American Adventures Part 24

Though I had often heard, before going into the South, of the devotion of that section to the memory of General Robert E. Lee, I never fully realized the extent of that devotion until I began to become a little bit acquainted with Virginia. I remember being struck, while in Norfolk, with the fact that portraits of General Lee were to be seen in many offices and homes, much as one might expect, at the present time, to find portraits of Joffre and Nivelle in the homes of France, or of Haig in the homes of Britain. It is not enough to say that the memory of Lee is to the South like that of Napoleon I to France, for it is more. The feeling of France for Napoleon is one of admiration, of delight in a national military genius, of hero-wors.h.i.+p, but there is not intermingled with it the quality of pure affection which fully justifies the use of the word _love_, in characterizing the feeling of the South for its great military leader--the man of whom Lord Wolseley said: "He was a being apart and superior to all others in every way; a man with whom none I ever knew, and very few of whom I ever read are worthy to be compared; a man who was cast in a grander mould and made of finer metal than all other men."

Nor is this love surprising, for whereas Napoleon was a self-seeking man, and one whose personal character was not altogether admirable in other respects, and whereas he could hardly be said to typify France's ideal of everything a gentleman should be, Lee sought nothing for himself, was a man of great n.o.bility of character, and was in perfection a Virginia gentleman. At the end, moreover, where Napoleon's defeat was that of an aspirant to conquest, glory and empire, Lee's defeat was that of a cause, and the cause was regarded in the entire South as almost holy, so that, in defeat, the South felt itself martyred, and came to look upon its great general with a love and veneration unequaled in history, and much more resembling the feeling of France for the canonized Joan of Arc, than for the ambitious Corsican.

When, therefore, my companion and I heard, while in Norfolk, that Colonel Walter H. Taylor, president of the Marine Bank of that city, had served through the Civil War on General Lee's staff, we naturally became very anxious to meet him; and I am glad to say that Colonel Taylor, though at the time indisposed and confined to his home, was so kind as to receive us.

He was seated in a large chair in his library, on the second floor of his residence, a pleasant old-fas.h.i.+oned brick house at the corner of York and Yarmouth Streets--a slender man, not very tall, I judged (though I did not see him standing), not very strong at the moment, but with nothing of the decrepitude of old age about him, for all his seventy-seven years. Upon the contrary he was, in appearance and manner, delightfully alert, with the sort of alertness which lends to some men and women, regardless of their years, a suggestion of perpetual youthfulness. Such alertness, in those who have lived a long time, is most often the result of persistent intellectual activity, and the sign of it is usually to be read in the eyes. Colonel Taylor's keen, dark, observant, yet kindly eyes, were perhaps his finest feature, though, indeed, all his features were fine, and his head, with its well-trimmed white hair and mustache, was one of great distinction.

Mrs. Taylor (of whom we had previously been warned to beware, because she had not yet forgiven the "Yankees" for their sins) was also present: a beautiful old lady of unquenchable spirit, in whose manner, though she received us with politeness, we detected lurking danger.

And why not? Do not women remember some things longer than men remember them? Do not the sweethearts who stayed at home remember the continual dull dread they suffered while the men they loved faced danger, whereas the absent lovers were at least in part compensated for the risks they ran, by the continual sense of high adventure and achievement?

Mrs. Taylor was Miss Elizabeth Selden Saunders, daughter of Captain John L. Saunders of Virginia, who died in 1860, in the service of his country, a commander in the United States Navy. When the war broke out Miss Saunders, wis.h.i.+ng to serve the Confederate Government, became a clerk in the Surgeon General's office, at Richmond, and there she remained while Colonel Taylor, whose training at the Virginia Military Inst.i.tute, coupled with his native ability, made him valuable as an officer, followed the fortunes of General Lee, part of the time as the general's aide-de-camp, and the rest of the time as adjutant-general and chief of staff of the Army of Northern Virginia, in which capacities he was present at all general engagements of the army, under Lee.

