When our soldiers returned we were always deeply interested in hearing them recount, when we met them at social gatherings at some neighbor’s house, the straits to which they were reduced toward the last days of the war, and on the home march after the surrender. A brother-in-law of mine, who became bare as to pants, and had no way of getting any in his then distressed state, had recourse to his army blanket, and having no scissors with which to cut the blanket, he used his pocket-knife for that purpose. He sharpened a stick with his knife to make holes in each half of the blanket, which he tied up separately with the raveling of the blanket: making each leg of the pants separately. They were tied around his waist with a string. He managed to get on for quite a while with his blanket pants, but met a comrade more fortunate than the rest of the soldiers of our cause, in that, beside having a passable pair of pants, he had rolled up under his arm a half worn osnaburg pair of pants, also. These my brother-in-law bought of him for four hundred dollars. He wore them home after the surrender, and that same half-worn, four-hundred-dollar pair of osnaburg pants did service for some time on the farm after the war.
When one of my brothers, who was taken prisoner at Appomattox during the last days of fighting in Virginia, and who was sent to Point Lookout in Maryland, was paroled with many others, and sent by steamer to Savannah, Georgia, he and they had to “foot it” the greater part of the way to Columbus, Georgia, where most of them lived, inasmuch as the Federal army had torn up the railroads and burnt all the bridges. They were all more or less lacking as to clothing, but one of the comrade’s clothing was in such bad plight that he could scarcely make a decent appearance on the road, much less appear in his own settlement. As they were nearing Columbus, they stopped and advised together as how to overcome the deficiency in their comrade’s wardrobe. One of the soldiers happened to have a silver dime (a thing quite rare in those days), which he gave his needy comrade to buy a pair of pants with. They had the good luck to get a half worn pair of jeans pants at a small farm-house in the piney-woods, for the ten cents, and these the soldier wore home.
Five or six years after the war, these two comrades, the one who had given the silver dime and the one who had bought the pants with it, met in Columbus, Georgia. They had been together in camp, in prison, and on that long walk home from Savannah to Columbus, through the grand stretches of piney-woods, covered with the green luxuriant wire-grass of southwestern Georgia, and they recognized each other immediately. One drew from his pocket a crisp five-dollar bill and handed it to the giver of the silver piece, saying, “Take this, old fellow, in grateful acknowledgment for that silver dime I bought those pants with; for I might almost say, ‘I was naked and ye clothed me.’”
XIV.
Just as soon as the railroads could be repaired and bridges builded anew, I made haste to get to my father’s again to find how all had gone with them while our foes were marching through Georgia. I had tried for three months or more to get a letter or message of some sort to them, as they had to me, but all communication for the time being was completely broken up. I had spent many sad hours thinking of those at home, and was almost afraid to hear from them; but as soon as a train ran to Columbus, I ventured forth.
I had traveled over the same road time and again, on my way to and from home, but now as I beheld the ruins of grim-visaged war, whichever way I cast my eyes, I must confess to a somewhat rebellious and bitter feeling. There are moments in the experience of every human being when the heart overflows like the great Egyptian river, and cannot be restrained. “O thou great God of Israel!” I cried, “why hast thou permitted this dire calamity to befall us? Why is it that our homes are so despoiled?” And I marveled not at the captive Hebrews’ mournful plaint, as by the rivers of Babylon they hung their harps on the willows.
As the train slowed up on the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee River, I looked eagerly over to the opposite bank, where the home of my father was situated. For a few seconds my pulse must have ceased to throb, as I beheld the ruins of the city of Columbus. With others I took my seat in an omnibus and was driven to the river’s edge, there to await the coming of the ferry-boat which had been built since all the bridges on the river had been burned by the hostile army. The scene seemed so unreal that like Abou Hassan, the caliph of fiction, I was thinking of biting my fingers to make sure I was really awake. Had I not had my coin in my hand to pay the ferryman, I should have imagined we were all shades, flitting about on the shore of the Styx!
In musing silence, I could but say, O swift-flowing Chattahoochee, is it thus I behold thee? Thou flowest in almost pristine loveliness. Where are your huge bridges, that linked the green hills of Alabama with the beautiful city of cottages and flowers? Where are the cotton mills and machine-shops that lined your banks,—mills which from early morn until the sun set sent forth an incessant hum? Is it thus that I behold thee, city of my fathers?