THE SPIRES OF RICHMOND
To meet three great armies converging on Richmond along the James under
McClellan, from the North under McDowell, and the West by the Shenandoah
Valley, the South had barely fifty-eight thousand men commanded by
Joseph E. Johnston and eighteen thousand under Stonewall Jackson.
The Southern people were still suffering from the delusion of Bull Run
and had not had time to adjust themselves to the amazing defeats
suffered at Fort Henry and Fort Donaldson, to say nothing of the
stunning victory of the _Monitor_ in Hampton Roads, which had opened the
James to the gates of the Confederate Capital.
Jackson was ordered into the Shenandoah Valley to execute the apparently
impossible task of holding in check the armies of Fremont, Milroy, Banks
and Shields, and at the same time prevent the force of forty thousand
men under McDowell from reaching McClellan. The combined forces of the
Federal armies opposed thus to Jackson were eight times greater than his
command. And yet, by a series of rapid and terrifying movements which
gained for his little army the title of "foot cavalry," he succeeded in
defeating, in quick succession, each army in detail.
McDowell was despatched in haste to join Fremont and crush Jackson. And
while his army was rushing into the Shenandoah Valley, Jackson withdrew
and quietly joined the army before Richmond which moved to meet
McClellan.
Little Mac, with his hundred and twenty thousand men, had moved up the
Peninsula with deliberate but resistless force, Johnston's army retiring
before him without serious battle until the Army of the Potomac lay
within sight of the spires of Richmond. Faint, but clear, the breezes
brought the far-off sound of her church bells on Sunday morning.
The two great armies at last faced each other for the first clash of
giants, McClellan with one hundred and ten thousand men in line,
Johnston with seventy thousand Southerners.
John Vaughan rode along the lines of the Federal host on the afternoon
of May 30th, to inspect and report to his Commander. Through the opening
in the trees the Confederate army could be plainly seen on the other
side of the clearing. The Federal scouts had already reported the
certainty of an attack.
The Confederates that night lay down on their arms with orders to attack
at daylight. Dark clouds had swirled their storm banks over the sky
before sunset and the heavens were opened. The rain fell in blinding
torrents, until the sluggish little stream of the Chickahominy had
become a rushing, widening, treacherous river which threatened to sweep
away the last bridge McClellan had constructed.
The Confederate Commander was elated. The army of his enemy was divided
by a swollen river. The storm increased until it reached the violence of
a hurricane. Through the entire night the lightning flashed and the
thunder pealed without ceasing. At times the heavens were livid with
blinding, dazzling light. Tents were a mockery. The earth was
transformed into a vast morass.
The storm had its compensations for the Northern army though divided.
Its frightful severity had so demoralized the Confederates that it was
nearly noon before General A. P. Hill moved to the attack.
The entrenched army was ready. The Union pickets lay in the edge of the
woods and every soldier in the pits had been under cover for hours
awaiting the onset.
With a shout the men in grey leaped from their shelter, pouring their
volleys from close charging columns. The rifle balls whistled through
the woods, clipping boughs, barking the trees, and hurling the Federal
pickets back on their support. In front of the abatis had been planted a
battery of four guns. The grey men had fixed their eyes on them. General
Naglee saw their purpose and threw his four thousand men into the open
field to meet them. Straight into each other's faces their muskets
flamed, paused, and flamed again. The Northern men fixed their bayonets,
charged, and drove the grey line slowly back into the woods. Here they
met a storm of hissing lead that mowed their ranks. They broke quickly
and rushed for the cover of their rifle pits.
The grey lines charged, and for three hours the earth trembled beneath
the shock of their continued assaults.
Suddenly on the left flank of the Federal army a galling fire was poured
from a grey brigade. The movement had been quietly and skillfully
executed. At the same moment General Rodes' brigade rushed on their
front with resistless force. The officers tried to spike their guns and
save them, but were shot down in their tracks to a man. Their guns were
lost, and in a moment the men in grey had wheeled them and were pouring
a terrible fire on the retreating lines.
