OUT WITH A BURYING PARTY.
When I rose, at ten o'clock on the morning of Sunday, August 10, the
porch was covered with wounded people. Some fierce sunbeams were gliding
under the roof, shining in the poor fellows' eyes, and they were
stirring wearily, though asleep. Picking my way among the prostrate
figures, I resorted to the pump in the rear of the tavern for the
purpose of bathing my face. A soldier stood there on guard, and he
refused to give me so much as a draught of water. The wounded needed
every drop, and there were but a few wells in the town. I strolled
through the main street, now crowded with unfortunates, and pausing at
the Court House, found the seat of justice transmuted to a headquarters
for surgeons, where amputations were being performed. Continuing by a
street to the left, I came to the depot, and here the ambulances were
gathered with their scores of inmates. A tavern contiguous to the
railway was also a hospital, but in the basement I found the
transportation agents at breakfast, and they gave me a bountiful meal.
It was here arranged between myself and an old friend--a newspaper
correspondent who had recently married, and whose wife awaited him at
Willard's in Washington--that he should proceed at once to New York with
the outline of the fight, and that I should follow him next day (having,
indeed, to report for duty and fresh orders at Head-quarters of the
army in Washington,) with particulars and the lists of killed. I
commenced my part of the labors at once, employing three persons to
assist me, and we districted Culpepper, so that no one should interfere
with the grounds of the other. My own part of the work embraced both
hotel-hospitals, the names and statements of the prisoners of the Court
House loft, and interviews with some of the generals and colonels who
lay at various private residences. The business was not a desirable one;
for hot hospital rooms were now absolutely reeking, and many of the
victims were asleep. It would be inhuman to awaken these; but in many
cases those adjacent knew nothing, and with all assiduity the rolls must
be imperfect. I found one man who had undergone a sort of mental
paralysis and could not tell me his own name. However, I groped through
the several chambers where the bleeding littered the bare floors. Some
of them were eating voraciously, and buckets of ice-water were being
carried to and fro that all might drink. Some male nurses were fanning
the sleeping people with boughs of cedar; but the flies filled the
ceiling, and, attracted by the wounds, they kept up a constant buzzing.
I imagined that mortification would rapidly ensue in this broiling
atmosphere. A couple of trains were being prepared below, to transport
the sufferers to Washington, and from time to time individuals were
carried into the air and deposited in common freight-cars upon the hard
floors. Here they were compelled to wait till late in the evening, for
no trains were allowed to leave the village during the day. At the
Virginia Hotel, I visited, among others, the room in which I had lodged
when I first came to Culpepper. Eight persons now occupied it, and three
of them lay across the bed. I took the first man's name, and as the man
next to him seemed to be asleep, I asked the first man to nudge him
gently.
"I don't think he is alive," said the man; "he hasn't moved since
midnight. I've spoken to him already."
I pulled a blanket from the head of the figure, and the tangled hair,
yellow skin, and stiffened jaw told all the story. The other man looked
uneasily into the face of the corpse and then lay down with his back
toward it.
"I hope they'll take it out," said he, "I don't want to sleep beside it
another night."
The guard at the Court House allowed me to ascend to the loft, and the
prisoners--forty or fifty in number--clustered around me. They had
received, a short time before, their day's allotment of crackers and
bread, and some of them were sitting in the cupola, with their bare legs
hanging over the rails. They were anxious to have their names printed,
and I learned from the less cautious the names of the brigades to which
they belonged. Before I left the room I had obtained the number of
regiments in Jackson's command and the names of his brigadier-generals.
Some prisoners arrived while I was noting these matters. They had been
sent to pick up arms, canteens, cartridge-boxes, etc., from the
battle-field, and some of our cavalry had ridden them down and captured
them. They were a little discomposed, but said, for the most part, that
they were weary of the war and glad to be in custody. As a rule,
Northern and Southern troops have the same general manners and
appearances. These were more ragged than any Federals I had ever known,
and their appetites were voracious.
