Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison: All Volumes E-Book

Belle Boyd

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 380

Beschreibung

Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison: All Volumes is the complete autobiography of the infamous Confederate spy.

Das E-Book Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison: All Volumes wird angeboten von Charles River Editors und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
civil war; spy; autobiography; biography

Leseprobe

BELLE BOYD IN CAMP AND PRISON: ALL VOLUMES

..................

Belle Boyd

LACONIA PUBLISHERS

Thank you for reading. If you enjoy this book, please leave a review or connect with the author.

All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

Copyright © 2016 by Belle Boyd

Interior design by Pronoun

Distribution by Pronoun

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

Vol II.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

BELLE BOYD,

IN

CAMP AND PRISON

All Volumes

With an Introduction

BY A FRIEND OF THE SOUTH.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

INTRODUCTION.

..................

BY A FRIEND OF THE SOUTH.

“WILL you take my life?”

This was the somewhat startling question put to me by Mrs. Hardinge-better known as Belle Boyd-on my recent introduction to her in Jermyn Street.

“Madam,” said I, “a sprite like you, who has so often run the gauntlet by sea and land, who has had so many hair-breadth escapes by flood and field, must bear a ‘charmed life:’ I dare not attempt it.” Then, placing in my hands a roll of manuscript, she said, “Take this; read it, revise it, rewrite it, publish it, or burn it-do what you will. It is the story of my adventures, misfortunes, imprisonments, and persecutions. I have written all from memory since I have been here in London; and, perhaps, by putting me in the third person you can make a book that will be not only acceptable to the public and profitable to myself, but one that will do some good to the cause of my poor country, a cause which seems to be so little understood in England.”

I took the manuscript, promising to look it over, and return it with an estimate of its merits. I have done so; and hence the publication of“Belle Boyd, in Camp and Prison.” The work is entirely her own, with the exception of a few suggestions in the shape of footnotes-the simple, unambitious narrative of an enthusiastic and intrepid schoolgirl, who had not yet seen her seventeenth summer when the cloud of war darkened her land, changing all the music of her young life, her peaceful “home, sweet home,” into the bugle blasts of battle, into scenes of death and most tumultuous sorrow.

Believing, with all the people of the South, in the sovereignty of the States, and the absolute political and moral right of secession, our young heroine, like Joan of Arc, inspired and fired by the “tyranny impending,” resolved to devote her hands, and heart, and life if need be, to the sacred cause of freedom and independence. How much she has done and suffered in the great struggle which has crimsoned the “sunny South” with the “blood of the martyrs,” we shall leave the reader to gather from the narrative itself.

But, by way of introduction, I have a few incidental facts to relate; and it is proper to add that I do it entirely on my own responsibility, and without consulting “our heroine” in the matter.

At the time of my presentation to Mrs. Hardinge, above alluded to, I found the lady in very great distress of mind and body. She was sick, without money, and driven almost to distraction by the cruel news that her husband was suffering the “tender mercies” of a Federal prison. Lieutenant Hardinge was in irons; and his friends were prohibited from sending him food or clothing! Letters addressed to his young wife, containing remittances, were intercepted; and thus I found her, not quite friendless, in this great wilderness of London, but, what is worse, absolutely destitute of that indispensable and all-prevailing friend-MONEY.

The sight of a pair of flowing eyes, that for thirteen long months had refused to weep in a Northern prison, were enough to call forth the following communication, addressed to the

“Morning Herald,” that able and consistent defender of the Southern cause:-

“A WORD TO CONFEDERATE SYMPATHIZERS.

“SIR,-Your readers cannot have forgotten the glowing description of the recent romantic wedding of ‘Belle Boyd’(La Belle Rebelle),so pleasantly celebrated a few months since at ‘a fashionable hotel in Jermyn Street.’

Alas, poor Belle! Her bridal bliss was ‘like the snow-fall on a river.’ Her husband of a day is now tasting the sweets of a Yankee prison, and she (who ‘was made his wedded wife yestreen’) all the bitterness of poverty and exile. After enduring for many a long and weary month the insults, sufferings, and persecutions of the ‘Old Capitol Prison,’ I heard the afflicted lady say yesterday that she ‘had rather be there as she was than here as she is.’ And why? Cut off from all pecuniary resources at home, she has had to part with her jewellery piece by piece, including her ‘wedding presents,’ to pay her weekly bills.

“We can well understand how trouble like that would smite the heart of a high-toned woman, the daughter of affluence and luxury, even more cruelly than the tortures of a Federal prison.

