Lee surrendered the remnant of his army at Appomattox, April 9, 1865,
and yet a couple of days later the old Colonel’s battery lay intrenched
right in the mountain-pass where it had halted three days before. Two
weeks previously it had been detailed with a light division sent to meet
and repel a force which it was understood was coming in by way of
the southwest valley to strike Lee in the rear of his long line from
Richmond to Petersburg. It had done its work. The mountain-pass had
been seized and held, and the Federal force had not gotten by that
road within the blue rampart which guarded on that side the heart of
Virginia. This pass, which was the key to the main line of passage over
the mountains, had been assigned by the commander of the division to
the old Colonel and his old battery, and they had held it. The position
taken by the battery had been chosen with a soldier’s eye. A better
place could not have been selected to hold the pass. It was its highest
point, just where the road crawled over the shoulder of the mountain
along the limestone cliff, a hundred feet sheer above the deep river,
where its waters had cut their way in ages past, and now lay deep and
silent, as if resting after their arduous toil before they began to boil
over the great bowlders which filled the bed a hundred or more yards
below.
The little plateau at the top guarded the descending road on either side
for nearly a mile, and the mountain on the other side of the river was
the centre of a clump of rocky, heavily timbered spurs, so inaccessible
that no feet but those of wild animals or of the hardiest hunter had
ever climbed it. On the side of the river on which the road lay,
the only path out over the mountain except the road itself was a
charcoal-burner’s track, dwindling at times to a footway known only to
the mountain-folk, which a picket at the top could hold against an army.
The position, well defended, was impregnable, and it was well defended.
This the general of the division knew when he detailed the old Colonel
and gave him his order to hold the pass until relieved, and not let his
guns fall into the hands of the enemy. He knew both the Colonel and his
battery. The battery was one of the oldest in the army. It had been in
the service since April, 1861, and its commander had come to be known as
“The Wheel Horse of his division”. He was, perhaps, the oldest officer
of his rank in his branch of the service. Although he had bitterly
opposed secession, and was many years past the age of service when the
war came on, yet as soon as the President called on the State for her
quota of troops to coerce South Carolina, he had raised and uniformed
an artillery company, and offered it, not to the President of the United
States, but to the Governor of Virginia.
It is just at this point that he suddenly looms up to me as a soldier;
the relation he never wholly lost to me afterward, though I knew him
for many, many years of peace. His gray coat with the red facing and the
bars on the collar; his military cap; his gray flannel shirt--it was the
first time I ever saw him wear anything but immaculate linen--his high
boots; his horse caparisoned with a black, high-peaked saddle, with
crupper and breast-girth, instead of the light English hunting-saddle
to which I had been accustomed, all come before me now as if it were but
the other day. I remember but little beyond it, yet I remember, as if
it were yesterday, his leaving home, and the scenes which immediately
preceded it; the excitement created by the news of the President’s call
for troops; the unanimous judgment that it meant war; the immediate
determination of the old Colonel, who had hitherto opposed secession,
that it must be met; the suppressed agitation on the plantation,
attendant upon the tender of his services and the Governor’s acceptance
of them. The prompt and continuous work incident to the enlistment of
the men, the bustle of preparation, and all the scenes of that time,
come before me now. It turned the calm current of the life of an old and
placid country neighborhood, far from any city or centre, and stirred it
into a boiling torrent, strong enough, or fierce enough to cut its
way and join the general torrent which was bearing down and sweeping
everything before it. It seemed but a minute before the quiet old
plantation, in which the harvest, the corn-shucking, and the Christmas
holidays alone marked the passage of the quiet seasons, and where a
strange carriage or a single horseman coming down the big road was
an event in life, was turned into a depot of war-supplies, and the
neighborhood became a parade-ground. The old Colonel, not a colonel yet,
nor even a captain, except by brevet, was on his horse by daybreak and
off on his rounds through the plantations and the pines enlisting his
company. The office in the yard, heretofore one in name only, became one
now in reality, and a table was set out piled with papers, pens,
ink, books of tactics and regulation, at which men were accepted and
enrolled. Soldiers seemed to spring from the ground, as they did from
the sowing of the dragon’s teeth in the days of Cadmus. Men came up the
high road or down the paths across the fields, sometimes singly, but
oftener in little parties of two or three, and, asking for the Captain,
entered the office as private citizens and came out soldiers enlisted
for the war. There was nothing heard of on the plantation except
fighting; white and black, all were at work, and all were eager; the
servants contended for the honor of going with their master; the women
flocked to the house to assist in the work of preparation, cutting
out and making under-clothes, knitting socks, picking lint, preparing
bandages, and sewing on uniforms; for many of the men who had enlisted
were of the poorest class, far too poor to furnish anything themselves,
and their equipment had to be contributed mainly by wealthier neighbors.
The work was carried on at night as well as by day, for the occasion
was urgent. Meantime the men were being drilled by the Captain and his
lieutenants, who had been militia officers of old. We were carried to
see the drill at the cross-roads, and a brave sight it seemed to us:
the lines marching and countermarching in the field, with the horses
galloping as they wheeled amid clouds of dust, at the hoarse commands
of the excited officers, and the roadside lined with spectators of every
age and condition. I recall the arrival of the messenger one night, with
the telegraphic order to the Captain to report with his company at “Camp
Lee” immediately; the hush in the parlor that attended its reading;
then the forced beginning of the conversation afterwards in a somewhat
strained and unnatural key, and the Captain’s quick and decisive
outlining of his plans.
