Inside : a chronicle of secession

Preface

TUB ATJTHOB BURYING HIS MANUSCRIPT.

NOT a Preface merely for preface' sake, but as few words as possible by way of explanation.

This book was written in one of the centres of Secession. Begun at the outset, it grew with the growth thereof, and closed with its ending. Owing to peculiar circumstances, the writer, never out of the pale of Secession during its continuance, had full time and opportunity for as careful a study of the period as he could wish. If he has cast the result in the form of a fiction his work is none the less as essentially true as 4;he dryest history ever penned; and will be acknowledged to be by all who, by reason of occupying a like position during the war, are competent to speak. And it is as true, in most respects, for one region in the South as for any other, the Secessionist as a class in all its varieties, and the j Union men as a class in all its varieties, being, [ in every village throughout the South, very much the same as in Somerville.

The form of a novel was adopted chiefly to make it impossible for any one to identify the place in which the scene is laid and the characters acting therein. And that for this reason : The period embraced in the story is one which will be, in all its aspects, a phenomenon interesting to men for generations to come. Other volumes will treat of other features of this most remarkable period ; this book aims only to .photograph the social aspect thereof from a point entirely within ; and it is a period altogether | too sublime, both in its evil and its good, for j any thing so short-lived and insect-like as mere j personalities, which, as they buzz and sting but during their brief moment, should perish also and be forgotten within the same. Yes, if there be one drop of gall, a least splinter of wormwood in these pages, the writer is ignorant of it.

Born at, and having spent almost his entire life in, the South, the writer's first affections are, by that nature which attaches every thing that breathes to its own home, with and for the South. At the very same time he entertains a love yet larger and stronger for the nation of which the South is but a part, and is powerless to refuse conviction, both of head and heart, to the truth that the whole is greater than part of the whole. Above all does he yield reverence and affection, still beyond this, to Truth, Eight, Conscience, God. A love herein without the least conflict in its three degrees of positive, comparative, superlative. Toward no one, during Secession, has his hatred been even stirred. For many a one, during that time, has the writer's pity been excited — his deepest pity for the guiltiest as being the most infatuated: glad that justice, human justice perhaps, Divine justice certainly, is to be meted out ; glad, also, that, save in these

PREFACE.

humble pages, to him is committed neither its determining nor the execution.

He claims no merit whatever above others, far better, mayhap, in every other respect than himself, for, being from his earliest memory, in every thought, emotion, word, deed, through all associations, oppositions, circumstances, whatever they were, a Union man — claims no merit for this, since it required no exertion on his part, he being such by a sort of nature, as a cedar-tree is not a cypress, and as an oak-tree is an oak. Conscious of many a shortcoming in other respects, he has nothing to reproach himself with in this, unless it be for excess of love to -his country, which, perhaps, the times may excuse.

The very manuscript from which these lines are printed could tell a tale of its own, apart from that which it narrates, in confirmation of this. While writing it the author was perfectly aware that his life would have paid the forfeit had a written page been discovered. On more than one Sunday the wife of the writer has borne the manuscript to church concealed about her person, in terror of leaving it, like powder exposed to chance sparks, at home. However, as our story shows, that was but a small specimen of the totally new set of duties, unprovided for in the marriage ceremony, which wives had to perform for Union husbands during Secession. On two occasions the writer was obliged to bury his manuscript in the ground, thereby damaging it seriously. To that the printer whose misfortune it is to set up these pages will tearfully depone.

They say that even amidst rock and glacier, avalanche and tempest of Alpine regions, there spring flowers not unworthy the gathering. Who knows but it may be so with this volume, which has slowly and painfully matured its leaves under circumstances — But suppose we permit the book to speak for itself.

INSIDE.

A CHRONICLE OF SECESSION.

•BUREAU FOE LINCOLN AN' THE SOCF!"

Chapter I

"A LITTLE more powder and a little more shot "11 teach dem Yankees how to trot!"

