THE city of Richmond was in flames.
We were beginning that last terrible retreat which ended the war. Fire had been set to the arsenal as a military possession, which must on no account fall into the enemy’s hands.
As the flames spread, because of a turn of the wind, other buildings caught. The whole business part of the city was on fire. To make things worse, some idiot had ordered that all the liquor in the city should be poured into the gutters.
The rivers of alcohol had been ignited from the burning buildings, and in their turn had set fire to other buildings. It was a time and a scene of unutterable terror.
As we marched up the fire-lined street, with the flames scorching the very hair off our horses, George Goodsmith—the best cannoneer that ever wielded a rammer—came up to the headquarters squad, and said: “Captain, my wife’s in Richmond. We’ve been married less than a year. She is soon to become a mother. I beg permission to bid her good-by. I’ll join the battery later.”
The permission was granted readily, and George Goodsmith put spurs to his horse. He had just been made a sergeant, and was therefore mounted.
It was in the gray of the morning that he hurriedly met his wife. With caresses of the tenderest kind, he bade her farewell. Realizing for a moment the utter hopelessness of our making another stand on the Roanoke, or any other line, he said in bitterness of soul: “Why shouldn’t I stay here and take care of you?”
The woman straightened herself and replied: “I would rather be the widow of a brave man than the wife of a coward.”
That was their parting, for the time was very short. Mayo’s bridge across the James River was already in flames when Goodsmith perilously galloped across it.
Three or four days later, for I never could keep tab on time at that period of the war, we went into the battle at Farmville. Goodsmith was in his place in command of the piece.
Just before fire opened he beckoned to me and I rode up to hear what he had to say.
“I’m going to be killed, I think,” he said. “If I am, I want my wife to know that she is the widow of a—brave man. I want her to know that I did my duty to the last. And—and if you live long enough, and this thing don’t kill Mary—I want you to tell the little one about his father.”
Goodsmith’s premonition of his death was one of many that were fulfilled during the war.
A moment later a fearful struggle began. At the first fire George Goodsmith’s wife became the “widow of a brave man.” His body was heavy with lead.
His son, then unborn, is now a successful broker in a great city. There is nothing particularly knightly or heroic about him, for this is not a knightly or heroic age. But he takes very tender care of his mother—that “widow of a brave man.”