Within the hour a dozen messengers were on their way in various
directions to notify the members of the command of the summons, and to
deliver the order for their attendance at a given point next day.
It seemed that a sudden and great change had come. It was the actual
appearance of what had hitherto only been theoretical--war. The next
morning the Captain, in full uniform, took leave of the assembled
plantation, with a few solemn words commending all he left behind to
God, and galloped away up the big road to join and lead his battery to
the war, and to be gone just four years.
Within a month he was on “the Peninsula” with Magruder, guarding
Virginia on the east against the first attack. His camp was first at
Yorktown and then on Jamestown Island, the honor having been assigned
his battery of guarding the oldest cradle of the race on this continent.
It was at “Little Bethel” that his guns were first trained on the enemy,
and that the battery first saw what they had to do, and from this time
until the middle of April, 1865, they were in service, and no battery
saw more service or suffered more in it. Its story was a part of
the story of the Southern Army in Virginia. The Captain was a rigid
disciplinarian, and his company had more work to do than most new
companies. A pious churchman, of the old puritanical type not uncommon
to Virginia, he looked after the spiritual as well as the physical
welfare of his men, and his chaplain or he read prayers at the head of
his company every morning during the war. At first he was not popular
with the men, he made the duties of camp life so onerous to them, it was
“nothing but drilling and praying all the time,” they said. But he had
not commanded very long before they came to know the stuff that was in
him. He had not been in service a year before he had had four horses
shot under him, and when later on he was offered the command of a
battalion, the old company petitioned to be one of his batteries, and
still remained under his command. Before the first year was out the
battery had, through its own elements, and the discipline of the
Captain, become a cohesive force, and a distinct integer in the Army
of Northern Virginia. Young farmer recruits knew of its prestige and
expressed preference for it of many batteries of rapidly growing or
grown reputation. Owing to its high stand, the old and clumsy guns with
which it had started out were taken from it, and in their place was
presented a battery of four fine, brass, twelve-pound Napoleons of
the newest and most approved kind, and two three-inch Parrotts, all
captured. The men were as pleased with them as children with new toys.
The care and attention needed to keep them in prime order broke the
monotony of camp life. They soon had abundant opportunities to
test their power. They worked admirably, carried far, and were
extraordinarily accurate in their aim. The men from admiration of their
guns grew to have first a pride in, and then an affection for, them, and
gave them nicknames as they did their comrades; the four Napoleons being
dubbed “The Evangelists”, and the two rifles being “The Eagle”, because
of its scream and force, and “The Cat”, because when it became hot from
rapid firing “It jumped,” they said, “like a cat.” From many a hill-top
in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania “The Evangelists” spoke their
hoarse message of battle and death, “The Eagle” screamed her terrible
note, and “The Cat” jumped as she spat her deadly shot from her hot
throat. In the Valley of Virginia; on the levels of Henrico and Hanover;
on the slopes of Manassas; in the woods of Chancellorsville; on
the heights of Fredericksburg; at Antietam and Gettysburg; in the
Spottsylvania wilderness, and again on the Hanover levels and on the
lines before Petersburg, the old guns through nearly four years roared
from fiery throats their deadly messages. The history of the battery was
bound up with the history of Lee’s army. A rivalry sprang up among
the detachments of the different guns, and their several records were
jealously kept. The number of duels each gun was in was carefully
counted, every scar got in battle was treasured, and the men around
their camp-fires, at their scanty messes, or on the march, bragged
of them among themselves and avouched them as witnesses. New recruits
coming in to fill the gaps made by the killed and disabled, readily fell
in with the common mood and caught the spirit like a contagion. It was
not an uncommon thing for a wheel to be smashed in by a shell, but if it
happened to one gun oftener than to another there was envy. Two of the
Evangelists seemed to be especially favored in this line, while the Cat
was so exempt as to become the subject of some derision. The men stood
by the guns till they were knocked to pieces, and when the fortune of
the day went against them, had with their own hands oftener than once
saved them after most of their horses were killed.
This had happened in turn to every gun, the men at times working like
beavers in mud up to their thighs and under a murderous fire to get
their guns out. Many a man had been killed tugging at trail or wheel
when the day was against them; but not a gun had ever been lost. At last
the evil day arrived. At Winchester a sudden and impetuous charge for
a while swept everything before it, and carried the knoll where the old
battery was posted; but all the guns were got out by the toiling and
rapidly dropping men, except the Cat, which was captured with its entire
detachment working at it until they were surrounded and knocked from the
piece by cavalrymen. Most of the men who were not killed were retaken
before the day was over, with many guns; but the Cat was lost. She
remained in the enemy’s hands and probably was being turned against
her old comrades and lovers. The company was inconsolable. The death of
comrades was too natural and common a thing to depress the men beyond
what such occurrences necessarily did; but to lose a gun! It was like
losing the old Colonel; it was worse: a gun was ranked as a brigadier;
and the Cat was equal to a major-general. The other guns seemed lost
without her; the Eagle especially, which generally went next to her,
appeared to the men to have a lonely and subdued air. The battery was
no longer the same: it seemed broken and depleted, shrunken to a mere
section. It was worse than Cold Harbor, where over half the men were
killed or wounded. The old Captain, now Colonel of the battalion,
appreciated the loss and apprehended its effect on the men as much as
they themselves did, and application was made for a gun to take the
place of the lost piece; but there was none to be had, as the men
said they had known all along. It was added--perhaps by a department
clerk--that if they wanted a gun to take the place of the one they had
lost, they had better capture it. “By----, we will,” they said--adding
epithets, intended for the department clerk in his “bomb-proof”, not
to be printed in this record--and they did. For some time afterwards in
every engagement into which they got there used to be speculation among
them as to whether the Cat were not there on the other side; some of
the men swearing they could tell her report, and even going to the rash
length of offering bets on her presence.