The Confederates now charged the Federal centre, and for an hour and a
half the fierce conflict raged--charge and countercharge by men of equal
courage led by dauntless officers. The Union right wing had already been
crumpled in hopeless confusion, the centre had yielded, the left wing
alone was holding its own. It looked as if the whole Union army on the
South side of the Chickahominy would be wiped out.
At Seven Pines Heintzelman had made a stubborn stand. General Keyes saw
a hill between the lines of battle which might save the day if he could
reach it in time. He must take men between two battle lines to do so.
The Confederate Commander, divining his intention, poured a galling fire
into his ranks and began a race with him for the heights. Keyes won the
race and formed his line in the nick of time. The tremendous fire poured
down from this new position was too much for the assaulting Southern
column and it halted.
The Confederate forces had forced the Federal lines back two miles as
the river fog and the darkness slowly rose and enveloped the field.
General Johnston ordered his men to sleep on the fields and camps they
had captured. A minute later he was hurled from his horse by an
exploding shell and was borne from the field dangerously wounded. The
first day's struggle had ended in reverses for the invading enemy. The
Confederates had captured ten guns, six thousand muskets, and five
hundred prisoners, besides driving McClellan's forces two miles from the
opening battle lines.
Between the two smoke-grimed, desperate armies locked thus in close
embrace there could be no truce for burying the fallen or rescuing the
wounded. Over the rain-soaked fields and woods for two miles behind the
Confederate front lay the dead, the dying, and the wounded, the blue
side by side with their foes in grey. Dim fog-ringed lanterns flickered
feebly here and there like wounded fireflies over the dark piles on the
ground.
The Southern ambulance corps did its best at its new trade. Their long
lines of wagons began to creep into Richmond and fill the hospitals.
Shivering white-faced women, wives, sweethearts, mothers, sisters were
there looking for their own, praying and hoping. All day they had
shivered in their rooms at the deep boom of cannon, whose thunder
rattled the glass in the windows through which they gazed on the
deserted streets. It was the first lesson in real war, this hand to hand
grip of the two giants whose struggle must decide the fate of Richmond.
The wagons left their loads and rattled back over the rough cobble
stones and out on the muddy roads to the front again. The night would be
all too short for their work.
In their field hospital, the surgeons, with bare, bloody arms, were busy
with knife and saw. Boys who had faced death in battle without a tremor,
now pale and trembling, watched the growing pile of legs and arms. Alone
in the darkness beyond the voice or touch of a loved hand they must face
this awful thing and hobble through life maimed wrecks. They looked
over their shoulders into the murky darkness and envied the silent forms
that lay there beyond the reach of pain and despair. All night the grim
tragedy of the knife and saw, and the low moans that still came from the
darkness of the woods!
Sunday morning, the second day of June, dawned over the battle-scarred
earth--an ominous day for the armies of the Republic--for the sun rose
on a new figure in command of the men in grey. Robert E. Lee had taken
the place of Joseph E. Johnston.
General G. W. Smith, second in command when Johnston fell, had formed
his plan of battle, and the new head of the Confederacy, with his high
sense of courtesy and justice, permitted his subordinate to direct the
conflict for the day.
As the sun rose, red and ominous through the dark pine forest, General
Smith quickly advanced his men at Fair Oaks Station, down the railroad,
and fell with fury on the men in blue, who crouched behind the
embankment. The men were less than fifty yards apart, and muskets blazed
in long level sheets of yellow flame. No longer could the ear catch the
effect of ripping canvas in the fire of small arms. The roar was
endless. For an hour and a half the two blazing lines mowed each other
down in their tracks without pause. The grey at last gave way and fell
back to the shelter of their woods and gathered reinforcements. The
Union lines had been cut to pieces and suddenly ceased firing while
their support advanced.
