The gray-beards were taking down their old guns and swords, and forming home-battalions, to fight the enemy to the death when his cavalry came to lay waste the country.
The women were weaving homespun, knitting socks, nursing the wounded, and praying. They had never ceased to pray, nor had they lost the heart of hope. The croakers believed in success, and their patron saint was Mammon. The women believed in the justice of the cause, and in God. In 1861, they had cheered the soldiers, and waved their handkerchiefs, and rained bouquets. In 1862, they had sent brave words of encouragement, and bade their sons, and brothers, and husbands fight to the end. In 1863, they repeated that—sent the laggards back to the ranks—and when they were not sewing, or nursing the sick, were praying. O women of Virginia, and the great South to her farthest limits, there is nothing in all history that surpasses your grand record! You hoped, in the dark days as in the bright;—when bearded men shrunk, you fronted the storm unmoved! Always you hoped, and endured, and prayed for the land. Had the rest done their duty like the women and the army, the red-cross flag would be floating to-day in triumph!
The army—that was unshaken. Gettysburg had not broken its strength, nor affected its stout manhood. Lee’s old soldiers believed in him after Gettysburg, in the winter of ‘63, as they had believed in him after Fredericksburg, in the winter of ‘62. They had confidence still in their great leader, and in their cause. The wide gaps in their ranks did not dismay them; want of food did not discourage them; hunger, hardships, nakedness, defeat,—they had borne these in the past, they were bearing them still, they were ready to bear them in the future. War did not fright them—though the coming conflict was plainly going to be more bitter than any before. The great array of Grant on the north bank of the Rapidan did not depress them—had they not met and defeated at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville a force as great, and could not they do it again?
So they lay in their camps on the Rapidan, in that cold winter of 1863—a little army of ragged and hungry men, with gaunt faces, wasted forms, shoeless feet; with nothing to encourage them but the cause, past victories, and Lee’s presence. That was much; what was enough, however, was the blood in their veins; the inspiration of the great race of fighting men from whom they derived their origin. Does any one laugh at that? The winner will—but the truth remains.
That ragged and famished army came of a fighting race. It was starving and dying, but it was going to fight to the last.
When the cannon began to roar in May, 1864, these gaunt veterans were in line, with ragged coats, but burnished bayonets. When Lee, the gray cavalier, rode along their lines, the woods thundered with a cheer which said, “Ready!”
XVI. — HAMMER AND RAPIER.
I pass to the great collision of armies in the first days of May.