A Year in the South

by Stephen V. Ash

  Cornelia had first sensed this moral crisis of the Confederacy during her journey to Richmond to meet Angus. On the boat down the James River she noticed that “every one was sad and anxious” and that among the passengers were “groups of murmuring men.” When she eavesdropped on conversations, she was disturbed by what she heard: “I … began to realize that the patience of the people was worn out; that their long suffering and endurance was to be depended on no longer.” Along with declining faith in victory, she detected deep resentment toward the Confederate government, especially over conscription. She listened as a fellow passenger, a forty-five-year-old conscript on his way to the army, told of a neighbor “who had had two sons killed [in battle], and one a prisoner … the father, had been taken as a conscript, and … the poor old wife had been left alone in her hut to abide the winter’s cold, with no one to provide for or take care of her.”44

  As the winter of 1864–65 went on, there was more bad news to depress Confederate spirits. City after city fell to the invaders: Savannah in late December, Charleston and Wilmington in February. Sherman’s army rampaged through South Carolina. Increasingly Cornelia saw around her “discouragement and apprehension.”45

  Yet hope endured among the Confederate faithful. While Robert E. Lee’s army was still intact, the war was not lost. Trust in Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia remained strong even as trust in the rebel government dwindled. Former governor Letcher, writing in November 1864 from the house in Lexington that he had moved into after the Yankees burned him out, spoke for many Confederate patriots: with General Lee in command, he said, “I have entire confidence in our ultimate success.”46

  Cornelia herself was, by 1865, undergoing a crisis of patriotic faith. Although she had opposed secession—unlike her husband, who became a rabid secessionist after Lincoln’s election in 1860—she ardently embraced the Confederate cause once the war began. She would never forget the thrill she experienced the first time she saw a Confederate flag carried by marching troops. On New Year’s Day 1863 she declared herself willing to “give all I have” in defense of the cause, “even my six boys.” She chafed under the rule of the “dirty Yankees” who occupied Winchester while she lived there, and she refused to take the Union oath of allegiance they demanded. Even when the war began to turn against the Confederacy in the summer of 1863, Cornelia did not despond. Victory was certain, she believed, because the cause was just: God would not deny the South “triumph over those who would deprive us of our right to do as we pleased with our own.”47

  Her belief that the cause was righteous never wavered, but by 1865 she was distraught with doubt about ultimate victory. Cold logic told her that the Confederacy must soon collapse. But she could not bring herself to renounce the struggle, as so many other Southerners were doing, for defeat was “too horrible to think of.” She trembled at the prospect of her beloved South under the heel of “our insolent enemies.” With ever greater urgency she prayed for divine favor, until her prayers became “almost a frantic cry to Heaven demanding help and success.” And yet she knew that if the war continued, more suffering would be demanded of the Confederate people. She herself, who had suffered so much already, might have to endure worse. Sacrificing her children was no longer just an abstract notion: Harry would turn seventeen in April and would have to go to the army.48

  These worries were compounded by the constant strain of providing for her family. She was managing, with Susan’s help, to put together three meals a day for the children, but just barely. Skimpy portions of coarse food were pretty much the rule at the McDonalds’ dining table all through the winter. Cornelia herself was not getting enough to eat: many days she had nothing but bread and coffee. This was not just a matter of self-denial. She was unable to stomach some of the food she had on hand—the beans and the sorghum, for example, which the children did not seem to mind—and undoubtedly her appetite was depressed by her ceaseless anxiety. She had noticed as far back as November, when she glanced in a mirror on the boat to Richmond, how thin her face was. Now she was beginning to look haggard.49

  The unending labor was wearing her down, too. Her morning and afternoon classes added to what was already an enormous burden of work. Although Susan relieved her of kitchen chores, Cornelia had no servants to assist with the other tasks: laundry, ironing, sewing, dusting, sweeping, mopping, making beds, fetching water, emptying chamber pots. There was no time now for the long, relaxing walks in the countryside with sketchbook in hand that she used to enjoy, and hardly any time for the reading that had always been an important part of her life.50

