I looked to Aunt Anne for help, but she simply shrugged and said in a hushed voice, “Caroline, please forgive us, dear, for arriving unannounced, but we had no one to send ahead of us. The Negroes would have all bolted over to the enemy, thinking they’d be free, if we had let them out of our sight.”
“I don’t mind at all. And I’m sorry for not welcoming you properly. Please, would you like something to eat, or maybe a place to rest or freshen up?”
“I’m not hungry, but perhaps Mother Fletcher would . . .”We both turned to ask Grandmother, but her eyes were closed and her head had lolled to the side, resting against the wings of the chair. She was snoring.
Aunt Anne and Cousin Thomas ate the light lunch Esther had quickly prepared, while Tessie and Luella readied the upstairs bedrooms for our guests. Gilbert hauled their luggage up to their rooms. We decided that Grandmother and her maid would sleep in Daddy’s library, since climbing the stairs was difficult for her.
“Hilltop is on the far side of the Chickahominy,” Aunt Anne explained as she ate, “and since the Confederate lines are on this side of the river, William thought it wise to send us to safety. The Federals are advancing, and the plantation will soon be in enemy hands.”
“They’re that close?” I asked, my stomach doing a slow, queasy turn.
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“I wanted to stay home and shoot Yankees,” young Thomas said, “but Father wouldn’t let me.” They were the first words he had spoken since he’d arrived. I calculated his age to be fourteen, nearly the age Jonathan had been the first time we’d met. But Thomas had none of his older brother’s curiosity and wiry vitality. Instead, Thomas was plump and lethargic and seemed content to sit and stare out the window all day. If he had stayed at Hilltop to shoot Yankees, I don’t know how he would have summoned the energy to reload the shotgun.
“William insisted on staying at the plantation,” Anne continued. “Heaven only knows what the Yankees will do with him. He’s the only one left, except for the slaves, but he didn’t want to abandon our home.”
“You are all very welcome here, Aunt Anne. Stay as long as you’d like.”
“We don’t want to be a burden to you. Your servants will find some produce in the wagon and the last of our hams. We’d rather you got them than the Yankees.”
“You have no idea what a blessing it will be to have real food again. Eli dug up his flower garden and planted vegetables this spring, but all we’ve harvested so far are some greens. Your food is a godsend.”
She smiled ruefully. “You may change your mind about what a godsend we are after you’ve lived with Mother Fletcher for a few days. But you know, out of all of us, I feel the most sorry for her. The war has changed everyone’s life—probably forever—but we’re still young enough to adjust, to start all over again if we have to. I pray to God that the war doesn’t take my husband or my sons, but at least the decision to engage in this folly was theirs to make. Mother Fletcher didn’t choose any of this. And now the quiet life she always had with her family, living on her own land, is gone— and no one can help her understand why.”
A few days later, early in the afternoon, a great rumble, like the roll of thunder, suddenly shook the house. Deaf as she was, Grandmother awoke from her catnap and said, “You’d better tell the servants to close the windows, Anne. It’s thundering.”
The skies were gray and overcast, but there weren’t any thunderclouds. Aunt Anne and I looked at each other as the rumbling booms grew louder. “It’s artillery,” I told her.
“Is it the war?” Thomas asked, looking up from the house of cards he was constructing. His mother nodded. “Tarnation! I want to fight, too, Ma, like Will and Jonathan. I’ll bet it’s grand.”
I knew better. The only thing
grand
was the scale of the slaughter. Every boom of the cannon meant men’s bodies were being blasted into pieces in a hail of canister shot and shrapnel.
We walked outside into the still, humid afternoon and listened. The fighting was the closest I’d ever heard it, just east of us. We felt the ground quaking. In the quiet moments between cannon blasts, we could hear the hollow clatter of gunfire, like bones rattling.
The horrific thundering finally stopped that evening, then resumed the next morning. By the time the battle ended the following afternoon, a long line of ambulances and farm wagons was already rolling into the city carrying the wounded and the dying.
“I’m going to Chimborazo Hospital to help,” I told Aunt Anne after lunch. She stared at me in surprise.
