A Year in the South (8 page)

If the Yankees came again and Early's little remnant of an army failed to stop them, Rockbridge would be at their mercy. A local-defense force was now being organized in the county, but it was symbolic more than anything else: no one really believed it could stand up to a Union force of any size. There were hardly any able-bodied white men of military age left in the county now, at least any who would willingly report for local-defense duty. The ever-tightening Confederate conscription laws had laid claim to almost every man between seventeen and fifty who could walk and hold a musket. The local-defense unit consisted for the most part of a scattering of men already in the army who had been detailed for duty in Rockbridge for one reason or another: quartermaster, commissary, and Nitre and Mining Bureau employees, and conscription officers and guards.
39

Actually, there were a number of able-bodied, military-age men in the county who were not in uniform, besides the handful exempted from the draft because they did critical war-related work. The authorities did not know exactly how many or exactly where they were, for the men were deserters or draft evaders who were hiding in the remote parts of the county. Some were being shielded and provisioned by family and friends; others, as the editor of Lexington's newspaper put it, were “prowling about … and living by robbing loyal citizens.” In early January the 5th Virginia Cavalry Regiment rode into Rockbridge with orders to scour the county, round up these skulkers, and put them back in the ranks. But this task proved to be pretty much impossible: the men were simply too elusive. Nor did Confederate president Jefferson Davis's offer of a pardon to deserters who returned to their units by March 1 succeed in luring many from their hiding places.
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The problem was not unique to Rockbridge. By early 1865, what was left of the Confederacy's armed forces was melting away from desertion. Spurred by the pleas of their suffering loved ones at home or by their own sense that the cause was now hopeless, rebel soldiers in growing numbers were abandoning their comrades and heading back to their families. Civilian morale was evaporating, too, in Virginia and elsewhere in the Confederacy, as the Confederate states' plight grew more and more desperate.
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This crisis of spirit became especially acute in the last four months of 1864, as a succession of disasters shook the Confederacy. First, Atlanta fell to the Union army, then Early's troops were routed in the lower valley, Abraham Lincoln won reelection as U.S. president with a pledge to continue the war until the Southern “rebellion” was stamped out, General William T. Sherman's Union army marched unimpeded through Georgia, and the main Confederate army west of the Appalachians was destroyed in battle.
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Defeatism spread with news of these calamities. Added to the rising chorus of hopelessness that could now be heard across the land were the angry voices of those who had decided that, even if the war could still be won, the Confederacy was not worth fighting for. This sentiment was especially common among poor and yeoman families, on whom the burdens of war fell most heavily. When conscription took away many of their men, they struggled to keep their small farms and artisan shops going and they grew resentful of those who had slaves to work for them. They especially resented the big planters who were exempted from the draft in order to supervise their slaves, and others of the elite who managed to secure desk jobs far from the battlefront. Many began to wonder out loud if the Confederacy was governed in their interests or those of the wealthy. The government eventually responded to their protests, revoking many exemptions and setting up relief programs, but these efforts never wholly pacified the plain folk. The feeling persisted among many that it was “a rich man's war and a poor man's fight,” and ultimately they turned against their government.
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Cornelia had first sensed this moral crisis of the Confederacy during her journey to Richmond to meet Angus. On the boat down the James River she noticed that “every one was sad and anxious” and that among the passengers were “groups of murmuring men.” When she eavesdropped on conversations, she was disturbed by what she heard: “I … began to realize that the patience of the people was worn out; that their long suffering and endurance was to be depended on no longer.” Along with declining faith in victory, she detected deep resentment toward the Confederate government, especially over conscription. She listened as a fellow passenger, a forty-five-year-old conscript on his way to the army, told of a neighbor “who had had two sons killed [in battle], and one a prisoner … the father, had been taken as a conscript, and … the poor old wife had been left alone in her hut to abide the winter's cold, with no one to provide for or take care of her.”
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As the winter of 1864–65 went on, there was more bad news to depress Confederate spirits. City after city fell to the invaders: Savannah in late December, Charleston and Wilmington in February. Sherman's army rampaged through South Carolina. Increasingly Cornelia saw around her “discouragement and apprehension.”
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Yet hope endured among the Confederate faithful. While Robert E. Lee's army was still intact, the war was not lost. Trust in Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia remained strong even as trust in the rebel government dwindled. Former governor Letcher, writing in November 1864 from the house in Lexington that he had moved into after the Yankees burned him out, spoke for many Confederate patriots: with General Lee in command, he said, “I have entire confidence in our ultimate success.”
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Cornelia herself was, by 1865, undergoing a crisis of patriotic faith. Although she had opposed secession—unlike her husband, who became a rabid secessionist after Lincoln's election in 1860—she ardently embraced the Confederate cause once the war began. She would never forget the thrill she experienced the first time she saw a Confederate flag carried by marching troops. On New Year's Day 1863 she declared herself willing to “give all I have” in defense of the cause, “even my six boys.” She chafed under the rule of the “dirty Yankees” who occupied Winchester while she lived there, and she refused to take the Union oath of allegiance they demanded. Even when the war began to turn against the Confederacy in the summer of 1863, Cornelia did not despond. Victory was certain, she believed, because the cause was just: God would not deny the South “triumph over those who would deprive us of our right to do as we pleased with our own.”
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Her belief that the cause was righteous never wavered, but by 1865 she was distraught with doubt about ultimate victory. Cold logic told her that the Confederacy must soon collapse. But she could not bring herself to renounce the struggle, as so many other Southerners were doing, for defeat was “too horrible to think of.” She trembled at the prospect of her beloved South under the heel of “our insolent enemies.” With ever greater urgency she prayed for divine favor, until her prayers became “almost a frantic cry to Heaven demanding help and success.” And yet she knew that if the war continued, more suffering would be demanded of the Confederate people. She herself, who had suffered so much already, might have to endure worse. Sacrificing her children was no longer just an abstract notion: Harry would turn seventeen in April and would have to go to the army.
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These worries were compounded by the constant strain of providing for her family. She was managing, with Susan's help, to put together three meals a day for the children, but just barely. Skimpy portions of coarse food were pretty much the rule at the McDonalds' dining table all through the winter. Cornelia herself was not getting enough to eat: many days she had nothing but bread and coffee. This was not just a matter of self-denial. She was unable to stomach some of the food she had on hand—the beans and the sorghum, for example, which the children did not seem to mind—and undoubtedly her appetite was depressed by her ceaseless anxiety. She had noticed as far back as November, when she glanced in a mirror on the boat to Richmond, how thin her face was. Now she was beginning to look haggard.
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The unending labor was wearing her down, too. Her morning and afternoon classes added to what was already an enormous burden of work. Although Susan relieved her of kitchen chores, Cornelia had no servants to assist with the other tasks: laundry, ironing, sewing, dusting, sweeping, mopping, making beds, fetching water, emptying chamber pots. There was no time now for the long, relaxing walks in the countryside with sketchbook in hand that she used to enjoy, and hardly any time for the reading that had always been an important part of her life.
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The children helped a great deal around the house, of course, but the smaller ones imposed burdens of their own: they had to be bathed, dressed, and constantly watched. Roy, who seemed always to be getting into some trouble, was especially exhausting, and Cornelia often ran out of patience with her eight-year-old “imp of mischief.” Harry, however, eventually stepped in to relieve his mother of this annoyance. He began taking Roy with him to his wood-chopping job and keeping him there all day. Roy loved it, especially on days when snow lay deep on the ground: because he was too little to slog through it, Harry would carry him to work and back on his shoulders.
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As busy and tired as she and the children were that winter, Cornelia nevertheless insisted that the long-established rituals of the family be observed. Each morning before breakfast they gathered; kneeling on the floor with her face lifted and her eyes closed, Cornelia would lead the children in devotions from the
Book of Common Prayer.
Before climbing into bed at night, the children would say their own prayers while Cornelia watched and listened. On Sunday mornings there were Bible lessons for the little ones, after which the whole clan marched off together to church.
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The church services helped lift Cornelia's spirits. And there were other moments of joy in her life during that bleak winter. She especially treasured the family get-togethers at home in the evenings. The children would assemble as darkness fell, gathering around her while she sewed by candlelight. By the time Harry and Roy came in, rosy-faced and breathless, the others would all be chatting and laughing in front of the fireplace. Even on her worst days, Cornelia found the merriment contagious.
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Often the family was joined in the evenings by friends. Mrs. Powell called frequently, sometimes bearing little gifts of food and always ready to lend Cornelia a sympathetic ear. Another regular caller was young Lottie Myers, “a pure and lovely Christian” who comforted Cornelia by reminding her of God's promise to the widow and the orphan: “Your bread and your water shall be sure.” Ann Pendleton stopped by often, too, until the end of January, when she and her oldest daughter departed for Petersburg for an extended visit with General Pendleton.
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There were signs of cheer not just at Cornelia's house but throughout Lexington and Rockbridge County that winter, despite the hard times and the news from the front. “Crowds of young people pass from house to house,” noted the town's Presbyterian minister, “with little to eat and less to wear, and spend the entire night in dancing and revelry.” Dour Calvinist that he was, he decried these and the other instances of godless gaiety he observed, some of them fueled by “intoxicating liquors.” The dancing and drinking continued despite his jeremiads, however, and so did the sleighing parties that appeared spontaneously that winter whenever there was a good snowfall.
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In the last days of February, Rockbridge citizens spotted flocks of wild geese flying northward. “This,” the editor of the
Lexington Gazette
reminded his readers, “has always been regarded as an infallible sign of the breaking up of winter.” Spring would bring longer days, warmer skies, and greener woods and fields—that much was certain; what else it might bring, for good or ill, could only be guessed. It would be the fifth spring of the Confederate States of America. Cornelia McDonald and many others wondered if it would be the last.
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JOHN ROBERTSON

