From Harper's Ferry to Bull Run.

"O war, thou hast thy fierce delight,
Thy gleams of joy intensely bright;
Such gleams as from thy polished shield
Fly dazzling o'er the battle-field."

Is there a boy in all this wide land, North or South, who would not like to hear what a boy has to say of his experience as a private soldier in the Confederate Army from 1861 to 1865, serving for the most part in Stuart's Cavalry of Lee's army? Men have told their story, and graphically told it from a man's standpoint. But who has spoken for the boy? Who has told of the part the boy played in that great drama that was on the stage for four years without intermission? That bloody drama in which there were 3,000,000 players—a play that cost the country eight billions in money and half a million human lives?

I do not know how it was in the Northern armies, but the bulk of Lee's soldiers in the ranks were boys in their teens. It was these boys who made Thomas Jonathan Jackson, "Stonewall Jackson;" who put Robert E. Lee's name in the hall of fame and who lifted J.E.B. Stuart up to the rank of lieutenant-general of cavalry. One of these boys has written the story as he remembers it in plain, simple language; not a history, but simply an account of what he saw and did while this eventful history was being made. If his experience is different from others, or does not accord in all respects with what the historian has written, it is because we do not all see alike. The writer has not consulted the histories for material for this story; he did not have to do this. If all the boys who served in the Confederate Army were to write their experience, they would all be different, yet all approximately correct, and perhaps, taken together, would be the most perfect history that could be written of the Confederate side of the Civil War.

In the early spring of 1861 I was seventeen years old and going to school about half a mile from my home in Loudoun county, Virginia. Twelve miles distant was Harper's Ferry, where four years previous John Brown had made an attempt to raise an insurrection among the slaves in that district. He seized the United States arsenal, located there, for the purpose of arming the negroes, who were expected to flock to his standard and have their freedom declared. The negroes did not respond; John Brown and a few of his followers were captured and hanged. This atrocious act of Brown and his abettors kindled a flame in the hearts of the Southern people that led to the Civil War. But none felt it so keenly as did the Virginians, because it was their sacred soil that had been traduced. Three years previous to this, when I was ten years of age, I remember to have heard a political discussion among a body of men, and the following words have lingered in my memory ever since, and they are all that I can recall of their talk: "If there is a war between the North and South, Virginia will be the battlefield." I thought it would be grand, and waited anxiously for the fulfillment of this prophecy. Then when John Brown swooped down on Harper's Ferry with his cohorts, it looked as if the day had really come and that the prediction was about to be fulfilled. From that time war talk was general, especially among the small boys. But the intense excitement caused by the Brown episode gradually abated. It broke out afresh, however, when later it was announced that Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. It seemed to be the concensus of opinion that the result would be war, and that Virginia in truth would be the battleground, and that the counties along the Potomac would receive the first shock of battle. We boys of Loudoun county, right on the Potomac, felt that we were "it," and we had a kind of pity for those poor fellows a little farther back. We were in the front row, and when the curtain went up we could see and hear everything. There were about thirty boys attending our school between the ages of fifteen and twenty. They all entered the Confederate Army, but few survived the war.

Before going on with the story, perhaps I ought to explain why these boys were so eager for war, when they knew that the enemy would be their own countrymen. There was a peculiar relationship existing between the slave owner's family and the slaves that the North never did and never will understand. On the part of the white children it was love, pure and simple, for the slave, while on the part of the adult it was more than friendship, and, I might add, the feeling was reciprocated by the slaves. The children addressed the adult blacks as Uncle and Aunt, and treated them with as much respect as they did their blood relatives. It was Uncle Reuben and Aunt Dinah. The adult white also addressed the older colored people in the same way. With but few exceptions, the two races lived together in perfect harmony. If a slave-owner was cruel to his slaves, it was because he was a cruel man, and all who came in contact with him, both man and beast, suffered at his hands. Even his children did not escape. These men are found everywhere. The old black mammy, with her head tied up in a white cloth, was loved, respected and honored by every inmate of the home, regardless of color.

