FOOL TOM JACKSON
The Reverend Mr. Corbin Wood, chaplain to one of Loring's regiments,
coming down from the hillside where he had spent the night, very
literally like a shepherd, found the little stream at its foot frozen to
the bottom. No morning bath for a lover of cleanliness! There had been
little water, indeed, to expend on any toilet since leaving Winchester.
Corbin Wood tried snow for his face and hands, but the snow was no
longer soft, as it had fallen the day before. It was frozen and harsh.
"And the holy hermits and the saints on pillars never had a
bath--apparently never wanted one!"
Reveille sounded drearily enough from the surrounding mountains. The
fires sprang up, but they did not burn brightly in the livid day. The
little there was to eat was warmed and eaten. When, afterwards, the
rolls were called, there were silences. Mr. Ready-to-halt, Mr. Faint
Heart, Mr. Fearing, and also Mr. Honesty, really too ill to march, were
somewhere on the backward road to Winchester. Length by length, like a
serpent grey and cold, sluggish, unburnished, dull, and bewildered, the
column took the road. Deeply cut the day before by the cavalry, by
Garnett's brigade, and by the artillery, the road was horrible. What had
been ridged snow was now ridged ice.
Corbin Wood and his old grey horse were loved by their regiment. The
chaplain was not, physically, a strong man, and his ways were those of a
scholar, but the regiment found them lovable. Pluto the horse was very
wise, very old, very strong and gentle. Upon the march he was of use to
many beside his master. The regiment had grown accustomed to the sight
of the chaplain walking through dust or mud at the bridle of the grey,
saying now and then a word in a sober and cheerful fashion to the
half-sick or wholly weary private seated in his saddle. He was forever
giving some one a lift along the road. Certain things that have had
small place in the armies of the world were commonplaces in the
Confederate service. The man on horseback was a more fortunate, but not
a better man--not even a better born or educated man--than he on foot.
The long grey lines saw nothing strange in a dismounted officer giving a
cast of the road to a comrade in the ranks. So, to-day, the chaplain's
horse was rather for everybody than for the chaplain himself. An old
college mate slipping stiffly to earth after five inestimable minutes,
remonstrated. "I'd like to see you riding, Corbin! Just give yourself a
lift, won't you? Look at Pluto looking at that rent in your shoe! You'll
never be a bishop if you go on this way."
The sleet fell and fell, and it was intensely cold. The wagons were
invisible. It was rumoured that they had taken another road. The country
was almost a wilderness. At long intervals the troops came upon a
lonely farmhouse, or a wayside cabin, a mill, a smithy. Loring sent
ahead a foraging party, with orders to purchase all supplies. Hardly
anything was gotten. Little had been made this year and little stored.
Moreover, latterly, the Yankees at Bath had taken all the stock and
poultry and corn--and without paying for it either. "Yes, sir, there are
Yankees at Bath. More'n you can shake a stick at!"
The foragers brought back the news. "There are Yankees at Bath--eight
miles away! Any number of them. Just as certain as it's sleeting, that's
where Old Jack's going!"
The news running along the column awoke a small flare of interest. But
it filled no empty stomachs, nor dissipated the numbing cold. The
momentary enthusiasm passed. "Eight miles! Have we got to go eight miles
to-day? We haven't made three miles since dawn. If George Washington,
Napoleon Bonaparte, and Julius Caesar were here they couldn't get this
army eight miles to-day!"
The cavalry, the artillery, the Stonewall Brigade, Meems and Carson's
Militia, the three brigades of Loring--on wound the sick and sluggish
column. The hills were now grey glass, and all the horses smooth-shod.
In advance a corps of pioneers broke with pickaxes the solid and
treacherous surface, roughening the road so that the poor brutes might
gain foothold. The vanguard, stumbling around a bend of the road,
stumbled upon a Federal ambush, horse and foot. To either side a wood of
cedars blazed and rang. A lieutenant of the 21st Virginia threw up his
arms and pitched forward, dead. A private was badly wounded. The company
charged, but the blue outposts fired another volley and got away,
crashing through the woods to some by-road. It was impossible to follow;
chase could not be given over grey glass.
