 | CHAPTER III Manuscript Draft: Walter Reed: Doctor in Uniform, by Laura Wood, [19—] |  |
3. CHAPTER III
The shadow of the approaching catastrophe had lain, at
first, but lightly over the younger members of the Reed household.
The threatening atmosphere, growing more eletric with every year,
had seemed, in fact, a natural element to the two boys who grew up
into it and were unacquainted with the bland airs of peace. If Mr.
Reed's habitually calm expression took on additional gravity when
he discussed the possibility of war between the states with his
wife, and if Mrs. Reed, looking at her older boys, could not always
keep a trace of apprehension out of her expressive eyes, Chris and
Walter probably did not notice, or, if they did, merely thought that
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1859 and 1860 saw the Reeds settled at Liberty, now called
Bedford, in Bedford County, near the foothills of the Blue Ridge
Mountains. After two years of duty there, discharged with the usual
unselfish devotion that made the Methodist circuit riders beloved and
admired wherever they went, Mr. Reed was shifted to Blackstone, in
Nottingham County, then an important railway center and nearer the
scene of the tragic action of the next four years.
The long dissension had been steadily sharpening between
the manufacturing North and the farming South. The North wanted
slavery barred from the United States territories, and the South,
whose whole economy was based on slave labor, knew that its voice
in the council of states would be diminished and finally strangled
should slavery be kept out of the territories. Sectional bitterness
was violent, and the struggle between the two societies was close
to exploding into open conflict. Congressmen went armed with pistols,
and Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi sadly reported that the
Congress appeared to be composed of the representatives of warring
states, rather than of men assembled for thex common good.
Abraham Lincoln, unalterably opposed to the extension of slav-
ery into the territories, but no abolitionist, was elected President
in November, 1860. The following month, South Carolina, traditionally
prone to secession, by the decision of a popular convention in holi-
day spirits withdrew from the Union. Some southern states followed;
others, Virginia among them, hesitated. In February Jefferson Davis
was inaugurated President of the Confederate States before an excited
throng in Montgomery, Alabama. Still, Lincoln solemnly assured his
“dissatisfied fellow countrymen” that, while there would be no seces-
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show his conciliatory spirit, he backed an amendment to the Consti-
tution which passed both houses of Congress preventing the Federal
government for all future time from interfering with slavery in any
state in which it was already established. Almost, it appeared that
war might at the last moment be staved off.
Then, on April 12th, 1861, southern guns fired on Fed-
eral-held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and the hope of peace
vanished with the puff of powder smoke in the damp spring air.
The antagonists quickly fell into line. Virginia reluctantly
decided to join the seceding states rather than yield to the Federal
government's demand for troops to discipline them. In the end,
eleven southern states faced twenty-three northern ones; nine mil-
lion people, more than a third of them slaves, pitted themselves
against the strength of twenty-two million free men. The North had
almost all the clothing, munitions and metal industries in the coun-
try, and a large proportion of the nation's banking capital. Moreover, most
of the foreign goods imported for southern use passed through northern
warehouses.
The South had little but cotton -cotton and courage. But
they believed that Cotton was King, in the popular phrase of the day,
and they had yet to learn that brave hearts are no more bullet proof
than trembling ones.
* * *
Having voted to secede, Virginia, as everyone had foreseen,
was immediately invaded. The war was on now, in earnest.
Daylight was fading, and Laura moved closer to the window
to make the most of it. Her eyes smarted and her throat burned
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It would only upset the younger children, and distress Ma -brave
Ma, whose air of cheerfulness deceived no one. In the dimming light
she bent closer over Jim's shirt.
When Jim had returned suddenly from college at Randolph-
Macon and announced that he was enlisting, there had been a heavy
silence. Ma's hands, busy with a piece of sewing, had dropped in
her lap and she stared at him speechless, her eyes slowly filling
with tears. Her first son, only eighteen, going to the war! Fear-
fully she thought, “Thank heaven, the others are too young!”
Mr. Reed had been the first to speak. He pushed away from
him the sheets of paper on which he was writing his sermon, and said
sadly, “It is your plain duty, son. Your mother and I could not
wish you to act otherwise.” He cleared his throad abruptly.
Tom got up from his chair and came to his father's side.
“Pa, I...” he began.
“No!” his father interrupted him almost harshly. “Our cause
is not so desperate that a sixteen year old boy must fight.” He took
the edge off his words by putting his arm around Tom's shoulders.
“Just wait,” he advised a little grimly. “Your turn may come yet.”
“Why, Pa!” Jim exclaimed. “The war will be over in a few
months. We can whip those Yanks easily. I expect to enter the Uni-
versity at Charlottesville this fall.”
“I'm afraid your expectations will have to be put aside,
Jim,” the minister observed. You underestimate the resources of our
opponents. Not only are we vastly outnumbered, but all the tools
of war are made in the north. We have almost none of the necessary
industries. Even the clothes we wear, made of the cotton we grow,
have to be manufactured up there."
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cotton. If the cotton mills go under, the whole industrial system
of the North will be shaken.”
“Theirs will be shaken,” his father conceded, “but
ours will be destroyed. Ours is a farming economy, and cotton is
our main crop. If we can't trade it for war materials -and you
my rely on it that they won't trade us the guns to shoot them with,
and that they'll do everything they can to keep England from doing
so -we'll simply choke to death on it. We can't eat it, we can't
shoot with it, we can't pay our soldiers with it, and we can't even
wear it until it's been converted by northern mills. No, Jim, the
South depends more on the North than it realizes, and the North is
more independent of us than we suppose.” He paused a moment and
his family looked at him, troubled. “It will certainly be a des-
perate war, and probably a long one,”"he added.
“Then do you think it's hopeless, Pa?” Tom inquired anxiously.
The minister's answer rang with confidence. “No cause is
hopeless when it is just, and when brave men defend it!”
“Pa, will it last long enough for Chris and me to go?”
Walter inquired hopefully. “We're almost big enough for drummers now.”
“Indeed not!” his mother answered fervently. “Will it, Pa?”
“God forbid!” Mr. Reed exclaimed.
Laura's practical mind had run in advance of the discussion.
Jimmy was going to the war; whtat could be done to make him as comfor-
table as possible?
“Jim, what can I do to help you to get ready?”
“Make me some shirts, sis. Most of mine are wearing out.”
“Tomorrow. I'll start to make you half a dozen.”
“No, no! Two is enough. A good campaigner doesn't carry
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He and his sister, only two years apart, had always been particularly
close friends. “One to wear while the other is drying, you know.”
“Oh, Jim! I'll make you the best shirts you've ever had in
your life.”
“Fine! Not that I deserve it, but nothing's too good to fight
for your country in,” he said lightly.
And nothing's too good to die for your country in, he had not
added. But the thought had leaped to everyone's mind.
Thinking of the unsaid words, Laura stitched faster, with a
sort of panicky urgency. Nothing must happen to Jim -not to Jim,
who was tall, and strong, and kind, whom everyone loved, who was
just becoming a man, with perhaps half a century of usefulness and
life ahead of him. The silent tears suddenly overflowed and slipped
down her face. Pressing the almost finished shirt against her eyes,
she thought desperately, “Not Jimmy! No, no, not Jimmy!”
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| CHAPTER III Manuscript Draft: Walter Reed: Doctor in Uniform, by Laura Wood, [19—] | |