"No, Amouse, no; that ain't the way; this the way :

"Little more shot an1 little powder '11 make them Yankees holler louder!"

"No, Bub, 'tain't ; you an' Amouse bofe wrong :

"Hurrah! hurrah! for the Yankee flag That bears the stingle star!"

"Lor', Miss 'Ilia, you better not sing dat — not de Yankee flag — bonner blue flag — " "You shut up, Amouse; hush, 'Eia." "Hush your own mouth, Bub. Hurrah for Lincoln an' Jeff Davis!"

" Oh, 'Ria, I'll tell Pa what you said ! Hollered for old Lincoln ; didn't she, Amouse ? If they don't hang you ! Yonder's Pupper now, just coming in the gate. Oh, Pupper, here's 'Ria been hollering all the morning for Abe Lincoln ! Ain't she a old Yankee?"

"Am a Yankee! Am a 'Bolitionist ! Hate old Davis ! Hurrah for Lincoln an' the Souf !"

"Hush your racket, children ; hush that, Mari_r| | ria!" and their father fastened the gate slowly I and carefully behind him.

"They know just about as much about it all I as most grown people," said, but strictly to himself, the father of 'Ria and Bub and the master of Amos, about whose profession, as he walks toward the house, there is no necessity of informing you. That he is a doctor you can see by the medical saddle-bags which he carries hung i over his left arm. A good, careful, conscientious doctor too, especially to nurse a patient through a long illness. That you can read in his mild, florid face, in the loiter of his very gait.

But, if you are a woman, and possess intuition, you can not help seeing also that this Dr. Warner is not the man to make an eminent surgeon. As you observe, following him with your eyes toward the house, he has very light hair and eyes — not the man to scoop a tumor out of the bosom of one's screaming child — not one you would care to call in if your leg had suddenly to be taken out of its socket at the thigh. When Nature has. given a decided character to a man or woman she is very apt to hang out some decided flag of it on the outer wall : eyes of some definite color ; hair red, black, or very brown.

"But, Pupper," says Bub, calling after his father, "oh, Pupper, please make 'Ria stop hollering out here for Lincoln ; she's all the time doing it. Joe Staples threw a rock at us yesterday ; hit our Amouse plum on the head."

"You hear, Maria. Mind what Bub says. Don't you let me hear of your hollering any more," says the father, turning half around. "Don't you know ladies never holler?"

"Oh, Pa, but yes they do!" exclaims his daughter. "Don't you know how Sally Smithers waved her towel an' hollered that dav the

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soldiers marched? — all the ladies on the front porches — don't you 'member?"

"Handkerchief, child; but you are a little, little girl, not eight years old ; you mustn't holler—"

" Yes I must, Pupper; have to holler. Amouse here, he hollers ; Joe Staples hollers ; Bub is always hollering ; every body in Somerville is always hollering all the time."

"Well, Maria, if you must have something to holler — '"

"'Bliged to," put in the little girl.

"Then holler for — Andrew Jackson;" and her prudent parent passed on into the house.

Ever mindful of the various poisons in his sad ale-bags, Dr. Warner placed them on a small shelf made for the express purpose, in the hall beside the hat-stand, high out of reach of the children. Next he proceeded, with what might be styled a cautious step for a man in his own house, to the door leading into the breakfast-room.

"Ah, Sarah, breakfast over, I see," he said, first glancing in through the partly-opened door, and then venturing more boldly in, when he sees that no one is therein except the negro woman standing over the wrecks of the meal, washing up the cups and saucers.

Prey fairly in the trap, the trigger springs :

" Over, Dr. Warner? Of course it was, one good hour ago, and you knew it when you asked."

It was his wife who said it, following her voice into the breakfast-room as she spoke. She had been saying it over to herself ever since she heard the front gate click, and short am' sharp enough were the tones in which she spoke.

