Army of Northern Virginia!—old soldiers of Lee, who fought beside your captain until your frames were wasted, and you were truly his “wretched” ones—you are greater to me in your wretchedness, more splendid in your rags, than the Old Guard of Napoleon, or the three hundred of Thermopylae! Neither famine, nor nakedness, nor suffering, could break your spirit. You were tattered and half-starved; your forms, were warworn; but you still had faith in Lee, and the great cause which you bore aloft on the points of your bayonets. You did not shrink in the last hour the hour of supreme trial. You meant to follow Lee to the last. If you ever doubted the result, you had resolved, at least, on one thing—to clutch the musket, to the end, and die in harness!
Is that extravagance—and is this picture of the great army of Northern Virginia overdrawn? Did they or did they not fight to the end? Answer! Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, Charles City, every spot around Petersburg where they closed in death-grapple with the swarming enemy! Answer! winter of ‘64,—bleak spring of ‘65,—terrible days of the great retreat when hunted down and driven to bay like wild animals, they fought from Five Forks to Appomattox Court-House—fought staggering, and starving, and falling—but defiant to the last!
Bearded men were seen crying on the ninth of April, 1865. But it was surrender which wrung their hearts, and brought tears to the grim faces.
Grant’s cannon had only made “Lee’s Miserables” cheer and laugh.
IV. — THE BLANDFORD RUINS.
These memories are not cheerful. Let us pass to scenes more sunny—and there were many in that depressing epoch. The cloud was dark—but in spite of General Grant, the sun would shine sometimes!
After reading the Examiner’s comments, I mounted my horse and rode into Petersburg, where I spent a pleasant hour in conversation with a friend, Captain Max. Do you laugh still, my dear Max? Health and happiness attend you and yours, my hearty!
As I got into the saddle again, the enemy began a brisk shelling. The shell skimmed the roofs of the houses, with an unearthly scream; and one struck a chimney which it hurled down with a tremendous crash. In spite of all, however, the streets were filled with young women, who continued to walk quietly, or to trip along laughing and careless, to buy a riband or some trifle at the stores.{1} That seemed singular then, and seems more singular to-day. But there is nothing like being accustomed to any thing—and the shelling had now “lost its interest,” and troubled nobody.