COLONEL CARTER IS ENTIRELY VICTORIOUS BEFORE HE BEGINS HIS CAMPAIGN.
Towards the close of this winter of 1862-3 Banks superseded Butler, and
the New England Division expanded into the Nineteenth Army Corps. Every
one who was in New Orleans during that season will remember the
amazement with which he and all other persons saw transport after
transport steam up the river, increasing the loyal forces in and around
the city by at least ten thousand men, which rumor magnified into
twenty-five thousand. Where did they come from, and where were they
going, and what would be the result? Since the opening of the war no
expedition of magnitude had been conducted with similar secrecy; and
every one argued that a general who could plan with such reticence would
execute with corresponding vigor and ability. While the Secessionists
shrank within themselves, seeing no more hope of freeing Louisiana from
Northern Vandals, our Doctor and his fellow Loyalists exulted in a
belief that the war would soon be brought to a triumphant close.
"Three mere transports!" exclaimed Ravenel, coming in from a walk on the
levee. "It is a most glorious spectacle, this exhibition of the power of
the Republic. It equals the greatest military efforts of the greatest
military nations. One is absolutely reminded of consular Rome, carrying
on the war with Hannibal in Italy, and at the same time sending one
great army to Spain and another to Africa. I pin my faith to the tail of
General Scott's anaconda. In the end it will crush Secessia, break every
bone in its body, and swallow it. I think, Colonel, that we have every
reason to congratulate ourselves on the prospects."
"I really can't see it," answered Carter, with a lugubrious laugh.
"How so? You astonish me."
"Don't you perceive that I lose my Governorship?"
"Oh, but--I don't anticipate an immediate close of the struggle. It may
last a year yet; and during that time--"
"That is not the point. King Stork has succeeded King Log. King Stork's
men must have the nice places and King Log's men must get out of them."
"Oh, but they won't turn you out," exclaimed Lillie, and then blushed as
she thought how her eagerness might be interpreted.
"We shall see," answered the Colonel gravely, and almost sadly. He was
so much in love with this girl that a life in Capua with her seemed
more desirable than the winning of Cannæ's away from her.
"Here is my fate," he said when he called on the following evening, and
handed her two official documents, the one relieving him from his
position as Military Governor, the other assigning him to the command of
a brigade.
"Now you must go into the battle again," she said, making a struggle to
preserve her self-possession.
"I am sorry,--on your account."
At this answer her effort at stoicism and maidenly dignity failed; she
dropped her head and hid her face in the sewing work on which she had
been engaged. This was too much for Carter, to whom love had been a
rejuvenation and almost a regeneration, so that he was as gentle,
virginal, and sensitive as if he had never known the hardening
experiences of a soldier and a man about town. Sitting down beside his
betrothed, he pressed her temples with both his hands and kissed the
light, flossy, amber-colored ripples of her hair. He could feel the
half-suppressed sobs which trembled through her frame, breaking softly
and noiselessly, like summer waves dying on a reedy shore. How he longed
to soothe her by grasping all her being into his and making her
altogether his own! He was on the point of falling before the temptation
which he had that morning resolved to resist. He knew that he ought not
to marry, with only his colonelcy as a support; yet he was about to urge
an immediate marriage, and would have done so had he spoken. Lillie
would not have refused him: it would not have been in the nature of
woman: what girl would put off a lover who was going to the
battle-field? Nothing prevented the consummation of this imprudence but
a ring at the door-bell. Miss Ravenel sprang up and fled from the
parlor, fearful of being caught with tears on her cheeks and her hair
disordered. Mrs. Larue entered, gave the Colonel a saucy courtesy, cast
a keen sidelong glance at his serious countenance, repressed apparently
some flippant remark which was on her lips, begged him to excuse her for
a few moments, and slid out of the room.
"Confound her!" muttered the Colonel, indignant at Madame without cause,
merely because he had been interrupted.
