William Keener - Pearl and the Nigger

Early this morning by candlelight, I read the letter I removed from Levi’s pocket. I hoped it was from you. Instead, it was from your aunt in Richmond. Here, basically, is its content:

October 27, 1862

Richmond, Virginia

My dearest nephew

Molly left this morning for the Pines. She is so unhappy and despondent. She is grieving herself to death over that unscrupulous Yankee she married. I have a large bundle of letters from that scallywag. Of course, she does not know I have them. I have intercepted every one as you directed. For all she knows, he is dead. I wonder if keeping the letters from her is wise. She was nearly mad from grief when she left here. I want to do your will in this matter, but I believe we are making a grave mistake. She sure loves him, and a love like hers cannot be broken regardless of what you do. You are foolish to try it.

Oh, I wonder when this war will be over. Surely it cannot last much longer with Daddy Lee returning from South Carolina to join Jackson. You would have thought the North would have given up after the crushing defeat at Bull Run. It seems there are still some fools up there that continue to believe they can defeat the South just because wart-nosed Abe Lincoln says they can. One of these days soon, Stonewall and Robert, somewhere there in the Valley, will mop up the whole mob and end this war.

Levi, Molly worries about you. I hear her pray for you each day, and I pray for you. Do be careful. If anything should happen to you, with all her other worries, I believe she would lose her mind. She is not strong like she used to be, and I believe with her not knowing what has happened to that Yankee husband of hers is breaking her heart. I say once again, I think withholding his letters from her is a grave mistake. Grant me permission to forward his letter to her at the Pines.

Molly loves you, Levi, and you may be her only strength when this awful war is over. So for her sake, as well as your own, be careful.

Molly, I must have fallen asleep before I finished this letter because the bugler has just sounded mess call. I didn’t hear reveille. I suppose I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. This letter lay at my feet on the floor of my tent.

I can see that God has created another beautiful day. The sky in the east is intermingled in crimson, blue, and pinks touched with gray. It is an indescribable splendor of beauty. The leaves on the trees are cloaked in their richest green, stirring gently from a soft Southern breeze. The wildflowers on the hillsides are the hues of the rainbow and morning glory vines over the old rail fence in front of my tent. Once again, the birds are singing songs of joy and gladness. It is like the Garden of Eden, and it would be paradise if you were here and I were holding you in my arms. Oh! Molly, just to hold you close to me once again would be paradise. I know this will be some days afar, but one day it will be and we will be so happy.

It will be only minutes from now that guns will sound again and the battle will rage. There they are. The Rebels are attacking. Molly, my love is always for you. You are the most precious thing on this earth to me. I will be there when this war is over. I will write you soon, but I have to go. The cannon fire is now landing close to my tent.

A few minutes after Andy signed his letter, the two armies were gripped again in the last day of combat at Chancellorsville. Hooker became panic-stricken and ordered a general retreat across the Rappahannock. Lee was deterred from following up his advantage of news of the success of General Sedgewick, commanding the Union left. General Lee prepared to renew the battle on the fifth of May 1863, but the enemy was gone. After his disastrous encounter with Lee and Jackson at Chancellorsville, General Joseph Hooker resigned his command of the Army of the Potomac on June 28, 1863. In November of the same year, he redeemed himself by winning Battle of the Clouds on Lookout Mountain and continued his aggressiveness in serving with General Sherman in the Atlanta Campaign.

Before Andy’s letter reached Molly, her brother’s body was delivered to her. She buried him in the family graveyard out back and to the left, beyond the springhouse.

Two months later, the great struggle between the North and the South, testing whether a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” could long endure, was reached in the terrific three days’ encounter at Gettysburg. Lee, on the offensive, attempted to carry the war into the North, and the army of ninety thousand veteran troops marched up the Valley of Virginia, crossing into Pennsylvania, drawing the Army of the Potomac after him.

At Frederick, Maryland, on the eve of the Battle of Gettysburg, General Meade succeeded General Hooker as commander of the Northern army, whose forces numbered in excess of 130,000 who wished to atone for the Chancellorsville rout. It was a sultry July day when General Meade’s advanced guard clashed with Lee’s columns.

Three days the struggle raged, but this time the North was fighting in defense of their own homes and on her own ground, and who will say that they did not fight better? To withstand and repulse such terrific and determined onslaughts as those made by General Pickett in his famous charge on Cemetery Hill, they must have fought with all the courage and patriotism a Yankee could muster.

Lee was disappointed at every turn. It was only at dreadful sacrifice that he could gain ground. Then he could not hold it. He thought his men fought with even more zeal and courage than they did at Chancellorsville. He was better prepared, better equipped, and the chance for a decisive victory never seemed brighter. It was not until the last great effort, on the memorable third day, when Pickett’s men gallantly swept across this open field to Cemetery Hill that the charge failed as did hope. Lee had never experienced this before. “Something is wrong,” he was heard to say, as he shook his head and turned away.

Yes, surely something was wrong. He had lost his right arm—Stonewall Jackson.

He knew on the afternoon of the third day that pursuing the battle further was futile. He ordered a retreat, and the grand army of the South that had gone forth to crush the North on her own grounds, dazed, staggered, and bleeding, retreated into the Valley of Virginia, from whence it had come. Depressed, disheartened, and defeated, they skillfully withdrew to a strong position along the Rapidan in Virginia. There he penned Molly another letter.

November 1863

Rapidan, Virginia

My dear child:

It has been long, hard days and months since the loss of General Jackson, and I know your grief for Levi must be great. But I suffer grief for each of my men, but your family and mine are different since our ancestry extends back to Robert Bruce, the king of Scots. We are kin, Molly, and I suffer with you in your grief for Levi.

Something has been on my mind since the day we withdrew from Seminary Ridge. As we were riding away from the raging battle, my attention was drawn to a Union cavalry officer in a captain’s uniform who lay wounded off to one side.

He beckoned by calling, “General Lee, General Lee.” As he struggled to his feet, he called, “Come this way—come this way—I’ve something to say to you.”

I turned and rode over to where he stood, unsteadily, as he called again, “General Lee, I—I—I’m Captain Andy Yates. You know me. I’m Molly Campbell’s husband. You know, Molly Campbell, from Gauley Mountain. Tell her, tell her for me—somehow get word to her—that I’m all right. That I’ll be coming home soon.”

I dismounted and inquired as to where he was wounded. He showed me the top of his head where the hair was discolored by blood.