Five Forks: Waterloo of the Confederacy

3: The Fighting Has Just Begun

3 • • I The Fighting Has Just Begun r •• Two ifSheridan's Scouts (Sketchedfrom Life by Winslow Homer). Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 35 (November 1887): 132. ......... he fluorescent lighting and climate-controlled hiss cif the air-conditioning surround me as I sit with the Virginia Historical Society library's century-old magazznes. The war, I'm beginning to realize, was fought and rifOughtyear afteryear, in print or over a couple cifdrinks, as long as two veterans survived to argue about what had really happened and why. "The war is over," they said, "but the fighting has just begun." These voices speak to mefrom the pages cifConfederate Veteran and the Southern Historical Society Papers. This spring morning, the peace and light cif the library and the comforting hiss cifthe air conditioner are a long wayfrom battle. Rob e T t A I e x and e T 59 I • I THE SMITH PREMIER TYPEWRITER: Leads them all. Elegant, durable. Light and easy touch. PACIFIC COAST LIMITED: Equipment brand new. Finest trains on wheels. Fastest schedule through the sunny South to sunny California. SOUTHERN RAILWAYS, the Great Highway of Travel: Reaching the principal cities of the South with its own lines and penetrating all parts of the country with its connections, offers to the traveler unexcelled train service, elegant equipment, fast time. A REUNIFIED COUNTRY: No North, No South, No East, No West. National Reunion of the Blue and Gray. War dramas, prize drills, military maneuvering, and patriotic speeches will be accompanied by marching soldiers, beating of drums, rattle of musketry, and booming of cannon. This will awaken the martial spirit and bring back to the veteran the impulse of youth.1 - CHARLES K. MOSER: In the spring of 1908, while I was an editorial writer on the Washington Post, through the recommendation of Colonel John S. Mosby, late guerrilla leader of the Confederacy, or perhaps through his son, John S. Mosby, Jr., I received the manuscript attached hereto entitled "Five Forks: The Waterloo of the Confederacy, or the Last Days of Fitz Lee's Cavalry Division," from General Thomas T. Munford, late cavalry leader of the Confederate 60 THE FIG H TIN G HAS Jus T BEG U N Army.... He wished me to put it into shape for submittal to publishers as a book or magazine serial. We had an exchange of correspondence, all of which has since been lost or destroyed. I rewrote the manuscript, using essentially and wherever possible General Munford's exact language, except in certain instances where it seemed to me impolitic. The MS was then sent to General Munford for examination, and he returned it with his approval and some few interlineations in his own handwriting.... I sent the MS to Mr. Leonard Derbyshire, Publisher and Editor of The Sunday Magazine, a syndicated magazine published simultaneously in several hundred newspapers throughout the country. Before decision was made as to its suitability for publication, however, General Munford wrote me asking that publication be held up indefinitely. He had discussed it with his friend, Rev. Dr. Randolph McKim, Rector of the Church of the Epiphany at Washington, nc., and others of his old comrades-in-arms, who felt that publication while some of the actors in the final scenes of the Confederacy still lived would cause needless distress. Soon afterward I entered the service of the Department of State, was sent abroad, and never heard from General Munford afterwards. He had, however, left this manuscript with me to do with as I wished (to the best of my recollection) after his death. He was concerned only, he said, with vindication of his old comrades-in-arms of Fitz Lee's Cavalry Division, and with the truth of history! r • 1 Robert Alexander 61 LATE THAT AFTERNOON I take my dog for a walk across the street from my fiancee's house on the north side of Richmond. There's an undeveloped patch ofland in the noise-shadow of the freeway-a rocky creek bed that's usually a trickle but after rain can get to be a shoulder-high torrent in places: ravined sides, granite boulders exposed above the waterline. A couple ofhuge loblolly pines, an enormous willow oak. Honeysuckle. My dog, beginning to show her years, has trouble getting across the boulders. This creek is nameless on the maps I have of Richmond. I imagine that this is what Hatcher's Run looked like, one...