It will always remain a matter of astonishment that the great and prosperous State of Pennsylvania did not make a more generous appropriation. The tax necessary for the purpose would scarcely have been felt by any one, while it would have been but a just indemnification to those who had suffered in a cause which the whole loyal North was bound to uphold. Families enjoying a small competency had been at once reduced to poverty; men doing a modest and comfortable business were unable to resume it. Those who could obtain credit before could now obtain none. Insurance was void. Householders were unable to rebuild, and at the time of my visit many were still living in shanties. Nearly all the rebuilding that was in progress was done on borrowed capital.
But there is no loss without gain. Chambersburg will in the end be greatly benefited by the fire, inasmuch as the old two-story buildings, of which the town was originally composed, are being replaced by three-story houses, much finer and more commodious. So let it be with our country; fearful as our loss has been, we shall build better anew.
CHAPTER IV.
SOUTH MOUNTAIN.
The next day I took the cars for Hagerstown; passed Sunday in that slow and ancient burg; and early on Monday morning set out by stage for Boonsboro’.
Our course lay down the valley of the Antietam. We crossed the stream at Funk’s Town, a little over two miles from Hagerstown. “Stop at two miles and you won’t be here,” said the driver. The morning was fine; the air fresh and inspiring; and the fact that the country through which we passed had been fought over repeatedly during the war, added interest to the ride. A fertile valley: on each side were fields of tall and stalwart corn. Lusty milkweeds stood by the fences; the driver called them “wild cotton.” And here the Jamestown-weed, with its pointed leaves, and flower resembling the bell of a morning-glory, became abundant. “That’s jimson,” said the driver; and he proceeded to extol its medicinal qualities. “Makes a good sa’v’. Rub that over a hoss, and I bet ye no fly lights on him!”
At Boonsboro’ some time was consumed in finding a conveyance and a guide to take me over the battle-fields. At length I encountered Lewy Smith, light and jaunty Lewy Smith, with his light and jaunty covered carryall,—whom I would recommend to travellers. I engaged him for the afternoon of that day and for the day following; and immediately after dinner he was at the tavern-door, snapping his whip.
The traveller’s most pleasant experience of Boonsboro’ is leaving it. The town contains about nine hundred inhabitants; and the wonder is how so many human souls can rest content to live in such a mouldy, lonesome place. But once outside of it, you find Nature as busy in making the world beautiful, as man inside has been in making it as ugly as possible. A country village carries with it the idea of something pleasant, shady, green; therefore do not think of Boonsboro’ as a country village. Leave it behind you as soon as convenient, and turn your face to the mountain.
That is the famed South Mountain, where the prologue to the Antietam fight was enacted. “I never heard it called South Mountain till after the battle,” said Lewy Smith. “It was always the Blue Ridge with us.” He had never heard of Turner’s Gap, or Frog Gap, either. “We always called it just the gap in the mountain.” The road to the gap runs southeast from Boonsboro’, then turns easterly up the hills. It stretched long and pleasant before us. “The night before the battle,” said Lewy Smith, “this road was lined with Rebels, I tell ye! Both sides were covered with them about as thick as they could lie. It was a great sight to see so many soldiers; and it didn’t seem to us there were men enough in the Union army to fight them. We thought the Rebels had got possession of Maryland, sure. They just went into our stores and took what they pleased, and paid in Confederate money; they had come to stay, they said, and their money would be better than ours in a little while. Some who got plenty of it did well; for when the Rebels slaughtered a drove of cattle, they would sell the hides and take their own currency for pay.”
The mountain rose before us, leopard-colored, spotted with sun and cloud. A few mean log houses were scattered along the road, near the summit of which we came to the Mountain House, a place of summer resort. Here again man had done his best to defeat the aim of Nature; the house and everything about it looked dreary and forbidding, while all around lay the beautiful mountain in its wild forest-shades.
Lewy left his horse at the stable, and we entered the woods, pursuing a mountain-road which runs south along the crest. A tramp of twenty minutes brought us to the scene of General Reno’s brilliant achievement and heroic death. A rude stone set up in the field, near a spreading chestnut, marks the spot where he fell. A few rods north of this, running east and west, is the mountain-road, with a stone wall on each side of it, where the Rebels fought furiously, until driven out from their defences by our boys coming up through the woods. The few wayside trees are riddled with bullets. A little higher up the crest is a log house, and a well in which fifty-seven dead Rebels are buried. “The owner of the house was offered a dollar a head for burying them. The easiest way he could do was to pitch them into the well. But he don’t like to own up to having done it now.”