A Year in the South

by Stephen V. Ash

  One day in March she received a note from her stepson Edward, a cavalry officer in Lee’s army, telling her that his outfit had captured some beef cattle from the Yankees and that he was allowed to keep one. He was going to try to send it to her, he said. Sometime later she got word that the animal was in Staunton, thirty-five miles down the valley. Immediately she dispatched Harry, her eldest, to retrieve it.4

  For three days she waited, anxious and excited. She knew exactly what she would do when the beef arrived. She would take it to the tannery down the street, where, in exchange for the hide and a bit of the meat, she could get it slaughtered and butchered. One roast she would give to Mrs. Powell, who had generously shared her own food with the McDonalds, and another she would give to some other friends. Then, after procuring salt, she would preserve the remainder. This would keep the family supplied with meat for a good while.5

  That was not all she anticipated. The animal would also provide tallow. “[O]h what a treasure the tallow would be,” she thought. “If there were even six pounds, that would make thirty-six candles, and that would give us light for seventy-two nights.” Good candles were now so expensive—six dollars apiece—that she, like most other people, had to rely on “Confederate candles,” crude beeswax contrivances that burned fast and required constant attention. With the tallow she could make some real candles. She had an old set of candle molds, left behind by one of the previous occupants of the house. While waiting for Harry to return, she cleaned up the molds and prepared wicks as she had seen the family servants do when she was a girl.6

  At last Harry arrived. But, as Cornelia recalled, when she saw him approaching with the beef in tow she “did not know whether to laugh or cry.” The poor animal had fared badly on its long journey from the Yankee army to Lexington: “It was so thin that the sides were transparent between the ribs, not a particle of fat on any part of it, and a teaspoon would have held all the tallow.” In the end, it yielded some lean meat, but not a single candle.7

  There were many families in and around Lexington whose plight was as desperate as the McDonalds’, and a great number worse off. Even those who were doing better could hardly have been said to be living in comfort, at least not many of them. Shortages and inflation touched everyone, and the government had siphoned off much of the community’s wealth through taxes and impressment. Few citizens had any surplus of provisions or money. And yet they were constantly being called on to give up more for the Confederate cause. Because the government had taken everything it could under the law, it now issued a plea for voluntary contributions of food and clothing for Lee’s army. A committee was formed in Lexington in March to collect whatever the people of Rockbridge County offered and to send it to the front. Blankets, shoes, meat, meal, and anything else the citizens could spare would be gladly accepted. If they were unwilling to donate these items, the government was willing to accept them as a loan, with a promise to repay.8

  An assortment of supplies trickled in to the committee in response to this pathetic appeal. Cornelia’s neighbor Mr. Deaver, the shoemaker, hard-pressed though he was, contributed a barrel of flour and some bacon. Others did likewise, or sacrificed a precious bushel of beans, a pair of socks, or an overcoat. Cornelia herself could give nothing.9

  She would have done so if she could. She knew that Lee’s soldiers—the last hope of the Confederacy—were suffering terribly in the trenches around Richmond and Petersburg. Her friend Ann Pendleton had recently returned to Lexington from an extended visit with her husband, General William Pendleton, who was at Petersburg. What she saw and heard there was enough to depress even the most optimistic Confederate patriot. The once-mighty Army of Northern Virginia was barely clinging to life. So thin was it stretched to cover the miles and miles of defensive works that one big push by Grant’s enormous army might well crush it. The troops were all underfed and most were ill clad: an army of raggedy scarecrows was what it seemed like to many who saw it. Worse yet, morale was crumbling. In the most recent engagements with the enemy it had been obvious that the fighting spirit of the men was dwindling, for they did not attack or defend with anything like their old élan. Many were now giving up altogether, crawling out of their trenches and across no-man’s-land in the dead of night to surrender to the Yankees, or sneaking away in the opposite direction in the hope of getting home—sometimes in groups of ten, twenty, or more. At least 3,000 men deserted between mid-February and mid-March, of the fewer than 50,000 present for duty. The army was melting away and neither General Lee nor anybody else could stop it.10

