THE TUG OF WAR
Betty Winter, having made up her mind to put John Vaughan out of her
life for all time, volunteered for field service as a nurse and by
permission of the President joined Burnside's army before
Fredericksburg.
The General had brought its effective fighting force to a hundred and
thirteen thousand. Lee's army confronted him on the other side of the
Rappahannock with seventy-five thousand men. A great battle was
impending.
Burnside had reluctantly assumed command. He was a gallant, genial,
cultured soldier, a gentleman of the highest type, a pure, unselfish
patriot with not a trace of vulgar ambition or self-seeking. He saw the
President hounded and badgered by his own party, assaulted and denounced
in the bitterest terms by the opposition, and he knew that the remedy
could be found only in a fighting, victorious army. A single decisive
victory would turn the tide of public opinion, unite the faction-ridden
army and thrill the Nation with enthusiasm.
He determined to fight at once and risk his fate as a commander on the
issue of victory or defeat. His council of war had voted against an
attack on Lee's army in Fredericksburg. Burnside brushed their decision
aside as part of the quarrel McClellan has left. Even the men in the
ranks were fighting each other daily in these miserable bickerings and
intrigues. A victory was the remedy for their troubles, and he made up
his mind to fight for it.
The General received Betty with the greatest courtesy:
"You're more than welcome at this moment, Miss Winter. The surgeons
won't let you in some of their field hospitals. But there's work to be
done preparing our corps for the battle we're going to fight. You'll
have plenty to do."
"Thank you, General," she gravely answered.
Burnside read for the second time the gracious letter from the President
which Betty presented.
"You're evidently pretty strong with this administration, Miss Betty,"
he remarked.
"Yes. The patience and wisdom of the President is a hobby of mine."
"Then I'll ask you to review the army with me. You can report to him."
Within an hour they were passing in serried lines before the Commander.
Betty watched them march with a thrill of patriotic pride, a hundred and
thirteen thousand men, their dark blue uniforms pouring past like the
waters of a mighty river, the December sun gleaming on their polished
bayonets as on so many icicles flashing on its surface.
Her heart suddenly stood still. There before her marched John Vaughan in
the outer line of a regiment, his eyes straight in front, looking
neither to the right nor the left. He was a private in the ranks, clean
and sober, his face rugged, strong and sun-tanned.
For a moment there was a battle inside that tested her strength. He had
not seen her and was oblivious of her existence apparently. But she had
noted the regiment under whose flag he marched. It would be easy to find
him if she wished.
When the first moment of love-sickness and utter longing passed, she had
no desire to see him. The dead could bury its dead. Her love was a thing
of the past. The cruel thing in this man's nature she had seen the first
day was there still. She saw it with a shudder in his red, half-drunken
eyes the day they met in Washington, saw it so plainly, so glaringly,
the memory of it could never fade. He was sober and in his right mind
now, his cheeks bronzed with the new life of sunshine and open air the
army had given. The thing was still there. It spoke in the brute
strength of his powerful body as his marching feet struck the ground, in
the iron look about his broad shoulders, the careless strength with
which he carried his musket as if it were a feather, and above all in
the hard cold glint from his shining eyes set straight in front.
She lay awake for hours on the little white cot at the headquarters of
the ambulance corps reviewing her life and dropped to sleep at last with
a deep sense of gratitude to God that she was free, and could give
herself in unselfish devotion to her country. Her last waking thoughts
were of Ned Vaughan and the sweet, foolish worship he had laid at her
feet. She wondered vaguely if he were in those grey lines beyond the
river. Ned Vaughan was there this time--back with his regiment.
Lee, Jackson and Longstreet had known for days that a battle was
imminent. Their scouts from over the river had brought positive
information. The Confederate leaders had already planned the conflict.