The following incident will be of interest: Hon. John Randolph Tucker, one of Virginia's most gifted and learned sons, who represented his State in the U.S. Senate, always celebrated his birthday. I remember to have attended one of these celebrations. It was shortly after the close of the war. Mr. Tucker was then between fifty-five and sixty years of age. He had grown children. Fun making was one of his characteristics. On these annual occasions, it was his custom to dress himself in a long white gown and bring into the parlor his old black nurse, whom he called "mammy." She sat in her rocking-chair with her head tied up in the conventional snow-white cloth. Mr. Tucker, dressed up as a child in his nightgown, would toddle in and climb up into her lap, and she would lull him to sleep with an old-time nursery song, no doubt one of her own compositions. This could not possibly have occurred had the skin of his nurse been white.

When a daughter married and set up her own home, fortunate was she if she took with her the mammy. In many homes the slaves were present at family prayers. The kitchen and the cabin furnished the white children places of resort that were full of pleasure.

This was the relation between white and colored as I remember it from a child in my part of Virginia. And tonight, as I write these lines, while the clock tolls off the hour of eleven, I cannot keep out of my mind the words of that little poem by Elizabeth Akers:

"Backward, turn backward, oh time in thy flight,
And make me a child again, just for tonight."

How anyone could have desired to break up this happy relationship was beyond the conception of the child, and more or less incomprehensible to the adult.

Somewhere between childhood and youth we children all learned that there was a race of people up North called Abolitionists, who were so mean that they sent secret agents through the country to persuade the colored people to leave their homes and go North, where they could be free. That these agents were disguised as peddlers or otherwise, and that they visited the cabins of the slaves during the late hours of the night, and went so far as to urge them to rise up in a body and declare their freedom, and if necessary to murder those who held them as slaves. This delusion, if it were a delusion, might have been dispelled had not John Brown and his men appeared upon the scene to give an ocular demonstration of their real intent. The few men with him may have been the only following that he had, but the damage had been done. Virginia was fighting mad. What had been whispered about the abolitionists in secret was now proclaimed from the housetops. John Brown was an abolitionist, and all abolitionists were John Browns, so the youths at least reasoned. The words abolitionist and Yankee were for the most part synonymous terms; the former being hard to pronounce, the child usually employed the latter. Some of the young children did not know that a Yankee was a human being, as the following incident will illustrate:

When the first Federal soldiers entered the village of Middleburg, Loudoun county, Virginia, the cry went up and down the streets, "The Yankees have come!" The streets were soon deserted by every living thing except the dogs and the ubiquitous, irrepressible small boy, who was or pretended to be "skeered o' nothin'." This war was gotten up for his special benefit, and he was determined to see all that was to be seen, and was always to be found well up in front. The women and children within their homes crowded to the windows to see the cavalry as it marched by. A little three-year old nephew of mine, with the expression of alarm disappearing from his face, said: "Mamma, them ain't Yankees, them's soldiers." He expected to see some kind of hideous animal.

This is the education the Virginia boys got, who afterward became Lee's soldiers. They were brought up in this school, and when they became soldiers, wearing the gray, they felt that they had something to fight for. They believed that they were real patriots, notwithstanding they were called rebels and traitors.

This brings us to the beginning of the Civil War, or at least to the secession movement. Lincoln had not yet taken his seat as President, when several of the Southern States seceded and formed a Southern Confederacy, with Montgomery, Ala., as the capital, and Jefferson C. Davis as President. This was recognized by the United States Government as open rebellion, and as soon as Mr. Lincoln took the reins of government, he called for 75,000 troops to suppress the rebellion.

