THE BEGINNING OF THE END
In this February the grey Congress at Richmond created the office of
Commander-in-Chief of all the Confederate Armies, and appointed to it
Robert Edward Lee. On the twenty-third Lee telegraphed to Johnston,
then at Lincolnton, North Carolina:
“GENERAL J.E. JOHNSTON:—
Assume command of the Army of Tennessee and all troops in the
Department of South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. Assign General
Beauregard to duty under you as you may select. Concentrate all
available forces and drive back Sherman.
R.E. LEE.”
“All available forces” were not many, indeed they were very few, but
such as they were Johnston drew them together, and with them, the
middle of March, faced Sherman at Bentonville. “Drive back Sherman?”
Once that might have deen done, with the old Army of Tennessee. It
could not be done now with the handful that was left of that army. On
the first of April General Sherman’s effective strength is given for
all three arms, as something over eighty-one thousand men. Infantry
and artillery the grey had on this date sixteen thousand and fourteen
men, with a little above four thousand cavalry. Bentonville saw, grey
and blue, an almost equal loss. After Bentonville came some days of
calm, the grey encamped at Smithfield, the blue at Goldsboro.
But through the pause came always the tolling of the bells, ringing
loud and louder—
Early in February Lee at Petersburg wrote to the Secretary of War as
follows. “All the disposable force of the right wing of the Army has
been operating against the enemy beyond Hatcher’s Run since Sunday.
Yesterday, the most inclement day of the winter, the men had to be
retained in line of battle, having been in the same condition the two
previous days and nights. I regret to be obliged to state that under
these circumstances, heightened by assaults and fire of the enemy,
some of the men had been without meat for three days, and all were
suffering from reduced rations and scant clothing, exposed to battle,
cold, hail, and sleet.... The physical strength of the men, if their
courage survives, must fail under this treatment. Our cavalry had to
be dispersed for want of forage. Fitz Lee’s and Lomax’s divisions are
scattered because supplies cannot be transported where their services
are required. I had to bring W.H.F. Lee’s division forty miles Sunday
night to get him into position. Taking these facts in consideration
with the paucity of our numbers, you must not be surprised if calamity
befalls us.” Bad in February, it was no better in March.
Back to the trenches before Petersburg came, because they were needed,
sundry troops that had fought in the Valley. Back came what was left
of the Golden Brigade, and what was left of the Sixty-fifth Virginia.
But November and December and January, well-nigh all of that winter,
Richard Cleave, carried across the mountains after Cedar Creek, lay at
Greenwood, a desperately wounded soldier. In February he began to
gather strength, but the latter half of that month found him still a
prisoner in a large, high, quiet room, firelit and still.
On a grey afternoon, with a few flakes of snow in the air, turning
from the window toward the fire, he found that Unity was his nurse for
this twilight hour. She lifted her bright face from her hands. “That
was a very sad sigh, Richard!”
He smiled. “Unity, I was thinking.... I have not been a very fortunate
soldier. And I used—long ago—to think that I would be.”
“Is there such a thing as a fortunate soldier?”
He smiled again. “That depends.—Is there such a thing as a fortunate
war? I don’t know.”
His mother entered the room. “It’s Cousin William, Richard. He wants
to come in and talk a little while.”
Cousin William appeared—seventy, and ruddy yet, with a gouty limb and
an indomitable spirit. “Ha, Richard! that’s more like! You’re getting
colour, and some flesh on your bones! When are you going back to the
front?”
“Next week, sir.”
Cousin William laughed. “Well, call it the week after that!” He sat by
the couch in the winged chair. The firelight played through the room,
lit the two women sitting by the hearth, and the two or three old
pictures on the walls. Outside the snow fell slowly, in large, quiet
flakes. “Have you had any letters?” asked Cousin William.
Unity answered. “One from Fauquier yesterday. None from Edward for
some days. The last was just a line from Columbia written before the
troops left the place and Sherman came and burned it. We can’t but
feel very anxious.”
But Cousin William could not endure to see Greenwood downcast. “I
think you may be certain they are safe.—What did Fauquier say?”
“Just that since Hatcher’s Run there had been comparative inaction. He
said that the misery in the trenches was very great, and that day by
day the army was dwindling. He said we must be prepared now for the
worst.”
Cousin William flushed, leaned forward, and became violently
optimistic. “You tell Fauquier—or I’ll write to him and tell him
myself—that that is no way to talk! It is no way for his father’s son
to talk, or his grandfather’s grandson to talk! I am sure, Richard,
that you don’t feel that way!”
“Yes, sir, I do feel that way. We are at the end.”
