Then we came South. A few months later we were tense with the imminence of war, for, young as we were, public matters were freely discussed before us and we were encouraged to ask questions and keep up with current events. Our maternal grandfather, William Elliott, a strong Union man, opposed secession, but, once his State seceded, he supported the Confederacy ardently with voice and pen and fortune. When the boom of cannon bombarding Sumter reached the plantation at dawn on that memorable April morning, my father, an exile from his beloved Cuba — the first of her sons to shed blood in her fight for freedom — too impatient to wait for the train, rode on horseback thirty miles to Charleston to offer his sword to the State of his adoption. Thenceforward his young sons lived in close touch with war, for the railway ran at the foot of the great liveoak avenue, and over its rails trains passed daily transporting troops to and from Charleston, Savan nah and intermediate points, and as the long trains of box-cars clanked slowly by, gray-clad Confederates packed within, and gray-clad Confederates sprawled upon their slanting roofs, the soldiers cheered at the sight of the lordly oaks and the tall white columns of the colonial house at the far end of the vaulted gray green aisle, and the little boys waved their caps and raised their shrill and feeble voices in response.