By the time that Lillie had dried her eyes, washed her face and composed
herself so far as to dare return to the parlor, Mrs. Larue, ignorant of
the good or mischief that she was accomplishing, was there also.
Consequently, although Carter stayed late into the evening, there was no
second opportunity for the perilous trial of a tête-a-tête farewell.
Next day he went by the first train to Thibodeaux. As commanding officer
of a brigade he exhibited his usual energy, practical ability, and
beneficent despotism. The colonels were ordered to make immediate
inspections of their regiments, and to send in reports of articles
necessary to complete the equipment of their men, with requisitions for
the same on the brigade quartermaster. During several consecutive days
he personally went the rounds of his grand guards and outlying videttes,
choosing for this purpose midnight, or a wet storm, or any other time
when he suspected that men or officers might relax their vigilance. In
such a pelting rain, as if the Father of Waters had been taken up to
heaven and poured back into Louisiana, he came upon a picket of five men
who had sought refuge in some empty sugar-hogsheads. The closed-up heads
were toward the road, because from that direction came the wind; and
such was the pattering and howling of the tempest, that the men did not
hear the tramp of the approaching horse. Reining up, the Colonel
shouted, "Surrender! The first man that stirs, dies!"
Not a soul moved or answered. For a minute or two Carter sat motionless,
smiling grimly, with the water streaming down his face and uniform. Then
he ordered: "Come out here, one of you. I want to see what this picket
is made of."
A corporal crawled out, leaving his gun behind him in the recumbent
hogshead. His face was pale at his first appearance, but it turned paler
still when he recognized his brigade commander.
"I--I thought it was a secesh," he stammered.
"And so you surrendered, sir!" thundered the Colonel. "You allowed
yourself to be surprised, and then you surrendered! Give me your name,
sir, and the names of your men."
Twenty minutes afterward a detachment from the reserve relieved the
culprits, and marched them into camp as prisoners. Next day the corporal
and the soldier whose turn it had been to stand as sentry, went before a
court-martial, and in a week thereafter were on their way to Ship
Island, to work out a sentence of hard labor with ball and chain.
On the midnight following this adventure Carter ordered the outlying
videttes to fire three rounds of musketry, and then rode from camp to
camp to see which regiment got into line the quickest.
The members of his staff, especially his Adjutant-General and Aid, found
their positions no sinecures. Every night one or other of these young
gentlemen made the rounds of the pickets some time between midnight and
daybreak, and immediately on his return to head-quarters reported to the
Colonel the condition of the line as regarded practical efficiency and
knowledge of the formalities. If the troops fell in at three in the
morning to go through the drill of taking position to repel an imaginary
enemy, they had at least the consolation of knowing that some poor
staff-officer had been roused out of bed half an hour before to
disseminate the order. A staff-officer inspected every guard-mounting
and every battalion-drill, and made a report as to how the same was
conducted. A staff-officer rode through every regimental camp every
morning, and made a report of its condition as to cleanliness. If the
explosion of a rifle was heard any where about the post, a staff-officer
was on the spot in five minutes to learn the circumstances of the
irregularity, to order the offender to the guard-house, and to make his
report to the all-pervading brigade commander. A false or incomplete
statement he did not dare to render, so severe was the cross-questioning
which he was liable to undergo.
"Did you see it yourself, Lieutenant?" the Colonel would ask.
"I saw the man cleaning his piece, sir; and he confessed that he had
discharged it to get the ball out."
"Who was the man?"
"Private Henry Brown, Company I, Ninth Barataria."
"Very well, Mr. Brayton." (In the regular army a lieutenant is Mr.) "Now
have the kindness to take my compliments to the Colonel of the Ninth
Barataria and the field-officer of the day, and request them to step
here."
First comes the commanding officer of the regiment in which the offence
has been committed.
"Walk in, Colonel," says the brigade commander. "Take a seat, sir.
Colonel, a rifle has been fired by one of your men this morning. How is
that?"
