The officer was General McClellan!
The company was paroled, but was not exchanged for a year. This prolonged parole, they always thought, was due to General McClellan's influence in order to give them a whole year at college.
They all returned to the army after their exchange, but never as the "Hampden-Sidney Boys." They never forgot the little interview with the General. He won all their hearts.
Our own Hampden-Sidney boy, Henry Rice, soon afterward wrote from a hospital in Richmond that he was ill with fever. My uncle ordered him home, and I took the great family coach and Uncle Peter and went to the depot, fourteen miles away, to fetch him. He looked so long, that I doubted whether I could bestow him in the carriage; and as he was too good a soldier for me to suggest that he be "doubled up," I entered the carriage first, had his head and shoulders placed in my lap, then closed the door and swung his long legs out of the window!
My uncle was a fine specimen of a Christian gentleman—always courteous, always serene. I delighted in following him around the plantation on horseback. When he winnowed his wheat, Uncle Moses, standing like an emperor amid the sheaves, filled the hearts of my little boys with ecstasy by allowing them to ride the horses that turned the great wheel. Finally the wheat was packed in bags, and we stood on the bank of the river to see it piled into flat-bottomed boats on the way to market.
The next morning Moses appeared at the dining room door while we were at breakfast.
"Good morning, Moses," said my uncle. "I thought you were going with the wheat."
"Dar ain't no wheat," said the old man. "Hit's all at de bottom of the river."
"How did that happen?"
"We jest natchelly run agin a snag; when de boat turn over, hit pulled all de others down. 'Cose you know, Marster, dey was tied together, an' boat ain' got no eyes to see snags."