“At the end!” ejaculated Cousin William. “Absurd! We have held Grant
eight months at Petersburg!—Well, say that General Lee eventually
determines to withdraw from Petersburg! What will follow? Lee in
Virginia and Johnston in Carolina have the inner lines. Lee will march
south, Johnston will march north, they will join armies, first crush
Sherman, then turn and destroy Grant! Richmond? Well, say that
Richmond is given up, temporarily, sir—temporarily! We will take it
again when we want it, and if they burn it we will rebuild it! Nothing
can keep it from being our capital. The President and the Cabinet and
offices can remove for a time. Who knows but what it may be very well
to be free and foot-loose of defended cities? Play the guerilla if
need be! Make our capital at mountain hamlet after mountain hamlet, go
from court-house to court-house—A capital! The Confederacy has a
capital in every single Southern heart—” Cousin William dashed his
hand across his eyes. “I’m ashamed to hear you speak so, Richard!—But
you’re a sick man—you’re a sick man!”
“God knows what should be done!” said Cleave. “I am not an easy
giver-up, sir. But we have fought until there is little breath in us
with which to fight any more. We have fought to a standstill. And it
is the country that is sick, sick to death!”
“Any day England or France—”
“Oh, the old, old dream—”
“Say then it’s a dream!” cried Cousin William angrily. “Say that is a
dream and any outer dependence is a dream! The spirit of man is no
dream! What have we got for dependence? We have got, sir, the spirit
of the men and women of the South! We’ve got the unconquerable and
imperishable! We’ve got the spiritual might!”
But Richard shook his head. “A fire burns undoubtedly and a spirit
holds, but day by day and night by night for four years death has come
and death has come! Half the bright coals have been swept from the
hearth. And against what is left, sir, wind and rain and sleet and
tempest are beating hard—beating against the armies in the field and
against the country in the field. They are beating hard, and they will
beat us down. They have beaten us down. It is but the recognition
now.”
“Then may I die,” said Cousin William, “before I hear Virginia say, ‘I
am conquered!’” His eyes sparkled, his frame trembled. “Do you think
they will let it rest there, sir! No! In one year I have seen
vindictiveness come into this struggle—yes, I’ll grant you
vindictiveness on both sides—but you say that theirs is the winning
side! Then I tell you that they will be not less but more vindictive!
For ten years to come they will make us drink the water of bitterness
and eat the bread of humiliation! _Virginia!_ And that second war will
be worse than the first!”
He rose. “I can’t stay here and hear you talk like this! I suppose you
know what you’re talking about, but you people in the field get a
jaundiced view of things! I’m going to see Noel. Noel and I worked it
all out last night.—General Lee to cut loose from the trenches at
Petersburg, Johnston to strike north, then, having the inner lines—”
And so on.
When he was gone Richard laughed. Unity, the log in her hands with
which she was about to replenish the fire, looked over her shoulder.
“That’s sadder than sighing!” she said. “Don’t!”
“What shall we do?” he asked. “Go like pieces of wood for a
twelvemonth—sans care, sans thinking, sans feeling, sans heart,
sans—no, not sans courage!”
“No—not sans courage.”
“I am not sad,” he said, “for myself. It would be strange if I were,
would it not, to-day? I have a great, personal happiness. And even
this afternoon, Unity—I am saying good-bye, as one of the generality,
to despair, and pain, and wounded pride, and foreboding, and
unhappiness. I have been looking it in the face. Such and so it is
going to be in the South, and perhaps worse than we know—and yet the
South is neither going to die nor despair!—And now if there is any
broth I surely could take it!”
Going downstairs Cousin William found the library and Miss Lucy. “I
got too angry, I suppose, with Richard—but to lie there talking of
surrender! _Surrender!_ I tell you, Lucy,—but there! I can’t talk
about it. Better not begin.”
“Richard is a strong man, William. He’s not the weakly despairing
kind.”
“I know, Lucy, I know! But it’s not so bad as he thinks. I look for a
big victory any day now.... Well! let’s talk of the wedding. When’s it
to be?”
“In three days. The doctor says he may come downstairs to-morrow.
Corbin Wood will marry them, here in the parlour. Then, in a few days,
Richard will go back to the front.... Oh, the sad and strange and
happy so blended together.... We are so desperate, William, that the
road has turned because we couldn’t travel it so any longer and live!
There’s a strange kind of calm, and you could say that a quiet music
was coming back into life.... If only we could hear from Edward!”
The sky was clear on Cleave’s and Judith’s wedding-day. The sun shone,
the winds were quiet, there was a feeling in the air as of the coming
spring. Her sisters cut from the house-plants flowers for Judith’s
hair; there fell over her worn white gown her mother’s wedding-veil.
