Our regiment was drawn up in the square of the little town, and as we came forth into the glorious sunlight, the stentorian voice of the Colonel called them into column of fours. Staff officers, gray with dust from their all-night service, were riding madly along the curb, while at the rear of our men, just debouching from one of the side streets, appeared the solid front of a division of infantry. We had barely time to swing into the saddles of the two horses awaiting us, and ride swiftly to the head of our command, when the short, stern orders rolled along the motionless line of troopers, and the long, silent column swung out to the northward, the feet of the horses raising a thick cloud of red dust which fairly enveloped us in its choking folds.
With the ardor of young manhood I looked forward to the coming battle, when I knew the mighty armies of North and South would once again contest for the fertile Shenandoah. It was to be American pitted against American, a struggle ever worthy of the gods. Slowly I rode back down the files of my men, marking their alignment and accoutrements with practised eye, smiling grimly as I noted their eager faces, war-worn and bronzed by exposure, yet reanimated by hope of active service. Boys half of them appeared to be, yet I knew them as fire-tested veterans of many hard-fought fields, lads who would die without a murmur beneath their beloved Southern flag, as undaunted in hour of peril as were the Old Guard at Waterloo. In spite of frayed and ragged uniforms, tarnished, battered facings, dingy, flapping hats, they looked stanch and true, soldiers every inch of them, and I marked with the jealous pride of command their evenly closed ranks and upright carriage. How like some giant machine they moved—horses and men—in trained and disciplined power!
As I watched them thus, I thought again of those many other faces who once rode as these men did now, but who had died for duty even as these also might yet be called upon to die. One hundred and three strong, gay in bright new uniforms, with unstained banner kissing the breeze above our proud young heads, we rode hopefully forth from Charlottesville scarce three years before, untried, undisciplined, unknown, to place our lives willingly upon the sacred altar of our native State. What speechless years of horror those had been; what history we had written with our naked steel; what scenes of suffering and death lay along that bloody path we travelled! To-day, down the same red road, our eyes still set grimly to the northward, our flag a torn and ragged remnant, barely forty men wore the “D” between the crossed sabres on their slouched brown hats, in spite of all recruiting. The cheer in my heart was for the living; the tear in my eye was for the dead.
“Colgate,” I said gravely, as I ranged up beside him at the rear of the troop, “the men look exceedingly well, and do not appear to have suffered greatly because of short rations.”
“Oh, the lads are always in fine fettle when they expect a fight,” he answered, his own eyes dancing as he swept them over that straight line of backs in his front. “They'll scrap the better for being a bit hungry,—it makes them savage. Beats all, Captain, what foolish notions some of those people on the other side have of us Southerners. They seem to think we are entirely different from themselves; yet I reckon it would puzzle any recruiting officer up yonder to show a finer lot of fighting men than those fellows ahead there. 'Food for powder?' Why, there isn't a lad among them unfit for command.”
In spite of the indignation in his tone, his voice had the lazy, Southern drawl, and somehow, as he spoke, I thought of my fair prisoner in the mountains, and of how disdainfully she treated me on the occasion of our first meeting. I sincerely hoped her conception of the Southerner had received partial revision since.
“Well, yes,” I answered thoughtfully. “Doubtless those who have never visited the South, and who form their conception of us from Northern newspapers and abolition orators, get hold of our worst characteristics, and judge accordingly. I sometimes feel that the whole trouble between the sections is merely such a misunderstanding on a large scale, and that had we only intermingled more freely, many of our differences would have disappeared. In this we are fully as wrong as those of the other side—narrowness of thought and life has been the secret force behind this war. Partisans upon both sides have ignored the fact that we are all of one blood and one history. But in this respect the tendency of the conflict has been to broaden out the actual participants, and teach them mutual respect. I imagine women are at present more apt to retain this prejudice, women whose loved ones are in arms against us.”
“I was thinking about a woman when I spoke,” he explained gravely. “She was certainly a beauty, and nursed me in the hospital at Baltimore. Oh, you needn't smile; she was married,—her husband was on Sheridan's staff; I saw him once, a big fellow with a black moustache. Of course we all looked alike lying there in those cots, and she very naturally supposed I was one of their wounded, until after the fever left me, and I became able to converse a bit, and then you ought to have seen the expression in her eyes when I confessed the truth. Actually she cried out, 'You a Rebel?' and gazed at me as if I had been some dangerous wild animal. Truly I believe she nearly looked upon herself as a traitress because she had nursed me and saved my life. Yet she was wonderfully tender-hearted and kind. You see she wasn't a regular army nurse, and I was probably the first Confederate soldier she had ever come in close contact with.”
“Did you become friends?”
“Most certainly; at least in a way, for she undertook my conversion. Frankly, if it hadn't been for that inconvenient husband in the path, I am not so certain you wouldn't have lost a lieutenant. The fact that the lady was already Mrs. Brennan alone saved me.”