Life in Dixie during the War, 1861-1862-1863-1864-1865

Imagine my astonishment, admiration and gratitude, when that group of Federal officers, with unanimity said:

“I glory in your spunk, and am proud of you as my countrywoman; and so far from banishing you from your home, we will vote for your retention within our lines.”

Thus the truth prevailed; but a new phase of the conflict was inaugurated, as proved by subsequent developments.

Turning to my mother, Major Campbell said:

“Mother, how did our advance guards treat you?”

A quivering of the lips, and a tearful effort to speak, was all the response she could make. The aggravation of already extreme nervousness was doing its work.

“Would you like to see?” I said. He indicated rather than expressed an affirmative answer.

I went around and entered the house, and, opening the front door, invited him and his friends to come in. A hindrance to the exhibit I was anxious to make presented itself – we had neither candle nor lamp, and this I told to the officers. Calling to a man in the nearest camp, Major Campbell asked him to bring a light. This being done, I led the way into the front room, and there our distinguished guests were confronted by a huge pallet occupied by a sixteen-year-old negro boy. A thrill of amusement evidently passed through this group of western men, and electrical glances conveyed messages of distrust when I told them of my walk yesterday afternoon, accompanied by this boy, and his exhaustion before we got home, and his complaints of “hurting all over” before he lay down an hour ago.

A low consultation was held, and one of the officers left and soon returned with another who proved to be a physician. He aroused the boy, asked several questions, and examined his pulse and tongue.

“That will do,” said he, and turning to the others, he said:

“He is a very sick boy, and needs medical treatment at once. I will prescribe and go for the medicine, which I wish given according to directions.”

Having received a statement of the boy’s condition from a trusted source, we were evidently re-instated into the good opinion of Major Campbell and his friends. Telitha had retired from them to as great a distance as the boundaries of the room would permit, and every time she caught my eye she looked and acted what she could not express in words – utter aversion for the “Yank.”

We now resumed our inspection of the interior of the house. The contents of every drawer were on the floor, every article of value having been abstracted. Crockery scattered all over the room, suggested to the eye that it had been used to pelt the ghosts of the witches burned in Massachusetts a century or two ago. Outrages and indignities too revolting to mention met the eye at every turn. And the state of affairs in the parlor baffled description. Not an article had escaped the destroyer’s touch but the piano, and circumstances which followed proved that that was regarded as a trophy and only waited removal.

“Vandals! Vandals!” Major Campbell sorrowfully exclaimed, and all his friends echoed the opinion, and said:

“If the parties who did this work could be identified, we would hang them as high as Haman.”

But these parties were never identified. They were important adjuncts in the process of subjugation.

After wishing that the worst was over with us, these gentlemen, who had come in no friendly mood, bade us good night and took their leave. Thus the Lord of Hosts, in his infinite mercy, furnished a just tribunal to pass judgment upon my acts as a Southern woman, and that judgment, influenced by facts and surroundings, was just and the verdict humane.

CHAPTER XV

The Battle of the 22d of July, 1864 – The Death of Toby

The excitement incident to the morning and evening of yesterday left my mother and myself in no frame of mind for repose, and we spent the night in suspense and painful apprehension of trouble yet to come greater and more dreadful than that through which we had passed. The medicine left for Toby by the physician summoned last night was faithfully administered according to direction, and the morning found him better, though able to sit up only for a short while at a time. Measles had developed, and we felt hopeful that it would prove to be a very slight attack; and such it might have been could we have controlled him properly, but the excitement and ever-varying scenes in the yard, and as far as vision extended, were so new and strange to him that, when unobserved, he spent much of his time at a window commanding the best view of the scene, and, thus exposed to a current of air, the disease ceased to appear on the surface and a troublesome cough ensued.

