We have been interested lately by a visit to this village of
our old friend, Mrs. Thornton, of Rappahannock County, She gives most graphic
descriptions of her sojourn of seven weeks among the Yankees last summer. Sixty
thousand surrounded her house, under command of General Siegel. On one
occasion, he and his staff rode up and announced that they would take tea
with her. Entirely alone, that elegant old lady retained her composure, and
with unruffled countenance rang her bell; when the servant appeared, she said
to him, “John, tea for fourteen.” She quietly retained her seat, conversing
with them with dignified politeness, and submitting as best she could to the
General's very free manner of walking about her beautiful establishment,
pronouncing it “baronial,” and regretting, in her presence, that he had not
known of its elegancies and comforts in time, that he might have brought on
Mrs. Siegel, and have made it his head-quarters. Tea being announced, Mrs. T.,
before proceeding to the dining-room, requested the servant to call a soldier
in, who had been guarding her house for weeks, and who had sought occasion to
do her many kindnesses. When the man entered, the General demurred: “No, no,
madam, he will not go to table with us.” Mrs. T. replied, “General, I must beg
that you will allow this gentleman to come to my table, for he
has been a friend to me when I have sadly wanted one.” The General objected
no farther; the man took tea with the master. After tea, the General
proposed music, asking Mrs. T. if she had ever played; she replied that “such
was still her habit.” The piano being opened, she said if she sang at all she
must sing the songs of her own land, and then, with her uncommonly fine voice,
she sang “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” “Dixie,” and other Southern songs, with great
spirit. They listened with apparent pleasure. One of the staff then suggested
that the General was a musician. Upon her vacating the seat he took it, and
played in grand style; with so much beauty and accuracy, she added, with
a twinkle of her eye, that I strongly suspected him of having been a
music-master. Since that time she has heard that he was once master of that
beautiful art in Mobile. Well, he was at least a more innocent man then than
now. Almost every woman of the South, or at least of Virginia, will have her
tale to tell when this “cruel war is over.” The life of too many will be, alas!
as a “tale that is told;” its interest, its charm even its hope, as far as this
world is concerned, having passed away. Their crown of rejoicing will be in the
public weal, which their loved and lost have fought, bled, and died to
establish; but their own hearts will be withered, their hearths deserted.
Mrs. Greenhow Daniel, of Fredericksburg, has been giving
some amusing incidents of her sudden departure from her home. She had
determined to remain, but when, on the night of the bombardment, a shell burst
very near her house, her husband aroused her to say that she must go. They had
no means of conveyance, and her two children were both under three years of
age, and but one servant, (the others having gone to the Yankees,) a girl
twelve years old. It so happened that they had access to three straw carriages,
used by her own children and those of her neighbours. They quickly determined
to put a child in each of two carriages, and to bundle up as many clothes as
would fill the third. The father drew the carriage containing one child, the
mother the other child, and the little girl drew the bundle of clothes. They
thus set out, to go they knew not whither, only to get out of the way of
danger. It was about midnight, a dark, cold night. They went on and on, to the
outskirts of the town, encountering a confused multitude rushing pell-mell,
with ever and anon a shell bursting at no great distance, sent as a threat of
what they might expect on the morrow. They were presently overtaken by a
respectable shoemaker whom they knew, rolling a wheelbarrow containing a large
bundle of clothes, and the baby. They were attracted by the poor little
child rolling off from its elevated place on the bundle, and as Mrs. D.
stopped, with motherly solicitude for the child, the poor man told his story.
In the darkness and confusion he had become separated from his wife and other
children, and knew not where to find them; he thought he might find them but
for anxiety about the baby. Mrs. D. then proposed that he should take her
bundle of clothes with his in the wheelbarrow, and put his child into the third
straw carriage. This being agreed to, the party passed on. When they came to
our encampment, a soldier ran out to offer to draw one carriage, and thus rest
the mother; having gone as far as he dared from his regiment, then another
soldier took his place to the end of his line, and so on from one soldier to
another until our encampment was passed. Then she drew on her little charge
about two miles farther, to the house of an acquaintance, which was wide open
to the homeless. Until late the next day the shoemaker's baby was under their
care, but he at last came, bringing the bundle in safety. As the day progressed
the cannon roared and the shells whistled, and it was thought advisable for
them to go on to Chancellorsville. The journey of several miles was performed
on foot, still with the straw carriages, for no horse nor vehicle could be
found in that desolated country. They remained at Chancellorsville until the 2d
or 3d of May, when that house became within range of cannon. Again she gathered
up her little flock, and came on to Ashland. Her little three-years old boy
explored the boarding-house as soon as he got to it, and finding no cellar he
became alarmed, and running to his mother, exclaimed, “This house won't do,
mother; we all have no cellar to go into when they shell it!” Thus our children
are born and reared amid war and bloodshed! It seemed so sad to me to see a
bright little girl, a few days ago, of four years old, stop in the midst of her
play, when she heard distant thunder, exclaiming, “Let me run home, they are
firing!” Poor little child, her father had been a sacrifice; no wonder that she
wanted to run to her mother when she thought she heard firing. Tales far more
sad than that of Mrs. D. are told, of the poor assembled by hundreds on the
roadside in groups, having no shelter to cover them, and often nothing to eat,
on that dark winter's night.
SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern
Refugee, During the War, p. 218-22
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