy, gave few additions to the conscript camps.

Kentucky, on whose adherence and solid aid to the cause such reliance had been placed in the beginning, had sadly failed to meet it. With the reminiscences of her early chivalry, her romantic warfare of the "Dark and Bloody Ground," and the warlike habits of her men, mingled considerations of the usefulness of her vast resources and her natural points for defense, lying so near the Federal territory. But as the war wore on and the state still wavered, the bent of her people seemed strangely to incline to the northern side. Seeking a neutrality that was clearly impossible, the division in her councils admitted the Federals within her borders. Then, when it was hopeless to do more, the noblest and most honored of her sons left Kentucky and ranged themselves under that banner they had in vain sought to unfurl over her.

Like Maryland, Kentucky had early formed a corps d' élite, called the "State Guard," which numbered many of the best-born and most cultured young men of the state, with headquarters at Louisville. This was commanded by General S. B. Buckner and under the general control of Governor Magoffin. This corps was supposed to represent the feelings of all better citizens in its opposition to the Union cause.

But when the action of political schemers—aided by the designs of a money-loving and interested populace—laid Kentucky, like Maryland, bound hand and foot at the feet of the Federal government; when the Union council of the state strove to disarm or put them in the Union ranks, the soldiers of the "State Guard" left unhesitatingly and joined the army of the South in large numbers.

Late in November, 1861, a convention had met; and, declaring all bonds with the Union dissolved, passed a formal Ordinance of Secession and sent delegates to ask admission from the Richmond Congress. A month later Kentucky was formally declared a member of the Confederacy; but before that time Buckner and Breckinridge had received the commissions, with which they were to win names as proud as any in the bright array of the South; a Kentucky brigade—whose endurance and valiant deeds were to shed a luster on her name that even the acts of her recreant sons could not dim—were in General Johnston's van; some of her ablest and most venerable statesmen had given up honors and home for the privilege of being freemen! All the South knew that the admission of the state was but an empty form—powerless alike to aid their cause, or to wrest her from the firm grasp the Federal government had set upon her.

At the time of the first conscription the few men left in Kentucky, who had the will, could not make their way into Confederate camps; far less could the unwilling be forced to come.

Tennessee, also, had been a source of uneasiness to the Richmond Government from the spread of Union tendencies among a portion of her inhabitants. Though she had been a member of the Confederacy near a year, still the half civilized and mountainous portions of her territory, known as East Tennessee, had done little but annoy the army near it, by petty hostilities and even by a concerted plan for burning all the railroad bridges in that section and thus crippling communications.

Fortunately this scheme had been frustrated, and the half-savage population—for the better class of Tennesseeans were almost unanimous in expression of loyalty to the South—kept in subjection.

But now with her soil overrun by Federal soldiers, and with a Federal fleet in every river, the state could not respond to the call of the South; and, of course, the soldiers she yielded the conscription were from the narrow tracts in Confederate possession only.

One hears much of the "Union feeling" in the South during the war. Immediately on its close, a rank crop of "southern loyalists" had sprung up in many quarters; basking in the rays of the Freedmen's Bureau and plentifully manured with promises and brotherly love by the open-mouthed and close-fisted philanthropy of New England. But like all dunghill products, the life of these was ephemeral. Its root struck no deeper than the refuse the war had left; and during its continuance the genus was so little known that a Carlyle, or a Brownlow, was looked upon with the same curiosity and disgust as a very rare, but a very filthy, exotic.

With the exceptions of portions of Kentucky and Tennessee, no parts of the South were untrue to the government they had accepted.

Florida was called "loyal" and General Finnegan proved with what truth. "Loyal" Missouri has written her record in the blood of Price's ragged heroes. Louisiana, crushed by the iron heel of military power, spoiled of her household gods and insulted in her women's name, still bowed not her proud head to the flag that had thus become hostile.

And the Valley of Virginia! Ploughed by the tramp of invading squadrons—her fair fields laid waste and the sanctity of her every household invaded—alternately the battle-ground of friend and foe—where was her "loyalty?"

Pinched for her daily food, subsidized to-day by the enemy and freely giving to-morrow to their own people—with farming utensils destroyed and barns bursting with grain burned in wanton deviltry—the people of the Valley still held to the allegiance to the flag they loved; and the last note of the southern bugle found as ready echo in their hearts as in the first days of the invasion—

"Their foes had found enchanted ground—

But not a knight asleep!"

In possibly one or two instances, the official reports of invading generals may have been in some slight degree erroneous; newspaper correspondents are not in every instance absolutely infallible; and perhaps it was more grateful to the tender sensibilities of the war party at the North to feel that there were hearts of brothers beating for them in the glare of burning rooftrees, or swelling with still more loyal fervor to the cry of the insulted wife!

But at this day—when the clap-trap of war has died away with the roll of its drums; when reason may in some sort take the place of partisan rage—not one honest and informed thinker in the North believes that "loyal" feeling ever had deep root anywhere among the southern masses; or that "loyal citizens" were as one in ten thousand!

Whole communities may have murmured; there may have been "schism in the council and robbery in the mart;" demagogues may have used wild comparisons and terrible threats about the Government; staunch and fearless newspapers may have boldly exposed its errors and mercilessly lashed its weak or unworthy members; some men may have skulked and dodged from their rightful places in the battle's front!

But, however misplaced the world's verdict may declare their zeal—however great the error for which they fought and suffered and died—no man to-day dare refuse to the southern people the need of their unparalleled constancy!

Even conquered—manacled and gagged by the blind and blood-thirsty faction in power—the southern people held on to the small fragments of rights left them, with brave tenacity. Willing to accept that arbitration to which they had submitted their cause, and ready to suffer with the bright memories of their past, rather than efface them by signing their own degradation.