An Organ Interlude

— I could never tell how it happened, — whether because our engineers had lost their way, as had been alleged of the great Pathfinder when he essayed these same regions, or whether our negro guide had fallen asleep in the hot sun, and so been left behind, — but we were lost. The battlefield of Piedmont lay behind us, the Natural Bridge was on our left, and Staunton, our objective point, was — where ?

After wandering hopelessly for some time, it became apparent to those whose sense of locality was an instinct that we were drifting aimlessly, after the usual device of the lost, in a series of circles, and our bewilderment was at its height when up rode a staff officer, galloping furiously, while flecks of foam upon his new uniform, and moisture dripping even from his sabre, attested the anxious eagerness of his errand. With a few hurried words reinforced by appropriate objurgation, this officer pointed out the right way, which having indicated, he disappeared in a whirlwind of dust which seemed to emit sparks—as the soldiers said — of profanity.

Now came a struggle. We were told to hasten for our lives, take any step we liked, carry our arms any way we chose, and proceed to Staunton across lots, as it were, since there were those upon our track who might make delay dangerous. The heat was terrible. It was the first time in my recollection when battle had brought no rain to temper the fever wrought by the elemental disturbances. The leaves of the forest drooped languidly in the breathless air. The little birds sat with open mouths, panting from exhaustion, and wholly undisturbed by the clatter of hurrying hosts. The few wild four-footed creatures that we passed were so oppressed by the heat as to make no attempt to escape, and indeed some of our men actually caught a beautiful little baby fawn, which, overcome by noon, had fallen asleep under an azalea bush. Emerging into the clearings, we noticed the same evidences of overpowering caloric : the cows would stand knee-deep in some stagnant pool and let the flies do their worst ; horses and mules fared scarcely better, and were less patient under the affliction. Of course the suffering on the part of our warmly clad and heavily armed meu was extreme, and every few minutes some poor fellow would fall forward on his face, sunstruck. The medical officers and their attendants were kept busy pouring water upon the prostrate forms of the fallen, — pouring it from a height as great as was attainable, sometimes standing up on their saddles for this purpose. Such, at the time whereof I write, was the approved method of treating coup de soleil.

Fortunately, Staunton was not very far away, and having eluded our crafty enemies by what was called “ leg strategy,” we soon had the happiness of marching into the captured town, where already “ the marshal held the market-place.” General Crook was there with fifteen loyal Virginia regiments, while, riding about in proud possession of roadway and sidewalk, could be seen the cavalry of Averill, with clanking sabres, jingling spurs, and patriotic sentiments.

Some sixty or more of our own men, who had fallen by the way from sunstroke, were now removed to a temporary hospital which had been improvised in the principal church of the town. Here already a goodly number of those who had been wounded in the battle of the day before were ensconced on some extemporized couches, in tranquil enjoyment of the light breeze that floated in through the pointed ecclesiastical windows.

The colors were about equally divided. The rebel wounded, Cared for by our medical officers, were mingled indiscriminately with our own men; the various party-colored uniforms of gray and butternut-brown making, with the blue and the red and yellow facings of our cavalry and artillery uniforms, a curiously variegated tartan as viewed from the organ-loft above by a Scotch surgeon whose work it was to oversee the preparing of supplies.

The communion between victor and vanquished was friendly in the extreme, as was usually the case among the actual participants on the field ; the hating being done mostly by politicians and other non-combatants who had more time for the indulgence of profitless rage and insidious distinctions.

The matter of supplies being arranged, it was not long before the hungry rebels were regaled with unwonted coffee and almost unassuageable hard - tack, luxuries whereof they had long forgotten the taste. Sisters of Mercy were to be seen, moving with noiseless tread, administering cooling drink, sponging the faces of the feverstricken, and covering up the features of those who, after life’s fitful fever, were sleeping well. A goodly number of Confederate officers in full uniform were chatting freely and comparing experiences with officers of our own army, not a few of whom discovered in the opponents of the day before classmates of auld lang syne at West Point, or comrades of Mexico or the plains ; our army, in ante-war days, having been so small that all officers were known to one another. Then there would appear at the church door, from time to time, deputations of ladies from the town or vicinity to inquire for such of their kin as were being cared for under that hospitable roof : the calm, sad face of the Southern mother, realizing at last the bitterness of civil war, and now intent on such amelioration as might reach her son within those walls ; the indignant Southern belle, whose unreasoning scorn we deplored, but could not help admiring. Occasionally there would appear negroes bringing fruit, milk, or wine, with the touching loyalty of old trusted house servants. One or two clergymen there were, and a Catholic priest, who added to sacerdotal functions the gentle mission of bringing letters, messages, etc. Beside these gentlemen and a stray hospital official, males there were none in the town, as every hand that could grasp a musket had long before been impressed for the cause.