The roaring hell had died into a strange ominous stillness. John Vaughan
had just dashed up to the embankment with orders from McClellan to hold
this position until Haskin's division arrived. He sprang on the
embankment and looked curiously at the long piles of grey bodies lying
in an endless row as far as the eye could reach. Over the tree tops,
faintly mingling with the low cry of a dying boy of sixteen, came the
sweet distant notes of a church bell in Richmond.
"God in heaven--the mockery of it!" he cried.
A great shout swept the blue lines. Hooker's magnificent division of
fresh troops swept into view, eager for the fray. They rapidly deployed
to the right and left. In front of them lay the open blood-soaked field,
and beyond the deep woods bristling with Southern bayonets. The new
division leaped into this open field, with a wild shout, their eyes set
on the woods. They paused, only to fire, and their double quick became a
race.
The Southern batteries followed and tore great holes in their ranks.
They closed them with low quick sullen orders sweeping on. They reached
the edge of the woods and poured into its friendly shelter. And then
above the tops of oak and pine and beech and ash and tangled undergrowth
came the soul-piercing roar of two great armies, fearless, daring,
scorning death, fighting hand to hand, man to man, for what they
believed to be right.
The people in church turned anxious faces toward the sound. Its roar
rang above the sob of organ and the chant of choir.
Bayonet clashed on bayonet, as regiment after regiment were locked in
close mortal combat. Hour after hour the stubborn unyielding hosts held
fast on both sides. The storm weakened and slowly died away. Only the
intermittent crack of a rifle here and there broke the stillness.
There was no shout of victory, no sweep of cheering hosts--only silence.
The Confederate General in command for the day had lost faith in his
battle plan and withdrew his army from the field. The men in blue could
move in and camp on the ground they had held the day before if they
wished.
But there was something more important to do now than maneuver for
position in history. The dead and the dying and wounded crying for water
were everywhere--down every sunlit aisle of the forest they lay in
heaps. In the open fields they lay faces up, the scorching Southern sun
of June beating piteously down in their eyes--the blue and the grey side
by side in death as they fought hand to hand in life.
The trenches were opened and they piled the bodies in one on top of the
other, where they had fallen. They turned their faces downward, these
stalwart, brave American boys that the grave-diggers might not throw the
wet dirt into their eyes and mouths. O, aching hearts in far-away homes,
at least you were not there to see!
Both armies paused now to gird their loins for the crucial test. General
Lee was in the saddle gathering every available man into his ranks for
his opening assault on McClellan's host. Jackson was in the Shenandoah
Valley holding three armies at bay, defeating them in detail and
paralyzing the efficiency of McDowell's forty thousand men at
Fredericksburg, by the daring uncertainty of his movements.
The first act of Lee was characteristic of his genius. Wishing to know
the exact position of McClellan's forces, and with the further purpose
of striking terror into his antagonist's mind for the safety of his
lines of communication, he conceived the daring feat of sending a picked
body of cavalry under the gallant J. E. B. Stuart completely around the
Northern army of one hundred and five thousand men.
On June the 12th, Stuart with twelve hundred troopers, fighting,
singing, dare-devil riders to a man, slipped from Lee's lines and
started toward Fredericksburg. The first night he bivouacked in the
solemn pines of Hanover. At the first streak of dawn the men swung into
their saddles in silence.
Turning suddenly to the east he surprised and captured the Federal
pickets without a shot. In five minutes he confronted a squadron of
Union cavalry. With piercing rebel yell his troopers charged and
scattered their foes.
Sweeping on with swift, untiring dash they struck the York River
Railroad, which supplied McClellan's army, surprised and captured the
company of infantry which guarded Tunstall's Station, cut the wires and
attacked a train passing with troops.
Riding without pause through the moonlit night they reached the
Chickahominy at daybreak. The stream was out of its banks and could not
be forded. They built a bridge, crossed over at dawn, and the following
day leaped from their saddles before Lee's headquarters and reported.
A thrill of admiration and dismay swept the ranks of the Northern army
and started in Washington a wave of bitter criticism against McClellan.