“You always did have a tender heart, Caroline. I remember how you nursed those little colored babies through the measles. But frankly, it surprises me that you’re able to go to such a dreadful place and see . . . that sort of thing.”
I forced myself to say what I had been thinking since the artillery fire began. “Charles and Jonathan are fighting out there somewhere. These soldiers might be from their company. If I don’t go and help them, who will?”
“I’d like to join you,” she said simply.
Chimborazo resembled a scene from Dante’s
Inferno
. I lost what little lunch I had eaten after I glimpsed a dying soldier whose entire lower jaw had been blown away. But from the men who were less seriously wounded, whose faces I cooled with water and whose thirst I helped ease, I learned that yesterday’s battle had been fought at Seven Pines, a few miles east of the city. Charles, along with the First Virginia Infantry, had taken part in a Confederate assault that attempted to push back the Union forces. The engagement had been successful the first day, then ended in a bloody draw the second. Among the wounded was the Rebel commander General Joe Johnston.
Before returning home, Aunt Anne and I drove downtown together, holding our breath and each other’s hands as we scanned a list of the four thousand men who had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. We sagged against each other in relief when we saw that Jonathan and Charles were not on it.
“You’ve changed, Caroline,” Aunt Anne said as we drove back up Church Hill afterward. “You’ve become a very strong young woman.”
I shook my head, my tears of relief still falling onto my lap. “No. I’m not strong at all. The fact that this war is so close terrifies me. Reading those lists and waiting to hear news of my loved ones is an agonizing ordeal. I’m not strong at all, Aunt Anne . . . but I’m learning to lean on a God who is.”
June 1862
All of Richmond was a hospital again. I spent every spare moment during the next week caring for wounded soldiers at Chimborazo Hospital. Then one quiet afternoon after the crisis eased and the hospital no longer needed me, a messenger came to our door. The man was gone again before I could hurry out to the foyer, but Gilbert handed me the note he had brought, scribbled on a folded scrap of greasy brown paper.
Dear Caroline,
I know that we are supposed to be at war with each other, but I cannot believe you would consider me your enemy. In Philadelphia, we were once dear friends, and I appeal to you now on the basis of that friendship.
I am being held here in Richmond as a prisoner of war. My fellow prisoners and I are suffering under dreadful conditions. Many of us are ill and near starvation. I remember your kindness and your Christian charity, and I ask for any shreds of mercy that you can spare my comrades and me. I am confined in a warehouse known as Libby Prison, in the east building.
Sincerely,
Lieutenant Robert Hoffman
United States Army
Eli and I went down to Libby Prison together. We parked the buggy on a side street and walked across the vacant lot beside the building beneath a broiling sun. The brick tobacco warehouse, which overlooked the canal, consisted of three conjoined buildings, four stories high, filling half a city block on the corner of Cary and Dock Streets. A faded sign, “L. Libby & Son, Ship Chandlers,” which had been hung by former owner Luther Libby, gave the prison its name. Behind the barred windows on the upper floors, I glimpsed shadowy figures, passing like ghosts. The sentries standing guard outside made Eli raise his arms as they searched him, then they searched the basket of food he carried. They directed us to Major Turner’s office on the ground floor.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. I had thought the hospital odorous, but Libby Prison’s hot, stifling air reeked—worse than any charnel house—of filth and death and human waste. I had to pull out my handkerchief and hold it over my nose and mouth to keep from gagging.
Major Turner scrambled to his feet when we entered his office. “Miss, you have obviously come to the wrong place. Let me escort you—”
“No, thank you, sir,” I said firmly. “I have come to Libby Prison to see one of your inmates.”
“Out of the question.”
I felt an immediate dislike for Major Turner. He hadn’t even taken the time to consider my request. Not much taller than me, Turner had a boyish face and a permanent frown—adopted, I guessed, to make himself appear more manly. My first impression was that he was a bully, and I determined to stand up to him— backed by Eli, of course, who towered over the man.
“My name is Caroline Fletcher,” I said. “My father is George Fletcher, owner of several warehouses in this district and recently commissioned by President Davis as a Captain in the Confederate Navy. My fiancé is Charles St. John, serving with the First Virginia Infantry. Surely you’ve heard of the St. John family, Major Turner? Proprietors of the city’s largest flour mill and one of Richmond’s most prominent families?”