I found General Geary, a Pennsylvania brigade Commander, in the dwelling
of a lady near the end of the town. He had received a bullet in the arm,
and, I believe, submitted to amputation afterward. He was a tall,
athletic man, upwards of six feet in height, and a citizen of one of the
mountainous interior counties of the Quaker State. His life had been
marked by much adventure, and he had been elevated to many important
civil positions in various quarters of the Republic. He occupied a
leading place, in the Mexican war, and was afterward Mayor of San
Francisco and Governor of Kansas. He acted with the Southern wing of
the Democratic party, and was discreetly ambitious, promoting the
agricultural interests of his commonwealth, and otherwise fulfilling
useful civil functions. He was a fine exemplar of the American
gentleman, preserving the better individualities of his countrymen, but
discarding those grosser traits, which have given us an unenviable name
abroad. Geary could not do a mean thing, and his courage came so
naturally to him that he did not consider it any cause of pride. The
bias of party, which in America diseases the best natures, had in some
degree affected the General. He was prone to go with his party in any
event, when often, I think, his fine intelligence would have prompted
him to an independent course. But I wish that all our leading men
possessed his manliness, for then more dignity and self-respect, and
less "smartness," might be apparent in our social and political
organizations.
He was lying on his back, with his shattered arm bandaged, and resting
on his breast. Twitches of keen pain shot across his face now and then,
but he received me with a simple courtesy that made his patience thrice
heroic. He did not speak of himself or his services, though I knew both
to be eminent; but McDowell had insulted him, as he rode disabled from
the field, and Geary felt the sting of the word more than the bullet. He
had ventured to say to McDowell that the Reserves were badly needed in
front, and the proud "Regular" had answered the officious "Volunteer,"
to the effect that he knew his own business. Not the least among the
causes of the North's inefficiency will be found this ill feeling
between the professional and the civil soldiery. A Regular contemns a
Volunteer; a Volunteer hates a Regular. I visited General Augur--badly
wounded--in the drawing-room of the hotel, and paused a moment to watch
Colonel Donnelly, mortally wounded, lying on a spread in the hall. The
latter lingered a day in fearful agony; but he was a powerful man in
physique, and he fought with death through a bloody sweat, never
moaning nor complaining, till he fell into a blessed torpidity, and so
yielded up his soul. The shady little town was a sort of Golgotha now.
Feverish eyes began to burn into one's heart, as he passed along the
sidewalks. Red hospital flags, hung like regalia from half the houses. A
table for amputations was set up in the open air, and nakedness glared
hideously upon the sun. How often have they brought out corpses in plain
boxes of pine, and shut them away without sign, or ceremony, or tears,
driving a long stake above the headboard. The ambulances came and went,
till the line seemed stretching to the crack of doom; while, as in
contemplation of further murder, the white-covered ammunition-teams
creaked southward, and mounted Provosts charged upon the skulkers,
driving them to a pen, whence they were forwarded to their regiments.
Old Mr. Paine, the landlord, tottered up to me, with a tear in his eye,
and said--
"My good Lord, sir! Who is responsible for this?"
He did not mean to suggest argument. It was the language of a human
heart pitying its brotherhood.
At twelve o'clock I started anew for the field, and fell in with Captain
Chitty on the way. He stated that his courage during the fight surpassed
his most heroic expectations, and added, in an undertone, that he was
deliberating as to whether he should allow his name to be mentioned
officially, since several military men were urging that honor upon him.
I dissuaded Chitty from this intent, upon the ground that his reputation
for modesty might be sacrificed. Chitty at once said that he would take
my advice. We encountered Surgeon Ball, of Ohio, after a time, and he
informed us that a day's armistice had been agreed upon, to allow for
the burial of the dead. The work of interment was already commenced in
front, and the surgeon had been ordered to see to the wounded, some of
whom still lay on the places where they fell. He allowed us to accompany
him in the capacity of cadets, but we first diverged a little from the
road, that he might obtain his portmanteau of instruments. I fell into a
little difficulty here, by unwittingly asking aloud of the 28th
Pennsylvania regiment, if that was not the organization which hid itself
during the fight? The 28th had been ordered, on the morning of Saturday,
to occupy Telegraph Mountain,--an elevation in the rear of Cedar
Mountain,--which was used for a Federal signal-post. Nobody having
notified the 28th to return to camp, they remained on the mountain,
passively witnessing the carnage, and came away in the night. But
although my remark was jestingly said, the knot of soldiers who heard it
were intensely excited. They spoke of taking me "off that hoss," and
called me a New York "Snob," who "wanted his head punched." This irate
feeling may be attributed to the rivalry which exists between the
"Empire" and the "Keystone" States, the latter being very jealous of the
former, and claiming to have sent more troops to the war than any other
commonwealth. The 28th volunteers doubtless expected a terrific
onslaught from the next issue of the Philadelphia papers.
The reserve, which had lain some miles in the rear the previous evening,
were now massed close to the field, but in the woods, that the enemy
might not count their numbers from his high position. Stopping at times
to chat with brother officers, at last I reached the meadow whence I had
been driven the previous evening. I looked for my nag in vain. One
soldier told me that he had seen him at daylight limping along the high
road; but after sundry wild-goose chases, I gave up the idea of
recovering him.
