It seems they had had a little dance at the house, and a number of girls had ridden over to take part in it. When it was finished it was too late for them to go to their homes, so their hostess had doubled them up in her beds, and the men had quartered themselves in the barn and thus escaped capture.
We returned to the Hastings and made the best of our way back to our headquarters, with very little to say to the outside world concerning our raid. This episode, however, commencing in comedy, had a tragic ending for at least one of the actors.
Graves, the scout, was soon after sent on a special mission by the general on the other side of the river, not far from Jackson, within the Confederate lines. By an unfortunate chance he there met, face to face, one day, the young woman who had parleyed with us at her cousin’s house on White River. Graves was in Confederate uniform, which he often wore on these scouting expeditions, but the woman recognized him at once and denounced him to the military authorities. He was arrested, tried before a drum-head court martial, and was hanged within twelve hours!
CHAPTER XI
THE END OF THE STRUGGLE
On the 9th of the following April, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Virginia to General U. S. Grant, beneath the famous Appomattox apple-tree, and our long civil war was practically closed.
For months afterward, straggling bands of Confederates would come riding down to the banks of the river on the Mississippi and Arkansas coasts, and, waving flags of truce, ask for confirmation of the news they had heard, that “the old man had surrendered.” The gunboats had been supplied with official printed copies of the terms of capitulation accepted by Lee, and we gave these out freely.
It was an interesting sight to watch these war-worn veterans as, with varying emotions, they read the documents that proved to them that the cause for which they had fought so long and so well was irretrievably lost.
Most of them frankly accepted the situation at once; some seemed relieved that the disastrous struggle was at last over; all were surprised and gratified to find that they were to have Grant’s liberal terms,—permission to retain their side-arms, horses, and saddles.
So they went their way to their several plantations, saddened men, but with an evident determination to devote themselves in the future much more closely to their own private affairs and to give politics the go-by.