No word of reply reached the world from the little Napoleon. He was busy
digging trenches, felling trees and pushing his big guns steadily
forward and always behind impregnable works. He was a born engineer and
his soul was set on training his great siege guns on the Confederate
Capital.
On the 25th of June his advance guard had pressed within five miles of
the apparently doomed city. His breastworks bristled from every point of
advantage. His army was still divided by the Chickahominy River, but he
had so thoroughly bridged its treacherous waters he apparently had no
fear of coming results.
On June the 27th Stonewall Jackson had slipped from the Shenandoah
Valley, baffling two armies converging on him from different directions,
and with a single tiger leap had landed his indomitable little army by
Lee's side.
Anticipating his arrival, the Confederate general had hurled Hill's
corps against the Union right wing under Porter. Throughout the day of
the 26th and until nine o'clock at night the battle raged with unabated
fury. The losses on both sides were frightful and neither had gained a
victory. But at nine o'clock the Federal Commander ordered his right
wing to retreat five miles to Gaines Mill and cover his withdrawal of
heavy guns and supplies. They were ordered at all hazards to hold
Jackson's fresh troops at bay until this undertaking was well under way.
It was a job that called for all his skill in case of defeat. It
involved the retreat of an army of one hundred thousand men with their
artillery and enormous trains of supplies across the mud-scarred marshy
Peninsula. Five thousand wagons loaded to their utmost capacity, their
wheels sinking in the springy earth, had to be guarded and transported.
His siege guns, so heavy it was impossible to hitch enough horses to
move them over roads in which they sank to the hubs, had to be saved.
Three thousand cattle were there, to be guarded and driven, and it was
more than seventeen miles to the shelter of his gunboats on the James.
During the night his wagon trains and heavy guns were moved across the
Chickahominy toward his new base on the James.
The morning of the 27th dawned cool and serene. Under the cover of the
night the silent grey army had followed the retiring one in blue. The
Southerners lay in the dense wood above Gaines Mill dozing and waiting
orders.
A balloon slowly rose from the Federal lines and hung in the scarlet
clouds that circled the sun. The signal was given to the artillery that
the enemy lay in the deep woods within range and a storm of shot and
shell suddenly burst over the heads of the men in grey and the second
day's carnage had begun.
For once Jackson, the swift and mysterious, was late in reaching the
scene. It was two o'clock when Hill again unsupported hurled his men on
the Federal lines in a fierce determined charge. Twenty-six guns of the
matchless artillery of McClellan's army threw a stream of shot and shell
into his face. Never were guns handled with deadlier power. And back of
them the infantry, thrilled at the magnificent spectacle, poured their
hail of hissing lead into the approaching staggering lines.
The waves of grey broke and recoiled. A blue pall of impenetrable smoke
rolled through the trees and clung to the earth. Under the protection of
their great guns the dense lines of blue pushed out into the smoke fog
and charged their foe. For two hours the combat raged at close quarters.
A division of fresh troops rushed to the Northern line, and Lee
observing the movement from his horse on an eminence, ordered a general
attack on the entire Union front.
It was a life and death grapple for the mastery. Jackson's corps was now
in action. A desperate charge of Hood's division at last broke the Union
lines and the grey men swarmed over the Federal breastworks. The lines
broke and began to roll back toward the bridges of the Chickahominy. The
retreat threatened to become a rout. The twilight was deepening over the
field when a shout rose from the tangled masses of blue stragglers by
the bridge. Dashing through them came the swift fresh brigades of French
and Meager. General Meager, rising from his stirrups in his shirt
sleeves, swung his bare sword above his head, hurled his troops against
the advancing Confederate line and held it until darkness saved Porter's
division from ruin.
McClellan's one hope now was to pull his army out of the deadly swamps
in which he had been caught and save it from destruction. He must reach
the banks of the James and the shelter of his gunboats before he could
stop to breathe. At every step the charging grey lines crashed on his
rear guard. Retreating day and night, turning and fighting as a hunted
stag, he was struggling only to escape.