By one of those curious coincidences, as strange as anything in fiction,
a new general had, in 1864, come down across the Rapidan to take
Richmond, and the old battery had found a hill-top in the line in which
Lee’s army lay stretched across “the Wilderness” country to stop him.
The day, though early in May, was a hot one, and the old battery, like
most others, had suffered fearfully. Two of the guns had had wheels cut
down by shells and the men had been badly cut up; but the fortune of the
day had been with Lee, and a little before nightfall, after a terrible
fight, there was a rapid advance, Lee’s infantry sweeping everything
before it, and the artillery, after opening the way for the charge,
pushing along with it; now unlimbering as some vantage-ground was
gained, and using canister with deadly effect; now driving ahead again
so rapidly that it was mixed up with the muskets when the long line
of breastworks was carried with a rush, and a line of guns were caught
still hot from their rapid work. As the old battery, with lathered
horses and smoke-grimed men, swung up the crest and unlimbered on the
captured breastwork, a cheer went up which was heard even above the long
general yell of the advancing line, and for a moment half the men in the
battery crowded together around some object on the edge of the redoubt,
yelling like madmen. The next instant they divided, and there was the
Cat, smoke-grimed and blood-stained and still sweating hot from her last
fire, being dragged from her muddy ditch by as many men as could get
hold of trail-rope or wheel, and rushed into her old place beside the
Eagle, in time to be double-shotted with canister to the muzzle, and
to pour it from among her old comrades into her now retiring former
masters. Still, she had a new carriage, and her record was lost, while
those of the other guns had been faithfully kept by the men. This made a
difference in her position for which even the bullets in her wheels
did not wholly atone; even Harris, the sergeant of her detachment, felt
that.
It was only a few days later, however, that abundant atonement was
made. The new general did not retire across the Rapidan after his first
defeat, and a new battle had to be fought: a battle, if anything, more
furious, more terrible than the first, when the dead filled the trenches
and covered the fields. He simply marched by the left flank, and Lee
marching by the right flank to head him, flung himself upon him again
at Spottsylvania Court-House. That day the Cat, standing in her place
behind the new and temporary breastwork thrown up when the battery was
posted, had the felloes of her wheels, which showed above the top of the
bank, entirely cut away by Minie-bullets, so that when she jumped in the
recoil her wheels smashed and let her down. This covered all old scores.
The other guns had been cut down by shells or solid shot; but never
before had one been gnawed down by musket-balls. From this time all
through the campaign the Cat held her own beside her brazen and bloody
sisters, and in the cold trenches before Petersburg that winter, when
the new general--Starvation--had joined the one already there, she made
her bloody mark as often as any gun on the long lines.
Thus the old battery had come to be known, as its old commander, now
colonel of a battalion, had come to be known by those in yet higher
command. And when in the opening spring of 1865 it became apparent to
the leaders of both armies that the long line could not longer be held
if a force should enter behind it, and, sweeping the one partially
unswept portion of Virginia, cut the railways in the southwest, and a
man was wanted to command the artillery in the expedition sent to meet
this force, it was not remarkable that the old Colonel and his battalion
should be selected for the work. The force sent out was but small; for
the long line was worn to a thin one in those days, and great changes
were taking place, the consequences of which were known only to the
commanders. In a few days the commander of the expedition found that
he must divide his small force for a time, at least, to accomplish his
purpose, and sending the old Colonel with one battery of artillery to
guard one pass, must push on over the mountain by another way to meet
the expected force, if possible, and repel it before it crossed the
farther range. Thus the old battery, on an April evening of 1865, found
itself toiling alone up the steep mountain road which leads above the
river to the gap, which formed the chief pass in that part of the Blue
Ridge. Both men and horses looked, in the dim and waning light of the
gray April day, rather like shadows of the beings they represented than
the actual beings themselves. And anyone seeing them as they toiled
painfully up, the thin horses floundering in the mud, and the men, often
up to their knees, tugging at the sinking wheels, now stopping to rest,
and always moving so slowly that they seemed scarcely to advance at all,
might have thought them the ghosts of some old battery lost from some
long gone and forgotten war on that deep and desolate mountain road.
Often, when they stopped, the blowing of the horses and the murmuring
of the river in its bed below were the only sounds heard, and the tired
voices of the men when they spoke among themselves seemed hardly more
articulate sounds than they. Then the voice of the mounted figure on the
roan horse half hidden in the mist would cut in, clear and inspiring, in
a tone of encouragement more than of command, and everything would wake
up: the drivers would shout and crack their whips; the horses would bend
themselves on the collars and flounder in the mud; the men would spring
once more to the mud-clogged wheels, and the slow ascent would begin
again.