"It was against my orders, sir. The man is in the guard-house."
"This is not the first offence of the kind--it is the third or fourth
within a week."
"The fact is, sir, that the men have no ball-screws. Their rifles get
wet on picket duty, and they have no means of drawing the loads.
Consequently they are tempted to discharge them, notwithstanding the
orders."
"Ah! You must give them the devil until they learn to resist temptation.
But no ball-screws! How is that?"
"I was not aware, sir, of the deficiency."
"Not aware of it? My God, Colonel! Not aware of such a deficiency of
equipment in your own regiment?"
"I am extremely sorry, sir," apologizes the humiliated Colonel, who
does not know what might be done to him for such neglect, and who,
although only three months in the service, is a conscientious officer,
anxious to do his whole duty.
"Send up a requisition for ball-screws and for every other lacking
article of ordnance," says the brigade commander. "I will forward it to
head-quarters and see that you are supplied. But, by the way, how did
this fellow get outside your camp-guard with his gun? That is all wrong.
Have the goodness to haul your officer of the guard over the coals about
it. Make him understand that he is responsible for such irregularities,
and that he may get dismissed the service if he doesn't attend to his
duties. That is all, Colonel. Will you take a glass of brandy? _Good_
morning, sir."
Then, turning to the Adjutant-General: "Captain, make out a circular
directing commandants of regiments to see that targets are set up in
proper places where the relieved guards may discharge their rifles. The
best marksman to be reported to regimental head-quarters, and to be
relieved from all ordinary duty for twenty-four hours."
The field-officer of the day is now announced by the orderly.
"Come in, Captain; take a seat, sir. Are you aware, Captain, that a
rifle has been fired this morning, outside the camps, in violation of
general orders?"
"I--I think I heard it," stammers the Captain, taking it for granted
that he is guilty of something, but not knowing what.
"Do you know who the offender is?" demands the Colonel, his brow
beginning to blacken like a stormy heaven over the ignoramus.
"I do not, sir. I will inquire, if you wish, Colonel."
"If I wish! My God, sir! of course I wish it. Haven't you already
inquired? My God, sir! what do you suppose your duties are?"
"I didn't know that this was one of them," pleads the now miserable
Captain.
"Don't you know, sir, that you are responsible for every irregularity
that happens within the grand guards and outside the camps, while you
are field-officer of the day? Don't you know that you are responsible
for the firing of this rifle?"
"Responsible," feebly echoes the Captain, not seeing the fact as yet,
but nevertheless very much troubled.
"Yes, sir. It is your business, if any thing goes wrong, to know it, and
discover the perpetrators, and report them for punishment. It was your
business, as soon as that gun was fired, to find out who fired it, to
have him put under guard, and to see that he was reported for
punishment. You haven't attended to your duty, sir. And because the
officers of the day don't know and don't do their duty, I have to make
my staff-officers ride day and night, and knock up their horses. Here is
my Aid, who has been doing your business. Mr. Brayton, give the Captain
this man's name, &c. Do you know, Captain, _why_ muskets should not be
fired about the camps at the will and pleasure of the enlisted men?"
"I suppose, sir, to prevent a waste of ammunition."
"Good God! Why, yes, sir; but that isn't all--that isn't half, sir. The
great reason, the all-important reason, is that firing is a signal of
danger, of an enemy, of battle. If the men are to go shooting about the
woods in this fashion, we shall never know when we are and when we are
not to be attacked. Without orders from these headquarters no firing is
permissible except by the pickets, and that only when they are attacked.
This matter involves the safety of the command, and must be subjected to
the strictest discipline. That is all, Captain. _Good_ morning, sir."
As the poor officer of the day goes out, the heavens seem to be peopled
with threatening brigade commanders, and the earth to be a wilderness
of unexplored and thorny responsibilities.
