United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
Throughout it all, the officers sit their horses, unmoved. A man on the
bank above draws a pistol and aims at a captain. A German private steps
from the ranks, forgetful of discipline, and points at the man, who is
cursing the captain's name. The captain, imperturbable, orders his man
back to his place. And the man does not shoot--yet.
Now are the prisoners of that regiment all in place between the two
files of it. A band (one of those which played lightsome music on the
birthday of the camp) is marched around to the head of the column. The
regiment with its freight moves on to make place for a battalion of
regulars, amid imprecations and cries of “Hurrah for Jeff Davis!” and
“Damn the Dutch! Kill the Hessians!”
Stephen Brice stood among the people in Lindell's Grove, looking up at
the troops on the road, which was on an embankment. Through the rows of
faces he had searched in vain for one. His motive he did not attempt
to fathom--in truth, he was not conscious at the time of any motive. He
heard the name shouted at the gate.
“Here they are,--the dragoons! Three cheers for Colfax! Down with the
Yankees!”
A storm of cheers and hisses followed. Dismounted, at the head of his
small following, the young Captain walked erect. He did not seem to hear
the cheers. His face was set, and he held his gloved hand over the place
where his sword had been, as if over a wound. On his features, in his
attitude, was stamped the undying determination of the South. How those
thoroughbreds of the Cavaliers showed it! Pain they took lightly. The
fire of humiliation burned, but could not destroy their indomitable
spirit. They were the first of their people in the field, and the last
to leave it. Historians may say that the classes of the South caused the
war; they cannot say that they did not take upon themselves the greatest
burden of the suffering.
Twice that day was the future revealed to Stephen. Once as he stood
on the hill-crest, when he had seen a girl in crimson and white in
a window,--in her face. And now again he read it in the face of her
cousin. It was as if he had seen unrolled the years of suffering that
were to come.
In that moment of deep bitterness his reason wavered. What if the South
should win? Surely there was no such feeling in the North as these
people betrayed. That most dangerous of gifts, the seeing of two
sides of a quarrel, had been given him. He saw the Southern view. He
sympathized with the Southern people. They had befriended him in his
poverty. Why had he not been born, like Clarence Colfax, the owner of a
large plantation, the believer in the divine right of his race to rule?
Then this girl who haunted his thoughts! Would that his path had been as
straight, his duty as easy, as that of the handsome young Captain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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