General Lee, however, was not forgotten. On fine mornings quite a procession of little negroes, in every phase of raggedness, used to pass my door, each one bearing a present from the farmers' wives of buttermilk in a tin pail for General Lee. The army was threatened with scurvy, and buttermilk, hominy, and every vegetable that could be obtained was sent to the hospital.
Mr. Connolly interested himself in my boys' Latin studies. "I am going home," he said, "and tell the English women what I have seen here: two boys reading Cæsar while the shells are thundering, and their mother looking on without fear."
"I am too busy keeping the wolf from my door," I told him, "to concern myself with the thunderbolts."
The wolf was no longer at the door! He had entered and had taken up his abode at the fireside. Besides what I could earn with my needle, I had only my father's army ration to rely upon. My faithful John foraged right and left, and I had reason to doubt the wisdom of inquiring too closely as to the source of an occasional half-dozen eggs or small bag of corn. This last he would pound on a wooden block for hominy. Meal was greatly prized for the reason that wholesomer bread could be made of it than of wheaten flour,—meal was no longer procurable, but we were never altogether without flour. As I have said, we might occasionally purchase for five dollars the head of a bullock from the commissary, every other part of the animal being available for army rations. By self-denial on our own part we fondly hoped we could support our army and at last win our cause. We were not, at the time, fully aware of the true state of things in the army. Our men were so depleted from starvation that the most trifling wound would end fatally. Gangrene would supervene, and then nothing could be done to prevent death. Long before this time, at Vicksburg, Admiral Porter found that many a dead soldier's haversack yielded nothing but a handful of parched corn. We were now enduring a sterner siege. The month of January brought us sleet and storm. Our famine grew sterner every day. Seasons of bitter cold weather would find us without wood to burn, and we had no other fuel. I commenced cutting down the choice fruit trees in the grounds,—and General Wilcox managed to send me a load of rails from a fence, hitherto spared by the soldiers. Poor little Rose could yield only one cupful of milk, so small was her ration; but we never thought of turning the faithful animal into beef. The officers in my yard spared her something every day from the food of their horses.
The days were so dark and cheerless, the news from the armies at a distance so discouraging, it was hard to preserve a cheerful demeanor for the sake of the family. And now began the alarming tidings, every morning, of the desertions during the night. General Wilcox wondered how long his brigade would hold together at the rate of fifty desertions every twenty-four hours!
The common soldier had enlisted, not to establish the right of secession, not for love of the slave,—he had no slaves,—but simply to resist the invasion of the South by the North, simply to prevent subjugation. The soldier of the rank and file was not always intellectual or cultivated. He cared little for politics, less for slavery. He did care, however, for his own soil, his own little farm, his own humble home, and he was willing to fight to drive the invader from it. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not stimulate him in the least. The negro, free or slave, was of no consequence to him. His quarrel was a sectional one, and he fought for his section.
In any war the masses rarely trouble themselves about the merits of the quarrel. Their pugnacity and courage are aroused and stimulated by the enthusiasm of their comrades or by their own personal wrongs and perils.
Now, in January, 1865, the common soldier perceived that the cause was lost. He could read its doom in the famine around him, in the faces of his officers, in tidings from abroad. His wife and children were suffering. His duty was now to them; so he stole away in the darkness, and in infinite danger and difficulty found his way back to his own fireside. He deserted, but not to the enemy.
But what shall we say of the soldier who remained unflinching at his post knowing the cause was lost for which he was called to meet death? Heroism can attain no loftier height than this. Very few of the intelligent men of our army had the slightest hope, at the end, of our success. Some, like Mr. William C. Rives, had none at the beginning.
One night all these things weighed more heavily than usual upon me,—the picket firing, the famine, the military executions, the dear one "sick and in prison." I sighed audibly, and my son Theodorick, who slept near me, asked the cause, adding, "Why can you not sleep, dear mother?"