Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty

by John William De Forest

But this was not all which prevented him from going forth to battle. The cry of his mother's heart was, "My son, how can I let thee go?" She was an abolitionist, as was almost every body of her set in New Boston; she was an enthusiastic patriot, as was almost every one in the north during that sublime summer of popular enthusiasm; but this war—oh, this strange, ferocious war! was horrible. Her sensitively affectionate nature, blinded by veils of womanly tenderness, folded in habits of life-long peace, could not see the hard, inevitable necessity of the contest. Earnestly as she sympathised with its loyal and humane objects, she was not logical enough or not firm enough to sympathise with the iron thing itself. Lapped in sweet influences of peace all her loving life, why must she be called to death amid the clamor of murderous contests? For her health was failing; a painful and fatal disease had fastened its clutches on her; another year's course she did not hope to run. And if the hateful struggle must go on, if it must torment her last few days with its agitations and horrors, so much the more did she need her only child. Other women's sons—yes, if there was no help for it—but not hers—might put on the panoply of strife, and disappear from anxiously following eyes into the smoke and flame of battle. Edward told her every day the warlike news of the journals, the grand and stern putting on of the harness, the gigantic plans for crushing the nation's foes. She could take no interest in such tidings but that of aversion. He read to her in a voice which thrilled like swellings of martial music, Tennyson's Charge of the Six Hundred. She listened to the clarion-toned words with distaste and almost with horror.

Well, the summer wore away, that summer of sombre preparation and preluding skirmishes, whose scattering musketry and thin cannonade faintly prophecied the orchestral thunders of Gettysburg and the Wilderness, and whose few dead preceded like skirmishers the massive columns which for years should firmly follow them into the dark valley. Its forereaching shadows fell upon many homes far away from the battlefield, and chilled to death many sensitive natures. Old persons and invalids sank into the grave that season under the oppression of its straining suspense and preliminary horror; and among these victims, whom no man has counted and whom few have thought of collectively, was the mother of Colburne.

One September afternoon she sent for Edward. The Doctor had gone; his labors were over. The clergyman had gone; neither was he longer needed. There was no one in the room but the nurse, the dying mother and the only child. The change had been expected for days, and Edward had thought that he was prepared for it; had indeed marvelled and been shocked at himself because he could look forward to it with such seeming composure; for, reason with his heart and his conscience as he might, he could not feel a fitting dread and anguish. In the common phrase of humanity, when numbed by unusual sorrow, he could not realize it. But now, as, leaning over the footboard and looking steadfastly upon his mother's face, he saw that the final hour had come, a sickness of heart fell upon him, and a trembling as if his soul were being torn asunder. Yet neither wept; the Puritans and the children of the Puritans do not weep easily; they are taught, not to utter, but to hide their emotions. The nurse perceived no signs of unusual feeling, except that the face of the strong man became suddenly as pale as that of the dying woman, and that to him this was an hour of anguish, while to her it was one of unspeakable joy. The mother knew her son too well not to see, even with those failing eyes, into the depths of his sorrow.

"Don't be grieved for me, Edward," she said. "I am sustained by the faith of the promises. I am about to return from the place whence I came. I am re-entering with peace and with confidence into a blessed eternity."

He came to the side of the bed, sat down on it and took her hand without speaking.

"You will follow me some day," she went on. "You will follow me to the place where I shall be, at the right hand of the Lord. I have prayed for it often;—I was praying for it a moment ago; and, my child, my prayer will be granted. Oh, I have been so fearful for you; but I am fearful no longer."

He made no answer except to press her hand while she paused to draw a few short and wearisome breaths.

"I can bear to part with you now," she resumed. "I could not bear it till the Lord granted me this full assurance that we shall meet again. I leave you in his hands. I make no conditions with him. I have been sweetly brought to give you altogether up to one who loves you better than I know how to love you. He gave me my love, and he has kept more than he gave. Perhaps I have been selfish, Edward, to hold on to you as I have. You have felt it your duty to go into the army, and perhaps I have been selfish to prevent you. Now you are free; to-morrow I shall not be here. If you still see that to be your duty, go; and the Lord go with you, darling, and give you strength and courage. I do not ask him to spare you, but only to guide you here below, and restore you to me above.——And he will do it, Edward, for his own sake. I am full of confidence; the promises are sure. For you and for myself, I rejoice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory."

While thus speaking, or rather whispering, she had put one arm around his neck. As he kissed her wasted cheek and let fall his first tears on it, she drew her hand across his face with a caressing tenderness, and smiling, fell back softly on her pillow, closing her eyes as calmly as if to sleep. A few broken words, a murmuring of unutterable, unearthly, infinite happiness, echoes as it were of greetings far away with welcoming angels, were her last utterances. To the young man, who still held her hand and now and then kissed her cheek, she seemed to slumber, although her breathing gradually sank so low that he could not perceive it. But after a long time the nurse came to the bedside, bent over it, looked, listened, and said, "She is gone!"

He was free; she was not there.