Harry realized as he approached the capital the deep intensity of
feeling in everybody. The Virginians were less volatile than the South
Carolinians, and they had long refused to go out, but now that they were
out they were pouring into the Southern army, and they were animated by
an extraordinary zeal. He began to hear new or unfamiliar names, Early,
and Ewell, and Jackson, and Lee, and Johnston, and Hill, and Stuart,
and Ashby, names that he would never forget, but names that as yet meant
little to him.
He had letters from his father and he expected to find his friends of
Charleston in Richmond or at the front. General Beauregard, whom he
knew, would be in command of the army threatening Washington, and he
would not go into a camp of strangers.
It was now early in June, and the country was at its best. On both
sides of the railway spread the fair Virginia fields, and the earth,
save where the ploughed lands stretched, was in its deepest tints of
green. Harry, thrusting his head from the window, looked eagerly ahead
at the city rising on its hills. Then a shade smaller than Charleston,
it, too, was a famous place in the South, and it was full of great
associations.
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