University of Virginia Library

I.
ON THE ROAD TO PETERSBURG.

1. I.
NOTES OF AN OFFICER OF THE C. S. A.

So June wears on in this good or bad year 1864, and our friend
General Grant is leaving Cold Harbour for a “new base,” I
think.

He has had a hard time of it since he crossed the Rapidan,
and we also; fighting in the Wilderness, (I came near “going
under” there); fighting at Spotsylvania Court-House (our Po
is more famous now than the classic stream of Virgil); fighting
on the North Anna, a maiden who stretched her arms between
the fierce combatants and commanded the peace; fighting on
the slopes of Hanover, when that Indian girl, the Tottapotamoi,
did the same; and then fighting here, how fiercely! on the
famous ground of old Cold Harbour, where the thunder of the
guns has seemed to many like an echo of those guns of
McClellan, which made such a racket hereabouts in June, 1862,
just two years since!

A good many things have happened since that period, but we
remain more faithful to our first loves than the blue people.
Then the Federal commander-in-chief was called McClellan—
now he is called Grant. The leader of the South was then
called Lee, and Lee is his name to-day. But each seems to
have a constant, never-faltering attachment for the “good old
place,” Cold Harbour, just as they appear to have for the blooming
parterres of the beautiful and smiling Manassas! The little
affair near Stone Bridge, in July, 1861, was not sufficient; again

in August, 1862, the blue and gray lovers of the historic locality
must hug each other in the dear old place! “Malbrook s'en
va-t en guerre,” to the old tune on the old ground!

The game is played here for the present, however. Every
assault upon the Confederate lines has been repulsed with heavy
loss, and Grant has evidently abandoned any further attempt
to storm them; he is moving toward James river. The fighting
has been heavy, incessant, deadly. Wind, rain, sunshine,
heat, cold, nothing has stopped it. But the Southern lines have
stood intact; so the war goes elsewhere. It is escorted on its
way, as usual, with a salute.

This morning a decided racket is going on. Boom! boom!
whiz-z-z-z! pow-w-w-w! there is a shell which has burst near
me. Won't our friends across the way permit an inoffensive
Confederate to smoke his pipe in peace, without disturbance
from these disgusting visitors? I have just dined on an infinitesimal
ration, and am smoking peaceably when my reverie
is thus invaded. That shell, which in bursting has raised a
little cloud of dust, might have hurt me; it has interrupted
me. Why do they fire so high, and why at me? I am not
a general. My flag is not up. I am not even fighting to-day.
I am smoking, and indulging no sort of spite against anybody.
I am thinking of some scenes and faces an enormous distance
from this spot, and am, in every sense of the words, “off duty.”
It is pleasure, not duty, which enthralls me. Recreation, not
work, is my programme for the nonce. Respect, my friends,
the rights of a neutral and non-combatant!

The cannonade continues. They are having a hot artillery
skirmish yonder, but I go on smoking without much excitement
thereat, being used to it. The time was when we fought
pitched battles once or twice a year, killed each other all day
long secundem artem, and then relapsed into gentlemanly repose
and amity, undisturbed save by the petite guerre of the
pickets. At that remote period, the present elderly, battered,
and unexcitable warrior, used to rush “to horse” at the first
roar of the cannon; for the roar in question preceded a general
and decisive engagement, in which every man ought to be “on

hand.” Now we have changed all that, or rather the enemy
have. Once, under McClellan, they seemed only bent on fighting
big battles, and making a treaty of peace. Now they seem
determined to drive us to the last ditch, and into it, the mother
earth to be shovelled over us. Virginia is no longer a battle-field,
but a living, shuddering body, upon which is to be inflicted
the immedicabile vulnus of all-destroying war. So be
it; she counted the cost, and is not yet at the last ditch.