“Without further comment, I will only add that Madame Hardinge (Belle Boyd) has prepared for publication a narrative of her adventures, imprisonment, and sufferings, for which there are no lack of publishers ready to advance a handsome sum; but she has recently received threatening intimations that her husband’s life depends upon the suppression of her story!

“The father of ‘Belle Boyd,’ a most respectable Virginian gentleman, has lately died, at the age of forty-six, from a disease induced by his daughter’s sufferings. These are the sad, simple facts of the case, and I commend them to the kind consideration of Confederate sympathizers in England. Surely poverty, in a young and accomplished woman, is not only a sacred claim to the protection of society-it is also the very highest credential of honour.”

The above was copied by one of the London morning papers, with the following sympathetic comments:-

“We are in a position to verify all that is here stated, and a great deal more. Probably the history of the world does not contain a parallel case to that of this newly married lady, who has just only emerged from her teens. Her adventures in the midst of the American war surpass anything to be met with in the pages of fiction. Her great beauty, elegant manners, and personal attractions generally, in conjunction with her romantic history before her marriage, which took place only three months ago at the West End, in the presence of a fashionable assemblage of affectionate and admiring friends, concur to invest her with attributes which render her such a heroine as the world has seldom, if ever, seen in a lady only now in her twentieth year.”

Several of the New York journals also copied the above, and one of them, “The World,” published the following communication:-

“I would respectfully ask the use of a small space in the columns of ‘The World’ to say a word regarding these statements.

“Within the past few months Mrs. Hardinge’s agent in the United States has sent her bills of exchange on London bankers to the amount of eight hundred pounds sterling, or nearly ten thousand dollars in greenbacks. She has never received a sou of this money. Her letters have been opened here and the drafts extracted before going on to her, and this is the reason she is in distress. Too proud to beg, too honourable to borrow, she pawned her jewels and wedding presents, piece by piece, until her situation became known to her friends. Cut off from pecuniary resources, a stranger in a strange land, her husband in a Northern prison, what could she do? ‘Surely poverty in a young and accomplished woman is not only a sacred claim to the protection of society, but is also the very highest credential of honour.’

“I received during the week a letter from this poor lady; and she says, ‘I think it is so cruel in the Yankees to intercept my letters and stop my money, and I don’t know why I am thus persecuted.’ It is cruel, and it is beneath the dignity of any Government to stoop to such means of revenge. Such things in the dark ages would be called unchivalrous. Good God! can this be the nineteenth century?

“Mr. Hardinge came here, as a peaceable citizen would come, to attend to his private business and return to England. He had noConfederate duties. Having nearly completed his labours, he went to Martinsburg to see his wife’s mother, and, while returning thence, with all the necessary papers and passes in his possession, was arrested this side of Harper’s Ferry. Confined in nondescript guard-houses, in jails, and dragged about like a convicted felon, he was finally lodged in the Carroll Prison at Washington, and from thence taken to Fort Delaware. After suffering two months’ confinement, he was unconditionally released, and sailed for Europe on the 8th February. She will not be in want or distress when he arrives in London. For what he was arrested and confined is to him yet a mystery.

“The intimation to Mrs. Hardinge that the publication of her work would endanger the life of her husband was not without foundation, as there are officials high in power at Washington of whom she knows more than is generally known, and who will be shown up in their true light and colours in her book. They fear the truth.”

It is pleasant to add, that the moment Belle Boyd’s necessities became known in London the most generous offers of assistance were literally showered upon her by ladies and gentlemen of the highest and best classes in England. And here I cannot refrain from saying that, after several years of observation and experience, I cannot but regard the real nobility of England as the noblest and most hospitable people in the world. The Southern planters rank-or, alas! did rank-next.

But this is a digression. Let us glance a moment at Belle Boyd in prison, sketched by other hands than her own.

In the month of August, 1862, the editor of the “Iowa Herald,” D. A. Mahony, Esq., a strong Anti-Black Republican, but an able and eloquent supporter of the Constitution and the Union, was taken from his bed, and, without arraignment or trial, and without even being informed of “the things whereof he was accused,” hurried away to Washington, and thrust into the “Old Capitol Prisons.” What he saw and suffered there he has already told the world, in words that ought to burn and brand for ever his lawless and infamous persecutors.

The following extracts from Mr. Mahony’s journal, published by Carleton, of New York, give us characteristic glimpses of Belle Boyd in prison:-

“Among the prisoners in the Old Capitol when I reached there was the somewhat famous Belle Boyd, to whom has been attributed the defeat of General Banks, in the Shenandoah Valley, by Stonewall Jackson. Belle, as she is familiarly called by all the prisoners, and affectionately so by the Confederates, was arrested and imprisoned as a spy....

