Before the month ended, Mosby’s prediction was fulfilled. Sheridan sent five thousand men across the Blue Ridge into Loudoun Valley, and the Yankee, extended in a line miles long, swept the countryside. They burned every mill and barn and smoke house, and every wheat stack; they destroyed every pound of ham or pork or bacon and every grain of wheat or corn; they drove away or shot and left to rot every horse and every head of beef cattle and every cow and every hog. They killed chickens and ducks and geese and turkeys and even dogs and cats.
And to every plea for mercy and forbearance the answer was the same: “You’ve given too many meals to Mosby’s cutthroats. You’d better be glad we don’t burn your houses too.”
For five days the systematic destruction continued. It ended only when in the whole valley there was nothing left except the smouldering embers of barns and corn cribs and farm buildings, the untouched houses which alone had been spared, and the hungry women and children and helpless old men who went plucking at charred carcasses or digging in the hot ashes of their smoke houses for a morsel of food.
In the face of this host, Mosby’s men could only scatter and watch their chance to strike and kill and ride away. In front of the advancing cordon they fell back, and when its work was done and the bluecoats withdrew toward the Valley, they followed, watching for stragglers, killing without mercy every man they found.
Through that five days of Hell, days when a smoke pall lay heavy across Loudoun Valley and the nights were illumined in all directions by hungry, high-leaping flames, Faunt did not spare himself. From the cover of forest by day or from the shadows of night he watched for opportunity and seized it when it came. Half a dozen times he charged through Yankee detachments with his pistols blazing, leaving dead and wounded behind, and heedless of the wild shots flung too hastily after him. Twenty times, from cover where he was secure against blundering pursuit, and using the stock that could be fitted to his pistols or taking rest on fence or boulder to make sure of his aim, he sent bullets toward their mark. He forgot food and drink and sleep, and he did not know his own exhaustion till at last a spasm of coughing swept him from his horse and red blood bubbled from his lips to stain the grass where he fell.
Mosby’s men found him and carried him to the nearest house, and Colonel Mosby himself came to offer his services. “I must go again to Richmond,” he explained. “But I will see you cared for first.”
Faunt, weak and weary, smiled a little. “Colonel, do you remember where we met?”
Mosby hesitated. “I’m not sure.”
“In Richmond,” Faunt reminded him. “At the home of lady, Mrs. Albion.”
“I remember now.”
“Take me to her.”
The other hesitated. “I’m afraid you’re too ill to be moved, Mr. Currain.”
“I will live,” Faunt promised. “I will live to come to her.”
14
September-December, 1864
TRAV’S stay in Augusta, while General Longstreet was there or stay in Augusta, while General Longstreet was there or at Hawthorne Heights, the Hart home in Union Point halfway to Atlanta, was a pleasant interlude; and particularly when, after that visit to General Lee in July, Longstreet’s anxieties began to ease. Grant seemed, at least for the time, securely held. Early’s little army marching boldly toward Washington would draw off some of the Union forces in front of Petersburg; and the Confederate lines were strong and defensible. There was little Grant could hope to do.
So, having brought Enid and the children to Augusta, Trav had weeks of relative repose. General Longstreet had stayed at first with the Anderson Carmichaels, six or seven miles out on the Savannah road. Mr. Carmichael farmed the fertile bottom lands in the bend of the river, where a shallow dry ditch marked the course of the old canal down which cargoes of tobacco had used to start their river journey to the Savannah market. The house was in a grove at the foot of the hills around which the river here had to make a detour; and across the tilled lands the mass of the Sand Hills west of Augusta was bold against the sky. Till he brought his family from Richmond, Trav, as well as the Longstreets, lodged there; but on the return from Petersburg the hot weather became unendurable, so the Longstreets went to live with Josiah Sibley. His big house was on Bay Street, not far down the river from the bridge, and so near the water and so vulnerable to spring floods that living quarters were all above the first-floor level. Josiah Sibley, who had married as his second wife Longstreet’s cousin, was now in his middle fifties and with a lifetime of success behind him. He had come from Massachusetts while still in his teens, to work for his brothers who were already established in the cotton business. Before he was twenty he and his brother Amory were in partnership, with their offices in Hamburg just across the river in South Carolina. When Amory Sibley died in 1853, Hamburg was losing its importance as a business center, so in 1855 Josiah Sibley shifted his headquarters to Augusta. Three sons in succession as they reached maturity became members of the firm.