Having been without food since the preceding morning, our thoughts turned to the usual preparation for breakfast, but alas, those preparations had to be dispensed of, as we had nothing to prepare. This state of affairs furnished food for at least serious reflection, and the inquiry, “What are we to do?” found audible expression. The inexorable demands of hunger could not be stifled, and we knew that the sick boy needed hot tea and the nourishment which food alone could give, and yet we had nothing for ourselves or for him – so complete had been the robbery of the “advance guards” of the Grand Army of the Republic that not a thing, animate or inanimate, remained with which to appease our hunger. “What are we to do?” was iterated and reiterated, and no solution of the question presented itself. Even then appetizing odors from the camp-fires were diffusing themselves upon the air and entering our house, but aliens were preparing the food and we had no part in it. We debated this question, and finally resolved not to expose ourselves to the jeers and insults of the enemy by an act of ours that would seem to ask for food; but that we would go to our Southern citizens in the war-stricken and almost deserted town, and, if they were not completely robbed, ask them to share their supplies with us until we could procure aid from outside of the lines so arbitrarily drawn.

In this dilemma an unexpected relief came to us, and convinced us that there was good even in Nazareth. A large tray, evidently well-filled, and covered with a snow-white cloth, was brought in by an Irishman, who handed a card to my mother containing these words:

“To Mrs. Stokes and daughter, Miss Gay, with compliments of

(Major) Campbell.

“Please accept this small testimonial of regard and respectful sympathy.”

The latter part of the brief message was the sesame that secured acceptance of this offering, and my mother and myself jointly acknowledged it with sincere thanks, and again we thought of Elijah and the ravens. The contents of the tray – coffee, sugar, and tea, sliced ham and a variety of canned relishes, butter, potatoes, and oatmeal and bread, were removed and the tray returned. That tray on its humane mission, having found its way into our house, more than once opportunely reappeared. We enjoyed the repast thus furnished, although briny tears were mingled with it.

The day passed without any immediate adventure. Great activity prevailed in army ranks. The coming and going of cavalry; the clatter of sabre and spur; the constant booming of cannon and report of musketry, all convinced us that the surrender of Atlanta by the Confederates was quite a matter of time. A few thousand men, however brave and gallant, could not cope successfully with “three hundred thousand” who ignored every usage of civilized warfare, and fought only for conquest.

I cannot say how long this state of affairs lasted before Wheeler’s Cavalry, supported by Confederate infantry, stole a march upon the Yankees and put them to flight. Garrard and his staff officers were in our parlor – their parlor pro tem.– holding a council; the teamsters and army followers were lounging about promiscuously, cursing and swearing and playing cards, and seeming not to notice the approaching artillery until their attention was called to it, and then they contended that it was their men firing off blank cartridges. I intuitively felt that a conflict was on hand. Ma and I held whispered conversations and went from one window to another, and finally rushed into the yard. Men in the camps observed our excitement and said, “Don’t be alarmed, it is only our men firing off their blank cartridges.”

The irony of fate was never more signally illustrated than on this occasion. I would have laid down my life, yea, a thousand breathing, pulsing lives of my own, to have witnessed the overthrow of the Yankee army, and yet, I may have been the means of saving a large portion of it on that occasion. Dreading for my mother’s sake and for the sake of the deaf girl and the sick boy, an attack upon the forces which covered our grounds, I ran to one of the parlor doors and knocked heavily and excitedly. An officer unlocked the door and opening it said:

“What is it?”

“Our men must be nearly here,” I replied.

“Impossible,” he said, and yet, with a bound he was in the yard, followed in quick succession by each member of the conclave.

A signal, long, loud, and shrill, awakened the drowsy, and scattered to the four winds of heaven cards, books and papers; and, in a few minutes, horses and mules were hitched to wagons, and the mules, wagons and men were fairly flying from the approach of the Confederates. Women and children came pouring in from every direction, and the house was soon filled. Before Garrard’s wagon train was three hundred yards away, our yard was full of our men – our own dear “Johnnie Rebs.” Oothcaloga Valley boys, whom I had known from babyhood, kissed, in passing, the hand that waved the handkerchief. An officer, ah, how grand he looked in gray uniform, came dashing up and said:

“Go in your cellar and lie down; the Federals are forming a line of battle, and we, too, will form one that will reach across the grounds, and your house will be between the two lines. Go at once.”