“The first intimation some of us new-comers in the Old Capitol had of the fact of there being a lady in that place was the hearing of “Maryland, my Maryland,” sung the first night of our incarceration, in what we could not be mistaken was a woman’s voice. On inquiry, we were informed that it was Belle Boyd. Some of us had never heard of the lady before; and we were all inquiring about her. Who was she? where was she from? and what did she do?....

“Belle was put in solitary confinement, but allowed to have her room-door open, and to sit outside of it in a hall or stair-landing in the evening. Whenever she availed herself of this privilege, as she frequently did, the greatest curiosity was manifested by the victims of despotism to see her. Her room being on the second story, those who occupied the third story were civilians from Fredericksburg.....

“But we must not lose sight of Belle Boyd. I heard her voice, my first night in prison, singing ‘Maryland, my Maryland,’ the first time I had ever heard the Southern song. The words, stirring enough to Southern hearts, were enunciated by her with such peculiar expression as to touch even sensibilities which did not sympathize with the cause which inspired the song. It was difficult to listen unmoved to this lady, throwing her whole soul, as it were, into the expression of the sentiments of devotion to the South, defiance to the North, and affectionately confident appeals to Maryland, which form the burden of that celebrated song. The pathos her voice, her apparently forlorn condition, and, at those times when her soul seemed absorbed in the thoughts she was uttering in song, her melancholy manner, affected all who heard her, not only with compassion for her, but with an interest in her which came near, on several occasions, bringing about a conflict between the prisoners and the guards.

“Fronting on the same hall or stair-landing on which Belle Boyd’s room-door opened, were three other rooms, all filled to their capacity with prisoners, mostly Confederate officers. Several of these were personally acquainted with Belle, as she was most of the time, and by nearly every one, called. In the evenings these prisoners were permitted to crowd inside of their room-doors, whence they could see and sometimes exchange a word with Belle. When this liberty was not allowed, she contrived to procure a large marble, around which she would tie a note, written on tissue-paper, and, when the guard turned his back to patrol his beat in the hall, she would roll the marble into one of the open doors of the Confederate prisoners’ rooms. When the contents were read and noted a missive would be written in reply, and the marble, similarly burdened as it came, would be rolled back to Belle. Thus was a correspondence established and kept up between Belle and her fellow-prisoners, till a more convenient and effective mode was discovered. This occurred soon after some of us were transferred from room No. 13 to No. 10.

“One day Mr. Sheward and I were rummaging in an old, dirty, doorless closet in No. 10, when we discovered an opening in the floor, and, looking down, perceived the light in the room below, which happened to be that occupied by Belle Boyd. Here was a discovery! No sooner was it made, than we set to writing a note, which was tied to a thread and dropped down through the discovered aperture. It happened to be seen by Belle, who soon returned the compliment. Thenceforth a regular mail passed through the floor in No. 10; and though Lieutenant Miller and Superintendent Wood prided themselves on being well informed of every occurrence which took place in prison contrary to the rules, with all their vigilance, aided by the presence, as they admitted, of a detective in every room of the prison, except that of Belle Boyd, they never discovered this through-the-floor mail. It would not be the least interesting chapter in the history of the Old Capitol to give in it these letters of Belle Boyd. But the time is not yet.”

These last words of Mahony remind me of the fact that Belle Boyd, the “rebel spy,” is in possession of a vast amount of information implicating certain high officials at Washington, both in public and private scandals, which she deems it imprudent at present to publish. “The time is not yet.”

“Belle usually commenced her evening entertainment,” writes Mahony, “with ‘Maryland.’ “ Up to this time this patriotic and spirit-stirring song, written by young Randall, of Baltimore, must be regarded as the “Marseillaise” of the

South. As it is as yet but little known in England, I will here quote it entire-

AS SUNG BY BELLE BOYD IN PRISON.

“The despot’s heel is on thy shore,

Maryland!

His torch is at thy temple door,

Maryland!

Avenge the patriotic gore

That flecked the streets of Baltimore,

And be the battle queen of yore,

Maryland! my Maryland!

“Hark to a wandering son’s appeal,

Maryland!

My Mother State, to thee I kneel,

Maryland!

For life and death, for woe and weal,

Thy peerless chivalry reveal,

And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,

Maryland! my Maryland!

“Thou wilt not cower in the dust,

Maryland!

Thy beaming sword shall never rust,

Maryland!

Remember Carroll’s sacred trust,

Remember Howard’s warlike thrust,

And all thy slumberers with the just,

Maryland! my Maryland!

