The woman straightened herself and replied: “I would rather be the widow of a brave man than the wife of a coward.”
That was their parting, for the time was very short. Mayo’s bridge across the James River was already in flames when Goodsmith perilously galloped across it.
Three or four days later—for I never could keep tab on time at that period of the war—we went into the battle at Farmville. Goodsmith was in his place in command 233 of the piece. Just before fire opened he beckoned to me, and I rode up to hear what he had to say.
“I’m going to be killed, I think,” he said. “If I am, I want my wife to know that she is the widow of a—brave man. I want her to know that I did my duty to the last. And—and if you live long enough and this thing don’t kill Mary—I want you to tell the little one about his father.”
Goodsmith’s premonition of his death was one of many that were fulfilled during the war. A moment later a fearful struggle began. At the first fire George Goodsmith’s wife became the “widow of a brave man.” His body was heavy with lead.
His son, then unborn, is now a successful broker in a great city. There is nothing particularly knightly or heroic about him, for this is not a knightly or heroic age. But he takes very tender care of his mother—that “widow of a brave man.”
TWO MISSISSIPPI GIRLS HOLD YANKEES AT PISTOL POINT
[In Richmond Enquirer, July 22, 1862, page 3.]
A Memphis correspondent of the Appeal, in referring to the bad treatment of citizens by the Federal soldiers, related the following: