E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 58523-h.htm or 58523-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/58523/58523-h/58523-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/58523/58523-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesofp00pryoiala Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). [Illustration: GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE ON "TRAVELLER." _From a photograph by Miley, Lexington, Va._] REMINISCENCES OF PEACE AND WAR by MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR Author of "The Mother of Washington and Her Times" Revised And Enlarged Edition New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers Copyright, 1904, 1905, by the Macmillan Company. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1904. Reprinted December, 1904; March, 1905. New edition, with additions, September, 1905; April, 1908. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE MEMORY OF My Son WILLIAM RICE PRYOR, M.D. WHO GAVE TO SUFFERING HUMANITY ALL THAT GOD HAD GIVEN HIM Preface It will be obvious to the reader that this book affects neither the "dignity of history" nor the authority of political instruction. The causes which precipitated the conflict between the sections and the momentous events which attended the struggle have been recounted by writers competent to the task. But descriptions of battles and civil convulsions do not exhibit the full condition of the South in the crisis. To complete the picture, social characteristics and incidents of private life are indispensable lineaments. It occurs to the author that a plain and unambitious narrative of her recollections of Washington society during the calm which preceded the storm, and of Virginia under the afflictions and sorrows of the fratricidal strife, will not be without interest in the retrospect of that memorable era. The present volume recalls that era in the aspect in which it appeared to a woman rather than as it appeared to a statesman or a philosopher. ROGER A. PRYOR. Contents CHAPTER I PAGE Washington in the Fifties—Literary Society during Fillmore's Administration—John P. Kennedy, G. P. R. James, Mrs. Gales, and Mrs. Seaton—Anna Cora Mowatt 3 CHAPTER II