Read Ebook: What Happened to Me by Pickett La Salle Corbell

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The stranger was Colonel William H. Lowdermilk, of Anglim's Bookstore. When later I lost all my worldly goods and was appointed to a desk in the Pension Office, Colonel Lowdermilk, then of the firm of Lowdermilk & Company, Book-Dealers, wrote to the Commissioner of Pensions a strong letter of commendation, in which he told in warmest terms of my care of himself and other Union soldiers in Libby prison, and asked that every courtesy and consideration be shown to me for all time and in every possible way, in sacred memory of the boys in Libby. Throughout his life afterward he was a devoted, loyal friend to me and mine.

I still have the photograph of him taken in his Federal uniform before he was captured.

THE CLOSING DAYS

The close of the stormy career of the Confederacy was marked in blood by the battle of Five Forks. The end was at hand.

The Army had subsisted on corn for many days. As my Soldier was riding to Sailor's Creek a woman ran out of a house by the roadside and handed him a luncheon wrapped in paper. Passing on, he saw a man lying behind a log; a deserter, he supposed. What did it matter! The poor fellows had fought long enough and hard enough to earn the right to go home. He spoke to the man, who looked up, revealing a boyish face. He was thin and pale, scarcely more than a child.

"Are you wounded, my boy!" asked my Soldier.

"No, General, I am starving, sir," he replied. "I could not keep up any longer and lay down here to die. I couldn't help it, Marse George."

"Here, take this," said my Soldier. "Eat it, and when you are rested and have slept go back home."

The soldier took the luncheon gratefully.

"No, Marse George," he answered, "if I get strength to go on I'll follow you and Marse Robert to the last."

He did follow to the last, being killed a few days later at Sailor's Creek, where the parting salute was fired over the grave of the Confederacy.

"They failed and fell, who bade the sun in heaven to stand, We failed and fell, who set our bars against the progress of the stars, And stayed the march of Motherland."

Many months before the farewell shot, when some one applied to President Lincoln for a pass to go into Richmond, he gravely replied:

"I don't know about that; I have given passes to about two hundred and fifty thousand men during the last two years to go to Richmond, and not one of them has got there yet."

Some of those passes had been used and their bearer had arrived at last, having made the slowest time on record since the first camel bore the pioneer traveler over an Oriental desert. The queen city of the South had fallen. The story of the great nation that had hovered upon the horizon of our visions had been written out to its last sorrowful word.

On the morning of Sunday, April 2, in the holy calm of St. Paul's Church, we had assembled to ask the great Father of Heaven and earth to guard our loved ones and give victory to the cause so dear to us. Suddenly the glorious sunlight was dimmed by the heavy cloud of disappointment, and the peace of God was broken by the deep-voiced bells tolling the death-knell of our hopes.

There was mad haste to flee from the doomed city. President Davis and his Cabinet officers were in the church, and to them the news first came. They hurried to the State House to secure the Confederate archives and retreat with them to some place of safety.

Fear and dread fell over us all. We were cut off from our friends and communication with them was impossible. Our soldiers might have fallen into the hands of the enemy--we knew not. They might have poured out their life-blood on the battlefield--we knew not. In our helpless deserted condition all the world seemed to have been struck with sudden darkness.

The records having been secured, an order was issued to General Ewell to destroy the public buildings. The one thing which could intensify the horrors of our position--fire--was added to our calamities. General J. C. Breckenridge, our Secretary of War, with a wider humanity and a deeper sense of the rights of our people, tried in vain to have this order countermanded, knowing that its execution could in no way injure or impede the victorious army, while it would result in the ruin of many of our own people. The order was carried out with even greater scope than was intended.

The Shockoe warehouse was the first fired, it being regarded as a public building because it contained certain stores belonging to France and England. A breeze springing up suddenly from the south fanned the slowly flickering flames into a blaze and they mounted upward until they enwrapped the whole great building. On the wings of the wind they were carried to the next building and the next, until when the noon hour struck all the city between Seventh and Fifteenth Streets and Main Street and the river was a heap of ashes.

