448

RICHMOND SCENES IN ’62.

bridge to go into action, went on. The President twisted in his saddle, quitetaken aback at such a greeting—the general regarding him now with glancesof growing severity. After a painful pause the President said, deprecatingly:

“ It is not my army, General.” “ It certainly is not my army, Mr. President,”was the prompt reply, “ and this is no place for it ”—in an accent of com-mand. Such a rebuff was a stunner to Mr. Davis, who, however, soonregained his serenity and answered:

“Well, General, if I withdraw, perhaps they will follow,” and, raising hishat in another cold salute, he turned his horse’s head to ride slowly towardthe bridge—seeing, as he turned, a man killed immediately before him by ashot from a gun which at that moment got the range of the road. The Presi-dent’s own staff-officers followed him, as did various others; but he presentlydrew rein in a stream, where the high bank and the bushes concealed himfrom General Lee ’s repelling observation, and there remained while the battleraged. The Secretary of War had also made a show of withdrawing, butimproved the opportunity afforded by rather a deep ditch 011 the roadside toattempt to conceal himself and his horse there for a time from General Lee ,who at that moment was more to be dreaded than the enemy’s guns.

When on the 27 th of June the Seven Days’ strife began, there was none ofthe excitement that had attended the battle of Seven Pines. People hadshaken themselves down, as it were, to the grim reality of a fight that mustbe fought. “ Let the war bleed, and let the mighty fall,” was the spirit oftheir cry.

It is not my purpose to deal with the history of those awful Seven Days. Mineonly to speak of the other side of that canvas in which heroes of two armieswere passing and repassing, as on some huge Homeric frieze, in the manoeuvresof a strife that hung our land in mourning. The scars of war are healed whenthis is written, and the vast “pity of it” fills the heart that wakes the retrospect.

What I have said of Richmond before these battles will suffice for a pictureof the summer’s experience. When the tide of battle receded, whatwrecked hopes it left to tell the tale of the Battle Summer! Victory was ours,but in how many homes was heard the voice of lamentation to drown theshouts of triumph! Many families, rich and poor alike, were bereaved oftheir dearest; and for many of the dead there was mourning by all the town.No incident of the war, for instance, made a deeper impression than the fallin battle of Colonel Munford’s beautiful and brave young son, Ellis, whosebody, laid across his own caisson, was carried that summer to his father’shouse at nightfall, where the family, unconscious of their loss, were sittingin cheerful talk around the portal. Another son of Richmond, whose deathwas keenly felt by everybody, received his mortal wound at the front of thefirst charge to break the enemy’s line at Gaines’s Mill. This was Lieutenant-Colonel Bradfute Warwick, a young hero who had won his spurs in servicewith Garibaldi. Losses like these are irreparable in .any community; and so,with lamentations in nearly every household, while the spirit along the linescontinued unabated, it was a chastened “ Thank God ” that went up amongus when we knew the siege of Richmond was over.