"Well, Mr. Brayton, what was the cause of the firing?" inquired Carter
one midnight, when the Aid returned from an expedition of inquiry.
"A sentinel of the Ninth shot a man dead, sir, for neglecting to halt
when challenged."
"Good, by" (this and that), exclaimed the Colonel. "Those fellows are
redeeming themselves. It used to be the meanest regiment for guard duty
in the brigade. But this is the second man the Ninth fellows have shot
within a week. By" (that and the other) "they are learning their
business. What is the sentinel's name, Mr. Brayton?"
"Private Henry Brown, Company I. The same man, sir, that was punished
the other day for firing off his rifle without orders."
"Ah, by Jove! he has learned something--learned to do as he is told. Mr.
Brayton, I wish you would go to the Colonel of the Ninth in the morning,
and request him from me to make Brown a corporal at the first
opportunity. Ask him also to give the man a good word in an order, to be
read before the regiment at dress parade to-morrow. By the way, who was
the fellow who was shot?"
"Private Murphy of the Ninth, who had been to Thibodeaux and over-stayed
his pass. He was probably drunk, sir--he had a half-empty bottle of
whiskey in his pocket."
"Bully for him--he died happy," laughed the Colonel. "You can go to bed
now, Mr. Brayton. Much obliged to you."
A few days later the brigade commander looked over the proceedings of
the court-martial which he had convened, and threw down the manuscript
with an oath.
"What a stupid--what a cursedly stupid record! Orderly, give my
compliments to Major Jackson, and request him" (here he rises to a roar)
"to report here immediately."
Picking up the manuscript, he annotated it in pencil until Major
Jackson was announced.
"My God, sir!" he then broke out. "Is that your style of conducting a
court-martial? This record is a disgrace to you as President, and to me
for selecting you for such duty. Look here, sir. Here is a private
convicted of beating the officer of the guard--one of the greatest
offences, sir, which a soldier could commit--an offence which strikes at
the very root of discipline. Now what is the punishment that you have
allotted to him? To be confined in the guard-house for three months, and
to carry a log of wood for three hours a day. Do you call that a
suitable punishment? He ought to have three years of hard labor with
ball and chain--that is the least he ought to have. You might have
sentenced him to be shot. Why, sir, do you fully realize what it is to
strike an officer, and especially an officer on duty? It is to defy the
very soul of discipline. Without respect for officers, there is no army.
It is a mob. Major Jackson, it appears to me that you have no conception
of the dignity of your own position. You don't know what it is to be an
officer. That is all, sir. Good morning."
"Captain," continues the Colonel, turning to his Adjutant-General, "make
out an order disapproving of all the proceedings of this court, and
directing that Major Jackson shall not again be detailed on
court-martial while he remains under my command."
Carter was a terror to his whole brigade--to the stupidest private, to
every lieutenant of the guard, to every commandant of company, to the
members of his staff, and even to his equals in grade, the colonels. He
knew his business so well, he was so invariably right in his
fault-findings, he was so familiar with the labyrinth of regulations and
general orders, through which almost all others groped with many
stumblings, and he was so conscientiously and gravely outraged by
offences against discipline, that he was necessarily a dreadful
personage. To use the composite expression, half Hibernian and half
Hebraic, of Lieutenant Van Zandt, he was a regular West Point Bull of
Bashan in the volunteer China-shop. But while he was thus feared, he was
also greatly respected; and a word of praise from him was cherished by
officer or soldier as a medal of honor. And, stranger still, while he
was exercising what must seem to the civilian reader a hard-hearted
despotism, he was writing every other day letters full of ardent
affection to a young lady in New Orleans.
