It was a starlit summer night following a day of moist, debilitating
heat. It had rained at dawn, and then, as the clouds of heaven broke
away and went sailing off towards the distant heights on the western
horizon, the sun had poured hotly down on open fields and sodden red
roads and long rows of wet, white tentage, veiling the landscape with
miniature clouds from the teeming earth. All day long soldiers
innumerable lolled about the camps and thronged the sentry-posts that
lined the roadway, chaffing the passers-by or dickering with darky
vendors of fruit, cakes, and pies,--amateur soldiers were these, as any
veteran could tell at a glance, some in gayly trimmed regimentals, some
in antiquated tail-coats, more in fancy jackets, few in serviceable
garb, and nearly all with their hands in their pockets. A bored, jaded,
time-killing lot they looked. The ground was too wet and muddy for
drill. The first flush of patriotic fervor had worn away. They had
rushed to the front at the earliest call, expectant of tremendous
doings, and, except the street-fight of the Sixth Massachusetts in
Baltimore and a few shots heard at the picket-posts, there had been no
taste of battle. They were the three-months men, mainly State militia,
hurried down to hold Washington against attack, while the volunteers,
the "three-years men" of the war, were organizing and drilling behind
them. Their three months had nearly expired, and most of them were eager
to go home so long as there was nothing going on at the front. Some,
indeed, were ready to go anyhow, many with the promise of commissions in
the volunteers, many with the resolve to re-enlist for the war, but all
anxious to visit home and friends and families and get a more deliberate
start than that initial impulse which sent them forward the latter part
of April, burdened with knapsacks they knew not how to pack or wear and
guns that they had never shot.
And here, along the main pike to Fairfax and Centreville, one on each
side of the way, a New York and a New England regiment of militia had
been swapping comments and criticisms most of the afternoon, badgering
each other when there came no one else to bear the brunt of their
shafts, and mischievously turning with one accord on passers-by whose
lack of rank or escort suggested improbability of effective resentment.
But as the day wore on and the mud thickened in the middle of the road,
and staff-officers, orderlies, and ambulances passing by began to veer
out to right and left and encroach on the sentry-posts and the grinning
groups that lay just back of them, "the boys" waxed more savage and
sarcastic. They had occupied those camps full six weeks, and thought
they owned the neighborhood. Back towards Washington, on every rising
ground, the red embankments showed where earthworks had been thrown up
to defend the front. Along the beautifully wooded slopes to the north
and west the fair contours were scarred and defaced with freshly spaded
parapets, and through gaping embrasures here and there frowned the black
muzzles of the Union guns. Over a rounded knoll half a mile to the
northwest of the camp of the New-Yorkers the stars and stripes hung
lazily from a white staff, and there were the quarters of a division
commander, whose aides and orderlies had been oddly busy all day long,
responding, according to rank, with a frown of annoyance or a grin of
amusement, to the hail of comment or question from the loungers along
the line. But at four in the afternoon a whole squadron of regular
cavalry, with high-collared, yellow-trimmed jackets and jaunty
forage-caps, came silently squashing by, taking the mud and the middle
of the road as a matter of course, and the chaff and comment as of no
consequence whatever. Hardly had their flapping silken guidons
disappeared around a bend of the pike three hundred yards farther to the
west than there came jogging into view from the rear a long column of
horses, gun-carriages, and caissons, the cannoneers sitting motionless
on the chests, the drivers carefully guiding their powerful teams. A
wiry captain, followed by his bugler, came trotting forward, surveyed
the mud that interposed along the defile between the two camps, nodded
cheerily to the "Going out ahead, Cap?" sung out to him by the nearest
New-Yorkers, and signalled with gauntleted hand to the leading chief of
section to incline to the right and take the turf at the roadside; and
so they, too, went clinking steadily by, twelve long teams of six horses
each, hauling six bronze "Napoleon" guns, heavy fellows, and six loaded
caissons. Behind them came their forge and battery wagon, a mule-drawn
baggage-wagon or two, and one of the famous light batteries of the
regular army had passed through the thronging lines of the State
militia, who emptied their tents to see the procession and to hurl
question after question as to the meaning of it all. And this was only a
beginning, for right behind it came the flaunting red silk guidon of
another battery, differing from the first only in that the men wore
red-trimmed jackets instead of dark-blue blouses, and that the
cannoneers were skipping along the roadside or squashing through the
mud, their captain holding sternly, even on a short march, to one of the
rules of the light artillery, that the horses should have to pull as
little weight as possible. And no sooner was he fairly by and his men
well within the lane of the militia camps than the storm of fun and
chaff rose to uproar, silenced only when the tail of the column had
passed beyond. By this time, too, the officers were coming out to take a
look. Then there rose a burst of martial music and a sound of cheering
up the roadway, and, preceded by a band, there rode into sight some
mounted officers, behind whom gleamed the sloping barrels of the arms of
a battalion of infantry; and now New York and New England dropped cards,
checkers, or chat, and the last laggards of both regiments come
streaming to line the roadway and scan these bold invaders. Even the
colonels mount their horses and ride in among their men, and as the
music ceases and the regiment picks its way gingerly through the mud,
the cry goes up from the eastward skirts of camp, "The Fire Zouaves!"