  Still, there were a good number of soldiers who were determined to stay at their posts to the end. How many civilians would remain steadfast was another question. Morale was collapsing on the home front as inexorably as in the army. More and more citizens were concluding that the war was lost and further sacrifice senseless. Many were conveying these sentiments in letters to their husbands and fathers and brothers in the army and pleading with them to come home. To Cornelia these first weeks of spring seemed a “gloomy and melancholy” time, for it was hardly possible now to deny the “dreadful certainty of disaster and defeat.”11

  Even so, she made no protest when Harry announced near the end of March that he was leaving to join the army. He intended to go to Petersburg and find his stepbrother Edward, who had told him he could enlist in his unit, the 11th Virginia Cavalry. If he stayed at home the conscription agents would take him in April, when he turned seventeen, and then he might be sent anywhere.12

  If Harry must go to the army, Cornelia decided, she would see to it that he was uniformed like a proper soldier. She dug out one of her last remaining pieces of fine clothing, a crepe shawl, and talked a shopkeeper into taking it as payment for a few yards of gray cloth. The cloth was very coarse, the kind used for slave clothing before the war; but these days, as Cornelia knew, “no gentleman thought himself above wearing it.” She took it home, busied herself cutting and stitching, and before long had a serviceable jacket and trousers ready for her soldier-to-be. One of her neighbors contributed a newly knitted pair of socks; a flannel shirt and a hat completed the outfit. “[H]e was soon equipped,” Cornelia wrote, “and my boy was gone.”13

  Harry set out on foot, making his way eastward across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Despite the Confederacy’s bleak prospects, he was eager to join the army. He had burned with a desire to fight the enemy ever since the war began, just as he turned thirteen. At the family’s home back in Winchester, he and the younger boys had fashioned a battery of toy cannons that mowed down imaginary Yankee soldiers by the hundreds.14

  As he followed the road that led to Petersburg, Harry stayed alert for any sign of the Yankee cavalry rumored to be in the area. He knew he had a journey of several days ahead of him, perhaps a week or more, for the city was a good 125 miles from Lexington. He did not know exactly where he would find Edward and his regiment, for Lee’s cavalry often operated far from the siege lines.15

  He never got to Petersburg or anywhere near it. Many miles west of the city he encountered the Army of Northern Virginia in headlong retreat. Lee had abruptly abandoned his lines on the night of April 2, after Grant launched an all-out assault. Richmond and Petersburg were now in enemy hands and Lee’s troops were moving west as fast as they could, barely a step ahead of their pursuers. Their only hope was to try to reach the mountains and make a stand there, or turn south and try to link up with the small rebel army facing Sherman in North Carolina.16

  Somehow, amid all the confusion, Harry found Edward’s regiment. On April 6 he formally enlisted in Company D and was given a horse and gun and assigned to help guard the supply train. As he rode westward with the long line of wagons, the army disintegrated around him. Exhausted men dropped out of the ranks by the thousands, collapsing on the roadside amid the litter of abandoned equipment and dead horses and mules. More men were lost when the pursuing Yankees overwhelmed the army’s rear guard, killing or capturing thousands.17

  For three hellish days and nigh
ts, Harry soldiered on. The ordeal ended on Sunday, April 9, when General Lee found his retreat route blocked by fast-moving Yankee divisions. That afternoon, in the parlor of a home in the village of Appomattox Court House, Lee met with Grant and surrendered his army. At that point, Harry was one of only 28,000 men still in the ranks. They were not taken prisoner but were instead paroled and allowed to go home.18

  News of the fall of Richmond and Petersburg and the retreat of the army reached Lexington not long after Harry left, followed soon by news of the surrender. During this time Cornelia waited anxiously for word of her son. Some of the Lexington men in the army got home as early as April 12, having tramped the fifty miles from Appomattox, but Harry was not among them.19

  At last he appeared, haggard and bone-weary. Upon entering the house he put his hands to his face and cried. It was some time before he could speak. “To think it is all over,” he sobbed, “and I did not strike a blow.”20

