My husband found me "gloating" over a copy of Common Sense the week after it was published.
"I verily believe," he said, wonderingly, "that you take more pride in that book than in all the rest you have written."
I answered, confidently, "It will do more good than all of them put together."
This was fifteen years after Emily's hand got out, and I knelt on the carpet in my bedroom to knead my trial batch of bread.
THE STIRRED NEST AMONG THE OAKS -
A CRUCIAL CRISIS
"CHARLOTTE C. H., April 12th, 1857
"MY STILL-REMEMBERED FRIEND, - It is a raw, cloudy Sunday afternoon; Mr. Terhune is suffering somewhat from a cold and is, moreover, fatigued by the labors of the day. I have persuaded him to take a siesta on the lounge. Even my birds are quiet under the drowsy influence of the weather, and only the fire and clock interrupt the stillness of my pleasant chamber. . . .
"I have been on the point several times of writing to you (despite your broken promise of last September), begging you to visit us during the summer. Need I say how happy we should be to see you in our Home?
"It is a sweet word to my ear, a sweet place to my heart, for a happier was never granted to mortals. I do not say this as a matter of course. You should know me too well than to suppose that. It comes up freely - joyously - from a brimming heart. My only fear is lest my cup should be too full, for what more could I ask at the hands of the Giver of mercies? I have a dear little home, furnished in accordance with my own taste; delightful society, and an abundance of it; perfect health, having scarcely seen a sick day since my marriage - and the best husband that lives upon the globe. . . .
"This is a large and flourishing church, demanding much hard work on his part; but he is young and strong, and he loves his profession. We visit constantly together, and here end my out-of-door 'pastoral duties.' Within doors, my aim is to make home bright; to guard my husband from annoyance and intrusion during study-hours; to entertain him when he is weary, and to listen sympathizingly to all that
interests him. I shall never be a model 'minister's wife.' I knew that from the first, so I have never attempted to play the rôle. Fortunately, it is not expected, much less demanded.
"We shall make a flying visit to Richmond in May. After that, we shall be at home, off and on, certainly until September. Our cottage parsonage - the 'little nest among the oaks,' as Alice calls it - is ever ready to receive you, and so are our hearts.
"Were my other and very much better half awake, he would join me in love and good wishes, for I have taught him to know and to love you all."
"CHARLOTTE
C. H., November 8th, 1857.
"MY OWN DEAR
FRIEND, - A fact overlooked by Mr. Terhune and
myself, occurred to me a little while ago - viz., that there
is only a semi-weekly mail to Smithville. Therefore, to insure
your reception of this in season at Montrose, it should go from
this place to-morrow. It was Mr. Terhune's intention to drop a
line to Mr. Campbell to-night; but I have begged that I might
write to you instead.
"I have many and bright hopes for you. Hopes, not 'as lovely
as baseless,' but founded upon a knowledge of your
character and that of him whom God has given you as your other
and stronger self. When I rejoiced in your union, it was with
sincere and full delight. You have a mate worthy of you - one
whom you love, and who loves you. What more does the woman's
heart crave? You have chosen wisely, and happiness, such as
you have never known before, must follow.
"Will you not come up and see us this winter? Nothing would
give me more pleasure than to see you in our dear little home.
"Mr. Terhune is very anxious that I should accompany him to
Powhatan, but I dare not suffer my mind to dwell upon a project
so charming. He cannot, all at once, get used to visiting
without me, but in the crib, over in the corner, lies an
insurmountable obstacle - tiny to view, but which may not be
set aside.
"I wish you could see my noble boy, who will be two months
old to-morrow! He is very pretty, says the infallible 'Everybody.'
To us, he is passing dear. Already he recognizes us and frolics by
the half-hour with us, laughing and cooing - the sweetest music
that ever sounded through our hearts and home. Nothing but the
extreme inconvenience attendant upon travelling and visiting with
so young a child, prevents me from accompanying the Reverend
gentleman. . . .
I have no advice to give you except that you shall be yourself,
instead of following the kind suggestions of any Mrs. Grundy
who has an ideal pattern of the 'Minister's Wife' ready for you
to copy. I am confident that you will be 'helpmeet' for the man,
and since he will ask no more, his parish has no right to do it.
"My warm regards to Mr. Campbell. When I see him I will
congratulate him. You would not deliver the messages I would
send to him. 'Eddie' seeds a kiss to 'Auntie Effie.' "
state of society that seems, by contrast with the complex
interests of To-day, pastoral in simplicity. In reviewing the
setting and scenes of my early history, I am reading a
quaint chronicle, inhaling an atmosphere redolent of spices
beloved of our granddames, and foreign to their descendants.
It is not I who have told the story, but the girl from provinces
that are no more on earth than if they had never been. The
Spirit of that Past is the narrator. I sit with her by the open
"chimney-piece," packed as far as arms can reach with blazing
hickory logs; as she talks, the imagery of a yet older day comes
to my tongue. We knew our Bibles "by heart" in both senses of
the term, then, and believed in the spiritual symbolism of that
perfervid love-Canticle - the song of the Royal Preacher. I
find myself whispering certain musical phrases while the tale
goes on, and the story-teller's face grows more rapt:
"Thy lips drop as the honey-comb; honey and milk are under
thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of
Lebanon;
"Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates with pleasant
fruits; camphire, with spikenard;
"Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon."
It is not a mystic love-chant, or a dreamy jargon, that I recite
under my breath. The sadly few (more sad and few with each
year) who recall with me the days that are no more - and
forever - will feel what I cannot put into words.
Soon after the dawn of the year 1858, we had news of the
death of my husband's youngest sister, a bright, engaging
matron, of whom I had grown very fond in my visits to her New
Jersey home. The happy wife of a man who adored her, and the
mother of a beautiful boy, she had but one unfulfilled wish on
earth. When a baby-girl
was put into her arms, she confessed this, and that now she
could ask nothing more of heaven. The coveted gift cost her her
life.
In March, my dearest friend, Mary Ragland, paid a long-
promised visit to the "nest among the oaks." She had not
been strong all winter. She was never robust. I brought her
up from town, in joyous confidence that the climate that had
kept me well and vigorous would brace her up to concert
pitch. For a few weeks she seemed to justify that belief.
Then the languor and slow fever returned. She faded before
our incredulous eyes as a flower droops on the stem. She
had no pain, and so slight was the rise in temperature that
made her thirsty by night that we would not have detected it
had she not mentioned casually at breakfast that she arose
to get a drink of water and chanced to see, through the
window, a lunar rainbow. This led to the discovery that she
always arose two or three times each night to quench her
thirst. It was characteristic that she saw the rainbow, and
was eager to report it next day. Beautiful things floated to
her by some law of natural attraction. She never took to her
bed. To the last, she averred, laughingly, that she was "only
lazy and languid." She "would be all right very soon."
As a sort of low delirium overtook her senses, her
fantasies were all of fair and lovely sights and sweet
sounds. She asked me "where I got the chain of pearls I
was wearing and why she had never seen it before?" She
exclaimed at the beauty of garlands of flowers wreathing
pictures and window-cornices, invisible to our eyes. Music
- a passion of her life - was a solace in the fearful
restlessness of the dying hours. She would have us sing to
her - first one, then the other, for an hour at a time - lying
peacefully attent, with that unearthly radiance upon her face
that never left it until the coffin-lid shut it from our
sight, and joining in, when a favorite hymn was sung, with the
rich contralto which was her "part" in our family concerts.
"She is singing herself away," said my husband, at
twilight on the ninth of May - my mother's birthday.
At nine o'clock that evening the swan-song was hushed.
We carried her down to Richmond, the next day but one.
I have said elsewhere that it is not given to one to have two
perfect, all-satisfying, friendships this side of the Land that
is all Love. She had gladdened our cottage for little over a
month. It was never quite the same after she flew heavenward.
Nor was my life.
To everybody else, it seemed that the "stirring" of the
nest began during the visit we paid to Northern friends that
summer.
Our vacation was longer than usual. It could not be gay,
for our mourning garments expressed but inadequately the
gloom from which our spirits could not escape, with the
memory of two bereavements fresh in the minds of all.
It was during this sojourn with the relatives, whose
adoption of me had been frankly affectionate from the
beginning of our association, that I learned of the desire of
my father-in-law to have his son removed nearer to the rest
of the family. The old Judge was proud and fond of the
boy, and Virginia was a long distance away from New
York - to him, and other loyal Middle Statesmen, as truly
the Hub of Civilization as Boston to the born Bostonian.
Moreover, the Village Church at Charlotte Court-House
was a country charge, although eminently respectable in
character, and honorable in all things pertaining to church
traditions. Other men as young, and, in the father's opinion,
inferior in talent and education, were called to city
parishes. "It was not right for Edward to bury himself in
the backwoods until such time as he would be too near the
dead line, with respect to age, to hope for preferment."
