Chapter I: Introduction

This history was told over the tea-cups. One winter, in the South, I had for my neighbor a gentle, little brown-haired lady, who spent many evenings at my fireside, as I at hers, where with bits of needlework in our hands we gossiped away as women will. I discovered in her an unconscious heroine, and her Civil War experiences made ever an interesting topic. Wishing to share with others the reminiscences she gave me, I seek to present them here in her own words. Just as they stand, they are, I believe, unique, possessing at once the charm of romance and the veracity of history. They supply a graphic, if artless, picture of the social life of one of the most interesting and dramatic periods of our national existence. The stories were not related in strict chronological sequence, but I have endeavored to arrange them in that way. Otherwise, I have made as few changes as possible. Out of deference to the wishes of living persons, her own and her husband’s real names have been suppressed and others substituted; in the case of a few of their close personal friends, and of some whose names would not be of special historical value, the same plan has been followed.

Those who read this book are admitted to the sacred councils of close friends, and I am sure they will turn with reverent fingers these pages of a sweet and pure woman’s life--a life on which, since those fireside talks of ours, the Death-Angel has set his seal.

Memoirs and journals written not because of their historical or political significance, but because they are to the writer the natural expression of what life has meant to him in the moment of living, have a value entirely apart from literary quality. They bring us close to the human soul--the human soul in undress. We find ourselves without preface or apology in personal, intimate relation with whatever makes the yesterday, to-day, to-morrow of the writer. When this current of events and conditions is impelled and directed by a vital and formative period in the history of a nation, we have only to follow its course to see what history can never show us, and what fiction can unfold to us only in part--how the people thought, felt, and lived who were not making history, or did not know that they were.

This is the essential value of A Virginia Girl in the Civil War: it shows us simply, sincerely, and unconsciously what life meant to an American woman during the vital and formative period of American history. That this American woman was also a Virginian with all a Virginian’s love for Virginia and loyalty to the South, gives to her record of those days that are still “the very fiber of us” a fidelity rarely found in studies of local color. Meanwhile, her grateful affection for the Union soldiers, officers and men, who served and shielded her, should lift this story to a place beyond the pale of sectional prejudice.

MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY.

NEW YORK, _November 1, 1902_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I.--HOME LIFE IN A SOUTHERN HARBOR 1

II.--HOW I MET DAN GREY 12

III.--THE FIRST DAYS OF THE CONFEDERACY 22

IV.--THE REALITIES OF WAR 38

V.--I MEET BELLE BOYD AND SEE DICK IN A NEW LIGHT 51

VI.--A FAITHFUL SLAVE AND A HOSPITAL WARD 59

VII.--TRAVELING THROUGH DIXIE IN WAR TIMES 69

VIII.--BY FLAG OF TRUCE 83

IX.--I MAKE UP MY MIND TO RUN THE BLOCKADE 91

X.--I CROSS THE COUNTRY IN AN AMBULANCE AND THE
PAMUNKEY ON A LIGHTER 101

XI.--THE OLD ORDER 113

XII.--A DANGEROUS MASQUERADE 124

XIII.--A LAST FAREWELL 139

XIV.--THE LITTLE JEW BOY AND THE PROVOST’S DEPUTY 144

XV.--I FALL INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY 150

XVI.--THE FLOWER OF CHIVALRY 172

XVII.--PRISONERS OF THE UNITED STATES 188

XVIII.--WITHIN OUR LINES 211

XIX.--MY COMRADE GENERAL JEB STUART 230

XX.--“WHOSE BUSINESS ’TIS TO DIE” 244

XXI.--RESCUED BY THE FOE 263

XXII.--WITH DAN AT CHARLOTTESVILLE 285

XXIII.--“INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH” 297

XXIV.--BY THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH 315

XXV.--THE BEGINNING OF THE END 330

XXVI.--HOW WE LIVED IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE
CONFEDERACY 349

XXVII.--UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES 365

A VIRGINIA GIRL IN THE CIVIL WAR