There was great excitement at Oakland
during the John Brown raid, and the boys’ grandmother
used to pray for him and Cook, whose pictures were
in the papers.
The boys became soldiers, and drilled
punctiliously with guns which they got Uncle Balla
to make for them. Frank was the captain, Willy
the first lieutenant, and a dozen or more little negroes
composed the rank and file, Peter and Cole being trusted
file-closers.
A little later they found their sympathies
all on the side of peace and the preservation of the
Union. Their uncle was for keeping the Union
unbroken, and ran for the Convention against Colonel
Richards, who was the chief officer of the militia
in the county, and was as blood-thirsty as Tamerlane,
who reared the pyramid of skulls, and as hungry for
military renown as the great Napoleon, about whom the
boys had read.
There was immense excitement in the
county over the election. Though the boys’
mother had made them add to their prayers a petition
that their Uncle William might win, and that he might
secure the blessings of peace; and, though at family
prayers, night and morning, the same petition was
presented, the boys’ uncle was beaten at the
polls by a large majority. And then they knew
there was bound to be war, and that it must be very
wicked. They almost felt the “invader’s
heel,” and the invaders were invariably spoken
of as “cruel,” and the heel was described
as of “iron,” and was always mentioned
as engaged in the act of crushing. They would
have been terribly alarmed at this cruel invasion
had they not been reassured by the general belief of
the community that one Southerner could whip ten Yankees,
and that, collectively, the South could drive back
the North with pop-guns. When the war actually
broke out, the boys were the most enthusiastic of
rebels, and the troops in Camp Lee did not drill more
continuously nor industriously.
Their father, who had been a Whig
and opposed secession until the very last, on Virginia’s
seceding, finally cast his lot with his people, and
joined an infantry company; and Uncle William raised
and equipped an artillery company, of which he was
chosen captain; but the infantry was too tame and
the artillery too ponderous to suit the boys.
They were taken to see the drill of
the county troop of cavalry, with its prancing horses
and clanging sabres. It was commanded by a cousin;
and from that moment they were cavalrymen to the core.
They flung away their stick-guns in disgust; and Uncle
Balla spent two grumbling days fashioning them a stableful
of horses with real heads and “sure ’nough”
leather bridles.
Once, indeed, a secret attempt was
made to utilize the horses and mules which were running
in the back pasture; but a premature discovery of
the matter ended in such disaster to all concerned
that the plan was abandoned, and the boys had to content
themselves with their wooden steeds.
The day that the final orders came
for their father and uncle to go to Richmond, from
which point they were ordered to “the Peninsula,” the
boys could not understand why every one was suddenly
plunged into such distress. Then, next morning,
when the soldiers left, the boys could not altogether
comprehend it. They thought it was a very fine
thing to be allowed to ride Frank and Hun, the two
war-horses, with their new, deep army saddles and
long bits. They cried when their father and uncle
said good-bye, and went away; but it was because their
mother looked so pale and ill, and not because they
did not think it was all grand. They had no doubt
that all would come back soon, for old Uncle Billy,
the “head-man,” who had been born down
in “Little York,” where Cornwallis surrendered,
had expressed the sentiment of the whole plantation
when he declared, as he sat in the back yard surrounded
by an admiring throng and surveyed the two glittering
sabres which he had no one but himself to polish,
that “Ef them Britishers jest sees dese swodes
dee’ll run!” The boys tried to explain
to him that these were not British, but Yankees, but
he was hard to convince. Even Lucy Ann, who was
incurably afraid of everything like a gun or fire-arm,
partook of the general fervor, and boasted effusively
that she had actually “tetched Marse John’s
big pistils.”
Hugh, who was fifteen, and was permitted
to accompany his father to Richmond, was regarded
by the boys with a feeling of mingled envy and veneration,
which he accepted with dignified complacency.
Frank and Willy soon found that war
brought some immunities. The house filled up
so with the families of cousins and friends who were
refugees that the boys were obliged to sleep in the
Office, and thus they felt that, at a bound, they
were almost as old as Hugh.
There were the cousins from Gloucester,
from the Valley, and families of relatives from Baltimore
and New York, who had come south on the declaration
of war. Their favorite was their Cousin Belle,
whose beauty at once captivated both boys. This
was the first time that the boys knew anything of
girls, except their own sister, Evelyn; and after
a brief period, during which the novelty gave them
pleasure, the inability of the girls to hunt, climb
trees, or play knucks, etc., and the additional
restraint which their presence imposed, caused them
to hold the opinion that “girls were no good.”