My mother ran and got Toby’s shoes and put them on for him, and told him to get up and come with her, and as he went out of the house, tottering, I threw a blanket over him, and he and Telitha went with ma to our near neighbor, Mrs. Williams, her cellar being considered safer than ours. I remained in our house for the twofold purpose of taking care of it, if possible, and of protecting, to the best of my ability, the precious women and children who had fled to us for protection. Without thought of myself I got them all into the room that I thought would be safest, and urged them to lie down upon the floor and not to move during the battle. Shot and shell flew in every direction, and the shingles on the roof were following suit, and the leaves, and the limbs, and the bark of the trees were descending in showers so heavy as almost to obscure the view of the contending forces. The roaring of cannon and the sound of musketry blended in harmony so full and so grand, and the scene was so absorbing, that I thought not of personal danger, and more than once found myself outside of the portals ready to rush into the conflict – for was not I a soldier, enlisted for the war? Nor was I the only restless, intrepid person in the house on that occasion. An old lady, in whose veins flowed the blood of the Washingtons, was there, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I restrained her from going out into the arena of warfare. The traditions of her ancestors were so interwoven with her life, that, at an age bordering on four score years and ten, they could not relax their hold upon her; and she and I might have gone in opposite directions had we fled to the ranks of the contending armies.

Mine was, no doubt, the only feminine eye that witnessed the complete rout of the Federals on that occasion. At first I could not realize what they were doing, and feared some strategic movement; but the “rebel yell” and the flying blue-coats brought me to a full realization of the situation, and I too joined in the loud acclaim of victory. And the women and children, until now panic-stricken and silent as death, joined in the rejoicing. All the discouragement of the past few weeks fled from me, and hope revived, and I was happy, oh, so happy! I had seen a splendidly equipped army, Schofield’s division, I think, ignominiously flee from a little band of lean, lank, hungry, poorly-clad Confederate soldiers, and I doubted not an over-ruling Providence would lead us to final victory.

When the smoke of the battle cleared away, my mother and her ebony charge returned home. Toby quickly sought his pallet, and burning fever soon rendered him delirious the greater part of the time. In one of his lucid intervals, he asked me to read the Bible to him, and he told me what he wanted me to read about, and said:

“Miss Missouri used to read it to me, and I thought it was so pretty.” And I read to him the story of the cross – of Jesus’ dying love, and he listened and believed. I said to him:

“My boy, do you think you are going to die?”

“Yes’m, I think I am.”

I bowed my head close to him and wept, oh, how bitterly.

“Miss Mary, don’t you think I’ll go to heaven?” he anxiously asked.

“Toby, my boy, there is one thing I want to tell you; can you listen to me?”

“Yes’m.”

“I have not always been just to you. I have often accused you of doing things that I afterwards found you did not do, and then I was not good enough to acknowledge that I had done wrong. And when you did wrong, I was not forgiving enough; and more than once I have punished you for little sins, when I, with all the light before me, was committing greater ones every day, and going unpunished, save by a guilty conscience. And now, my boy, I ask you to forgive me. Can you do it?”

“Oh, yes’m!”

“Are you certain that you do? Are you sure that there is no unforgiving spirit in you towards your poor Miss Mary, who is sorry for all she has ever done that was wrong towards you.”

“Oh, yes’m!”

“Then, my boy, ask the Lord to forgive you for your sins just as I have asked you to forgive me, and He will do it for the sake of Jesus, who died on the cross that sinners might be redeemed from their sins and live with Him in heaven.”

I can never forget the ineffable love, and faith, and gratitude, depicted in that poor boy’s face, while I live; and as I held his soft black hand in mine, I thought of its willing service to “our boys,” and wept to think I could do no more for him, and that his young life was going out before he knew the result of the cruel war that was waged by the Abolitionists! He noticed my grief, and begged me not to feel so badly, and added that he was willing to die.

I arose from my position by his bed and asked him if there was anything in the world I could do for him. In reply he said:

“I would like to have a drink of water from the Floyd spring.”