The orders to the Colonel, as has been said, were brief: To hold the
pass until he received further instructions, and not to lose his guns.
To be ordered, with him, was to obey. The last streak of twilight
brought them to the top of the pass; his soldier’s instinct and a brief
recognizance made earlier in the day told him that this was his place,
and before daybreak next morning the point was as well fortified as a
night’s work by weary and supperless men could make it. A prettier spot
could not have been found for the purpose; a small plateau, something
over an acre in extent, where a charcoal-burner’s hut had once stood,
lay right at the top of the pass. It was a little higher on either
side than in the middle, where a small brook, along which the
charcoal-burner’s track was yet visible, came down from the wooded
mountain above, thus giving a natural crest to aid the fortification on
either side, with open space for the guns, while the edge of the wood
coming down from the mountain afforded shelter for the camp.
As the battery was unsupported it had to rely on itself for everything,
a condition which most soldiers by this time were accustomed to. A dozen
or so of rifles were in the camp, and with these pickets were armed and
posted. The pass had been seized none too soon; a scout brought in the
information before nightfall that the invading force had crossed the
farther range before that sent to meet it could get there, and taking
the nearest road had avoided the main body opposing it, and been met
only by a rapidly moving detachment, nothing more than a scouting party,
and now were advancing rapidly on the road on which they were posted,
evidently meaning to seize the pass and cross the mountain at this
point. The day was Sunday; a beautiful Spring Sunday; but it was
no Sabbath for the old battery. All day the men worked, making and
strengthening their redoubt to guard the pass, and by the next morning,
with the old battery at the top, it was impregnable. They were just in
time. Before noon their vedettes brought in word that the enemy were
ascending the mountain, and the sun had hardly turned when the advance
guard rode up, came within range of the picket, and were fired on.
It was apparent that they supposed the force there only a small one, for
they retired and soon came up again reinforced in some numbers, and
a sharp little skirmish ensued, hot enough to make them more prudent
afterwards, though the picket retired up the mountain. This gave them
encouragement and probably misled them, for they now advanced boldly.
They saw the redoubt on the crest as they came on, and unlimbering a
section or two, flung a few shells up at it, which either fell short or
passed over without doing material damage. None of the guns was allowed
to respond, as the distance was too great with the ammunition the
battery had, and, indifferent as it was, it was too precious to be
wasted in a duel at an ineffectual range. Doubtless deceived by this,
the enemy came on in force, being obliged by the character of the ground
to keep almost entirely to the road, which really made them advance
in column. The battery waited. Under orders of the Colonel the guns
standing in line were double-shotted with canister, and, loaded to the
muzzle, were trained down to sweep the road at from four to five hundred
yards’ distance. And when the column reached this point the six guns,
aimed by old and skilful gunners, at a given word swept road and
mountain-side with a storm of leaden hail. It was a fire no mortal man
could stand up against, and the practised gunners rammed their pieces
full again, and before the smoke had cleared or the reverberation had
died away among the mountains, had fired the guns again and yet again.
The road was cleared of living things when the draught setting down the
river drew the smoke away; but it was no discredit to the other force;
for no army that was ever uniformed could stand against that battery in
that pass. Again and again the attempt was made to get a body of men up
under cover of the woods and rocks on the mountain-side, while the guns
below utilized their better ammunition from longer range; but it was
useless. Although one of the lieutenants and several men were killed in
the skirmish, and a number more were wounded, though not severely, the
old battery commanded the mountain-side, and its skilful gunners
swept it at every point the foot of man could scale. The sun went down
flinging his last flame on a victorious battery still crowning the
mountain pass. The dead were buried by night in a corner of the little
plateau, borne to their last bivouac on the old gun-carriages which
they had stood by so often--which the men said would “sort of ease their
minds.”
The next day the fight was renewed, and with the same result. The old
battery in its position was unconquerable. Only one fear now faced them;
their ammunition was getting as low as their rations; another such day
or half-day would exhaust it. A sergeant was sent back down the mountain
to try to get more, or, if not, to get tidings. The next day it was
supposed the fight would be renewed; and the men waited, alert, eager,
vigilant, their spirits high, their appetite for victory whetted by
success. The men were at their breakfast, or what went for breakfast,
scanty at all times, now doubly so, hardly deserving the title of a
meal, so poor and small were the portions of cornmeal, cooked in their
frying-pans, which went for their rations, when the sound of artillery
below broke on the quiet air. They were on their feet in an instant and
at the guns, crowding upon the breastwork to look or to listen; for the
road, as far as could be seen down the mountain, was empty except for
their own picket, and lay as quiet as if sleeping in the balmy air. And
yet volley after volley of artillery came rolling up the mountain. What
could it mean? That the rest of their force had come up and was engaged
with that at the foot of the mountain? The Colonel decided to be ready
to go and help them; to fall on the enemy in the rear; perhaps they
might capture the entire force. It seemed the natural thing to do, and
the guns were limbered up in an incredibly short time, and a roadway
made through the intrenchment, the men working like beavers under the
excitement. Before they had left the redoubt, however, the vedettes sent
out returned and reported that there was no engagement going on, and the
firing below seemed to be only practising. There was quite a stir in
the camp below; but they had not even broken camp. This was mysterious.