Robert, the youngest son by Mr. Sibley’s first wife, was this summer sixteen; and he and Garland Longstreet and Trav’s Lucy were from the first good companions. Trav enjoyed long hours with Mr. Sibley. The cotton merchant had not outlived his New England inheritance of sagacity and acumen, even though old thrifty ways had surrendered to the generous seductions of his adopted habitat; and he like Trav thought in figures. A neat sum in addition or in subtraction was beautiful, regardless of its meaning. They matched Northern resources in men and money and materials against those of the South, and in spite of the tragic significance of their results, they found in these elaborate calculations an almost sensuous content.
Through Mr. Sibley, Trav was able to rent for his family five rooms in a house in the Sand Hills where two ladies, Mrs. Sibley’s distant relatives, lived alone. Enid made many friends in these new surroundings; and when Trav one day remarked on this she said:
“Why, of course! I’m really lots nicer than you think, Trav!” She spoke teasingly. “You hid me away in the country for years, and at Great Oak your mother kept me in the background, and in Richmond Cinda prejudiced everyone else against me.” Though he himself had sometimes resented Cinda’s attitude, Trav protested that this was not true; and Enid tossed her head. “Oh, naturally you’ll stand up for your own family against me! The Currains are something pretty special, of course; and I know they feel you married beneath you. But people here don’t know I’m the skeleton in the closet, so they like me.”
In these days when she was more contented, they had reached an easy footing; and he said quizzically that she was a pretty well-nourished skeleton, and she laughed and retorted:
“Well, Honey, I may be a little plump, but I’m awfully comfortable.” Her kiss was affectionate, and he caught her close, grateful for a happiness which he had once thought would never again be his.
He was happy with Enid, and happy with Peter and Lucy. They liked to ride together, rising early to escape the heat of the day. Trav bought at an absurdly high price a mare for Lucy, and borrowed a mount for Peter. Nig, here where the sound of battle never touched his ears, was as docile as a kitten. His smooth single-foot stretched the other horses to a half-gallop; and they might ride swift and far, and then while the horses cooled come more decorously home. Trav’s only regret was that on these fine excursions Enid would never join them. To ride in hot weather produced on her fair skin an ugly rash; and she thought it was caused by the heat from the horses, and preferred to amuse herself in other ways. To Trav’s satisfaction she even helped in the hospitals, as crowded here as they were everywhere in the South. Lucy answered the call for help in making cartridges at the Arsenal on the Sand Hills near where they lived; and when she came home after her first day at this work she had to describe to Peter how a cartridge was made.
“Why, you just roll a strip of paper around a piece of stick that’s the right size,” she explained. “And you paste it so it won’t come unrolled, and tie one end with a string the way you would a bag. Then you
put in the bullet, and a wad, and just the right amount of powder; and then you twist the paper at the other end, with some paste so it will stay—and that’s all there is to it.”
She made some cartridges for him, using a stick for a mold, and pebbles for bullets and sand for powder; and Peter said they looked like so many mice with their tails tucked along their sides. “I bet I could do that,” he declared. “Do they pay you for doing it?”
“Of course not! Oh, they would; but I do it to help our soldiers.”
“Well, they’d have to pay me!” Peter declared; and Trav, listening, suggested that Peter try the work. The boy thereafter earned at first fifty cents and presently a dollar a day. “I’m going to save up till I’m big enough to go and be a soldier,” he announced.
But Peter was only twelve. Before he could achieve that ambition, the fighting would be done. “Better spend it, son,” Trav advised. “Those shinplasters they pay you will buy a lot of butterscotch, even at twenty-five cents a piece.” Nevertheless the youngster zealously treasured his little hoard.
