Four Years in Rebel Capitals Part 21

And the Valley of Virginia! Ploughed by the tramp of invading squadrons--her fair fields laid waste and the sanct.i.ty of her every household invaded--alternately the battle-ground of friend and foe--where was her "loyalty?"

Pinched for her daily food, subsidized to-day by the enemy and freely giving to-morrow to their own people--with farming utensils destroyed and barns bursting with grain burned in wanton deviltry--the people of the Valley still held to the allegiance to the flag they loved; and the last note of the southern bugle found as ready echo in their hearts as in the first days of the invasion--

"Their foes had found enchanted ground-- But not a knight asleep!"

In possibly one or two instances, the official reports of invading generals may have been in some slight degree erroneous; newspaper correspondents are not in every instance absolutely infallible; and perhaps it was more grateful to the tender sensibilities of the war party at the North to feel that there were hearts of brothers beating for them in the glare of burning rooftrees, or swelling with still more loyal fervor to the cry of the insulted wife!

But at this day--when the clap-trap of war has died away with the roll of its drums; when reason may in some sort take the place of partisan rage--not one honest and informed thinker in the North believes that "loyal" feeling ever had deep root anywhere among the southern ma.s.ses; or that "loyal citizens" were as one in ten thousand!

Whole communities may have murmured; there may have been "schism in the council and robbery in the mart;" demagogues may have used wild comparisons and terrible threats about the Government; staunch and fearless newspapers may have boldly exposed its errors and mercilessly lashed its weak or unworthy members; some men may have skulked and dodged from their rightful places in the battle's front!

But, however misplaced the world's verdict may declare their zeal--however great the error for which they fought and suffered and died--no man to-day dare refuse to the southern people the need of their unparalleled constancy!

Even conquered--manacled and gagged by the blind and blood-thirsty faction in power--the southern people held on to the small fragments of rights left them, with brave tenacity. Willing to accept that arbitration to which they had submitted their cause, and ready to suffer with the bright memories of their past, rather than efface them by signing their own degradation.

They were conquered and bound in the flesh, but there was enough of manhood left in the spirit to say--

"Though you conquer us, men of the North, know ye not What fierce, sullen hatred lurks under the scar?

How loyal to Hapsburg is Venice, I wot!

How dearly the Pole loves 'his father'--the Czar!"

No more singular sight was presented by all the war than the conscript depot at Richmond. The men from the "camps of instruction" in the several states--after a short sojourn to learn the simplest routine of the camp, and often thoroughly untaught in the manual even--were sent here to be in greater readiness when wanted. Such officers as could be spared were put in charge of them, and the cadets of the Virginia Military Inst.i.tute were employed as drill officers.

Citizens of various states--young, old, honest and vicious alike--the conscripts were crowded together in camp, left to their own devices enough to make them learn to live as soldiers; and put through constant drill and parade to accustom them to the use of arms.

Almost every variety of costume obtained among them. The b.u.t.ternut jacket with blue pants of the Federal soldier, the homespun shirt with the cast-off pants of some lucky officer; and the black broadcloth frock and jauntily-cut pants that some friendly lady had ransacked her absent one's stores to give, all appeared on dress parade; surmounted by every variety of head gear, from the straw hat of many seasons to the woolen night-cap the good "marm" had knitted.

Notwithstanding much work, there was still too much leisure time; and "apple jack" filtered its way through provost guards, and cards, the greasiest and most bethumbed, wiled many an hour for the unwary and verdant.

The lower cla.s.s of conscripts were almost invariably from the cities--the refuse population of the wharf, bar-room and hotel.

Unwilling to volunteer, these gentry skulked behind every excuse to avoid conscription; but when forced off at last, they and the subst.i.tutes banded in an unholy brotherhood to make the best of their position.

Ringleaders in every insubordination and every vice they a.s.sumed a _degage_, or air of superiority, and fleeced their verdant companions of the very clothes they wore; while they made the impure air of the camps more foul with ribald jest and profane song.

A single glance segregated this element from the quiet country conscripts. The latter were generally gloomy, thinking of the field untilled and the wife and little ones, perhaps, unfed. When they drank "new dip" it was to drown thought, for the fumes of every stew-pan brought back shadowy memories of home and comfort; and when they slept on the damp ground--wrapped in the chance rug, or worn sc.r.a.p of carpet charity had bestowed--a sad procession marched through their dreams, and sorrowful and starving figures beckoned them from mountain side and hamlet.

Great misery and dest.i.tution followed the conscription. Large numbers of men, called from their fields just as they were most needed, cut down greatly the supplies of grain. Almost all who remained at home bought their exemption by giving so large a portion of their product to Government as to reduce civil supplies still more; and these two facts so enhanced the price of food--and so reduced the value of money--that the poorer cla.s.ses rapidly became dest.i.tute of all but the barest means of life. Whether this was the result of inevitable circ.u.mstance, or the offspring of mismanagement, in no way affects the fact. Food became very hard to procure even at high prices; and the money to get it was daily more and more monopolized by a grasping few.

The Confederate soldier now had a double share of toil and torture.

When the smoke of the fight rolled away, and with it the sustaining glow of battle, thought bore him but grim companionship at the camp fireside; for he saw famine stalk gaunt and pale through what had been his home.

When tidings of want and misery came, he strove to bear them. When he heard of burning and outrage--where naught was left to plunder--who may wonder that he sometimes fled from duty to his country, to that duty more sacred to him of saving his wife and children!

Who does not wonder, rather, in reading the history of those frightful days, that desertions were so few--that untutored human nature could hide in its depths such constancy and devotion to principle!