“Come! ‘tis the red dawn of the day,

Maryland!

Come with thy panoplied array,

Maryland!

With Ringgold’s spirit for the fray,

With Watson’s blood at Monterey,

With fearless Lowe, and dashing May,

Maryland! my Maryland!

“Dear mother! burst the tyrant’s chain,

Maryland!

Virginia should not call in vain,

Maryland!

She meets her sisters on the plain:

Sic semper, ‘tis her proud refrain,

That baffles minions back amain.

Maryland! my Maryland!

“Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,

Maryland!

Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,

Maryland!

Come to thine own heroic throng,

That stalks with Liberty along,

And gives a newKey to thy song,

Maryland! my Maryland!

“I see the blush upon thy cheek,

Maryland

And thou wert ever bravely meek,

Maryland!

But, lo! there surges forth a shriek,

From hill to hill, from creek to creek:

Potomac calls to Chesapeake.

Maryland! my Maryland!

“Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll,

Maryland!

Thou wilt not crook to his control,

Maryland!

Better the fire upon thee roll,

Better the shot, the blade, the bowl,

Than crucifixion of the soul,

Maryland! my Maryland!

“I hear the distant thunder hum,

Maryland!

The Old Line’s bugle, fife, and drum,

Maryland!

She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb.

Hurrah! she spurns the Northern scum!

She breathes, she lives; she’ll come, she’ll come!

Maryland! my Maryland!”

“The singing of this song,” says Mahony, “often brought Belle in collision with the guard who passed to and fro in front of her room door. It was, of course, provoking; but was such a place a proper one in which to imprison a female, and especially one who, whatever may have been her offence, was in the estimation of the world, a lady?”....

Many a patriotic lady of Baltimore has been arrested by Federal officers for singing the patriotic song of “Maryland.” But what will the English reader say when he learns the following fact? At one of the most celebrated eating, drinking, and singing saloons in London, the classical resort of authors, actors, poets, and wits, for these hundred years at least, the famous band of boys, who sing better than any choir outside the Sistine chapel in Rome, after having got “the words and air of ‘Maryland’ by heart,” are not allowed to sing it,for fear of giving offence! OFFENCE TO WHOM? It might possibly “offend”somebody were they to chant the “Marseillaise.”

To return again to our caged bird:-

“Belle was allowed to go in the yard on Sundays, when there was preaching there. On these occasions she wore a small Confederate flag in her bosom. No sooner would her presence be known to the Confederate prisoners, than they manifested towards her every mark of respect which persons in their situation could bestow. Most of them doffed their hats as she approached them, and she, with a grace and dignity that might be envied by a queen, extended her hand to them as she moved along to her designated position in a corner near the preacher. We Northern prisoners of State envied the Confederates who enjoyed the acquaintance of Belle Boyd, and who secured from her such glances of sympathy as can only glow from a woman’s eyes.

“Belle’s situation was a peculiarly trying one. If she kept her room, a solitary prisoner, her health, and probably her mind, would become affected by the confinement and solitude; and if she indulged herself by sitting outside her room door, she became exposed to the gaze of more than a hundred prisoners, nearly all of them strangers to her, and many of them her enemies by the laws of war. Nor was this all.

She could not help hearing the comments made on her, and the opinions expressed of her, by passers-by; some of them complimentary and flattering, it is true, but oftentimes couched in expressions which were not what she should hear. The guards, too, were sometimes rude to her both by word and action. One time, especially, one of the guards presented his bayoneted musket at her in a threatening manner. She, brave and unterrified, dared the craven-hearted fellow to put his threat into execution. It was well for him that he did not, for he would have been torn into pieces before it could be known to the prison authorities what had happened.

“Belle was subjected to another worse annoyance and indignity than even this. Her room fronted on A Street, and, as usual with all the prisoners whose rooms had windows opening towards the street, Belle would sit at her window sometimes, and look abroad upon the houses, streets, and people of the city named after Washington. It happened frequently that troops were moving to and fro, and it was on such occasions especially that Belle, prompted by that curiosity which seems to be a law of nature in mankind, would look through her barred window at the soldiers. No sooner would they perceive her than they indulged in coarse jests, vulgar expressions, and the vilest slang of the brothel, made still more coarse, vulgar, and indecent by the throwing off of the little restraint which civilized society places upon the most abandoned prostitutes and their companions....