In a general way one is tempted to speak jestingly of the circumstance
of a well-matured man falling in love with a girl in her teens. By the
time a man gets to be near forty, his moral physiognomy is supposed to
be so pock-marked with bygone amours as to be in a measure ludicrous, or
at least devoid of dignity in its tenderness. But Carter's emotional
nature was so emphatic and volcanic, so capable of bringing a drama of
the affections to a tragic issue, that I feel no disposition to laugh
over his affair with Miss Ravenel, although it was by no means his
first, nor perhaps his twentieth. Considering the passions as forces, we
are obliged to respect them in proportion to their power rather than
their direction. And in this case the direction was not bad, nor
foolish, but good, and highly creditable to Carter; for Miss Ravenel,
though as yet barely adolescent, was a finer woman in brain and heart
than he had ever loved before; also he loved her better than he had ever
before loved any woman.
He could not stay away from her. As soon as he had got his brigade into
such order as partially satisfied his stern professional conscience, he
obtained a leave of absence for seven days, and went to New Orleans.
From this visit resulted one of the most important events that will be
recorded in the present history. I shall hurry over the particulars,
because to me the circumstance is not an agreeable one. Having from my
first acquaintance with Miss Ravenel entertained a fondness for her, I
never could fancy this match of hers with such a dubious person as
Colonel Carter, who is quite capable of making her very unhappy. I
always agreed with her father in preferring Colburne, whose character,
although only half developed in consequence of youth, modesty, and
Puritan education, is nevertheless one of those germs which promise much
beauty and usefulness. But Miss Ravenel, more emotional than reflective,
was fated to love Carter rather than Colburne. To her, and probably to
most women, there was something powerfully magnetic in the ardent nature
which found its physical expression in that robust frame, that florid
brunette complexion, those mighty mustachios, and darkly burning eyes.
The consequence of this visit to New Orleans was a sudden marriage. The
tropical blood in the Colonel's veins drove him to demand it, and the
electric potency of his presence forced Miss Ravenel to concede it. When
he held both her hands in his, and, looking with passionate importunity
into her eyes, begged her not to let him go again into the flame of
battle without the consolation of feeling that she was altogether and
for ever his, she could only lay her head on his shoulder, gently
sobbing in speechless acquiescence. How many such marriages took place
during the war, sweet flowers of affection springing out of the mighty
carnage! How many fond girls forgot their womanly preference for long
engagements, slow preparations of much shopping and needle-work, coy
hesitations, and gentle maidenly tyrannies, to fling themselves into the
arms of lovers who longed to be husbands before they went forth to die!
How many young men in uniform left behind them weeping brides to whom
they were doomed never to return!
"Brave boys are all, gone at their country's call,
And yet, and yet,
We cannot forget
That many brave boys must fall."
This sad little snatch from the chorus of a common-place song Lillie
often repeated to herself, with tears in her eyes, when Carter was at
the front, without minding a bit the fact that her "brave boy" was
thirty-six years old.
The marriage cost the Doctor a violent pang; but he consented to it,
overborne by the passion of the period. There was no time to be lost on
bridal dresses, any more than in bridal tours. The ceremony was
performed in church by a regimental chaplain, in presence of the father,
Mrs. Larue, and half a dozen chance spectators, only two days before the
Colonel's leave of absence expired. Neither then nor afterward could
Lillie realize this day and hour, through which she walked and spoke as
if in a state of somnambulism, so stupefied or benumbed was she by the
strength of her emotions. The lookers-on observed no sign of feeling
about her, except that her face was as pale and apparently as cold as
alabaster. She behaved with an appearance of perfect self-possession;
she spoke the ordained words at the right moment and in a clear
voice--and yet all the while she was not sure that she was in her right
mind. It was a frozen delirium of feeling, ice without and fire within,
like a volcano of the realms of the pole.
Once in the hackney-coach which conveyed them home, alone with this man
who was now her husband, her master, the ice melted a little, and she
could weep silently upon his shoulder. She was not wretched; neither
could she distinctly feel that she was happy; if this was happiness,
then there could be a joy which was no release from pain. She had no
doubts about her future, such as even yet troubled her father, and set
him pacing by the half-hour together up and down his study. This man by
her side, this strong and loving husband, would always make her happy.