The servants brought boughs of cedar and bright berries, and with them
decked the large old parlour, where the shepherds and shepherdesses
looked out from the rose wreaths on the wall as they had looked when
Hamilton and Burr and Jefferson were alive. The guests were few, and
all old friends and kinsfolk, and there were, beside, Mammy and Julius
and Isham and Scipio and Esther and Car’line and the others, Tullius
among them. A great fire warmed the room, shone in the window-panes
and the prisms beneath the candles and the polished floor and the old
gilt frames of the Cary portraits. Margaret Cleave sat with her hand
shadowing her eyes. Her heart was here, but her heart was also with
her other children, with Will and Miriam. Molly, who was Miriam’s age,
kept beside her, a loving hand on her dress. Cousin William gave away
the bride. An artillery commander, himself just out of hospital, stood
with Cleave.—Oh, the grey uniforms, so worn and weather-stained for a
wedding party!
It was over—the guests were gone. The household, tremulous, between
smiles and tears, went its several, accustomed ways. There was no
wedding journey to be taken. All life was fitted now to a Doric
simplicity, a grave acceptance of realities without filagree
adornment. There was left a certain fair quietness, limpid sincerity,
faith, and truth.... There was a quiet, cheerful supper, and
afterwards a little talking together in the library, the reading of
the Richmond papers, Unity singing to her guitar. Then at last
good-nights were said. Judith and Cleave mounted the stairs together,
entered hand in hand their room. The shutters were all opened; it lay,
warmed by the glowing embers on the hearth, but yet in a flood of
moonlight. His arm about her, they moved to the deep window-seat above
the garden, knelt there and looked out. Valley and hill and distant
mountains were all washed with silver.
“The moon shone so that April night—that night after you overtook the
carriage upon the road—and at last we understood ... I sat here all
that night, in the moonlight.”
“The garden where I said good-bye to you, a hundred years ago, the day
after a tournament.... It does not look dead and cold and a winter
night. It looks filled with lilies and roses and bright, waving
trees—and if a bird is not singing down there, then it must be singing
in my heart! It is singing somewhere!—Love is best.”
“Love is best.”
A week from this day he passed through Richmond on his way to the
front. Richmond! Richmond looked to him like a prisoner doomed, and
yet a quiet prisoner with a smile for children and the azure spaces in
the winter sky. People were going in streams into the churches. The
hospitals, they said, were very full. In all the departments, it was
said, the important papers were kept packed in boxes, ready to be
removed if there were need. No one any longer noticed the cannon to
the south. They had been thundering there since June, and it was now
March. There was very little to eat. Milk sold at four dollars a
quart. And yet children played about the doors, and women smiled, and
men and women went about the day’s work with sufficient heroism. “Dear
Dick Ewell” had charge of the defences of Richmond, the slightly
manned ring of forts, the Local Brigade, Custis Lee’s division at
Chaffin’s Bluff. In the high, clear March air, ragged grey soldiers
passed, honoured, through the streets, bugles blew, or drums beat. One
caught the air of Dixie.
Cleave rode out over Mayo’s Bridge and south through the war-scored
country to Petersburg and the grey lines, to division headquarters and
then to the Golden Brigade. The brigade and he met like tried friends,
but the Sixty-fifth and he met like lovers.
The lines at Petersburg!—stretched and stretched from the Appomattox,
east of the town, to Five Forks and the White Oak Road, stretched
until now, in places, there was scarcely more than a skirmish line,
stretched to the breaking-point! The trenches at Petersburg!—clay
ditches where men were drenched by the winter rains, pierced by the
winter sleet, where they huddled or burrowed, scooping shallow caves
with bayonet and tin cup, where hands and feet were frozen, where at
night they watched the mortar shells, and at all hours heard the
minies keening, where the smoke hung heavy, where the earth all about
was raw and pitted, where every muscle rebelled, so cramped and weary
of the trenches! where there were double watches and a man could not
sleep enough, where there were nakedness and hunger and every woe but
heat, where the sharpshooters picked off men, and the minies came with
a whistle and killed them, and the bombs with a shriek and worked red
havoc, where men showed a thousand weaknesses and again a thousand
heroisms! Oh, the labyrinth of trenches, forts, traverses, roads,
approaches, raw red clay, and trampled herbage, hillock and hollow,
scored, seamed, and pitted mother earth, and over all the smoke and
noise, blown by the March wind! And Petersburg itself, that had been a
pleasant town, was a place of ruined houses and deserted streets! A
bitter havoc had been wrought.