  The children helped a great deal around the house, of course, but the smaller ones imposed burdens of their own: they had to be bathed, dressed, and constantly watched. Roy, who seemed always to be getting into some trouble, was especially exhausting, and Cornelia often ran out of patience with her eight-year-old “imp of mischief.” Harry, however, eventually stepped in to relieve his mother of this annoyance. He began taking Roy with him to his wood-chopping job and keeping him there all day. Roy loved it, especially on days when snow lay deep on the ground: because he was too little to slog through it, Harry would carry him to work and back on his shoulders.51

  As busy and tired as she and the children were that winter, Cornelia nevertheless insisted that the long-established rituals of the family be observed. Each morning before breakfast they gathered; kneeling on the floor with her face lifted and her eyes closed, Cornelia would lead the children in devotions from the Book of Common Prayer. Before climbing into bed at night, the children would say their own prayers while Cornelia watched and listened. On Sunday mornings there were Bible lessons for the little ones, after which the whole clan marched off together to church.52

  The church services helped lift Cornelia’s spirits. And there were other moments of joy in her life during that bleak winter. She especially treasured the family get-togethers at home in the evenings. The children would assemble as darkness fell, gathering around her while she sewed by candlelight. By the time Harry and Roy came in, rosy-faced and breathless, the others would all be chatting and laughing in front of the fireplace. Even on her worst days, Cornelia found the merriment contagious.53

  Often the family was joined in the evenings by friends. Mrs. Powell called frequently, sometimes bearing little gifts of food and always ready to lend Cornelia a sympathetic ear. Another regular caller was young Lottie Myers, “a pure and lovely Christian” who comforted Cornelia by reminding her of God’s promise to the widow and the orphan: “Your bread and your water shall be sure.” Ann Pendleton stopped by often, too, until the end of January, when she and her oldest daughter departed for Petersburg for an extended visit with General Pendleton.54

  There were signs of cheer not just at Cornelia’s house but throughout Lexington and Rockbridge County that winter, despite the hard times and the news from the front. “Crowds of young people pass from house to house,” noted the town’s Presbyterian minister, “with little to eat and less to wear, and spend the entire night in dancing and revelry.” Dour Calvinist that he was, he decried these and the other instances of godless gaiety he observed, some of them fueled by “intoxicating liquors.” The dancing and drinking continued despite his jeremiads, however, and so did the sleighing parties that appeared spontaneously that winter whenever there was a good snowfall.55

  In the last days of February, Rockbridge citizens spotted flocks of wild geese flying northward. “This,” the editor of the Lexington Gazette reminded his readers, “has always been regarded as an infallible sign of the breaking up of winter.” Spring would bring longer days, warmer skies, and greener woods and fields—that much was certain; what else it might bring, for good or ill, could only be guessed. It would be the fifth spring of the Confederate States of America. Cornelia McDonald and many others wondered if it would be the last.56

  JOHN ROBERTSON

  When the morning sun broke over east Tennessee at a little after seven on New Year’s day 1865, it illuminated a sile
nt, snow-blanketed landscape. It was a bitterly cold Sunday—“as cold as it ever gets in this climate,” recalled John Robertson.1

  John was staying at the farm of his uncle and aunt, Thomas and Kate Collier, nine miles west of Knoxville. He had arrived a day or two earlier in a borrowed carriage that he had driven forty miles from Roane County, where he had lived since October. He brought along a large batch of cigars he had made. Although he chewed tobacco, he did not smoke; he intended to sell the cigars in Knoxville.2

  At this point in his life John was a seeker. But it was not riches he sought, nor was it adventure. Although he was only eighteen, he had seen, as a rebel soldier and home guardsman, all the excitement and danger he cared to see. What he thirsted for now was spiritual fulfillment. He would not rest, he vowed to himself, until he became “changed in heart.”3