Their battle lines circled the hills beyond Fredericksburg, spread out
in a crescent, five miles long. Nature had piled these five miles of
hills around Fredericksburg as if to build an impregnable fortress. On
every crest, concealed behind trees and bushes, the Confederate
artillery was in place--its guns trained to sweep the wide plain with a
double cross fire, besides sending a storm of shot and shell straight
from the centre. Sixty thousand matchless grey infantry crouched among
those bushes and lay beside stone walls, in sunken roadways or newly
turned trenches.
The great fan-shaped death-trap had been carefully planned and set by a
master mind. Only a handful of sharpshooters and a few pieces of
artillery had been left in Fredericksburg to dispute the passage of the
river and deceive Burnside with a pretense of defending the town.
The Confederate soldier was ragged and his shoes were tied together with
strings. His uniform consisted of an old hat or cap usually without a
brim, a shirt of striped bed-ticking so brown it seemed woven of the
grass. The buttons were of discolored cow's horn. His coat was the color
of Virginia dust and mud, and it was out at the elbow. His socks were
home-made, knit by loving hands swift and tender in their endless work
of love. The socks were the best things he had.
The one spotless thing about him was his musket and the bayonet he
carried at his side. His spirits were high.
A barefooted soldier had managed to get home and secure a pair of boots.
He started back to his regiment hurrying to be on time for the fight.
The new boots hurt him so terribly he couldn't wear them. He passed
Ned's regiment with his precious footgear hanging on his arm.
"Hello, Sonny, what command?" Ned cried.
"Company E, 12th Virginia, Mahone's brigade!" he proudly answered.
"Yes, damn you," a soldier drawled from the grass, "and you've pulled
your boots off, holdin' 'em in yer hand, ready to run now!"
The laugh ran along the line and the boy hurried on to escape the chaff.
A well-known chaplain rode along a narrow path on the hillside. He was
mounted on an old horse whose hip bones protruded like two deadly fangs.
A footsore Confederate was hobbling as fast as he could in front of him,
glancing back over his shoulder now and then uneasily.
"You needn't be afraid, my friend," the parson called, "I'm not going to
run over you."
"I know you ain't," the soldier laughed, "but ef I wuz ter let you pass
me, and that thing wuz ter wobble I'll be doggoned ef I wouldn't be
gored ter death!"
The preacher reined his steed in with dignity and spoke with wounded
pride:
"My friend, this is a better horse than our Lord rode into Jerusalem
on!"
The soldier stepped up quickly, opened the animal's mouth and grinned:
"Parson, that's the very same horse!"
A shout rose from the hill in which the preacher joined.
"Dod bam it, did ye ever hear the beat o' that!" shouted a pious fellow
who was inventing cuss words that would pass the charge of profanity.
A distinguished citizen of Fredericksburg passed along the lines wearing
a tall new silk hat. He didn't get very far before he changed his line
of march. A regular fusillade poured on him from the ranks.
"Say, man, is dat a hat er a bee gum?"
"Come down now!"
"Come down outen that hat an' help us with these Yanks!"
"Come down I say--I know you're up there for I can see your legs!"
When the silk hat vanished, a solemn country boy with slight knowledge
of books began to discuss the great mysteries of eternity.
Ned had won his unbounded faith and admiration by spelling at the
first trial the name of his native village in the Valley of
Virginia--McGaheysville. Tom held this fact to be a marvellous
intellectual achievement.
"What I want to know, Ned, is this," he drawled, "who started sin in
this world, anyhow? What makes a good thing good and what makes a bad
thing bad, and who said so first?"
"That's what I'd like to know myself, Tom," Ned gravely answered.
"An' ye don't know?"
"I certainly do not."
"I don't see why any man that can spell like you don't know everything."
He paused, picked up a pebble and threw it at a comrade's foot and
laughed to see him jump as from a Minie ball.
"You know, Ned," he went on slowly, "what I think is the prettiest piece
of poetry?"
"No--what?"
"Hit's this:
"'The men of high condition
That rule affairs of State;
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate.'"