On April 2, 1865, when Lee's gallant but fast dwindling army, short of supplies, and so reduced in numbers as to be no longer able to stand against the powerful forces of Grant, was evacuating its lines at Petersburg, when it was evident that the capital of the Confederacy was about to fall, and the orders for retreat had been despatched by Colonel Taylor, in his capacity as adjutant--then the colonel went to his commander and asked for leave of absence over night, for the purpose of going to Richmond and being married. He tells the story in his exceedingly interesting and valuable book, "General Lee--His Campaigns in Virginia":

At the close of the day's work, when all was in readiness for the evacuation of our lines under cover of the darkness of night, I asked permission of General Lee to ride over to Richmond and to rejoin him early the next morning, telling him that my mother and sisters were in Richmond and that I would like to say good-by to them, and that my sweetheart was there, and we had arranged, if practicable, to be married that night. He expressed some surprise at my entertaining such a purpose at that time, but when I explained to him that the home of my bride-elect was in the enemy's lines, that she was alone in Richmond and employed in one of the departments of the government, and wished to follow the fortunes of the Confederacy should our lines be reestablished farther South, he promptly gave his a.s.sent to my plans. I galloped to the railroad station, then at Dunlops, on the north side of the river, where I found a locomotive and several cars, const.i.tuting the "ambulance train," designed to carry to Richmond the last of the wounded of our army requiring hospital treatment. I asked the agent if he had another engine, when, pointing to one rapidly receding in the direction of Richmond, he replied, "Yonder goes the only locomotive we have besides the one attached to this train." Turning my horse over to the courier who accompanied me, with directions to join me in Richmond as soon as he could, I mounted the locomotive in waiting, directed the engineer to detach it from the cars and to proceed to overtake the engine ahead of us. It was what the sailors call a stern chase and a long one. We did not overtake the other locomotive until it had reached Falling Creek, about three-fourths of the distance, when I transferred to it and sent the other back to Petersburg. I reached Richmond without further incident, and soon after midnight I was married to Elizabeth Selden Saunders....

As will be readily understood, the occasion was not one of great hilarity, though I was very happy; my eyes were the only dry ones in the company....

The people of Richmond were greatly excited and in despair in the contemplation of the abandonment of their beautiful city by our troops. General Lee had for so long a time thwarted the designs of his powerful adversaries for the capture of the city, and seemed so unfailing and resourceful in his efforts to hold them at bay, that the good people found it difficult to realize that he was compelled at last to give way. There was universal gloom and despair at the thought that at the next rising of the sun the detested Federal soldiers would take possession of the city and occupy its streets.

The transportation companies were busily engaged in arranging for the removal of the public stores and of the archives of the government. A fire in the lower part of the city was fiercely raging, and added greatly to the excitement.

Somewhere near four o'clock on the morning of the 3d of April I bade farewell to all my dear ones, and in company with my brother-in-law, Colonel John S. Saunders, proceeded toward Mayo's Bridge, which we crossed to the south side of the James, in the lurid glare of the fire, and within the sound of several heavy explosions that we took to be the final scene in the career of the Confederate navy, then disappearing in smoke on the James River, near Rockets.

Before we departed from the colonel's library, which we felt obliged to do much sooner than we wished to, owing to the condition of his health, he called our attention to an oil portrait of his old commander, which occupied the place of honor above the mantelpiece, and asked his daughters to let us see his sc.r.a.p-book, containing personal letters from General Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other distinguished men, as well as various war doc.u.ments of unusual interest.

We felt it a great privilege to handle these old letters and to read them, and the charm of them was the greater for the affection in which the general held Colonel Taylor, as evidenced by the tone in which he wrote. To us it was a wonderful evening.... And it still seems to me wonderful to think that I have met and talked with a man who issued Lee's orders, who rode forth with Lee when he went to meet Grant in conference at Appomattox, just before the surrender, who once slept under the same blanket with Lee, who knew Lee as well perhaps as one man can know another, and under conditions calculated to try men to the utmost.

As adjutant, Colonel Taylor took an active part in arranging details of surrender and parole. He says:

Each officer and soldier was furnished for his protection from arrest or annoyance with a slip of paper containing his parole, signed by his commander and countersigned by an officer of the Federal army.

I signed these paroles for all members of the staff, and when my own case was reached I requested General Lee to sign mine, which I have retained to the present time.

This doc.u.ment, with Colonel Taylor's name and t.i.tle in his own handwriting, and the signature of General Lee, I am able to reproduce here through the courtesy of the colonel's daughters, Mrs. William B.

Baldwin and Miss Taylor, of Norfolk. It is the only parole which was signed personally by General Lee.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

On the back of the little slip, which is of about the size of a bank check, is the countersignature of George H. Sharpe, a.s.sistant Provost Marshal general:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Following his parole Colonel Taylor rode with General Lee to Richmond.

