Staunton did little sleeping that Saturday night. Jackson was gone—Ashby with him. There was not a Confederate vedette between the town and Banks at Harrisonburg—the latter was probably moving down the pike this very night, in the dark of the moon. Soldiers of Edward Johnson—tall Georgians and 44th Virginians—had been in town that Saturday, but they two were gone, suddenly recalled to their camp, seven miles west, on the Parkersburg road. Scouts had reported to Johnson that Milroy was concentrating at M'Dowell, twenty miles to the westward, and that Schenck, sent on by Frémont, had joined or would join him. Any hour they might move eastward on Staunton. Banks—Frémont—Milroy—three armies, forty thousand men—all converging on Staunton and its Home Guard, with the intent to make it even as Winchester! Staunton felt itself the mark of the gods, a mournful Rome, an endangered Athens, a tottering Carthage.
Sunday morning, clear and fine, had its church bells. The children went to Sunday School, where they learned of Goliath and the brook Hebron, and David and his sling. At church time the pews were well filled—chiefly old men and women and young boys. The singing was fervent, the prayers were yet more so. The people prayed very humbly and heartily for their Confederacy, for their President and his Cabinet, and for Congress, for their Capital, so endangered, for their armies and their generals, for every soldier who wore the grey, for their blocked ports, for New Orleans, fallen last week, for Norfolk that the authorities said must be abandoned, for Johnston and Magruder on the Peninsula—at that very hour, had they known it, in grips with Hancock at Williamsburg.
Benediction pronounced, the congregation came out of the churchyards in time to greet with delight, not unmixed with a sense of the pathos of it, certain just arrived reinforcements. Four companies of Virginia Military Institute cadets, who, their teachers at their head, had been marched down for the emergency from Lexington, thirty-eight miles away. Flushed, boyish, trig, grey and white uniformed, with shining muskets, seventeen years old at most, beautifully marching with their band and their colours, amidst plaudits, tears, laughter, flowers, thrown kisses, they came down the street, wheeled, and before the court house were received by the Home Guard, an organization of grey-headed men.
Sunday afternoon brought many rumours. Milroy would march from McDowell to-morrow—Banks was coming down the turnpike—Frémont hovering closer. Excited country people flocked into town. Farmers whose sons were with Jackson came for advice from leading citizens. Ought they to bring in the women and children?—no end of foreigners with the blue coats, and foreigners are rough customers! And stock? Better drive the cows up into the mountains and hide the horses? "Tom Watson says they're awful wanton,—take what they want and kill the rest, and no more think of paying!—Says, too, they're burning barns. What d'you think we'd better do, sir?" There were Dunkards in the Valley who refused to go to war, esteeming it a sin. Some of these were in town, coming in on horseback or in their white-covered wagons, and bringing wife or daughter. The men were long-bearded and venerable of aspect; the women had peaceful Quaker faces, framed by the prim close bonnet of their peculiar garb. These quiet folk, too, were anxious-eyed. They would not resist evil, but their homes and barns were dear to their hearts.
By rights the cadets should have been too leg weary for parade, but if Staunton (and the young ladies) wished to see how the V. M. I. did things, why, of course! In the rich afternoon light, band playing, Major Smith at their head, the newly-arrived Corps of Defence marched down the street toward a green field fit for evolutions. With it, on either sidewalk, went the town at large, specifically the supremely happy, small boy. The pretty girls were already in the field, seated, full skirted beneath the sweet locust trees.
V. M. I., Home Guard, and attendant throng neared the Virginia Central. A whistle shrieked down the line, shrieked with enormous vigour—"What's that? Train due?"—"No. Not due for an hour—always late then! Better halt until it pulls in. Can't imagine—"
The engine appeared, an old timer of the Virginia Central, excitedly puffing dark smoke, straining in, like a racer to the goal. Behind it cars and cars—cars with men atop! They were all in grey—they were all yelling—the first car had a flag, the battle-flag of the Confederacy, the dear red ground, and the blue Saint Andrew's Cross and the white stars. There were hundreds of men! hundreds and hundreds, companies, regiments, on the roof, on the platforms, half out of the windows, waving, shouting—no! singing—
| "We're the Stonewall. Zoom! Zoom! We're the openers of the ball. Zoom! Zoom! "Fix bayonets! Charge! Rip! Rip! N. P. Banks for our targe. Zip! Zip! "We wrote it on the way. Zoom! Zoom! Hope you like our little lay. Zoom! Zoom! For we didn't go to Richmond and we're coming home to stay!" |
Four days later, on Sitlington's Hill, on the Bull Pasture Mountain, thirty miles to the west of Staunton, a man sat at nightfall in the light of a great camp-fire and wrote a dispatch to his Government. There waited for it a swift rider—watching the stars while the general wrote, or the surgeons' lanterns, like fireflies, wandering up and down the long green slopes where the litter bearers lifted the wounded, friend and foe.