All this and more of the like purport fell upon
unheeding ears, when addressed to me. I had but one
answer to make after listening respectfully to argument
and appeal.
"I promised Edward, of my own free will and accord, before
our marriage, that I would never attempt to sway his
judgment in anything relating to his profession. Least of
all, would I cast the weight of what influence I might have
into either scale, if he were called upon to make change
of pastorate. He must do as he thinks best."
More than one church had made overtures to the rising
man, and his kindred were hanging eagerly upon his
decision. The initial "stir" had been given. It was a
positive relief when we turned our faces southward.
The nest was full that autumn. My husband's widower
brother-in-law, crushed by his late bereavement, and
compelled to resign the home in which his wife had taken
just pride; helpless, as only a man of strictly domestic tastes
can be in such circumstances, abandoned his profession of
the law, and resolved to study divinity. My brother Herbert
turned his back upon a promising business career and made
the same resolution. Both men were rusty in Latin and
Greek, and neither knew anything of Hebrew. My husband
- ever generous to a fault in the expenditure of his
own time and strength in the service of others - rashly
offered to "coach" them for a few months. I think they
believed him, when he represented that Latin was mere
play to him, and that an hour or two a day would be an
advantage to him in refreshing his recollection of other
dead languages.
Alice and I bemoaned ourselves, in confidence and privily,
over the loss of the quietly-happy evenings when we sewed
or crocheted, while the third person of the trio read
aloud, as few other men could read - according to our
notion. We grudged sharing the merry chats over the little
round table with those who were not quite au fait to all our mots de famille,
and did not invariably sympathize with our
judgment of people and things. Mr. Frazee was one of the
most genial of men - good through and through, and as
kind of heart as he was engaging in manner. My brother was
a fine young fellow, and his sisters loved him dearly. It
was ungracious, ungenerous, and all the other "uns" in the
English language, to regret the former order of everyday
life. We berated ourselves soundly, at each of our secret
conferences, and kept on doing it. Home was still passing
lovely, but the stirring went on.
Is everything - moral, spiritual, and physical - epidemic?
I put the question to myself when, less than a week after
the arrival of an invitation to become the leader of the
Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, and
before a definite answer was returned, the mail brought an
important document, portentous with signatures and seals
official, requesting Rev. Edward Payson Terhune to
assume the pastorate of the First Reformed Church in
Newark, New Jersey.
Here was a crucial test of my voluntary pledge never, by
word, look, or deed, to let my husband suspect the trend of
my inclinations with respect to any proposed change of
clerical relations!
For, as I am at liberty now to confess, I wanted to go to
Richmond horribly! Family, friends, ties of early association,
strengthened by nearly fifteen years of residence at the
formative period of life; the solicitations of parents,
brothers, sisters, and true and tried intimates, who
wrote to say how delighted they were at the prospect of
having me "back home" - tugged at my heartstrings until I
needed Spartan firmness of will and stoical reticence, to
hold me fast to my vow. Meanwhile, letters bearing Northern
postmarks were fluttering down upon the one whose must be
not the casting vote alone, but the responsibility of the
decision of what he felt was one of the most momentous
problems he was ever to face. Fortunately, neither of us
knew then the full gravity of the crisis.
Looking back from the top of the hill, I see so clearly the
working out of a benign and merciful design in what was
then perplexity, puzzle, and pain, that I cannot say whether
humility or devout gratitude has the ascendancy in my
thoughts. Especially is this true when I reflect that strength
was vouchsafed to me to hold my peace, even from what I
conceived was "good," when my husband brought both calls
to me, after four days of anxious deliberation, and bade me
speak one word in favor of, or against, either.
Side by side, they lay upon my table, and with them a
paper upon which he had set down, clearly and fairly, the
pros and cons of each.
He read these aloud, slowly and emphatically, then
looked up at me.
"I am in a sore strait! Can you help me?"
In my heart I thought I could, and that right speedily.
With my tongue I said: "No one has a right to say a word.
It is a matter between God and yourself."
He took up the papers silently, and went to the study.
And I prayed, with strong crying and tears, that God would
send us to Richmond.
An hour later he came back. The light of a settled
purpose was in his face. All he said was:
"I have decided to go to Newark. We will talk it over
to-morrow morning."
He slept soundly that night, for the first time in a week
So did not I!
MIGRATION NORTHWARD - ACCLIMATION -
ALBERT EDWARD,
ONE who had known my
husband well for fifty years,
wrote of him soon after his translation: "More than any
other man I ever knew, he had a genius for friendship."
This testimony is amply supported by the fact that he
kept, to his journey's end, the friends whose loving
confidence he gained during the five years of his Charlotte
pastorate. Those who loved him in his youth loved him to
the end - or so many of them as remained to see the
beautiful close of his long day.
We left our Parsonage home and the parish, which was
our first love, laden with proofs of the deep affection
inspired by devoted service in behalf of a united
constituency, and the rare personal gifts of the man who
suffered, in the parting, a wrench as sharp as that which
made the separation a grief to each member of the flock he
was leaving. It was a just tribute to his integrity of purpose
and conscientiousness that the purity of his motives in
deciding upon the step were never questioned. Leading
men in the church said openly that they could not have
hoped to keep him, after his talents and his ability to fill
worthily a wider field were recognized in the world outlying
this section of the Great Vineyard. They had foreseen that
the parting must come, and that before long. He was a
growing man, and the sphere they offered was narrow.
It was in no spirit of Christian philosophy that I
dismantled the nest among the oaks, and packed my Lares
and Penates with a fair show of cheerfulness. Inly, I was
in high revolt for a full week after the die was cast.
The final acceptance of the inevitable, and the steadfast
setting of my face Northward, ensued upon the persuasion
that the one and only thing for a sensible, God-fearing
woman to do was to make the very best of what no human
power could avert.
It is a family saying, based upon the assertion of eldest
daughter, that "if mother were set down in the middle of the
Desert of Sahara, and made to comprehend that she must
spend the rest of her days there, she would within ten
minutes, begin to expatiate upon the many advantages of a
dry climate as a residential region."
By the time we stayed our flight in Richmond, where we
spent our Christmas, I took from the worn and harassed
man of the hour the burden of explanation and defence of
the reasons for tearing ourselves up by the roots and
transplanting the tender vine into what some of our best
wishers called, "alien soil." I had worked myself into an
honest defender of the Middle States in contradistinction
to "Yankee land," before we departed, bag, baggage, and
baby, for the new home.
Mr. Terhune had preached twice in Newark, in
December, after formally accepting the call. We removed
to that city in February of 1859.
With the Saharan spirit in full flow, I met the welcoming
"people", settled in the house we bought in a pleasant
quarter of the growing city - then claiming a population of
less than seventy-five thousand - installed white servants;
received and returned calls, and was, for the first time in
my life, homesick at heart for three months.
In the recollection of the eighteen years that succeeded
that period of blind rebellion against the gentle leading
which was, for us, wisdom and loving-kindness throughout,
I write down the confession in shame and confusion of
face, and abasement of soul.
I stay the course of the narrative at this point to record,
devoutly and gratefully, that never had pastor and pastor's
wife, in any section of our land, a parish in which "pleasant
places" did more richly abound. I would write down, yet
more emphatically and thankfully, the amazing fact that, in
the dozen-and-a-half years of my dwelling among them, I
never had a word of unkind criticism of myself and my
ways; not a remark that could wound or offend was ever
addressed to me.
I wish I might have that last paragraph engraved in golden
capitals and set to the everlasting credit of that Ideal
Parish! To this hour, I turn instinctively in times of joy
and of sorrow, as to members of the true household of
faith, to the comparatively small band of the once large
congregation who are left alive upon the earth.
For eighteen years I walked up the central aisle of the
church, as I might tread the halls and chambers of my
father's house in that far Southern town, with the
consciousness that we were surrounded by an atmosphere
of affectionate appreciation, at once comforting and
invigorating.
All this - and I understate, rather than exaggerate, the
real state of circumstance and feeling I am trying to
depict - was the more surprising, because I went to this
people young, and with little experience as a clergyman's
wife. In Charlotte, I had, as we have seen, done no
"church work." I was petted and made much of, in
consideration of my position as the wife of the idolized
pastor, and my newness to the duties of country
housekeeping and the nursery. In Newark, I was gradually
to discover that I could not shirk certain obligations
connected with parish and city charities. The logic of
events - never the monitions of friends and parishioners
opened my eyes to the truth. When, at length, I took
charge of a girls' Bible
Class, and, some years after, worked up the Infant Class
from tens to hundreds, there was much expression of
unfeigned gratification and eager rallying to my help, not an
intimation of relief that I "had, at last, seen my way clear
to the performance of what everybody else had expected
of a minister's wife."