She did not doubt his goodness so much as she doubted her own; she
trusted him almost as firmly as if he were a deity. Yes, he would always
love her--and she would always, always, always love him; and what more
was there to desire? All that day she was afraid of him, and yet could
not bear to be away from him a moment. He had such an authority over
her--his look and voice and touch so tyrannized her emotions, that he
was an object of something like terror; and yet the sense of his
domination was so sweet that she could not wish it to be less, but
desired with her whole beating brain and heart that it might evermore
increase. I give no record of her conversation at this time. She said so
little! Usually a talker, almost a prattler, she was now silent; a look
from her husband, a thought of her husband, would choke her at any
moment. He seemed to have entered into her whole being, so that she was
not fully herself. The words which she whispered when alone with him
were so sacred with woman's profoundest and purest emotions that they
must not be written. The words which she uttered in the presence of
others were not felt by her, and were not worth writing.
After two days, there was a parting; perhaps, she wretchedly thought, a
final one.
"Oh! how can I let you go?" she said. "I cannot. I cannot bear it. Will
you come back? Will you ever come back? Will you be careful of yourself?
You won't get killed, will you? Promise me."
She was womanish about it, and not heroic, like her Amazonian sisters on
the Rebel side. Nevertheless she did not feel the separation so bitterly
as she would have done, had they been married a few months or years,
instead of only a few hours. Intimate relations with her husband had not
yet become a habit, and consequently a necessity of her existence; the
mere fact that they had exchanged the nuptial vows was to her a
realization of all that she had ever anticipated in marriage; when they
left the altar, and his ring was upon her finger, their wedded life was
as complete as it ever would be. And thus, in her ignorance of what love
might become, she was spared something of the anguish of separation.
She was thinking of her absent husband when Mrs. Larue addressed her for
the first time as Mrs. Carter; and yet in her dreaminess she did not at
the moment recognize the name as her own: not until Madame laughed and
said, "Lillie, I am talking to you." Then she colored crimson and
throbbed at the heart as if her husband himself had laid his hand upon
her shoulder.
Very shortly she began to demand the patient encouragements of her
father. All day, when she could get at him, she pursued him with
questions which no man in these unprophetic days could answer. It was,
"Papa, do you think there will be an active campaign this summer? Papa,
don't you suppose that Mr. Carter will be allowed to keep his brigade at
Thibodeaux?"
She rarely spoke of her husband except as Mr. Carter. She did not like
his name John--it sounded too common-place for such a superb creature;
and the title of Colonel was too official to satisfy her affection. But
"Mr. Carter" seemed to express her respect for this man, her husband,
her master, who was so much older, and, as she thought, morally greater
than herself.
Sometimes the Doctor, out of sheer pity and paternal sympathy, answered
her questions just as she wished them to be answered, telling her that
he saw no prospect of an active campaign, that the brigade could not
possibly be spared from the important post of Thibodeaux, etc. etc. But
then the exactingness of anxious love made her want to know why he
thought so; and her persevering inquiries generally ended by forcing him
from all his hastily constructed works of consolation. In mere
self-defence, therefore, he occasionally urged upon her the unpleasant
but ennobling duties of patience and self-control.
"My dear," he would say, "we cannot increase our means of happiness
without increasing our possibilities of misery. A woman who marries is
like a man who goes into business. The end may be greatly increased
wealth, or it may be bankruptcy. It is cowardly to groan over the fact.
You must learn to accept the sorrows of your present life as well as the
joys; you must try to strike a rational balance between the two, and be
contented if you can say, 'On the whole, I am happier than I was.' I beg
you, for your own sake, to overcome this habit of looking at only the
darker chances of life. If you go on fretting, you will not last the war
out. No constitution--no woman's constitution, at any rate--can stand
it. You positively must cease to be a child, and become a woman."
Lillie tried to obey, but could only succeed by spasms.