"Pretty good, Tom," was the quick reply, "but I think I can beat it with
something more hopeful. I got it in Sunday School out in Missouri:
"'The sword and spear, of needless worth,
Shall prune the tree and plough the earth;
And Peace shall smile from shore to shore
And Nations learn to war no more.'"
The country boy's eyes gleamed with eager approval. He had fought for
nearly two years and the glory of war was beginning to lose its glamour.
"Say that again, Ned," he pleaded. "Say it again! That's the prettiest
thing I ever heard in my life!"
He was silent a moment:
"Yes, I used to think it would be glorious to hear the thunder of guns
and the shriek of shells. I've changed my mind. When I hear one of 'em
comin' now, I begin to sing to myself the old-fashioned tune I used to
hear in the revivals:
"'Hark from the tomb a doleful sound!
'My thoughts in dreadful subjects roll damnation and the dead----'
"I've an idea we're going to sing some o' them old songs on this field
pretty soon."
Again Ned thought of John and offered a silent prayer that he might not
be in those blue lines that were going to charge into the jaws which
Death had opened for them in the valley below.
John Vaughan in his tent beyond the Rappahannock was wasting no energy
worrying about the coming battle. Death had ceased to be a matter of
personal concern. He had seen so many dead and wounded men as he had
ridden over battlefields he had come to take them as a matter of course.
He was going into action now for the first time in the ranks as a
private soldier and he would see things happen at closer range--that was
all. He wished to see them that way. He had reached the point of utter
indifference to personal danger and it brought a new consciousness of
strength that was inspiring. He had stopped dreaming of the happiness of
love after the exhibition he had made of himself before Betty Winter and
the brutal insult with which he met her advances. Some girls might
forgive it, but not this proud, sensitive, high strung daughter of the
snows of New England and the sunlight of France. And so he had
resolutely put the thought out of his heart.
Julius had proven himself a valuable servant. He was the best cook in
the regiment, and what was still more important, he was the most
skillful thief and the most plausible liar in the army. He could defend
himself so nobly from the insinuations of the suspicious that they would
apologize for the wrong unwittingly done his character. John had not
lived so well since he could remember.
"Julius, you're a handy man in war!" he exclaimed after a hearty supper
on fried chicken.
"Yassah--I manage ter git 'long, sah."
Julius took up his banjo and began to tune it for an accompaniment to
his songs. He had a mellow rhythmical voice that always brought the
crowd. He began with his favorite that never failed to please his
master. The way he rolled his eyes and sang with his hands and feet and
every muscle of his body was the source of unending interest to his
Northern audience.
He ran his fingers lightly over the strings and the men threw down their
dirty packs of cards and crowded around John's tent. Julius only sang
one line at a time and picked his banjo between them to a low wailing
sound of his own invention:
"O! far' you well, my Mary Ann;
Far' you well, my dear!
I've no one left to love me now
And little do I care----"
He paused between the stanzas and picked his banjo to a few prose
interpolations of his own.
"Dat's what I'm a tellin' ye now, folks--little do I care!"
He knew his master had been crossed in love and he rolled his eyes and
nodded his woolly head in triumphant approval. John smiled wanly as he
drifted slowly into his next stanza.
"An' ef I had a scoldin' wife
I'd whip her sho's yer born,
I'd take her down to New Orleans
An' trade her off fer corn----"
Julius stopped with a sudden snap and whispered to John:
"Lordy, sah, I clean fergit 'bout dat meetin' at de cullud folks'
church, sah, dat dey start up. I promise de preacher ter fetch you,
sah--An' ef we gwine ter march ter-morrow, dis here's de las' night
sho----"
The concert was adjourned to the log house which an old colored preacher
had converted into a church. It was filled to its capacity and John
stood in the doorway and heard the most remarkable sermon to which he
had ever listened.
The grey-haired old negro was tremendously in earnest. He could neither
read nor write but he opened the Bible to comply with the formalities of
the occasion and pretended to read his text. He had taken it from his
master who was a clergyman. Ephraim invariably chose the same texts but
gave his people his own interpretation. It never failed in some element
of originality.