"Gracious goodness! can't your patients fix it so we can have some little order about our meals? But it is all your fault, Dr. Warner. Why can't you just give them their physic, whatever it is, be done with it, and come home? Here's Sarah — why can't you get that coffee-pot, Sarah? — here's Sarah — and you haven't washed them plates up yet? — here's Sarah kept from her morning's work, and kept from and kept from it, and she a good six dozen washing to have done and hung out before the cows come up to-night. If I was you, Dr. Warner, I'd give up my practice ; goodness knows you make little enough at it; you would make plenty if you would only collect. But precious little you'd make at any thing else !"

"It doesn't matter, Helen," ventured her spouse, whose somewhat bald head had fallen into an indescribable droop, as of one under a shower-bath, the instant his wife began. So saying, he drew his chair to the table while the servant was placing his breakfast thereon. "I have been \\p near all night," he continued, as he stirred his coffee; "haven't any warm hominy ? Never mind, I have no appetite, any thing will do."

"That Mrs. Bowles, I suppose. Bring me my work here off the sewing-machine, and mind you wipe your wet hands clean before you do it, you Sarah;" and Mrs, Warner takes a seat at the other end of the table. "I would like to know when she settled last — such a lady as you always call her. And why haven't you told me what is the matter with the woman? They might have given you at least a cup of coffee."

"And so they did, Alice saw to that," says Dr. Warner, who never fails to speak the best he can of any and every one.

"Coffee! Yes, Confederate coffee, I'll bet," interposes his wife, threading her needle.

"Yes, but you couldn't have told the difference—at least, hardly;" for the Doctor is very truthful too.

"Stuff! Never tell me," breaks in his wife. "There's old Mrs. Juggins, she uses barley. You know you couldn't stand that, even the smell. Came to find out we had gone and ground it, while she used it so — only toasted. Tried not grinding, but it wouldn't do. There's sweet-potatoes, too, cut thin and browned. Mrs. Bowles's notion ; you know what a sickly sort of sweet it was. Coffee! Rye, too, that is Mr. Neely's plan. Like a Yankee! Then there's Mr. Ferguson, okra seed's his Scotch scheme, as if one could get okra seed enough to last a week. Never tell me ! A thing is either coffee or it ain't coffee. You are so polite you pretend you can't tell the difference — don't catch me."

"One dollar a pound," ventures her husband.

" What, gone up to a dollar ? Oh, if I only was a man! If I didn't hang them. First thing you knew it was fifty cents. Next time I went in to the stores it was : ' Not one pound on hand, ma'am, sorry to say; hope to get some soon.' Yes, and when they did have some next time it was eighty cents. And all the time they were pretending to be out they had sacks and sacks of it piled away down in the cellar, or hidden under carpets and things way up in the loft. Oh, if I was only a man! Calicoes up to fifty cents ; domestics, six bits ; fifty cents for a tin cup ; five pounds of sugar for a dollar ; molasses, dollar and a quarter ; shoes, eight dollars ; flour, fifty dollars, or soon will.be. I'd like to know what we are coming to ! Mr. Barker was right — they are worse than Yankees ! Our men gone off to fight the battles of their country, bleeding and dying somewhere, and they at home making money out of the poor wives, and widows, and orphans. Barker was right. Their stores ought to be just taken, the goods sold for them at the old prices. Hang them!" ejaculated Mrs. Warner, her wrath rising, as it ever did, at the sound of her own voice. " Yes, as brother Barker says, ' I could string them up with my own hands!'"

" Rather strong language for a preacher," interposed her husband, who was quietly eating his breakfast.

INSIDE.— A CHRONICLE OF SECESSION.

"As much as to say, if Mr. Barker oughtn't to say it because he is a preacher, I oughtn't to say it because I'm a woman."

Dr. Warner continues to breakfast. A little more, perhaps, of the shower-bath droop about the head. There is a pause of surprise in the eyes of his wife. She sits with suspended needle, looking at her husband. And while she is still an instant let us seize that rare instant to catch her photograph — if we can.