I have never had a higher compliment than was paid me
by the invitation, a dozen years back, to address the
Alumni of Union Theological Seminary in New York City
upon the subject of "Ministers' Wives."
I took occasion, in the presence of that grave and reverend
assembly of distinguished theologues, to pay a brief
tribute, as strong as words could make it, to that Ideal
Parish. I could not withhold it then. I cannot keep it back
now. I believe my experience in this regard to be highly
exceptional. More's the pity and the shame!
Five children were born to us in those happy, busy years.
Each was adopted lovingly by the people, so far as prideful
affection and generous deeds implied adoption. We were
all of one family.
Returning to the direct line of my narrative - the spring
of 1860 found us well, at work, and contented. I had good
servants, kindly neighbors, and a growing host of congenial
acquaintances. Our proximity to New York was an important
factor in the lives of both of us, bringing us, as it did,
within easy reach of the best libraries and shops in the
country, and putting numberless means of entertainment
and education at our very door. There were two babies by
now - healthy, happy, bright - in every way thoroughly
satisfactory specimens of infant humanity. In the matter of
children's nurses, I have been extraordinarily blessed among
American women. In the twenty-one years separating the
birth of our elder boy from the day when the younger was
released from nursery government, I had but three of these
indispensable comforts.
Two married after years of faithful service; the third
retired upon an invalid's pension. All were Irish by birth.
After much experience in, and more observation of, the
Domestic Service of these United States, I incline to
believe that, as a rule, we draw our best material from
Celtic emigrant stock.
So smoothly ran the sands of life that I recall but one
striking incident in the early part of 1860. That was the
visit of the Prince of Wales to this country. We witnessed
the passage of the long procession that received and
escorted him up-town, to his quarters at the, then, new and
fashionable hostelry - the Fifth Avenue Hotel. My husband
went down to the Battery to see the princeling's review of
the regiments drawn up in line before him, as he rode from
end to end of the parade-ground.
Joining us at the window, from which we had a splendid
view of the pageant, the critic, who was an accomplished
horseman, reported disdainfully that "the boy was
exceedingly awkward. He had no seat to speak of, leaning
forward, until his weak chin was nearly on a line with the
horse's ears, and sticking his feet out stiffly on each side."
Our impression of the imperial youth was not more agreeable.
He sat back in the open coach, "hunched" together in an
ungainly heap, looking neither to the right nor the left,
evincing no consciousness of the existence of the shouting
throngs that lined the pavements ten deep, other than by
raising, with the lifeless precision of a mechanical toy,
the cocked hat he wore as part of the uniform of a British
colonel.
There was a big ball the next night, at which gowns of
fabulous prices were sported, and reported by the
newspapers, and Albert Edward flitted on to his mother's
dominions of Canada, leaving not a ripple in the ocean of
local and national happenings.
That ocean was stilling and darkening with the brooding
of a threatening storm. Newspapers bristled with portents
and denunciations; demagogues bellowed themselves
hoarse in parks and from stumps; torchlight processions
displayed new and startling features.
"So much for so little!" sighed I, upon our return from a
lookout at the nearest corner, commanding long miles of
marching men. "It was ingenious and amusing; but what a
deal of drilling those embryo patriots must have gone
through to do it so well! And for what? The President
will be elected, as other Presidents have been, and as
maybe a hundred others will be, and there the farce will
end. Does it pay to amuse themselves so very hard?"
"If we could be sure that it would end there!" answered
my husband, with unexpected gravity. "The sky is red and
lowering in the South. Between politicians, and the freedom
of the press to play with all sorts of explosives, there is
no telling what the rabble may do."
I looked up, startled.
"You are not in earnest? The good Ship of State has
been driving straight on to the rocks ever since I can
recollect, and she has not struck yet. Think of the Clay and
Polk campaign!"
"Child's play compared with the fight that is on now!"
was the curt retort.
Something - I know not what - in his manner moved me
to put a leading question.
"Have you made up your mind how you will vote?"
"Yes."
"A month ago, you said you had not."
"A good deal has happened in that month."
It was not like him to be sententious with me, but I
pushed the subject.
"I have never interfered with your political opinions, as
you know, and I don't care to vote, myself; but if I had a
vote, I should be in no doubt where to cast it. Lovers
of peace and concord should unite upon Bell and Everett.
That party seems to me to represent the sanest element in
this mammoth muddle."
He smiled.
"To say nothing of your fondness for Mr. Everett. A
charming gentleman, I grant. But the helm of state is not
to be in his hands. Even, supposing" - grave again, and
sighing slightly - "that they are strong enough to hold it
in a storm."
There was a boding pause. Then I spoke, and unadvisedly:
"I ask no questions that I think you would not care to
answer. But I do hope you are not thinking of voting for
Abraham Lincoln? Think of him in the White House! Mr.
Buchanan may be weak - and a Democrat. I heard father say,
as the one drop of comfort he could express from his election:
'At any rate, he is a gentleman by birth and breeding.' Mr.
Lincoln is low-born, and has no pretensions to breeding."
"Then, if I should be so far lost to the proprieties as to
vote for him, I would better not let either of you know."
And he glanced teasingly at Alice, who had just entered
the room.
"I could never respect you if you did!" she said,
spiritedly. "I am persuaded better things of you."
A teasing rejoinder was all she got out of him. The matter
was never brought up again by any of us. When Election
Day came, I was too proud to seem inquisitive. But in my
inmost soul I was assured that reticence boded no good to
my hope of one gallant gentleman's vote for Bell and
Everett.
Months afterward, when we were once again of one mind
with respect to the nation's peril and the nation's need,
he told me that he had kept his own counsel, not only
because the truth might grieve me, but that party feeling
ran so high in his church he thought it best not to intimate
to any one how he meant to vote.
"And, like Harry Percy's wife, I could be trusted not to
tell what I did not know?" said I.
"You might have been catechised," he admitted. "There
are times when the Know-nothing policy is the safest.
PANIC OF '61 - A VIRGINIA VACATION -
MUTTERINGS OF
BAYARD TAYLOR said to me
once of a publishing house,
"An honest firm, but one that has an incorrigible
habit of failing!"
The habit was epidemic in the first half of 1861. Among
others who caught the trick were my publishers. Like a
thunderbolt came the announcement, when I was expecting
my February semi-annual remittance of fat royalties: "We
regret to inform you that we have been compelled to
succumb to the stringency of the times."
The political heavens were black with storm-clouds, and,
as was inevitable then, and is now, the monetary market
shut its jaws tightly upon everything within reach. We could
not reasonably have expected immunity, but we had. We had
never known the pinch of financial "difficulties." Prudent
salaried men are the last to feel hard times, if their wage
is paid regularly. I had three books in the hands of the
"failing" firm. All were "good sellers," and I had come to
look upon royalties as my husband regarded his salary, as a
sure and certain source of revenue.
We had other and what appeared to us graver anxieties.
My sister Alice had passed the winter with us, and the
climate had told unhappily upon her throat. My husband had
not escaped injury from the pernicious sea-fogs and the
malarial marshes, over which the breath of the Atlantic
flowed in upon us. He had a bronchial cough that defied
medical treatment; and March, the worst month of the
twelve for tender throats and susceptible lungs, would
soon be upon us. His physician, a warm personal friend,
ordered him South, and the church seconded the advice by
a formal grant of an out-of-season vacation. We did not
change our main plan in consequence of the disappointment
as to funds. Nor did we noise our loss abroad. Somehow,
the truth leaked out. Not a word of condolence was breathed
to us. But on the afternoon of the day but one before
that set for our departure, the daughter of a neighborly
parishioner dropped in to leave a basket of flowers and
to say that her father and mother "would like to call
that evening, if we were to be at home." I answered that
we should be glad to see them, and notified my husband
of the impending call. The expected couple appeared at
eight o'clock, and by nine the parlors were thronged
with guests who "dropped in, in passing, to say
'Good-bye.' " None stayed late, and before any took leave,
there was the presentation of a parcel, through the hands
of Edgar Farmer, a member of the Consistory, who, in
days to come, was to be to my husband as David to
Jonathan. He was young then, and of a goodly presence,
with bright, kind eyes and a happy gift of speech. Neither
Mr. Terhune nor I had any misgivings of what was in
prospect, when he was asked to step forward and face the
spokesman deputed to wish us Bon voyage and recovery of
health in our old home. Mr. Farmer said this felicitously,
and with genuine feeling. Then he asked the pastor's
acceptance of a parcel "containing reading-matter for the
journey."
The reading-matter was bank-bills, the amount of which
made us open our eyes wide when the company had dispersed
and we undid the ribbons binding the "literature."
That was their way of doing things in the "Old First." A
way they never lost. In a dozen-and-a-half years we should
have become used to it, but we never did. Each
new manifestation of the esteem in which they held their
leader, and of the royally generous spirit that interfused
the whole church, as it might the body and soul of one
man, remained to the last a fresh and delicious surprise.
