{Footnote 1: It is unnecessary to say that this is not a jest or fancy on the part of Colonel Surrey. It is a statement of fact.—ED.}
{Illustration: THE TRENCHES.}
The sobriquet was gloomy, and there was something tragic in the employment of it; but it was applicable. Like most popular terms, it expressed the exact thought in the mind of every one—coined the situation into a phrase. Truly, they were “The Wretched,”—the soldiers of the army of Northern Virginia, in the fall and winter of 1864. They had a quarter of a pound of rancid “Nassau bacon”—from New England—for daily rations of meat. The handful of flour, or corn-meal, which they received, was musty. Coffee and sugar were doled out as a luxury, now and then only; and the microscopic ration became a jest to those who looked at it. A little “grease” and cornbread—the grease rancid, and the bread musty—these were the food of the army.
Their clothes, blankets, and shoes were no better—even worse. Only at long intervals could the Government issue new ones to them. Thus the army was in tatters. The old clothes hung on the men like scarecrows. Their gray jackets were in rags, and did not keep out the chilly wind sweeping over the frozen fields. Their old blankets were in shreds, and gave them little warmth when they wrapped themselves up in them, shivering in the long cold nights. The old shoes, patched and yawning, had served in many a march and battle—and now allowed the naked sole to touch the hard and frosty ground.
Happy the man with a new blanket! Proud the possessor of a whole roundabout! What millionaire or favorite child of fortune passes yonder—the owner of an unpatched pair of shoes?
Such were the rations and clothing of the army at that epoch;—rancid grease, musty meal, tattered jackets, and worn-out shoes. And these were the fortunate ones! Whole divisions often went without bread even, for two whole days. Thousands had no jackets, no blankets, and no shoes. Gaunt forms, in ragged old shirts and torn pantaloons only, clutched the musket. At night they huddled together for warmth by the fire in the trenches. When they charged, their naked feet left blood-marks on the abatis through which they went at the enemy.
That is not an exaggeration, reader. These facts are of record.
And that was a part only. It was not only famine and hardship which they underwent, but the incessant combats—and mortal tedium—of the trenches. Ah! the trenches! Those words summed up a whole volume of suffering. No longer fighting in open field; no longer winter-quarters, with power to range; no longer freedom, fresh air, healthful movement—the trenches!
Here, cooped up and hampered at every turn, they fought through all those long months of the dark autumn and winter of 1864. They were no longer men, but machines loading and firing the musket and the cannon. Burrowing in their holes, and subterranean covered-ways, they crouched in the darkness, rose at the sound of coming battle, manned the breastworks, or trained the cannon—day after day, week after week, month after month, they were there in the trenches at their grim work; and some fiat of Destiny seemed to have chained them there to battle forever! At midnight, as at noon, they were at their posts. In the darkness, dusky figures could be seen swinging the sponge-staff, swabbing the cannon, driving home the charge. In the starlight, the moonlight, or the gloom lit by the red glare, those figures, resembling phantoms, were seen marshalled behind the breastworks to repel the coming assault. Silence had fled from the trenches—the crash of musketry and the bellow of artillery had replaced it. That seemed never to cease. The men were rocked to sleep by it. They slept on in the dark trenches, though the mortar-shells rose, described their flaming curves, and, bursting, rained jagged fragments of iron upon them. And to many that was their last sleep. The iron tore them in their tattered blankets. They rose gasping, and streaming with blood. Then they staggered and fell; when you passed by, you saw a something lying on the ground, covered with the old blanket. It was one of “Lee’s Miserables,” killed last night by the mortars—and gone to answer, “Here!” before the Master.
The trenches!—ah! the trenches! Were you in them, reader? Thousands will tell you more of them than I can. There, an historic army was guarding the capital of an historic nation—the great nation of Virginia—and how they guarded it! In hunger, and cold, and nakedness, they guarded it still. In the bright days and the dark, they stood at their posts unmoved. In the black night-watches as by day—toward morning, as at evening—they stood, clutching the musket, peering out into the pitchy darkness; or lay, dozing around the grim cannon, in the embrasures. Hunger, and cold, and wounds, and the whispering voice of Despair, had no effect on them. The mortal tedium left them patient. When you saw the gaunt faces contract, and tears flow, it was because they had received some letter, saying that their wives and children were starving. Many could not endure that. It made them forget all. Torn with anguish, and unable to obtain furloughs for a day even, they went home without leave—and civilians called them deserters. Could such men be shot—men who had fought like heroes, and only committed this breach of discipline that they might feed their starving children? And, after all, it was not desertion that chiefly reduced Lee’s strength. It was battle which cut down the army—wounds and exposure which thinned its ranks. But thin as they were, and ever growing thinner, the old veterans who remained by the flag of such glorious memories, were as defiant in this dark winter of 1864, as they had been in the summer days of 1862 and 1863.