The text his master had evidently chosen last were the words:
"And he healeth them of divers diseases."
Old Ephraim's version was a free one. From the open Bible he solemnly
read:
"An' he healed 'em of all sorts o' diseases an' even er dat wust o'
complaints called de Divers!"
He plunged straight into a fervent exhortation to sinners to flee from
the Divers.
"I'm gwine ter tell ye now, chillun," he exclaimed with uplifted arms,
"ye don't know nuttin' 'bout no terrible diseases till dat wust er all
called de Divers git ye! An' hit's a comin' I tell ye. Hit's gwine ter
git ye, too. Ye can flee ter the mountain top, an' hit'll dive right up
froo de air an' git ye dar. Ye kin go down inter de bowels er de yearth
an' hit'll dive right down dar atter ye. Ye kin take de wings er de
mornin' an' fly ter de ends er de yearth--an' de Divers is dar. Dey kin
dive anywhar!
"An' what ye gwine ter do when dey git ye? I axe ye dat now? What ye
gwine ter do when hit's forever an' eternally too late? Dese doctors
roun' here kin cure ye o' de whoopin'-cough--mebbe--I hain't nebber seed
'em eben do dat--but I say, mebbe. Dey kin cure ye o' de measles, mebbe.
Er de plumbago or de typhoid er de yaller fever sometimes. But I warns
ye now ter flee de wrath dat's ter come when dem Divers git ye! Dey
ain't no doctor no good fer dat nowhar--exceptin' ye come ter de Lord.
For He heal 'em er all sorts er diseases an' de wust er all de
complaints called de Divers!
"Come, humble sinners, in whose breast er thousand thoughts revolve!"
John Vaughan turned away with a smile and a tear.
"In God's name," he murmured thoughtfully, "what's to become of these
four million black children of the tropic jungles if we win now and set
them free! Their fathers and mothers were but yesterday eating human
flesh in naked savagery."
He walked slowly back to his tent through the solemn starlit night. The
new moon, a silver thread, hung over the tree tops. He thought of that
dusky grey-haired child of four thousand years of ignorance and
helplessness and the tragic role he had played in the history of our
people. And for the first time faced the question of the still more
tragic role he might play in the future.
"I'm fighting to free him and the millions like him," he mused. "What am
I going to do with him?"
The longer he thought the blacker and more insoluble became this
question, and yet he was going into battle to-morrow to fight his own
brother to the death on this issue. True the problem of national
existence was at stake, but this black problem of the possible
degradation of our racial stock and our national character still lay
back of it unsolved and possibly insoluble.
The red flash of a picket's gun on the shore of the river and the quick
answer from the other side brought his dreaming to a sudden stop before
the sterner fact of the swiftly approaching battle.
He snatched but a few hours sleep before his regiment was up and on the
march to the water's edge. A dense grey fog hung over the river and
obscured the town. The bridge builders swung their pontoons into the
water and soon the sound of timbers falling into place could be heard
with the splash of the anchors and the low quick commands of the
officers.
The grey sharpshooters, concealed on the other shore, began to fire
across the water through the fog. The sound was strangely magnified. The
single crack of a musket seemed as loud as a cannon.
The work went quickly. The bullets flew wide of the mark. The fog
suddenly lifted and a steady fusillade from the men hidden in the hills
of Fredericksburg began to pick off the bridge builders with cruel
accuracy. At times every man was down. New men were rushed to take their
places and they fell.
The signal was given to the artillery and a hundred and forty-seven
great guns suddenly began to sweep the doomed town. Houses crumpled like
egg-shells and fires began to blaze.
The sharpshooters fell back. The bridges were laid and the grand army of
a hundred and thirteen thousand began to pour across. The caissons, with
their huge black, rifled-barrel guns rumbling along the resounding
boards in a continuous roar like distant thunder.
