After walking a few yards, not hearing any footsteps near me, and fearing Barringer had lost his way, I turned back and found this gallant leader of brave men, who had won his stars in a score of battles, “like Niobe, all tears,” audibly sobbing and terribly overcome.
He took my arm, and as we walked slowly home he gave voice to as hearty expressions of love for the great Lincoln as have been since uttered by his most devoted and life-long friends.
A few years afterwards I met the General socially in Philadelphia, and we went over this episode in his life, as I have narrated it, and then, for the third time, his eyes filled as he told me how he had wept and wept at “the deep damnation of his taking off.”
The “bull pen,” of which I have already spoken, was, in these early days of April, so densely packed with prisoners of war that the overflow were permitted to sleep outside the enclosure. Poor fellows, there was little danger of their running away. Such a mass of hungry, unshaven, ragged, and forlorn humanity was never seen before, and will, I hope, never again be seen in our country. No wonder they looked tattered and torn, fighting for days in the trenches, then driven from pillar to post and hunted down till they fell by the road-side from sheer exhaustion; then captured and hurried to City Point, several miles distant, through rain and mud, with no shelter, no food, no any thing, save the little which the Union soldier in mercy and pity could spare from his own scanty supply. In the “bull pen,” however, they had plenty of hot real coffee (so long a stranger to their lips), and good fresh bread and meat, and after a day’s rest they were sent by the boat-load to the North. My husband did his best to provide comfortable quarters for the Confederate officers, and brought Generals Ewell, Barringer, and Custis Lee to our own little house. The two former dined with us upon their arrival, but, if I remember rightly, the latter went right on to Washington. It gave me great pleasure to have these distinguished men as my guests, rebels though they were, and I was glad to have it in my power to show them that there was a disposition to welcome the prodigals’ return with the fatted calf. Being quite a cordon bleu myself, it was not difficult to present an attractive menu, consisting of superb raw oysters, green-turtle soup, a delicious James-River shad, and a fillet of army beef. A bottle of whiskey and another of brandy, and a cup of good black coffee constituted the dinner which, General Barringer was good enough to say, and said it as if he meant it, was the first square meal he had eaten in two years. The General was a charming gentleman, appreciative, tolerant, and resigned. General Ewell was irritable, disappointed, and disposed to be out of humor with every thing and everybody; yet who could blame him in that hour of his culminating misfortunes. The loss of a leg in battle appealed to my sympathy, the loss of station, fortune, and the attainment of his ambition made me pardon his irascibility. Among other things, he could not understand how a Southern woman could espouse the Northern cause simply because she had married a Northerner, but I forced him into a more cheerful mood, I think, when I told him that I had only followed the example of many other Southrons,—I had “gone with my State,” mine being the state of matrimony.
General Grant at this time was in pursuit of Lee’s retreating army, and my husband’s brigade was once more ordered on the march, while I, with my sick child, remained at City Point. It was not until April 14th that I considered my daughter well enough to travel, and then, without waiting for my husband’s return from Appomattox, I started for Philadelphia, taking a steamboat as far as Baltimore. The war was over; my husband was alive and well; my child was recovering; my life was brimful of gladness. With such happy thoughts and in such a mood I reached Baltimore, when I gradually became sensible of an abnormal condition of things, which indicated some fresh outbreak, and I became alarmed. People were hurrying through the streets, groups of men and women were engaged in eager discussion; something had happened. There were no cheers, no music; it was gloom! There had been a calamity. What was it? “The President has been murdered,” whispered my orderly, who had gone for information, “and nobody can go North to-day.” Oh, horror! I had learned to love Mr. Lincoln then, as younger people to-day love to read about him. I had seen him weep, had heard him laugh, had been gladdened by his wit and saddened by his pathos. I had looked up to him as one inspired. How glad I was afterwards to know that his untimely death was the act of a mad fanatic, and that my people who had fought a desperate but unreasonable war had no hand in it.
When I could collect my thoughts I gathered up my sick child and the little comforts I had brought with me to nourish and sustain her on the journey, and took myself to the nearest hotel, where I remained until the authorities permitted me to continue on my way the next morning. Later I was among the sad and silent multitude who witnessed the passing of the funeral cortége up Broad Street, in Philadelphia. There were many joys in my life then which made me the happiest of women, but I could willingly have sacrificed some of them to bring that best of the very best back again into life.
In the middle of May, 1865, I was once more in camp, this time at Arlington Heights, Va., and witnessed the magnificent reviews of Meade’s and Sherman’s armies on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington. I shall never forget the dashing Custer, his sombrero, his flowing red scarf, his long blond hair,—the beau ideal of a cavalry leader, as his charger reared and pranced and became almost unmanageable; nor am I likely to forget that, for a better view, I was lifted above the crowd by the strong arms of my escort (I was then quite petite), and that at that moment the photograph fiend was on hand and secured the lasting evidence of the fact that I was in the arms of a stalwart man in broad daylight.
The continuous columns of these martial hosts, their victorious cheers, their well-worn uniforms, ribboned battle-flags, fifes, drums, and bands, seemed to give utterance to but a single thought, and that was: “This is the Northern army returning from its victory over the South”; but to-day, as I look back over twenty years of peace and prosperity, I feel that there was victory for the South in the defeat. It cost the lives of many dear ones, but this was the only loss. We are to-day one people—we might have been a dozen.
During this four-years’ drama I was sometimes in the audience, often behind the scenes, and once or twice upon the stage itself. When the curtain fell at last I did not appreciate the awful grandeur and moment of the events, but now I realize that they stamped their impression upon my young life. They strengthened me for undertakings for which I otherwise would have lacked nerve and endurance, and they gave me a fonder longing for the comforts of Peace than is entertained by those who have never heard the wail of woful War.
THE END.