They told of the stillness after the army had gone, and of the sense of ruin which was upon them with their cotton destroyed, and all their stores for the winter pillaged, and their live stock driven off. An old dame told me how the only live animal in her neighborhood was a broken-down army horse left behind to die by the enemy. The folk were starving, but a woman resuscitated the horse and went off with him to try and bring food to the village. She walked by his side for fear he would drop down dead—and first of all she sought a little corn for the horse, for “Old Yank” as she called him. Many a weary mile they walked together, only to find that “Sherman’s bummers” had been there before her. She slept the night in a Negro hut (a thing no white woman would dream of doing now) and the Negroes fed her and gave corn to the horse and sent her on her way. Out of several old buggies and derelict wheels a “contrapshun” had been rigged out and tied to the old horse, but it was not until beyond Covington and Conyers that a place was found which the foragers had missed, and the strange buggy was loaded for home.
I spent a night in Conyers in beautiful country, and was away early next morning on the Covington road. The road was shadowy and sanguine. The heavy gossamer mist which closed out the view of the hills clothed me also with white rime. Warm, listless airs stole through the mist. On my right, away over to the heaviness of the mist curtain, was a sea of dark green spotted and flecked with white; on my left was the wretched single track of the railway to Covington rebuilt on the old levels where it was destroyed in ‘64. Wooden carts full to the rim with picked cotton rolled clumsily along the red ruts of the road, and jolly-looking Negroes sprawled on the top as on broad, old-fashioned cottage feather beds. And ever and anon there overtook me the inevitable “speed merchants,” hooting and growling and racketing from one side to the other of the broken way. I sat down on a stone in an old wayside cemetery, sun-bleached and yet hoary also with mist. Such places have a strange fascination, and I knew some of those who lay beneath the turf had lain unwitting also when the army went by. What old-fashioned names—Sophronias and Simeons and Claramonds and Nancies! On most of the graves was the gate of heaven and a crown, and on some were inscribed virtues, while on one was written “He belonged to the Baptist Church.” The oldest stones had all fallen and been washed over with red mud. Among the old were graves of slaves, I was told, but since the war no Black has been buried with the White.
An old Negro in cotton rags, grizzled white hair on his black, weather-beaten face, told me where the colored folk lay buried half a mile away, where he, too, would lay down his old back and rest from cotton picking at last. “But on de day ob Judgment dere be no two camps,” said he. “No, sir ... only black and white souls.” He remembered the joy night and the jubilation after the army passed through, and how all the colored boys danced and sang to be free, and then the disillusion and the famine and the misery that followed. The old fellow was a cotton picker, and had a large cotton bag like a pillow case slung from his shoulders—an antediluvian piece of Adamite material with only God and cotton and massa and the Bible for his world.
While sitting on this wayside stone I have the feeling that Sherman’s army has marched past me. It has gone over the hill and out of view. It has marched away to Milledgeville and Millen and Ebenezer and Savannah, and not stopped there. It has gone on and on till it begins marching into the earth itself. For all that are left of Sherman’s warriors are stepping inward into the quietness of earth to-day.
The mist lifts a little, and the hot sun streams through. The crickets, content that it is no longer twilight, have ceased chirping, and exquisite butterflies, like living flames, are on the wing. It is a beautiful part of the way, and where there is a sunken, disused road by the side of the new one I take it for preference. For probably it was along that the soldiers went. Now young pines are springing from their footsteps in the sand.
Here no cars have ever sped, and for a long while no foot has trod. The surface is smooth and unfooted like the seashore when the tide has ebbed away, and bright flowers greet the wanderer from unfarmed banks and gullies. So to Almon, where an old gaffer told me how he and some farm lads with shotguns had determined they would “get” Sherman when he came riding past with his staff, and how they hid behind a bush, where the Methodist church is now standing, and let fly. Sherman they missed, but hit someone else and they fled to the woods. He lost both his hat and his gun in the chase which followed, but nevertheless got away. Not that I believed in its entirety the old man’s story. It was his pet story, told for fifty years, and had become true for him. I came into Covington, a regular provincial town, whose chief feature is its large sandy square about which range its shops with their scanty wares. There I met another old man, a captain who served under Lee, and indeed surrendered with him. He had been beside Stonewall Jackson when the latter died. He was now eighty-four years, haunting the Flowers Hotel.
“This world’s a mighty empty place, believe me,” said he. “Eighty-four years ...!”
He seemed appalled at his own age.
“Threescore and ten is the allotted span.... At seventeen I went gold digging ... seeking gold ... it was the first rush of the digging mania in California, but I only got six hundred dollars worth.”