All that talk about immedicable wounds and last ditches has
diverted me from the contrast I was drawing between the past
and present. Then, I meant to say, I always started up at the
cannon's roar, expecting a decisive battle; now, so incessant
and so indecisive is the fighting, I lie under my tree and smoke,
and dream of other scenes, scarcely conscious that those guns
are thundering yonder, and that many a brave fellow is uttering
his last groan. Thus we harden. Do I think of “those
blue eyes?” Well, the comrade dying yonder thinks of the
pair he knows. Poor fellow! then I return to my reverie.

The war grows tedious; carnage bores one. “Bores!!!”
This is, I think, about the fortieth day of fighting. We had
the “seven days' battles around Richmond” in 1862. Is this
campaign to be the “seventy days' battles around Virginia?”
The game keeps up with wonderful animation; guns roaring,
shell bursting, and listen! that long, sustained, resolute crash
of the deadly small-arms! Suddenly it stops; but a good many
brave fellows have “gone under” in that five minutes' work.
This takes place at all hours of the day and night. Grant keeps
“pegging away.” To-day he seems to gain something, but
to-morrow Lee stands like a lion in his path, and all the advantage
is lost. We continue to repulse every attack along the
bristling lines, as in 1862. Grant ends where McClellan began;
upon the ground at least. We hold our own. “Lee's army
is an army of veterans,” writes the correspondent of a Northern
journal; “it is an instrument sharpened to a perfect edge.
You turn its flanks; well, its flanks are made to be turned.
This effects little or nothing. All that we can reckon as gained,
therefore, is the loss of life inflicted on the enemy, and of having

reached a point thus near the objective, but no brilliant military
results.” Candid and true. They lose more heavily—the enemy
—than we do, but our precious blood flows daily. Poor Charley—!
A braver soul was never born into this world than
his; and, since something happened to him, he has been quite
reckless. He is dead yonder, on the slopes of Hanover, fighting
his guns to the last. And that greater figure of Stuart; he has
fallen, too! How he would have reigned, the King of Battle,
in this hot campaign, clashing against the hosts of Sheridan in
desperate conflict! What deathless laurels would he have won
for himself in this hurly-burly, when the war grows mad and
reckless! But those laurels are deathless now, and bloom in
perennial splendour! Stuart is dead at the Yellow Tavern
yonder, and sleeps at Hollywood; but as the dying Adams said
of Jefferson, he “still lives”—lives in every heart, the greatest
of the Southern cavaliers! His plume still floats before the
eyes of the gray horsemen, and “history shall never forget him!”

There was Gordon, too—alive but the other day, now dead
and gone whither so many comrades have preceded him. He
fell in that same fierce onslaught on the enemy's cavalry, when
they tried to enter Richmond by the Brook road, in that sudden
attack which saved the capital. “I blamed Stuart once
for his reckless attack with so small a force as he then had on
so large a one as the enemy's,” said a most intelligent gentleman
of the neighbourhood to me not long since; “but now I
know that he proved himself here, as everywhere, the great
soldier, and that he thereby saved Richmond.” And the gallant
Gordon! how well I knew him, and how we all loved him!
Tall, elegant in person, distinguished in address, with a charming
suavity and gaiety, he was a universal favourite. Of
humour how rich! of bearing how frank and cordial! of courage
how stern and obstinate! Under fire, Gordon was a perfect
rock; nothing could move him. In camp, off duty, he
was the soul of good-fellowship. His bow and smile were inimitable,
his voice delightful. He would present a bouquet to a
lady with a little speech which nobody else could approach;
and, at the head of the “Old First” North Carolina cavalry,

he would have charged McClellan's massed artillery at Malvern
Hill. We used to tell him that his rapid rise to the rank of
General was the result of his “personal, political, and pecuniary
position;” but that alliterative accusation was only a jest.
He won his rank by hard fighting and hard work; he gave the
South all he had—his time, his toil, his brain; she demanded
his life, and he gave that, too, without a murmur. Peace to
that brave!