Ten days out of the six weeks of our vacation were spent
in Charlotte. Mr. Terhune's successor was Rev. Henry C.
Alexander, one of a family of notable divines whose praise
is in all the Presbyterian churches. He was a bachelor, and
the "nest among the oaks" was rented to an acquaintance. I
did not enter it then, or ever again. I even looked the
other way when we drove or walked past the gate and grove.
To let this weakness be seen would have been ungracious,
in the face of the hospitalities enlapping us during every
hour of our stay. We dined with one family, supped with
another, spent the night and breakfasted with a third, and
there was ever a houseful of old friends to meet us. My
husband wrote to his father:
"Swinging around the circle at a rate that would turn
steadier heads. And talk of the fat of the land and groaning
tables! These tables fairly shriek, and the fat flows like a
river Heaven send we may live through it! We like it, all
the same!"
And enjoyed every hour, albeit senses less agreeably
preoccupied might have detected the smell of gunpowder
in the air.
I am often asked if we were not uneasy for the safety of
the Union, while in the thick of sectional wordy strife, and
how it was possible to enjoy visits when much of the talk
must have jarred upon the sensibilities of loyal lovers of
that Union.
The truth is that I had been used to political wrangling
from my youth up. The fact that South Carolina and six
other States had seceded in name from the control of the
Federal government; that, in every county and "Cross-Roads"
hamlet, from the Gulf of Mexico to Chesapeake Bay, bands
of volunteers were drilling daily and nightly and that
cargoes of arms were arriving from the North and in
distribution among the enlisted militiamen; that the Southern
papers sounded the tocsin of war to the death and "Death
in the last ditch!" and "Down with the Yankees!" with
every red-hot issue; that a convention had been solemnly
summoned to meet in Richmond to decide upon the action
of the Old Dominion at the supreme moment of the nation's
destiny - weighed marvellously little against the settled
conviction, well-nigh sublime in its fatuousness, that the
right must prevail, and that such furious folly must die
ignominiously before the steadfast front maintained by the
Union men of the infected section.
To my apprehension, so much that we heard was sheer
gasconade, amusing for a time from its very unreason and
illogical conclusions, and often indicative of such blatant
ignorance of the spirit and the resources of the Federal
government, that I failed to attach to it the importance the
magnitude of the mischief deserved to have.
I refused stubbornly to let the clear joy of my holiday be
clouded by the smoke from blank cartridges. So light was
my spirit that I made capital for fun of bombastic threats
and gloomy predictions, touching the stabling of
Confederate cavalry in Faneuil Hall inside of three months
from the day of the inauguration of the "Springfield Ape" at
Washington. The Vice-President was a full-blooded negro,
or, at the least, a mulatto, I was assured over and over.
Wasn't his name damning evidence of the disgraceful fact?
What white man ever called his child "Hannibal"?
I supplied other confirmation to one fiery orator:
" 'Ham-lin' sounds suspicious, too. I wonder you have
not thought of the color that gives to your theory."
The youth foamed at the mouth. He wore a Secession cockade
on his breast, and proved, to a demonstration, that
any Southerner over fourteen years old was equal, on the
battle-field, to five Yankees. Why not seven, I could never
ascertain.
Such funny things were happening hourly, and such
funnier things were said every minute, that I was in what
we used to call, when I was a child, "a continual gale."
Let one bit of nonsense illustrate the frivolity that, in the
retrospect, resembles the pas seul of a child on the edge of
a reeking crater.
I was summoned to the drawing-room, one forenoon, to
receive a call from the son of an old friend who had
promised his mother to look me up, in passing through the
city on his way to the "Republic of South Carolina." That
was the letter-head of epistles received from the Palmetto
State.
In descending the stairs, I heard the scamper of small
boots over the floor of the square, central hall, and caught
the flash of golden curls through the arched doorway
leading into the narrower passage at the rear of the house.
Knowing the infinite capacity of my son for ingenious
mischief, I stayed my progress to the parlor, and looked
about for some hint as to the nature of the present
adventure. Sofa and chairs were in place, as was the
mahogany table at the far corner. On this was a silver tray,
and on the tray the pitcher of iced water, which was a
fixture the year through. Two tumblers flanked it on one
side, and my visitor had set on the other the sleekest tall
silk hat I had ever seen outside of a shop window. There was
absolutely no rational association of ideas between the iced
water-pitcher and that stunning specimen of headgear. Yet I
glanced into the depths of both. One was half-full; the other
was empty. Clutching the desecrated hat wildly, I sped to the
sitting-room. "Oh, mother,
what is to be done? Eddie has emptied the water-pitcher
into William M.'s hat!"
Whereupon, that gentlest, yet finest, of disciplinarians,
who would have sent one of her own bairns to bed in the
middle of the day, for an offence one-tenth as flagrant,
dropped her sewing on her lap and went off into a
speechless convulsion of laughter. A chuckle of intense
delight from behind her rocking-chair, and a glimpse of
dancing blue eyes under her elbow, put the finishing
touches to a scene so discreditable to grandmotherly ideas
of domestic management, that the family refused to believe
the story told at the supper-table, when the culprit was
safe in his crib.
Leaving the dishonored "tile" to the merciful manipulations
of the laundress, who begged me to "keep the pore young
gentleman a-talkin' 'tell she could dry it at the fire,"
I went to meet the unsuspecting victim.
It was not difficult to keep him talking, when once he
was launched upon the topic paramount in the mind of what
he denominated as "every truly loyal and chivalrous Son of
the South." He had a plan of campaign so well concerted
and so thoroughly digested, that it could have but one
culmination.
"But why Faneuil Hall ?" I demurred, plaintively. "You
are the sixth man who has informed me that your cavalry
are to tie and feed their horses there. Why not the City
Hall in New York? There must be stable-room short of
Boston."
He flushed brick-red.
"It is no laughing matter to us who have been ground
down so long under the iron heels of Yankee mud-sills!"
I found his mixed metaphors so diverting that I was near
forgetting the ruined head-piece, and the inexorable
necessity of confession.
Sobering under the thought, I let him go on, lending but
half an ear, yet, in seeming, bowed by the weight of his
discourse. Moved by my mournful silence, he stopped midway.
"I beg your pardon if my feelings and patriotism have
carried me too far. I own that I am hot-headed - "
Another such chance would not come in a life-time. I
broke his sentence short.
"Oh, I am glad to know that! For my boy has filled
your hat with iced water!"
Eheu! That night's supper was the last merry meal the
old home was to know for many a long month and year.
For, by breakfast-time next day, the news had come of the
bombardment of Fort Sumter, and men's hearts were hot
within them, and women's hearts were failing them for fear
of battle, murder, and sudden death to sons, husbands, and
brothers.
One might have fancied that a visible pall hung over the
city, so universal and deep was the agony of suspense.
While the recollection of suspense and agony was fresh
in my mind, I wrote of the awful awakening from my fool's
paradise of incredulity and levity:
"For two days, the air was thick with rumors of war and
bloodshed. For two days, the eyes and thoughts of the
nation were fixed upon that fire-girt Southern island, with
its brave but feeble garrison - the representative of that
nation's majesty - testifying, in the defiant boom of every
cannon's answer to the rebel bombardment, that resistance
to armed treason is henceforward to be learned as one of
the nation's laws. For two days, thousands and hundreds of
thousands of loyal hearts all over this broad land, cried
mightily unto our country's God to avert this last and direst
trial - the humiliation of our Flag by hands that once helped
to rear it in the sight of the world, as the ensign of national
faith. And under the whole expanse of heaven, there was
no answer to those prayers, except the reverberation of the
cruel guns.
"On Saturday, April 14th, the End came!"
THE FOURTEENTH OF APRIL, 1861, IN
WE had planned to leave Richmond for home on Tuesday
afternoon. At noon on Saturday, my husband asked me if
I would not like to prolong my stay with my relatives,
adding significantly:
"We do not know how long it may be before you can get
South again. There is thunder in the air."
I looked up from the letter I was writing to Newark:
"Thunder - alone - is harmless. I take no stock in
gasconade that is only thunder. And if trouble is coming
it is clear that our place is not here."
The letter-writing went on not uncheerfully. Far down in
my soul was the belief that a peaceful issue must be in
store for the land beloved of the Lord. Were we not
brethren? When brought, face to face, with the fact that
brothers' hands must be dipped in brothers' blood, reaction
was inevitable.
So foolish was I, and ignorant of the excesses to which
sectional fury can carry individuals and nations.
I was in my room, getting ready for our last walk among
scenes endeared to us by thousands of associations, my
husband standing by, hat in hand, when a terrific report split
the brooding air and rent the very heavens. Another and
another followed. We stood transfixed, without motion or
speech, until we counted, silently, seven.