Perhaps it meant that they had received reinforcements, but it was a
queer way of showing it. The old Colonel sighed as he thought of the
good ammunition they could throw away down there, and of his empty
limber-chests. It was necessary to be on the alert, however; the guns
were run back into their old places, and the horses picketed once more
back among the trees. Meantime he sent another messenger back, this time
a courier, for he had but one commissioned officer left, and the picket
below was strengthened.
The morning passed and no one came; the day wore on and still no advance
was made by the force below. It was suggested that the enemy had left;
he had, at least, gotten enough of that battery. A reconnoissance,
however, showed that he was still encamped at the foot of the mountain.
It was conjectured that he was trying to find a way around to take them
in the rear, or to cross the ridge by the footpath. Preparation was
made to guard more closely the mountain-path across the spur, and a
detachment was sent up to strengthen the picket there. The waiting told
on the men and they grew bored and restless. They gathered about the
guns in groups and talked; talked of each piece some, but not with the
old spirit and vim; the loneliness of the mountain seemed to oppress
them; the mountains stretching up so brown and gray on one side of
them, and so brown and gray on the other, with their bare, dark forests
soughing from time to time as the wind swept up the pass. The minds of
the men seemed to go back to the time when they were not so alone, but
were part of a great and busy army, and some of them fell to talking of
the past, and the battles they had figured in, and of the comrades they
had lost. They told them off in a slow and colorless way, as if it were
all part of the past as much as the dead they named. One hundred and
nineteen times they had been in action. Only seventeen men were left of
the eighty odd who had first enlisted in the battery, and of these four
were at home crippled for life. Two of the oldest men had been among the
half-dozen who had fallen in the skirmish just the day before. It
looked tolerably hard to be killed that way after passing for four
years through such battles as they had been in; and both had wives and
children at home, too, and not a cent to leave them to their names. They
agreed calmly that they’d have to “sort of look after them a little” if
they ever got home. These were some of the things they talked about
as they pulled their old worn coats about them, stuffed their thin,
weather-stained hands in their ragged pockets to warm them, and squatted
down under the breastwork to keep a little out of the wind. One thing
they talked about a good deal was something to eat. They described
meals they had had at one time or another as personal adventures, and
discussed the chances of securing others in the future as if they were
prizes of fortune. One listening and seeing their thin, worn faces and
their wasted frames might have supposed they were starving, and they
were, but they did not say so.
Towards the middle of the afternoon there was a sudden excitement in the
camp. A dozen men saw them at the same time: a squad of three men down
the road at the farthest turn, past their picket; but an advancing
column could not have created as much excitement, for the middle man
carried a white flag. In a minute every man in the battery was on the
breastwork. What could it mean! It was a long way off, nearly half a
mile, and the flag was small: possibly only a pocket-handkerchief or
a napkin; but it was held aloft as a flag unmistakably. A hundred
conjectures were indulged in. Was it a summons to surrender? A request
for an armistice for some purpose? Or was it a trick to ascertain their
number and position? Some held one view, some another. Some extreme ones
thought a shot ought to be fired over them to warn them not to come on;
no flags of truce were wanted. The old Colonel, who had walked to the
edge of the plateau outside the redoubt and taken his position where he
could study the advancing figures with his field-glass, had not spoken.
The lieutenant who was next in command to him had walked out after
him, and stood near him, from time to time dropping a word or two of
conjecture in a half-audible tone; but the Colonel had not answered a
word; perhaps none was expected. Suddenly he took his glass down, and
gave an order to the lieutenant: “Take two men and meet them at the turn
yonder; learn their business; and act as your best judgment advises. If
necessary to bring the messenger farther, bring only the officer who has
the flag, and halt him at that rock yonder, where I will join him.” The
tone was as placid as if such an occurrence came every day. Two minutes
later the lieutenant was on his way down the mountain and the Colonel
had the men in ranks. His face was as grave and his manner as quiet as
usual, neither more nor less so. The men were in a state of suppressed
excitement. Having put them in charge of the second sergeant the Colonel
returned to the breastwork. The two officers were slowly ascending the
hill, side by side, the bearer of the flag, now easily distinguishable
in his jaunty uniform as a captain of cavalry, talking, and the
lieutenant in faded gray, faced with yet more faded red, walking beside
him with a face white even at that distance, and lips shut as though
they would never open again. They halted at the big bowlder which the
Colonel had indicated, and the lieutenant, having saluted ceremoniously,
turned to come up to the camp; the Colonel, however, went down to meet
him. The two men met, but there was no spoken question; if the Colonel
inquired it was only with the eyes. The lieutenant spoke, however. “He
says,” he began and stopped, then began again--“he says, General Lee--”
again he choked, then blurted out, “I believe it is all a lie--a damned
lie.”
“Not dead? Not killed?” said the Colonel, quickly.
“No, not so bad as that; surrendered: surrendered his entire army at
Appomattox day before yesterday. I believe it is all a damned lie,” he
broke out again, as if the hot denial relieved him. The Colonel simply
turned away his face and stepped a pace or two off, and the two men
stood motionless back to back for more than a minute. Then the Colonel
stirred.