That there was no panic, no rout, was a splendid tribute to his
organizing and commanding powers. His army was an army at last in fact
as well as in name--a compact and terrible fighting machine. The
oncoming Confederate hosts learned this to their sorrow again and again
in the five terrible days which followed.
On July 1st, McClellan reached the shelter of his gunboats and
intrenched himself on the heights of Malvern Hill. On its summit he
placed tier after tier of batteries swung in crescent line, commanding
every approach. Surmounting those on the highest point he planted seven
of his great siege guns. His army surrounded this hill, its left flank
resting on the James and covered by his gunboats.
It was late in the afternoon before Lee ordered a general attack. The
grey army was floundering in the mud in a vain effort to reach its
fleeing enemy in force. At noon they were still burying the dead on the
blood-soaked field of Glendale where McClellan's gallant rear guard had
stood until the last wagon train had safely arrived at Malvern Hill.
Ned Vaughan's company had been hurried from the West to the defense of
Richmond, and reached the field on the night of the 30th, too late for
the battle of Glendale, but in time to walk over its scarred soil in the
soft moonlight and get his first glimpse of war. He was yet to see a
battle.
A group of grey schoolboy comrades were burying one of their number
beneath a tall pine in the edge of an old field. He joined the circle
and watched them. They dug the grave with their bayonets, tenderly
wrapped the body in the battle flag of the South and covered it with
their hands. One of them recited a beautiful Psalm from memory, and not
a word was spoken as they drew the damp earth up into a mound. A
whip-poor-will began his song in the edge of the woods as he passed on.
A few yards further a man in grey was cutting a forked limb into a
crutch. Something dark lay huddled on the brown straw. It was a wounded
man in blue. The Southerner lifted his enemy, and placed the crutch
under him.
"Now, partner," he said cheerfully, "you're all right. You'll find the
hospital down there by them lights. They'll look out for ye."
Ned wondered vaguely how he would really feel under his first baptism of
fire. He was only a private soldier in this company which had been
ordered East. He had resigned from the first he had helped to raise--the
ambitions and intrigues of its officers had aroused his disgust and he
had taken a place in the ranks of the first company sent to Virginia. He
had made up his mind he would wear no signs of rank that were not fairly
won on the field of battle.
To-morrow he was going to face it at short range. Everywhere were strewn
canteens, knapsacks, broken guns and blankets. He came suddenly on a
trench behind which the men in blue had fought from dark to dark. It was
full of dead soldiers.
His regiment was up before day to move at dawn. His company had been
assigned to a regiment of veterans who had fought at Bull Run and had
been in three of the battles before Richmond. Their ranks were thin and
the Western boys were given a royal welcome.
The seasoned men were in good humor, the new company serious. Ned was
carefully shaving by the flickering light of the camp fire.
"What the divil are you doin' that for?" his Irish messmate asked in
amazement.
"You want to know the truth, Haggerty?" Ned drawled.
"That's what I want----"
"We're going into our first battle, aren't we?"
"Praise God, we are!"
"And we may come out a corpse?"
"Yis----"
"I'm going to be a decent one."
"Ah, go'long wid ye--ye bloody young spalpeen--ye're no more afraid than
I am!"
"Maybe not, Haggerty, but it's a solemn occasion, and I'm going to look
my best."
"Ye'll live ter see many a scrap, me bye!"
"Same to you, old man! But I'm going to be clean for this one, anyhow."
The regiment marched toward Malvern Hill at the first streak of dawn. It
was slow work. Always the artillery ahead were sticking in the mud and
the halts were interminable.
The new company grew more and more nervous:
"What's up ahead?"
They asked it at every halt the first three hours. And then their
disgust became more pronounced.
"What in 'ell's the matter?" Ned groaned.
"Don't worry, Sonny," an old corporal called, "you'll get there in time
to see more than you want."
The regiment reached the battle lines at one o'clock. The morning hours
had been spent in driving in the skirmishers and feeling the enemy's
positions. Lee had given orders for a general charge on a signal yell
from Armistead's brigade. He was now waiting the arrival of all his
available forces before attacking.
