It was in every way an ugly time. There was always considerable difficulty in obtaining a sufficient supply of artillery ammunition. The first trouble was in making it, and the second was in finding transportation for it. At no time did we have so large a reserve as was necessary. What was true of the artillery was true in a less degree of the infantry. There was even some delay on our march into Pennsylvania in consequence of the detention of a train of ordnance wagons, which did not arrive when expected. A brigade of infantry with a battery of artillery, was sent as an escort; for had that train been captured it would have been risking too much to advance farther. The terrible cannonade on the third day at Gettysburg exhausted the whole of the artillery ammunition in reserve. My recollection is, that there was no long range ammunition left except what was in the caissons and limber chests. Under such circumstances, and having lost so heavily in the attack on Cemetery Hill, General Lee determined to retreat to Virginia; but we lay one day at least on the field awaiting the attack which Meade did not venture to make. The Union forces had suffered severely; but they could stand the loss of men better than we could; and they had a right to claim Gettysburg as a decisive victory, for we had failed utterly in what we had undertaken.
The march back to the Potomac was dreary and miserable indeed. The rain fell in torrents. The clothing of the men was worn and tattered, and too many of them were without shoes. It was a heart-breaking business, and gloom settled down upon the army. The enemy’s cavalry made an attempt to cut us off at Williamsport, where the river was too high for fording, and they would have succeeded but for the gallantry of the wagoners and “Company Q” (the stragglers, and the disabled men with the trains), who had a free fight with them, and drove them back. We crossed the river on a pontoon bridge, leaving the cavalry in the entrenchments at Williamsport, and plodded our way back towards Winchester. Just about this time we received the news of the fall of Vicksburg. It needed only this to intensify the feeling that the star of the Confederacy was setting.
Passing from grave to gay, I may mention here that a sad trick was played on me by Captain Innes Randolph, an Engineer officer at our head-quarters. While we were at Bunker Hill, on the way to Winchester, he invited me to dine with him, saying that his mess had a very fine ’possum, which would be a novelty to me if I had not tasted that succulent dish. It was finely served, and merited the encomiums that Randolph lavished upon it. He was careful, besides, to tell me that I should find, as I did, that it tasted very much like roast sucking pig. Two or three years afterwards Randolph told me that this famous dish was not ’possum after all, but a sucking pig which he had bagged in the neighborhood, and which he had dubbed ’possum in order to spare me the pain of banqueting on a dish that I knew to be —— I was going to say “stolen,” but we called it “captured” in the army.
Resuming our march, we passed through Millwood and Chester Gap, where we had a slight skirmish with the enemy. One of our brigades charged across a field which was thick with blackberry bushes. The fruit was ripe, and as the men moved forward firing they would pick the blackberries and hastily eat them. No troops ever showed more indifference to danger, or took fighting more as a matter of course, than the veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia.
We went into camp at Culpepper Court House, and remained there a considerable time.
[XXII.]
The army rapidly recovered its tone, and we heard that one corps of the three was to be sent to Tennessee. The choice fell upon Longstreet, who took with him Hood’s and McLaws’ Divisions of Infantry and Alexander’s Battalion of Artillery. Pickett’s Division was left in Virginia to recruit. There was much for me to do preparing for the change of base, and I was permitted to remain a day or two in Richmond on the way to the West. I stayed in Richmond at the house of Mr. John H. Tyler, the father of Henry Tyler, who was one of the Ordnance Sergeants with us, and a most excellent fellow. From the first time that I went to Richmond after I made his acquaintance, Mr. and Mrs. Tyler made their house like a home to me; and until the end of the war, and long afterward, a chair was kept as regularly for me at their table as though I had been one of their sons. Their generous and unaffected kindness to me, year after year, was more than I could ever hope to repay. God bless them.
I was a day or two later than the corps in leaving Richmond; but the cars were crowded with our soldiers, and when we reached South Carolina we received attentions which had long ceased to be common in Virginia, where the passage of large bodies of troops was an every day occurrence. At Sumter, South Carolina, a number of ladies were waiting for us on the platform, armed with bouquets of flowers and with well filled baskets of cake, fruit and more substantial fare. There was an abundance, too, of lemonade for the dusty soldiers. But the good things were for the soldiers only. Some ladies in the car were evidently faint with long fasting, and a civilian who was with them asked a very pretty girl, who had a large dish of cake and sandwiches, to give him a piece of the cake for a lady in the car who really needed it. With the mercilessness which one woman usually shows to another, the fair young patriot told him jauntily that everything there was for the soldiers, and that ladies and civilians must look out for themselves. Our men were rather unaccustomed to so much kindness, in these days, but they enjoyed it thoroughly. At Augusta, and at Atlanta, also, we were most hospitably received.