The woods were very thick--so dense that a regimental commander could not see the whole of his line at the same time, and in many instances the only guides were the points of the compass.

The battle was raging on May 6. In a bulletin sent to the Secretary of War at the close of that day, General Lee stated: "Our loss in killed is not large, but we have many wounded, most of them slightly, artillery being little used on either side."

General Grant's army had suffered severely, and he had become convinced that it was useless to try to drive Lee from his position. He decided to move his army southward to Spotsylvania Court House and get between Lee and Richmond.

During the afternoon of May 7, Grant sent his trains off in the direction of Spotsylvania Court House, which was only fifteen miles distant, and ordered the army to prepare to follow at nightfall.

Among Grant's wounded men there was by some mistake a wounded Confederate soldier. Perhaps the color of his home-made uniform, dyed with a brew of herbs and vegetables concocted by his wife was not too accurate a shade of Confederate gray, especially when obscured by the blood and filth of the long battle. Whatever the reason may have been, he was carried along by the enemy with their own wounded men.

Near Spotsylvania Court House a home was commandeered by the Federals for their wounded, but when the Confederate's uniform was recognized, he was left lying in the yard.

The lady of the house saw him there. She dared not take him inside, but she made a pallet on the ground for him, and stayed by him, and comforted him as best she could.

The soldier was still conscious. He told her of his wife, her name and where she lived, of his children, and of a ring in his pocket. He told her that when he was holding the horses one day while a battle was in progress, he had plucked some hairs from the mane of a horse and fashioned a ring as a gift for his wife. It was a crude thing, he said, entirely lacking in beauty, but he had woven his love into it. He hoped that in some way it could be conveyed to her.

The woman promised the dying man that his wish would be carried out, having faith that in some way she could fulfill her promise.

Satisfied by her promise, the soldier died quietly there on the pallet, toward evening of May 7, 1864.

The woman covered his body and left him there until nightfall. Under cover of darkness she returned with a woman servant, and together they laboriously dug a grave for him there in her yard. Before laying him to rest she searched his pockets and found the ring and two Confederate notes for fifty cents each, both issued April 6, 1863. Two Confederate notes and a ring made of horse-hair--the total possessions on his person.

The ring, as the soldier had said, was lacking in beauty, but it was skillfully made. He had fastened together a circle of horse-hair about the size of a slender woman's finger, then he had covered it by weaving a few strands of the hair around it, making a sort of button-hole stitch on both edges.

After the war had ended the woman managed in some way to fulfill her promise. She wrote the soldier's widow a letter telling her the details of her husband's death and enclosed the contents of his pockets. Whether the postal system had been restored in the region where the letter traveled, or whether it was conveyed by hand, is not known, but it did finally reach its destination.

As soon as it was possible, relatives of the bereaved family, an old man and a small boy, made a long, weary and sad journey by ox-cart from their home in the lower Northern Neck, through Fredericksburg to Spotsylvania Court House, a distance of more than a hundred miles, for the purpose of transporting the remains of their kinsman back to his homeland. When this mission was accomplished, the remains of the young Confederate sergeant were laid to rest in the family burial ground, near Burgess Store, in Northumberland County.

For many years the soldier's widow and the loyal Southern lady corresponded. Although they never did meet, their spirits were bound together by that common denominator--war.

_MIRACLE AT KETCHUM'S CAMP_

Toward the close of the Civil War the fortunes of the lower Northern Neck like those of the entire South were low. This section was then so isolated that news from the battlefields was long in coming, and usually bad when it did arrive. Food was meager and monotonous and, despite the ingenious efforts of the women, could only be stretched so far.

As another war Christmas approached there was little heart to make merry, but for the sake of the children the older people felt that an appearance of festivity was necessary. A fowl of some sort was killed and dressed and hung in the cold smokehouse in readiness for its last minute stuffing. The tree had been selected but would not be cut until late Christmas Eve. Some chose a holly, because it needed less trimming and the berries held up for quite a while in the poorly heated rooms, but cedar was still the favorite. The little ones were stringing long garlands of holly berries and popcorn and making ornaments from whatever they could find.

On the night of December the twenty-third, the small spark of Christmas spirit that had been kindled was dampened by a terrific storm that raged over the Chesapeake, dashing huge breakers against the beach and shaking and rattling the houses along its shoreline, like some monster bent on destruction. By morning the wind and waves had subsided leaving a chill gray atmosphere that warned of a snow-storm in the making.

It is the natural thing for people who live close to the water to scan the horizon the last thing before retiring and the first thing upon arising, so on this bleak Christmas Eve it was not long after dawn when residents along that section of the Bay between Smith Point and Taskmakers Creek had observed two dark objects drifting toward shore near a spot later known as Ketchum's Camp. In those uncertain days anything unusual was viewed with great alarm. Not long before this, one of the houses along this same stretch of beach had been fired upon by an enemy gunboat and saved only because two daughters of the house had waved a sheet on a pole and implored the officers who came ashore to cease firing.

Now, as the alarm went out members of the Home Guard swiftly assembled with their miscellaneous firearms ready for action. These fiery lads were sometimes overzealous in their defense tactics so on this day they were restrained by their elders until the objects drifted in so close that all could see that they were nothing but clumsy unmanned boats of the scow type.

The boys and a few very old men who were there hastened out in small boats to the stranded vessels. As they pulled back the tarpaulin coverings they could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw that both boats were loaded with provisions. After much discussion, they concluded that these must be Federal supply boats which had broken loose during the storm while being towed up the Bay. Of course, the idea that they were putting one over on the Yankees appealed to the Home Guard even more than the food. They hastily and joyfully began the task of transporting the windfall to shore. By midafternoon the beach was lined with people who had learned the good news through the grapevine.

