THE RECKONING

So it was war.  We drew apart into hostile camps.  By midwinter South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, had withdrawn from the Union.  There arose two capitals, each claiming a government, each planning war:  Washington and Richmond.

As for me, I had seen the flag on our far frontiers, in wide, free lands.  It was a time when each must choose for himself.  I knew with whom my own lot must be cast.  I pledged myself to follow the flag of the frontier, wherever it might go.

During the winter I busied myself, and when the gun of Sumpter came on that sad day of April, I was ready with a company of volunteers who had known some months of drill, at least, and who had been good enough to elect me for their captain.  Most of my men came from the mountains of Western Virginia, where geography made loyalty, and loyalty later made a State.  I heard, remotely, that Colonel Meriwether would not join the Confederacy.  Some men of Western Virginia and Eastern Kentucky remained with the older flag.  Both the Sheratons, the old Colonel and his son Harry, were of course for the South, and early in January they both left home for Richmond.  On the other hand, again, our friend Captain Stevenson stood for the Federal government; and so I heard, also indirectly, did young Belknap of the Ninth Dragoons, Regulars, a gallant boy who swiftly reached distinction, and died a gallant man’s death at Shiloh later on.

My mother, all for peace, was gray and silent over these hurrying events.  She wept when she saw me in uniform and belt.  “See,” she said, “we freed our slaves long ago.  We thought as the North thinks.  This war is not for the Society of Friends.”  But she saw my father’s blood in me again, and sighed.  “Go, then,” she said.

All over the country, North and South, came the same sighed consent of the women, “Go, then.”  And so we went out to kill each other, we who should all have been brothers.  None of us would listen.  The armies formed, facing each other on Virginia soil.  Soon in our trampled fields, and broken herds, and ruined crops, in our desolated homes and hearts, we, brothers in America, learned the significance of war.

They crossed our little valley, passing through Alexandria, coming from Harper’s Ferry, these raw ninety-day men of McDowell and Patterson, who thought to end the Confederacy that spring.  Northern politics drove them into battle before they had learned arms.  By midsummer all the world knew that they would presently encounter, somewhere near Manassas, to the south and west, the forces of Beauregard and Johnston, then lying within practical touch of each other by rail.

My men, most of them young fellows used to horse and arms, were brigaded as infantry with one of the four divisions of McDowell’s men, who converged along different lines toward Fairfax.  For nearly a week we lay near the front of the advance, moving on in snail-like fashion, which ill-suited most of us Virginians, who saw no virtue in postponing fight, since we were there for fighting.  We scattered our forces, we did not unite, we did not entrench, we did not advance; we made all the mistakes a young army could, worst of all the mistake of hesitancy.