It was the number of the seceding States! As if
pandemonium had waited for the seventh boom to die sullenly
away among the hills, the pause succeeding the echo was
ended by an outburst of yells, cheers, and screams that
beggars description. The streets in our quiet quarter were
alive with men, women, and children. Fire-crackers, pistols
and guns were discharged into the throbbing air.
"The fort has fallen!" broke in one breath from our lips.
And simultaneously: "The Lord have mercy upon the country!"
We ran down-stairs and into the street.
My sister "Mea" was upon the front porch, and the steps
were thronged by children and servants, wild with curiosity.
I have not mentioned that my sister had married, two
years before, Mr. John Miller, a Scotchman by birth. He
was much liked and respected by us all, and it spoke
volumes for his breeding and the genuine good feeling
prevailing among us, that although he was the only "original
secessionist" in our household band, our cordial relations
remained unbroken in spite of the many political arguments
we had had with him.
aloft her baby boy, a pretty year-old,
in her arms. A Secession cockade was pinned upon his breast;
in his chubby hand he flourished a rebel flag, and he
laughed down into her radiant face.
We feigned not to see them as we hurried past. But a gulf
seemed to open at my feet. As in a baleful dream, I
comprehended, in the sick whirl of conflicting sensations,
what Rebellion, active and in arms, would mean in hundreds
of homes on both sides of the border.
"Is the world going mad?" muttered my husband, between
his teeth, and I knew that the same horror was present with
him.
Secession flags blossomed in windows and from roofs;
were waved from doors and porches by girls and women;
were shaken in mad exultation by boys on the sidewalks;
hung upon lamp-posts, and were stretched from side to
side of the street. It was like the magical upspringing
baneful fungi. Where had they all come from? And at what
infernal behest had they leaped into being?
The living stream poured toward the Capitol Square,
and it swept us with it. The grounds were filled with
tumultuous crowd. Upon the southern terrace was the
park of artillery that had fired the salute of seven guns.
As we entered the upper gate a long procession of men
issued from the western door of the Capitol, and
descended the steps.
"The convention has adjourned for the day," remarked
Mr. Terhune. We were at the base of the Washington
monument, and he drew me up on the lower step of the
base to avoid the press.
The delegates streamed by us in groups; some striding in
excited haste; talking gleefully, and gesticulating wildly.
Others were grave and slow, silent, or deep in low-toned
conversation; others yet - and these were marked men
already - walked with bent heads, and faces set in
wordless sadness. One of these, recognizing Mr. Terhune,
approached us, and with a brief apology to me, drew him
a few paces apart.
Three years before, I had seen the ceremonies by which
this monument - Crawford's finest work in marble - was
uncovered and dedicated. On the next day, Mr. Everett
had repeated his oration on Washington in the Richmond
theatre. The silver-tongued orator had joined hands, then
and there, with Tyler, Wise, and Yancey, in proclaiming
the unity of the nation. General Scott had sat in the centre
of the stage, like a hoary keystone in the semi-circle of
honorable men and counsellors.
Was it all a farce, even then, this talk of brotherhood
and patriotism? And of what avail were wisdom and
diplomacy and the multitude of counsels, if this were to
be the end?
I was saying it to myself in disgustful bewilderment, when
the crowd cheered itself mad over a fresh demonstration
of popular passion. The rebel flag had been run up from
the peak of the Capitol roof!
My husband came back to me instantly. He was pale,
and the lines of his mouth were tense.
"Let us get out of this!" he said. "I cannot breathe!"
On the way to Gamble's Hill - a long-loved walk with
us - I heard how Sumter had fallen. We were not hopeless,
yet, as to the final outcome of the tragical complication
that had turned the heads of the populace. The outrage
offered the Flag of our common country must open the eyes
of true men, and all who had one spark of patriotism left
in their souls. We could have no longer any doubt as to
the real animus of the Rebellion. One thing was certain:
To-day's work would decide the question for Virginia. She
could not hang back now.
Thus reasoning, we took our last look of the lovely
panorama of river, islets, and hills; of the city of the dead
- beautiful in wooded heights and streams and peaceful
valleys, on our right - while on the left was the city of the
living, noble and fair, and, in the distance, now as silent as
Hollywood.
My companion lifted his arm abruptly and pointed
northward.
A long, low line of cloud hung on the horizon - dun, with
brassy edges - sullen and dense, save where a rainbow,
vivid with emerald, rose-color, and gold, spanned the murky
vapor.
"Fair weather cometh out of the North," uttered the resolute
optimist. "With the Lord is terrible majesty. After all, He
is omnipotent. We will hope on!"
We were measurably cheered on our way back to the heart of
the city by the sight of the Flag of Virginia flying
serenely from the staff where had flaunted the Stars and
Bars, an hour ago. At supper, my father related with gusto
how a deputation of Secessionists had waited on the
Governor to offer congratulations upon the Confederate
victory. How he had received them but sourly, being, as
the deputation should have known, an "inveterate Unionist."
When felicitated upon the result of the siege, he returned that
he "did not consider it a matter for any compliments." At
that instant he caught sight of the flag hoisted to the roof
of the Capitol, demanded by whose order it was done, and
straightway commanded it to be hauled down and the State
flag, usually sported when the Legislature was in session,
to be run up in its stead.
"Governor Letcher has a rough tongue when he chooses
to use it," commented my father. "He is honest, through and
through."
The talk of the evening could run in but one channel. Our
nerves were keyed up to the highest tension, and the day's
events had gone deep into mind and heart. Two or three
visitors dropped in, and both sides of the Great Controversy
were brought forward, temperately, but with force born of
conviction. If I go somewhat into the details of the
conversation, it is because I would make clear the truth
that each party in the struggle we feared might be imminent,
believed honestly that justice and right were at the
foundation of his faith. I wrote down the substance of the
memorable discussion, as I recorded and published other
incidents of the ever-to-be-remembered era, while the
history of it was still in the making. I am, then, sure that
I give the story correctly.
John Miller opened the ball by "hoping that the North
was now convinced that the South was in earnest in
maintaining her rights."
I liked my Scotch brother-in-law, and we bandied jests
safely and often. But it irked me that we should have a
Secessionist in a loyal family, and I retorted flippantly,
lest I should betray the underlying feeling:
"There has been no madness equal to Secession since
the swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea.
The choking in the waves will come later."
"Let wise men stand from under!" he retorted, smiling
good-humoredly. "As to the choking, that may not be such
an easy job as you think."
A visitor took up the word, and seriously:
"The dissatisfaction of the South is no new thing. It is as
old as the Constitution itself. John Randolph said of it: 'I
saw what Washington did not see. Two other men in Virginia
saw it - the poison under its wings.' Grayson, another
far-sighted statesman, prophesied just what has come to
pass. He said of the consolidation policy taught in the
Constitution: 'It will, in operation, be found unequal,
grievous, and oppressive.' He foresaw that the manufacturer
of the North would dominate the agriculturist of the South;
that there would be burdensome taxation without adequate
representation; in short, that there would be numberless
encroachments of the North upon the prerogatives of the
Southern slaveholder."
"He said nothing of the manifest injustice in a republic, of
the election of a candidate by the votes of a petty faction,
dominant for the time, because the other party split and ran
several men?"
This was said by a young man who had not spoken until
then.
My father replied: "Suppose Breckenridge had been
elected? Would that have been the triumph of a faction?"
"Circumstances alter cases," said my brother Horace,
dryly.
Everybody laughed, except the man who had quoted Grayson
and Randolph.
"It is not easy for the Mother of Presidents to submit
to the rule of those whom, as Job says, they would have
scorned to put with their cattle," he said, with temper.
I saw the blue fire in my husband's eyes before he
spoke; but his voice was even and full; every sentence was
studiedly calm.
"For more than seventy years, the South has prospered
under the Constitution, which, according to the renowned
authorities cited just now, had poison under its wings. Hers
have been the chief places in our national councils and the
most lucrative offices in the gift of the government. It is
her boast, if we are to believe what this one of your leading
papers says" - unfolding and reading from the editorial
page - "that 'since the organization of the Union she has
held the balance of power - as it is her right to do -
her citizens being socially, morally, and intellectually
superior to those of the North.' "
My father filliped his cigar ash into the fire.
"Now you are improvising?"
"Not a word! Our editor goes on to say further: 'Our
whilom servants have lately strangely forgotten their places.
They now aspire to an equal share in the administration of
the government. They have presumed to elect from their
own ranks an illiterate, base-born, sectional tool, whom they
rely upon to do their foul work of subverting our sovereignty.
It is high time the real masters awoke from their fatal
lethargy, and forced their insubordinate hinds to stand once
more, cap in hand, at their behest.' "
The stump of my father's cigar followed the ash.