Trav rode with the children almost every morning, but after dinner he went to be with the General. Longstreet’s arm was still paralyzed, and Trav wrote at his dictation many letters. For the rest, Longstreet liked to talk of what had been and of what would be. The news of Stuart’s death, soon after his own hurt, had saddened him, and he often spoke of the young cavalryman. “I first met him in the Indian country,” he remembered. “He was the best young officer in the army at getting guns through hard country, lowering them down precipices or hauling them up, manhandling them if there was no other way, getting them to the spot where they were needed. That first summer of the war—is it only three years ago, Currain?”
“After First Manassas? Only three years, yes sir.”
“It seems a lifetime,” Longstreet commented. “Yes, that summer, when we were on the outpost, Stuart was splendid. I think I was the first to recommend him for promotion.” And he said sorrowfully: “A gallant and a bold and yet a discreet and careful man. His only mistakes arose from his high qualities. When he failed, it was his own audacity that betrayed him.”
When General Hood superseded General Johnston in command of the army defending Atlanta, Secretary Seddon wrote suggesting that Longstreet take over Hood’s corps. Longstreet replied that he would prefer to wait till he was fully recovered, and Mr. Seddon agreed that until his strength was restored he should remain inactive. Longstreet thought putting Hood in Johnston’s place was a mistake.
“I’ve always rated General Johnston high,” he told Trav. “His strategy against Sherman has been as splendid as Lee’s against ’Lys Grant. Johnston would have played a waiting game to baffle Sherman at Atlanta; but I’m afraid Sam Hood will be too ready to fight.”
“Isn’t General Hood’s name ‘John’?”
“Yes, but everyone calls him ‘Sam.’ ”Longstreet chuckled. “Just as the men call me ‘Old Pete’ when my name is ‘James.’ But by either name, Hood is no match for Sherman. Putting him in command is another of Mr. Davis’s mistakes.”
He added harshly: “President Davis has an extraordinary aptitude for doing the wrong thing, in small matters and in great ones.” And he referred to an incident of the previous fall. “Remember after Chickamauga I sent those captured flags back to Richmond with a guard of honor selected from men who had specially distinguished themselves? In Washington, Union soldiers on such an errand would have been given a fine reception; yes, and promotions. But my men were met by an old negro with a cart to haul the flags to the Capitol, and the only reward they got was transportation back to the army. President Davis seems to go out of his way to affront the men who are fighting this war for him.”
Through the weeks that followed, the General’s anxieties persisted; and when Atlanta fell he was more depressed than Trav had ever seen him. Sherman’s action a few days later in expelling from Atlanta all the civilian residents, sending old men and women and children through the Confederate lines as homeless wanderers, made him hot with rage.
“I regret now our forbearance in Pennsylvania,” he commented. “Hunter’s outrages in the Valley, and Sheridan’s burning and stealing, and now Sherman’s prodding ladies and children out of their homes at the point of a bayonet! There you have three crimes no decent men, North or South, will condone.”
Yet he was even more angered when President Davis on his way to General Hood’s army spoke in Macon and announced, in terms so plain that no one could doubt his meaning, that Hood would move to get in Sherman’s rear.
“That delivers us into the hands of the enemy,” Longstreet declared. “Sherman is forewarned, so he will know exactly what to expect, and what to do.” He decided to take Mrs. Longstreet and the children back to Lynchburg. “For I am almost ready to return to duty, and I can’t leave them here in Sherman’s path.”
Trav echoed: “In his path? You think Sherman will try to move south?”
“Of course! As soon as Hood moves around him to the north, there’ll be nothing to stop him. He can go where he pleases; and though Sherman is a brutal ruffian, he’s soldier enough to seize the opportunity. Georgia is hardly touched by the war, so Sherman can live off the country; and he’ll rip the heart out of the South.” He added bitterly: “Georgia may even welcome him! She’s been full of peace talk for months. But if she throws any garlands in Sherman’s path she’ll regret it. He’ll strip her to the bone.” And he added: “Yes, we must get back to Lynchburg before Hood opens the door and lets Sherman come this way.”
