magazine in water-tight tanks. Everything broken that they could break. Private trunks broken open and officers’ clothing and that of their wives stolen.
Glorious news! General Gwynn just read me a telegram; it comes from a reliable source; the New York Regiment, attempting to march through Maryland, was met half way between Marlborough and Annapolis and cut all to pieces.
– G. T. Sinclair
April 20 and 21, 1861
What strange and awful spirits were abroad that night! Which our brave Captain sensed, and handing the field glasses to me did most nobly ask that I give him my opinion of just what mischief might be afoot! To my eye I put the glass. And what was that I saw? To our good captain said, “Indeed, there is some ignoble thing here! Something is rotten in the State of Virginia!”
And so on my urging the captain steered our humble vessel down the Elizabeth River to Norfolk. What is that we see? Just what the cowardly debased Yankees had wrought-not but utter destruction to the grand and valuable naval yard which by right and location does and should belong to the Sovereign State of Virginia, and the Grand Confederacy.
With never a thought toward his own life nor limb, our gallant Captain Bowater went at the head of his own small army and extinguished the very flame that would have destroyed the dry dock and rained down on the heads of those poor innocents abed in Portsmouth untold hundred tons of granite! And thus did the bold Bowater save for the Confederacy that grand edifice, the dry dock, with which we now might hope to build grand and vast men-of- war to sally forth and vanquish those sea-born vandals who have come south to do us gross injustice!
I made much protest that our bold captain should not thus expose his life to the cowardly fires of our enemies, but rather it was the place of his subordinate officer, myself, who so longed to charge into the lion’s mouth with guns blazing. What is that that our brave captain replied? He would hear none of it, but did assure me (with that nobleness and honestness of character that is the birthright of those noble Sons of the South) that on the next occasion I should have my chance to distinguish myself in mortal combat with those who would deprive us of our liberties! O, how I long for that day, hour, moment!
Mrs. Bertrand Atkins
9 Elm Street
Culpepper, Virginia
Dearest Mother,
No doubt you will have heard of the terrific excitement we have had down here! I daresay it has been building for the past month, ever since my arrival here in Portsmouth, the way the storms build up in the summertime. You could just feel it, with more and more soldiers arriving in town, and talk everywhere of attacking the naval yard, and the Yankees making their preparations to leave. Two nights ago the storm broke, as it were. Of course I remained safe at home with Aunt Molly, well away from any danger, but the flames were perfectly visible, and the sounds of the gunfire and explosions quite clear, even though we were more than a mile away from the yard.
Now things are settling down some, with our troops in command of the yard and the Yankees fled to Fort Monroe and Washington. Still, it seems as if Portsmouth and Norfolk are to be the center of much activity, in the military and naval line, as the Yankees were not able to destroy as much as they thought. It is a very exciting place to be, during an exciting time, not unlike being in Boston or Philadelphia in 1776. But I am getting too full of all this excitement and playing the poet again, as Father has always accused me of doing.
I trust all is well with you and Father, and that Father has become more sanguine about my moving down here. Aunt Molly is well and sends her love, and I am well also.
Love to everyone there.
Your daughter,
Wendy Atkins
12
– James R. Binford, 15th Mississippi Infantry
Lieutenant Robley Paine, Jr., trudged through the tent-lined, makeshift streets of Camp Walker, bivouac of 3rd Brigade, of which the 18th Mississippi was now a part. The summer sun pushed him down into the dusty path. He and his men had been there for two weeks already, but it seemed much longer than that.
It was July of 1861, and Lieutenant Paine reckoned he knew most of what soldiering was about.
He knew the weary, hot, dusty marching, as he and the rest of the young men had tramped to Yazoo City and then north to Corinth, over two hundred miles by paddle wheeler, by foot, and by rail.
He knew the muttering and the growling and the insubordination of the men, silent and otherwise. He learned when to cajole and when to yell and when to deliver a cuff to the ear or a boot to the ass. He learned how to do it in such a way that it got the job done and left no permanent and festering hatreds.
In Corinth he learned what an ungodly mess a cluster of officers could make of trying to create an army from a rabble. Officers who, a month before, had been cotton planters and merchants and politicians.
But not all of them. There were a handful of real soldiers, men who had resigned their commissions in the old army and come south to fight for their states. These men Robley watched close, and imitated, and tried to learn what he could about real soldiering.
He learned about indecision and infighting, about intrigue, about toadying and backstabbing and bootlicking. By his own inbred good sense and natural aversion to such things, and the honor instilled in him by his father, he learned to avoid it all, and to go about his business and look after the welfare of his men.
As a result of that policy, Robley Paine remained an officer, because in the Confederate Army the men voted their officers in, with a democracy that harked back to the army of 1776. Robley Paine was a near-unanimous choice for third lieutenant.
At length, under the direction of General J. L. Alcorn, the disparate young men from Mississippi were formed into companies: Company A, the Confederate Rifles, Company B, the Benton Rifles, Company C, the Confederates, and so on. The boys from Yazoo County formed Company D, named, to no one’s surprise, the Hamer Rifles. And finally the great lot of them were formed into the 18th Mississippi Regiment and sent north once again.
They traveled for eight days, marching, jostling onto railroad platforms, crushing into sweating railcars, rattling northeast. They covered nearly seven hundred miles and landed at last in the great
Robley paused in his deliberate wandering, pulled off his kepi, wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his frock coat. He squinted around him, at the bored men on guard duty, the companies off in the distance, kicking up dust as they drilled, the men lounging around, reading, writing letters, playing cards. Things were getting mighty relaxed at Camp Walker. Laundry hung out in the sun, tables and chairs were set up outside the little tents, chickens ran around the dusty ground. They were only about twenty-five miles from Washington, D.C., the heart of the Union, and all the bluebellies gathering there, but no one of either side seemed overeager to do anything about it.
From the moment that he had signed his name to the enlistment roll, through the long march and wait and the endless drilling at Corinth, over the misery of eight days’ travel to Manassas, Robley had known several fears.
One was that he would miss the great battle that would decide the war. That one was a common fear. It was the only fear that the boys would gladly own up to, and did, often.
But also, in his heart, tucked away, he harbored the secret fear that that was what he wanted, that he hoped
