Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER II THE G A Y E T I E S OF WAS K I N G ton , to which I alluded in my first chapter, were soon eclipsed by the clouds that gathered in the political horizon. The contest for the Presidentship was over, and the men of the South could no longer hide it from themselves, that the issue of the struggle must determine their fate. The secession of the Southern States, individually or in the aggregate , was the certain consequence of Mr. Lincoln's election. His accession to a power supreme and almost unparalleled was an unequivocal declaration, by the merchants of New England, that they had resolved to exclude the landed proprietors of the South from all participation in the legislation of their common country. I will not attempt to defend the institution of slavery, the very name of which is abhorred in England; but it will be admitted that the emancipation of the negro was not the object of Northern ambition; that is, of the faction which grasps exclusive power in contempt of general rights. Slavery, like all other imperfect forms of society, will have its day; but the time for its final extinction in the Confederate States of America has not yet arrived. Can it be urged that a race which prefers servitude to freedom has reached that adolescent period of existence which fits it for the latter condition? Meanwhile, which stands in the better position, the helot of the South, or the "free" negro of the 74 B E L L E BOYD IN C A M P AND P R I S O N North—the willing slave of a Confederate master, or the reluctant victim of Federal conscription? And here I must take leave to ask a question of two great authors, both formerlyadvocates of an instantaneous abolition of slavery. Is the ghost of Uncle Tom laid? Has the slave dreamed his last dream? Will Mrs. H. B. Stowe and Mr. Longfellow admit that in either instance the hero owes his reputation for martydom to a creative genius and to an exquisite fancy? or will they still contend that the negro slave of the Confederate States is, physically and morally, a real object of commiseration? The first champion of freedom—I speak advisedly, and in defiance of a seeming paradox—was South Carolina. She was a slaveholding State, but she flung down the gauntlet in the name and for the cause of liberty. Her bold example was soon followed; State after State seceded, and the Union was dissolved. It was now that we heard of the fall of Fort Sumter and Mr. Lincoln's demand upon the State of Virginia. He called upon her to furnish her quota of 75,000 recruits, to engage in battle with her sister States. He sowed the dragon's teeth, and he soon reaped the only harvest that could spring from such seed. Virginia promptly answered to the call, and produced the required soldiers; but they did not rallyunder the Stars and Stripes. It wasto the Stars and Bars, the emblem of the South, that Mr. Lincoln's Virginia soldiers tendered the oath of military allegiance. The flag of the once loved, but now dishonored Union, was lowered, and the colors of the Confederacy were raised in its place. Since that memorable epoch, those colors have been baptized with the blood of thousands, to whose death, in a cause so righteous, the honor and reverence that wait upon martyrdom have been justly awarded: Oh, if there be in this earthly sphere A boon, an offering, Heaven holds dear, It is the libation that Libertydraws From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her cause. The enthusiasm of the enlistment was adequate to the occasion. Old men, with gray hairs and stooping forms, young boys, just able to B E L L E BOYD IN C A M P AND P R I S O N 75 shoulder a musket, strong and weak, rich and poor, rallied round our new standard, actuated by a stern sense of duty, and eager for death or victory. It wasat this exciting crisis that I returned to Martinsburg; and, oh! what a striking contrast my native village presented to the scenes I had just left behind me at Washington! My winter had been cheered by every kind of amusement and every form of pleasure: my summer was about...