These memories seduce me. I am getting triste—blue. I
do not like blue, having so many disagreeable associations connected
with it; I prefer gray. Blue eyes and blue skies are
exceptions, however. I differ with General Henry A. Wise,
who said to me once, “I like a gray day.” Hurrah for the
sunshine, and up with the flag that has “Vive la joie!” for its
motto. We need all the sunshine and gaiety that is attainable,
for whatever may be thought of our friend General Ulysses
Grant's genius as a soldier, he allows the gray people very
little time for relaxation or amusement. I think McClellan is
the better general, but the present generalissimo does “keep
pegging away” with unusual regularity! There is another roar;
but the artillery fire has slackened. Now the sound is heard
only at intervals. The desultory “wood-chopping” of the sharpshooters
comes from the woods and gradually recedes. Grant
is moving.

2. II.

We strike tents, shoulder arms—I do not, I only buckle on a
sabre—cross the Chickahominy, and take up the line of march
for the James river—hungry.

A tedious march down the right bank of the “Swamp,” into
the low grounds of Charles City, everywhere facing Grant;
line of battle; fighting on the long bridge road; men throwing
up earthworks with their bayonets in twenty minutes,
whenever they stop; sun rising and setting; wind blowing;
woods reverberating with shots; column still moving toward

James river. Then the question is settled; General Grant is
going to try the Petersburg line of advance on Richmond, with
his base at City Point.

Judicious! General Lee said a year ago, I am told, that this
was the quarter from which Richmond was most exposed. That
terrible question of our “communications”—the Southern railroads!
After all, it is bread and meat which will decide this
war, or rather, I am afraid, the want of it. The granaries of
the Gulf States are full, and we are starving. Who is to blame?
History will answer that question. The time will come when
the survivors of this army, or their children, will know why
we are left to starve upon a microscopic ration—“so-called”—
of meat, which just enables a man to carry a musket and cartridge-box
without staggering and falling upon the march,
or in battle, from exhaustion! Some day we will know that;
meanwhile we go on starving, and try to do the work. Close
up!

Over James river above Drury's Bluff—not “Fort Darling,”
nobody ever heard of that place—on pontoons. The artillery
moves on all night; I and the most amiable of Inspector-Generals
bivouac with saddles for pillows in a clover-field. We
have just passed an ancient-looking house, but seeing no
light, forebore from arousing the lady of the establishment,
preferring to sleep al fresco, by the camp-fire. Yonder, through
the gloaming, as I lie on my red blanket—from Chancellorsville—with
feet to the rail fire, and my head on my English
saddle, as I smoke—not after supper—yonder I see the old
house. It is not a very imposing place. Set upon a handsome
hill, amid waving fields, above the James, nearly opposite the
Randolph house of “Wilton,” it would be attractive in “good
times.” But now it is pulled to pieces and dust-covered. For
the cannon of the Army of Northern Virginia have rolled by
the door hour after hour, and the trampling hoofs of the cavalry
have raised clouds of dust, hanging on the trees and walls.
House, out-buildings, fences (broken down), grass-plat, box-rows
—all disappear under the cloud. Dust is king there. We drop
asleep with rosy visions; for, in passing the house, an Ethiopian

friend named Richard, who subsequently kindled our rail fire
for us, promised us breakfast. We rise at dawn, repair to the
establishment, make our toilets (I always carry soap, brush, and
towel in my haversack), and are shown into the drawing-room,
to which the ladies have not descended, though they have sent
polite messages touching breakfast.

