Chapt Four- Caught in the Middle

           Blank looks in Dixie when Northern troops come!

           Sad hearts in Dixie when they hear the victor's drum!

           Pale cheeks in Dixie when  rattle, shell and bomb,

            And down goes the Dixie rag!

           Glory! Glory! Glory for the North!

           Glory to the soldiers she is sending forth!

           Glory! Glory! Glory for the North!

          They'll conquer as they go!

                    1861 Fourth Battalion of Rifles

                   13th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers

Chapter 4

Caught in the Middle

Mrs. Mary Custis Lee

"//"

“I don't suppose it will ever stop burnin'... a bustling city is a stubbu'n thing. It will fight to survive... heroically, and then the embers themselves will not give up. Richmond will come back from the ashes... Whether General Lee prevails or not... General Lee is not the Confederacy.

“The Southern people are always those challenging the wilderness- taming it, making a civilization from the unknown... Richmond is not board and shingle- it is enterprise and refinement... and stubborn pride. And that is alive and well.

“That's the way we all were in the beginning; in denial, fired by indignation, refusing to surrender, refusing to yield to the Federals... refusing to face the inevitable. Thew victors will soon forget... And now we smolder like coals under a giant fallen tree... the flames are gone but the fire will never go out. The South will never burn out, not completely. It will live as long as it feels the wounds of this God-forsaken conflict. And that will be a hundred years. Then it will live to cry another hundred years- just rememberin'.

“And here I sit, a broken down old woman, who won't leave. And it's not even my home. The Yankees took that early on, took it for taxes owed, which was just another one of their self-serving lies. When the war broke out, we had to abandon it, so close to the Federal capital, and we have had to move so many times since, that I feel rootless. Can you believe it? They had to carry me sometimes because I couldn' ride or walk. 

When Rooney my middle son was wounded, quite badly, he sneaked his way home and found us all taking refuge in a hiding place nearby. Then when the Yankees came and dragged him out of bed, right in front of us, and threw him in prison, we all felt so weak and pitiful, and so... outraged. Of course they could not resist burning his home to the ground- destroying his farm.

“The Union army... and I cannot believe I am saying this, as my Robert was once one of their commanders, my boys once wore their uniform proudly... but the Federals were vindictive devils. They seemed out of control... not soldier-like, but more like hounds of revenge. And they did their work with a sinister delight which I never imagined was possible in an American army. You could hear them... some taunting in their broken English accents, Irish, Germans, fighting Lincoln's war. They had no stake in the conflict... but sold their allegiance for shoes and a hot meal.

“I once heard General Lee tell of Stonewall Jackson, that after witnessing Union atrocities against helpless civilians, and he was a devout Christian man, he told his men to kill them all! To show no mercy! And now I can say I understand how the General felt.

“When Rooney's two babies, my first little grandchildren... so beautiful... and innocent... perished, I had no tears left to shed. And then- when their mama died, poor Charlotte, her husband in a Yankee prison, her children asleep with God... Robert said it was from a broken heart; I was almost jealous of her, to escape this hell.

“Then my number two daughter Annie passed... it was typhoid... a perfect example of the good dying young. She surrendered to death rather than to live in this broken world. They talk about the monumental casualties of this war, and they are, but they never count the women or children. The true amount in human suffering will never be known.

“But I know.”

“Who would believe that this country, this magnificent United States of America, would some day lose its mind and memory so bad that it would destroy itself... even the very family who gave it life? I would never have believed it, and I still don't... I can't believe the country changed that much, from when my great-grandmother was considered the mother of this country... That's right. Martha Custis Washington was my great-grandmother. She once walked the streets of this city. And had the people had their way, they would have made her husband George king, and she the queen, and I would be... well, at least a princess today. I know I don't look much like a princess... and I sure do not feel like one.

“But a kingdom was not what George Washington envisioned, and I doubt this destruction was eithah. Look at our countreh now... now that we have settled the question, the one our founders widely skirted... and successfully avoided...

“Or there never would have been an America...”

But there would have been a Vuginia! And Richmond would still be standing... picturesque and proud. Vuginia provided the luminaries who created this countreh... Washington... Jefferson... and their vision of the original republic... including the dignity of mutual compromise...

“The supremacy of personal conscience...”

“A charitable respect for ideological adversaries...thus our paramount freedoms.”