"Come, come, my dear boy! it isn't fair to take the ravings
of one fool as the sentiment of the section in which that
stuff is printed. I could quote talk, as intemperate and
incendiary, from your Northern papers. You wouldn't have
us suppose that you and other sane voters indorse them?"
"I grant what you say, sir. And, as I long ago affirmed, the
shortest and best way to put out the fire that threatens the
integrity of the government, would be to muzzle every
political ranter in the country, and suppress every
newspaper for six months. The conflagration would die for
want of fuel."
My mother interposed here:
"Good people, don't you think there is 'somewhat too much
of this'? I, for one, refuse to believe that anything but
smoke will come of the alarm that is frightening weak
brothers out of their wits. The good Ship of State will 'sail
on, strong and great,' when our children's children are in
their graves."
She changed the current of talk, but not of thought. After
the rest had gone, there lingered a young fellow whose
case was so striking an example of a host of others, who
were forced into the forefront of the battle, that I take
leave to relate it.
He still lives, an honored citizen of the State he loved as
a son loves the mother who bore and nursed him. Therefore I
shall not use his real name. Eric S., as I shall call him,
was an intimate friend of my brother Herbert, and as much at
home in our house as if he were, in very deed, one of the
blood and name. He had visited us in Newark, and made
warm friends there, during the past year. Mr. Terhune had
had long and serious consultations with him since we came
to Virginia, and, within a few days, as the war-cloud took
form, had urged him to accompany us to New Jersey, or, at
least, to promise to come to us should hostilities actually
begin between the two sections. The lad (scarcely twenty-one)
was an ardent Unionist, and, although a member of a crack
volunteer company in Richmond, had declared to us that
nothing would ever induce him to bear arms under the Rebel
government. Mea and her spouse went up-stairs early, and
the rest of us were in
hearty sympathy with our guest. He had not taken an active
share in the discussion, and his distrait manner and sober
face prepared us, in part, for the disclosure that followed
the departure of the others.
He had been credibly and confidentially informed that a
mighty pressure would be brought to bear upon the convention,
at their next sitting, to force the Ordinance of Secession.
If it were carried, by fair means or foul, every man who
could bear arms would be called into the field.
While he talked, the boy stood against the mantel - erect
lithe, and handsome - the typical mother's and sister's
darling, yet manly in every look and lineament. The thought
tore through my imagination while I looked at him:
"And it is material like this that will go to feed the maw
of War! - such flesh and blood as his that will be mangled
by bullet and shell!"
I had never had the ghastly reality brought so near to me
until that moment.
"Oh-h!" I shuddered. "You won't stay to be shot at like a
mad dog!"
The first bright smile that had lighted his face was on it.
"It isn't being shot at that I am thinking of." The gleam faded
suddenly. "I don't think I am a coward. It doesn't run in the
blood. But" - flinging out his arm with a passionate gesture
that said more than his words - "I think that would be
paralyzed if I were to lift it against the dear old flag!"
Before he left it was agreed privately, between him and
my husband, that he would try his fortune on the other side
of Mason and Dixon's line, should the axe fall that would
sever Virginia from the Union her sons had been mainly
instrumental in creating.
Sunday came and went. Such a strange, sad Sunday as it
was! with the marked omission, in every pulpit of
the prayer for the President of the United States and others
in authority; with scanty congregations in the churches, and
growing throngs of excited talkers at the street corners, and
knots of dark-browed men in hotel lobbies, and the porches
of private houses.
In the length and breadth of the town but one Union flag
was visible. Nicholas Mills, a wealthy citizen of high
character and fearless temper, defied public opinion and
risked popular wrath, by keeping a superb flag flying at the
head of a tall staff in his garden on Leigh Street. We went
out of our way, in returning from afternoon service, to
refresh eyes and spirits with the sight.
On Monday, the mutterings of rebellion waxed into a roar
of angry revolt over the published proclamation of the
President, calling for an army of seventy-five thousand men
to quell the insurrection. The quota from Virginia was, I
think, five thousand.
"A fatal blunder!" said my father, in stern disapproval.
My husband's answer was prompt:
"To omit her name from the roll would be an accusation
of disloyalty."
The senior shook his head.
"It may have been a choice of evils. I hope he has chosen
the less! But I doubt it! I doubt it!"
So might Eli have looked and spoken when his heart
trembled for the ark of the Lord.
That afternoon, the flagstaff in the Mills garden was
empty. The Stars and Stripes were banned as an unholy
ensign.
Eric S. paid us a flying visit that evening. His parents
urged his going. The father was especially anxious that
he should not risk the probability of impressment, and,
should he refuse to serve, of imprisonment. Already Union
men were regarded with suspicion. The exodus of the
disaffected could not be long delayed. He had influential
family connections at the North who would see to it that he
found occupation. When we parted that night, it was with
a definite understanding that he would be our travelling
companion.
Tuesday noon, he appeared, haggard and well-nigh desperate.
Going, like the honorable gentleman he was, to the Colonel
of his regiment early in the day, to tender his resignation
and declare his intentions, he was stricken by the news that
the State had seceded in secret session Monday night.
Whereupon the Colonel had offered the services of his
regiment to the authorities of the Confederate States. They
were accepted.
"You are now in the Confederate army," added the superior
officer, "and, from present indications, we will not be
idle long."
"But," stammered the stunned subaltern, "I am going
North this very afternoon with friends, and I shall not
consent to serve."
"If you attempt to leave, you will be reckoned as a
deserter from the regular army, and dealt with accordingly."
I do not attempt to estimate what proportion of men, who
would have remained loyal to flag and government if they
could, were coerced, or cajoled, into bearing arms under a
government they abhorred. I tell the plain facts in the
instance before me.
Eric S. fought in fifteen general engagements, and came
out with his life when the cruel war was over. He told with
deep satisfaction, in after-years, that he had never worn the
Confederate uniform, but always that of his own regiment.
It is easy for us to prate, at this distance from those times
of trial to brave men's souls, of the high and sacred duty of
living and, if need be, of dying for the right. From our
standpoint, it is as clear as the noonday sun, that allegiance
to the general government should outrank allegiance to the
State in which one has chanced to be born and to live. We
have had an awful object-lesson in the study of that creed
since the day when the Virginian, who saw his native State
invaded, believed that he had no alternative but to "strike
for his altars and his fires."
Upon the gallant fellows who, seeing this, and no further,
risked their lives unto the death, fell the penalty of the
demagogues' sin.
We may surely lay the blame where it belongs.
THE LAST THROUGH TRAIN FOR FOUR YEARS"
I COPY in substance, and
sometimes verbatim, the account
written in 1861, and published later, of our journey
northward in the last train that went through to Washington
before the outbreak of hostilities.
I preface the narrative by saying that, by the merciful
provision of the Divine Father, Who will not try us beyond
our strength, we, one and all, kept up to our own hearts the
sanguine incredulity in the possibility of the worst coming to
pass, which was characteristic of Union lovers at the South,
up to the battle of Manassas.
After that, the scales fell from all eyes. Had not my
mother hoped confidently that the war-cloud would blow
over, and that, before long, she would not have allowed
Alice to go back to Newark with us? My place was with
my husband, but this young daughter she had the right to
keep with her.
Had I not hoped for a peaceful solution of the national
problem, if only through the awakening of the fraternal love
of those whose fathers had fought, shoulder to shoulder, to
wrest their country from a common oppressor, I could not
have said "Good-bye" smilingly to home and kindred. When
I said to my mother: "We shall have you with us at the
seashore, this summer," it was not in bravado, to cheat her
into belief in my cheerfulness
Our party of Mr. Terhune, Alice, our boy and baby Christine,
with their nurse and myself, was comfortably
bestowed in the train that was to meet the boat at Acquia
Creek. Luggage and luncheon were looked after as seddously
as if there were no superior interest in our minds.
The very commonplaceness of the details of getting ready
and sending us off, exactly as had been done, time and time
again, were in themselves heartening. What had been,
would be. To-morrow should be as to-day.
When we and our appurtenances were comfortably bestowed
in the ladies' car (there were no parlor cars or sleepers,
as yet), I had leisure to note what was passing without.
The scene should be that which always attends the departure
of a passenger train from a provincial city. Yet I felt, at
once, that there was a difference.
I noticed, and not without an undefined sense of uneasiness,
the unusual number of strollers that lounged up and down
the sidewalks, and loitered about the train, and that some
of these were evidently listening to the guarded subtones
to which the voices of all - even the rudest of the
loungers - were modulated. With this shade of uneasiness
there stole upon me a strange, indescribable sense of the
unreality of all that I saw and heard. The familiar streets
and houses were seen, as through the bewildering vapors of
a dream; men and women glided by like phantoms, and there
was a shimmer of red-and-orange light in the air - the
reflection of the glowing west - that was vague and dazing,
not dazzling.
