VIRGINIA

These pious pilgrimages in part led the author's feet along the pathways of the four years' struggle between the dauntless Army of the Potomac and the heroic Army of Northern Virginia, from the first assault at Bull Run to the final charge at Appomattox, for he wanted a picture of the State at the close of that epic era-wanted a bench mark, so to speak, by which to gauge the rise of the tide of progress and prosperity since the return of peace.

When it is remembered that a million and a half American soldiers were, first and last, mustered into the armies that fought for four long years on Virginia soil, with only two short interludes of a week or so, when they turned aside to Antietam and Gettysburg, and that they fought as only men can fight when stirred to the core by their convictions, it is little to be wondered that Appomattox left the Mother of States desolate, her people in despair, and rack and ruin stalking everywhere.

Her farms and plantations, once the pride of her people, had been neglected and laid waste; her barns had been burned and her fences used for seasoned firewood by troops that could not wait for other fuel; her horses and cattle had been commandeered by Mars, the former for cavalry mounts, artillery spans, and wagon teams, and the latter for a meat supply that could march on its own hoofs.

Her turnpikes in ante-bellum days were America's most complete adventure in the realm of good roads. Over them had rolled the carriages of the socially elect and the politically distinguished, en route to their common meeting grounds at White Sulphur, Hot Springs, Old Sweet, Rockbridge Baths, and the galaxy of other noted watering places of the period; over them had moved the covered-wagon caravans which hauled the products of the Valley and the Piedmont to the cities of the Tidewater and the Plain. But the war's end found them worn down to the foundation bowlders by the unending grind of supply trains, baggage wagons, artillery carriages, cavalry, and foot soldiers.

Her bridges had been dynamited or burned under the demands of military necessity, her mills had been put to the torch, many of her factories were in ruins, and not a few of her cities had felt the withering flames of war.

All over the State reigned a physical desolation typified by the declaration that General Sheridan had laid the Shenandoah Valley so bare that a crow traversing…"