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Updated: May 22, 2025
Back to Meechum's Station, from body and top of the out-going train floated wild cheering. "Staunton! We're going to Staunton! We're going back to the Valley! We're going home! We're going to get there first! We're going to whip Banks! We've got Old Jack with us. You all hurry up. Banks thinks we've gone to Richmond, but we ain't! Yaaaih! Yaaaaihhh! Yaaaih! Yaaaaaaih!"
"Oh, come on and go! All the people are going at home." And, after all, no one in the Army of the Valley went to church! The bugler blew another call, the chaplains stopped short in their sedate stride, short as if they had been shot, "Old Hundred" was not sung. Break camp Break camp! The regiments, marching down to Meechum's Station, were of one mind. Old Jack was losing his religion.
Oh, Jupiter! we are tired!" A man behind put in his word. "To-morrow's Sunday. Two Sundays ago we were at Meechum's River, and since then we've marched most two hundred miles, and fought two battles and a heap of skirmishes! I reckon there'll be a big fight to-morrow, with Old Jack jerking his hand in the air as they say he's been doing! 'N all to the sound of church bells! Oh, Moses, I'm tired!"
They were moving toward the Virginia Central, toward Meechum's Station. A courier had ridden far in advance. At Meechum's was a little crowd of country people. "They're coming! That's an ambulance! Is he in the ambulance? Everybody take off their hats. Is that his horse behind? Yes, it is a horse that he sometimes rode, but the three stallions were killed. How mournful they come!
At Meechum's Station, beneath the locust trees, it was like bees swarming. Another train was on the main track, the head beautifully, gloriously westward! "Staunton! Good-bye, you little old Richmond, we ain't going to see you this summer! Feel good? I feel like a shouting Methodist! My grandmother was a shouting Methodist. I feel I'm going to shout anyhow, I've got to sing "
That evening the Army of the Valley slept in emerald meadows beside Meechum's River in Albemarle. Coming down the mountain it had caught distant glimpses of white spirals of smoke floating from the overworked engines of the Virginia Central; and now it lay near a small country station, and there on the switch were empty cars and empty cars! cars to go to Richmond on.
The ground about Meechum's Station was grey with soldiers part of the Stonewall, most of Burk's and Fulkerson's brigades, waiting for the second train and the third train and their turn to fill the cars. They stood or leaned against the station platform, or they sat upon the warm red earth beneath the locust trees, white and sweet with hanging bloom. "Good-bye, boys!
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