Fitz-Hugh St. Clair; The South Carolina Rebel Boy. Or, It Is No Crime to Be Born a Gentleman (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IX. TIIE BATTLE GF MANASSAS. ALL through the dark and gloomy winter after the General's visit home, and return to the army, amid desolations and sufferings, sueh as it seemed ineredible eould exist in Ameriea, our people struggled. Uneomphiiningly they endured every privation, hoping for the day that would bring peaee and independenee to our distraeted land. Sometimes we were exultant with hope, then again upon the very verge of despair; prayer-meetings were held daily, and from eveiy family altar went up the ery for " peaee." We knew we were fighting the whole world, and at fearful odds, too, hut right and justiee were on our side, and we believed God would, in his own good time, interpose in our behalf. Heartless extortioners, shirking military duty, urged Lee "on to Washington," harangued the soldiers as to the neeessity of "dying in the last diteh," while they took from their families a whole month's wages for a bushel of eorn. The priees asked for provisions almost amounted to a prohibition, and Mrs. St. Clair's health was failing for want of nourishing food. They seldom tasted meat; eorn-hominy and sorghum-syrup, with rye. as a substitute for tea and eoffee, was their chief subsistenee. As in the time of William and Mary, money had merely a nominal value ? we eould not purehase provisions with it. A peek of eorn, or a pieee of baeon, must be paid for with leather or yarn; and even after the food was obtained and eooked, it was seareely palatable, for salt was not to be had at any priee. Old smoke-houses were torn down, and the dirt floors boiled for the salt they eontained. The sediment of an old maekerel-barrel was regarded as a " treasure- trove," to sueh straits were we redueed. Is it at all surprising, that we eould not give the Federal prisoners ...