and that cry is taken up and passed from lip to lip, and order and
discipline, even of these primitive war days, all are forgotten, and as
the long column comes winding down the gentle slope in the afternoon
sunshine, and bright bits of scarlet glow through the sombre tone of
gray, and the old familiar fire shirts are recognized, as one man the
New-Yorkers set up the welcoming fireman chorus of the streets of
Gotham, and the welkin rings with shouts of "Hi, hi, hi!" mingled with
rapturous cheers. Prompt comes the answer from a thousand lusty throats.
Caps and hats are tossed in air, ay, and, as the column and the colors
mingle, canteens, tossed from bystanders to marchers, are pressed to
thirsty lips and passed from hand to hand. Officers and men alike,
militia and volunteers, the soldiers of Manhattan are shouting greeting
and rejoicing, and the next moment, despite all efforts of the senior
officers to stop it, the Zouaves are forcibly seized and dragged from
the marching ranks, hugged and hauled and slapped on arm and chest and
leg and shoulder, wherever knapsack, blanket, and cartridge-box do not
interpose below the neck, and men come running with more canteens, and
Zouaves are lugged bodily away to the neighboring sutler's tent, and
when, finally, the last unmolested files of the Fire Zouaves have gone,
cap-waving and cheering, on in the trail of the batteries, the camp of
their fellow-townsmen is filled with stragglers who are only recovered
an hour later through the medium of strong patrols.
But meantime the batteries have "gone into park," unhitched and
unharnessed back of the Virginia farm-house just beyond the bend. The
Zouaves have trailed off into an open field between them and the tents
of the New-Yorkers. Staff-officers have conducted the commanders to the
designated spots for their bivouac. Two other regiments of the new
volunteers have followed, marching somewhat wearily past the now
thoroughly roused camps of the militia, and as the sun sinks to the west
and heavy knapsacks are unslung and arms stacked in the fields and
sentry-posts established, everybody begins to realize among the tents of
the earlier comers that a move to the front is in contemplation, just
when they were counting on a homeward move to the rear.
And now as the tattoo drums are bracing up, a score of officers are
gathered about the tents of the New York colonel, chatting over the
probabilities. With them are two of the New England officers, one a
grave, taciturn captain who has listened for half an hour without a
word. By several officers the idea has been advanced that if a forward
move is intended in response to the "on to Richmond" cry of the press,
many of the men will demur. They were called into service in mid-April;
it is now mid-July. Many of them are clerks who will lose their
positions, married men who have made no provision for their families,
staid citizens who from sense of duty sprang to the front at the first
summons, so as to help hold the fort until the nation could organize its
army of volunteers. Of regulars at the time there were less than ten
thousand, scattered from Maine to Oregon, from Mackinaw to the Gulf of
Mexico. Now the first levies of the volunteers were pouring in. Here
already in front of Washington were regiments from New York, New Jersey,
Michigan, Ohio, even far away Wisconsin. Why should the government
require of the State militia, rallied at the capital solely to defend,
that it should march away southward to attack an enemy in position?
Similar views were being expressed in other militia camps, said the
speaker, and the colonel looked worried.
At last he turned to the stalwart, silent captain from the regiment over
the way.
"What do your people say, Captain Stark?" he asks.
