June 12, 1863, The New York Herald
Sights and Scenes Along the Route – Inside View of the South, &c.
MR. W. YOUNG’S LETTER.
ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, June 9, 1863.
SCENES IN AND ABOUT URBANNA.
In Urbanna, on the south side of the Rappahannock, where Kilpatrick’s cavalry took steam transports for the opposite shore of the river, there were scenes to sadden the heart and cause deeper regrets that was carrying sorrow into every household. One citizen, Mr. Street, had twenty or thirty house and field servants to whom freedom may prove a doubtful blessing. He had thrown wide open his doors to our cavalry officers, and had extended his hospitalities to them with no limit but his means and resources. He had a granddaughter, an estimable young lady, with an infant in her arms. Her husband, a rebel soldier at home on furlough, was secreted in the forest, and she was trembling lest he should be captured. She was kind and courteous to the guests who assembled at the breakfast table.
AUNT MARY HAS GONE, TOO !
It became a military necessity to announce to the slaves that their destiny was in their own hands – to go as free people or remain as property. Most of them chose the former lot, and there was a sundering of the ties of affection which had bound servants to the household in which they had been lifetime members. Tears expressed the grief of both mistress and maid; and when an old colored woman, eighty years advanced in her pilgrimage, resolved to enter upon a new life of experimental freedom, leaving the home where she received kind treatment and tender care, perhaps to be neglected and to suffer the ills of poverty and want, in the agony of her grief the rebel soldier’s youthful wife exclaimed, “Aunt Mary has gone, too!”
A MIRTHFUL PICTURE.
A merry laugh and the cheerful face of another wife, whose husband not yet seventeen was out of the rebel army, attracted the attention of your correspondent, then riding by. She was amused at the sport the cavalry boys were enjoying while in the pursuit of poultry in a hot sun and under difficulties and wooden buildings. They proved to be her own hens and chickens, and she philosophically exclaimed that she might as well laugh as cry about it, and so long as Henry was not in the army and in danger she had a right to be happy.
THE POST OFFICE AND CUSTOM HOUSE.
The Post Office and Custom House in Urbanna were not in the full tide of successful operation, and the principal interest therein centred in the documents of a long time ago. The late Custom House officer, Mr. Palmer, presented to the HERALD correspondent manifests of the cargoes of the schooner Esther, bound from the port of Plymouth for Tappahannock, dated January 5, 1806; the schooner Delight, from Antigua for Fredericksburg, with forty-eight puncheons of rum, &c., dated August 14, 1809, and of the ship Commerce (built at Bath, Massachusetts), from Liverpool for Tappahannock, dated October 28, 1809.
RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.
The neat little brick church for Episcopal worship at Urbanna attests that the religious condition of the people in that vicinity ought to be good. The edifice was not, of course, desecrated by our chivalric soldiery.
TRADE AND COMMERCE.
There had been three stores in Urbanna; but there are no goods in them now, and it is presumed that they have nothing to sell, as all the ladies united in the declaration that they had ‘nothing to wear” but dresses two summers old.
THE TOWN ANCIENT AND SMALL.
The town of Urbanna is ancient and small, dotted with some thirty or forty houses, which present an air of comfort, if not elegance.
NO ARMS-BEARING CITIZENS.
There were no men in Urbanna capable of bearing arms, if a half dozen are excepted, who appeared as though they might make very indifferent soldiers, hardly worth conscripting.
SALUDA IN THE DISTANCE.
The court house of Middlesex county is at Saluda, three miles distant from Urbanna, the road to which leads through a productive, pleasant and hospitable region.
FLOCKS AND HERDS – WHEAT AND CORN.
The reported destitution of the South was not strikingly apparent at or between these points, and flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, fields of wheat and corn, and numerous vegetable gardens and fruitful orchards were seen here and there and everywhere.
LABOR BECOMING SCARCE.
As raid after raid is made through the South by our cavalry, and field hands leave for cooler skies, it will follow that labor must become scarce, and the time may come when the rebel soldier must convert the sword into the ploughshare or learn that his wife and children clamor for bread. Inhumanity to the negroes in transferring them from Southern homes to contraband camps may prove humanity to the men in arms against the authority of the Union, by compelling them to abandon the cruel arts of war and pursue the occupation of peaceful husbandry.
THE UNION AS IT WAS NOT DESPISED.
The most decided advocate of Southern rights, among the ladies and the old men, who alone occupy that part of Virginia which this correspondence sketches, and those who are most hopeful of success, do not despise or repudiate the Union as it was, but admit that it was the best government the world ever knew. This admission is one step in the path of its restoration.
ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, June 10, 1863.
SOLDIERS APPRECIATE ANCIENT DOCUMENTS.
At Middlesex Court House the cavalry boys obtained some ancient documents – one dated October 17, 1761, in the first year of the reign of George the Third, under the huge seal of the colony, in which “George the Third, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith,” constituted Edmund Berkeley and others justices of the peace in the county of Middlesex, as witnessed by Francis Fauquier, Lieutenant Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the colony and dominion of Virginia; another dated October 23, 1674, being a bond to pay four hundred pounds of food, sound, merchantable tobacco, signed by John Fitz Randolph.
