George Washington for his mother's family. Not far off is a monument erected to Mary, the mother of Washington, whose mortal remains rest here. It is of marble, measuring some nine feet square and fifteen in height, unfinished, capped with a mat of weeds, and bearing no inscription but the names of visitors who should have blushed to desecrate the tomb of the venerated dead. The monument has in other ways been sadly misused; in the first place, by. balls which nicked and chipped it during the battle; and afterwards by relic-hunters, who, in their rage for carrying away some fragment of it, have left scarce a corner of cornice or pilaster unbroken.

I had afterwards many walks about Fredericksburg, the most noteworthy of which was a morning-visit to the Lacy House, where Burnside had his headquarters. Crossing the Rappahannock on the pontoon bridge, I climbed the stone steps leading from terrace to terrace, and reached the longneglected grounds and the old-fashioned Virginia mansion. It was entirely deserted. The doors were wide open, or broken from their hinges, the windows smashed, the floors covered with rubbish, and the walls with the names of soldiers and regiments, or pictures cut from the illustrated newspapers,

--

The windows command a view of Fredericksburg and the battle-field; and there I stood, and saw in imagination the fight reenacted, the pontoniers at their work in the misty morning, the sharpshooters in rifle-pits and houses opposite driving them from it with their murderous fire, the shelling of the town, the troops crossing, the terrible roaring battle, the spouting flames, the smoke, the charging parties, and the horrible slaughter; --I saw and heard it all again, and fancied for a time that I was the commanding general, whose eyes beheld, and whose wrung heart felt, what he would gladly have given his own life to prevent or retrieve.

CHAPTER XIV.

TO CHANCELLORSVILLE.

In conversation with my Rebel acquaintance at the Marye House, I had learned that his friend ""Lijah" sometimes conveyed travellers over the more distant battle-fields. Him, therefore, I sent to engage with his horse and buggy for the following day.

Breakfast was scarcely over the next morning, when, as I chanced to look from my hotel-window, I saw a thin-faced countryman drive up to the door in an old one-horse wagon with two seats, and a box half filled with corn-stalks. I was admiring the anatomy of the horse, every prominent bone of which could be counted through his skin, when I heard the man inquiring for me. It was "Lijah," with his "horse and buggy."

I was inclined to criticise the establishment, which was not altogether what I had been led to expect.

"I allow he a'n't a fust-class hoss," said Elijah. "Only give three dollars for him. Feed is skurce and high. But let him rest this winter, and git some meal in him, and he'll make a plough crack next spring."

"What are you going to do with those corn-stalks?"

"Fodder for the hoss. They're all the fodder he 'll git till night; for we 're go'n' into a country whar thar's noth'n' mo'e for an animal to eat than thar is on the palm of my hand."

I took a seat beside him, and made use of the stalks by placing a couple of bundles between my back and the sharp board which travellers were expected to lean against. Elijah cracked his whip, the horse frisked his tail, and struck into a cow-trot which pleased him.

"You see, he'll snake us over the ground right peart!"

ELIJAH AND HIS MULE.

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He proceeded to tantalize me by telling what a mule he had, and what a little mare he had, at home.

"She certainly goes over the ground! I believe she can run ekal to anything in this country for about a mile. But she's got a set of legs under her jest like a sheep's legs." He could not say enough in praise of the mule.

"Paid eight hundred dollars for him in Confederate money. He earned a living for the whole family last winter. I used to go reg'lar up to Chancellorsville and the Wilderness, buy up a box of clothing, and go down in Essex and trade it off for corn."

"What sort of clothing?"

"Soldiers' clothes from the battle-fields. Some was flung away, and some, I suppose, was stripped off the dead. Any number of families jest lived on what they got from the Union armies in that way. They'd pick up what garments they could lay hands on, wash 'em up and sell 'em. I'd take a blanket, and git half a bushel of meal for it down in Essex. Then I'd bring the meal back, and git maybe two blankets, or a blanket and a coat, for it. All with that little mule. He'll haul a load for ye! He'll stick to the ground go'n' up hill jest like a dry-land tarrapin! But I take the mare when I'm in a hurry; she makes them feet rattle ag'in the ground!"