The general seemed to be in a philosophical frame of mind, but thought much of the future. The subject of the surrender and its consequences was about exhausted. The Colonel tells of one incident:

On the route General Lee stopped for the night near the residence of his brother, Mr. Carter Lee, in Powhatan County; and although importuned by his brother to pa.s.s the night under his roof, the general persisted in pitching his tent by the side of the road and going into camp as usual. This continued self-denial can only be explained upon the hypothesis that he desired to have his men know that he shared their privations to the very last.

This was perfectly in character with Lee. Throughout the War, we learn from Colonel Taylor's book, the general used the army ration, and lived the army life. He would not take up his quarters in a house, because he wished to share the lot of his men, and also because he feared that, in the event of the house falling into the hands of the enemy, the very fact of its having been occupied by him might possibly cause its destruction. It was only during the last year of the War, when his health was somewhat impaired, that he consented sometimes to vary this rule.

Lee's chivalrous nature is well shown forth in his famous General Orders, No. 73, issued at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a few days before Gettysburg.

After congratulating the troops on their good conduct the general continued as follows:

There have, however, been instances of forgetfulness on the part of some that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own.

The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and defenseless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country.

Such proceedings not only degrade the perpetrators and all connected with them, but are subversive to the discipline and efficiency of the army, and destructive of the ends of our present movement. It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain. The commanding general, therefore, earnestly exhorts the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against the orders on this subject.

R.E. Lee, General.

Truly, a doc.u.ment to serve as a model for warriors of all future generations, albeit one showing an utter lack of "Kultur"!

Said Charles Francis Adams, of Ma.s.sachusetts: "I doubt if a hostile force ever advanced into an enemy's country, or fell back from it in retreat, leaving behind it less cause of hate and bitterness than did the Army of Northern Virginia in that memorable campaign."

After the war, Colonel Taylor and his wife settled in Norfolk, where, within a very short time, a United States grand jury indicted Jefferson Davis and General Lee for treason--this, in the case of Lee, being in direct violation of the terms of surrender. When Grant learned of the shameful action of the grand jury he complained to Was.h.i.+ngton and caused the proceedings against Lee to be dropped.

In Colonel Taylor's sc.r.a.p-book I found a letter written by Lee before the indictment had been quashed, referring to the subject:

Richmond, Va.

June 17, 1865.

My dear Colonel:

I am very much obliged to you for your letter of the 13th. I had heard of the indictment by the grand jury at Norfolk, and made up my mind to let the authorities take their course. I have no wish to avoid any trial the government may order, and cannot flee. I hope others may be unmolested, and that you at least may be undisturbed.

I am sorry to hear that our returned soldiers cannot obtain employment. Tell them they must all set to work, and if they cannot do what they prefer, do what they can. Virginia wants all their aid, all their support, and the presence of all her sons to sustain and recuperate her. They must therefore put themselves in a position to take part in her government, and not be deterred by obstacles in their way. There is much to be done which they only can do.

Very truly yours, R.E. Lee.

As time went on, and the more gaping wounds began to heal, Colonel Taylor's letters from the general took in many cases a lighter and happier tone. After some years, when four daughters had been born to Colonel and Mrs. Taylor, while yet they had no son, the general chaffed them gently on the subject: "Give my congratulations to Mrs. Taylor," he wrote. "Tell her I hope that when her fancy for girls is satisfied (mine is exorbitant) she will begin upon the boys. We must have somebody to work for them."

One of the colonel's sons was present when I came upon this letter.

"And you see," he smiled, "my father obeyed his old commander to the last, for the next baby was a boy, and the next, and the next, and the next, until there were as many boys as girls in our family."

Colonel Taylor died at his home in Norfolk, March 1, 1916, and on the subsequent June 15, was followed by his wife.

His death leaves but three members of Lee's staff surviving, namely, Rev. Giles B. Cooke, of Portsmouth, Virginia, Inspector General; Major Henry E. Young, of Charleston, South Carolina, Judge Advocate General; and Colonel T.M.R. Talcott, of Richmond, Virginia, Aide-de-Camp. Of these officers only the first two surrendered with General Lee, Colonel Talcott having left the staff by promotion in 1863.

Yes, two of them surrendered, but if we are to believe Charles Francis Adams we cannot say that Lee and his forces were actually vanquished, for as the Ma.s.sachusetts soldier-author put it:

"Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally succ.u.mbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in fight."