On the southern shore the deep mud cut hills put every team to the test
of its strength and the utmost skill of their drivers. Hundreds of men
were in the mud at the wheels and still they would stick.
And then the patient heavens above heard the voices of army teamsters in
plain and ornamental swearing! Such profanity was probably never heard
on this earth before and it may well be hoped will not be heard again.
The driver whose wheels had stuck, cracked his whip first and yelled. He
yelled again and cracked his whip. And then he began to swear, loudly,
and angrily at first and then in lower, steadier, more polite terms--but
always in an unending nerve-racking torrent.
He cursed his mules individually by name and the whole team
collectively, and consigned it to the lowest depth of the deepest hell
and then the devil for not providing a deeper one. Each trait of each
mule, good and bad, he named without fear or favor and damned each alike
with equal emphasis. He named each part of each mule's anatomy and
damned it individually and as a whole, with full bill of particulars.
He swore in every key in the whole gamut of sound and last of all he
damned himself for his utter inability to express anything he really
felt.
The last big gun up the hill and the infantry poured into the town of
Fredericksburg, halting in regiments and brigades in its streets. Only a
few shots had been exchanged with the men in grey. They had withdrawn to
the heights a mile beyond. The assault had been a mere parade. Many of
the inhabitants had fled in terror at the approach of the men in blue.
Some of the lower types of soldiers in the Northern army broke into
these deserted houses and began to rob and pillage.
Julius "found" many delicacies lying about on lawns and in various
unheard-of places. His master never pressed him with rude questions when
his zeal bore such good results for their table.
Ned Vaughan had been very much amused at an old woman who had been
driven from her home by marauders. She had piled such goods and chattels
as she could handle into an ox cart and drove past the grey battle
lines, hurrying as fast as she could Southward. Her wrinkled old face
beamed with joy at the sight of their burnished muskets and her eyes
flashed with the gleam of an Amazon as she shouted:
"Give it to the damned rascals, boys! Give 'em one fer me--one fer me
and don't you forget it!"
Far down the line she could be heard delivering her fierce exhortation.
The men smiled and answered her good-naturedly. The day of wrath and
death had dawned. It was too solemn an hour for boastful words.
For two days the grand army in blue poured across the river and spread
out through the town of Fredericksburg. The fateful morning of the 13th
of December, 1862, dawned in another heavy fog. Its grey mantle of
mystery shrouded the town, clung wet and heavy to the ground in the
silent valley before the crescent-shaped hills and veiled the face of
their heights.
Under the cover of this fog the long waves of blue spread out in the
edge of the valley and took their places in battle line. The grey men in
the brown grass on the hills crouched behind their ditches and stone
walls, gripped their guns and waited for the foe to walk into the trap
their commanders had set.
An unseen hand slowly lifted the misty curtain and the sun burst on the
scene. The valley lay like the smooth ground of some vast arena prepared
for a pageant and back of it rose the silent hills, tier on tier like
the seats of a mighty amphitheatre. But the men crouching on those seats
were not spectators--they were the grimmest actors in the tragedy.
For a moment it was a spectacle merely--the grandest display of the
pageantry of war ever made on a field of death.
Franklin's division suddenly wheeled into position for its united
assault on the right.
Ned Vaughan, from his lair on the hill, could see the officers in their
magnificent new uniforms, their swords flashing as they led their men. A
hundred thousand bayonets were gleaming in the sparkling December sun.
Magnificent horses in rich tasselled trappings were plunging and
prancing with the excitement of marching hosts, some of them keeping
time to the throb of regimental bands.
The bands were playing now, all of them, a band for every thousand men,
the shrill scream of their bugles and the roar of their drums sending a
mighty chorus into the heavens that echoed ominously against the silent
hills.
And flags, flags, flags, were streaming in billowy waves of red, white
and blue, as far as the eye could reach!
"Isn't that pretty, boys!" Ned sighed admiringly.