When Dr. Warner first settled in Somerville, years ago this 1862, Mrs. Warner was a tall, spare, shrill spinster. Other than being an exceedingly industrious and neat housekeeper Miss Helen Morris had only fourteen recommendations to a marrying man ; and those fourteen had legs and could wield hoes, scrubbing-brushes, and washing-boards. Somehow or other the Doctor married her. Was it that the poor and patientless young Doctor wanted a home ? Mrs. Warner very often afterward herself suggested that solution of the case. It was a special weapon in her arsenal in the worriment of her husband, which worriment was a large part of her housekeeping. Nor did she conceal her painful impression to that effect from chance company either ; for it was a peculiarity of Mrs. Warner to express herself upon matters, pleasant and unpleasant, relating to herself openly, fully, and upon every occasion. Or it may be — most were of that opinion — that it was not the Doctor who married the lady, but the lady who married him. Good, easy, indolent man, he was no match for Miss Helen Morris — as natural a prey to such a woman as a mouse is to a cat.

Not that the Doctor did not have warning fair and sufficient. When he applied that day in the dirty county court office to Bob Withers, county clerk, for the marriage license, that gentleman did his best. Years after Bob prided himself upon that.

" To Miss Helen Morris — not the widow Morris— to Miss Helen Morris, did you say, Doc?" he asked, with an emphasis not complimentary.

Even when Bob Withers brought himself fairly to the task of filling up the blanks of a license he spoiled one form, and then another, with blunders, his mind evidently being on something else. And when he had dipped his pen in the ink to begin at the third k was only to stick it behind his ear, unlock the drawer in the desk at which he wrote, take out a pistol and lay it thereupon, the handle convenient to his friend. A frank and wholesome face, Bob's.

"Doc," he solemnly said, with hand resting upon the weapon, "I like you as much, by George ! as any man I know. I haven't forgot that typhoid fever time. But look here, Doc. I know that Miss Helen Morris — gracious Heavens!" with considerable irritation, "who in Somerville don't know her? — and I just tell you as a friend, you see — no other possible interest in the thing — but before you marry them black eyes and that awful tongue — you see I boarded with her once — you'd better take this Derringer and kill yourself, by George ! and be done with it."

But the Doctor married her.

Early in life Miss Helen may have been a brunette and all the rest. But Mrs. Warner was now sallow — only sallow. The lips were still red, but very thin. And then her eyes? Once on a time the Reverend Edward Arthur had made a pretty long trip on a canal boat, and on his introduction to Mrs. Warner, when he first took charge of the Somerville church, he had been struck with a foolish fancy that her blackly-defined eyebrows resembled the lockgates on the canal when opening to let down the water. The fact is, the lady's eyes and eyebrows did have an oblique direction upward above the nose, giving her the appearance of being wide awake, becoming more and more oblique as she grew excited. Free as the air in the expression of herself; tough and elastic as gutta percha; electric from head to foot, the electricity quivering, as its nature is on every projecting point of the body charged, at the tips of her fingers, the corners of her eyes and mouth, in focus on the end of her tongue.

But let us be charitable. Perhaps if you, or even if I myself, had dipped snuff as long and as $ f incessantly as she had, we too would have been as nervous as she was. But very little- Bub, 'Ria, Amos, Sarah, and the rest had to endure it in comparison with the Doctor. Sharp and perpetual as were her eyes and tongue in regard to all within and without her household, the Doctor had by far the larger share thereof.

Because for him it was she cared most. Indolent, sensible, getting-to-be-corpulent, slovenly Dr. Warner ! He has learned only to droop his head and take it. When it becomes too bad, and if Mrs. Warner pours her vial upon him when company — as she often does — is present, the Doctor, at the earliest possible moment, carries his drooped head out of the parlor and off the place. Yet, let us get at the eternal reason and meaning of things ; for there is as solid a reason for the growth of a nettle as there is for the existence of a rose — as substantial a meaning in the existence of a mosquito as in the life of John Howard. As a needed spur — we will not call it thorn — in his side, this wife is a blessing to this husband. He married her, perhaps, with blind promptings — who knows ? — from his physiological studies, because she was so unlike to himself. And she married him ? — perhaps from some vague intuitions to the same effect.

