-- Bradford Ripley Alden Scott: Memoirs of the Civil War

Privation and Defeat

The last winter of the Civil War was a hard one in every way in our part of war-worn battle-scarred old Virginia, especially so after the last heavy campaign followed by Sheridan's raid in 1864. There was still more privation among friends in beleaguered Richmond, with increasing scarcity of supplies and prices going sky high in the constantly depreciating Confederate currency -- almost as bad as the recent German paper money. Supplies for the army were collected by a tax in kind, under questionable management of "bomb-proof" agents so that there was some doubt felt of what became of it all, and how much of it reached the men in the lines. There was much suffering and not a few desertions, but still more conspicuous heroism of half-starving veterans freezing to death on picket posts while volunteering to take the place of new recruits, boys fresh from home and warm feather beds. Nothing but the days of "Reconstruction" ever surpassed the last months of the war.

When we heard of the break up at Petersburg, my next older brother Lewis (who had enlisted before and been discharged as too young for the service) mounted a horse and struck out across the James River to Lee's army, but only got up with them at Appomattox.

Our first news of the Surrender, after the usual rumor through the negroes, came by a pair of badly hacked cavalrymen whom my father accused as deserters and refused shelter in the house. I felt sorrier for them and got them feed for their horses and similar accommodation for themselves. Very soon additional proof came from others who had been paroled, and finally two of my brothers came home from the surrender. Another was included in Johnson's surrender to Sherman. Another on prisoner's furlough in Alabama was paroled there, and our oldest brother John, a West Point cadet, then adjutant of the post at Galveston officiated in the surrender of that department, afterwards.

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