The train slid away from the station. My father and my
brother Horace lifted their hats to us from the pavement;
we held the children up to the open window to kiss their
hands to them; I leaned forward for one last, fond look into
the dear eyes, and our journey had begun.
Not a word was exchanged between the members of our party,
while we rumbled slowly up Broad Street toward the open
country.
I was unaccountably indisposed to talk, and this feeling
seemed to pervade the company of passengers. The dreamy
haze enveloped me again. The car was very full and very
quiet. The languorous hues of the west swooned into
twilight, and here and there a star peeped through the
gray veil of the sky.
We had cleared the city limits, and the blending of daylight
and the falling darkness were most confusing to the eye,
when I became aware that the train was slowing up where
there was no sign of a switch or "turn-out." If it actually
halted, it was but for a second, just long enough to enable
two men, standing close to the track, to board the train.
They entered our car, and my husband pressed my arm as
they passed down the aisle to seats diagonally opposite to
us.
Under cover of the rattle and roar of the speeding train,
he told me presently - after cautioning me not to glance
in their direction - that they were Messrs. Carlisle and
Dent - well known to visitors to the convention as most
prominent among the leaders of the Union party.
On through the gathering gloom rolled the ponderous train
- the only moving thing abroad, on that enchanted night.
Within it there was none of the hum of social intercourse
one might have expected in the circumstances. Adult
passengers were not drowsy, for every figure was upright,
and the few faces, dimly visible in the low light of the
lamps overhead, were wakeful - one might have imagined,
watchful. I learned subsequently that the insufficient light
was purposely contrived by conductor and brakemen, and
why. But for the touch of my husbands hand, laid in
sympathy or reassurance upon mine, and the sight of my
babies, sleeping peacefully - one in the nurse's arms, the
other on the seat beside her, his head in her lap - I might
have believed the weird light within, the
darkness without, and the motionless shapes and saddened
faces about me, accessories to the fantasy that gained
steadily upon me.
The spell was broken rudely - terribly - at Fredericksburg.
We steamed right into the heart of a crowd, assembled to
await the arrival of the train, which halted there for wood
and water. It was a tumultuous throng, and evidently drawn
thither with a purpose understood by all. The babel of
queries and exclamations smote the breezeless night-air like
a hail-storm. It was apparent that the railway officials
returned curt and unsatisfactory replies, for the noise
gathered volume, and uncomplimentary expletives flew freely.
All at once, a rush was made in the direction of the
ladies' car. Eager and angry visages, dusky in shadow, or
ruddied by torch-light, were pressed against closed
windows, and thrust impudently into the few that were
open.
"Three cheers for the Southern Confederacy!" yelled
stentorian tones.
Three-times-three roars of triumph deafened us.
"Three cheers for Jefferson Davis - the savior of
Southern liberties!" shouted the fugleman.
Again a burst of frenzied acclamation that made the
windows rattle.
I could see the leader of the riot - a big fellow who stood
close to our window. He was bareheaded, and he rested
one hand on the side of the car, swinging his hat with the
other, far above his head.
"Three groans for Carlisle!"
Nothing else that has ever pained my ears has given me the
impression of brute ferocity that stopped the beating of
my heart for one awful moment.
From the mob went up a responsive bellow of execration
and derision.
"All aboard!" shouted conductor and trainmen.
The hoarse call and the shriek of the engine were welcome
music to the travellers.
My husband's eyes met mine.
"What Eric S. told us was then true," he said, without
forming the words with his lips. "Virginia has joined her
sisters. And the people have got hold of the news. Are they
blind, not to see that their State will be the battle-ground,
if war should be declared?"
How dearly and for how long she was to pay for her
blindness, let the history of the next four years say!
Leaving the boat at Washington, we were conveyed by
stages across the city to the Baltimore station. It was two
o'clock in the spring morning, when we passed the Capitol.
It was lighted from basement to roof, but, to passers-by, as
still as a tomb. Nothing had brought home to us the fact and
the imminence of the peril to our national existence, as did
the sight of that lighted pile. For, as we had been informed,
it was filled with armed men, on guard against surprise or
open attack. On the train, we heard how troops had been
hurried from all quarters of the still loyal States into
Washington. The war was on!
Full appreciation of what the Great Awakening was, and
what it portended, came to us in Philadelphia. I had not
known there was so much bunting on this side of the Atlantic
as fluttered in the breeze in the city of staid homes and
brotherly loves. It was a veritable bourgeoning of patriotism.
From church-spires; from shop-windows; from stately dwellings,
and from the lowliest house in the meanest street - they
"All
uttered forth a glorious voice."
Successful rebellion
seemed an impossibility in the face
of the demonstration.
Every village, town, and farm-house along the route
proclaimed the same thing. So convinced were we that
the mere knowledge of the strength and unity of the North,
East, and West would carry conviction to the minds of the
led, and strike terror to the hearts of the leaders in the
gigantic Treason, that we rallied marvellously the spirits
which had flagged last night.
The train ran into Newark at eight o'clock that evening.
By the time it stopped, we had a glimpse of familiar and
anxious faces. We stepped off into the arms of four of our
parishioners, all on the alert for the first sight of the man
of their hour. They received us as they might welcome friends
rescued from great and sore perils.
Carriage and baggage-wagon were waiting. We were tucked
into our seats tenderly, and with what would have been
exaggerated solicitude in men less single of heart and
motive.
"But you knew that we would surely come back?" I said
to Mr. Farmer, at the third repetition of his - "Thank
Heaven you are here!"
The quartette of heads wagged gravely.
"We knew you would, if you could get here. But there is
no telling what may not happen in these times."
Their thanksgivings were echoed by ourselves, when, that
very week, a Massachusetts regiment, en route for
Washington, was assailed by a Baltimore mob, several
killed and more wounded, and the railway tracks torn up, to
prevent the progress of troops to the national capital.
We laughed a little, and were much moved to see a
handsome flag projecting from a second-story window of
our house, as we alighted at the door. It was a mute
token of confidence in our loyalty. Smiles and softness
chased each other when the proud cook, left in charge
during our absence, related how the "beautiful supper,"
smoking hot, and redolent of all manner of appetizing viands,
was the gift of two neighbors, and that pantry and larder
were "just packed full" of useful and dainty edibles and
brought by ladies who had forbidden her to tell their
names.
Thus began the four years of separation from my early home
and those who had hallowed it for all time. That eventful
journey was the dividing line between the Old Time and the
New. With it, also dawned apprehension of the gracious
dealings of the All-wise and All-merciful with us - His
ignorant, and ofttimes captious, children. It would have
been impossible for my husband, with his staunch principles
of fidelity to the government, and uncompromising adherence
to what he believed to be the right in the lamentable
sectional strife, to remain in the seceding State. Dearly
as he loved Virginia - and romantic and tender as was his
attachment to the brave old days that were to him the
poetry of domestic and social life - he must have severed
his connection with a parish in which he would have been
accounted a "suspect." Before the storm broke, we were
gently lifted out of the "nest among the oaks" and
established, as tenderly, in the "pleasant places" the
Father - not we - had chosen.
DOMESTIC SORROWS AND NATIONAL STORM AND STRESS -
WE were to need all the
fulness of consolation that could
be expressed from divine grace and human friendships, in
the years immediately succeeding the events recorded in
the last chapter.
The Muse of American History has set a bloody and fire-blackened
cross against 1861. To us, it was darkened,
through three-quarters of its weary length, by the shadows
of graves. One death after another among the friends to
whom we clung the more gratefully, because of the gulf -
fast filling with blood - that parted us from kindred and
early companions, followed our home-coming. In the last
week of August, my husband recorded, in his pastor's
notebook, that he had stood, in fourteen weeks, at the open
graves of as many parishioners, among them some who had
been most forward in welcoming him to his new field, and
most faithful in their support of him in it.
"It is literally walking in the valley of the shadow of
death!" he sighed, closing the melancholy pages. "I ask
myself tremblingly, after each funeral - Who next?"
At noon on September second - the fifth anniversary of
our wedding day - our boy came home from a drive with his
father, feverish and drowsy, and fell asleep in my arms. On
the fourteenth of the same month, he was folded in an
embrace, yet more fond and safe, beyond the touch of
mortal sorrow.
My bonnie, bonnie boy! who had never had a day's illness
until he was stricken by that from which there was no
recovery! Diphtheria was comparatively new at that time,
even to the able physician who was our devoted personal
friend. The boy faded before it, as a lily in drought. Four
days before he left us, his baby sister was smitten by the
same disease. Two days after the funeral, their father fell
ill with it. Why neither Alice, I, nor the faithful nurse
who assisted us in the care of the three patients, did not
take the infection is a mystery. There were no quarantine
regulations to prevent the spread of what is now recognized
as one of the most virulent of epidemics. We took absolutely
no precautions; friends flocked to us as freely as if there
were no danger. Our fearlessness may have been a catholicon.