The night of his return to the front Cleave stood with Fauquier Cary
in an embrasure whence a gun had just been taken to strengthen another
work, stood and looked first over the red wilderness of their own
camp-fires, and then across a stripe of darkness to the long, deep,
and vivid glow that marked the Federal lines. The night was cold but
still, the stars extraordinarily bright. “For so long in that quiet
room at Greenwood!” said Cleave. “And now this again! It has almost a
novel look. There! What a great shell!”
“Fireworks at the end,” answered Cary. “It is the end.”
“Yes. It is evident.”
“I have been,” said Cary, “for a day or two to Richmond, and I was
shown there certain papers, memoranda, and estimates. I wish you would
listen to three or four statements out of many.—‘Amount needed for
absolutely necessary construction and repair of railroads if they are
to serve any military purpose $21,000,000.’—‘The Commissary debt now
exceeds $70,000,000.’—‘The debt to various factories exceeds
$5,000,000.‘—‘The Medical Department asks for $40,000,000, at least
for the current year.’—‘The Subsistence Bureau and the Nitre and
Mining Bureau as well as other Departments are resorting to
barter.’—‘Requisitions by the War Department upon the Treasury since
’61 amount to $1,737,746,121. Of the requisition for last year and
this year, there is yet unfurnished $160,000,000. In addition the War
Department has a further arrearage of say $200,000,000.’—This was a
letter from one of the up-river counties patriotically proposing the
use of cotton yarn or cloth as specie—thus reducing the necessity for
the use of Treasury notes to the smallest possible limit! Let us see
how it went.—First it proposed the removal of all factories to safe
points near the mountains, where the water-power is abundant and
approach by the enemy difficult. Next the establishment of small
factories at various points of like character. Around these, as
centres, it goes on to say, ‘the women of our country who have been
deprived of all and driven from their homes by the enemy should be
collected, together with the wives and daughters of soldiers and
others in indigent circumstances. There they would not be likely to be
disturbed by the enemy. Thus distributed they could be more easily
fed, and the country be greatly benefited by their labours, which
would be light and highly remunerative to them, thereby lessening the
suffering at home and the consequently increasing discontent in the
army. Cotton would be near at hand, labour abundant, and the necessity
of the transportation of food and material to and from great centres
of trade greatly reduced. We would furnish the women of the country
generally with yarns and a simple and cheap pattern of looms, taking
pay for the same in cloth made by them—’ et cætera!... How desperate
we are, Richard, to entertain ourselves with foolery like this!—But
the act to use the negroes as soldiers will go through. We have come
to that. The only thing is that the war will be ended before they can
be mustered in.”
They turned in the embrasure and looked far and wide. It seemed a
world of camp-fires. Far to the east, in the direction of City Point,
some river battery or gun-boat was sending up rockets. Westward a blue
fort began a sullen cannonade and a grey fort nearly opposite at once
took up the challenge. “Fort Gregg,” said Cary, “dubbed by our men
‘Fort Hell,’ and Fort Mahone called by theirs ‘Fort Damnation.’”
For all that the night itself was so clear and the stars so high and
splendid, there was a murk discernible everywhere a few feet above the
earth, rising like a miasma, with a faint, distasteful odour. Through
it all the fires lit by men shone blurred. The cannon continued to
thunder, and above their salients gathered clouds of coppery smoke. A
half brigade passed on its way to strengthen some menaced place, and a
neighbouring fire showed in series its face and form. The men looked
dead for sleep, hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked. They dragged their limbs,
their heads drooped, their shoulders were bowed. They passed like dull
and weary sheep. Fort Hell and Fort Damnation brought more guns into
action.
Cleave passed his hand before his eyes. “It’s not,” he said, “the way
to settle it.”
“Precisely not,” answered Cary. “It is not, and it never was, and it
never will be. And that despite the glamour and the cry of
‘Necessity!’”
“Little enough glamour to-night!”
“I agree with you. The glamour is at the beginning. The necessity is
to find a more heroic way.”
The two went down from the embrasure and presently said goodnight.
Cleave rode on—not to the house in which he was quartered, but to the
portion of the lines where, he was told, would be found a command for
which he had made enquiry. He found it and its colonel, asked a
question or two, and at once obtained the request which he made, this
being that he might speak to a certain soldier in such a company.
The soldier came and faced Cleave where the latter waited for him
beside a deserted camp-fire. The red light showed both their faces,
worn and grave and self-contained. Off in the night and distance the
two forts yet thundered, but all hereabouts was quiet, the fires dying
down, the men sinking to rest. “Stafford,” said Cleave, “I have been
lying wounded for a long while, and I have had time to look at man’s
life, and the way we live it. It’s all a mystery, what we do, and what
we do not do, and we stumble and stumble!...” He held out his hand.
“Don’t let us be enemies any longer!”