The Struggle in the Pine Woods when death struck at Southern hearts
From the close of the battle at Fredericksburg in December 1862, until the spring of 1863, General Burnside’s Army of the Potomac and General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia lay in camp; the first on the north and the second on the south bank of the Rappahannock. The little town, now fairly well repopulated by returned refugees, lay between the hosts. The Northern lines practically began at Falmouth, where General Daniel Butterfield had headquarters, and at which spot young Count Zeppelin and his assistants were busily arranging to send up a great Observation Balloon with a signalling outfit. Southward, Lee’s army stretched over thirty-three miles, from the fords of the Rappahannock, where the hard riding cavalrymen of Stuart and W. H. F. Lee watched, to Port Royal, Jackson’s right.
Burnside’s headquarters were the Phillips house and Chatham, (recently owned by the famous journalist, Mark Sullivan and where he and Mrs. Sullivan made their home for some years). Hooker, part of the time, was at the Phillips house, Lee in a tent, near Fredericksburg, while General Jackson had headquarters first in an outbuilding at Moss Neck, now the home of Count d’Adhemar and later in a tent. It was here that he became fond of little Farley Carbin, who came every day to perch on his knee and receive little presents from him. One day he had nothing to give her, and so, ere she left, he tore the gold braid from the new hat that was part of a handsome uniform just given him by General “Jeb” Stuart, and placed it like a garland on her pretty curly head. During the winter the General, who from the beginning of the war never slept at night outside his army’s camp, nor had an hour’s leave of absence, saw for the first time since he left Lexington, and for next to the last time on earth, his wife and little daughter, whom he so fervently loved. They spent some weeks near him at Moss Neck.
Christmas at the Front
Christmas Eve came. In the Southern camp back of the hills down the river road, up towards Banks Ford, out at Salem Church, and even in the town, hunger and cold were the lot of all. General Lee, wincing at the sufferings of his “tatterdermalion” forces, wrote and asked that the rations of his men be increased, but a doctor-inspector sent out by the often futile Confederate Government reported that the bacon ration of Lee’s army—one-half a pound a day, might be cut down, as “the men can be kept alive on this.” General Lee himself wrote that his soldiers were eating berries, leaves, roots and the bark of trees to “supplement the ration,” and although at this time the Confederate Government had a store of bacon and corn meal that would have fed all its armies a half year, Lee’s ragged soldiers starved throughout the winter. It is worthy of note here that when Lee’s starving army moved, foodless, toward that last day at Appomattox, they marched past 50,000 pounds of bacon alone, which the Confederate commissary, at Mr. Jefferson Davis’ orders, burned next day.
We spoke of Christmas Eve, when in the long lines of the two camps’ great fires beamed, voices rose in songs and hymns, and bands played. Late in the evening, when dusk had settled, a band near Brompton broke out defiantly into “Dixie,” and from the Washington Farm a big band roared out “The Battle Hymn.” There was a pause and then, almost simultaneously, they began “Home, Sweet Home,” and catching the time played it through together. When it was done, up from the camps of these boys who were to kill and be killed, who were to die in misery on many a sodden field, rose a wild cheer.
Hardly could two great armies ever before have lain for months’ within sight of each other as these two did in almost amicable relations. There was no firing; the cannon-crowned hills were silent. Drills and great reviews took place on either bank of the river and in the Confederate ranks there went on a great religious “revival” that swept through the organization. Along the banks of the river where pickets; patrolled by day, and their little fires flamed in the night, trading was active. From the Union bank would come the call softly:
“Johnny.”
“Yea, Yank.”
“Got any tobacco?”