“What is your business here, Miss Fletcher?” His voice was high-pitched, boyish.
“I’ve learned that a relative of mine is imprisoned here. I’ve come to see him on a mission of charity.”
“Leave your package. I’ll see that he gets it.”
“I don’t intend to leave until I’ve spoken with him, sir.”
Turner’s frown deepened. “This prison is not a suitable venue for social calls. We do not have the proper facilities for visitors to—”
“Then I’ll wait until a suitable room is prepared,” I said, seating myself on the chair in front of Major Turner’s desk. “I would hate to bother President Davis at such a busy time as this, just for a request to meet with my cousin. But I will do it, sir, if you force me to.” I saw Turner’s resolve weakening and added, “My cousin’s name is Lieutenant Robert Hoffman. I believe you’ll find him in the east building.”
The guards readied a small storeroom on the ground floor and escorted Robert inside. The windowless room quickly filled with his stench. I would have run forward to embrace him but he held out both hands, stopping me with a cry of horror.
“No, Caroline! No! I’m crawling with vermin!”
The skin on his hands and neck was scaly and raw from ringworm and scabbed insect bites. As I stepped closer I could see lice moving through his black hair. Robert was pale and thin; dark circles rimmed his mournful eyes. His infested hair was long and matted and dirty, his face unshaved. But he smiled and briefly gripped my fingers in a quick, reassuring squeeze.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. But heaven knows how I would defile you if we embraced.”
“Robert . . . I . . . I don’t know what to say. . . .” I could barely speak, barely see him through my tears. He was so horribly changed, a figure from a nightmare. Yet his voice, his sweet nature, were the same.
“You don’t need to say a word, Caroline. Just your beautiful presence . . . the fact that you came . . . they will sustain me for a year.”
The major had provided us with two wooden benches. Robert and I sat down, and I gave him the basket of food I had brought. It was meager fare by pre-war standards—a square of Esther’s corn bread, some cold boiled potatoes, a piece of leftover fish, a slice from one of Aunt Anne’s hams that we had been stingily doling out—but the sight of it, the aroma of it, caused Robert to break down and weep.
“I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry,” he repeated as he vainly tried to wipe his tears. “I don’t know what’s come over me . . . forgive me. . . .”
I longed to hold him, to comfort him, but I didn’t dare. I silently cursed the war, the stupidity and hatred that had reduced gentle Robert to such a state. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
The food trembled in Robert’s hands as he slowly began to eat. He lifted each bite to his nose first, closing his eyes and inhaling, before tasting each morsel. I knew by his appearance that he must be half-starved, but he took his time eating, allowing his shrunken stomach to adjust to food again.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Since early last November. I was part of a Federal expedition that crossed the Potomac at Ball’s Bluff, above Leesburg, Virginia. We were ordered to probe the Rebels’ defenses, but they proved stronger than we expected. The Rebs drove us back to the river, then mowed us down as we tried to get into our boats and escape.” He paused, struggling with his emotions. “I . . . I surrendered my unit rather than watch everyone die. Even so . . . I lost too many men.”
He looked down, concentrating on his food as if to distract himself. Robert had been raised in a wealthy home with the finest of table manners, but I watched him eat fish with filthy hands, then lick every precious drop of oil and juice off his fingers.
“The Rebels marched us through their lines to the rear,” he said when he could continue. “I was angry, humiliated. The war had barely begun and I was already a prisoner. They marched us double-quick, but I observed all their defenses, their reserves and artillery and gun emplacements. When the guards looked away, I hid my money, my watch, and any other valuables I owned in my clothing. I was glad I did. They found some of my money when they searched me, but not all of it. One of the Rebel guards took my haversack with all my rations, then tried to pump me for information in exchange for food and other favors. Another stole my boots and gave me his worn-out shoes to wear in their place.
“As we traveled south, more prisoners from other captured units joined us. I remember marching through one small town along a river and all the young boys came out to pelt us with stones and manure as we passed. The women jeered and spit at us. When we finally arrived in Richmond, they separated the other officers and me from the enlisted men and brought us here. I don’t know what they did with my men . . . I hope they’re being treated better than we are.”