  On New Year’s day, John Robertson went, along with some of his cousins, to a church not far from the Colliers’ farm. The icy air pierced his clothing to the skin and stung his face and lungs all the way to the church, but he nevertheless went gladly and hopefully. He came away disappointed, however. There was no inspiring sermon that day to help open his heart to Jesus. Instead, there was a contentious discourse by a Baptist preacher named Miller on the necessity of baptism and the foolishness of those who opposed it. It “rather wounded my feelings,” recalled John, who held contrary views on that particular point of doctrine. When fellow worshipers urged him to go forward to the “anxious seat” with the others who were seeking salvation, John declined, and during the remainder of the service he sat sulkily in his pew. Afterward he felt guilty for “refusing to do what was for my own ben[e]fit.”4

  The next day he had some work to do. He and his friend George Whillock, who had come up from Roane County with him, had to get the carriage fixed. It had broken down during their journey as they were climbing the steep bank of the Tennessee River, just after crossing on the ferry at Loudon. Had it not broken down there, it would undoubtedly have done so somewhere else along the Loudon-Knoxville road. In normal times this road was one of the most dependable in east Tennessee, but it had fallen into disrepair over the last few years, like so many other things in this war-ravaged region. It was washed out in some places and deeply rutted in others, a victim of the marching of armies and the disruption of local government. John and George managed to patch up the carriage sufficiently with leather straps to get to Uncle Thomas’s, but they knew it would never make it back to Roane without repairs by a blacksmith.5

  The fact that the two young men had encountered no hazards on their journey other than ruts and mud was, John knew, a lucky thing. Most of east Tennessee’s roads these days were not only dilapidated but dangerous. The Yankee army had wrested control of most of the region from the rebels in the fall of 1863—to the great joy of the unionist majority, who had waited impatiently while the Yankees conquered the other sections of the state—and there were now ten thousand federal occupation troops stationed in the region, distributed among the larger towns. But the Northern occupiers could exert only limited authority outside these garrisoned posts. Much of the countryside remained unpacified, crawling with secessionist guerrillas and frequently raided by Confederate cavalry. Unionist guerrillas were likewise on the prowl, terrorizing their secessionist neighbors. Bandits roamed around, too, preying on unionist and secessionist families alike. If John Robertson—a former Confederate soldier who had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States to get out of prison—should fall into the hands of any of these armed bands, he would be in extreme danger. He knew, however, that the Loudon-Knoxville road was considerably safer than most, for it was anchored at each end by a Yankee garrison and well patrolled. Nevertheless, he had made sure to pack his pistol along with his cigars.6

  There was a blacksmith’s shop two miles from the Colliers’ farm. John and George drove the carriage there on January 2 only to find that the blacksmith was not in. John, who had picked up a smattering of all sorts of skills while growing up in Greene County, was undeterred. He and George fired up the forge and then “went to work and fixed [the carriage] ourselves.”7

  George then took the carriage back to the Colliers’ while John walked a bit farther to see some friends, the Browns. He had lived with this family on their little farm for a time in late 1863 and early 1864, while he was employed in supplying firewood to the Yankee troops in Knoxville. He remembered the Browns fondly, for they had been “kind and good” to him, and he did not want to leave the neighborhood without paying his respects.8

  As he approached their house he saw John Brown, the head of the family, on the porch. Brown spotted him and said, “Well, if there isn’t John, and I was dreaming of him last night; [I dreamed] he was here.” The whole family greeted him warmly and asked many questions; they were especially curious to know if he “was still a seeker of religion.” When he assured them he was, they told him there was a revival in progress at a nearby schoolhouse. John Brown, who was a minister as well as a farmer, was leading the revival. The Browns begged John Robertson to stay with them while the good work continued.9

  “Their commencing on me so sud[d]enly, gave me a great sho[c]k,” John later wrote. “I knew nothing of the [revival] till I got to Brown’s.” He was stunned, too, by John Brown’s prescient dream. Surely there was something more at work here than mere coincidence. “It seemed that by Providence I had been thrown here.”10

