XLI Fort Delaware — “Old Glory” — Lincoln’s Assassination — The Released Prisoner of War
In the last week of May, 1864, I had a letter from my brother Horace, now a Lieutenant in the Richmond Howitzers, C.S.A.
It bore the heading: “Under the walls of Fort Delaware,” and was scribbled upon the deck of a United States transport.
With the gay courage that was his characteristic, and without waste of words in preliminaries, directness in action and speech being another prominent trait with him, he informed me that “General Hancock, by making an ungenerously early start at Spottsylvania Court-House—before breakfast, in fact—on the morning of May 21st, captured part of our division.”
The letter wound up with: “We are now approaching Fort Delaware, which is, we are told, our destination. I am well. Don’t take this to heart. I don’t!”
I was so far from taking it to heart that I called upon my soul, and all that was within me, to return thanks to Him who had delivered my darling boy from the battle that was against him. He was now out of the reach of bullet and bayonet.
If I did not summon neighbors and friends to rejoice with me over my brother’s capture, the news spread fast, and congratulatory calls were the order of the next few days. Not satisfied with words of good-will, every bit of political machinery at the command of our friends was put in motion to secure for me the great joy of visiting him.
One of these plans so nearly succeeded that I went, under the escort of the plotter, as far as Delaware City, within sight of the gloomy fortress, to be turned back by a new order—incited by a rumored attempt at escape of the prisoners—prohibiting any visitors from entering the fort.
In the tranquil assurance of the captive s security from the chances of war, I bore up under the failure better than could have been expected, solacing myself by writing, regularly, long letters, and the preparation of boxes of books and provisions, which I was allowed to forward weekly. It was “almost as good,” I wrote to him, gleefully, “as having a son at school, for whom I could get up boxes of goodies.”
Twice I had direct intelligence of him from army officers, who sought him out and talked to him of us.
One wrote: “Fine-looking fellow—hearty as a buck! In good heart, and in good looks.” Another: “Never met a nicer fellow. I wish he had been on our side!”
While I was comforting myself with these mitigating incidents, the line of communication was abruptly severed by the transfer of prisoners from Fort Delaware to Hilton, South Carolina. I had no letter for a month, and began to think—I might say, to fear—that an exchange of prisoners had returned him to Virginia. He gave the reason for his silence finally:
“In pursuance of the retaliatory policy determined upon by the Federal authorities, we were brought here and placed, for three weeks, under the fire of our own guns from the shore. Our fare was pickles and corn-meal, for the same time. I did not write while this state of things prevailed. It would have distressed you uselessly.”
He went on to say that the order of retaliation for the cruelties inflicted upon Federal captives in Confederate prisons, had been rescinded. The Confederates, now at Hilton Head, could hardly be said to be lodged luxuriously; but they were no longer animated targets.
Through the intercession of a friend with Gen. Stewart L. Woodford, then in command in South Carolina, I gained permission to supply my brother with “plain clothing, books, papers, food, and small sums of money.” The latter went to him by the kind and safe hand of Richard Ryerson, a young Jerseyman, holding office in the Commissary Department at Hilton Head. My letters were forwarded under cover to the same generous intermediary.
Thus was another crooked way made straight.
The news of the evacuation; of my brother’s removal back to Fort Delaware, and a letter from my father, sent by private hand to Mr. Terhune, came simultaneously. My husband had had a verbal message through a trusty “refugee,” as long ago as January, to the effect that the fall of the city could not, in my father’s judgment, be long delayed. Since confiscation was sure to follow the collapse of the Confederacy, he instructed my husband to repair to Richmond, at the earliest possible moment after the way was cut open by the victorious army, and claim the family estate in the name of his wife, our loyalty being unquestionable.
In the light of what really happened when the city was occupied by the invaders, the precaution seems absurdly useless. Then, it was prudent in the estimation of those best acquainted with the current of public affairs. Every dollar belonging, in fact, or constructively, to Northern citizens, that the Confederate authorities could reach, had been confiscated early in the action. My husband was a non-combatant in the eye of the law, by reason of his profession. Yet the few thousands we had invested in various ways in Virginia had gone the way of all the rest. It was but fair to suppose that the rebels would be stripped of houses, lands, and money.
