This was the tremendous event which was to change all our lives,—to give us poverty for riches, mutilation and wounds for strength and health, obscurity and degradation for honor and distinction, exile and loneliness for inherited homes and friends, pain and death for happiness and life.
Apprehension was felt lest the new President's inaugural might be the occasion of rioting, if not of violence. We Southerners were advised to send women and children out of the city. Hastily packing my personal and household belongings to be sent after me, I took my little boys, with their faithful nurse, Eliza Page, on board the steamer to Acquia Creek, and, standing on deck as long as I could see the dome of the Capitol, commenced my journey homeward. My husband remained behind, and kept his seat in Congress until Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. He described that mournful day to me,—differing so widely from the happy installation of Mr. Pierce; "o'er all there hung a shadow and a fear." Every one was oppressed by it, and no one more than the doomed President himself.
We were reunited a few weeks afterward at our father's house in Petersburg; and in a short time my young congressman had become my young colonel—and congressman as well, for as soon as Virginia seceded he was elected to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, and was commissioned colonel by Governor Letcher.
We bade adieu to the bright days,—the balls (sometimes three in one evening), the round of visits, the levees, the charming "at homes." The setting sun of such a day should pillow itself on golden clouds, bright harbingers of a morning of beauty and happiness. Alas, alas! "whom the gods destroy they first infatuate."
The fate of Virginia was decided April 15, when President Lincoln demanded troops for the subjugation of the seceding states of the South. The temper of Governor Letcher of Virginia was precisely in accord with the spirit that prompted the answer of Governor Magoffin of Kentucky to a similar call for state militia, "Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern states!" Until this call of the President, Virginia had been extremely averse from secession, and even though she deemed it within her rights to leave the Union, she did not wish to pledge herself to join the Confederate States of the South. Virginia was the Virginian's country. The common people were wont to speak of her as "The Old Mother,"—"the mother of us all," a mother so honored and loved that her brood of children must be noble and true.
Her sons had never forgotten her! She had fought nobly in the Revolution and had afterward surrendered, for the common good, her magnificent territory. Had she retained this vast dominion, she could now have dictated to all the other states. She gave it up from a pure spirit of patriotism,—that there might be the fraternity which could not exist without equality,—and in surrendering it she had reserved for herself the right to withdraw from the confederation whenever she should deem it expedient for her own welfare. There were leading spirits who thought the hour had come when she might demand her right. She was not on a plane with the other states of the Union. "Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts had expressly reserved the right to withdraw from the Union, and explicitly disclaimed the right or power to bind the hands of posterity by any form of government whatever."[5]
A strong party was the "Union Party," sternly resolved against secession, willing to run the risks of fighting within the Union for the rights of the state. This spirit was so strong that any hint of secession had been met with angry defiance. A Presbyterian clergyman had ventured, in his morning sermon, a hint that Virginia might need her sons for defence, when a gray-haired elder left the church, and turning at the door, shouted, "Traitor!" This was in Petersburg, near the birthplace of General Winfield Scott.
And still another party was the enthusiastic secession party, resolved upon resistance to coercion; the men who could believe nothing good of the North, should interests of that section conflict with those of the South; who cherished the bitterest resentments for all the sneers and insults in Congress; who, like the others, adored their own state and were ready and willing to die in her defence. Strange to say, this was the predominating spirit all through the country, in rural districts as well as in the small towns and the larger cities. It seemed to be born all at once in every breast as soon as Lincoln demanded the soldiers.
When it was disclosed that a majority of the Virginia Convention opposed taking the state out of the Union, the secessionists became greatly alarmed; for they knew that without the border states, of which Virginia was the leader, the cotton states would be speedily crushed. They were positively certain, however, that in the event of actual hostilities Virginia would unite with her Southern associates. Accordingly, it was determined to bring a popular pressure to bear upon the government at Montgomery to make an assault on Fort Sumter. To that end my husband went to Charleston, and delivered to an immense and enthusiastic audience a most impassioned and vehement speech, urging the Southern troops to "strike a blow," and assuring them that in case of conflict, Virginia would secede "within an hour by Shrewsbury clock." The blow was struck; Mr. Lincoln called upon Virginia for a quota of troops to subdue the rebellion, and the state immediately passed an ordinance of secession. Here, in substance, is my husband's Charleston speech, as reported at the time by the New York Tribune:—
"Mr. Roger A. Pryor, called by South Carolina papers the 'eloquent young tribune of the South,' was on Wednesday evening serenaded at Charleston. In response to the compliment he made some remarks, among which were the following: 'Gentlemen, for my part, if Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin were to abdicate their office to-morrow, and were to give to me a blank sheet of paper whereupon to write the conditions of reannexation to the Union, I would scorn the privilege of putting the terms upon paper. [Cheers.] And why? Because our grievance has not been with reference to the insufficiency of the guarantees, but the unutterable perfidy of the guarantors; and inasmuch as they would not fulfil the stipulations of the old Constitution, much less will they carry out the guarantees of a better Constitution looking to the interests of the South. Therefore, I invoke you to give no countenance to any idea of reconstruction. [A voice, "We don't intend to do anything of the kind.">[ It is the fear of that which is embarrassing us in Virginia, for all there say if we are reduced to the dilemma of an alternative, they will espouse the cause of the South against the interests of the Northern Confederacy. If you have any ideas of reconstruction, I pray you annihilate them. Give forth to the world that under no circumstances whatever will South Carolina stay in political association with the Northern states. I understand since I have been in Charleston that there is some little apprehension of Virginia in this great exigency. Now I am not speaking for Virginia officially; I wish to God I were, for I would put her out of the Union before twelve o'clock to-night. [Laughter.] But I bid you dismiss your apprehensions as to the old Mother of Presidents. Give the old lady time. [Laughter.] She cannot move with the agility of some of the younger daughters. She is a little rheumatic. Remember she must be pardoned for deferring somewhat to the exigencies of opposition in the Pan Handle of Virginia. Remember the personnel of the convention to whom she intrusted her destinies. But making these reservations, I assure you that just so certain as to-morrow's sun will rise upon us, just so certain will Virginia be a member of the Southern Confederation. We will put her in if you but strike a blow. [Cheers.] I do not say anything to produce an effect upon the military operations of your authorities, for I know no more about them than a spinster. I only repeat, if you wish Virginia to be with you, strike a blow!'"