“Shall I go back with you?” the lieutenant asked, huskily.
The Colonel did not answer immediately. Then he said: “No, go back to
camp and await my return.” He said nothing about not speaking of the
report. He knew it was not needed. Then he went down the hill slowly
alone, while the lieutenant went up to the camp.
The interview between the two officers beside the bowlder was not a long
one. It consisted of a brief statement by the Federal envoy of the fact
of Lee’s surrender two days before near Appomattox Court-House, with the
sources of his information, coupled with a formal demand on the Colonel
for his surrender. To this the Colonel replied that he had been detached
and put under command of another officer for a specific purpose, and
that his orders were to hold that pass, which he should do until he was
instructed otherwise by his superior in command. With that they parted,
ceremoniously, the Federal captain returning to where he had left his
horse in charge of his companions a little below, and the old Colonel
coming slowly up the hill to camp. The men were at once set to work to
meet any attack which might be made. They knew that the message was of
grave import, but not of how grave. They thought it meant that another
attack would be made immediately, and they sprang to their work with
renewed vigor, and a zeal as fresh as if it were but the beginning and
not the end.
The time wore on, however, and there was no demonstration below, though
hour after hour it was expected and even hoped for. Just as the sun
sank into a bed of blue cloud a horseman was seen coming up the darkened
mountain from the eastward side, and in a little while practised eyes
reported him one of their own men--the sergeant who had been sent back
the day before for ammunition. He was alone, and had something white
before him on his horse--it could not be the ammunition; but perhaps
that might be coming on behind. Every step of his jaded horse was
anxiously watched. As he drew near, the lieutenant, after a word with
the Colonel, walked down to meet him, and there was a short colloquy
in the muddy road; then they came back together and slowly entered the
camp, the sergeant handing down a bag of corn which he had got somewhere
below, with the grim remark to his comrades, “There’s your rations,” and
going at once to the Colonel’s camp-fire, a little to one side among the
trees, where the Colonel awaited him. A long conference was held, and
then the sergeant left to take his luck with his mess, who were already
parching the corn he had brought for their supper, while the lieutenant
made the round of the camp; leaving the Colonel seated alone on a log
by his camp-fire. He sat without moving, hardly stirring until the
lieutenant returned from his round. A minute later the men were called
from the guns and made to fall into line. They were silent, tremulous
with suppressed excitement; the most sun-burned and weather-stained of
them a little pale; the meanest, raggedest, and most insignificant not
unimpressive in the deep and solemn silence with which they stood, their
eyes fastened on the Colonel, waiting for him to speak. He stepped out
in front of them, slowly ran his eye along the irregular line, up and
down, taking in every man in his glance, resting on some longer than
on others, the older men, then dropped them to the ground, and then
suddenly, as if with an effort, began to speak. His voice had a somewhat
metallic sound, as if it were restrained; but it was otherwise the
ordinary tone of command. It was not much that he said: simply that it
had become his duty to acquaint them with the information which he had
received: that General Lee had surrendered two days before at Appomattox
Court-House, yielding to overwhelming numbers; that this afternoon when
he had first heard the report he had questioned its truth, but that it
had been confirmed by one of their own men, and no longer admitted
of doubt; that the rest of their own force, it was learned, had been
captured, or had disbanded, and the enemy was now on both sides of the
mountain; that a demand had been made on him that morning to surrender
too; but that he had orders which he felt held good until they were
countermanded, and he had declined. Later intelligence satisfied him
that to attempt to hold out further would be useless, and would involve
needless waste of life; he had determined, therefore, not to attempt to
hold their position longer; but to lead them out, if possible, so as to
avoid being made prisoners and enable them to reach home sooner and
aid their families. His orders were not to let his guns fall into the
enemy’s hands, and he should take the only step possible to prevent it.
In fifty minutes he should call the battery into line once more, and
roll the guns over the cliff into the river, and immediately afterwards,
leaving the wagons there, he would try to lead them across the mountain,
and as far as they could go in a body without being liable to capture,
and then he should disband them, and his responsibility for them would
end. As it was necessary to make some preparations he would now dismiss
them to prepare any rations they might have and get ready to march.
All this was in the formal manner of a common order of the day; and the
old Colonel had spoken in measured sentences, with little feeling in his
voice. Not a man in the line had uttered a word after the first
sound, half exclamation, half groan, which had burst from them at the
announcement of Lee’s surrender. After that they had stood in their
tracks like rooted trees, as motionless as those on the mountain behind
them, their eyes fixed on their commander, and only the quick heaving up
and down the dark line, as of horses over-laboring, told of the emotion
which was shaking them. The Colonel, as he ended, half-turned to his
subordinate officer at the end of the dim line, as though he were about
to turn the company over to him to be dismissed; then faced the line
again, and taking a step nearer, with a sudden movement of his hands
towards the men as though he would have stretched them out to them,
began again:
“Men,” he said, and his voice changed at the word, and sounded like
a father’s or a brother’s, “My men, I cannot let you go so. We were
neighbors when the war began--many of us, and some not here to-night; we
have been more since then--comrades, brothers in arms; we have all
stood for one thing--for Virginia and the South; we have all done our
duty--tried to do our duty; we have fought a good fight, and now
it seems to be over, and we have been overwhelmed by numbers, not
whipped--and we are going home. We have the future before us--we don’t
know just what it will bring, but we can stand a good deal. We have
proved it. Upon us depends the South in the future as in the past. You
have done your duty in the past, you will not fail in the future. Go
home and be honest, brave, self-sacrificing, God-fearing citizens,
as you have been soldiers, and you need not fear for Virginia and the
South. The war may be over; but you will ever be ready to serve your
country. The end may not be as we wanted it, prayed for it, fought for
it; but we can trust God; the end in the end will be the best that could
be; even if the South is not free she will be better and stronger that
she fought as she did. Go home and bring up your children to love her,
and though you may have nothing else to leave them, you can leave them
the heritage that they are sons of men who were in Lee’s army.”