Virginia must either furnish her quota of troops or withdraw from the Union. She promptly chose the latter, and shortly afterward became a part of the Southern Confederacy. As soon as the ordinance of secession had passed the Virginia Legislature, there were a thousand Paul Reveres in the saddle, carrying the news to every point not reached by telegraph lines. The young men and boys did not wait for the call from the Governor. Military companies, infantry, cavalry and artillery sprang up everywhere. Anyone who chose and could get a sufficient following might raise a company. These companies were offered to the Governor and promptly accepted. The ordinance of secession was passed at night. The next morning Virginia troops were on their way to seize Harper's Ferry. On the approach of these troops the small guard of United States soldiers stationed there set fire to the buildings and fled. The fire was extinguished by the citizens, I think, and much of the valuable machinery and military stores was saved. The machinery was sent to Richmond, and the arms were used in equipping the soldiers. Harper's Ferry became one of the outposts of the Confederacy, and a place of rendezvous for the rapidly-growing Confederate battalions. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, afterward known as Stonewall Jackson, was sent to Harper's Ferry to drill and organize the forces gathering there, into an army. He was later superseded by Gen. Jos. E. Johnston, but Jackson remained as a subordinate commander. In the meantime, the Confederate Government had demanded that Gen. Anderson evacuate Fort Sumter, at the entrance of Charleston harbor, and also had said, if not in words, in action, to the Government at Washington as it saw United States armies gathering near its northern frontier, So far shalt thou come, and no further.

But to go back to the thirty boys. What were they doing all this time? Just prior to the date of Virginia's secession they were gathering in groups at noon and recess, on the way to and from school, and talking war. How big and important we seemed as we prospectively saw ourselves dressed as soldiers, armed and keeping step to the beat of the drum. There was but little studying, for our preceptor was not hard on us. He had once been a boy himself, and appreciating the conditions that surrounded us, he chiefly employed himself in keeping the school together until hostilities began, if it should really come to that. I don't know how long the school continued, but I do know that these particular boys were early on the drill ground, and were being trained into soldiers. It was difficult for the parents to keep the fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys at home or in school. I had a brother sixteen years old who was first of the family to enlist, and then all followed, one after another, until four of us were in the ranks. There were mature men and old men, men of heavy responsibilities, who saw farther into the future than the younger generation. These went about with bowed heads and talked seriously of what the future might bring. They wisely discussed constitutional law, State rights, what foreign nations would have to say about it, the nations that had to have our cotton. "Cotton was king," they said, and the South owned the king, soul and body. Questions like these were discussed among the men, but like one of old, the boy cared for none of these things. In the language of a famous Union general, his place was to meet the enemy and defeat him. I remember about this time hearing this toast being offered to the South:

"May her old men make her laws, her young men fight her battles, and her maidens spin her cotton."

The boy well understood the part he was to play, and he was in his element, and as happy as a boy could be. I cannot remember just when the first call was made for troops by the Governor, but I do know, as I have already stated, that the boys heard the call from a higher source, and they were coming from mountain and plain, from hillside and valley, from the shop, and office and school. Well do I recall the joy that welled up in every boy's breast as one after another of the actors took their places on the stage. Again I find myself quoting Elizabeth Akers, this time substituting a word:

"Backward, turn backward, oh time in thy flight,
And make me a BOY again, just for tonight."

Now let us take a peep into the Virginia homes. What were the women doing? Ah, they were as busy as bees. These boys must be equipped not only with munitions of war, but each boy must take with him as many home comforts as could possibly be compressed into a bundle small enough to be carried. When he was at home it took a good-sized room to hold these things; now he must put them into his pocket or on his back, and it took all of a mother's skill to gather these things up into the least possible space, that her boy might have in the camp life all that a mother's love could give him. The Government would furnish the guns, the powder, the lead, the canteen and knapsack and haversack; the tinshop, the tincup; the shoemaker, the boots; the bookstore, the Bible (every boy must carry a Bible), but all the clothing, all the little necessary articles for comfort and health, must be manufactured in the home. Did you ever open the outside casing of one of these large patent beehives and see the bees at work inside? What rushing and pushing and confusion! Every bee, so far as human eye can see, seems busy. This beehive was but a replica of a Virginia home in the spring of 1861.

While these things were going on in the home the boys were drilling in the field, for they were now out of school. All were anxious to get their equipment, and to be the first to offer their services to the Governor.

Had these boys any conception of what they were rushing into? Suppose just at this time the curtain had been lifted, and they could have seen Bull Run and Seven Pines, Manassas and Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and The Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor and Appomattox? And if they could have seen a picture of their homes and fields as they appeared in 1865, would they have rushed on? Perhaps I can answer that question by pointing to the battlefield of New Market. In the fall of 1864, after nearly all the great battles had been fought, the young cadets from Lexington, Va., who had not yet been under fire, but with a full knowledge of what war meant, rushed into this battle like veterans and were mowed down as grain, their little bodies lying scattered over the field like sheaves of wheat.