When the morning sun broke over east Tennessee at a little after seven on New Year's day 1865, it illuminated a silent, snow-blanketed landscape. It was a bitterly cold Sunday—“as cold as it ever gets in this climate,” recalled John Robertson.
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John was staying at the farm of his uncle and aunt, Thomas and Kate Collier, nine miles west of Knoxville. He had arrived a day or two earlier in a borrowed carriage that he had driven forty miles from Roane County, where he had lived since October. He brought along a large batch of cigars he had made. Although he chewed tobacco, he did not smoke; he intended to sell the cigars in Knoxville.
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At this point in his life John was a seeker. But it was not riches he sought, nor was it adventure. Although he was only eighteen, he had seen, as a rebel soldier and home guardsman, all the excitement and danger he cared to see. What he thirsted for now was spiritual fulfillment. He would not rest, he vowed to himself, until he became “changed in heart.”
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On New Year's day, John Robertson went, along with some of his cousins, to a church not far from the Colliers' farm. The icy air pierced his clothing to the skin and stung his face and lungs all the way to the church, but he nevertheless went gladly and hopefully. He came away disappointed, however. There was no inspiring sermon that day to help open his heart to Jesus. Instead, there was a contentious discourse by a Baptist preacher named Miller on the necessity of baptism and the foolishness of those who opposed it. It “rather wounded my feelings,” recalled John, who held contrary views on that particular point of doctrine. When fellow worshipers urged him to go forward to the “anxious seat” with the others who were seeking salvation, John declined, and during the remainder of the service he sat sulkily in his pew. Afterward he felt guilty for “refusing to do what was for my own ben[e]fit.”
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