Late in the afternoon General D. H. Hill heard a shout followed by a
roar of musketry and immediately ordered his division to charge. No
other General seemed to have heard it and the charge was made without
support. It was magnificent, but it was not war, it was sheer butchery.
No army could have stood before the galling fire of those massed
batteries.
Ned's regiment had deployed in a wood on the edge of a wide field at the
foot of the hill. Their movement caught the eye of a battery on the
heights which opened with six guns squarely on their heads.
The struggling, shattered remnants of a regiment which had been all but
annihilated fell back through these woods, stumbling against the waiting
men.
Ned saw a soldier with a Minie ball sticking in the centre of his
forehead, the blood oozing from the round, clean-cut hole beside the
lead. He was walking steadily backward, loading and firing with
incredible rapidity. The company halted behind the troops held in
reserve, but the man with the ball in his forehead refused to go to the
rear. He wouldn't believe that he was seriously hurt. He jokingly asked
a comrade to dig the ball out. He did so, and the fellow dropped in his
tracks, the blood gushing from the wound in a stream.
The uncanny sight had sickened Ned. He looked at his hand and it was
trembling like a leaf.
And this division was charging up that awful hill again. Ned saw a
private soldier who belonged to one of its regiments deliberately walk
across the field alone and join his comrades as if nothing of importance
were going on. And yet the bullets were whistling so thickly that their
"Zip! Zip!" on the ground kept the air filled with flying dirt and tufts
of grass--a veritable hail of lead through which a sparrow apparently
couldn't fly.
The fellow was certainly a fool! No man with a grain of sense would do
such a thing _alone_--maybe with a crowd of cheering men, but only a
maniac _could_ do it alone--Ned was sure of that.
A shell smashed through the top of a tree, clipped its trunk in two and
down it came with a crash that sent the men scampering.
A solid shot came bounding leisurely down the hill and rolled into the
woods. A man just in front put out his foot playfully to stop it and it
broke his leg.
The shriek of shell and the whistle of lead increased in terrifying roar
each moment and Ned felt a queer sensation in his chest--a sort of
shortness of breath. In a moment he was going to bolt for the rear! He
felt it in his bones and saw no way to stop it. He lifted his eyes
piteously toward the Colonel who sat erect in his saddle stroking the
neck of a restless horse with his left hand.
The veteran saw the boy's terror under his trial of fire and his heart
went out to him in a wave of fatherly sympathy.
He rode quickly up to Ned:
"Won't you hold my horse's bridle a minute, young man, while I use my
glasses?" he asked coolly.
Ned's trembling hand caught the reins as a drowning man a straw. The act
steadied his shaking nerves. As the Colonel slowly lowered his glasses
Ned cried through chattering teeth:
"D-d-d-on't y-you think--I-I-I--am d-d-doing p-pretty well, C-colonel,
f-f-f-for my f-f-ffirst battle?"
The Colonel nodded encouragingly:
"Very well, my boy. It's a nasty situation. You'll make a good
soldier."
And then the order to charge!
Across the level field torn by shot and shell, the regiment swept in
grey waves. The gaps filled up silently. They started up the hill and
met the sleet of hissing death. The hill top blazed streams of yellow
flame through the pall of smoke. Men were falling--not one by one, but
in platoons and squads, rolling into heaps of grey blood-soaked flesh
and rags. The regiment paused, staggered, reeled and rallied.
Haggerty fell just in front of Ned, who was loading and firing with the
precision of a machine. If he had a soul--he didn't know it now. The men
were ordered to lie down and fire from the ground.
Haggerty caught Ned's eye as it glanced along his musket searching for
his foe through the cloud of blue black smoke that veiled the world.
"Roll me around, Bye," the Irishman cried, "and make a fince out of
me--I'm done for."
Ned paid no attention to his call, and Haggerty pulled his mangled body
down the hill and doubled himself up in front of his friend.