On New-Year’s day, we had a call from Dr. J. J. Craven, Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, a warm personal friend of Mr. Terhune. He was stationed at Fort Monroe, the key to the James River. Him, my husband took into confidence, and it was arranged between them that the latter was to be notified of the practicability of entering the city in the track of the troops, when the inevitable hour should arrive.
On one and the same day in April, Mr. Terhune had a telegram from Fort Monroe, containing three words: “Come at once,” and I a letter from my faithful ally, Ossian Ashley, enclosing an introductory note from General Butterfield to the Commandant at Fort Delaware, requesting him to permit me to see my brother.
Mr. Farmer, my husband’s companion in many expeditions and journeyings, consented gladly to go with him now. We three left next morning for Philadelphia, and the two gentlemen accompanied me in the afternoon to Fort Delaware.
We were courteously received by the officials, the Commandant voluntarily relaxing the rules at our parting, to let my brother walk across the drawbridge and down to the wharf with me. High good-humor reigned in all branches of the service. The war was virtually over. As we sailed out into the bay, and I threw a last salute to the soldierly figure standing on the pier, it was with a bound of hope at my heart to which it had been long a stranger. “My boy” would join us in our home before many days. He had never been a rebel, indeed; he had gone reluctantly into the service, as had thousands of others. The chance to take the oath of allegiance to the Federal government would be readily embraced by him and his comrades. And my husband had engaged to see to it that the opportunity should not be long delayed. We parted in Philadelphia, I passing the night with friends there, the two men going on to Fort Monroe. By Doctor Craven’s kindly management, they found a transport awaiting their arrival. They were, thus, the first civilians to enter Richmond after the military took possession.
A hasty note from Fort Monroe apprised me of the success of the expedition, up to that point. Beyond that place there were no postal or telegraphic facilities. I must wait patiently until they touched Old Point on the return journey.
With a thankful spirit and busy hands, I fell to work, making ready for the home-coming of husband and brother. It was as if the world and the house were swept and garnished together.
In the early dawn of April 15th, too happily excited to sleep, I arose and looked from my dressing-room window over intervening buildings and streets, to the spire of Old Trinity Church.
Church’s picture, Our Banner in the Sky, was painted during the Rebellion, and every print-shop window displayed a copy of it. Some of my older readers may recollect it. A tall, and at the summit, leafless, pine stood up, stark and gaunt, against a sky barred with crimson-and-white. Above, a cluster of stars glimmered faintly in the dusky blue. It was a weird “impressionist” picture, that fired the imagination and thrilled the heart of the lover of our glorious Union.
From my window, I saw it now in fulness of detail. I had heard the story of “Old Glory,” a little while before. The words leaped from my lips at the sight of the splendid flag on the staff towering from the church-spire. Straight and strong, it streamed over the sleeping city in the fresh breeze from the sea, emblem of the triumphant right—of a saved nation!
“Old Glory!” I cried aloud, and fell upon my knees to thank God for what it meant.
Had another woman in the land—now, more than ever and forever, “God’s Country”—such cause as I to return thanks for what had been in the last month?
The glow of exultation still warmed my inmost being, when I halted on the upper stair on my way down to breakfast. Hearing a ring at the door-bell, with the thought of a telegram, as probable explanation of the untimely call, I leaned breathlessly over the balustrade as the maid opened the door.
It was a parishioner, and a neighbor. He spoke hurriedly:
“Will you say to Mrs. Terhune that the President was assassinated in Ford’s Theatre in Washington last night?”
When, hours and hours afterward, I looked, with eyes dimmed by weeping, upon “Old Glory,” it hung limp at half-mast, and the background was dull with rain-clouds.
I had many visitors that day. My nearest neighbor, and, to this hour, one of my closest friends, ran in to “see how I was bearing it. I must not get overexcited!” Then she broke down, and wept stormily, as for a murdered father.
“We never knew how we loved him until now!” she sobbed.