At last I passed the outlying batteries, with their black muzzles
scanning the battle-ground, and ascending the clover field, came upon
the site of the battery which had so discomfited us the previous night.
A signal vengeance had overtaken it. Some splinters of wheel and an
overturned caisson, with eight horses lying in a group,--their hoofs
extended like index boards, their necks elongated along the ground, and
their bodies swollen--were the results of a single shell trained upon
the battery by a cool artillerist. Beyond, the road and fields were
strown with knapsacks, haversacks, jackets, canteens, cartridge-boxes,
shoes, bayonets, knives, buttons, belts, blankets, girths, and sabres.
Now and then a mule or a horse lay at the roadside, with the clay
saturated beneath him; and some of the tree-tops, in the depth of the
woods, were scarred, split, and barked, as if the lightning had blasted
them. Now passing a disabled wagon, now marking a dropped horseshoe, now
turning a capsized ambulance, now regarding a perfect wilderness of old
clothes, we emerged from the timber at last, and came to the place where
I had slept on the eve of the battle. A hurricane had apparently swept
the country here, and the fences had been transported bodily. Sometimes
the ground looked, for limited areas, as if there had been a rain of
kindling-wood; and there were furrows in the clay, like those made by
some great mole which had ploughed into the bowels of the earth. All the
tree boles were pierced and perforated, and boughs had been severed so
that they littered the way. Cedar Creek ran merrily across what had been
the road,--the waters limpid and cool as before,--and when I passed
beyond, I entered the region of dead men. Some poisonous Upas had
seemingly grown here, so that adventurers were prostrated by its
exhalations. A tributary rivulet formed with the creek a triangular
enclosure of ground, where most of the Federals had fallen. To the left
of the road stood a cornfield; to the right a stubble-field, dotted with
stone heaps: deep woods formed the background to these, and
scrub-timber, irregularly disposed, the foreground. On the right of the
stubble lay a great stretch of "barren," spotted with dwarf cedars, and
on the left of the cornfield stood a white farm-house, with orchards and
outbuildings; beyond, the creek had hollowed a ravine among the hills,
and the far distance was bounded by the mountains on the Rapidan. In the
immediate front, towered Cedar Mountain, with woods at its base; and
the roadway in which I stood, lost itself a little way on in the mazes
of the thicket. Looking down one of the rows of corn, I saw the first
corpse--the hands flung stiffly back, the feet set stubbornly, the chin
pointing upward, the features losing their sharpness, the skin
blackening, the eyes great and white--
"A heap of death--a chaos of cold clay."
Turning into the cornfield, we came upon one man with a spade, and
another man lying at his feet. He was digging a grave, and when we
paused to note the operation, he touched his cap:--
"Pardner o' mine," he said, indicating the body; "him and I fit side by
side, and we agreed, if it could be done, to bury each other. There
ain't no sich man as that lost out o' the army, private or
officer,--with all respect to you."
It was a eulogy that sounded as if more deserved, because it was homely.
There are some that I have read, much finer, but not as honest. At
little distances we saw parties of ten or twenty, opening trenches, the
tributary brook, only, dividing the Confederate and Federal fatigue
parties. Close to this brook, in the cornfield, lay a fallen trunk of a
tree, and four men sat upon it. Two of them wore gray uniforms, two wore
blue. The latter were Gens. Roberts and Hartsuff of the Federal army.
They were waiting for Gens. Stuart and Early, of the Confederate army:
and the four were to define the period of the armistice. The men in gray
were Major Hintham of Mississippi, and Lieut. Elliott Johnston of
Maryland. Hintham was a lean, fiery, familiar man, who wore the uniform
of several field-marshals. An ostrich feather was stuck in his soft hat
and clasped by a silver star upon a black velvet ground. A golden cord
formed his hat-band, and two tassels, as huge as those of drawing-room
curtains, fell upon his back. His collar was plentifully embroidered as
well as his coat-sleeves, and a black seam ran down his trousers. He
wore spurs of prodigious size, and looked, in the main, like a tragedian
about to appear upon the stage. The other man was young, stout, and good
humored; and he talked sententiously, with a little vanity, but much
courtesy. The Federals had nothing to say to these, they dealt only with
equals in rank. It became a matter of professional ambition, now, to
obtain the greatest amount of information from these Confederates,
without appearing to depart from any conventionality of the armistice. I
got along very well till Chitty came up, and his interrogatives were so
pert and pointed that he very nearly spoiled the entire labor. Young
Johnston was a Baltimorean, and wished his people to know something of
him; he gave me a card, stated that he was one of Gen. Garnett's aids,
and had opened the armistice, early in the day, by riding into the
Federal lines with a flag of truce. By detachments, new bodies of
Confederate officers joined us, most of them being young fellows in gray
suits: and at length Gen. Early rode down the hillside and nodded his
head to our party.