"Keep down behind me, Bye," he moaned. "I'll make a good fort for ye!"
It was useless to protest, he had erected the fort to suit himself and
Ned was fighting now behind it. The sight of his dying friend steadied
his nerves and sent a thrill of fierce anger like living fire through
his veins. His eye searched the hilltop for his foe. The smoke rolled in
dark grey sulphurous clouds down the slope and shut out the sky line. He
waited and strained his bloodshot eyes to find an opening. It was no use
to waste powder shooting at space. He was too deadly angry now for
that.
A puff of wind lifted the clouds and the blue men could be seen leaping
about their guns. They looked like giants in the smoke fog. Again he
fired and loaded, fired and loaded with clock-like, even steady, hand.
It was tiresome this ramming an old-fashioned muzzle-loading musket
lying flat on the ground. But with each round he was becoming more and
more expert in handling the gun. His mouth was black with powder from
tearing the paper ends of the cartridges. The sulphurous taste of the
powder was in his mouth.
From the centre of the field rose the awful Confederate yell again. A
regiment of Georgians, led by Gordon were charging. Waiting again for
the smoke to clear in front Ned could see the grey waves spread out and
caught the sharp word of command as the daring young officers threw
their naked swords toward the sky crying:
"Forward!"
And then they met the storm. From grim, black lips on the hill crest
came the answer to their yell--three hundred and forty mighty guns were
singing an oratorio of Death and Hell in chorus now from those heights.
Half the men seemed to fall at a single crash and still the line closed
up and rushed steadily on, firing and loading, firing and
loading,--running and staggering, then rallying and pressing on again.
On the right ten thousand men under Hill slipped out into line as if on
dress parade--long lines of handsome boyish Southerners. The big guns
above saw and found them with terrible accuracy. A wide lane of death
was suddenly torn through them before they moved. They closed like clock
work and with a cheer swept forward to the support of the men who were
dying on the blood-soaked slope.
Ned's heart was thumping now. He felt it coming, that sharp low order
from the Colonel before the words rang from his lips. His hour had come
for the test--coward or hero it had to be now. It was funny he had
ceased to worry. He had entered a new world and this choking, blinding
smoke, the steady thunder of guns, the long sheets of orange fire that
flashed and flashed and blazed in three rings from the hill, the ripping
canvas of musketry fire in volleys, the dull boom of the great guns on
the boats below, were simply a part of the routine of the new life. He
had lived a generation since dawn. The years that had gone before seemed
a dream. The one real thing was Betty's laughing eyes. They were looking
at him now from behind that flaming hill. He must pass those guns to
reach her. Not a doubt had yet entered his soul that he would do it. Men
were falling around him like leaves in autumn, but this had to be. He
saw the end. No matter how fierce this battle, McClellan was only
fighting to save his army from annihilation. Lee was destroying him.
The order came at last. The Colonel walked along in front of his men
with bared head.
"Now, boys,--that battery on the first crest--we've half their
men--charge and take those guns!"
The regiment leaped to their feet and started up the hill. They had lost
two hundred men in their first sweep. There were six hundred left.
"Hold your fire until I give the word!" the Colonel shouted.
The smoke was hanging low, and they had made two hundred yards before
the blue line saw them through the haze. The hill blazed and hissed in
their faces. The massed infantry behind the guns found their marks. Men
dropped right and left, sank in grey heaps or fell forward on their
faces--some were knocked backwards down the slope. Yet without a pause
they climbed.
Three hundred yards more and they would be on the guns. And then a sheet
of blinding flame from every black-mouthed gun in line double shotted
with grape and canister! The regiment was literally knocked to its
knees. The men paused as if dazed by the shock. The sharp words of cheer
and command from their officers and they rallied. From both flanks
poured a murderous hail of bullets--guns to the right, left and front,
all screaming, roaring, hissing their call of blood.