Tom lifted his solemn eyes from the grass.
"Lord, Lord, look at them new warm clothes, an' my elbows a-freezin' in
this cold wind!"
"Ain't it a picture?"
"What a pity to spile it!"
A ripple of admiration ran along the crouching lines as fingers softly
felt for the triggers of their guns.
A quick order from John Vaughan's Colonel sent their battery of
artillery rattling and bounding into position. The cannoneers sprang to
their mounts. A handsome young fellow missed his foothold and fell
beneath the wheels. The big iron tire crushed his neck and the blood
from his mouth splashed into John's face. The men on the guns didn't
turn their heads to look back. Their eyes were searching the brown hills
before them.
The long roll beat from a thousand drums, the call of the buglers rang
over the valley--and then the strange, solemn silence that comes before
the shock--the moment when cowards collapse and the brave falter.
John Vaughan's soul rose in a fierce challenge to fate. If he died it
was well; if he lived it was the same. He had ceased to care.
At exactly eight-thirty, General Meade hurled his division, supported by
Doubleday and Gibbon, against Jackson's weakest point, the right of the
Confederate lines. Their aim was to seize an opposing hill. The curving
lines of grey were silent until the charging hosts were well advanced in
deadly range and then the brown hills flamed and roared in front and on
their flanks.
The blue lines were mowed down in swaths as though the giant figure of
Death had suddenly swung his scythe from the fog banks in the sky.
Again and again came those awful volleys of musketry and artillery
cross-firing on the rushing lines. The men staggered and recovered,
reformed and charged again over the dead bodies of their comrades
carrying the crest for a moment. They captured a flag and a handful of
prisoners only to be driven back down the hill with losses more
frightful in retreat than when they breasted the storm.
In the centre the tragedy was repeated with results even more terrible.
As the charging lines fell back, staggering, bleeding and cut to pieces,
fresh brigades threw down their knapsacks, fixed their bayonets and
charged through their own melting ranks into the jaws of Death to fall
back in their turn.
With a mighty shout the blue line swept across the railroad, took the
ditches at the point of the bayonet and captured two hundred grey
prisoners. But only for a moment. From the supporting line rang the
rebel yell and they were hurled back, shattered and cut to pieces.
These retreats were veritable shambles of slaughter. The curved lines on
the hills raking them with their deadly accurate cross-fire.
John Vaughan's regiment leaped to the support of the falling blue waves.
A wounded soldier had propped himself against a stone and smiled as the
cheering men swept by. He could rest a while now.
A battery of artillery suddenly blazed from the hill-crest and his
Colonel threw his command flat on their stomachs until the storm should
slacken. John heard the shrill deadly swish of the big shots passing two
feet above.
He lifted his eyes to the hill and a frightened pigeon suddenly swooped
straight down toward his head. He ducked quickly, sure he had escaped a
cannon ball until the laugh of the man at his side told of his mistake.
They rose to charge. The knapsack of the man who had laughed was struck
by a ball and a deck of cards sent flying ten feet in the air.
"Deal me a winning hand!" John shouted.
A shot cut the sword belt of the first lieutenant, left him uninjured,
glanced and killed the captain. The lieutenant picked up his sword, took
his captain's place and led the charge.
Men were falling on the right and left and John Vaughan loaded and fired
with steady, dogged nerve without a scratch.
Four times the blue billows had dashed against the hills only to fall
back in red confusion. The din and roar were indescribable. The
color-bearer of the regiment confused by conflicting orders paused and
asked for instructions. The Colonel, mistaking his act for retreat,
tore the colors from his hand and gave them to another man. The boy
burst into tears. The new color-bearer had scarcely lifted the flag
above his head when he fell. The disgraced soldier snatched the
tottering flagstaff and, lifting it on high, dashed up the hill ahead of
his line of battle.
The men were ducking their heads low beneath the fierce hail of lead and
staggering blindly.