“Did the officers of the troops passing by permit the soldiers to thus insult a female, and subject themselves to such scornful and contemptuous reproof? the reader will be apt to inquire. Yes; and participated with the soldiers in uttering the most vulgar language and indecent allusions to the imprisoned woman; and that, too, without having the remotest idea of who she was, or of what she was accused. It was enough for them that she was a defenceless woman, to insult and outrage her by such language as they would not dare to apply in the public streets to an abandoned woman who had her liberty. And these men were going forth to fight the battles of the Union! They had just parted with mothers, wives, and sisters. It would seem that, in doing so, they turned their backs upon the virtues which give beauty to woman and dignity to man....

“At the general exchange of prisoners which took place in September Belle Boyd was sent to Richmond. As soon as it became known in the ‘Old Capitol’ that she was about to leave, there was not one, Federalist or Confederate, prisoner of state, officer of the ‘Old Capitol,’ as well as prisoner of war, who did not feel that he was about to part with one for whom he had, at least, a great personal regard. With many it was more than mere regard.

“Every inmate of the ‘Old Capitol’ tried to procure some token of remembrance from Belle, and there was scarcely one who did not bestow on her some mark of regard, esteem, or affection, as their sentiments and feelings influenced them severally, and as the means of their disposal afforded them an opportunity to manifest their sensibility. While every man who had any delicacy of feeling for the apparently forlorn prisoner rejoiced at her release from such a loathsome place, and from being subjected, as she continually was, to insult and contumely, there was not a gentleman in ‘Old Capitol’ whose emotions did not overcome him as he saw her leave the place for home.”

Thus kindly and warmly writes the veteran editor of the “Iowa Herald,” one of the victims of Seward’s “little bell,” for whose imprisonment and release the “Powers” at Washington, “clothed with a little brief authority,” have given no reason or explanation. But was not Mr. Mahony “guilty” of being the Democratic nominee for Congress?

A somewhat more poetic picture of“La Belle Rebelle” is given by the accomplished author of “Guy Livingstone,” in his “Border and Bastille,” written while tasting the sweets of Federal tyranny in that same “Old Capitol” Prison:-

“Through the bars of a second-story window that fronted each turn of my tramp, I saw-this: a slight figure, in the freshest summer-toilette of cool pink muslin; close braids of dark hair shading clear pale cheeks; eyes that were made to sparkle, though the look in them was very sad; and the languid bowing down of the small head told of something worse than weariness.

“Truly a pretty picture, though framed in such a rude setting; but almost startling, at first, as the apparition of the fair witch in the forest to Christabelle....

“No need to ask what her crime had been: aid and abetment of the South suggested itself before you detected the ensign of the South that thedémoiselle still wore undauntedly-a pearl solitaire, fashioned as a Single Star. I may not deny that my gloomy ‘constitutional’ seemed thenceforward a shade or two less dreary; but, though community of suffering does much to abridge ceremony, it was some days before I interchanged with the fair captive any sign beyond the mechanical lifting of my cap, when I entered and left her presence, duly acknowledged from above. One evening I chanced to be loitering almost under the window. A low, significant cough made me look up; I saw the flash of a gold bracelet, and the wave of a white hand; and there fill at my feet a fragrant, pearly rose-bud, nestling in fresh green leaves. My thanks were, perforce, confined to a gesture and a dozen hurried words; but I would the prison-beauty could believe that fair Jane Beaufort’s rose was not more prized than hers, though the first was a love-token to a king, the last only a graceful gift to an unlucky stranger. I suppose that most men, whose past is not utterly barren of romance, are weak enough to keep some withered flowers till they have lived memory down; and I pretend not to be wiser than my fellows. Other fragrant messengers followed in their season; but if ever I ‘win hame to my ain countrie,’ I make mine avow to enshrine that first rose-bud in my reliquaire with all honour and solemnity, there to abide till one of us shall be dust.”

With this explanatory introduction, I have now only to commend “La Belle Rebelle” to the kindly sympathies of her readers-not as an authoress (to this she makes no pretensions); nor as a partisan soldier, although as such she has done good service in the cause; nor even as a freed bird from the “Old Capitol” cage; but simply as a woman-a warm-hearted, impulsive, heroic woman of the South, who, maddened by the wrongs and cruelties inflicted upon her people, and exalted, by the love she bore them, above the common cares and considerations of life, dashed into the field, bearing more than a woman’s part in her country’s struggle for liberty.

Like the flashing of the plume in the helmet of Navarre, the glancing of the Confederate ensign, when waved by a woman’s hand, has never failed to fire the soldier’s heart to “lofty deeds and daring high;” and on more than a hundred Southern battle-fields that proud banner, consecrated by prayers and kisses, baptized in tears and blood, has been greeted by the closing eyes of its dying defenders as the oriflamme of victory. Though lost for the moment in clouds and darkness, prophetic Hope, the last solace of the unfortunate, still waits and watches for its re-appearance as the harbinger of Southern liberty and independence:-

“For the battle to the strong

Is not given,

While the Judge of Right and Wrong

Sits in heaven!