AN AGED LADY’S GREAT GRIEF.
An aged woman in tears at all times makes one sad, and when a venerable lady, who had lost the horse which had carried her husband to the grave, weepingly besought Colonel Kilpatrick to make an effort to procure its return to her, a cloud of sadness passes over his face. It was not the value of the horse, but the associations with the memory of her husband, that impelled her to make this request. When among the multitude of animals it became evident that her horse could not be found, a sister, with more firmness and less excitement, almost sternly reproached her for asking favors of an enemy.
A DAUGHTER’S LAMENTATION.
While riding along through Westmoreland county a female was heard crying bitterly, as though her lamentations were caused by deepest grief. Approaching, we met a little girl some twelve years old, and […..] agony she cried” because the soldiers had taken their only horse. The mother was expressing both sorrow and indignation and giving utterance to the sentiment that she did not believe a government which permitted these things could prosper. Every officer who witnessed the grief of the daughter was moved to pity, and all regretted the military necessity which rendered it imperative to impress that particular horse into the Union service. Poor little girl. Even your sorrow would be heightened were your only brother to fall on the battle field before […..] cruel war is over.”
IN TRYING RECOVER HIS “BOY” HE LOST A HORSE.
A citizen of Lancaster or Westmoreland drove up in an open buggy, with his large umbrella sheltering him from the sun, to recover his only negro boy, who had avowed his determination to become a Yankee, and had gone into the train which was […..] bound.” The citizen was interrogated by the question, “Were you ever in the rebel army?” He answered that he had been. “Why, then are you not in it now?” “Because I procured a substitute.” It followed that the citizen lost not only his ‘boy,” but his horse, which was unharnessed from the buggy by the cavalrymen, and he was left to walk home or get there in any manner than he could.
THE HORSE IMPRESSMENT.
Instances might be enumerated to an almost endless extent of serious inconveniences resulting from the horse impressment. One young widow lady, who had an old horse unfit for army service, rode eight miles to recover the animal. By perseverance and the assurance that she had no relatives in the rebel army she accomplished her purpose. Another lady, the wife of a commissary in the rebel army, was not successful. Another and an old lady, who had one son in the Northern army and another in the rebel service, went home without her horse.
If the horse impressment by Kilpatrick’s raiders has been inconvenient and unpleasant to the citizens of that part of the confederacy through which he passed, they can derive some consolation from looking upon this picture, as illustrated in the Petersburg Express, showing how difficult it is to keep horses out of the hands of rebel authorities: –
The stable – that haven of rest for the horse after the toils of the day – wherein he was always accustomed to eat his daily means and lie upon his bed of straw, was entirely too uncertain and insecure on the day of impressment. No stable escaped espionage, and consequently no horse found therein was allowed to remain by the insatiable officers. Therefore, we understand, favorite animals were introduced into the cellars and dining rooms of private residences, and into kitchens. Even the church, we hear, opened its doors to receive a religious horse, while those more rurally inclined concealed themselves in the budding woods around the city. Nor was the tobacco factory forgotten. But in many instances the retreats were discovered, and all was over with owner and animal. We venture to say that on this occasion a new intelligence dawned on these horses. For the first time they gained some view of the manner of man’s living and of the construction of his house, and many other matters which they took due notice of. Who shall reveal their impressions?
A FAITHFUL NEGRO SERVANT.
Horses were taken from the stable, from the field, from the plough and from the carriage. A Union man had been forced to seek refuge at the North to escape conscription, leaving family, his horse and a negro man who had faithfully promised to cultivate the soil and serve the interests of his master during his absence. The horse was led from the furrow and put into the advancing train, and the negro was told to go along also. He rode a short distance, then, bowing, addressed the officer in command, stating his pledge of fidelity to both master and mistress, and expressing a desire to return. He was sent back and will doubtless be faithful to his young mistress.
RUNNING THE BLOCKADE.
There is frequent communication across the Rappahannock from Warsaw and other points. Two citizens of foreign birth, with passports from the Prussian Consul at Richmond, came over, bound to Baltimore, bringing with them some $7,000 in Southern bank notes “to pay their travelling expenses.” An examination of their papers did not result in their detention. They had left Richmond that morning, pursuing one of the routes to the North mentioned by a Richmond paper recently as [….] only to the initiated.”
THE EIGHTH ILLINOIS CAVALRY.
The reputation of the Eighth Illinois cavalry, which had made a raid through the Northern Neck but a short time previous, is not enviable among the inhabitants there, by whom they are accused of outrages which it seems impossible for an American soldier to perpetrate. A batch of letters was captured by Kilpatrick’s command, addressed by wives, mothers, and daughters to their husbands, sons and brothers in the rebel army, detailing these alleged outrages and expressing a determination to suffer and be strong while there was a ray of hope for an independent government and a separation from the hated Yankees. Doubtless their fears have magnified the offences and improprieties of individual privates in the Eighth Illinois, whose officers cannot forget or neglect their own duties.