It is with real historic interest that I gaze upon this old
mansion. For this is “Ampthill,” the former residence of the
famous Colonel Archibald Cary of the first Revolution—the
man of the low stature, the wide shoulders, the piercing eyes,
and the stern will. He was of noble descent, being the heir
apparent to the barony of Hunsdon when he died; sat in the
Virginia Convention of 1776; lived with the eyes of his great
contemporaries fixed on him—with the ears of George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason, listening to hear
him speak, and was the sort of man who will “stand no nonsense.”
When the question of appointing Patrick Henry
Dictator was agitated, Cary said to Henry's brother-in-law,
“Sir, tell your brother that if he is made Dictator, my dagger
shall be in his breast before the sunset of that day!” There
spoke “Cary of Ampthill,” as they used to call him—a man
who religiously kept his word, saying little and performing
much. Hardest of the hard-headed, in fact, was this Ampthill
Cary, and his contemporaries nicknamed him “Old Iron”
therefor. He played a great part in old times—he is dead in
this good year 1864, many a long day ago—but this is his
house. Looking around at the wainscoted walls, the ample
apartments, and with a view of the extensive out-buildings
through the window, I come to the conclusion that those old
Virginians had a tolerably good idea of “how to live.” Here
is a house in which a reasonable individual could be happy,
provided he had a pleasing young personage of the opposite
sex to assist him. Woodwork to the ceiling; wide windows;
trees waving without, and green fields stretching far away to
the horizon; pure airs from the river fanning the cheek, and
moving gently the bright plumage of the singing birds perched
amid the rustling foliage—Cary of Ampthill must surely have

been a gentleman of taste. Is that him yonder, sitting on the
porch and reading his old blurred “Virginia Gazette,” containing
the announcement of the proposed passage of a Stamp
Act in the English Parliament? That must be “Old Iron.”
He wears ruffles at his breast, knee-breeches, a coat with barrel
sleeves covered with embroidery, a pigtail, and a cocked hat.
His shoulders are broad, his frame low, his eye piercing—and
I think he is swearing as he reads about the doings of parliament.
He has apparently just returned from inspecting the
blood-horses in his stables, and after taking his morning julep,
is reading the Gazette, and pondering on the probable results
of secession from England, with the sword exercise which is
sure to follow. But look! he raises his head. A gun sounds
from down the river, reverberating amid the bluffs, and echoing
back from the high banks around “Wilton,” where his friend
Mr. Randolph lives. It must be the signal of a ship just
arrived from London, in this month of June, 1764; the Fly-by-Night,
most probably, with all the list of articles which
Colonel Cary sent for—new suits for himself from the
London tailors (no good ones in this colony as yet), fine silks
for the ladies, wines from Madeira, and Bordeaux, and Oporto,
new editions of the “Tattler,” or “Spectator,” or “Tom
Jones,” all paid for by the tobacco crop raised here at Ampthill.
The Fly-by-Night probably brings also the London
Gazette, showing what view is taken in England of the “rising
spirit of rebellion” in the colonies, and what the ministers
think of the doctrine of coercion. Our present Governor,
Fauquier, is not wholly “sound,” it is thought, upon these
questions, and Lord Dunmore it is supposed will succeed him.
A second gun! The Captain of the Fly-by-Night seems to
have anchored at the wharf, and the swivel, announcing his
arrival to his patrons, is making a jolly racket. Again!—and
there again! Bomb! bomb! bomb! bomb! Can that be the
Fly-by-Night, and is that Mr. Randolph galloping up in hot
haste from the ferry opposite “Wilton?”

It is a courier who stops a moment to tell me that the Yankee
gunboats have opened below Drury's Bluff, and are trying to

force a passage through the obstructions. So my dream is broken;
I wake in the every-day world of 1864; the year 1764 has
quite disappeared; and Cary of Ampthill—where is his figure?
That is only my friend, the amiable Inspector-General, on the
porch, reading a copy of the Richmond Examiner. I took his
looped-up felt for a cocked hat, and his officer's braid for the
ante-revolutionary embroidery! So the past disappears, but
the winds are blowing, and the cloud-shadows float just as they
did one hundred years ago. The fields are green again, the
river breeze comes to me with its low sweet murmur, and the
birds are singing in the trees as they sang for Cary of Ampthill.

“Gentlemen, will you walk in to breakfast?”

O most prosaic—but also most agreeable of announcements!
The past and its memories fade; we are again in the present,
as the most agreeable of odours indicates!