And the God of David still

Guides the pebble with his will.

There are giants yet to kill,

Wrongs unshriven!”

Since the above was written the Southern people have suffered a heavy calamity in the assassination of the President of the United States. Not that Mr. Lincoln was their friend: on the contrary, every man and woman in the South, and every child born within the last four years, regarded him as the official head and personal embodiment of all their enemies. But, by the removal of the Commander-in-Chief of the great army and navy with which they were contending, a far more vindictive and unrelenting man is invested with the supreme power of the nation.

Abraham Lincoln,-with all his faults and fanaticism, his angularities of character and vulgarities of manner, had a sunny side to his nature; and there is every reason to believe that, with his idol Union once nominally restored, he would have adopted an indulgent, humane policy towards the brave and vanquished South, believing, with the great poet, that-

“Earthly power cloth then show likest God’s,

When mercy seasons justice.”

The suspicion which has been officially and wickedly thrown upon an honourable and heroic people, touching “the deep damnation of his taking off,” is sufficiently answered by the universal regret expressed throughout the Confederacy at President Lincoln’s death, the public denunciation of his murderer, and the horror everywhere felt at the idea of being “ruled with a rod of iron” by such an unprincipled demagogue as Andrew Johnson! It is usual in cases of murder to look for the criminal among those who expect to be benefited by the crime. In the death of Lincoln his immediate successor in office alone receives “the benefit of his dying.”

While deploring the event which places the reins of power in the hands of one as unfit to control the destinies of a great nation as was the reckless youth to guide the chariot of the Sun, there can be no injustice in alluding to the fact that the Northern Powers and the Northern Press have much to answer for on the head of assassination. I have yet to learn that the written programme of Colonel Dahlgren, which designed the burning of Richmond, the ravaging of its women, and the murder of President Davis and all his cabinet, has ever been disavowed or denounced by the Washington Government, or by the newspapers that support it. Philosophy and religion alike teach us that, while crime only belongs to the act, the sin of murder consists in the intent. In the light of this judgment, faint in comparison with that “awful light” yet to be thrown, not only upon all human actions, but upon “the very thoughts and intents of the heart,” both North and South, friend and foe, rebel and loyalist, the victim and the victor, the living and the dead, must all be tried and sentenced by ONE who “judgeth not as man judgeth.”

In the meantime, let us pray, and hope, and labour for liberty, love, and peace.

London, May 17th, 1865.

BELLE BOYD.

CHAPTER I.

..................

Home-Glimpse at Washington City.

MY ENGLISH READERS, WHO LOVE their own hearths and homes so dearly, will pardon an exile if she commences the narrative of her adventures with a brief reminiscence of her far-distant birthplace-

“Loved to the last, whatever intervenes

Between us and our childhood’s sympathy,

Which still reverts to what first caught the eye.”

There is, perhaps, no tract of country in the world more lovely than the Valley of the Shenandoah. There is, or rather I should say, there was, no prettier or more peaceful little village than Martinsburg, where I was born, in 1844.

All those charms with which the fancy of Goldsmith invested the Irish hamlet in the days of its prosperity were realized in my native village. Alas! Martinsburg has met a more cruel fate than that of “sweet Auburn.” The one, at least, still lives in song, and will continue to be a household word as long as the English language shall be spoken: the other was destined to be the first and fairest offering upon the altar of Confederate freedom; but no poet has arisen from her ruins to perpetuate her name.

While America was yet at peace within itself, while the States were yet united, many very beautiful residences were erected in the vicinity of Martinsburg, which may be said to have attained some degree of importance as a town when the large machinery buildings were raised, at a vast outlay, by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Company. They were not destined to repay those who designed them.

While they were yet in course of construction their doom was silently, but rapidly approaching. They were destroyed, as the only means of averting their capture by the advancing Yankees, by that undaunted hero, that true apostle of Freedom, “Stonewall” Jackson.

Reader, I must once again revert to my home, which was so soon to be the prey of the spoiler.

Imagine a bright warm sun shining upon a pretty two-storied house, the walls of which are completely hidden by roses and honeysuckle in most luxuriant bloom. At a short distance in front of it flows a broad, clear, rapid stream: around it the silver maples wave their graceful branches in the perfume-laden air of the South.