He stopped, looked up and down the ranks again, which had instinctively
crowded together and drawn around him in a half-circle; made a sign to
the lieutenant to take charge, and turned abruptly on his heel to walk
away. But as he did so, the long pent-up emotion burst forth. With a
wild cheer the men seized him, crowding around and hugging him, as
with protestations, prayers, sobs, oaths--broken, incoherent,
inarticulate--they swore to be faithful, to live loyal forever to the
South, to him, to Lee. Many of them cried like children; others offered
to go down and have one more battle on the plain. The old Colonel
soothed them, and quieted their excitement, and then gave a command
about the preparations to be made. This called them to order at once;
and in a few minutes the camp was as orderly and quiet as usual: the
fires were replenished; the scanty stores were being overhauled; the
place was selected, and being got ready to roll the guns over the cliff;
the camp was being ransacked for such articles as could be carried, and
all preparations were being hastily made for their march.
The old Colonel having completed his arrangements sat down by his
camp-fire with paper and pencil, and began to write; and as the men
finished their work they gathered about in groups, at first around their
camp-fires, but shortly strolled over to where the guns still stood
at the breastwork, black and vague in the darkness. Soon they were all
assembled about the guns. One after another they visited, closing around
it and handling it from muzzle to trail as a man might a horse to try
its sinew and bone, or a child to feel its fineness and warmth. They
were for the most part silent, and when any sound came through the dusk
from them to the officers at their fire, it was murmurous and fitful
as of men speaking low and brokenly. There was no sound of the noisy
controversy which was generally heard, the give-and-take of the
camp-fire, the firing backwards and forwards that went on on the march;
if a compliment was paid a gun by one of its special detachment, it was
accepted by the others; in fact, those who had generally run it down now
seemed most anxious to accord the piece praise. Presently a small
number of the men returned to a camp-fire, and, building it up, seated
themselves about it, gathering closer and closer together until they
were in a little knot. One of them appeared to be writing, while two or
three took up flaming chunks from the fire and held them as torches for
him to see by. In time the entire company assembled about them, standing
in respectful silence, broken only occasionally by a reply from one or
another to some question from the scribe. After a little there was a
sound of a roll-call, and reading and a short colloquy followed, and
then two men, one with a paper in his hand, approached the fire beside
which the officers sat still engaged.
“What is it, Harris?” said the Colonel to the man with the paper, who
bore remnants of the chevrons of a sergeant on his stained and faded
jacket.
“If you please, sir,” he said, with a salute, “we have been talking it
over, and we’d like this paper to go in along with that you’re writing.”
He held it out to the lieutenant, who was the nearer and had reached
forward to take it. “We s’pose you’re agoin’ to bury it with the guns,”
he said, hesitatingly, as he handed it over.
“What is it?” asked the Colonel, shading his eyes with his hands.
“It’s just a little list we made out in and among us,” he said, “with
a few things we’d like to put in, so’s if anyone ever hauls ‘em out
they’ll find it there to tell what the old battery was, and if they
don’t, it’ll be in one of ‘em down thar ‘til judgment, an’ it’ll sort of
ease our minds a bit.” He stopped and waited as a man who had delivered
his message. The old Colonel had risen and taken the paper, and now held
it with a firm grasp, as if it might blow away with the rising wind. He
did not say a word, but his hand shook a little as he proceeded to fold
it carefully, and there was a burning gleam in his deep-set eyes, back
under his bushy, gray brows.
“Will you sort of look over it, sir, if you think it’s worth while? We
was in a sort of hurry and we had to put it down just as we come to it;
we didn’t have time to pick our ammunition; and it ain’t written the
best in the world, nohow.” He waited again, and the Colonel opened the
paper and glanced down at it mechanically. It contained first a roster,
headed by the list of six guns, named by name: “Matthew”, “Mark”,
“Luke”, and “John”, “The Eagle”, and “The Cat”; then of the men,
beginning with the heading:
“Those killed”.
Then had followed “Those wounded”, but this was marked out. Then came a
roster of the company when it first entered service; then of those who
had joined afterward; then of those who were present now. At the end
of all there was this statement, not very well written, nor wholly
accurately spelt:
“To Whom it may Concern: We, the above members of the old battery known,
etc., of six guns, named, etc., commanded by the said Col. etc., left
on the 11th day of April, 1865, have made out this roll of the battery,
them as is gone and them as is left, to bury with the guns which the
same we bury this night. We’re all volunteers, every man; we joined the
army at the beginning of the war, and we’ve stuck through to the end;
sometimes we aint had much to eat, and sometimes we aint had nothin’,
but we’ve fought the best we could 119 battles and skirmishes as near
as we can make out in four years, and never lost a gun. Now we’re agoin’
home. We aint surrendered; just disbanded, and we pledges ourselves to
teach our children to love the South and General Lee; and to come when
we’re called anywheres an’ anytime, so help us God.”