  He had little time to rest before he had to take on another mission. When the family received word that Edward was lying wounded in a Confederate military hospital in Charlottesville, sixty miles away, Cornelia immediately sent Harry to his aid. Edward and Harry had become separated during the chaotic retreat, and until now no one knew what had become of Edward. On arriving in Charlottesville, Harry learned the full story. Edward had been with a detachment that repulsed an assault by Yankee infantry and cavalry on April 6 at a place called High Bridge, one of a number of flank attacks that Lee’s troops had had to fend off in those desperate final days as they were strung out along the road in flight. In this engagement, one of the army’s very last, Edward—who had served for four years without a scratch—was shot in the face. A Minié ball smashed into his lower jaw, sliced through his tongue, and lodged near his windpipe. Knowing he could get no medical treatment in his own army and unwilling to fall into enemy hands, he stayed on his horse and headed for Charlottesville, where he eventually arrived bleeding, weak, and unable to speak. For days he lay prostrate in the hospital, taking liquid nourishment only, while the doctors debated his case. The bullet was in a dangerous spot and had to come out, but his condition made the use of chloroform risky. When at last he was informed of this predicament, Edward did not hesitate. Taking pencil and paper, he wrote: “Leave off the chloroform; cut it out; I can stand it.” And so the operation was performed.21

  Finding that Edward was recovering and that another stepbrother was already at the hospital caring for him, Harry returned to Lexington. He found the townsfolk in a state of great uncertainty. With Lee’s army gone and the leading officials of the Confederate and state government on the run, many people considered the war over. But no federal occupation force had yet appeared anywhere near Lexington, and there were rebel armies still in the field elsewhere in the South. Some people were willing to continue the struggle; there was even talk of waging guerrilla war to keep the Yankees at bay.22

  The immediate danger, however, was anarchy. There were a lot of footloose rebel soldiers roaming about, many of them not parolees but stragglers or deserters, some of them armed. There were the slaves to consider, too: although still obedient to their masters for the most part, they were well aware of Lee’s surrender and might decide to try to emancipate themselves without waiting for Yankee troops to arrive. Whether the local authorities—the only authorities now functioning—could deal effectively with these threats was questionable.23

  Some Rockbridge County citizens had taken matters into their own hands as soon as they learned of Lee’s surrender. Assembling at the courthouse in Lexington on April 11, they formed a volunteer police force. Worried that this might cause trouble in the future, however, they issued a public disclaimer: “It is to be distinctly understood that this is only a temporary expedient, and that the organization is to be disbanded in the event of the county being occupied by the military authorities of the United States.”24

  These citizens acted none too soon, for in the succeeding days incidents of robbery, theft, and disorder multiplied. The police managed to keep Lexington fairly safe and quiet, although there was an incident on April 29 in which three armed and mounted men in Confederate uniform rode into town and, as the newspaper reported, “caused a ruckus.” Out in the county, there was a good deal more trouble, most of it ascribed to the “vile deserters,” “lawless desperadoes,” and “bands of renegades” who had infested the mountainous districts for some time.25

  11. Main Street, Lexington, Virginia, ca. 1867–70. On the ridge in the far distance stands the Virginia Military Institute.

  There was little trouble from the blacks. In the opinion of most citizens and officials, until someone with formal authority and the force to back it up appeared and ordered them to obey the Emancipation Proclamation, they should keep the blacks under tight control, and they took steps to do so. On May 1, the magistrates of the county court convened in Lexington and reorganized the slave patrol system. With so many soldiers now home there was no longer a shortage of men to ride patrol, and the magistrates therefore increased the strength of each company from five to twenty-one. The patrollers were instructed “to visit all suspected places … disperse unlawful and disorderly assemblages, quell disturbances, and assist the Civil Authority in the preservation of the peace.”26

