The month of August in the besieged city passed like a dream of terror. The weather was intensely hot and dry, varied by storms of thunder and lightning—when the very heavens seemed in league with the thunderbolts of the enemy. Our region was not shelled continuously. One shot from "our own gun," as we learned to call it, would be fired as if to let us know our places; this challenge would be answered from one of our batteries, and the two would thunder away for five or six hours. We always sought shelter in Mr. Campbell's bomb-proof cellar at such times, and the negroes would run to their own "bum-proofs," as they termed the cells hollowed under the hill.
Agnes wrote from Richmond, August 26, 1864:—
"You dear, obstinate little woman! What did I tell you? I implored you to get away while you could, and now you are waiting placidly for General Grant to blow you up. That awful crater! Do the officers around you consider it honorable warfare to dig and mine under a man and blow him up while he is asleep—before he has time to get his musket? I always thought an open field and a fair fight, with the enemy in front at equal chances, was the American idea of honest, manly warfare. To my mind this is the most awful thing that could be imagined. There is a strong feeling among the people I meet that the hour has come when we should consider the lives of the few men left to us. Why let the enemy wipe us off the face of the earth? Should this feeling grow, nothing but a great victory can stop it. Don't you remember what Mr. Hunter said to us in Washington? 'You may sooner check with your bare hand the torrent of Niagara than stop this tidal wave of secession.' I am for a tidal wave of peace—and I am not alone. Meanwhile we are slowly starving to death. Here, in Richmond, if we can afford to give $11 for a pound of bacon, $10 for a small dish of green corn, and $10 for a watermelon, we can have a dinner of three courses for four persons. Hampton's cavalry passed through town last week, amid great excitement. Every man as he trotted by was cutting and eating a watermelon, and throwing the rinds on the heads of the little negro boys who followed in crowds on either side of the street. You wouldn't have dreamed of war—such shouting and laughing from everybody. The contrasts we constantly see look like insanity in our people. The President likes to call attention to the fact that we have no beggars on our streets, as evidence that things are not yet desperate with us. He forgets our bread riot which occurred such a little while ago. That pale, thin woman with the wan smile haunts me. Ah! these are the people who suffer the consequence of all that talk about slavery in the territories you and I used to hear in the House and Senate Chamber. Somebody, somewhere, is mightily to blame for all this business, but it isn't you nor I, nor yet the women who did not really deserve to have Governor Letcher send the mayor to read the Riot Act to them. They were only hungry, and so a thousand of them loaded some carts with bread for their children. You are not to suppose I am heartless because I run on in this irrelevant fashion. The truth is, I am so shocked and disturbed I am hysterical. It is all so awful.
"Your scared-to-death
"Agnes."
My husband sent me a note by his courier, one hot August day, to tell me that his old aide, Captain Whitner, having been wounded, was now discharged from the hospital, but was much too weak for service in the trenches, so he had obtained for the captain leave of absence for two weeks, and had sent him to me to be built up. On the moment the sick man appeared in an ambulance. I was glad to see him, but a gaunt spectre arose before my imagination and sternly suggested: "Built up, forsooth! And pray, what are you to build him up with? You can no more make a man without food than the Israelites could make bricks without straw."
However, the captain had brought a ration of bacon and meal, with promise of more to come. I bethought me of the flourishing garden of my neighbor, whose onions and beets were daily gathered for her own family. I wrote a very pathetic appeal for my wounded Confederate soldier, now threatened with scurvy for want of fresh food, and I fully expected she would be moved by my eloquence and her own patriotism to grant me a daily portion from her garden. She answered that she would agree to send me a dish of vegetables fourteen days for fourteen dollars. Gold was then selling at the rate of twenty-five dollars in our paper currency for one dollar in gold, so the dish was not a very costly one. But when it appeared it was a very small dish indeed,—two beets or four onions. Homœopathic as were the remedial agents, they helped to cure the captain.
One morning, late in August, Eliza came early to my bedside. I started up in alarm.
"Shelling again?" I asked her.
"Worse," said Eliza.
"Tell me, tell me quick—is the General—"