The flames leaped from house to house in mad revel. They stretched out burning arms on all sides and embraced in deadly clasp the stately mansions which had stood in lofty grandeur from the olden days of colonial pride. Soon they became towering masses of fire, fluttering immense flame-banners against the wind, and fell sending up myriads of fiery points into the air, sparkling like blazing stars against the dark curtain that shut out the sky.

A stormy sea of smoke surged over the town--here a billow of blackness of suffocating density--there a brilliant cloud, shot through with crimson arrows. The wind swept on and the ocean of smoke and flame rolled before it in surges of destruction over the once fair and beautiful city of Richmond.

The terrified cries of women and children arose in agony above the roaring of the flames, the crashing of falling buildings, and the trampling of countless feet.

Piles of furniture and wares lay in the streets as if the city had struck one great moving day, when everything was taken into the highways and left there to be trampled to pieces and buried in the mud.

Government stores were thrown out to be destroyed, and a mob gathered around to catch the liquors as they ran in fiery rivers down the streets. Soon intoxication was added to the confusion and uproar which reigned over all. The officers of the law, terror-stricken before the reckless crowd, fled for their lives. The firemen dared not make any effort to subdue the flames, fearing an attack from the soldiers who had executed the order to burn the buildings.

Through the night the fire raged, the sea of darkness rolled over the town, the crowds of men, women and children went about the streets laden with what plunder they could rescue from the flames. The drunken rabble shattered the plate-glass windows of the stores and wrecked everything upon which they could seize. The populace had become a frenzied mob, and the kingdom of Satan seemed to have been transferred to the streets of Richmond.

The fire revealed many things which I should like never to have seen and, having seen, would fain forget.

The most revolting revelation was the amount of provisions, shoes and clothing which had been accumulated by the speculators who hovered like vultures over the scene of death and desolation. Taking advantage of their possession of money and lack of both patriotism and humanity, they had, by an early corner in the market and by successful blockade running, bought up all the available supplies with an eye to future gain, while our soldiers and women and children were absolutely in rags, barefoot and starving. Not even war, with its horrors and helplessness, can divert such harpies from their accustomed methods of accumulating wealth at the expense of those who have spent their lives in less self-seeking ways.

About nine o'clock Monday morning a series of terrific explosions startled our ears, inured as they were to every variety of painful sounds. Every window in our house was shattered and the old plate-glass mirrors built into the walls were broken. We felt as if called upon to undergo a bombardment, in addition to our other misfortunes, but it was soon ascertained that the explosions were from the Government arsenal and laboratory, now caught by the flames. Fort Darling and the rams were blown up.

While the flames were raging the colored troops of General Weitzel, who had been stationed on the north side of the James a few miles from Richmond, entered the city. As I saw their black faces shining through the gloom of the smoke-shrouded town I could not help thinking that they added the one feature needed, if any there were, to complete the demoniacal character of the scene. They were the first colored troops I had ever seen, and the weird effect produced by their black faces in that infernal environment was indelibly impressed upon my mind.

General Weitzel sent Major E. E. Graves, of his staff, and Major A. H. Stevens, of the Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry, at the head of a hundred mounted men, to reconnoiter the Richmond roads and works. At the fortifications beyond the junction of the Osborne turnpike and New Market road they were met by a flag of truce waved from a dilapidated, old-fashioned carriage drawn by a pair of skeleton-like horses. The truce party consisted of the Mayor of Richmond, Colonel Mayo; Judge Meredith, of the Supreme Court; Mr. James Lyons, one of our most eminent lawyers, and a fourth, whom I do not now recall.

The carriage was probably in the early part of the century what might have been called, if the modern classic style of phraseology had prevailed at that time, a "tony rig." At the period of which I write it had made so many journeys over the famous Virginia roads that it had become a sepulchral wreck of its former self.

There may have been a time when the reminiscences of animals that dragged out from the burning Capital the ruins of the stately chariot were a span of gay and gallant steeds, arching their necks in graceful pride, champing their bits in scorn of the idea that harness made by man could trammel their lofty spirits, pawing the earth in disdain of its commonplace coarseness. If so, the lapse of years and an extended term of Confederate fare had reduced those noble coursers to shambling memories.

