We were all suffering the consequences of late and early hours, and of the worry and excitement at Harper’s Ferry. I felt almost ill, and when Miss Oglesby, whose home was in Winchester, invited us to spend a week with her, we concluded that we would accept her hospitality until better able to continue our journey.
Winchester was the most difficult of all places for Southerners to pass through at this time, and we could not possibly have gotten through if we had been left to our own resources. Milroy was commandant, and his name was a terror. He belonged to the Ben Butler of New Orleans type. Some time near the middle of the day we drew up in front of Milroy’s headquarters. Immediately behind us came the Jews and their belongings. They did not go in with us, and I supposed they were awaiting their turn. General Milroy was absent, off on a fight, and we fell into the hands of his adjutant, a dapper little fellow. We heard him talking to Goldsborough of the recent fight and victory, and heard him making arrangements for our transportation.
Here we thought it proper to inform him that we were going to remain a week in Winchester.
“You can not remain here,” he said. “You go on immediately.”
“Oh, no!” we said, “we’re not going on now. We are going to stop here for a visit and until we are rested.”
“You are prisoners and under orders. You go at once--” he began bruskly.
“Oh, no!” we interrupted, eager to enlighten him, for we saw he had made a very natural mistake. “_We_ are not prisoners. Those poor Jews out there, _they_ are prisoners. We are going to stop here on a little visit.”
“You don’t stop here an hour. This is Miss Oglesby’s destination, and she stops, but the rest of you go on--now.”
He looked as if he thought us demented. Goldsborough kept making faces at us, but we were so anxious to correct the adjutant’s mistake that we had no attention to bestow elsewhere. We thought we had never seen so stupid a man as that adjutant.
“_We_ are not the prisoners,” we insisted. “Those Jews out there----”
Here he told Captain Goldsborough to conduct “these prisoners” down-stairs and into the ambulance provided for them. “You will not go far before you meet a detachment of cavalry on their way to this place,” he informed Captain Goldsborough, and then instructed him to turn back of these a sufficient escort for our party.