CAMPAIGNING IN THE VALLEY

BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE

[From an article, "The Creed of the Old South," in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1892. The Shenandoah Valley, in northwestern Virginia, was the scene of much severe fighting during the Civil War. In 1864, Lee sent General Jubal A. Early into this valley to threaten Washington. By this move he hoped to draw off a part of Grant's army, which was pressing down upon Richmond. General John B. Gordon was one of Early's lieutenants. Sheridan defeated Early and forced him out of the valley.

Sheridan's famous "ride" occurred during this campaign. He made a dash on horseback from Winchester to the battlefield on Cedar Creek, rallying his retreating troops and turning defeat into victory. William McKinley and Rutherford B. Hayes, both to become presidents of the United States at a later day, were officers under Sheridan in this battle.]

IN the midsummer of 1863 I was serving as a private in the First Virginia Cavalry. Gettysburg was in the past, and there was not much fighting to be done, but the cavalry was not wholly idle. Raids had to be intercepted, and the enemy was not to be allowed to vaunt himself too much; so that I gained some experience of the hardships of that arm of the service. . . . Now in one of these charges some of us captured a number of the opposing force, among them a young lieutenant. Why this particular capture should have impressed me so I cannot tell, but memory is a tricky thing. A large red fox scared up from his lair by the fight at Castleman's Ferry stood for a moment looking at me; and I shall never forget the stare of that red fox. The explosion of a particular caisson, the shriek of a special shell, will ring in one's ears for life.

A captured lieutenant was no novelty, and yet this captured lieutenant caught my eye and held it. A handsomer young fellow, a more noble-looking, I never beheld among Federals or Confederates, as he stood there, bareheaded, among his captors, erect and silent. His eyes were full of fire, his

lips showed a slight quiver of scorn, and his hair seemed to tighten its curls in defiance. Doubtless I had seen as fine specimens of young manhood before, but if so, I had seen without looking, and this man was evidently what we called a gentleman.

Southern men were proud of being gentlemen, and showed, as was thought, undue exclusiveness on this subject. But this prisoner was the embodiment of the best type of Northern youth, with a spirit as high, as resolute, as could be found in the ranks of Southern gentlemen; and though in theory all enlightened Southerners recognized the high qualities of some of our opponents, this one noble figure in "flesh and blood" was better calculated to inspire respect for "those people," as we had learned to call our adversaries, than many pages of "gray theory."

A little more than a year afterwards, in Early's Valley campaign, a rude school of warfare, I was serving as a vol-I unteer aide on General Gordon's staff. The day before the disaster of Fisher's Hill I was ordered, together with another staff officer, to accompany the general on a ride to the front. The general had a well-known weakness for inspecting the outposts, a weakness that made a position in his suite somewhat precarious. The officer 1 with whom I was riding had not been with us long, and when he joined the staff had just recovered from wounds and imprisonment. A man of winning appearance, sweet temper, and attractive manners, he soon made friends of the military family, and I never learned to love a man so much in so brief an acquaintance, though hearts knit quickly in the stress of war. He was highly educated, and foreign residence and travel had widened his vision without affecting the simple faith and thorough consecration of the Christian. Here let me say that the bearing of the Confederates is not to be under

1 This officer was Captain George H. Williamson, of Maryland, who was educated at Harvard and abroad. He was a lawyer in Baltimore when the war broke out.

stood without taking into account the deep religious feeling of the army and its great leaders. It is an historical element, like any other, and is not to be passed over in summing up the forces of the conflict.

We rode together towards the front, and as we rode our talk fell on Goethe and on Faust, and of all passages the soldiers' song came up to my lips, the song of soldiers of fortune, not the chant of men whose business it was to defend their country. Two lines, however, were significant:

"Kuhn ist das Muhen,

Herrlich der Lohn." 1

We reached the front. An occasional "zip" gave warning that the sharpshooters were not asleep, and the quick eye of the general saw that our line needed rectification and how. Brief orders were given to the officer in command. My comrade was left to aid in carrying them out. The rest of us withdrew. Scarcely had we ridden a hundred yards towards camp when a shout was heard, and, turning round, we saw one of the men running after us. "The captain had been killed." The peace of heaven was on his face, as I gazed on the noble features that afternoon. The bullet had passed through his official papers and found his heart. He had received his discharge, and the glorious reward had been won.

