[
512]
Sixteen years before,
the writer, while gathering up materials for his
Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, visited
Hampton and the fortress, and traveled over the road from
Yorktown to the coast, on which the battle at Great Bethel occurred.
The aspect of every thing was now changed.
The country, then thickly settled and well cultivated, was now desolated and depopulated.
The beautiful village of
Hampton, which contained a resident population of about fourteen hundred souls when the war broke out, had been devoured by fire; and the venerable St. John's Church, built in far-back colonial times, and presenting a picturesque and well-preserved relic of the past, was now a blackened and mutilated ruin, with the ancient brick wall around the yard serving as a part of the line of fortifications cast up there by the
National troops.
The site of the town
 |
|
Ruins of St. John's Church.1 |
was covered with rude cabins, all occupied by negroes freed from bondage; and the chimney of many a stately mansion that was occupied in summer by some of the wealthiest families of
Virginia, who sought comfort near the seaside, now served the same purpose for a cabin only a few feet square.
Only the
Court House and seven or eight other buildings of the five hundred that comprised the village escaped the conflagration lighted by
General Magruder just after midnight on the 7th of August, 1861, when the
National troops had withdrawn to the opposite side of
Hampton Creek.
In that Court House, which had been partly destroyed, we found two young women from
Vermont earnestly engaged in teaching the children of the freedmen.
In the main street of the village, where we remembered having seen fine stores and dwellings of brick, nothing was now to be seen but miserable huts, their chimneys composed of the bricks of the ruined buildings.
It was a very sad sight.
The sketches on this and the preceding page, made by the writer at the time, give an idea of the desolate appearance of the once flourishing town, over which the chariot of war rolled fearfully at the beginning of the struggle.
 |
|
Cabin and chimney. |
On Monday, the 12th of December, a cold, blustering day, we visited the Bethel battle-field, in company with
Doctor Ely McClellan, of
Philadelphia, then the surgeon in charge of the hospitals at
Fortress Monroe, and
Assistant Medical Director of the post.
In a light wagon, drawn by two lively horses belonging to the doctor, we made a journey of about twenty-five miles during the short afternoon, attended by two armed outriders to keep off the “bushwhackers” or prowling secessionists with which the desolated country was infested.
The road was fine, and passed over an