We nursed the sufferers back to health, and, looking to God
for strength, took our places again in the ranks.
Such a trite, every-day story as it is! To the soul for
which the task is set, it is as novel and crucial as death
itself. It is not the young mother who finds comfort and
tonic in the inspired assurance:
"For
while we bear it, we can bear;
For four months, we had
not a letter from Richmond. The
cordon was drawn closely about the chief seat of the
Rebellion - now the capital of the Confederacy. It was hard
to smuggle private letters through the lines. We wrote by
every possible opportunity, and were certain that my family
were as watchful of chances, likely and improbable. At
Christmas, we had a packet that had been run through by
way of Kentucky, by a man who wrote to say that he had
been ill in a Richmond hospital and received great kindness
from my mother. When he was well enough to rejoin his
regiment, he had offered to get
her letters to me, if it were in the power of man to do it.
His plan, he said, was to entrust the parcel to a trusty
negro, who would swim the Ohio River on horseback at a
point where the stream was narrow, and post letters on the
other side. If I should receive them, I might know that he
had fulfilled his pledge to my mother. If I did not get them,
I would never know how hard he had tried to keep his word.
I have often wondered if he received the answers we
dispatched to the post-office from which our precious
letters were mailed. I never heard from him again.
Home-bulletins brought the news of the death of my stern
old grandmother at the advanced age of eighty-four. She
had never given her sanction to the war, disapproving of
military operations with the whole might of her rugged
nature. On a certain Sunday in June, news was brought by
fast express, while the people were in church, that the
war-vessel Pawnee was on its way up the river to bombard the
town. Owing to the old lady's deafness, she did not fully
comprehend why the services were closed summarily, and
the streets were too full of people hurrying to and fro, for
my father to explain the state of affairs on the way home.
On the front steps they met my brother Horace in the
uniform of the Richmond Howitzers, to which he belonged.
They had been ordered summarily to repair to the point
from which the expected attack was to be repelled. A few
hasty sentences put her into possession of leading facts; the
boy kissed her; shook hands with his father, and ran down
the street.
The old Massachusetts dame, whose father and husband had
fought in the Revolutionary War, stood still and looked
after him until he was out of sight.
He was her favorite of the boys - we fancied because he
resembled the Edwin she had wished to adopt, and who
died in her arms.
The lad she followed with puzzled and griefful eyes was
of a goodly presence, and never goodlier than in his
uniform. Did she bethink herself of the probability that she
might never see him again? What she thought, and what she
felt, will never be known. When my father addressed her,
she gazed at him with uncomprehending eyes, turned and
walked feebly up the stairs.
"I am afraid mother is not well," said my father to my
mother, after they had talked a few minutes of the alarm
and Horace's departure. "She looked shaken by the boy's
going. Will you go up and look after her?"
She had undressed and gone to bed. She had taken her
seat in church that morning, a fine-looking dame of the old
school; erect and strong; alert of wits and firm of purpose.
My mother looked into the face of a shrunken, dull-eyed
crone, who asked, in quavering accents, "Who she was, and
what was her business?" Then she began to moan and beg
to be taken "home." That was her cry, whenever she spoke
at all, all summer long. But once did she quit her bed. That
was when the nurse left her, as they supposed, sleeping, and
discovered her half an hour later, fumbling at the lock of
the front door, and in her nightgown. She "wanted to go home!
she would go home!" She went on September 5th, while we,
hundreds of miles away, were watching over our sick boy.
"The war killed off most of our old people," said an
ex-Confederate officer once to me. "Almost as many died of
sheer brokenheartedness, as on the battle-field! That's an
account somebody has got to settle some day, if there is any
justice in heaven."
In the autumn of 1862, the state of my sister Alice's
health demanded a change of climate so imperatively that
we had no option in the consideration of the emergency Her
throat was seriously affected; she had not spoken above a
whisper for six months. To keep her in Newark
for another winter was not to be thought of. Our parents
were writing by every available flag of truce strenuous
orders that she should "come home." In early October, Mr.
Terhune took her down to an obscure village in Maryland
directly upon Chesapeake Bay. It was, in fact, a smuggling-station,
from which merchandise of various sorts was
ferried into Virginia, in direct violation of embargo laws.
Southern sympathizers, whom loyalists were beginning to
brand as "Copperheads" - a name that stuck fast to them
throughout the war - ran the enterprise and profited by it.
Through one of these, information sifted to us of which we
made use. When necessity drives, it will not do to be
fastidious as to instruments that will save us.
At dead of night my young sister was put into a boat,
warmly wrapped from the river-fogs, and, in charge of a
Richmond gentleman who was returning home, sent across
the unlicensed ferry. Her father awaited her on the other
shore. A mile above and a mile below, lurid gleams, like the
eyes of river-monsters watching for their prey, showed
where United States gunboats lay in midstream to intercept
unlawful commerce and to arrest offenders. My husband
did not impart to me the details of the adventure until we
had heard of the child's restoration to her father's arms.
Then he told of the fearful anxiety with which he waited on
the Maryland shore, under starless skies, scanning the
menacing lights up and down the river, and straining his ears
for the ripple against the sides of the boat making its way,
cautiously, with muffled oars, across the watery track. To
deflect from the viewless course would be to awaken the
sleeping dogs of war. The lonely watcher feared every
minute to see from either of the gunboats a flash of fire,
followed by the boom of a cannon, signalling the discovery
of the attempt to evade the embargo.
"The dreariest vigil imaginable!" he said. "I stayed
there for two hours, until I was sure the boat must have
made the landing. Had it been intercepted, I should have
seen some change in the position of those red eyes and
heard a shot."
Before she embarked he had given the fugitive a self-
addressed envelope enclosing a card, on which was written
"Arrived safely." She pencilled below - "Alice," and sent it
back by the boatman. It was a week old when he got it and
creased and soiled by much handling.
Then fell silence, that was felt every waking hour, and
lasted for four long months. On the first day of February,
my husband being absent from home, I walked down to the
city post-office with Mrs. Greenleaf, my eldest sister-in-law,
who was visiting us, and took from our box a thin letter
addressed in my mother's hand, and stamped "FLAG OF TRUCE."
It was but one page in length. Flag-of-truce communications
were limited to that. The first line branded itself upon my
brain:
"I have written to you several times since our precious Alice's
death!"
She had rallied finely in her native air, and was,
apparently, on the highroad to health when smallpox broke
out in Richmond military hospitals. It spread to the citizens.
The town was crowded, and quarantine laws were lax. Dr.
Haxall called and insisted that the entire family be
revaccinated. He had his way with all save one. Alice put
him off with a jest, and my mother bade him "call again,
when she may be more reasonable." I fancy none of them
put much faith in the honest physician's assertion that
the precautionary measure was a necessity. In those days a
"good vaccination scar" was supposed to last a lifetime. My
sister fell ill a fortnight afterward, and the seizure was
pronounced to be "varioloid."
A girl's wilful whim! A mother's indulgence! These may,
or may not, have been the opening acts of the tragedy. God
knows!
Alice was in her twenty-second year, and in mind the most
brilliant of the family. She was an ardent student for
learning's sake, and an accomplished English scholar; wrote
and spoke French fluently, and was proficient in the Latin
classics. The one sketch from her pen ever published
appeared in The Southern Literary Messenger while she was
ill. It proved what we had known already, that her talent for
composition was of a high order. Had she lived, the reading
world would have ratified our judgment.
On March 7th of that dark and bloody year, the low tide
of hope with the nation, our home was brightened by the
birth of a second daughter - our first brunette bairnie. Her
brother and sister had the Terhune blue eyes and sunny
hair. She came on a wild, snowy day, and brought such
wealth of balm and blessing with her as seldom endows
parents and home by reason of a single birth. From the hour
of her advent, Baby Alice was her father's idol. Why, we
could not say then. The fact - amusing at times - always
patent - of the peculiar tenderness binding together the
hearts of the father and the girl-child - remained, and was
gradually accepted, without comment, by us all.
It was an unspeakable comfort to be able once more to
talk of "the children." One never divines the depth of
sweetness and significance in the term until one has been
robbed of the right to use it, through months of missing
what has been.
Other, if minor, distractions from personal sorrow and
public solicitudes were not wanting that year. I had been
drawn into charitable organizations born of the times. Our
noble church was forward in co-operation with municipal
and State authorities in relieving the distress of the
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PRINCE OF WALES, IN NEW YORK - POLITICAL PORTENTS
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Page 363XXXVII
COMING STORM
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Page 370XXXVIII
RICHMOND
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Page 382XXXIX
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FRIENDS, TRIED AND TRUE
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Past
that - we lay it down!"
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