"Nothing," is the answer, as the tall, bearded man puffs meditatively at
the brier-root pipe, his head resting on his hand, his elbow on his
knee.
"Well, you were mustered in about the same date we were. Don't some of
your boys talk of going home, and wanting to?"
"Not--audibly," says Stark.
"Well, they must be thinking a lot. They are fixed pretty much as ours
are," hazards a field-officer.
"Possibly," says Stark, tapping out the ashes on the leg of the
camp-stool. "But we made no stipulation as to the duty to be required of
us. We tendered our services and expect to take our chances."
"Do you mean your boys would all go, no matter how far south they were
ordered?" asks a young officer who has already had much to say about his
own.
"My men will go wherever they're ordered," answers Stark, briefly. "I
haven't any boys, except one, and he's so much of a man I never found
him out till we got here."
"That brown-eyed young fellow I've seen round your tent?" queries the
colonel, deeming it wise to change the tenor of the talk.
"The very one."
"How'd you come to take him? He's too light built for heavy work. He's
outgrown his strength and he don't look eighteen," says the major, glad
enough to shift implied criticism to the rival regiment.
"Well, his employers said he was worth three men around the shop, and he
was bound to go. The inspectors passed him, and there he was in my
company."
"Looks all legs," hazards the colonel.
"And is all head," says Stark. "That's why he's always studying tactics
and regulations round my tent instead of fooling away time with the
company. There goes tattoo. Good-night, gentlemen," and the
New-Englander rises and presently strides away.
Over within the lines of his own regiment Stark passes line after line
of company streets where the men are skylarking or chatting, waiting for
the "fall in" signal at the close of the sounding of tattoo. The drums
and fifes are hammering noisily down along the color line as he reaches
his own company and his first sergeant comes forward and, saluting,
says, "Did young Lawton find you, sir?"
"No. What did he want?"
"Permission to go out of camp, sir. Said he knew an officer in the Fire
Zouaves. The lieutenant signed a pass, and he took it to the colonel,
but he wished the captain should know."
"Very well. Form your company," says the captain.
The long wailing notes of the tattoo and the roll of the drums came
abruptly to an end. The silent, shadowy double rank stood to attention,
and, lantern in hand, the sergeant called his roll. Two names met with
no response besides those of men on guard. Two men were reported absent.
One of them came on the run as the company broke ranks.
"I was with Lawton, sir," said he, to his soldierly commander. "They let
us into the Zouave camp all right, but didn't want to let us out. Lawton
couldn't get away at all. As many as twenty of those red-shirted fellows
nabbed him, and there he is a prisoner."
"In fun, I suppose?"
"Why, yes. They seem to know him well and be mighty glad to see him. I
told my brother, who is in one of their companies, that Lawton must come
home with me or he'd get into trouble, but the crowd just laughed."
"Very well. Go to your tent," said Stark, and went to his own. There on
the little camp-desk was a note which he tore open and read. Briefly it
said that Lawton had recognized some old friends among the Fire Zouaves,
and had sought the captain to get permission to go and see them early in
the evening. Even though the lieutenant took the responsibility and
signed the pass, and the colonel too, he wanted his captain to know
whither he had gone and that he would be back at tattoo.
But he wasn't back at tattoo, nor at taps. Not until eleven o'clock did
Stark hear the sound of the young soldier's voice. Lawton was
scratching at the tent-flap.
"What is it?" shouted the captain.
"It's Lawton, sir,--come to report return. I was held by those men,
quite a lot of them, and simply couldn't make them understand about our
discipline."
"Never mind," interposed Stark. "Go to bed now and get all the sleep you
can. You may need it;" and the captain rolled over on his cot, anxious
to try his own prescription.
But the late comer hesitated. For a moment he stood irresolute. Plainly
there was something which he wanted to say to his commander. The officer
of the day, lantern in hand, came along at the moment, his red sash
crossed upon his broad chest. He raised the lantern and peered at the
tall young soldier, whose coat and trousers looked as though they had
been made for a shorter lad, and the face that was revealed seemed white
and full of trouble.
"I was just speaking to my captain, sir," explained the young soldier,
and the officer of the day went briskly one way, the soldier,
dejectedly, another.
"Homesick, and wants to go and see his mother," said the officer of the
day to himself. "Well, he needn't waste time pleading with Stark. Might
as well talk to a stone."