CONFEDERATE BIOGRAPHY: TWO DRAMATIC INCIDENTS

***********************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm

Submitted by Mary Love Berryman - marylove@tyler.net
28 March 2002 
*********************************************************** 
TEXANS WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson - Pages 309-310

TWO DRAMATIC INCIDENTS. 

As those who wore the gray, approach the end of life's weary march, 
their minds and memories reach back to the stirring scenes of that 
"bloodiest drama in the book of Time," known as the War between the 
States, just as the setting sun casts lengthening shadows along the 
paths we'eve trod.

So being in a reminiscent mood I thought I would relate two dramatic 
incidents of that war, incidents which have never before been 
embalmed in "cold type."

Just before the fatal day of Appomattox, Lee's match­less, but decimated 
legions, were staggering on, hungry, ragged and foot sore.  They had 
bivouacked for a brief rest. Grant's great army, the best equipped host 
ever marshaled for battle, was pressing Lee on every side.  Front, 
flank and rear, the Federal guns volleyed and thundered.  Sud­denly a 
Confederate cavalryman, begrimed with smoke and powder, his steed 
flaked with foam and covered with dust, dashed into the midst of the 
bivouacking veterans, and stopping, sat on his horse like a Cavalier 
Crusader, grim, silent and sad, a model fit for the chisel of a 
Praxitiles. The brave men, who had fought hundreds of battles and had 
never lost one, gathered about the lone cavalryman and eagerly asked 
"Wheie is the enemy?" With an expression of deep sad­ness on his tanned 
and hardened face, and with a voice choked with emotion, he pointed up 
and replied: "They are everywhere - except up younder," and putting 
spurs to his jaded horse, he disappeared as suddenly as he had come 
upon the scene.

This incident illustrates the profound devotion of the Confederate 
soldier to the cause for which he fought and the unspeakable grief which 
he felt when he realized that the cause was lost.

The next incident occurred a few day later.  Lee's im­mortal eight 
thousand had stacked their arms at Appomat­tox The Southern Conferacy 
had fallen, and the paroled soldiers of the army of Northern Virginia, 
with sorrowing hearts and saddened lives, had turned their faces to 
their far off homes.  About a dozen Alabama solliers -- all that was 
left of a once proud company of more than a hundred men, that four years 
ago had left Marion, Alabama, with high hopes and with banners flying, 
agreed that they would maintain their company organization and march 
all the way back to Alabama, and thus make their company an object 
lesson of the awful carnage of the tremendous conflicts through which 
they had passed. This handful of soldiers, a skeleton company, marched
southward for several days, till they knew that they must be approaching 
the North Carolina State line. At noon one day they stopped at a 
farmhouse, one of those fine old Virginia country homes, where knightly 
chivalry and generous hospitality forever dwell.

The good lady of the house gave them something to eat -- perhaps all she 
had left. After thanking her, they in­quired the distance to the North 
Carolina line. She pointed to a fence about two hundred yards off, and 
said that the fence was exactly on the State line. Saluting their kind 
hostess, this skeleton company marched down to the fence and formed a line 
of battle (?) across the road and exactly where the fence, if projected, 
would cross the highway. Thus standing directly on the line that marked 
the boundary between North Carolina and Virginia, with their faces South, 
the command was given "about face!" and with their faces towards the 
grand old Commonwealth, "the mother of statesrnen and the nurse of 
heroes," and the theatre of the mightiest military achievements of 
modern times, the com­mand was given, "Three cheers for Old Virginia," 
and the "rebel yell" was heard, perhaps, the last time on the winds of 
Old Virginia, not inspired, however, by the thrill of bat­tle, but as a 
tribute of affection for a grand State whose peo­ple, worn and wasted by 
four years of war, - never grew lukewarn and never once failed in 
hospitality and kindness to a Confederate soldier. Yes, "three cheers 
for Old Vir­ginia."	H. C. COOKE.