A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [266]
Lawley understood Fremantle’s desire to meet Lee, but persuaded him to wait until the atmosphere was less frenetic. He suggested they leave the camp and deposit themselves ten miles farther north, at Winchester, where there would be decent lodgings and a blacksmith for Fremantle’s suffering horse. They spent the next couple of days together, exploring the battle-scarred countryside and staying out of the Confederates’ way. The houses looked bleak and dilapidated, with those still inhabited being used as hospitals for the wounded. The travelers visited the mud hole that had once been Commissioner Mason’s elegant plantation. “Literally not one stone remains standing upon another,” wrote Fremantle, surprised at the vitriol behind the Federal attack.
On June 24, leaving Lawley to write his Times dispatch, Fremantle went foraging for their horses without success. He eventually found virgin grass four miles outside town, but all the hay and corn had been seized long ago. He was experiencing on a small scale one of Lee’s greatest anxieties: how to feed his army. As usual, Lawley hid the situation from his readers. He conceded that the Southern army was “still ragged and unkempt” but declared that all had good shoes and that the animals were “for the most part sleek and fat.” Lawley was unable to finish his report that day or the next. He became so ill, probably with dysentery, that they had to stay behind in Winchester even though the Confederate army had resumed its northward progress. On June 25, Lawley forced himself to mount his horse and they rode all day in the rain, trying to catch up with Lee. They managed to pass some divisions of Longstreet’s corps, but the generals had already crossed the Potomac.
“It was a dreary day! The rain was falling in torrents,” recalled Francis Dawson. “General Lee, General Longstreet and General Pickett were riding together, followed by their staffs. When we reached the Maryland shore we found several patriotic ladies with small feet and big umbrellas waiting to receive the Confederates who were coming a second time to deliver downtrodden Maryland.” One of the four women held an enormous wreath that had been intended to adorn the neck of Lee’s horse, Traveler, but its size frightened the animal and it was handed to one of the general’s aides to carry. More ladies greeted them at Hagerstown, just south of the Pennsylvania state line. This time one of them asked for a lock of Lee’s hair, which he refused, offering one of General George Pickett’s instead. “General Pickett did not enjoy the joke,” wrote Dawson, “for he was known everywhere by his corkscrew ringlets, which were not particularly becoming when the rain made them lank in such weather as we then had.”10
Lawley and Fremantle rode into Hagerstown late at night on Friday, June 26. They had almost caught up with the army, but Lawley was so weak that he slumped alarmingly on his horse. Fremantle’s had gone lame; “by the assistance of his tail, I managed to struggle through the deep mud and wet,” he wrote, until after seventeen very long miles they bribed a Dutchman with gold to let them stay the night. “I dared not take off my solitary pair of boots, because I knew I should never get them on again,” recorded Fremantle. Twenty-four hours earlier, in England, the Times’ managing editor, Mowbray Morris, was writing optimistically to Lawley to keep going just a little bit longer. The only real hardship was the blockade, he asserted; once that was raised, “your position will be comparatively easy and your work pleasant.”11
The following day Lawley was too ill to be moved. Deciding that his friend required medical attention, Fremantle took Lawley’s horse, which seemed