Away up in the heart of the Allegheny mountains, in
Pocahontas county, West Virginia, is a beautiful little valley through which
flows the east fork of the Greenbrier river. At a point where the valley road
intersects the old Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike, a famous thoroughfare in
its day, is a post office in a farm house. The name of the place is Travelers'
Repose, for it was once a tavern. Crowning some low hills within a stone's
throw of the house are long lines of old Confederate fortifications, skilfully
designed and so well"preserved"that an hour's work by a brigade would
put them into serviceable shape for the next civil war. This place had its
battle - what was called a battle in the"green and salad days"of the
great rebellion. A brigade of Federal troops, the writer's regiment among them,
came over Cheat mountain, fifteen miles to the westward, and, stringing its
lines across the little valley, felt the enemy all day; and the enemy did a
little feeling, too. There was a great cannonading, which killed about a dozen
on each side; then, finding the place too strong for assault, the Federals
called the affair a reconnaissance in force, and burying their dead withdrew to
the more comfortable place whence they had come. Those dead now lie in a
beautiful national cemetery at Grafton, duly registered, so far as identified,
and companioned by other Federal dead gathered from the several camps and
battlefields of West Virginia. The fallen soldier (the
word"hero"appears to be a later invention) has such humble honors as
it is possible to give.
His part in all
the pomp that fills
The circuit of the Summer hills
Is that his grave is green.
True, more than a half of the green graves in the
Grafton cemetery are marked"Unknown,"and sometimes it occurs that one
thinks of the contradiction involved in"honoring the memory"of him of
whom no memory remains to honor; but the attempt seems to do no great harm to
the living, even to the logical.
A few hundred
yards to the rear of the old Confederate earthworks is a wooded hill. Years ago
it was not wooded. Here, among the trees and in the undergrowth, are rows of
shallow depressions, discoverable by removing the accumulated forest leaves.
From some of them may be taken (and reverently replaced) small thin slabs of
the split stone of the country, with rude and reticent inscriptions by
comrades. I found only one with a date, only one with full names of man and
regiment. The entire number found was eight.
In these
forgotten graves rest the Confederate dead - between eighty and one hundred, as
nearly as can be made out. Some fell in the"battle;"the majority died
of disease. Two, only two, have apparently been disinterred for reburial at
their homes. So neglected and obscure is this campo santo that only he upon
whose farm it is--the aged postmaster of Travelers' Repose - appears to know
about it. Men living within a mile have never heard of it. Yet other men must
be still living who assisted to lay these Southern soldiers where they are, and
could identify some of the graves. Is there a man, North or South, who would
begrudge the expense of giving to these fallen brothers the tribute of green
graves? One would rather not think so. True, there are several hundreds of such
places still discoverable in the track of the great war. All the stronger is
the dumb demand--the silent plea of these fallen brothers to what
is"likest God within the soul."
They were honest
and courageous foemen, having little in common with the political madmen who
persuaded them to their doom and the literary bearers of false witness in the
aftertime. They did not live through the period of honorable strife into the
period of vilification - did not pass from the iron age to the brazen - from
the era of the sword to that of the tongue and pen. Among them is no member of
the Southern Historical Society. Their valor was not the fury of the
non-combatant; they have no voice in the thunder of the civilians and the
shouting. Not by them are impaired the dignity and infinite pathos of the Lost
Cause. Give them, these blameless gentlemen, their rightful part in all the
pomp that fills the circuit of the summer hills.
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