and go North, where they could be free. That
these agents were disguised as peddlers or otherwise, and that they
visited the cabins of the slaves during the late hours of the night, and
went so far as to urge them to rise up in a body and declare their
freedom, and if necessary to murder those who held them as slaves. This
delusion, if it were a delusion, might have been dispelled had not John
Brown and his men appeared upon the scene to give an ocular
demonstration of their real intent. The few men with him may have been
the only following that he had, but the damage had been done. Virginia
was fighting mad. What had been whispered about the abolitionists in
secret was now proclaimed from the housetops. John Brown was an
abolitionist, and all abolitionists were John Browns, so the youths at
least reasoned. The words abolitionist and Yankee were for the most part
synonymous terms; the former being hard to pronounce, the child usually
employed the latter. Some of the young children did not know that a
Yankee was a human being, as the following incident will illustrate:

When the first Federal soldiers entered the village of Middleburg,
Loudoun county, Virginia, the cry went up and down the streets, "The
Yankees have come!" The streets were soon deserted by every living thing
except the dogs and the ubiquitous, irrepressible small boy, who was or
pretended to be "skeered o' nothin'." This war was gotten up for his
special benefit, and he was determined to see all that was to be seen,
and was always to be found well up in front. The women and children
within their homes crowded to the windows to see the cavalry as it
marched by. A little three-year old nephew of mine, with the expression
of alarm disappearing from his face, said: "Mamma, them ain't Yankees,
them's soldiers." He expected to see some kind of hideous animal.

This is the education the Virginia boys got, who afterward became Lee's
soldiers. They were brought up in this school, and when they became
soldiers, wearing the gray, they felt that they had something to fight
for. They believed that they were real patriots, notwithstanding they
were called rebels and traitors.

This brings us to the beginning of the Civil War, or at least to the
secession movement. Lincoln had not yet taken his seat as President,
when several of the Southern States seceded and formed a Southern
Confederacy, with Montgomery, Ala., as the capital, and Jefferson C.
Davis as President. T