Even at this distance of time and space, as I write in my dull London lodging, I can hardly restrain my tears when I recall the sweet scene of my early days, such as it was before the unsparing hand of a ruthless enemy had defaced its loveliness. I frequently indulge in a fond soliloquy, and say, or rather think, “Do my English readers ever bestow a thought upon that cruel fate which has overtaken so many of their lineal descendants, whose only crime has been that love of freedom which the Pilgrim Fathers could not leave behind them when they left their island home? Do they bestow any pity, any sympathy, upon us homeless, ruined, exiled

Confederates? Do they ever pause to reflect what would be their own feelings if, far and wide throughout their country, the ancestral hall, the farmer’s homestead, and the labourer’s cot were giving shelter to the licentious soldiers of an invader or crackling in incendiary flames? With what emotions would the citizens of London watch the camp-fires of a besieging army?

“ ‘Say with what eye along the distant down

Would flying burghers mark the blazing town-

How view the column of ascending flames

Shake his red shadow o’er the startled Thames.’ “

Much has lately been written of the comfort of our Southern homesteads; and now, though so many of them are things of the past, while those that remain are no longer what they were, I may safely say that not even English homes were more comfortable, in the true sense of the word, than ours; while, for hospitality, we have never been surpassed.

I passed my childhood as all happy children usually do, petted and caressed by a father and mother, loving and beloved by my brothers and sisters. The peculiarly sad circumstances that attended my father’s death will be found recorded at a future page. Where my mother is hiding her head I know not: doubtless she is equally ignorant of my fate. My brothers and sisters are dispersed God knows where.

But to return to my narrative. I believe I shall not be contradicted in affirming, that nowhere could be found more pleasant society than that of Virginia. In this respect the neighbourhood of Martinsburg; was remarkably fortunate, populated as it was by some of the best and most respectable families of “the Old Dominion”- respectable, I mean, both in reputation and in point of antiquity-descendants of such ancestors as the Fairfaxes and Warringtons, upon whom Mr. Thackeray has lately conferred immortality.

According to the custom of my country, I was sent at twelve years of age to Mount Washington College, of which Mr. Staley, of whom I cherish a most grateful recollection, was then principal. At sixteen my education was supposed to be completed, and I made myentrée into the world in Washington City with all the high hopes and thoughtless joy natural to my time of life. I did not then dream how soon my youth was to be “blasted with a curse”-the worst that can befall man or woman-the curse of civil war.

Washington is so well known to English people that I need not pause to describe the city, its gaities and pleasures. In the winter of 1860-1, when I made my first acquaintance with it, the season was pre-eminently brilliant. The Senate and Congress halls were nightly dignified by the presence of our ablest orators and statesmen; the salons of the wealthy and the talented were filled to overflowing; the theatres were crowded to excess, and for the last time for many years to come the daughters of the North and the South commingled in sisterly love and friendship.

I am inclined to think that at the time of which I speak the city of Washington must have very nearly resembled that of Paris during those few years which immediately preceded 1789, while the elements of a stupendous revolution were yet hidden beneath a tranquil and deceitful surface. Like the Parisians of that memorable epoch, we were wilfully or fatally blind to the signs of the times; we ate and drank, we dined and danced, we went in and came out, we married and were given in marriage, without a thought of the volcano that was seething beneath our feet.

Who can predict what will be the end and issue of our revolution, when we consider that the effects of that which burst forth seventy-five years ago, wrapped all Europe in flames, and hurled kings from their thrones, are even now but partially developed? How many thousands of our sons have fallen in battle, against oppressors who would not confess that our freedom was beyond their power! How many hapless women and children have perished miserably, or been driven forth to beg their bread in foreign countries, before enemies who with heavy hands have sought to rivet our chains-enemies who could not discern the truth of the Irish orator’s memorable axiom, and acknowledge that the genius of Liberty is universal and irresistible!

CHAPTER II.

..................

POLITICAL CONTEST-COMMENCEMENT OF THE GREAT Struggle in America-Secession of the Southern States-We hear of the Fall of Fort Sumter-Call for Troops-The Stars and Bars-Volunteers-Enlistment of my Father-Patriotism of the Southern Women-Harper’s Ferry-Visit to Camp-Picnics, Balls, &c., &c.

THE gaities of Washington, to which I alluded in my first chapter, were soon eclipsed by the clouds that gathered in the political horizon.

The contest for the presidentship was over and the men of the South could no longer hide it from themselves that the issue of the struggle must determine their fate.

The secession of the Southern States, individually or in the aggregate, was the certain consequence of Mr. Lincoln’s election. His accession to a power supreme and almost unparalleled was an unequivocal declaration, by the merchants of New England, that they had resolved to exclude the landed proprietors of the South from all participation in the legislation of their common country.