What of it? The chariot of state might be the wreck of former grandeur, the horses might be the dimmest of recollections, but was not Mr. Lyons still Mr. Lyons--in all circumstances, the most dignified member of Old Dominion aristocracy? The Mayor turned over the keys of the city and in recognition of the pre-eminence of Mr. Lyons, deputed to him the performance of further ceremonies. With cold and stately formality Mr. Lyons "had the honor" to introduce his companions and to present a paper on which was inscribed:

"It is proper to formally surrender to the Federal authorities the City of Richmond, hitherto Capital of the Confederate States of America, and the defenses protecting it."

Major Stevens courteously accepted the surrender on behalf of his Commanding General, to whom the document was transmitted, and proceeded to reduce the newly acquired property to possession by fighting the flames which disputed ownership with him.

Having utilized to good effect what little remnant of the fire department he could find, Major Stevens ordered the Stars and Stripes to be raised over the Capitol. Two soldiers of the Fourth Massachusetts Cavalry, one from Company E and one from Company H, mounted to the summit of the Capitol, and in a few moments, for the first time in more than four years, the National Flag fluttered unmolested in the breezes of the South. The stars of the Union were saluted, while our "warrior's Banner took its flight to meet the warrior's soul."

That flag which almost a century before had risen from the clouds of war, like a star gleaming out through the darkness of a stormy night, with its design accredited to both Washington and John Adams, was raised over Virginia by Massachusetts, in place of the one whose kinship and likeness to the old banner had never been entirely destroyed.

In March, 1861, the Confederate Congress adopted the Stars and Bars--three horizontal bars of equal width, the middle one white, the others red, with a blue union of nine stars in a circle. This was so like the National Flag as to cause confusion. In 1863 this flag was replaced by a banner with a white field, having the battle-flag for a union. It was feared that this might be mistaken for a flag of truce, and was changed by covering the outer half of the field with a vertical red bar. This was finally adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.

Richmond will testify that the soldiers of Massachusetts were worthy of the honor of first raising the United States flag over the Capitol of the Confederacy, and will also bear witness to the unvarying courtesy of Major Stevens and the fidelity with which he kept his trust.

The day after the fire there was a rap at our door. The servants had all run away. The city was full of northern troops, and my environment had not taught me to love them. With my baby on my arm I answered the knock, opened the door and looked up at a tall, gaunt, sad-faced man in ill fitting clothes, who asked with the accent of the North:

"Is this George Pickett's place?"

"This is General Pickett's home, sir," I replied, "but he is not here."

"I know that, ma'am, I know where George Pickett is," he answered, "but I just wanted to see the place. Down in old Quincy, Illinois, where I used to hear George Pickett whistle the songs of Virginia in his bird-like notes, I have heard him describe his home till in spirit I have been here many a time. I have smelled the multi-flora roses and the Lady Bankshire roses and the golden cluster roses and those great cabbage roses. I have seen the borders of hyacinths in the springtime and the lilies-of-the-valley blooming in the chimney corner, the beds of violets, the rows of beehives and the lily-beds that the bees knew were theirs, had been planted just for them. I have stood under the arbor and gathered those strange green looking grapes that are like the Virginia aristocracy, growing each one on its own individual stem. I think he called them scuppernongs. I have sat on that back porch and listened to the music as his sister Virginia, of whom he was so proud, sang in that glorious voice he told me about, and I have swung in this old swing here while the moon and I watched and waited for the old cat to die. So I wanted to see the place."

I, listening, wondered who he could be, till he finished and then he said:

"I am Abraham Lincoln."

"The President!" I gasped.

"No--no,--just Abraham Lincoln; George Pickett's old friend."

"I am George Pickett's wife and this is his baby," was all I could say.

The baby reached out his arms and Mr. Lincoln took him, a look of tenderness almost divine glorifying that sad face. I have never seen that expression on any other face. My little one opened his mouth and insisted upon giving his father's friend a dewy baby kiss. As he handed my baby back to me Mr. Lincoln shook his long hand at him and said:

"Tell your father, the rascal, that I could almost forgive him anything for the sake of those bright eyes and that baby kiss."

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