That was the cry of every torn heart. At last, we knew the patient, tender-hearted, magnificent patriot-hero for what he was—the second Father of his Country. At least a dozen men dropped in to “talk over” the bereavement. One, as rugged of feature and as soft of heart as our martyred head, said, huskily, holding my hand in our “good-bye”:
“Somehow, it does me good to hear you talk, in your Southern accent, of our common grief. I can’t exactly express what it means to me. Words come hard to-day. But it may be a sign that this awful sorrow may, in God’s hands, be the means of bringing us brothers together again. He always felt kindly toward them. Some day, they may be brought to see that they have lost their best friend. God knows!”
I thank Him that, in the fulness of time, the old man’s hope has been fulfilled.
My husband brought home with him my youngest sister, Myrtle.
One of the incongruities that strike oddly across our moments of intensest emotion was, that, in the excitement of welcome and surprise (for I had had no intimation of her coming), I bethought myself that I had never known, until I heard her call my name, that girls’ voices change as boys’ do, in passing from childhood into youth. I left her a little girl in short dresses. In four years she had passed the delta
“Where the brook and river meet.”
Girls and boys matured fast under the influences that had ripened her character.
It was a rare and lovely product which linked itself into the chain of my life, for the score of years beyond our reunion. To say that her companionship was a comfort and joy unspeakable, that summer, would be to describe feebly what her coming brought into my existence. The burden of solicitudes and suspense, of actual bereavement and dreads of the morrow’s happenings, slid from my shoulders, as Christian’s pack from him at the Cross. I grew young again.
My third baby-girl, Virginia Belle, was ten days old when my liberated brother was added, like a beautiful clasp, to the golden circle of our reunited family. He came directly to us, and lingered longer than I had dared expect, for recuperation, and for enjoyment of the society from which he had been so long exiled.
A pretty love-story, the initial chapters of which had been rudely broken into by the war, was resumed and continued at this visit. That the girl-friend who had grown into a sister’s place in our home and affections, should marry my dearest brother, was a dream too fair of complexion and too symmetrical in proportions, to be indulged under conditions that had prevailed since his visit to Newark, almost five years ago. Yet this was the vision that began to define itself into a blessed reality, by the time the soldier-returned-from-the-war packed the outfit of civilized and civilian clothing—the getting-together of which had been one ostensible excuse for extending the visit—and took his way southward.
It was a divine breathing-spell for us and for the country—that summer of peace and plenty.
For three years past, we had spent each July and August in a roomy farm-house among the Jersey hills. For the first season, we were the only boarders. Then, perhaps because we boasted somewhat too freely of the healthfulness of the region, and the excellent country fare set before us by good Mrs. Blauvelt, the retreat from malaria and mosquitoes became too popular for our comfort. When there were three babies, a nurse, a visiting sister, our two selves, and a horse, to be accommodated, we found the once ample quarters too strait for us.
For baby Belle’s sake we migrated late in June of this year. We were discussing the seriousness of the problem consequent upon a growing family, as we drove up a long hill, one July day, Alice on a cricket between us in the foot of the buggy, when an exclamation from my husband stopped a sentence in the middle. He drew the horse to a sudden halt.
Woodmen were busy with destructive axes upon a body of native trees at the left of our road. They had opened to our sight a view heretofore hidden by the wood. A lake, blue and tranquil as the heavens it mirrored; green slopes, running down to the water; wooded heights, bordering the thither banks, and around, as far as the eye could reach, mountains, benignant in outline and verdant to their summits, billowing, range beyond range, against the horizon—why had we never seen this before? It was like a section of the Delectable Mountains, gently lowered from Bunyan’s Beulah Land, and set down within thirty miles of the biggest city in America.
The rapt silence was ended by one word from my companion:
“Alabama!”
He passed the reins into my hands, and leaped over the wheel. Making his way down the hill, he stopped to talk with the workmen for ten minutes. Then he came back, held up a hand to help me out of the carriage, and lifted “Brownie” in his arms. Next, he tied the horse to a tree, and, saying to me—“Come!” led the way to the lake.
We bought the tract, in imagination, and decided upon the site of our cottage, in the next half-hour. On the way home we called upon the owner of the tract, paid a hundred dollars down to bind the bargain, and left orders that not another tree was to be felled until further notice.
It would have been expecting too much of human nature had we been required to go back to the farm-house dinner, without driving again by “Our Land.” The happy silence of the second survey culminated in my declaration and the instant assent of my companion to the same:
“And we will name it ‘Sunnybank’!”