If the stream of my story did not hurry me on so urgently I would like to turn out of its current for a moment and say just one word about that admirable provision of Nature, by

JO

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which she preserves, in our species as in the planets, her own sacred balance. When it i not Parent, nor Pique, nor Mammon, nor an) thing other than sweet Nature herself who weds you to your wife, you will find that she mates you two on the plan of a perfect compensation that is, she makes up for the excess of any defect in one of you by an excess of the opposite virtue in the other. It was something othei than Nature that made the match if you, a tal] man, are wedded to any other than an under, sized woman. Woe to you, Madam, if you, a blonde, are united to a fair-haired man ! So of that inner nature of which the outer appearance is but the symbol. Alas for you, Sir, if you, a man of desponding temperament, are wedded to a wife of the same dismal hue of feeling ! Though I believe, even in that case, Nature strives to make the best of a union in which she had no hand. I will not say how it will be if you are a man ; but if you are a woman I am certain of this: however despondent you may yourself be, the instant you detect the slightest gloom in your husband's brow, or the least growl in his voice, you go instinctively to the other side of the tilting bark, and become as cheerful as possible. And the instant you give way to gloom notice how awkwardly, yet well meaningly, he, poor fellow! attempts at least to trim the tilting vessel by putting on at least an aspect of cheerfulness. Woe, then, had it been to Mrs. Warner if she had been united to some blackeyed, black-haired, black-bearded husband ! Notice the union of two sable clouds in mid-air, if you would understand the result. So that when Mrs. Warner paused from her sewing and said,

' ' As much as to say, if brother Barker oughtn't to say it because he is a preacher, I oughtn't to say it because I'm a Avoman." The Doctor only helped himself in a sidelong and deprecatory manner to the butter.

"I do believe," said Mrs. Warner—" Sarah, step out and tell those children to hush that noise — I do believe," she continued in low, sepulchral tones, "that you, Dr. Warner, are a — Union man !"

Language can not set forth the awfulness of epithet implied in the charge, the canal gates opening wider and wider. "Yes, and I know now why the bells didn't ring last night ! I was wondering, I know now !" said Mrs. Warner swiftly, and with a new light breaking all over her face. "Yes, and why you couldn't leave Mrs. Bowles. Worse, is she ! Ha ! Yes, I see it all." Canal gates open their widest.

Dr. Warner glanced up from his plate at his wife with a flash of admiration. "What an amazingly sharp woman !" he said to himself.

" Bells ?" he said, however, at last. "Bells ? I should think, Helen, you would have had enough of bells night before last. Every bell in town ! There was the big Methodist bell ; I lay and counted no less than ten fresh hands in turn at that bell-rope before day. The first hand began as if he would break the bell to pieces, pulled until it was broken down ; then you could notice the rope taken by another till he gave up exhausted ; then by another, through the whole ten. I am not nervous, but I couldn't get a wink of sleep."

* ' Dr. Warner ! " said Mrs. W. solemnly, needle, eyes, breath suspended.

"And you know I said at the time— or was it you yourself made the remark — "

"Dr. Warner ! — Sarah, don't come here, stay in the kitchen till I call you."

"Well, it was one of us said it," continued the husband, very quietly sipping his coffee, looking over the top of his cup with unusual hardihood at his eager wife.

"You know I never said it!" broke in the wife. You know I never could have been such a traitor as to have said it. And if the paper that came last night says our soldiers have been whipped there in Tennessee, it's a lie ! Didn't the papers night before last tell how our men had come out of Fort Donelson and driven the Hessians back through their camps, and killed six thousand, and taken all the rest prisoners, and — and — "

" Very well, my dear, you needn't be excited at me. Have it your own way. Suppose we talk of something else."