We took the plank-road to Chancellorsville, passing through a waste country of weeds or undergrowth, like every other part of Virginia which I had yet seen.

"All this region through yer," said Elijah, "used to be grow'd up to corn and as beautiful clover as ever you see. But since the wa', it's all turned out to bushes and briers and hog-weeds. It's gitt'n' a start ag'in now. I'll show 'em how to do it. If we git in a crap o' wheat this fall, which I don't know if we sha'n't, we kin start three big teams, and whirl up twenty acres of land directly. That mule," etc. Elijah praised the small farmers.

"People in ordinary sarcumstances along yer are a mighty industrious people. It's the rich that keep this country down.

The way it generally is, a few own too much, and the rest own noth'n'. I know hundreds of thousands of acres of land put to no uset, which, if it was cut up into little farms, would make the country look thrifty. This is mighty good land; clay bottom; holds manure jest like a chany bowl does water. But the rich ones jest scratched over a little on 't with their slave labor, and let the rest go. They would n't sell; let a young man go to 'em to buy, and they'd say they didn't want no poo' whites around 'em; they would n't have one, if they could keep shet of 'em. And what was the result? Young men would go off to the West, if they was enterpris'n', and leave them that wa'n't enterpris'n' hyer to home. Then as the old heads died off, the farms would run down. The young women would marry the lazy young men, and raise up families of lazy children."

The country all about Fredericksburg was very unhealthy. Elijah, on making inquiries, could hear of scarcely a family on the road exempt from sickness.

"It was never so till sence the wa'. Now we have chills and fever, jest like they do in a new country. It's owin' to the land all comin' up to weeds; the dew settles in 'em and they rot, and that fills the air with the ager. I've had the ager myself till about a fortnight ago; then soon as I got shet of that, the colic. took me. Eat too much on a big appetite, I suppose. I like to live well; like to see plenty of everything on the table, and then I like to see every man eat a heap." I commended Elijah's practical sense; upon which he replied,

"The old man is right ignorant; can't read the fust letter; never went to school a day; but the old man is right sharp!" He was fond of speaking of himself in this way. He thought education a good thing, but allowed that all the education in the world could not give a man sense. He was fifty years

old, and had got along thus far in life very well.

"I reckon thar's go'n' to be a better chance for the poo' man after this. The Union bein' held together was the greatest thing that could have happened for us."

ELIJAH'S ACCOUNT OF SEDGWICK'S RETREAT. 117

"And yet you fought against it."

"I was in the Confederate army two year and a half. I was opposed to secession; but I got my head a little turned after the State went out, and I enlisted. Then, when I had time to reconsider it all over, I diskivered we was wrong. I told the boys so.

666

Boys,' says I, when my time's up, I'm go'n' out of the army, and you won't see me in ag'in.'

"You can't help that, old man,' says they; fo' by that time the conscript law 'll be changed so 's to go over the heads of older men than you.'

"Then,' says I, the fust chance presents itself, I fling down my musket and go spang No'th.'

"They had me put under arrest for that, and kep' me in the guard-house seven months. I liked that well enough. I was saved a deal of hard march'n' and lay'n' out in the cold, that winter.

666

"Why don't ye come in boys,' says I, and have a warm?' "I knowed what I was about! The old man was right ignorant, but the old man was right sharp!"

We passed the line of Sedgwick's retreat a few miles from Fredericksburg.

66

"Shedrick's mer was in line acrost the road hyer, extendin' into the woods on both sides; they had jest butchered their meat, and was ishyin' rations and beginnin' to cook their suppers, when Magruder struck 'em on the left flank." (Elijah was wrong; it was not Magruder, but McLaws. These local guides make many such mistakes, and it is necessary to be on one's guard against them.) They jest got right up and skedaddled! The whole line jest faced to the right, and put for Banks's Ford. Thar 's the road they went. They left it piled so full of wagons, Magruder could n't follah, but his artillery jest run around by another road I'll show ye, hard as ever they could lay their feet to the ground, wheeled their guns in position on the bluffs by the time Shedrick got cleverly to crossin', and played away. The way they heaped up Shedrick's men was awful!"