“You shall have it, my boy, just as soon as I can go there and back,” and I took a pitcher and ran to the spring and filled and refilled it several times, that it might be perfectly cool, and went back with it as quickly as possible. He drank a goblet full of this delicious water and said it, was “so good,” and then added:

“You drink some, too, Miss Mary, and give Miss Polly some.”

I did so, and he was pleased. He coughed less and complained less than he had done since the change for the worse, and I deluded myself into the hope that he might yet recover. In a short while he went to sleep, and his breathing became very hard and his temperature indicated a high degree of fever. I urged my mother to lie down, and assured her that if I thought she could do anything for Toby at any time during the night I would call her.

I sat there alone by that dying boy. Not a movement on his part betrayed pain. His breathing was hard and at intervals spasmodic. With tender hands I changed the position of his head, and for a little while he seemed to breathe easier. But it was only for a little while, and then it was evident that soon he would cease to breathe at all. I went to my mother and waked her gently and told her I thought the end was near with Toby, and hurried back to him. I thought him dead even then; but, after an interval, he breathed again and again, and all was over. The life had gone back to the God who gave it, and I doubt not but that it will live with Him forever. The pathos of the scene can never be understood by those who have not witnessed one similar to it in all its details, and I will not attempt to describe it. No timepiece marked the hour, but it was about midnight, I ween, when death set the spirit of that youthful negro free. Not a kindred being nor a member of his own race was near to lay loving hand upon him, or prepare his little body for burial. We stood and gazed upon him as he lay in death in that desolated house, and thought of his fidelity and loving interest in our cause and its defenders, and of his faithful service in our efforts to save something from vandal hands; and the fountain of tears was broken up and we wept with a peculiar grief over that lifeless form.

My mother was the first to become calm, and she came very near me and said, as if afraid to trust her voice:

“Wouldn’t it be well to ask Eliza Williams and others to come and ‘lay him out?’”

Before acting on this suggestion I went into another room and waked Telitha and took her into the chamber of death. A dim and glimmering light prevented her from taking in the full import of the scene at first; but I took her near the couch, and, pointing to him, I said:

“Dead! – Dead!”

She repeated interrogatively, and, when she fully realized that such was the case, her cries were pitiable, oh, so pitiable.

I sank down upon the floor and waited for the paroxysm of grief to subside, and then went to her and made her understand that I was going out and that she must stay with her mistress until I returned. An hour later, under the manipulation of good “Eliza Williams” – known throughout Decatur as Mrs. Ammi Williams’ faithful servant – and one or two others whom she brought with her, Toby was robed in a nice white suit of clothes prepared for the occasion by the faithful hands of his “Miss Polly,” whom he had loved well and who had cared for him in his orphanage.

We had had intimation that the Federals would again occupy Decatur, and as soon as day dawned I went to see Mr. Robert Jones, Sen., and got him to make a coffin for Toby, and I then asked “Uncle Mack,” and “Henry” – now known as Decatur’s Henry Oliver – to dig the grave. Indeed, these two men agreed to attend to the matter of his burial. After consultation with my mother, it was agreed that that should take place as soon as all things were in readiness. Mr. Jones made a pretty, well-shaped coffin out of good heart pine, and the two faithful negro men already mentioned prepared with care the grave. When all was in readiness, the dead boy was placed in the coffin and borne to the grave by very gentle hands.

Next to the pall-bearers my mother and myself and Telitha fell in line, and then followed the few negroes yet remaining in the town, and that funeral cortege was complete.

At the grave an unexpected and most welcome stranger appeared. “Uncle Mack” told me he was a minister, and would perform the funeral service – and grandly did he do it. The very soul of prayer seemed embodied in this negro preacher’s invocation; nor did he forget Toby’s “nurses,” and every consolation and blessing was besought for them. And thus our Toby received a Christian burial.

CHAPTER XVI.

