I turned and rode over to where he stood, unsteadily, as he called again, “General Lee, I—I—I’m Captain Andy Yates. You know me. I’m Molly Campbell’s husband. You know, Molly Campbell, from Gauley Mountain. Tell her, tell her for me—somehow get word to her—that I’m all right. That I’ll be coming home soon.”
I dismounted and inquired as to where he was wounded. He showed me the top of his head where the hair was discolored by blood.
“A piece of shell hit me. I guess it knocked me out for a while. I’m all right now. I’m Andy—don’t you recognize me? Over there, under that tree is Black Demon, waiting for me. They won’t deliver my letters to her. She thinks I’ve deserted her. Can’t you get word that I’m all right?” he requested.
I assured him that I would do my best, and he ran to me, throwing his arms around me. He asked, “Are you retreating, General?”
I assured him we were withdrawing and for him to be careful and return to his men.
Then he asked, “You missed General Jackson today?”
I had to be truthful and answered yes.
He answered, “If he had been here today, you would be riding the other way.”
He did not know how true it was. He didn’t know that General Longstreet, who was second in command, taking Thomas’s place, disapproved of my plan for battle. Sulking, he failed to support and cooperate with me, like Jackson would have done.
Over and over in my mind I question if I was too prone to take the offensive and march into the North’s territory. We crushed them at Chancellorsville, and the odds were about the same. Have I lost the war for the South by ordering thousands of men into battle against terrible odds because of my overconfidence? Lord forbid.
Molly, you may have had word from Andy by the time this letter reaches you. I assure you his wound was not serious. Forgive me for not writing you sooner, but preparing for the defense of the valley has been quite an undertaking without Tom.
Some weeks later, Rachel carried General Lee’s letter into Molly’s bedroom, where she lay rigidly in bed, her eyes wide and staring, and every bone and muscle in her grief-ridden body ached. A few days after she laid her brother to rest in the small family cemetery, she received Andy’s letter relating how Levi died.
After reading the contents, Molly’s depression deepened until she began spending hour after hour in her bedroom, sobbing. Hours grew from mealtime to mealtime and then into days. Molly had not departed her bedroom for nearly a month before the letter from General Lee arrived. Rachel cooked and carried her meals to her room each day. At first she ate most of what was placed before her. As the days went by she consumed less and less, until now it was down to a bite or two at each meal and then only when Rachel pleaded, coaxed, and hand-fed her.
The only thing she neglected more than her meals was her daughter, Pearl. It was as if she did not exist. Rachel had become Pearl’s black Nanny and cared for her with the same love and affection that she gave her mother only a few years before.
Molly’s feeble hands opened the letter. With arms shaking and bent upward, she held the paper in front of her and slowly read the message. Her weakened fingers let go; the pages dangled from one hand and then floated down onto her breast.
Rachel bent downward to retrieve them when Molly took her thin, seamed face in her bony hands and weakly pulled her forward and in a weak, low voice murmured, “Nanny—Rachel—take good care of Pearl for me. Take her. Make her yours, but never, never let Andy know. Never let him know she is his—promise me. Promise me.”
Tears began to flow down Rachel’s long, slim cheeks. Sobbing, she answered, “Molly! Molly! I’ll promise you, child. I’ll promise, missy, that you can cut my heart out, I’ll never tell.”
Somewhere within, Molly gained strength, smiled, and then she knew nothing.
It was near dusk when Rubin rode into our place, shouting hysterically. After calming him down, he explained that Molly had died. He soon saddled my horse. It was dark when we rode out the Clifty Road to the Pines. I was the only one that could go. Your great-granddad was with the Confederate troops somewhere in Tennessee.
The following morning, Rubin hitched up the horses to the wagon for a trip to Fayetteville. There he notified the undertaker of Molly’s death. He obtained a mahogany-stained pine casket and returned. Late in the afternoon he dug a grave by Levi, and we laid Molly to rest.
It was in April 1865, almost two years after Molly’s death, that General Lee wrote her another letter. Rachel delivered the letter to me along with a stack of Andy’s letters, tied together with brown twine, and those written by General Lee. I kept them for several years and gave them to Pearl on her sixteenth birthday.
In those two years terrible battles had been fought, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, the Wilderness, Petersburg, stirring and terrible scenes had been wasted across the face of our nation. General Grant had been placed in command of all the Yankee armies, and he promised Lincoln that he would “hammer” the Confederacy unceasingly until he hammered the life out of her. He fulfilled his promise. General Sherman had marched south with his army, where he sacked and burned Atlanta. From Atlanta he marched to the sea, laying waste the country for miles around. General Phil Sheridan devastated the Valley of Virginia, the bread basket of the Confederacy, with such malicious destruction that in one of his reports to Grant, he is supposed to have written, “A crow crossing the Valley of Virginia will have to carry its own rations.”
The South had been hemmed in by land and by sea. Although her resources were drained, she was game to the end. But the end had come, and Lee, with his little army, ragged and starving, had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. A week previous, Lee staved off final defeat by withdrawing during the night from Petersburg and Richmond, retreating westward, hoping to save the cities. At the same time, President Davis and other members of the Confederate government deserted the capitol, which was left to the mercy of plundering blacks and drunken whites. Much destruction was wrought until Phil Sheridan dispatched a Colonel Yates[5] with a detachment of cavalry to quell the plundering. He held the plunderers in check until General Wetzel arrived with his division to occupy the city.
Two days after his surrender at Appomattox, General Lee bade farewell to his troops. Then, mounting his faithful horse, Traveler, he rode away, down the Valley of Humiliation. He was going home now—home to his wife and children at the fallen Confederate capitol, Richmond. His head was bowed, his lips closed, and teardrops dampened his cheeks as he rode away with many following in pitying silence.
When he rode across the bridge over the James River into Richmond, he found the whole city waiting to receive him. Throngs of citizens and troops gathered about him and rent the air with deafening cheers. As he rode through the city streets toward his home, the crowds thickened and the cheers grew louder. “It was the greeting of a conqueror rather than that of the conquered,” one newspaper account reported, in describing his return home. “This man, wonderful even in adversity, with hat removed, head bowed, passed through the streets of the fallen citadel of the once proud Confederacy, to his home, which for several days had been vigilantly guarded and protected by Federal troops. When he reached his door and was about to escape into the house, a Federal officer burst through the crowd and seized his arm. The officer wore a stubble beard of a month’s growth or more. His uniform was wrinkled and bespattered with mud. From head to foot he was unkempt, and neglect was personified. In his eyes was an expression of wild delirium as he called in a strained and excited tone to the great warrior, “General Lee! General Lee!” And then he was overheard to say, “Molly’s aunt has been killed by plunderers and her house has been burned.”
5
Colonel Andy Yates was registered as one of Phil Sheridan’s staff, which substantiates the last two letters from General Lee to Molly. One she read. The other, she didn’t.