  He accepted the Browns’ invitation to stay and that night went to the schoolhouse. When the call came for “mourners” to come forward to the anxious seat, Parson Brown approached him. “John,” he said, “no doubt you have a good Mother now at home praying for you.” These words struck John with great force. His mother, whom he revered, had long worried about his soul and “had sent up to the throne of God many petitions for me.” Now, as her image appeared in his mind, “I felt my sins more … than ever.” He stood and walked forward to take his place.11

  At this stage of his spiritual life, John was, as he and other evangelicals expressed it, “deeply convicted.” He had searched his heart and seen himself for what he really was: a sinner, repugnant in the eyes of God and unworthy of salvation. He was sick with guilt and remorse. His only hope was that God would see fit to forgive his sins, change his heart, and grant the gift of eternal life.12

  The catalogue of John’s sins was not a long one, but it was sufficient to damn him if God’s grace was not forthcoming. By his own reckoning, the “wickedest day” he had ever known was one in 1863 when he stole a horse from a unionist neighbor in Greene County and later got drunk and threw up. He had robbed unionists on other occasions, too, when he was in the home guard, and he had played cards. While in the Confederate army he had gotten in the habit of swearing; and he had once stolen a rifle from a fellow soldier. He had obeyed all the other commandments, however, except that he might have killed some Yankees in combat. He did not know: there was so much smoke and confusion on the battlefield that only God could tell if any of the bullets he fired had found their mark.13

  His sinfulness now oppressed him like an enormous weight on his back. Seated prayerfully on the anxious seat, he awaited the advent of the divine hand that would lift the burden. But it did not come. “I struggled hard, but to my grief I could find no relief.”14

  He returned to the Browns’ home that night disappointed but undaunted. He was certain that a sign had been given him when he arrived at the Browns’, and he would not throw away this opportunity. “For several days I struggled in this way. I could neither eat nor sleep.” Each morning and evening he made his way to the schoolhouse. All around him “a mighty work was being done.” Many of those present were seized by the spirit and transformed on the spot. At times John would leave the crowded schoolhouse for “secret prayer,” hoping to find in private what eluded him in public. But this, too, availed him nothing. “[S]till I would cling to the world with one hand and reach for mercy with the other.… Thus I suffered under the load of guilt and sin for sever[a]l
days.”15

  On the morning of January 10 he rose, ate breakfast with the Browns, and then retired to pray until time for the meeting. More fervently than ever he offered himself. “I made a bold struggle to give myself whol[l]y up to God. I vowed to spend the remainder of my days in his cause if he would only give me evidence of my pardon.”16

  It was rainy that day, and the path to the schoolhouse was muddy. John went “with a sad and weary heart.” His earnest quest had so far gained him nothing but a heavier burden of guilt. He entered the building and took his seat with the mourners. As the service got under way, he prayed.17

  It happened about noon:

  I felt that a beam of light had entered my sad and aching heart, that my weight of guilt was removed.… I ventured to rise. Uncle T[homas] Collier was there; the first man I noticed was him drawing his overcoat; he sprang forward and gathered me. This was a time of rejoicing. I was perfectly calm, no ways excited. I was greatly rejoiced, but kept it to myself. I was not of that disposition to make a noise, though it was a bright day to me. This joy did not come in the way expected. “The fire, wind and earthquake passed but the Lord was not in them; then came a Still Small Voice.”18

  He stayed with the Browns for another two weeks and went to the schoolhouse every day and night, “not feeling willing to leave the happiest place I had ever seen.” No longer chained to the mourners’ bench, he joined the chorus. “All the singers was worn out by the almost constant singing. I done the best I could for one week; then I was worn out too.” The revival ended twenty-two days after it began. Sixty-four conversions was the final tally, sixty-four men, women, boys, and girls who, in John’s words, “had been made to rejoice by the goodness of God.”19