"O war, thou hast thy fierce delight,
Thy gleams of joy intensely bright;
Such gleams as from thy polished shield
Fly dazzling o'er the battle-field."

Yes, war has its bright, attractive side, and those boys, as I knew them, would have looked at these moving-pictures as they came one after another into view, and then perhaps have turned pale; perhaps they would have shuddered and then cried out, "On with the dance; let joy be unconfined;" and it was literally on with the dance. School, as I have just said, was out, and every laddie had his lassie, and you may be sure they improved the time. It was drill through the day and dance through the night.

"No sleep till morn when youth and pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet."

The boys were happy, and "all went merry as a marriage bell," and well that it was so. When we looked into the hive we saw that the bees were busy, but as far as human eye could discover, there was no head; all was confusion; it was pushing and shoving and coming and going, and one might have asked the question, What are they doing? What does it all mean? If we could have seen farther into the hive we would have discovered that back of this busy throng sat the queen, and that these were her subjects, doing her bidding. She was sending out her little rogues to rob the flowers, and they were coming back richly laden with spoils. This was the raw material, and it was being worked up. When the season was over and the flowers were dead, and we drew from the hive the finished product, so perfect in all its parts and richly stored with sweetened treasures, we began to realize that there was a master mind behind it all. Do you suppose for a moment that when these young men and boys of Virginia, in fact from all over the South, who were rushing with such intense enthusiasm in the Confederate ranks, these fathers and mothers and sisters, who were equipping these youths with comforts without which they could not have endured the hardships of the camp, do you suppose they were but following the dictates of a few maddened, fire-eating fanatics, and that the whole would end in debt, death and desolation? If you had lived in 1861 you might have been excused for thinking so. But what do you think of it today, as the finished product begins to unfold itself to our view? Do you not believe there was a master mind behind it all, a King, and that these boys were but part of His royal subjects, doing His will? Suppose there had been no rush and no adequate army at Bull Run to meet McDowell and his forces as they came marching out from Washington with flying colors? Suppose the Confederates had been beaten at Bull Run and Richmond had fallen, and the war had ended then? What miserable creatures we poor devils of the South would have been! The world would have laughed at us. We would have lost all of our self-respect. A cycle of time could not have wiped out our self-contempt, and God might have said, "I cannot build up a great nation with material like this." The North would have had no Grand Army Veterans, and no deeds of heroism with which to keep alive the fire of patriotism in the hearts of their children. Spain in 1898 might have successfully defied us, and China and Japan have roamed at will over our land. No; the war was a necessity. It was costly, but was worth all that it cost. It has made of us a very great nation.

Now I shall go back and tell how it was done. I will do so by narrating my own experience, and as my experience, with but slight variation, was the experience of every boy who served in the Confederate army, the reader will have a fair idea of what the boy's life was during those four years.

The firing upon Fort Sumter was like throwing a stone into a hornet's nest. All the North was aroused. Troops came pouring into Washington by every train. A Massachusetts regiment, in passing through the streets of Baltimore, was mobbed, and the song "Maryland, My Maryland" was wafted out on the air.

Maryland boys, under cover of night, were crossing the Potomac to help drive the invaders back. They came singing "The Despot's Heel Is on Thy Shore." Rumors flew thick and fast. Now and then shots were exchanged between opposing pickets as they walked to and fro on the banks of the Potomac river that separated them. In fact, the curtain was up and the play had begun. Harper's Ferry, Leesburg and Manassas (see map)[1] became strategical points, and at each of these the Confederates were concentrating their forces.

By June 1, 1861, Jos. E. Johnston at Harper's Ferry had an army of 10,000. Gen. A.P. Hill at Leesburg, 3000. Gen P.T. Beauregard at Manassas, 12,000. These were Confederates. On the Union side, Gen. Patterson had an army of about 15,000 confronting Johnston, and McDowell at the head of 35,000 was crossing the Potomac at Washington en route for Bull Run.