Who went up in a chariot of fire;
Safe now in the promised land.”
And the chorus,—
“By and by we’ll go home to meet him,”
would peal forth again in loud-shouting strains. I hushed my breath to hear the mellow strains of that song, and seemed to see the mantle of our lost cause descending.
It was about this time that a letter came from my father, saying one of the soldier brothers was at home on a twenty-one days’ furlough. This was the first’ home-coming since the commencement of hostilities in 1861. My presence was again desired at home, to meet with the long-absent brother. But by some irregularity of the mail, it so happened that my letter had been delayed, and I saw by the postscript and date that my brother would be leaving for the front again before I could possibly reach my father’s house. Yet a great yearning came over me, on reading his kindly letter, to see my father again. Soon I was homeward bound once more, disappointed and pained at not being in time to see my brother. I gave little heed to the landscape spread out as the train swept onward; but my heart gave a glad bound when the waters of the Chattahoochee river, sparkling in the bright sunlight, greeted my eyes, for now I should soon be at my father’s house.
Here and in all the surrounding neighborhood, as far as I could see, the same vigorous efforts were put forth to feed and clothe the soldiers of our Confederacy, as well as the home ones, that I had witnessed in southern Alabama. There was the same self-sacrifice, without a thought of murmuring for the luxuries enjoyed before the war. Yet with the nicest economy, and the most studied husbandry,—however generously the earth might yield of grain, fruits, and vegetables,—the South was awakening to the painful reality that the produce grown on our narrowing space of Confederate soil was inadequate for the sustenance of those at home, our soldiers, and the Northern soldiers whom we held as prisoners. We were not only encompassed by land and water, but the Confederacy was divided in twain by the gunboats of the Federals on the Mississippi River. With nearly all the soldiers from west of the Mississippi River in the eastern half of our Confederacy, we had no communication whatever from beyond the great “Father of Waters.” All aid and succor as regarded provisions and clothes for our army was at an end from beyond the Mississippi. We were caged up like a besieged city. There was neither egress nor ingress for men or means. Our soldiers from the west had to share what little provisions were grown in our circumscribed limit. They also shared what clothing could be manufactured in the more and more straitened condition of the South.
If a soldier from the west drew a furlough he could not get to his home. Those who had relatives or friends east of the Mississippi River would spend their leave of absence with them. Sometimes the soldier from the west would give the furlough he drew to some friend he had made on this side; or perhaps it would be that the soldier of our side of the river would send his comrade of the west to his people and home with a letter of introduction.