There must be soldiers, and soldiers must be taught.
But
not the less pitiful is it to see men of thirty undergoing the
goose-step, and tortured by orders as to the proper mode of handling
a long instrument which is half gun and half spear. In the days of
Hector and Ajax, the thing was done in a more picturesque manner;
and the songs of battle should, I think, be confined to those ages.
The ground occupied by the divisions on the farther or southwestern
side of the Potomac was, as I have said, about twenty miles in
length and perhaps seven in breadth. Through the whole of this
district the soldiers were everywhere. The tents of the various
brigades were clustered together in streets, the regiments being
divided; and the divisions combining the brigades lay apart at some
distance from each other. But everywhere, at all points, there were
some signs of military life. The roads were continually thronged
with wagons, and tracks were opened for horses wherever a shorter
way might thus be made available. On every side the trees were
falling or had fallen. In some places whole woods had been felled
with the express purpose of rendering the ground impracticable for
troops; and firs and pines lay one over the other, still covered
with their dark, rough foliage, as though a mighty forest had grown
there along the ground, without any power to raise itself toward the
heavens. In other places the trees had been chopped off from their
trunks about a yard from the ground, so that the soldier who cut it
should have no trouble in stooping, and the tops had been dragged
away for firewood or for the erection of screens against the wind.
Here and there, in solitary places, there were outlying tents,
looking as though each belonged to some military recluse; and in the
neighborhood of every division was to be found a photographing
establishment upon wheels, in order that the men might send home to
their sweethearts pictures of themselves in their martial costumes.
I wandered about through these camps both on foot and on horseback
day after day; and every now and then I would come upon a farm-house
that was still occupied by its old inhabitants. Many of such houses
had been deserted, and were now held by the senior officers of the
army; but some of the old families remained, living in the midst of
this scene of war in a condition most forlorn. As for any tillage
of their land, that, under such circumstances, might be pronounced
as hopeless. Nor could there exist encouragement for farm-work of
any kind. Fences had been taken down and burned; the ground had
been overrun in every direction. The stock had of course
disappeared; it had not been stolen, but had been sold in a hurry
for what under such circumstances it might fetch. What farmer could
work or have any hope for his land in the middle of such a crowd of
soldiers? But yet there were the families. The women were in their
houses, and the children playing at their doors; and the men, with
whom I sometimes spoke, would stand around with their hands in their
pockets. They knew that they were ruined; they expected no redress.
In nine cases out of ten they were inimical in spirit to the
soldiers around them. And yet it seemed that their equanimity was
never disturbed. In a former chapter I have spoken of a certain
general - not a fighting general of the army, but a local farming
general - who spoke loudly, and with many curses, of the injury
inflicted on him by the secessionists. With that exception I heard
no loud complaint of personal suffering. These Virginian farmers
must have been deprived of everything - of the very means of earning
bread. They still hold by their houses, though they were in the
very thick of the war, because there they had shelter for their
families, and elsewhere they might seek it in vain. A man cannot
move his wife and children if he have no place to which to move
them, even though his house be in the midst of disease, of
pestilence, or of battle. So it was with them then, but it seemed
as though they were already used to it.
But there was a class of inhabitants in that same country to whom
fate had been even more unkind than to those whom I saw. The lines
of the Northern army extended perhaps seven or eight miles from the
Potomac; and the lines of the Confederate army were distant some
four miles from those of their enemies. There was, therefore, an
intervening space or strip of ground, about four miles broad, which
might be said to be no man's land. It was no man's land as to
military possession, but it was still occupied by many of its old
inhabitants. These people were not allowed to pass the lines either
of one army or of the other; or if they did so pass, they were not
allowed to return to their homes. To these homes they were forced
to cling, and there they remained. They had no market; no shops at
which to make purchases, even if they had money to buy; no customers
with whom to deal, even if they had produce to sell. They had their
cows, if they could keep them from the Confederate soldiers, their
pigs and their poultry; and on them they were living - a most forlorn
life. Any advance made by either party must be over their
homesteads. In the event of battle, they would be in the midst of
it; and in the mean time they could see no one, hear of nothing, go
nowhither beyond the limits of that miserable strip of ground!
The earth was hard with frost when I paid my visit to the camp, and
the general appearance of things around my friend's quarters was on
that account cheerful enough.
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