234 The American Civil Warfighting around Richmond in May and June
1862 - but in May 1864 hostile troops swept
across the grounds of Clover Lea and
threatened to destroy everything that the
Bassetts and Washingtons owned. On
28 May, Ella could hear rifles rattling in the
near distance. It was a time 'of dreadful
suspense and anxiety.' She wondered in her
diary that evening whether her brothers had
been in the fighting, and whether they had
survived. A few Confederates galloped past,
pausing only briefly. 'God bless you, boys,'
Ella's father said as they hurried away. As
their horses' hoofbeats faded, Ella thought
they left behind 'a strange silence, brooding
over nature like a pall.'
The next morning, after a terrified night
and little sleep, Ella had to face the invasion
of her property by swarms of uncontrolled
enemy foragers. This 'most horrible set of
creatures I ever saw' took everything in sight
and made the women fear for their safety.
Ella longed for a guillotine to 'take their
heads off in just as rapid a style' as they
were killing the farm animals.
In desperation, Ella Washington sent notes
off to her stepson's friend, General Custer,
hoping that he might come to assist her. One
of the messages did reach the Federal cavalry-
general and on the 30th he arrived in person
at Clover Lea, where he at once promised to
protect the stepmother of his friend James
Washington, and her property. Custer behaved
gallantly with the pretty Virginian, who
despite being his school chum's stepmother
was not much beyond his own age. Ella wrote
of the pleasure of finding someone, in the
midst of 'this host of enemies, with whom we
can feel some human sympathy.'
Even though they enjoyed intermittent
protection afforded by the connection with
Custer, Clover Lea and its civilians still
suffered under the hostile occupation.
Despite her gratitude for Custer's aid, Ella
told her diary: 'In wickedness and
impudence no nation ever equalled the
Yankees.' Years later, in contrast, she still
wrote warmly of the enemy general's
'generous and kindly deeds done under
trying circumstances.'
Mrs Washington's experience as a helpless
pawn on the chessboard of war was of a kind
shared by countless thousands of other
women. Her own vivid words describe some
of what she saw and felt:the dreadful Yankees ...I feel so much
fatigued I can scarcely dress ... What a day of
horrors and agony, may I never spend such
another ... The demon of destruction [was] at
[our] very door, surrounding, swallowing [us] up
in its fearful scenes of strife ... How can such an
army of devils not human beings ever succeed?
...I fancied (though it seems a very ridiculous
idea) that there was something almost human in
[the dying farm animals'] screaming voices ...I
was glad when the last had been killed ...I am
feeling physically and mentally oppressed, never
found my nerves so shaken, and my courage
so tried.As General Custer took his leave of Clover
Lea and went back to war, Ella described to
him the frustration of being helpless to affect
her own fate. 'You men don't know how
much more intolerable the martyrdom of
endurance is than the martyrdom of action.'
'Some of us,' he replied, 'can comprehend,
and sympathize, too. War is a hard, cruel,
terrible thing. Men must fight, and women
weep.' Ella gave Custer as a token of her
appreciation a button from George
Washington's coat. The General set the
button as a brooch and presented it to his
wife, who eventually donated the relic to the
US Military Academy. It survives today in the
collection of Custer Battlefield National
Monument, Montana.
Custer subsequently played a role in
making war 'a hard, cruel, terrible thing' in
the Shenandoah valley. In September, his
troopers murdered six Confederate prisoners
in a churchyard and the streets of Front
Royal. One was a 17-year-old youngster
whose widowed mother screamed in horror
as she pleaded in vain for his life. A girl in
the village wrote of how that 'dark day of
1864 ... clouded my childhood' and
haunted her dreams forever. The famed
Confederate partisan leader John S. Mosby