The Days of a Man 



as the generals who attempted it McClellan, 



Burnside, and Hooker found to their discomfiture. 



There was but one vulnerable gate to Richmond; 



that led from the southeast through Petersburg and 



Dinwiddie County, source of the city's food supply. 



Desolation In the old plantation counties lying east of the 



f, the . Blue Ridge, the stately homes were virtually all 



plantation jiiv -11 j 



counties destroyed and the hospitable aristocracy was reduced 

 to penury. The proud array of "F. F. V.," "first 

 families of Virginia," was decimated by the war. 

 When it ended they had only the bare land no 

 houses, no slaves. The young men who survived fell 

 naturally into two groups, some extricating them- 

 selves through energy and intelligence, others giving 

 up the struggle, "spending their time drinking whisky 

 and sitting on the courthouse steps cursing the 

 Yankees." Alcoholism and war combined to wreck 

 the upper caste. But thousands of the humble also 

 fell in battle, and universal bereavement and poverty 

 placed all on an equal footing. To hustle is to grow 

 strong. Many of the more forceful, both men and 

 women, went West; the final status of the others 

 depended on their own exertions, not on their ancestry. 

 Yet in Virginia this counts more than anywhere else 

 in America, and every one knows the pedigrees of all 

 his neighbors. 



In Fredericksburg I spent an afternoon and evening 

 with Peter Vivian B. Conway, brother of the late 

 Rev. Moncure D. Conway of London, a man of 

 intelligence and character who gave us much in- 

 formation as to Spottsylvania County and the battle 

 of Fredericksburg, in which he took part, being one of 

 the gunners stationed on the hill at the head of the 

 street. 



