The Boys of '61 Part 63

Another, more demonstrative, was jumping and swinging her arms, crying, "Bless de Lord! Bless de Lord! Bless de Lord!" as if there could be no end of her thankfulness.

No carriage was to be had, so the President, leading his son, walked to General Weitzel's head-quarters,-Jeff Davis's mansion. Six sailors, wearing their round blue caps and short jackets and baggy pants, with navy carbines, formed the guard. Next came the President and Admiral Porter, flanked by the officers accompanying him, and the writer, then six more sailors with carbines,-twenty of us in all.

The walk was long, and the President halted a moment to rest. "May de good Lord bless you, President Link.u.m!" said an old negro, removing his hat and bowing, with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. The President removed his own hat and bowed in silence: it was a bow which upset the forms, laws, customs, and ceremonies of centuries of slavery. It was a death-shock to chivalry, and a mortal wound to caste. Recognize a n.i.g.g.e.r! Disgusting. A woman in an adjoining house beheld it, and turned from the scene with unspeakable contempt. There were men in the surging ma.s.s who looked daggers from their eyes, and felt murder in their hearts, if they did not breathe it from their lips. But the hour of sacrifice had not yet come; the chosen a.s.sa.s.sin was not there; the crowning work of treason and traitors yet remained to be performed. Not the capital of the defunct slave Confederacy, but of the restored nation, was to be the scene of the last brutal act in the tragedy of horrors perpetrated in the name of Christianity. The great-hearted, n.o.ble-minded, wise-headed man, whom Providence had placed in the Executive chair to carry successfully through the b.l.o.o.d.y war of freedom against slavery to its glorious consummation, pa.s.sed on to the mansion from whence the usurping President had fled.

When the soldiers saw him amid the noisy crowd they cheered l.u.s.tily. It was an unexpected ovation. Such a welcome, such homage, true, heartfelt, deep, impa.s.sioned, no prince or prelate ever received.

President Lincoln in Richmond.

The streets becoming impa.s.sable on account of the increasing mult.i.tude, soldiers were summoned to clear the way. How strange the event! The President of the United States-he who had been hated, despised, maligned above all other men living by the people of Richmond-was walking its streets, receiving every evidence of love and honor! How bitter the reflections of that moment to some who beheld him, who remembered, perhaps, that day in May, 1861, when Jefferson Davis entered the city,-the pageant of that hour, his speech, his promise to smite the smiter, to drench the fields of Virginia with richer blood than that shed at Buena Vista! How that part of the promise had been kept; how their sons, brothers, and friends had fallen; how all else predicted had failed; how the land had been filled with mourning; how the State had become a desolation; how their property, wealth, had disappeared! They had been invited to a gorgeous banquet; the fruit was fair to the eye, golden and beautiful, but it had turned to ashes. They had been promised a high place among the nations. Cotton was the king of kings; and England, France, and the whole civilized world would bow in humble submission to his majesty. That was the promise; but now their king was dethroned, their government overthrown, their President and his cabinet vagrants. They had been promised affluence, Richmond was to be the metropolis of the Confederacy, and Virginia the all-powerful State of the new nation. How terrible the cheat! Their thousand-dollar bonds were not worth a penny. A million dollars would not purchase a dinner. Their money was valueless, their slaves were freemen, the heart of their city was in ashes. They had been deluded in everything. Those whom they had most trusted had most abused their confidence; and at last, in the most unfeeling and inhuman manner, had fired their dwellings, destroying property they could no longer use or levy upon, thus adding arson and robbery to the already long list of their crimes.

The people of Richmond were in despair, having no means for present subsistence, or to rebuild or commence business again. All their heroism, hards.h.i.+p, suffering, expenditure of treasure, and sacrifice of blood had availed them nothing. There could be no comfort in their mourning, no alleviation to their sorrow. All had been lost in an unrighteous cause, which G.o.d had not prospered, and no satisfaction could be derived from their partic.i.p.ation in it. For try to deceive themselves as they might into a belief that the conflict was unavoidable by the encroachments of the North upon the South, they could but remember the security and peace they enjoyed in the Union, little of which they had felt or dared hope for in their Utopian scheme of slavery.