EVERETT’S DESERTION

During the early spring of that memorable year, 1864, it was announced to the citizens of Decatur that Judge Hook and family, including his accomplished daughter, Mrs. Whitesides, and her children, from Chattanooga, had arrived at the depot, and were domiciled, pro tem., in cars which had been switched off the main track of the famous old Georgia Railroad. This novel mode of living, even in war times, by people in their monetary condition and social standing, naturally attracted much attention, and brought us to a full realization of approaching danger. That this family, accustomed to all the luxuries of an elegant home, should live in such an abode, with its attendant privations, was convincing proof that the home they had abandoned had become intolerable because of the proximity of the enemy; and it was also fearfully suggestive that that ubiquitous enemy was extending his dominion and bringing the fiery, bloody conflict into the very heart of the “rebellion.”

A rebellion, by way of parenthesis, which impartial historians will put on record as the grandest uprising of a long suffering people that was ever known in the annals of nations; “a mutiny” (as that chief of Southern haters, John Lathrop Motley, whose superb egotism impressed him with the idea that his influence could change the political trend of Great Britain towards the South, has seen proper to denominate it) in the camp of American councils brought about by unceasing abuse of the Southern States by political tricksters, whose only hope of survival lay in the hatred for the South thus engendered.

The coming of Judge Hook’s family was hailed with pleasure by all good and loyal citizens, and was a ligament connecting more closely states suffering in a common cause; and we all called upon them and soon numbered them with our intimate friends. Mrs. Whitesides and Miss Hook were effective workers in all that benefited our soldiers or their families.

Judge Hook was superintendent of the Government Iron Works, and literally brought the foundry as well as the operatives with him. Among the latter was a man by the name of Everett, who, with his family, consisting of his wife and five children, occupied an old one-room house near a corner of our home lot. Although a hearty, hale, and rather good-looking man, Everett was very poor, and the first time I ever saw his wife she came to borrow “a little flour.” As my mother never turned away from a borrower, Mrs. Everett’s vessel was filled to overflowing, and, besides, a pitcher of buttermilk and a plate of butter was given to her, for which she was extremely grateful.

An acquaintance thus begun continued during the spring and early summer months, and there was not a day during that period that my mother did not find it convenient to do something for this family. Mrs. Everett was more than ordinarily intelligent for a person in her position, and the blush which mantled her pretty cheeks when she asked for anything betrayed her sensibility; and her children were pretty and sweet-mannered. I never saw Everett, only as I met him going and coming from his work, and on those occasions he showed the greatest respect for me by taking off his hat as he approached me, and holding it in his hand until he had fully passed. He seemed to be a steady worker, and if he ever lost a day I never heard of it; and Mrs. Everett was industrious, but much of the time unemployed for lack of material with which to work, and she often begged for something to do. She was anxious to work for our soldiers, and told me that all of her male relatives were in the Confederate army. This circumstance endeared her very much to me; and I made the support of his family very much easier to Everett than it would have been had he lived in a non-appreciative neighborhood. And when the village girls met at our house to practice for concerts for the benefit of our soldiers, which they did almost weekly, I never forgot that Mrs. Everett’s brothers were in our army fighting valiantly, no doubt, for our cause, and I always asked her to come and bring her children to my room and listen with me to the sweet music and patriotic songs.

As time sped, many opportunities for witnessing Mrs. Everett’s devotion to her native land presented themselves; and her service to its defenders, though humble and unobtrusive, was valuable. Her children, too, always spoke lovingly of our soldiers, and were never more happy than when doing something for them. At length the time came for another move of the foundry, and quietly, as if by magic, it and its appurtenants, under the judicious management of Judge Hook, got on wheels and ran at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour until it reached Augusta – another haven of rest invested with heavenly beauty. After the departure of this important adjunct to this portion of the Confederacy, it was discovered that Everett and his family remained in Decatur. And a remarkable change came over them. Instead of the free-spoken, unsophisticated woman that she had always appeared to be, Mrs. Everett became reserved and taciturn, and seldom left the enclosure by which her humble dwelling was surrounded. And the children ceased to cheer us by their merry prattle and daily trip for a pitcher of buttermilk, which, under the changed and unexplained circumstances, my mother sent to them.