There was a dead silence whilst the Colonel read.
“‘Taint entirely accurite, sir, in one particular,” said the sergeant,
apologetically; “but we thought it would be playin’ it sort o’ low
down on the Cat if we was to say we lost her unless we could tell about
gittin’ of her back, and the way she done since, and we didn’t have time
to do all that.” He looked around as if to receive the corroboration of
the other men, which they signified by nods and shuffling.
The Colonel said it was all right, and the paper should go into the
guns.
“If you please, sir, the guns are all loaded,” said the sergeant; “in
and about our last charge, too; and we’d like to fire ‘em off once more,
jist for old times’ sake to remember ‘em by, if you don’t think no harm
could come of it?”
The Colonel reflected a moment and said it might be done; they might
fire each gun separately as they rolled it over, or might get all ready
and fire together, and then roll them over, whichever they wished. This
was satisfactory.
The men were then ordered to prepare to march immediately, and withdrew
for the purpose. The pickets were called in. In a short time they were
ready, horses and all, just as they would have been to march ordinarily,
except that the wagons and caissons were packed over in one corner by
the camp with the harness hung on poles beside them, and the guns stood
in their old places at the breastwork ready to defend the pass. The
embers of the sinking camp-fires threw a faint light on them standing so
still and silent. The old Colonel took his place, and at a command from
him in a somewhat low voice, the men, except a detail left to hold the
horses, moved into company-front facing the guns. Not a word was spoken,
except the words of command. At the order each detachment went to its
gun; the guns were run back and the men with their own hands ran them
up on the edge of the perpendicular bluff above the river, where, sheer
below, its waters washed its base, as if to face an enemy on the black
mountain the other side. The pieces stood ranged in the order in which
they had so often stood in battle, and the gray, thin fog rising slowly
and silently from the river deep down between the cliffs, and wreathing
the mountain-side above, might have been the smoke from some unearthly
battle fought in the dim pass by ghostly guns, yet posted there in the
darkness, manned by phantom gunners, while phantom horses stood behind,
lit vaguely up by phantom camp-fires. At the given word the laniards
were pulled together, and together as one the six black guns, belching
flame and lead, roared their last challenge on the misty night, sending
a deadly hail of shot and shell, tearing the trees and splintering the
rocks of the farther side, and sending the thunder reverberating through
the pass and down the mountain, startling from its slumber the sleeping
camp on the hills below, and driving the browsing deer and the prowling
mountain-fox in terror up the mountain.
There was silence among the men about the guns for one brief instant
and then such a cheer burst forth as had never broken from them even in
battle: cheer on cheer, the long, wild, old familiar rebel yell for the
guns they had fought with and loved.
The noise had not died away and the men behind were still trying to
quiet the frightened horses when the sergeant, the same who had written,
received from the hand of the Colonel a long package or roll which
contained the records of the battery furnished by the men and by the
Colonel himself, securely wrapped to make them water-tight, and it was
rammed down the yet warm throat of the nearest gun: the Cat, and then
the gun was tamped to the muzzle to make her water-tight, and, like
her sisters, was spiked, and her vent tamped tight. All this took but a
minute, and the next instant the guns were run up once more to the edge
of the cliff; and the men stood by them with their hands still on them.
A deadly silence fell on the men, and even the horses behind seemed to
feel the spell. There was a long pause, in which not a breath was heard
from any man, and the soughing of the tree-tops above and the rushing
of the rapids below were the only sounds. They seemed to come from far,
very far away. Then the Colonel said, quietly, “Let them go, and God be
our helper, Amen.” There was the noise in the darkness of trampling and
scraping on the cliff-top for a second; the sound as of men straining
hard together, and then with a pant it ceased all at once, and the
men held their breath to hear. One second of utter silence; then one
prolonged, deep, resounding splash sending up a great mass of white foam
as the brass-pieces together plunged into the dark water below, and then
the soughing of the trees and the murmur of the river came again with
painful distinctness. It was full ten minutes before the Colonel spoke,
though there were other sounds enough in the darkness, and some of the
men, as the dark, outstretched bodies showed, were lying on the ground
flat on their faces. Then the Colonel gave the command to fall in in the
same quiet, grave tone he had used all night. The line fell in, the men
getting to their horses and mounting in silence; the Colonel put himself
at their head and gave the order of march, and the dark line turned
in the darkness, crossed the little plateau between the smouldering
camp-fires and the spectral caissons with the harness hanging beside
them, and slowly entered the dim charcoal-burner’s track. Not a word was
spoken as they moved off. They might all have been phantoms. Only, the
sergeant in the rear, as he crossed the little breastwork which ran
along the upper side and marked the boundary of the little camp, half
turned and glanced at the dying fires, the low, newly made mounds in the
corner, the abandoned caissons, and the empty redoubt, and said, slowly,
in a low voice to himself,
“Well, by God!”