"What is the matter with Mrs. Bowles, Dr. Warner?" asked his wife, with .sudden suspicion.

"Well," replied her helpmate, slowly, "the acuity have different names for it. There are 'ebrile symptoms, too much excitement in the irain. Nervous, hysteria."

' Stuff ; but what has made her worse ? I mow it can not be she has heard any bad news nbout that everlasting Rutledge Bowles of hers, or you would have told me so when you first came. - What has she heard ? Something bad, ! know."

'Well, yes. But you know, my dear, Mrs. Bowles permits her mind to run too much, really

00 much, on the events of the day — "

"Dr. Warner," says his wife, in alarming ones though lower than before, "will you tell me the news that came last night?"

" If you wish it. Remember it may be false ; you will be sure it is. In any case I didn't do iny thing to bring it about."

"What is it?"

"Fort Donelson has fallen, my dear. General bhnson has retreated into Alabama. Nashville las capitulated. A good many more items to he same effect. At least so the paper says. I lare say part of the news may be exaggerated, >remature at least."

' It's a lie — it's a base, base, base lie ! I'll bet

1 thousand dollars the man that prints that pa-

is a Yankee. He ought to be hung !"

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Perhaps it was owing to her cheeks having become some shades sallower that Mrs. Warner's lips seemed so much redder, her eyes and hair so much blacker than before. "Oh, if I was only a man !" she added.

Meanwhile her husband only arched his brows deprecatingly, and proceeded to eat his breakfast with a coolness, appetite, even cheerfulness, which contrasted greatly with the vehement, almost hysterical, wife at the other end of the table.

But, oh the exquisite satisfaction of Dr. War-

INSIDE.— A CHRONICLE OF SECESSION.

ner in imparting the news, unspeakable satisfaction at the very core of his heart, though all the rest of his anatomy might disavow it !

How you up there at the North rang your bells and blazed in all manner of illumination, and invoked the entire hive to help utter your gratification, Heaven and History well know. Your joy? It was as nothing compared with the electric ecstasy thereat which flashed unexpressed through all loyal hearts at the South. Heaven only knew it then ; History shall know it forever.

"And if it is true, though I don't believe a word of it, there's some base treachery in it, or the officers were all drunk, or they were all a pack of cowards ! To give up to Yankees ! I do wish the Yankees had managed to kill them. I hope Davis will have them tried and hung," says Mrs. Warner.

"Why, my dear, it would take a perfect factory to keep you in rope," dares her husband, playfully but injudiciously.

"And you are not sorry a single bit!" responds his wife, turning the lightning of her rage zigzag in every direction that offers. " I do believe you are glad. I tell you, Dr. Warner, if I actually thought so, was satisfied of it, I would not care that, if we have been married so long. I'd — ha! no wonder you wouldn't get up that night the bells rung so. I had to hunch and hunch you ever so often before you woke even. And when you did wake, you said it must be fire, not even expecting a victory. Ought not to be too certain, you said, at the very time every bell in town was ringing as hard as could be. Dr. Warner, you are the worry of my life ! And there you sit this moment just as cool — "

"But you know, Helen, I heard the news several hours ago. Besides, I've just drunk two cups of your excellent coffee. Then, my mind has been taken up with Mrs. Bowles's case. And, really, my dear," said the Doctor, eager to divert the conversation, " I'm getting uneasy about Mrs. Bowles. Such a sensitive, refined little body she is ! perfect lady, too, in every respect ; but she has given herself up to so much excitement for so long. Rutledge Bowles, too ; the news night before last almost deranged her with joy. Then comes that news last night. The reaction was almost too much for her. I tell you what, my dear," continued the Doctor, with indolent hypocrisy, "I'm glad I have a wife who is stronger than her nerves. Glad, my dear, that you have such strong sense of your own to keep you steady these stormy times."