A nondescript crowd they were, but representative of the countryside at that time. Very old men, children and boys were there but the majority were women of all ages. The clothes of every one were knitted and homespun, their main virtue being warmth. They had come on foot, on horseback, in carriages and wagons. Their faces were alight with the thought of real coffee and tea on Christmas morning after months of nauseous brews made from sweet potatoes, wheat or sage, sweetened with sorghum. Real white loaf sugar! Their eyes glistened with delight--or maybe, tears. Bacon, too, and flour and molasses! Plenty for all. They did not doubt that this was a miracle.

The children jumped and screamed in ecstatic anticipation of the wonderful Christmas to come. Snow began to fall but now it was not the dreaded stuff that makes the woes of the poor greater, but, instead, it was the beautiful, dream-making substance that belongs to Christmas. It fell softly on the loaded vehicles and on the heads of those who knelt with one accord on the lonely sand beach and gave thanks to God.

_Note_: This spot which was called Ketchum's Camp soon after the Civil War, because a sawmill camp was located there, has in recent years been known as Chesapeake Estates, a summer cottage area.

_DESPERATE PASSAGE_

It was April of the year 1865, and Lee had already surrendered his army at Appomattox.

On the night of April 22nd a row-boat moved cautiously across the Potomac in the direction of the Virginia shore. This was the second time, it is believed, that the two men in the boat had tried to make the river crossing from Maryland to Virginia. The night before they had failed because it had been too dark and the tide had been too strong.

The past eight days had doubtless seemed like an eternity to them.

Now they could see the Virginia shore and the dim outline of a landing but the thin youth at the oars did not head for the public wharf. He rowed on until he came to a smaller landing which belonged to a private home. They landed there, at Upper Machodoc Creek near what later became Dahlgren, in King George County.

The younger man helped his passenger out of the boat and together they approached the house on the bank of the creek, knocked on the door and asked for lodging for the night. The mistress of the house could doubtless see that the dark handsome man in the muddy Confederate uniform was badly in need of rest. Tradition says that she took them in for the night.

The next morning the two men left the Quesenberry home. The older man was limping badly and seemed to be in much pain. That day they traveled slowly on foot over back roads.

Toward dusk they came to a home set in a grove of beautiful trees. It was Cleydael, the residence of Doctor R. H. Stuart. Tradition says that the men knocked on the back door and asked for food and aid.

Whether Doctor Stuart rendered surgical aid to the man in the tattered uniform is still a controversial subject in that region. They did receive food and were waited on by Junius and Patsy Dixon, servants at Cleydael. Tradition says that the older man left a note to Doctor Stuart in which he enclosed a five-dollar bill and grudgingly thanked him for "what we did get."

Stories vary as to where the two men spent the night of April 23rd.

At some time or other they rested in the yard of St. Paul's Church, it is said. One account says that they spent the night at the house of a man named Rollins near Office Hall. Another story says that they found shelter for the night in the cabin of William Lucas, a Negro, and that the next day the man who was burning with fever, ordered Lucas's son to take him and his companion to the Rappahannock ferry at Port Conway.

All accounts seem to agree that the men came to the Rappahannock in daylight on April 24th, and that they were in a spring wagon driven by a Negro man.

It seems that the ferryman was fishing and wouldn't come ashore for only two fares. At this point three Confederate soldiers who, it has been said, were veterans of Mosby's Raiders and were on their way home, rode up on horseback.

The haggard man got out of the wagon and limped over to the soldiers, the story goes, and told them who he was and asked them to help him.

Tradition says that the young veterans moved off and held a conference together and when they had reached a decision they told him that they were not in sympathy with what he had done, but since he had thrown himself on their mercy they would help him.

One story says that the Confederate veterans then leveled their rifles at the ferryman and ordered him to come ashore at once and get them or he would have his head blown off. The ferryman came ashore and the two men and at least one of the veterans got on the ferry.

It was in this way that John Wilkes Booth, who had shot and killed Abraham Lincoln in Washington on the night of April 14th, and his faithful companion, Herold, finally completed their journey across the Northern Neck, from the Potomac to the Rappahannock. In their devious flight across the Neck they had traveled perhaps twenty miles.

The painful journey was in vain, however, for it was only a matter of hours before Federal soldiers would track down the assassin and his companion and find them in a barn on Garrett's farm.

_AFTER THE WAR_

The old order of things finally died in the Northern Neck with the surrender of 1865. But, though the splendor was gone, the people continued to cling to the old ways--the traditions, customs, family life and ties of kinship.

With the younger generation--the war children--there began a new type of manhood. Knowing nothing except privations, they grew up with hard bodies and practical minds, and though thrust into manhood while they were still adolescent, they shouldered their responsibilities.

Those who lived near the water turned to it because it was now more fruitful than the land. Its harvests could be reaped more quickly, and they could be reaped by one man working alone, or by several men working together.

Bundled up in home-made garments and warmed by caps, mufflers, socks and mittens knitted by their mothers and grandmothers, these boys sallied forth at dawn in the bitterest weather to tong oysters. Winters were much colder then. They worked until nightfall, often in open boats, stopping only long enough to refresh themselves with a hearty lunch, which was usually packed in a tin bucket, and usually included pork, biscuits and sorghum molasses. This was washed down with cold coffee drunk from a stone jug.

The girls too had changed and they now belonged to this new regime.

During the winter evenings they helped the older women to knit fish nets. They used home-made wooden needles for this, and sometimes they fastened one end of the net to wooden pegs driven in the wall. (Years later people were to wonder why those pegs were found in some homes of the lower Neck.) The women helped the men to fashion sails for their boats by sewing together pieces of canvas.