A WOMAN’S HAIR
AFTER the battle of Manassas or Bull Run, fought July 21, 1861, Stuart made his headquarters in the neighborhood of Fairfax Court House, with pickets at Falls Church, Vienna, and other points ten miles or so to the front.
Suddenly, with a strong force, he occupied Mason’s and Munson’s hills, almost under the guns of the Washington fortifications, and very much farther in advance than outposts generally are.
It has since been a puzzle to many military critics to guess why he did this unusual thing. Perhaps this story may throw some light on the problem.
Our company was on picket at Falls Church. Half a dozen of us kept watch at the edge of the woods on the top of the hill, while the rest of the boys took their ease in rear.
It was in that early stage of the war when to shoot at men seemed to many civilians a species of sport—a sort of pursuit of big game.
This Falls Church post was a favorite rendezvous for this species of sportsmen from Washington. Our position was an exposed one. Men not in the army, and even women, liked to ride out from Washington, crouch behind a pile of logs, and “take a crack” at the rebels.
Now and then they made a widow and some orphans, and since this was merely a matter of diversion and entertainment for them, with no other principle involved, it seemed almost too bad.
Finally Charlie Irving got “tired,” as he put it, of “playing partridge for those people to shoot at.” Charlie Irving was our captain. He was a man who never said much, but always meant a good deal.
The next morning he made the detail for post duty at the front upon a new principle. We had been nine days on picket, and it had been his custom to detail the men for post duty in front in alphabetical order. This morning he selected us without reference to our “turns,” and with sole reference to the speed and endurance of our horses.
“Now, boys,” he said, with that easy familiarity which made us call him “Charlie,” because we had all gone hunting together as comrades before the war; “now, boys, we’re going to capture that picket post to-day, and if I find a civilian among them, I’m going to hang him to that chestnut tree for murder.”
We knew that he would do what he said, and we were all in hearty sympathy with his purpose.
About ten o’clock in the morning the sharp-shooting began. Our captain instantly divided us into two squads, and without military formalities said: “Now, boys, ride to the right and left and corner ’em.”
That was the only command we received, but we obeyed it with a will. The two sharp-shooting citizens who were there that morning escaped on good horses, but we captured the pickets.
Among them was a woman—a Juno in appearance, with a wealth of raven black hair twisted carelessly into a loose knot under the jockey cap she wore.
She was mounted on a superb chestnut mare, and she knew how to ride.
She might easily have escaped, and at one time seemed about to do so, but at the critical moment she seemed to lose her head and so fell into our hands.
When we brought her to Charlie Irving she was all smiles and graciousness, and Charlie was all blushes.
“You’d hang me to a tree, if I were a man, I suppose,” she said. “And serve me right, too. As I’m only a woman, you’d better send me to General Stuart, instead.”
This seemed so obviously the right way out of it that Charlie ordered Ham Seay and me to escort her to Stuart’s headquarters, which were under a tree some miles in the rear.
When we got there Stuart seemed to recognize the young woman. Or perhaps it was only his habitual and constitutional gallantry that made him come forward with every manifestation of welcome, and himself help her off her horse, taking her by the waist for that purpose.
Ham Seay and I being mere privates were ordered to another tree. But we could not help seeing that cordial relations were quickly established between our commander and this young woman. We saw her presently take down her magnificent back hair and remove from it some papers. They were not “curl papers,” or that sort of stuffing which women call “rats.” Stuart was a very gallant man, and he received the papers with much fervor. He spread them out carefully on the ground, and seemed to be reading what was written or drawn upon them.
Then he talked long and earnestly with the young woman and seemed to be coming to some definite sort of understanding with her.
Then she dined with him on some fried salt pork and some hopelessly indigestible fried paste which we called bread.
Then he mounted her on her mare again and summoned Ham Seay and me.
“Escort this young lady back to Captain Irving,” he said. “Tell him to send her to the Federal lines under flag of truce, with the message that she was inadvertently captured in a picket charge, and that as General Stuart does not make war on women or children, he begs to return her to her home and friends.”
We did all this.
The next day, Stuart with a strong force advanced to Mason’s and Munson’s hills.
From there we could clearly see a certain house in Washington. It had many windows, and each had a dark Holland shade.
When we stood guard we were ordered to observe minutely and report accurately the slidings up and down of those Holland shades.
We never knew what three shades up, two half up, and five down might signify. But we had to report it, nevertheless, and Stuart seemed from that time to have an almost preternatural advance perception of the enemy’s movements.
That young woman certainly had a superb shock of hair.