This is the other picture that the talk of the two old soldiers called up, dead Confederate against living Federal; and these two pictures stand out before me again, as I am trying to make others understand and to understand myself what it was to be a Southern man twenty-five years ago; what it was to accept with whole heart the creed of the Old South. The image of the living Federal bids me refrain from harsh words in the presence of those who were my captors. The dead Confederate bids me uncover the sacred memories that the dust of life's Appian Way hides from the tenderest and truest of those whose business it is to live and work. For my dead comrade 1 Bold is the venture, glorious the reward.

1

of the Valley campaign is one of many; some of them my friends, some of them my pupils as well. The 18th of July, 1861, laid low one of my Princeton College room-mates; on the 21st, the day of the great battle, the other fell, — both bearers of historic names, both upholding the cause of their State with as unclouded a conscience as any saint in the martyrology ever wore.

SERGEANT JASPER

JOHN B. GORDON

[From an address' at Savannah, Georgia, February 22, 1888, at the dedication of a monument to Jasper. General Gordon was then governor of Georgia. The exploits of Sergeant Jasper became famous through the narrative by Parson Weems in his life of Marion.]

PERHAPS no comparatively obscure name has ever gathered about it, after the lapse of a century, so general and tender an interest as that of Sergeant William Jasper. There was nothing in Jasper's birth, education, or circumstances, as far as these are known, calculated to arrest the attention or impress the imagination. He was born in our sister State of South Carolina, of humble parentage, and died an unpretending soldier in the non-commissioned ranks of a rebel army, and died, too, in the very hour of disastrous defeat. Yet there stands not upon this, or any other continent, one monument more worthily erected than the granite column and bronze statue which we are here to unveil.

At Fort Moultrie, on June 28, 1776, he leaped through an embrasure, under furious fire, and recovered, with its shattered staff, the fallen flag of South Carolina. In Georgia, on outpost duty, he released prisoners from the enemy's hands, and distinguished himself by deeds of extraordinary daring. His life was a noble illustration of all the characteristics that adorn the 1 His Princeton room-mates were James Kendall Lee and Peyton Randolph Harrison. 2 Bull Run.

soldier and the patriot. It was an exhibition of all the boasted virtues of the knighthood of olden times. His courage was of the most heroic and elevated type. Patriotism burned with a steadfast and undying flame in his breast. His modesty was as conspicuous as his splendid and unselfish valor. He little thought, when with his dying breath he said, "Tell Mrs. Elliott that I saved the flag she gave me, though I lost my life," that he was placing in the hands of the historic muse one of the rarest gems of chivalry that ever sparkled upon her bosom. Indeed, his modest worth, his lofty courage, his self-sacrifice, his disinterestedness, and his touching reverence for womanhood, in the hour of danger and of death, constitute the very essence and glory of chivalry. They illustrate the truth, that genuine greatness of soul is independent of rank, of titles, of station.

You have raised this monument not only to Jasper, but to that vast army of unpretending heroes who, in all armies, have fought and suffered, and without hope of distinction have forgotten self, braved dangers, faced death unblanched, torn flags from the enemy's hands, and placed their own on hostile breastworks, or gone down to unlettered graves, in the crash and carnage of war.

But, again, this monument will become another bond of sympathy between Ireland and America. Let us regard it, in some sense, as a memorial of the heroic and pathetic struggle waged for self-government by Jasper's fatherland, that Niobe of the nations, "songful, soulful, sorrowful Ireland," the echoes of whose woes are in the very heart of Christendom, whose genius and courage have enriched and ennobled every land, and whose irrepressible passion for liberty, growing stronger through centuries of oppression, is the great phenomenon of history.

Lastly, I interpret the purpose of your monument to be the commemoration of those noble attributes of character which Jasper so beautifully illustrated in his life and death. "God save liberty and my country!" was his exclamation as he rescued the flag at Fort Moultrie. And as he closed his eyes upon his