"I'm glad to see you both."
We passed on, my heart fluttering terribly; but, once, in the crowd again, I felt that I had passed another danger. We lingered in the crowd for a short time; saw all who came and left in that time, and not being able longer to stand the storm, while waiting for a glimpse of Capitola, I turned away from the crowd into the darkness of a stormy night and wandered out to camp, so much absorbed in my own thoughts that I lost all care for my appearance—trudging blindly along through the darkness into the mud and slush until I reached camp, tired, where I quickly tumbled into the bunk and was quickly lost to all consciousness of the day's doing.
CHAPTER XX.
ONE SUNDAY IN RICHMOND—JEFF DAVIS' AND GENERAL LEE'S HOMES AND CHURCH—RECOGNIZED AT LIBBY PRISON—VISIT TO TEXAS CAMP—A "DIFFICULTY" RENEWED—THRILLING EXPERIENCE—A NIGHT IN RICHMOND WITH TEXAS BOYS.
From the subsequent questionings of our people North about how things looked in Richmond during the war, I gathered that they all entertained erroneous impressions about the conditions of affairs in that city at that time. I have been trying to describe them from a Unionist's standpoint. Though it had been in a state of siege at the time of which I write, and was apparently cut off from the balance of the world for a year, yet there was absolutely nothing in the general appearance of things in the streets to indicate that the city suffered in the least from the blockade.
It may be said that Richmond was very much like Washington at the same period, the principal difference being that the soldiers who thronged the streets and filled the saloons and houses of one city were in a gray uniform, while those in the other wore a blue. There was probably more of the blue boys loose in Washington than of the gray in Richmond, because the Confederate officials and, particularly, Provost-Marshal-General Winder, of Maryland, was able, with the despotic power granted him by the War Office, to prevent a great deal of straggling.
The weather was now settled into the regular Virginia winter, alternating into rain, snow, slush and sleet. Under these conditions it was impossible for either army to move, and, as a consequence, the city was soon filled full of officers from Manassas, who were on leave from their command, or of soldiers on furlough, or straggling deserters. No one will attempt to claim that the city at this time was orderly; in fact, the oldest citizens are ready to assert, even now, that, during the early winter months, the respectable portion of the community were in truth besieged in their own houses. It was scarcely safe for a lady to venture alone in certain portions of the town during the daytime, while at night the straggling furloughed officers and soldiers, under such conditions, on the same equality, had entire possession in the streets and certain parts of the city.
There was apparently no scarcity of money—such as it was—and there was not, that I can recall, any limit of the supply of whisky and all the other little attachments that the soldiers either in gray or in blue will have.
Main street, 1886, looked to me very much as it did in 1861 and 1862, except, perhaps, that on the occasion of my last visit the city presented to my eye somewhat the appearance of Sunday, in its general orderly and quiet bearing, as compared with the noisy, boisterous crowds that we saw on the streets daily in 1861 and 1862.