We Once Met by Chance

“Oh, mother, it’s finally true; Virginia has voted to secede at last! She is finally numbered with her Southern sister states!”

Ann Ratcliffe gave a startled look at her daughter, who was reading the newspaper in the sitting room.

“It says here that ‘the people of Virginia voted with substantial unanimity to confirm the Ordinance of Secession.’ Why, I can’t believe anyone would vote against secession after that treacherous Lincoln called on troops from our own state to put down the ‘rebellion.’”

“Lincoln knows our first allegiance is to Virginia,” Ann replied, calming herself.

“Why, if we feel the government under which we are living becomes oppressive, it is our duty to throw off that government and establish a new one in its stead.”

She watched as Laura, her beautiful and staunchly Southern twenty-five-year-old daughter dropped the day-old Alexandria Gazette newspaper (dated May 24, 1861) in the lap of her hoop skirt, which had collapsed around her on her armless chair. Ann could see the fire rising in Laura’s eyes.

“Our men should go forth in the name of the Lord to fight the battle against that evil tyrant. How pleased would I be to stand by their side and face the cannon ball, but this duty is denied us women!”

Laura paused, thinking of another aspect of war.

“Do you really think there will be fighting in Virginia, Mother?”

“Well, the soldiers from the North would want to come between us and Washington. Lincoln can certainly see the camps of the home guard in Alexandria as well as they can see into the city. Now that we have voted to secede, it may only be a matter of time.”

---

“Pa! Pa! What does it mean, Virginia has sa-ceeded?”

“Where you hear that?” James Robinson asked while looking intently at his twenty-two-year-old son, Tasco, who was gasping for breath after crossing the brick-red clay soil of the turnpike in front of the house and running up the driveway.

“I was just over at the Van Pelts’. They’re all excited, talking about it.”

James knew what secession meant: Virginia taking sides with the South. Could that lead to fighting around here? What would happen to his family? He did not want the South to win. We’d better pray for the North, he thought.

“Judgment! Judgment is upon us,” James said in the middle of his thoughts. Tasco had a puzzled look on his face as his breathing slowed.

“Pa, what you mean, ‘Judgment is upon us?’”

“Either we’ll all be free, or it will be worser for us than ever.”

---

In what seemed a totally different world only one state away, Boston-born Charles Russell Lowell was working as an ironmaster at the Mt. Savage Iron Works in the northwestern Maryland town of Cumberland. Having graduated as the valedictorian from Harvard, he could have had his pick of jobs. However, he wanted to learn about the family business and understand operations from a workingman’s point of view so he would have empathy for their situation.

Lowell was shocked by the news of South Carolina’s secession, followed by the fall of Fort Sumter. The South was testing the North’s manhood as President Lincoln struggled to find a way to provision the isolated Union garrison in the Charleston Harbor. Lowell spilled out his passions in letters home.

Who cares now about the slavery question? Secession has crowded it out. I fear our government will be hard pushed for the next six months—it can raise 75,000 men easily enough, but can it use them?

When the Union troops finally surrendered Fort Sumter and the telegraphed news spread across the country, it was if an electric shock had run through him. The war had finally begun. Americans were going to be forced to take sides. He was stunned again upon learning of the firing on Union soldiers who were traveling through Baltimore to Washington in response to Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion. Some of those men were the Sixth Massachusetts Militia from his home state.

Lowell decided to quit his job and travel to Washington to join the army and answer his own question.

---

“You are a slouchy rider who does not seem to take any interest in his military duties. In fact, you make a rather indifferent soldier.”

William Blackford was not impressed with his friend, John Singleton Mosby, upon whom he had been trying to impress the importance of joining the cavalry for the defense of the town of Abingdon, in southwestern Virginia.

“You are correct.” Mosby felt no concern about the imminence of war.

The omens of war had begun to pervade talk in Mosby’s hometown of Bristol, Tennessee, as they had throughout many small towns in the South. Mosby favored states’ rights but was in no way in favor of secession. He noticed that some local towns were beginning to organize local militia units for protection should it come to that, but he had decided he was not interested.

Focused on building his law practice to support his young family, Mosby rode to the nearby town of Abingdon weekly to handle cases there. It was in Abingdon that William Blackford, a friend from college days, asked if Mosby would consider joining a cavalry unit for the town’s defense.

Not wanting to turn down his friend’s request, Mosby replied, “You may put my name on the muster roll,” although he thought no further of it and skipped the meeting for the company’s organization.

Mosby did borrow a horse, however, and attended his first drill as it coincided with a court day in January 1861, resulting in his friend’s observations about his horsemanship and attitude.

After the fall of Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call to arms, Virginia’s vote for secession confirmed Mosby’s mind on the issue of states’ rights, especially his own state’s rights. When Virginia left the Union, Mosby knew he was going with her.