John saw this boy waving his flag and shaking his fist back at the
halting line. He was not a hundred feet from the Confederate trenches.
"Come on there!" he shouted. "Damn it, what's the matter with you?"
Ned Vaughan and his grey men behind the little mound of red dirt were
watching this drama with flashing eyes. Beside him crouched a boy whose
early piety had marked him for the ministry. But he had wandered from
the fold in the stress of army life. Ned heard his voice now in low,
eager prayer:
"O Lord, drive 'em back! Drive 'em back, O Lord!"
He fired his musket down the hill and prayed harder:
"Lord, drive 'em back! I've sinned and come short, but drive 'em, O
Lord!"
He paused and whispered to Ned as he reached for another cartridge:
"Are they comin' or goin'?"
"Coming!"
Again he prayed with fervor:
"Drive 'em back, Lord Goddermighty, we're weak and you're strong--help
us now! Drive 'em--just this time, O Lord, and you can have me--I'll be
good!"
He paused for breath and turned to Ned:
"Now look!--Comin' or goin'?"
"That follow with the flag cussin' the men has dropped----"
"Thank God!"
"Another's lifted it----"
"Lord, save us!"
"Why don't you lie down, ye damn fool," Tom shouted. "I'm huggin' the
ground so close now I don't want a piece of paper under me, and if
there's got to be a piece I don't want no writin' on it!"
"Now look, are they comin'?" the pious boy gasped.
Ned made no answer. His wide set eyes were staring at the man who had
caught that color-bearer in his arms and was carrying him to the rear.
It was John Vaughan!
His lips were moving now in silent prayer and his sword hung limp in his
hands.
Through chattering teeth he cried:
"Don't shoot that fellow carrying his friend down the hill, boys!"
"They're runnin' now?" the pious one asked.
"It isn't war--it's a massacre!" Ned sighed.
The man of prayer leaped on the ditch bank suddenly and shook his fist
defiantly.
"Come back here, you damned cowards!" he yelled. "Come back and we'll
whip hell out o' you!"
Slowly the shattered regiment fell back down the bloody slope, stumbling
over their dead and wounded. The dim smoke-bound valley was a slaughter
pen. Where magnificent lines of blue had marched with flashing bayonets
and streaming banners at eight o'clock, the dead lay in mangled heaps,
and the wounded huddled among them slowly freezing to death.
John saw a magnificent gun a heap of junk with four dead horses and
every cannoneer on the ground dead or freezing where they fell. A single
shell had done the work. Riderless horses galloped wildly over the
field, shying at the grim piles of dark blue bodies, sniffing the blood
and neighing pitifully.
Twelve hundred men in his regiment had charged up that hill. But two
hundred and fifty came down.
From the steeple of the Court House in Fredericksburg General Couch, in
command of the Second Corps, stood with his glasses on this frightful
scene. He whispered to Howard by his side:
"The whole plain is covered with our men fallen and falling--I've never
seen anything like it!"
He paused, his lips quivering as he gasped:
"O my God! see them falling--poor fellows, falling--falling!"
He signalled Burnside for reinforcements.
General Sumner's division on the Union right had charged into the
deadliest trap of all.
Down the road toward the foot of Marye's Heights his magnificent army
swept at double quick. The Confederate batteries had been specially
trained to rake this road from three directions, right, and left flank
and centre.
Steadily, stoically the men in blue pressed into this narrow way in
silence and met the flaming torrent from three directions. Rushing on
over the bodies of their fallen comrades the thinning ranks reached the
old stone wall at the foot of the hill. General Cobb lay concealed
behind it with three thousand infantry. The low quick order ran along
his line:
"Fire!"
Straight into the faces of the heroic Union soldiers flashed a level
blinding flame from three thousand muskets, slaying, crushing, tearing
to pieces the proud army of an hour ago. A thousand men in blue fell in
five minutes. The ground was piled with their bodies until it was
impossible to charge over them effectively.