The reaction which follows the excitement of a great battle usually finds expression in the writing of a multitude of letters, and now, throughout this large, cool churchhospital, could be seen men,in every attitude betokening weariness or languor, engaged in writing home. These letters might never reach their destination, for we were far within the enemy’s lines, but it was a relief to the surcharged masculine heart to write, and at least try to convey the news that the writer was still in the land of the living, even though sorely hurt.

Gradually, as the day wore down, the fragrance of many flowers began to fill the church ; for the Virginia ladies were not content. with sending meat and wine to such of their friends as lay suffering there, but supplemented those gifts with large offerings of flowers, of royal hue and almost tropical luxuriance, such as the generous Southern climate loves to foster. They were sent to the rebels, but were equally enjoyed by all present, because community of goods was one of the necessary conditions of the place. The perfume of roses could not help dividing itself among friend and foe, even had our gallant adversaries desired otherwise, which I am sure they did not. Before the red Virginia sun had set on that hot June day, almost every water-pitcher was filled with June roses, every table was covered with them, while yet more flowers were sprinkled profusely on pillow and counterpane ; and indeed it needed the piled accoutrements, the stacked muskets, with other paraphernalia of a military hospital, to enable the beholder to realize the fact of war, although the victims of the struggle, to the number of many hundreds, were there, breathing the flower-scented air, and watching the setting sun through the open windows of the church.

Suddenly there was a sound from the large organ of the church. Some unknown experimenter was trying his hand at the bellows, —a ’prentice hand it seemed, from the bustling and creaking that he made, — and I was a little surprised when I discovered that the “artist,” as the boys dubbed him, was a Confederate officer in full cavalry uniform, pumping till he grew red in the face, while, seated at the keyboard, was the Scotch surgeon whose roving eyes had made tartan of the variegated hues in the motley array below. Now he was intent on what Tyndall, quoting from Helmholtz, calls “sound-tint.” First came experimental chords, with a few tentative stops, to gauge the mettle and volume of the sonorous monster, which proved to be one of the best organs in the South, — one of those sweet-toned, old-fashioned, wooden-piped instruments like that whose melody has for half a century gone to the hearts of Sabbath worshipers in St. Paul’s, New York. Soon the scheme expanded ; chords modulated into fragments of chant, of symphony, and finally settled down into a military march, to the manifest delight of the listening men below. One by one, all the stops which represented the different instruments of a full military band were brought into requisition, until the walls of the building began to vibrate with these deep - toned volumes of sound, and the faintest of the wounded strove to heat time to the swaying rhythm. It is needless to say that the music thus evoked was all intended for Federal inspiration. Gradually the music from the vast organ grew more patriotic, more significantly suggestive. At last, when the great crash of the first few bars of the Star Spangled Banner shook the church, the meaning of the musician had become so clear that, as with one voice, Federal and Confederate, officer and soldier, wounded and dying, joined in the chorus, and sang, so far as I could judge, every man of them, to the end. Then each looked at the other, mute with the surprise of men whose hearts have been taken by storm.

The bitterness and cruelty, the ferocity of civil strife as compared with that which is international, are obvious enough, but in the former there is some compensation in the greater facilities afforded for the restoration of peace after the cessation of active hostilities. A common language ; in the main a common faith, political and religious; and above all, such association of ideas as must exist among combatants who have been comrades in previous wars, would seem to conduce to the reestablishment of good feeling when the casus belli shall have been removed.

The Star Spangled Banner is not a patriotic anthem of enthralling interest. The music is from an old English glee ; and as to the words, the American does not live who can remember all of them. But on this occasion the song represented so much that was common to us all that when the defeated rebels found themselves singing it, they almost wondered that they ever could have rebelled. There were at this time, upon the political and military horizon, many gleams of the coming arch of peace, many evidences that the South was tired of the war, and that the North never loved it; and I think it may safely be assumed that one of the harbingers of the peace so soon to follow might have been detected in the sound of the organ at Staunton, and in the voices caught singing in unison with it.