The Colonel saw the charge was hopeless and ordered his men to fire and
fall back fighting. The grey line began to melt into the smoke mists
down the hill and disappeared--all save Ned Vaughan. His eyes were fixed
on that battery when the order to fire was given. He fired and charged
with fixed bayonet alone. He never paused to see how many men were with
him. His mind was set on capturing one of those guns. He reached the
breastworks and looked behind him. There was not a man in sight. A blue
gunner was ramming a cannon. With a savage leap Ned was on the boy,
grabbed him by the neck and rushed down the hill in front of his own gun
before the astounded Commander realized what had happened. When he did
it was too late to fire. They would tear both men to pieces.
The regiment had rallied in the woods at the edge of the field from
which they had first charged.
Ned Vaughan led his prisoner, in bright new uniform of blue, up to the
Colonel and reported.
"A prisoner of war, sir!"
The Colonel took off his hat and gazed at the pair:
"Aren't you the boy who held my horse?"
Ned saluted:
"Yes, sir."
"Then in the name of Almighty God, where did you get that man?"
Ned pointed excitedly to the hilltop:
"Right yonder, sir,--there's plenty more of 'em up there!"
The Colonel scratched his head, looked Ned over from head to heel and
broke into a laugh.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said at last. "Take him to the rear and
report to me to-night. I want to see you."
Ned saluted and hurried to the rear with his prisoner.
The sun was slowly sinking in a sea of blood. The red faded to purple,
the purple to grey, the grey into the shadows of night and still the
guns were thundering from their heights. It was nine o'clock before they
were silent and Lee's torn and mangled army lay down among their dead
and wounded to wait the dawn and renew the fight. They had been
compelled to breast the most devastating fire to which an assaulting
army had been subjected in the history of war. The trees of the woods
had been literally torn and mangled as if two cyclones had met and
ripped them to pieces.
The men dropped in their tracks to snatch a few hours' sleep.
The low ominous sounds that drifted from the darkness could not be
heeded till to-morrow. Here and there a lantern flickered as they picked
up a wounded man and carried him to the rear. Only the desperately
wounded could be helped. The dead must sleep beneath the stars. The low,
pitiful cries for water guided the ambulance corps as they stumbled over
the heaps of those past help.
The clouds drew a veil over the stars at midnight and it began to pour
down rain before day. The sleeping, worn men woke with muttered oaths
and stood against the trees or squatted against their trunks seeking
shelter from the flood. As the mists lifted, they looked with grim
foreboding but still desperate courage to the heights. Every rampart was
deserted. Not one of those three hundred and forty guns remained.
McClellan had withdrawn his army under the cover of the night to
Harrison's Landing.
It would be difficult to tell whose men were better satisfied.
"Thank God, he's gone from there anyhow!" the men in grey cried with
fervor.
Now they could get something to eat, bury their dead and care for all
the wounded. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign had ended. His Grand Army
had melted from a hundred and ten thousand fighting men in line to
eighty-six thousand. The South had lost almost as many.
From the wildest panic into which the advance of his army had thrown
Richmond, the Confederate Capital now swung to the opposite extreme of
rejoicing for the deliverance, mingled with criticism of their leaders
for allowing the Federal army to escape at all.
The gloom in Washington was profound.
An excited General rushed to the White House at two o'clock in the
morning, roused the President from his bed and pleaded for the immediate
dispatch of a fleet of transports to Harrison's Landing as the only
possible way to save the army from annihilation.
The President soothed his fears and sent him home. He was not the man to
be thrown into a panic. Yet the incredible thing had happened. His army
of more than two hundred thousand men, under able generals, had been
hurled back from the gates of Richmond in hopeless, bewildering defeat,
and he must begin all over again.
One big ominous fact loomed in tragic menace from the smoke and flame of
this campaign--the South had developed two leaders of matchless military
genius--Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It was a fact the President
must face and that without fear or favor to any living man in his own
army.
He left Washington for the front at once. He must see with his own eyes
the condition of the army. He must see McClellan. The demand for his
removal was loud and bitter. And fiercest of all those who asked for his
head was the iron-willed Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, his former
champion.