Rebecca Harding Davis's Stories of the Civil War Era: Selected Writings from the Borderlands

John Lamar (1862)

T John Lamar HE guard-house was, in fact, nothing but a shed in the middle of a stubble-field. It had been built for a cider-press last summer; but since Captain Dorr had gone into the army, his regiment had camped over half his plantation, and the shed was boarded up, with heavy wickets at either end, to hold whatever prisoners might fall into their hands from Floyd’s forces.1 It was a strong point for the Federal troops, his farm,—a sort of wedge in the Rebel Cheat counties of Western Virginia.2 Only one prisoner was in the guard-house now. The sentry, a raw boat-hand from Illinois, gaped incessantly at him through the bars, not sure if the “Secesh”3 were limbed and headed like other men; but the November fog was so thick that he could discern nothing but a short, squat man, in brown clothes and white hat, heavily striding to and fro. A negro was crouching outside, his knees cuddled in his arms to keep warm: a field-hand, you could be sure from the face, a grisly patch of flabby black, with a dull eluding word of something, you could not tell what, in the points of eyes,—treachery or gloom. The prisoner stopped, cursing him about something: the only answer was a lazy rub of the heels. “Got any ’baccy, Mars’ John?” he whined, in the middle of the hottest oath. The man stopped abruptly, turning his pockets inside out. “That ’s all, Ben,” he said, kindly enough. “Now begone, you black devil!” From the Atlantic Monthly (April 1862): 411–423. 1 John Buchanan Floyd (1806–1863), a noted Virginian and Confederate general, is credited with unsuccessfully engaging in conflicts in the Kanawha Valley area of western Virginia (today West Virginia) and losing the Battle of Fort Donelson in Tennessee. 2 The Cheat River runs through several northern West Virginia counties. 3 Derogatory slang for secessionists. 2 John Lamar “Dem ’s um, Mars’! Goin’ ’mediate,”—catching the tobacco, and lolling down full length as his master turned off again. Dave Hall, the sentry, stared reflectively, and sat down. “Ben? Who air you next?”—nursing his musket across his knees, babyfashion . Ben measured him with one eye, polished the quid in his greasy hand, and looked at it. “Pris’ner o’ war,” he mumbled, finally, —contemptuously; for Dave’s trousers were in rags like his own, and his chilblained toes stuck through the shoe-tops. Cheap white trash, clearly. “Yer master’s some at swearin’. Heow many, neow, hes he like you, down to Georgy?” The boatman’s bony face was gathering a woful pity. He had enlisted to free the Uncle Toms, and carry God’s vengeance to the Legrees.4 Here they were, a pair of them. Ben squinted another critical survey of the “miss’able Linkinite.”5 “How many wells hev yer poisoned since yer set out?” he muttered. The sentry stopped. “How many ’longin’ to de Lamars? ’Bout as many as der’s dam’ Yankees in Richmond ’baccy-houses!” Something in Dave’s shrewd, whitish eye warned him off. “Ki yi! yer white nigger, yer!” he chuckled, shuffling down the stubble. Dave clicked his musket,—then, choking down an oath into a grim Methodist psalm, resumed his walk, looking askance at the coarse-moulded face of the prisoner peering through the bars, and the diamond studs in his shirt,—bought with human blood, doubtless. The man was the black curse of slavery itself in the flesh, in his thought somehow, and he hated him accordingly. Our men of the Northwest have enough brawny Covenanter6 muscle in their religion to make them good haters for opinion’s sake. 4 In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Tom is a slave brutalized by the white slave owner Simon Legree. 5 Supporters of President Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause. 6 In the seventeenth century, a group known as the Covenanters became important to the religious and political development of Scotland. Covenanters, known for their religious intolerance and early support of Cromwell, are credited with the development and spread of Presbyterianism, which was favored by the people (Episcopacy was the choice of the monarchy). John Lamar 3 Lamar, the prisoner, watched him with a lazy drollery in his sluggish black eyes. It died out into sternness, as he looked beyond the sentry. He...