For a moment a cloud of smoke pitifully drew a soft grey veil over the
awful scene while the men who were left fell back in straggling broken
groups.
Five times the Union hosts had charged those terrible brown hills and
five times they had been rolled back in red waves of blood.
Late in the day a fierce bitter wind was blowing from the north. There
was yet time to turn defeat into victory. The desperate Union Commander
ordered the sixth charge.
The men in blue pulled their hats down low as if to shut out the pelting
hail of lead and iron and without a murmur charged once more into the
mouth of hell. The winds had frozen stiff the bodies of their dead. The
advancing blue lines snatched these dead men from the ground, carried
them in front, stacked them in long piles for bulwarks, and fought
behind them with the desperation of madmen. There was no escape. The
keen eyes of the Confederate Commanders had planted their right and left
flanking lines to pour death into these ranks no matter how high their
corpses were piled. The crescent hill blazed and roared with unceasing
fury. Only the darkness was kind at last.
And then the men in blue planted the frozen bodies of their comrades
along the outer battle line as dummy sentinels, and under cover of the
night began to slip back through Fredericksburg and across the silver
mirror of the Rappahannock to their old camp, shattered, broken,
crushed.
It was four o'clock in the morning before John Vaughan's regiment would
give up the search for their desperately wounded. Only the strongest
could endure that bitter cold. Through the long, desolate hours the
pitiful cries of the wounded men rang through the black, freezing night,
and few hands stirred to save them. A great army was fighting to save
its flags and guns and reach the shelter beyond the river.
Amid the few flickering lanterns could be heard the greetings of friends
in subdued tones as they clasped hands:
"Is that you, old boy?"
"God bless you--yes--I'm glad to see you!"
A dying man in blue was pitifully calling for water somewhere, in the
darkness in front of Ned Vaughan's ditch. He took his canteen, got a
lantern and went to find him. It might be John. If not, no matter, he
was some other fellow's brother.
As the light fell on his drawn face Ned murmured:
"Thank God!"
He pressed the canteen to his lips and held his head in his lap. It was
only too plain from the steel look out of the eyes that his minutes were
numbered. He moved and turned his dying face up to Ned:
"Why is it you always whip us, Johnny?"
He paused for breath:
"I wonder--every battle I've been in we've been defeated--why--why--why,
O God, why----"
His head drooped and he was still.
Ned wondered if some waiting loved one on the shores of eternity had
given him the answer. He wrapped him tenderly in his blanket and left
him at rest at last.
As he turned toward his lines the unmistakable wail of a baby came
faintly through the darkness--a wee voice, the half smothered cry
sounding as if it were nestling in a mother's arms. He followed the
sound until his lantern flashed in the wild eyes of a young woman who
had fled from her home in terror during the battle and was hugging her
baby frantically in her arms.
Ned led her gently to an officer's quarters and made her comfortable.
The glory of war was fast fading from his imagination. A grim spectre
was slowly taking its place.
John's shattered regiment lay down on the field with the rear guard at
four o'clock to snatch an hour's sleep, their heads pillowed on the
bodies of the dead. The cold moderated and a light mantle of snow fell
softly just before day and covered the field, the living and the dead.
When the reveille sounded at dawn, the bugler looked with awe at the
thousands of white shrouded figures and wondered which would stir at his
note. The living slowly rose as from the dead and shook their white
shrouds. Thousands lay still, cold and immovable to await the
archangel's mightier call at the last.
Beyond the river, through the long night, Burnside, wild with anguish,
had paced the floor of his tent. Again and again he threw his arms in a
gesture of despair toward the freezing blood-stained field:
"Oh, those men--those men over there! I'm thinking of them all the
time----"
As the rear guard turned from the field at sunrise, John Vaughan looked
back across the valley of Death and saw the ragged brown and grey
figures shivering in the cold, as they swarmed down from the hills and
began to shake the frost from the new, warm clothes they were stripping
from the dead.