At length we reached the house from which Jeff Davis had so recently departed, where General Weitzel had established his head-quarters. The President entered and sat wearily down in an arm-chair which stood in the fugitive President's reception-room. General Weitzel introduced the officers present. Judge Campbell entered. At the beginning of the war he was on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, afterwards espoused Secession, and was appointed a.s.sistant Secretary of War under Seddon. He was tall, and looked pale, care-worn, agitated, and bowed very low to the President, who received him with dignity, and yet cordially.

President Lincoln, accompanied by Admiral Porter, General Weitzel, and General Shepley, rode through the city, escorted by a squadron of cavalry, followed by thousands of colored people, shouting "Glory to G.o.d!" They had seen great hards.h.i.+p and suffering. A few were well dressed. Some wore pants of Union blue and coats of Confederate gray. Others were in rags. The President was much affected as they crowded around the carriage to touch his hands, and pour out their thanks. "They that walked in darkness had seen a great light." Their great deliverer was among them. He came not as a conqueror, not as the head of a mighty nation,-

"Not with the roll of the stirring drum, Nor the trumpet that sings of fame,"-

but as a plain, unpretending American citizen, a representative republican Chief Magistrate, unheralded, almost unattended, with "malice towards none, with charity for all," as he had but a few weeks previously proclaimed from the steps of the Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton.

He visited Libby prison, breathed for a moment its fetid air, gazed upon the iron-grated windows and the reeking filth upon the slippery floors, and gave way to uncontrollable emotions.

Libby Prison! What horrors it recalls! What sighs and groans! What prayers and tears! What dying out of hope! What wasting away of body and mind! What nights of darkness settling on human souls! Its door an entrance to a living charnel-house, its iron-barred windows but the outlook of h.e.l.l! It was the Inferno of the slave Confederacy. Well might have been written over its portal, "All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

Visiting the prison the next morning, I found it occupied by several hundred Rebels, who were peering from the grated windows, looking sadly upon the desolation around them. A large number were upon the roof, breathing the fresh air, and gazing upon the fields beyond the James, now green with the verdure of spring. Such liberty was never granted Union prisoners. Whoever approached the prison bars, or laid his hand upon them, became the victim of a Rebel bullet.

A. Lincoln.

There was a crowd of women with pails and buckets at the windows, giving the prisoners provisions and talking freely with their friends, who came not only to the windows, but to the door, where the good-natured sentinel allowed conversation without restraint.

The officer in charge conducted our party through the wards. The air was saturated with vile odors, arising from the unwashed crowd,-from old rags and dirty garments, from puddles of filthy water which dripped through the floor, ran down the walls, sickening to all the senses. From this prison fifteen hundred men were hurried to the flag-of-truce boat on Sunday, that they might be exchanged before the evacuation of the city. Many thousands had lived there month after month, wasting away, starving, dying of fever, of consumption, of all diseases known to medical science,-from insanity, despair, idiocy,-having no communication with the outer world, no food from friends, no sympathy, no compa.s.sion,-tortured to death through rigor of imprisonment, by men whose hearts grew harder from day to day by the brutality they practised.

"Please give me a bit of bread, Aunty, I am starving," was the plea one day of a young soldier who saw a negro woman pa.s.sing the window. He thrust his emaciated hand between the bars and clutched the bit which she cheerfully gave him; but before it had pa.s.sed between his teeth he saw the brains of his benefactress spattered upon the sidewalk by the sentinel!

Although the city was in possession of the Union forces, there were many residents who believed that Lee would retrieve the disaster.

"I was sorry," said a citizen, "to see the Stars and Stripes torn down in 1861. It is the prettiest flag in the world, but I shed tears when I saw it raised over the Capitol of Virginia on Sunday morning."

"Why so?" I asked.

"Because it was done without the consent of the State of Virginia."

"Then you still cling to the idea that a State is more than the nation."

