Looting at Home

As I passed the kitchen at the edge of the yard there were five stragglers inside talking to the negroes, their guns left outside the door, I believe. When I reached the back porch there sat Father alone amidst every sign of pillage, papers, ladies' clothing, and even the children's doll rags all mixed up and scattered around, and I particularly noticed my favorite hunting rifle and ammunition all ruined and thrown on the ground. Father was quietly smoking his pipe, but mad till he was sick. I made bold to break silence by asking "if any Yankees had been there". He replied, "You had better look around you and see for yourself. Where is Alfred?" I told him -- also the object of my visit to get him something to eat. He replied, "Go and see your Mother. I don't think there is anything left for anybody." I then went into the room where the ladies of the family were gathered, but before I could speak Alfred's wife sprang up with the baby in her arms and asked after him till assured he was all right, only famished for a lunch.

While we were skirmishing around for this Alf got impatient and started across the field to the house. Just then we saw five or six horsemen over on the adjoining farm less than a mile beyond him, coming towards us at a run and Father, thinking they might be Yanks, motioned Alfred to hide out, which he did under the banks of a branch nearby, while we all waited on the back porch for the newcomers. Soon they showed up from around the outbuildings and galloped into the large open yard in grey uniforms, that never looked so fine and welcome. "Confederates! Confederates!!" we all shouted in glad chorus. They proved to be a party of Hampton's scouts, from a South Carolina Regiment, keeping up with Sheridan's column. Their leader was named Cooper and one was a young fellow named Scott, whom I met on the train months later going home on furlough with a wounded arm gotten in Hampton's "Beef Raid" below Petersburg, I think.

Cooper asked us if there were "any Yankees around" and we told him of the five stragglers who had just left. "We'll take them in," he replied, as they reined back their horses around the house and went off at a canter. They camped with these prisoners on an adjoining plantation that evening, when a strong Federal rear guard found them cooking supper and got their horses and prisoners after a skirmish in which the Federal leader was killed.