“Yes, sir; I was in the army. I enlisted fo’ three months, and they kept me in fou’ years,” he said, as men speak of deep and unforgiven wrongs. “The wa’ was the cruelest thing, and the wust thing fo’ the South that could have been. What do you think they’ll do with Jeff Davis?”
“I don’t know,” I replied; “what do you think?”
“I know what I’d like to do with him: I’d hang him as quick as I would a mad dog! Him and about fo’ty others: old Buchanan along with ’em.”
“Why, what has Buchanan done?”
“He was in cohoot with ’em, and as bad as the baddest. If we had had an honest President in his place, thar never’d have been wa’.”
From the day I entered Virginia it was a matter of continual astonishment to me to hear the common people express views similar to those, and denounce the Davis despotism. They were all the more bitter against it because it had deceived them with lies and false promises so long. Throughout the loyal North, the feeling against the secession leaders was naturally strong; but it was mild as candle-light compared with the fierce furnace-heat of hatred which I found kindled in many a Southern breast.
The passage of the river was delightful, in the fading sunset light. On a bluff opposite Belle Island was Hollywood, the fashionable cemetery of Richmond, green-wooded, and beautiful at that hour in its cool and tranquil tints. As we glided down the river, and I took my last view of the Island, I thought how often our sick and weary soldiers there must have cast longing eyes across at that lovely hill, and wished themselves quietly laid away in its still shades. Nor could I help thinking of the good people of Richmond, the Christian citizens of Richmond, taking their pleasant walks and drives to that verdant height, and looking down on the camp of prisoners dying from exposure and starvation under their very eyes. How did these good people, these Christian citizens, feel about it, I wonder?
Avoiding the currents sweeping towards the Falls, my man pushed into the smooth waters of a dam that fed a race, and landed me close under the walls of his own house.
“This yer is Brown’s Island,” he told me. “You’ve heerd of the laboratory, whar they made ammunition fo’ the army?” He showed me the deserted buildings, and described an explosion which took place there, blowing up the works, and killing, scalding, and maiming many of the operatives.
Passing over a bridge to the main land, and crossing the canal which winds along the river-bank, I was hastening towards the city, when I met, emerging from the sombre ruins of the burnt district, a man who resembled more a wild creature than a human being. His hands, arms, and face were blackened with cinders, his clothes hung upon him in tatters, and the expression of his countenance was fierce and haggard. He looked so much like a brigand that I was not a little startled when, with a sweeping gesture of his long lean arm and claw-like fingers, he clutched my shoulder.