Last evening we
received orders to be ready to move by sunrise this morning, and many of us
took the liberty of going into the city to bid our friends farewell—perhaps for
the last time, for none of us know the result of this terrible war.
Our destination is
Yorktown, where we will report to General Magruder, who now commands our forces
on the Peninsula. We "broke camp" after an early breakfast and left
in splendid spirits, as all of our boys were eager to see service."
Well, it was the
morning of June 4th, when we were ordered away from Chimborazo to join
Magruder's forces on the Peninsula, and we eagerly obeyed the summons.
When marching
through Church Hill I felt very sad, for I was passing my old home, and I
looked into the garden, all choked up with weeds now, thinking all the while of
the fragrant flowers I used to gather there, long ago, and of those dear ones
who used to watch them as they first began to bloom in the sunny summer time.
Memories of the by-gone crowded thick and fast upon me, and then I saw one who
had nursed me in the happy days of childhood. She rushed out into the street,
clasped me in her arms, and whilst great tears of grief trickled down her dusky
cheek, placed in my hands a huge loaf of bread, begged me to accept it, and
humbly apologized because it was all she could give.
Lives there a
Virginian whose soul does not melt into tenderness when memory backward flows
to childhood's happy days, and he remembers the ever venerated “mammy,"
whose name was perhaps the first ever articulated by his childish lips; whose
snow-white 'kerchief and kindly heart will ever be in the memories of the happy
past; whose ample lap was so often childhood's couch, when tiny feet were
wearied in roaming over the green fields, and joyously wading through the
limpid streamlets of the old homestead! And then at night-fall, when the
candles were lighted, and the elder ones gathered around the fire-place, how
gently, tenderly, that old black "mammy" raised him up in her great
strong arms, carried him through the spacious hall, and up the wide winding
stair-case; then placing him carefully in his low trundle-bed, first taught his
infant lips the hallowed words of the Lord's Prayer.
Ah! mayhap she's
dead now, but the memory of that dear old nurse still lingers, and though that
blue-eyed boy is a stern strong man, yet the green sod of her grave is oft
bedewed with tears.
After a great deal
of trouble and some pretty hard work we succeeded in getting our guns and
horses on the York River train, and finally bade adieu to Richmond.
SOURCE: William S.
White, A Diary of the War; or What I Saw of It, p. 94-5
