Two weeks later I was in my room, resting after a hard day, when a haggard officer, covered with mud and dust, entered. It was my husband.
"My men are all dead," he said, with anguish, and, falling across the bed, he gave vent to the passionate grief of his heart.
Thousands of Confederate soldiers were killed, thousands wounded.
Richmond was saved!
General McClellan and General Lee both realized that their men needed rest. My husband was allowed a few days' respite from duty. Almost without pause he had fought the battles of Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Mechanicsville, Gaines's Mill, and Frazier's Farm. He had won his promotion early, but he had lost the loved commander who appreciated him, had seen old schoolmates and friends fall by his side,—the dear fellow, George Loyal Gordon, who had been his best man at our wedding,—old college comrades, valued old neighbors.
Opposed to him in battle, then and after, were men who in after years avowed themselves his warm friends,—General Hancock, General Slocum, General Butterfield, General Sickles, General Fitz-John Porter, General McClellan, and General Grant. They had fought loyally under opposing banners, and from time to time, as the war went on, one and another had been defeated; but over all, and through all, their allegiance had been given to a banner that has never surrendered,—the standard of the universal brotherhood of all true men.
CHAPTER XIV
THE WINTER OF 1861
The privilege of nursing in the hospital had been bought at a dear price, for it was decided positively that I was to surrender, for the present, my dream of following the army. I was remanded to the mountains, and at Charlottesville I had news of the events that rapidly followed the Seven Days' Battles around Richmond.
McClellan had been relieved of his command, and the defenceless women and children of Northern Virginia were handed over to the tender mercies of General Pope. McClellan wrote, August 8: "I will strike square in the teeth of all the infamous orders of Mr. John Pope, and forbid all pillaging and stealing, and take the highest Christian ground for the conduct of the war. I will not permit this army to degenerate into a mob of thieves, nor will I return these men of mine to their families as a set of wicked and demoralized robbers."
General Pope had announced his purpose (which he carried out) to subsist his army on our country, and to hang or shoot any non-combating citizens who might fall into his hands, in retaliation for the killing of his soldiers. This was one of "the infamous orders of Mr. John Pope" to which General McClellan alluded; but infamy to some eyes is fame to others. Pope superseded McClellan; but he was himself superseded after his defeat at the hands of Lee, and McClellan reinstated.