A MIDNIGHT CRIME
THE CRIMINAL’S OWN ACCOUNT OF IT
AS there is no law that can now reach my crime, I may as well tell all about it.
Soon after we sat down before Petersburg, in the summer of 1864, I was sent on a little military mission accompanied by Johnny Garrett, into the land of desolation—that part of Northern Virginia which lay sometimes in the possession of one army, sometimes in possession of the other, but was mostly left in nobody’s possession at all, and open to raids from both sides.
That region had been swept by fire and sword for nearly four years. It had been tramped over by both armies, and latterly had been subjected to that process of destruction which Sheridan had in mind when he said of another region that “the crow that flies over it must carry his rations with him.”
How anybody managed to live at all in such a region has always been a puzzle, but a few people did.
We had slept, Johnny Garrett and I, by the side of a fence the night before, and without breakfast we had been riding all day. Late in the afternoon we made up our minds to go for supper and lodging to a great country house which I had frequently visited as a guest in the days of its abundance. As we rode through the plantation, decay manifested itself on every hand. There was a small, straggling crop in process of growth, but sadly ill attended. There were no animals in sight except five sheep that we saw grazing on a hillside.
As we turned the corner of the woodland the mansion came into view. Only its walls were left standing. Fire had destroyed the rest. At the gate we met an old negro serving-man, whom I had known in the palmy days as Uncle Isham.
When I had seen him last he was in livery. As I saw him now he was in rags.
Some eager, hurried inquiries as to the family brought out the fact that the mistress of the mansion with her two grown daughters was living in one of the negro quarters in rear of the burned house, and that he, alone, remained as a servant on the plantation.
“Dey took all de res’ off No’th, an’ dey tried to take Isham, too. But Isham he slip’ de bridle one night, an’ he came back heah to look after ole missus an’ de girls. So heah I is, an’ heah Ise gwine to stay.”
We did not remain to hear Isham’s account of his adventures, but hurried on to find out the condition of things with the family. There were but two rooms—one below, and the other above stairs—in the hut in which they were living. Yet the proud woman who was thus reduced showed no shame of her poverty, but gloried in it rather, as the old soldier glories in the scars received in his country’s service.
She welcomed us with as warm a show of hospitality as she had ever made in the old days of lavish entertainment.
After our first inquiries concerning their welfare, she said to us laughingly: “I wouldn’t keep you to-night, but would send you on to a better place, if I knew any better in the neighborhood. As it is, you’ll have to sleep under the trees for lack of room; but you boys are rather used to that. As for supper, I can give you some corn-bread and some sorghum molasses. The bread won’t be very good, because our supply of salt has run out, and of course as the cows have all been killed I can’t give you butter. But there’s enough bread and sorghum, anyhow.”
“How long since you had meat?” I asked.
“About three weeks,” she replied. “That is to say, since the last big raiding party came by.”
“Have you no pigs left?”
“No, we haven’t a living animal of any kind.”
“Whose sheep are those I saw as I rode up?”
“They belong to a neighbor,” she answered. “They’re what’s left of a large flock. When the raiders were here those five sheep ran into the bushes and escaped. But even if they were ours, you know, we couldn’t kill one.”
I remembered then that a law of the Confederacy made it a crime severely punishable to slaughter a sheep, even one’s own. They were wanted by the government for their wool to clothe the army.
Waiving all this aside as a matter of small moment, our hostess pressed us again to dismount for supper.
At this point Johnny Garrett lied:
“Oh, we can’t stay to supper, and the fact is we couldn’t eat if we did. It’s only half an hour since we ate the best part of a ham out of our haversacks. And besides we’ve got to get to Gordonsville to-night.”
I am afraid I was accessory after the fact to the telling of that lie. At least I didn’t contradict it.
We pushed on a little way till we had got out of sight of the house. Then we stopped by mutual consent under a tree and dismounted.
“The grass is pretty good,” I said, “and we’ll let the horses crop it while we wait for it to get good and dark.” It did not seem necessary to mention what we were to wait for darkness for.
“Yes,” said Johnny, “there are the sheep, and I’ll keep an eye on them.”
When it was thoroughly dark we committed a double crime.
It was sheep stealing as well as a violation of the other law, but we were not in a mood to consider such things just then. Under cover of the darkness we killed the fattest sheep in the lot, dressed it as well as we could, and then by the light of some matches I wrote a little note on a leaf from my memorandum book. It said simply this:—
“There is no law to forbid some hungry women to eat a sheep that somebody else has killed in violation of law.”
Pinning this to the carcass we carried the mutton to the house, and hung it to a tree where it would be seen with the dawn.
We felt as well about this thing as if we had been engaged in some highly moral act.