Trav told Enid the General’s decision, and he said she and the children had better return to Richmond; but she refused to leave Augusta. “I don’t believe him,” she declared. “He’s just scared! We’re ever so much better off here. There’s plenty of food in the stores, and it’s not too expensive, and I have so many friends. No, indeed, the children and I will stay right here.”
“The General will want me with him,” Trav reminded her.
“Well, for that matter, Lucy and Peter and I want you with us,” Enid retorted. “But of course what we want doesn’t matter.”
So they would stay, but Trav must go; and in late September he bade them good-by. He and the General left Mrs. Longstreet and the children at the Estes home in Danville long enough to go to Petersburg to see General Lee. When he met Faunt there, Trav’s disgust at the other’s intimacy with Mrs. Albion gave way to the old affection; but he took away with him memory of his brother’s wasted body, his haggard eyes and flaming cheeks. That Faunt was ill, perhaps beyond recovery, was unmistakable.
General Longstreet was equally concerned for General Lee. “He’s worn to death,” he said, when they were on the cars again.
“His hair has grown almost completely white since I saw him.”
Longstreet nodded. “He’s been ill ever since May, and that damned pain in his back torments him steadily. And he has too many burdens to bear. The commissary has completely broken down, so he has to feed the army as well as fight it. I told him supplies were plentiful in Georgia, but apparently the speculators monopolize the railroads so there aren’t enough cars to carry what the army needs.” Anger stirred in his heavy tones. “He tells me that in Mississippi and Alabama everyone’s selling cotton to the Yankees, trading it for bacon pound for pound; but the bacon never reaches the army. And he’s desperate for men. Governor Brown of Georgia not only refuses to let the state militia join General Lee; he wants the Georgia troops now in the army sent home. General Lee says half to two-thirds of the paper strength of his army is absent without leave. Of course, hungry men are easily persuaded to desert, but General Lee can’t face Grant alone.”
He was eager for duty. His arm was still useless, but in Lynchburg he began to ride every day, testing his strength. In mid-October he and Trav returned to Richmond, and Longstreet dictated a letter to Colonel Taylor, Lee’s adjutant general. “I doubt the propriety of being assigned in my crippled condition to positions now filled by officers of vigorous health
,” he confessed; but he added that if he could be used anywhere, even west of the Mississippi, without displacing an efficient officer, he would welcome the assignment.
Trav, writing at the other’s dictation, felt his: throat filled with sympathy, thinking this humility in one who had always been profoundly self-confident infinitely touching. Trav found most people perplexing; they did inexplicable things. Cinda and Brett, Tony, Tilda, Faunt; Enid most of all: each sometimes reacted to life in ways he could not comprehend. He had sometimes thought, watching them, listening to them, that they were as mysterious as chemicals in an opaque bottle. Until the cork was removed you never knew what they would do. The way of a seed in the ground, of a beast in the field, of a fish in the water or a wild animal in the forest—these were all predictable; but not the ways of man and woman.
Yet he did not have this sense of mystification where General Longstreet was concerned, and he. was rarely surprised at the other’s deeds or words. Everything about the General seemed to Trav consistent, all of a part, cut off the same piece. Thus now he understood that Longstreet’s lifetime of vigorous health made him feel the more keenly his present handicaps; and he looked for and saw, with gladness for the other’s sake, the lift in spirits when orders came assigning him to command the left wing of Lee’s army, holding the line from Chapin’s Bluff to the Chickahominy at New Bridge.
They were near Richmond, so Trav asked Cinda to send servants to open the house on Clay Street; and he and the General made it their Richmond headquarters, and when the lines were quiet they frequently spent the night there. It was good to see Cinda again. She had a new and warming quality. Her tart tongue, since sadness came to dull the bite of her sardonic humor, had long since lost its edge; but now sadness too was gone, and all bitterness and anger. Trav felt in her a strong serenity, and a gentleness that matched her strength. She smiled easily, and her eyes when they rested upon those she loved held a peace which Trav himself, in this collapsing world, had not achieved. When the house on Clay Street was ready she took him to see it, and she said laughingly:
House Divided Page 151