But, great as were the privation and the suffering caused by the first conscription, they were still to be increased. Through those twin abortions of legislation, the subst.i.tute and exemption bills, the results of the first law proved inadequate to fill the gaps of the fatal fights of the summer.

Detail and subst.i.tute had done their work, as thoroughly as had the sh.e.l.ls of Malvern Hill, the bullets of Sharpsburg, or the raw corn of the retreat to the river.

More men were wanted! At whatever cost in territory, or in suffering, more men must be had. And on the 27th September, Congress pa.s.sed an act extending the age of conscription from 18 to 45 years. But the exemption and subst.i.tute laws remained as effective as ever. True, some feeble moves were made toward narrowing the limits of the former; but while it stood a law in any form, enough could be found to read it in any way. The extension law, while it still further drained the almost exhausted country--and left in its track deeper suffering and dest.i.tution, that brought famine from a comparative term into an actual verity--still left in the cities an able-bodied and numerous cla.s.s; who, if not actually useless, were far more so than the food-producing countrymen sent to the front to take their places.

Yet so blind was the Congress--so impervious to the sharpest teachings of necessity and so deaf to the voice of common sense and reason, that unceasingly upbraided it--that this state of things continued more than a year from the pa.s.sage of the extension act.

Then, when it was almost too late for human aid to save the cause--when the enemy had not only surrounded the contracted territory on every side, but had penetrated into its very heart--the subst.i.tute bill was repealed, and every man in the land between the ages of 18 and 45, declared a Confederate soldier subject to service. Then, too, the abuses of exemption and detail, so often and so clearly pointed out, were looked into and measurably corrected.

Further than this, all boys from 16 to 18, and older men, from 45 to 60, though not conscribed, were formed into reserve "home guards;" and then General Grant wrote to Washington that the cause was won when the Rebels "robbed the cradle and the grave."

But the infantile and the moribund murmured not; and more than once a raid was turned and a sharp skirmish won, when the withered cheek of the octogenarian was next the rosy face of the beardless stripling!

Only one complaint came, and that was heard with grim amus.e.m.e.nt alike by veteran, by conscript, and by subst.i.tute.

The subst.i.tute buyers now loudly raised a wail of anguish. Plethoric ledger and overflowing till, alas! must be left; the auctioneer's hammer and the peaceful shears must alike be thrown aside, and the rusty musket grasped instead; soft beds and sweet dreams of to-morrow's profit must be replaced by red mud and the midnight long roll!

It was very bitter; and rising in their wrath, a few of these railed at the perfidy of the Government in breaking a contract; and even employed counsel to prove that in effect they were already in the field.

One ardent speculator even sought the War Department and logically proved that, having sent a subst.i.tute, who was virtually himself, and that subst.i.tute having been killed, he himself was a dead man, from whom the law could claim no service!

But the Department was now as deaf as the adder of Scripture; and the counsel, let us hope, pleaded not very earnestly. So the subst.i.tute buyers--except in the few cases where the long finger of influential patronage could even now intervene--went, as their ill-gotten dollars had gone before.

It is plainly impossible, in limits of a desultory sketch, to give even a faint outline of the conscription. Its ramifications were so great--the stress that caused it so dire, and the weaknesses and abuses that grew out of it so numerous, that a history of them were but a history of the war.

Faithfully and stringently carried out, it might have saved the South.

Loosely constructed and open to abuse, it was still the most potent engine the Government had used; and while it failed of its intent, it still for the first time caused the invader to be met by anything approaching the whole strength of the country.

Under its later workings, every man in the South was a soldier; but that consummation, which earlier might have been salvation--came only when the throes of death had already begun to seize her vitals.

CHAPTER XXII.

WAITING FOR THE ORDEAL BY COMBAT.

If any good fruits were to grow from the conscription, the seed had not been planted a moment too soon.

The whole power of the Union was now to be exerted against the South; and the Washington idea plainly was to lay the ax at the very root of the rebellion.

Desultory movement had already begun in the Valley and along the river; but it masked in nowise plain indication of the ma.s.sing of troops for another, and a greater, "On to Richmond!"

The separate corps of Banks, Fremont and Shields were hovering about the flanks of the devoted Army of Mana.s.sas; and the decisive blow was evidently to be aimed at that point. But the clear-sighted and cool-headed tactician at the head of the bulwark of Virginia saw far beyond the blundering war-chess of his antagonist. He prepared to checkmate McClellan's whole combination; and suddenly--after weeks of quiet preparation, of which the country knew no more than the enemy--Mana.s.sas was evacuated!

To effect this movement, it was necessary to abandon all the heavy river batteries, guarding the Potomac, at immense loss in guns and material; and to destroy large quant.i.ties of commissary stores, for which there was no transportation. But, "Joe Johnston" held the movement to be necessary; and, by this time the South had learned to accept that what he thought must be correct. The great disparity in numbers, and the evident purpose of the Federals to make Richmond the focal point of attack, spoke plainly to that perfect soldier the necessity--_coute que coute_--of bringing his army within easy striking distance of the Capital.

Stonewall Jackson--with Ewell's and Early's divisions of less than ten thousand men of all arms--was detached to watch the enemy; and the retrograde movement was completed so successfully that McClellan never suspected the evacuation. Two days later, his grand array--"an army with banners," bands braying and new arms glinting in the sun--moved down to the attack; and then, doubtless to his infinite disgust, he found only the smoking and deserted _debris_ of the Confederate camp.

The army he had hoped to annihilate was on its steady and orderly march for Richmond.

Immediately, the baffled Federal embarked his entire force and landed it on the Peninsula--formed by the junction of the York and James rivers--in front of Magruder's fortifications. Failing at the front door, McClellan again read Caesar, and essayed the back entrance.