f Brown and his abettors kindled a flame in the hearts of
the Southern people that led to the Civil War. But none felt it so
keenly as did the Virginians, because it was their sacred soil that had
been traduced. Three years previous to this, when I was ten years of
age, I remember to have heard a political discussion among a body of
men, and the following words have lingered in my memory ever since, and
they are all that I can recall of their talk: "If there is a war between
the North and South, Virginia will be the battlefield." I thought it
would be grand, and waited anxiously for the fulfillment of this
prophecy. Then when John Brown swooped down on Harper's Ferry with his
cohorts, it looked as if the day had really come and that the prediction
was about to be fulfilled. From that time war talk was general,
especially among the small boys. But the intense excitement caused by
the Brown episode gradually abated. It broke out afresh, however, when
later it was announced that Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the
United States. It seemed to be the concensus of opinion that the result
would be war, and that Virginia in truth would be the battleground, and
that the counties along the Potomac would receive the first shock of
battle. We boys of Loudoun county, right on the Potomac, felt that we
were "it," and we had a kind of pity for those poor fellows a little
farther back. We were in the front row, and when the curtain went up we
could see and hear everything. There were about thirty boys attending
our school between the ages of fifteen and twenty. They all entered the
Confederate Army, but few survived the war.

Before going on with the story, perhaps I ought to explain why these
boys were so eager for war, when they knew that the enemy would be their
own countrymen. There was a peculiar relationship existing between the
slave owner's family and the slaves that the North never did and never
will understand. On the part of the white children it was love, pure and
simple, for the slave, while on the part of the adult it was more than
friendship, and, I might add, the feeling was reciprocated by the
slaves. The children addressed the adult blacks as Uncle and Aunt, and
treated them with as much respect as they did their blood relatives. It
was Uncle Reuben and Aunt Dinah. The adult white also addressed the
older colored people in the same way. With but few exceptions, the two
races lived together in perfect harmony.