I will not attempt to defend the institution of slavery, the very name of which is abhorred in England; but it will be admitted that the emancipation of the negro was not the object of Northern ambition; that is, of the faction which grasps exclusive power in contempt of general rights. Slavery, like all other imperfect forms of society, will have its day; but the time for its final extinction in the Confederate States of America has not yet arrived. Can it be urged that a race which prefers servitude to freedom has reached that adolescent period of existence which fits it for the latter condition? Meanwhile, which stands in the better position, the helot of the South, or the “free” negro of the North-the willing slave of a Confederate master, or the reluctant victim of Federal conscription?

And here I must take leave to ask a question of two great authors, both formerly advocates of an instantaneous abolition of slavery. Is the ghost of Uncle Tom laid? Has the slave dreamed his last dream? Will Mrs. H. B. Stowe and Mr. Longfellow admit that in either instance the hero owes his reputation for martyrdom to a creative genius and to an exquisite fancy? or will they still contend that the negro slave of the Confederate States is, physically and morally, a real object of commiseration?

The first champion of freedom-I speak advisedly, and in defiance of a seeming paradox-was South Carolina. She was a slave-holding State, but she flung down the gauntlet in the name and for the cause of liberty. Her bold example was soon followed. State after State seceded, and the Union was dissolved. It was now that we heard of the fall of Fort Sumter and Mr. Lincoln’s demand upon the State of Virginia. He called upon her to furnish her quota of 76,000 recruits, to engage in battle with her sister States. He sowed the dragon’s teeth, and he soon reaped the only harvest that could spring from such seed.

Virginia promptly answered to the call, and produced the required soldiers; but they did not rally under the Stars and Stripes. It was to the Stars and Bars, the emblem of the South, that Mr. Lincoln’s Virginian soldiers tendered the oath of military allegiance. The flag of the once loved, but now dishonoured Union was lowered, and the colours of the Confederacy were raised in its place.

Since that memorable epoch those colours have been baptized with the blood of thousands, to whose death in a cause so righteous the honour and reverence that wait upon martyrdom have been justly awarded:-

“Oh, if there be in this earthly sphere

A boon, an offering Heaven holds dear,

It is the libation that Liberty draws

From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause.”

The enthusiasm of the enlistment was adequate to the occasion. Old men with gray hairs and stooping forms, young boys just able to shoulder a musket, strong and weak, rich and poor, rallied round our new standard, actuated by a stern sense of duty, and eager for death or victory. It was at this exciting crisis that I returned to Martinsburg; and, oh! what a striking contrast my native village presented to the scenes I had just left behind me at Washington! My winter had been cheered by every kind of amusement and every form of pleasure: my summer was about to be darkened by constant anxiety and heart-rending affliction.

My father was one of the first to volunteer. He was offered that grade in the army to which his social position entitled him; but, like many of our Virginian gentlemen, he preferred to enlist in the ranks, thereby leaving the pay and emoluments of an officer’s commission to some other, whose means were not so ample, and whose family might be straitened in his absence from home, an absence that must of course interfere with his avocation or profession.

The 2nd Virginian was the regiment to which my father attached himself. It was armed and equipped by means of a subscription raised by myself and other ladies of the Valley. On the colours were inscribed these words, so full of pathos and inspiration:-

“Our God, our country, and our women.”

The corps was commanded by Colonel Nadenbush, and belonged to that section of the Southern army afterwards known as “the Stonewall Brigade.” “The Stonewall Brigade!”-the very name now bears with it traditions of surpassing glory; and I seize this opportunity of assuring English readers that it is with pride we Confederates acknowledge that our heroes caught their inspiration from the example of their English ancestors. When our descendants shall read the story of General Jackson and his men, they will be insensibly attracted to those earlier pages of history which record the exploits of Wellington’s Light Division.

My father’s regiment was hardly formed when it was ordered to Harper’s Ferry; for the sacred soil of Virginia was threatened with invasion, and it was thought possible to make a stand at this lovely spot, to see which is “worth a voyage across the Atlantic.” At the outbreak of the war Harper’s Ferry could boast of one of the largest and best arsenals in America, and of a magnificent bridge, which latter, spanning the broad stream of the Potomac, connected Maryland with Virginia. Both arsenal and bridge were blown up in July, 1861, by the Confederate forces, when the Federals, pressing upon them in overwhelming numbers, compelled a retreat.

My home had now become desolate and lonely: the excitement caused by our exertions to equip