“Now it is all dead.”

“And so many have died with it. It was such a beautiful city. I wonder what my ancestors would think of it now. What they would say about its demolition. What would Martha say, having invested everything she had in the beginnin', to see it all come to this? They surely neva' realized how fragile a peace it was.

How did it come to this? I believe it was when our nation, especially the Press, began to use our differences as excuses for rudeness and hatefulness. When religion judgments became the gateway to intolerance and condemnation. It seems in a single generation, our fellow countrymen became our sworn enemies... Yet Christ taught us to love our enemies... The New Testament is a pattern for love of everyone, and the restraint from aggression. What kind of God would use this much death and destruction to reform his own believers? To use killing and crippling of hundreds of thousands to end any kind of evil?  I don't know how he could take a side, knowing the faith of our generals, of our boys...

"The faith of most of our families... all the way back to Plymouth Rock... We are not heathen infidels. The country was founded on Christian principles... My family was some of the leaders who made sure that God and His Law was woven into the very fabric of our legal system and our society. If we were in error, and I will not argue that point, this was not the Godly way to resolve it... 

"My great-grandmother was a slave owner... she passed down that asset to me... and the most humane tradition of slave ownership as well, and it was her grandson who set those slaves free by his own volition."

"That was the future of the entire South... had it been allowed to resolve its own problems... And I think my great-grandmother would have understood... as long as the slaves had been adequately prepared for freedom and citizenship... the Washington slaves, the Custis slaves,  they lived better than many white people. They were treated like family."

"Sometimes they were."

“But now her memory, her legacy lays in ashes.”

“Now New York businessmen work women and their children to death in their factories, unchecked, as they mnanufacture arms and finance this horrible WAR... and manipulate one section of the country against the other... at great profit, and fan the flames of hatred through the newspapers... and wrap themselves in the flag and the Glory of the Lord... and Abe Lincoln has done their bidding.

“And now perhaps a million are dead, and twice as many wounded...and now the Nawth will control everythin'... the labor, the politics... the money. Now the whole South, weakened and demoralized, will be the slave of the Nawth. I expect they will even try to put the Negroes over us.

“I know that I sound bittah. But bittehness is not quite it... maybe someday I will rise to bittehness. But for now... it is moa shock... dismay, that our country, which had so much hope and idealism... and ambition to show the world how to govern... with God's guidance, could lose its way so badly...

“And fall into such contention and self-destruction! Fall into the clutches of an apostate administration... led by a president with no religious convictions, where Union control was more important than self-determination.

“My daughter saw Abraham Lincoln mahchin' down the street the otha day... inspecting his victory I suppose, the contraband were so happily following and cheering... as if he was personally going to take them all home with him... He was solemn... and seemed very kind and when he learned about me, sent a message to assure me that I would be safe. But I wondered what did Abraham Lincoln think as he strolled through this blackened wasteland, which used to be a grand city... the pride of the South. And Richmond is just one of many- scarred forevah.

“I wondah: Just how much was he willing to destroy to supposedly "save" the Union? Was he happy with what he saw? Was he satisfied with his army's handiwork? Was he proud of the staggering, unconscionable losses this country has suffered, Nawth and South? I can't believe that.

“He must have been crying inside. His head spinning with questions he had nevah asked himself befoah. Paradin' down the street like the pied pipah, followed by a growing throng of homeless children? Through a city literally destroyed by his cannons, with no concept of where we go from heah? Supposedly now the states are UNIFIED! In our misery...

“Ironically the girls and I were reading Les Miserables, just a few days ago, it's a good book, but never did we imagine that we could soon write our own!

“This attack on the city of Richmond... cannot go unanswered. Robert has gathered his troops and they are out somewhere gathering their wits and their gumption... for one last, horrible, rebuttal against this unconscionable Nawthu'n aggression. His men are starved, and shoeless, and some of them, God Bless 'em, have no weapons. Many more are completely out of ammunition. All of them are out of whatever vinegar they were full of in the beginnin'.

“They know now that the South is lost. But still they will fight with every ounce of resistance left in them. They will have to be utterly incapacitated... God help them. We all pray for an end to this now, even the most rabid secessionists.

“Even if we won this damned war... and pushed Lincoln all the way back to Canada, we have still lost ev-er- y-thing.  It is now all pointless... who is right, who is wrong, whose rights have been wronged... None of it mattes anymoah. The negroes will be free in a charred hell with no food or shelter or jobs...

