News from Virginia

LETTERS FROM LEE'S ARMY (312 pp.)--Abridged by Charles Minor Blackford III--Sender ($3.50).

Charles Minor Blackford, 2nd Virginia Cavalry, kissed his wife goodbye, grabbed his double-barreled shotgun, mounted his "very fine roan" and rode out of Lynchburg, Va. one morning in June 1861.

Some four years later, the Confederacy and most of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry were dead. But young Captain Blackford survived. He lived on long enough to edit, with his wife Susan Leigh Blackford, the letters they had exchanged during the war. Privately printed in two volumes in 1894, they are now abridged by Grandson Charles Minor Blackford III.*

Calico & Cream Pots. As letters, they make fascinating reading; as a record of Southern life, 1861-65, they are worth a stack of yarns like Gone With the Wind. The title tells only part of the story, for some of the best letters are Susan Black-ford's. Prices were high, she explained: calico, $2.50 a yard; leather boots, $50 a pair. Little Willie, their son, was naughty but "so funny": he sang "Dixie" when he went to bed at night instead of going off to sleep as he should.

Later, little Willie sickened and died: "Yes, my darling, impossible as it seems, our precious little soldier boy has been taken away." Later still, to forestall Yankee marauders, "I took my silver sugar dish, cream pot, bowl, forks and spoons and put them into the legs of a pair of your drawers . . . tying up each leg at the ankle and buckling the band around my waist. They hung under, and were concealed by, my hoops. It did well while I sat still, but as I walked . . . the clanking destroyed all hope of concealment. ... I could not restrain my laughter, which sister said was very unseemly."

The Yankee Twang. Captain Blackford, meanwhile, had fought at Bull Run, bivouacked along the Rappahannock, marched to the Confederacy's high-water mark at Gettysburg and returned with the ebbing tide. In victory or defeat, he decided, Pennsylvania held no charms for a Virginian. "Never in my life have I seen so many ugly women." Furthermore, the "men, women and children are all afflicted with a yankee twang."

Pennsylvanians, though, were "very loyal to the 'old flag.' ... I rode through [Chambersburg] with General Kemper, at the head of his brigade. The windows and porches were filled with women who were covered with flags, and each one had a flag, waving it over our troops as they passed. . . . The men exercised forbearance and seldom replied, but [one said] to a very bold-looking girl . . . with a great flag pinned and hanging over her shoulders and over her bosom: 'Look here, Miss, you'd better take that flag off! . These old rebs are hell on breastworks.' Not a very refined joke, but the woman brought it upon herself. . . . General Kemper and myself were much amused."

The Recorder. Blackford wrote home as often and as fully as possible, realizing that impressions faded quickly and eager to preserve as much of his experience as he could. "I fear all these stories bore you," Blackford apologized to his wife. But 20th Century readers will be grateful for the sharp little anecdotes and graphic glimpses on almost every page. Samples:

P: Robert E. Lee, the "most magnificent man I ever saw," stands on the steps of a house, faultlessly uniformed in grey, with sword, sash, boots and "beautiful" spurs.

P: Stonewall Jackson, an "indifferent and slouchy looking man" whom some thought "deranged," suddenly halts while on midday reconnaissance, dismounts, unbuckles his sword, goes to sleep with his head on the root of a tree.

P: great snowball battle involving thousands of men takes place in the Confederate Army's winter camp, with "generals and colonels riding about everywhere amidst the thickest fighting, cheering on their men." General Lee, who left his headquarters to watch the goings on, "was struck several times." P: A brash Yankee prisoner, brought up for interrogation, pulls hair out of the tail of Jackson's horse. When Jackson demands to know why, the prisoner explains that each hair is worth a dollar in New York. Mild, modest Jackson, victor of a dozen battles, blushes at the compliment like a girl.

* Another Blackford Civil War volume appeared in 1945: War Years with Jeb Stuart, by Lieut. Colonel W. W. Blackford, brother of Captain Charles.

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