"Yes; State rights above everything."

"Don't you think the war is almost over,-that it is useless for Lee to contend further?"

"No. He will fight another battle, and he will win. He can fight for twenty-five years in the mountains."

"Do you think that men can live in the mountains?"

"Yes; on roots and herbs, and fight you till you are weary of it, and whip you out."

A friend called upon one of the most aristocratic families of the place. He found that men and women alike were exceedingly bitter and defiant. They never would yield. They would fight through a generation, and defeat the Yankees at last.

They were proud of the Old Dominion, the mother of States and of Presidents, proud of their ancestry, of the chivalry of Virginia, and gave free expression to their hatred.

Having heard that a brigade of colored troops had been enlisted in Richmond for the Rebel army, I made inquiries to ascertain the facts. All through the war the Rebel authorities had engaged a large number of slaves as teamsters and laborers. The immense fortifications thrown up around Richmond, Yorktown, Petersburg, Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah were the work of slaves. The Rebels said that slavery, instead of being a weakness, was an element of strength. Slaves built the fortifications and raised the corn and wheat, which enabled the Confederacy to send all of its white fighting population to the field. But the fighting material was used up. Men were wanted. An unsparing conscription failed to fill up the ranks. Then came the agitation of the question of employing negro soldiers.

General Lee advocated the measure. "They possess," said he, "all the physical qualifications, and their habits of obedience const.i.tute a good foundation for discipline. I think those who are employed should be freed. It would neither be just nor wise, in my opinion, to require them to serve as slaves. The best course to pursue, it seems to me, would be to call for such as are willing to come,-willing to come, with the consent of their owners. An impressment or draft would not be likely to bring out the best cla.s.s, and the use of coercion would make the measure distasteful to them and to their owners."

The subject was debated in secret session in Congress, and a bill enacted authorizing their employment.

A great meeting was held in the African church to "fire the Southern heart," and speeches were made. A recruiting-office was opened. The newspapers spoke of the success of the movement. Regiments were organizing.

"I fear there will soon be a great scarcity of arms when the negroes are drilled," wrote the Rebel war clerk in his diary on the 11th of March; and five days later, on the 17th, "We shall have a negro army. Letters are pouring into the department from men of military skill and character, asking authority to raise companies, battalions, and regiments of negro troops. It is the desperate remedy for the very desperate case, and may be successful. If three hundred thousand efficient soldiers can be made of this material, there is no conjecturing when the next campaign may end."

A week later the colored troops had a parade in Capitol Square. There were so few, that the war clerk said it was "rather a ridiculous affair."

"How many colored men enlisted?" I asked of a negro.

"'Bout fifty, I reckon, sir. Dey was mostly poor Souf Carolina darkies,-poor heathen fellers, who didn't know no better."

"Would you have fought against the Yankees?"

"No, sir. Dey might have shot me through de body wid ninety thousand b.a.l.l.s, before I would have fired a gun at my friends."

"Then you look upon us as your friends?"

"Yes, sir. I have prayed for you to come; and do you think that I would have prayed one way and fit de other?"

"I'll tell you, ma.s.sa, what I would have done," said another, taking off his hat and bowing: "I would have taken de gun, and when I cotched a chance I'd a shooted it at de Rebs and den run for de Yankees."

This brought a general explosion from the crowd, and arrested the attention of some white men pa.s.sing.

We were in the street west of the Capitol. I had but to raise my eyes to see the Stars and Stripes waving in the evening breeze. A few paces distant were the ruins of the Rebel War Department, from whence were issued the orders to starve our prisoners at Belle Isle, Salisbury, and Andersonville. Not far were the walls of Dr. Reed's church, where a specious Gospel had been preached, and near by was the church of Dr. Minnegerode. The street was full of people. I was a stranger to them all, but I ventured to make this inquiry,-

"Did you ever see an Abolitionist?"

"No, ma.s.sa, I reckon I neber did," was the reply.

"What kind of people do you think they are?"

"Well, ma.s.sa, I specs dey is a good kind of people."