  There was, to be sure, a degree of doubt and hesitancy regarding the continued enforcement of slavery. As with the formation of the volunteer police, people feared there might be unpleasant repercussions when and if the Yankees arrived. Just to be on the safe side, the county magistrates made no mention of blacks or slaves in their revised patrol ordinance, disguising it as a general law-enforcement measure. For the same reason, the slave-auction house of Myler & Williams on Bridge Street in Lexington quietly withdrew its regular advertisement from the newspaper beginning with the April 13 issue. Nor were there any notices about slave-hiring or runaways to be seen in the paper from that date on. Nevertheless, slavery persisted in the town and county through the spring. “There are as yet no ‘Freedmen’ here,” a Lexington resident boasted on May 26, “and our ‘servants’ are still in statu quo.… We have an armed patrol which keeps perfect order and makes them stand in some fear.”27

  By that date, the Yankees had made one appearance, but it was of no consequence for the black population. Before dawn on May 20, a force of 300 cavalrymen rode into Lexington to arrest former governor Letcher, whom the federal authorities deemed a public enemy. The troopers stayed only long enough to locate his home and take him into custody. They ignored the blacks.28

  While slavery survived through the spring, the spirit of resistance did not. As news filtered in of the surrender of the remaining Confederate armies and the capture of Jefferson Davis, the last die-hard rebel patriots bowed to the reality of defeat. Even the editor of the Lexington newspaper, who had been an unwavering voice of Confederate nationalism throughout the war, now advised his readers to accept their fate and cease talk of continuing the struggle through partisan warfare: “At present it could avail nothing, and would only bring ruin upon neighborhoods in which it is carried on.… [T]here is no sacrifice of honor or dignity in quietly desisting from a contest that can no longer be maintained with any hopes of success. All that we can now do is to remain quietly at home, endeavor to preserve order around us, make such efforts as we can to procure what is necessary for ourselves and our families, and thus await the developments of the future.”29

  By late spring the only manifestations of rebel defiance in Lexington and Rockbridge County were the sullen avowals of a few that they would not live under Yankee rule—they would leave the country, they said, and go to Mexico or Brazil. Among the others who had once pledged their loyalty to the Confederacy, two sentiments now prevailed. Those who had given up hope before Appomattox felt enormous relief at the coming of peace. Those who had remained hopeful to the end mourned the loss of their patriotic dream.30

  Cornelia herself felt both relief and sorrow, for in the war’s last months she had been torn be
tween head and heart: the one told her sternly that the cause was lost, the other whispered encouragement. That Southern men, including her own first-born, would no longer have to face death on the battlefield was deeply gratifying to her. But at the same time, the extinction of the Confederacy overwhelmed her with “Grief and despair … [and] a sense of humiliation that till then I did not know I could feel.”31

  Although she accepted defeat, she refused to embrace her former enemies as friends. She could not readily forgive the Yankees’ heinous sins. They had invaded and subjugated a people who wanted only to be left alone; they had killed many thousands of men, her husband among them; they had seized and destroyed Southern property, including her own home; they had declared war on slavery and were now about to unleash an entire race fit only for servitude. When news of Lincoln’s assassination came, her first impulse was to cheer: “I thought it was just what he deserved.”32

  She had little time to indulge in bitter reflections, however, for the family’s plight demanded her attention. “Our condition had been desolate before,” she wrote, “but now was forlorn to the last degree.” The money owed her by the Confederate government had never come. Her stock of food was dwindling, and the garden would yield nothing for weeks. On the other hand, she continued to give lessons in her home and thus still had a little income. And in early May a small windfall came her way when the local agent of the Confederate War Department decided to unlock the commissary warehouse he was still dutifully guarding and distribute its contents to the citizens, or at least those he deemed worthy. Cornelia, as a soldier’s widow, got some bacon and beans.33

  Every day she was reminded that there were many whose circumstances were as dire as hers or worse. Rebel soldiers frequently came through Lexington on their way home, and some knocked on her door to see if they might get a bite to eat. As she shared with them whatever food and coffee she had, she listened to their horrible tales of combat, their sad recollections of dead comrades, and their anxious musings on their prospects for the future. Some had nothing now but the tattered uniforms they wore. Others who passed through Lexington were more pitiful still. One of Cornelia’s friends reported that while walking downtown one day she saw six one-legged veterans sitting together on a stack of lumber. They were trying to get to their families in Tennessee and North Carolina, limping along on their crutches and hitching rides when they could.34