It was the custom of our newspapers to publish, with its narrative of
each battle, a plan of the field; and in furtherance of this object,
having agreed to act for my absent friend, I moved a little way from the
place of parley, and laying my paper on the pommel of my saddle
proceeded to sketch the relative positions of road, brook, mountain, and
woodland. While thus busily engaged, and congratulating myself upon the
fine opportunities afforded me, a lithe, indurated, severe-looking
horseman rode down the hill, and reining beside me, said--
"Are you making a sketch of our position?"
"Not for any military purpose."
"For what?"
"For a newspaper engraving."
"Umph!"
The man rode past me to the log, and when I had finished my transcript,
I resumed my place at the group. The new comer was Major General J. E.
B. Stuart, one of the most famous cavalry leaders in the Confederate
army. He was inquiring for General Hartsuff, with whom he had been a
fellow-cadet at West Point; but the Federal General had strolled off,
and in the interval Stuart entered into familiar converse with the
party. He described the Confederate uniform to me, and laughed over some
reminiscences of his raid around McClellan's army.
"That performance gave me a Major-Generalcy, and my saddle cloth there,
was sent from Baltimore as a reward, by a lady whom I never knew."
Stuart exhibited what is known in America as "airiness," and evidently
loved to talk of his prowess. Directly Gen. Hartsuff returned, and the
forager rose, with a grim smile about his mouth--
"Hartsuff, God bless you, how-de-do?"
"Stuart, how are you?"
They took a quiet turn together, speaking of old school-days, perhaps;
and when they came back to the log, Surgeon Ball produced a bottle of
whiskey, out of which all the Generals drank, wishing each other an
early peace.
"Here's hoping you may fall into our hands," said Stuart; "we'll treat
you well at Richmond!"
"The same to you!" said Hartsuff, and they all laughed.
It was a strange scene,--this lull in the hurricane. Early was a North
Carolinian, who lost nearly his whole brigade at Williamsburg. He wore a
single star upon each shoulder, and in other respects resembled a homely
farmer. He kept upon his horse, and had little to say. Crawford was gray
and mistrustful, calmly measuring Stuart with his eye, as if he intended
to challenge him in a few minutes. Hartsuff was fair and burly, with a
boyish face, and seemed a little ill at ease. Stuart sat upon a log, in
careless posture, working his jaw till the sandy gray beard brushed his
chin and became twisted in his teeth. Around, on foot and on horse,
lounged idle officers of both armies; and the little rill that trickled
behind us was choked in places with corpses. A pleasanter meeting could
not have been held, if this were a county training. The Surgeon told
Gen. Stuart that some of his relatives lived near the Confederate
Capital, and as the General knew them, he related trifling occurrences
happening in their neighborhoods, so that the meeting took the form of a
roadside gossip, and Stuart might have been a plain farmer jaunting home
from market. The General, who was called "JEB" by his associates, so far
relented finally as to give me leave to ride within the Confederate
outer lines, and Lieut. Johnson accompanied me. The corpses lay at
frequent points, and some of the wounded who had not been gathered up,
remained at the spots where they had fallen. One of these, whose leg had
been broken, was incapable of speaking, and could hardly be
distinguished from the lifeless shapes around him. The number of those
who had received their death wound on the edge of the brook, while in
the act of leaping across was very great. I fancied that their faces
retained the mingled ardor and agony of the endeavor and the pang. There
seemed to be no system in the manner of interment, and many of the
Federals had thrown down their shovels, and strolled across the
boundary, to chaff and loiter with the "Butternuts." No one, whom I saw,
exhibited any emotion at the strewn spectacles on every side, and the
stories I had read of the stony-heartedness during the plague, were more
than rivalled by these charnel realities. Already corruption was
violating the "temples of the living God." The heat of the day and the
general demoralizing influences of the climate, were making havoc with
the shapely men of yesterday, and nature seemed hastening to reabsorb,
and renew by her marvellous processes, what was now blistering and
burdening her surface. Enough, however, of this. Satiated with the
scenes of war, my ambition now was to extend my observations to the
kingdoms of the Old World.