Under the Stars and Bars / Or, Memories of Four Years Service with the Oglethorpes, of Augusta, Georgia

by Walter A. Clark

A RIDE WITH BELLE BOYD, THE CONFEDERATE SPY.

On a page of the writer's scrap book, underneath a roll of the Oglethorpes and in friendly contact with the parole granted me at Johnston's surrender, is a slip of paper pocket-worn, and yellow with age, which reads as follows: "Winchester, Va., Mar. 1, 1862. Pass W. A. Clark and brother today on Valley Road. By order Maj. Gen. T. J. Jackson. M. M. Sibert, Captain and Provost Marshall." Thereby hangs the following tale: On my return to Winchester, after the tramp to Hancock, I had secured lodgings at the home of a Mrs. Polk, where for nearly four weeks, I lay with my pulses throbbing with fever. From that sick bed two incidents come back vividly today over the waste of years that have intervened. My hostess, whose kindness I shall never forget, had a daughter, Nellie, who, as a rustic friend of mine would say, was something of a "musicianer." Patriotic songs were all the rage and one evening as I lay on my bed restless from fever and trying to sleep, she began in the parlor below to sing the "Bonnie Blue Flag." The copy used had, I think, eleven verses, and in my nervous condition the entertainment seemed endless. Just as I had congratulated myself on its conclusion, a young gentleman called and insisted on a repetition of the program with his vocal accompaniment, and she was kind enough to comply, without skipping a verse. I can not recall a musical entertainment that my condition forced me to appreciate less though cheerfully acquitting her of any malice aforethought in the matter.

As I lay on my bed during all those weeks and looked on the white-mantled hills that environed the town I remember distinctly how intensely my parched lips craved the cooling touch of the pure white snow. But like Tantalus, I was forced day after day to gaze on a luxury I could not enjoy, for the medical science of that day said nay. Tempora mutantur, and doctors change with them.

Before I had recovered sufficiently to leave my bed Stonewall Jackson decided to evacuate Winchester and ordered all the convalescent sick to be moved. Having no desire to complete my recovery in a Federal prison my brother secured the pass above referred to and seats in the hack to Strasburg. There were nine passengers and among them was Belle Boyd, the Confederate Spy. Her home was in Martinsburg and her father a Major in the Confederate army. Her mother had forced her to leave home on the approach of the Federal army. On its first visit to Martinsburg she had remained there. Having a soldier friend in the hospital and uncertain as to the treatment he would receive from the enemy, she had taken two of her father's servants to the hospital with a stretcher, had him placed upon it and walked by his side through the streets to her home with a loaded pistol in her hand to protect him from insult or injury at their hands. A few days later a Federal soldier attempted to place a Union flag over the door of her home and she persuaded him to desist by the use of a leaden argument from her pistol. Another attempt to remove a Confederate flag that waved over the mantel in her parlor met with a similar counter-irritant, and she was molested no further. Fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, neither of her shots hit their mark. In view of these facts her mother thought it prudent to send her away before the Union forces occupied the town again, and she was en route to the home of a relative in Front Royal. To protect myself from the chilly air during the stage ride I was wearing a woollen visor knitted for my brother by Miss Lucy Meredith, of Winchester, and covering my head and throat, leaving only my eyes exposed. With a woman's instinct she saw that I was too weak to sit up and arranged to give me possession of an entire seat, improvised a pillow of a red scarf she was wearing on her shoulders and in every way possible contributed to my ease and comfort. On reaching Strasburg she aided my brother in getting me into the hotel, arranged a lounge in the parlor for me, brought my supper and entertained me during the meal, refusing to eat anything herself until I had finished. After supper she sat by me and talked to me for an hour, and then, thinking I was weary, she moved the lamp in a corner of the room shading it from my eyes with her scarf, so that I might sleep. After all these years my memory retains some incidents of that conversation. I remember that she told me something of her child life; that when a little girl she had been a member of Dave Strother's party in his tour through Virginia, which he described so charmingly in the early numbers of Harper's Magazine over the nom de plume of "Porte Crayon;" that Gen. Lander, who commanded the Federal troops, that we had driven from Bath into Maryland, was an old sweetheart of hers; that Dave Strother was a member of his staff, and she intended to cut his acquaintance.

I remember that she said further that she had been hurt by a remark made to her that day by a soldier about the seeming boldness of Virginia girls; that soldiers mistook kindness and the expression of a desire to serve them for boldness; that she intended coming to Georgia after the war to get married. She left on the next train for her destination, and I saw her no more. She had impressed me as one of kindest and gentlest of women and yet a year or two later she forded the Potomac alone in a storm at midnight to carry important information to her brother in Stuart's cavalry. Perhaps with woman as well as man

"The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring."

If necessity had required it I believe she would have led the charge of Pickett's Division at Gettysburg without a tremor.

In the years that followed she became a noted spy, going into the Federal lines and securing information, which she sent or carried to the Confederate army. She was finally arrested and sent to Washington as a prisoner. It was reported that she married the Federal officer, to whose oversight she had been entrusted and that he joined the Confederate army. Some of her methods as a spy subjected her to harsh and hostile criticism, but in grateful memory of her kindness to one, who was only a private soldier, without rank or social prestige, one who had no claim upon her service save that in an humble way he had tried to serve the cause she loved and in that service had grown sick and helpless, her name has never passed my lips except in tones of fervent gratitude and reverent respect.