Now let us take a peep into the Virginia homes. What were the women doing? Ah, they were as busy as bees. These boys must be equipped not only with munitions of war, but each boy must take with him as many home comforts as could possibly be compressed into a bundle small enough to be carried. When he was at home it took a good-sized room to hold these things; now he must put them into his pocket or on his back, and it took all of a mother's skill to gather these things up into the least possible space, that her boy might have in the camp life all that a mother's love could give him. The Government would furnish the guns, the powder, the lead, the canteen and knapsack and haversack; the tinshop, the tincup; the shoemaker, the boots; the bookstore, the Bible (every boy must carry a Bible), but all the clothing, all the little necessary articles for comfort and health, must be manufactured in the home. Did you ever open the outside casing of one of these large patent beehives and see the bees at work inside? What rushing and pushing and confusion! Every bee, so far as human eye can see, seems busy. This beehive was but a replica of a Virginia home in the spring of 1861.
While these things were going on in the home the boys were drilling in the field, for they were now out of school. All were anxious to get their equipment, and to be the first to offer their services to the Governor.
Had these boys any conception of what they were rushing into? Suppose just at this time the curtain had been lifted, and they could have seen Bull Run and Seven Pines, Manassas and Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and The Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor and Appomattox? And if they could have seen a picture of their homes and fields as they appeared in 1865, would they have rushed on? Perhaps I can answer that question by pointing to the battlefield of New Market. In the fall of 1864, after nearly all the great battles had been fought, the young cadets from Lexington, Va., who had not yet been under fire, but with a full knowledge of what war meant, rushed into this battle like veterans and were mowed down as grain, their little bodies lying scattered over the field like sheaves of wheat.
"O war, thou hast thy fierce delight,
Thy gleams of joy intensely bright;
Such gleams as from thy polished shield
Fly dazzling o'er the battle-field."
Yes, war has its bright, attractive side, and those boys, as I knew them, would have looked at these moving-pictures as they came one after another into view, and then perhaps have turned pale; perhaps they would have shuddered and then cried out, "On with the dance; let joy be unconfined;" and it was literally on with the dance. School, as I have just said, was out, and every laddie had his lassie, and you may be sure they improved the time. It was drill through the day and dance through the night.
"No sleep till morn when youth and pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet."
The boys were happy, and "all went merry as a marriage bell," and well that it was so. When we looked into the hive we saw that the bees were busy, but as far as human eye could discover, there was no head; all was confusion; it was pushing and shoving and coming and going, and one might have asked the question, What are they doing? What does it all mean? If we could have seen farther into the hive we would have discovered that back of this busy throng sat the queen, and that these were her subjects, doing her bidding. She was sending out her little rogues to rob the flowers, and they were coming back richly laden with spoils. This was the raw material, and it was being worked up. When the season was over and the flowers were dead, and we drew from the hive the finished product, so perfect in all its parts and richly stored with sweetened treasures, we began to realize that there was a master mind behind it all. Do you suppose for a moment that when these young men and boys of Virginia, in fact from all over the South, who were rushing with such intense enthusiasm in the Confederate ranks, these fathers and mothers and sisters, who were equipping these youths with comforts without which they could not have endured the hardships of the camp, do you suppose they were but following the dictates of a few maddened, fire-eating fanatics, and that the whole would end in debt, death and desolation? If you had lived in 1861 you might have been excused for thinking so. But what do you think of it today, as the finished product begins to unfold itself to our view? Do you not believe there was a master mind behind it all, a King, and that these boys were but part of His royal subjects, doing His will? Suppose there had been no rush and no adequate army at Bull Run to meet McDowell and his forces as they came marching out from Washington with flying colors? Suppose the Confederates had been beaten at Bull Run and Richmond had fallen, and the war had ended then? What miserable creatures we poor devils of the South would have been! The world would have laughed at us. We would have lost all of our self-respect. A cycle of time could not have wiped out our self-contempt, and God might have said, "I cannot build up a great nation with material like this." The North would have had no Grand Army Veterans, and no deeds of heroism with which to keep alive the fire of patriotism in the hearts of their children. Spain in 1898 might have successfully defied us, and China and Japan have roamed at will over our land. No; the war was a necessity. It was costly, but was worth all that it cost. It has made of us a very great nation.
Now I shall go back and tell how it was done. I will do so by narrating my own experience, and as my experience, with but slight variation, was the experience of every boy who served in the Confederate army, the reader will have a fair idea of what the boy's life was during those four years.
The firing upon Fort Sumter was like throwing a stone into a hornet's nest. All the North was aroused. Troops came pouring into Washington by every train. A Massachusetts regiment, in passing through the streets of Baltimore, was mobbed, and the song "Maryland, My Maryland" was wafted out on the air.
Maryland boys, under cover of night, were crossing the Potomac to help drive the invaders back. They came singing "The Despot's Heel Is on Thy Shore." Rumors flew thick and fast. Now and then shots were exchanged between opposing pickets as they walked to and fro on the banks of the Potomac river that separated them. In fact, the curtain was up and the play had begun. Harper's Ferry, Leesburg and Manassas (see map)[1] became strategical points, and at each of these the Confederates were concentrating their forces.