4. IV.
A few words will end the present sketch. They will refer to
the manner in which the watch and chain of Captain Gove were
returned.
In the year 1863, the cavalry headquarters were at “Camp
Pelham,” near Culpeper Court-house.
The selection of that title for his camp by Stuart, will indicate
little to the world at large. To those familiar with his peculiarities
it will be different. Stuart named his various headquarters
after some friend recently dead. “Camp Pelham” indicated
that this young immortal had finished his career.
Pelham, in fact, was dead. At Manassas, Williamsburg, Cold
Harbour, Groveton, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, and a hundred
other battles, he had opposed his breast to the storm, but no bullet
had ever struck him. In the hard and bitter struggle of
Kelly's Ford, with Averill, in March, 1863, he had fallen. The
whole South mourned him—dead thus at twenty-four. Stuart
wept for him, and named his new quarters “Camp Pelham.”
To-day, in this autumn of 1866, the landscape must be dreary
there; the red flag floats no more, and Pelham lives only in
memory. But that is enough. There are some human beings
who, once encountered, “dare you to forget.”
To terminate my sketch. In those days of 1863, I had long
forgotten Mountsville, the little fight there, and Captain Gove—
for the months of war are long—when one evening at “Camp
Pelham” I saw approach a small party of cavalrymen escorting
a Federal prisoner. This was so common an occurrence that it
attracted no attention. The loungers simply turned their heads;
the men dismounted; the orderly announced the fact to the
General, and the Federal prisoner, who was an officer, disap
peared behind the flap of General Stuart's tent.
Half an hour afterwards the General came out with the
prisoner, a short, thick-set man, and approaching the fire in front
of my tent, introduced him to me as Captain Stone, of the
United States Army. Then, drawing me aside, the General
said:
“I wish you would make Captain Stone's time pass as agreeably
as possible. We ought to treat him well. In fording a
stream near Warrenton, after his capture, he saved the life of
Colonel Payne. The Colonel was wearing a heavy overcoat
with a long cape, when his horse stumbled in the water, threw
him, and as the heavy cape confined his arms, he would have
been drowned but for the prisoner, who jumped into the water
and saved him. You see we ought to treat him like a friend,
rather than as a prisoner,” added the General smiling, “and I
wish you would give him a seat and make yourself agreeable
generally!”
I saluted, returned the General's laugh, and made a profound
bow to Captain Stone as I offered him the only camp stool which
I possessed. Then we began to talk in a manner perfectly
friendly.
This conversation lasted for half an hour. Then General
Stuart, who had finished his evening's task at his desk, approached,
in company with several members of the staff, and everybody
began to converse. The comments of Captain Stone upon his
capture and his captors, were entirely amicable. He had been
“taken in charge” with perfect politeness; and his personal
effects had been religiously respected. In proof of this statement
he drew out his watch, and commended it as a timepiece of most
admirable performance.
“It is not better than mine, I think, Captain,” said a member
of the staff, with a smile; and he drew from his breast pocket a
large silver watch of the most approved pattern.
“That seems to be an excellent timepiece,” was the response
of the Federal prisoner. “Where did you purchase it?”
“It was captured; or rather I took it from a Federal officer
who was dying, to preserve it—intending if I ever had an opportunity
to return it to some member of his family.”
Stuart took the watch and looked at it.
“I remember this watch,” he said; “it belonged to Captain
Gove, who was killed in the skirmish at Mountsville.”
“Captain Gove, of the First Rhode Island, was it, General?”
asked the prisoner.
“The same, Captain.”
“I know his people very well.”
“Then,” returned Stuart, handing him the watch, “you will
be able to return this to his family.”
So when Captain Stone left Camp Pelham on the next morning,
he took away with him the watch, which the family of the
unfortunate Captain Gove no doubt preserve as a memorial of
him.
This little incident has occupied an amount of space disproportioned,
it may be thought, to its importance. But memory
will have no master. The sight of the paper which that dying
man at Mountsville affixed his name to, aroused all these recollections.
Unwritten, they haunted the writer's mind; recorded,
they are banished. The past takes them. There they sleep
again, with a thousand others, gay or sorrowful, brilliant or
lugubrious, for of this changeful warp and woof is war.