Mildred Lee. Her father called her "Life."

“My children begged me to leave, before the Yankees poured in. Everyone was evacuating, like rats leaving a sinking ship... That may have been the most humbling moment... the most disappointing scene in my life, to see Vuginians running from theya ohwwwwn capital. Such a shameful, hono'less retreat. I wonded where they all intended to go? Some of them in loaded-down wagons with all of theya possessions, and children and dogs runnin' alongside, an draggin' theya milk cows... long since dried up from all the cannon fire... marchin' to nowhere, with little o' no protection from the elements. 

The Union army has divided the South now, and it is a long way to Texas. So they will stand and fight. I fear to the last man. I pray Robert will stop it before it comes to that.

“And here I stand... I guess I am captured! Where was I to go? I have already relocated half a dozen times trying to avoid this conflict. No, I was through... told my girls I was too tired of runnin'.

“An' I would not believe that American soldiers would gun down an old woman! A woman who had sat through many a graduation ceremony at West Point. Who had spent her whole life as a military wife. If they would kill me, then it was time for me to leave this earth! Arlin'ton was gone... and my grandchildren, their legacy as well... No, my neighbor and I prayed and watched the battle... like it was a Fourth of July fireworks show. She wouldn' leave and neither would I, even when the harbor had been demolished, and almost all the houses on our street were on fire! Lord knows, I just wanted to go up in smoke with them.

 "Truth, be known? I believe I had lost my mind."

“My daughters, General Robert E. Lee's daughters mind you, commandeered a bucket brigade, to keep us all from going up in flames! Daughter led the way. They would gave made him proud. My spunky Agnes waved that old musket around like she knew how to use it. Tryin' to keep the Union soldiahs away... I doubt that it was even loaded!

Eleanor Agnes Lee

“It was a waste of water howevah. God was protectin' this foolish ol' woman an' He did not let me perish. Then Gen'rel Weitzel very kindly sent us a sentry. He even arranged for a carriage, so I might leave, but I sent it away. He must be a true gentleman. His Yankee boys have stood guard over us with surprising efficiency. I'm sure my beautiful, eligible daughters have had nothin' to do with that... They take them breakfast every morning... as if... well, that's Southern girls for you.

“And we are grateful, the city is crawling now with freed prisoners, deserters, and desperate... hungry Negroes. And somehow we have suvived it all...

“So strangely I knew that it was not my time, and God was not ready for me to join Him... an' my Annie, and Charlotte... not just yet. And so here I sit. The house was charred but it is still livable, and it is as safe as anywhere else. And, somethin' none of my children thought about... when this is all ovah, this godless travesty... and I hope soon, this way all my chickens will know where to find me.

“Had I left, I am not sure how Robert or my boys, in different units, could ever find me. Where would they look? All is pandemonium. Post Offices are burned or unmanned. Don't suppose the Yankees left here would know where to send them... Telegraph lines are down... will be for months. The rails are burned and bent into junk iron. My children can find me here... when they end this war, and God willin' we can be togetha again, what is left of us. And I would have risked my life over and over for that.

“History will be our judge. Someday Nawth and South will be united in the fact that slavery was an American abomination... BUT its abolition was immensely complicated, far more than the radicals understood, with far reaching implications which would take a lot of adjustment and would impact Blacks and Whites for maybe a century.

“History will prove us out, the future will explain why we fought Abolition so... with the Constitution in one hand and the Southern Cross in the othah! They will someday vindicate us, just like they did for my great-grandfather.

“Robert and the boys will come find me, and we will make a home again, somewhere in ol' Vuginia. And we will get through this terrible time. We will rebuild. It might not be so bad, now that we won't have to feed and shelter two hundred people! An' just to barely tread water. We will raise another generation, in a new Vuginia... and we will endure our sufferings and insults... and patch up our pride, and with God's help I suppose we will even learn to forgive those who have so mercilessly trespassed against us... Those, as Christ warned... who have spitefully used us...

“The country will eventually come to its senses... Someday it will wake up and see the iron Nawthun' fist which has commandeered this country... at the terrible expense of the American people, and their freedoms... and the people will rise up, Nawth and South, We the People... we will prevail in the end.”