With the closing in of the ghostly day, in a stretch of fields beside a
frozen stream, the column halted. There were no tents, and there was
scarcely anything to eat. One of the fields was covered by stacked corn,
and it was discovered that the ear had been left. In the driving sleet
the men tore apart the shocks and with numbed fingers stripped from the
grain the sere, rough, and icy husks. They and the horses ate the yellow
corn. All night, stupid with misery, the soldiers dozed and muttered
beside the wretched fires. One, a lawyer's clerk, cried like a child,
with his hands scored till they bled by the frozen corn husks. Down the
stream stood a deserted sawmill, and here the Rockbridge men found
planks with which they made for themselves little pens. The sleet
sounded for hours on the boards that served for roof, but at last it
died away. The exhausted army slept, but when in the grey dawn it
stirred and rose to the wailing of the bugles, it threw off a weight of
snow. All the world was white again beneath a livid sky.
This day they made four miles. The grey trees were draped with ice, the
grey zigzag of the fences was gliding ice under the hands that caught at
it, the hands of the sick and weak. Motion resolved itself into a Dead
March; few notes and slow, with rests. The army moved and halted, moved
and halted with a weird stateliness. Couriers came back from the man
riding ahead, cadet cap drawn over eyes that saw only what a giant and
iron race might do under a giant and iron dictatorship. General Jackson
says, "Press Forward!" General Jackson says, "Press Forward, men!"
They did not reach Bath that night. They lay down and slept behind a
screen of hills and awoke in an amethyst dawn to a sky of promise. The
light, streaming from the east, made glorious the ice-laden trees and
the far and dazzling wastes of snow. The sunshine cheered the troops.
Bath was just ahead--Bath and the Yankees! The 1st Tennessee and the
48th Virginia suddenly swung from the main road, and moved across the
fields to the ridges overlooking the town. Apparently they had gathered
their strength into a ball, for they went with energy, double-quickening
over the snow. The afternoon before Carson and Meems had been detached,
disappearing to the right. A rumour ran through the ranks. This force
would be now on the other side of Bath. "It's like a cup, all of us on
the rim, and the Yanks at the bottom. If Carson can hold the roads on
the other side we've got them, just like so many coffee grounds! Fifteen
hundred of them in blue, and two guns?--Boys, I feel better!"
Old Jack--the men began with suddenness again to call him Old Jack--Old
Jack divulged nothing. Information, if information it was, came from
scouts, couriers, Ashby's vedettes, chance-met men and women of the
region. Something electric flashed from van to rear. The line went up
the hill with rapidity. When they reached the crest the men saw the
cavalry far before and below them, charging upon the town and shouting.
After the horse came a body of skirmishers, then, pouring down the
hillside the 1st Tennessee and the 48th Virginia, yelling as they ran.
From the town burst a loud rattle of musketry, and from a height beyond
a cannon thundered. All the white sides of the cup echoed the sound.
The infantry swerved to let the artillery by. The guns, grim beneath
their ice coats, the yelling men, the drivers loudly encouraging the
horses, the horses, red-nostrilled, wide-eyed--all came somehow,
helter-skelter down the long windings of the ridge. The infantry
followed; the town was entered; the Federals retreated, firing as they
went, streaming out by two roads. One led toward Sir John's Run, the
other direct to the Potomac with Hancock on the Maryland shore, and at
Hancock General Lander with a considerable force. Carson's men, alack!
had found the winter hills no bagatelle. They were not in time to secure
the roads.
The Confederate cavalry, dividing, followed, full tilt, the retreating
foe. A courier brought back to the artillery a curt order from Jackson
to push on by the Hancock road. As he turned, his mare slipped, and the
two came crashing down upon the icy road. When they had struggled up and
out of the way the batteries passed rumbling through the town. Old men
and boys were out upon the trampled sidewalks, and at window and door
women and children waved handkerchiefs, clapped hands. At a corner, in
the middle of the street, lay a horse, just lifeless, covered with
blood. The sight maddened the battery horses. They reared and plunged,
but at last went trembling by. From the patriarchs and the eager boys
came information. The Yankees were gone, but not their baggage and
stores. Everything had been left behind. There were army blankets,
tents, oilcloths, clothing, _shoes_, cords of firewood, forage for the
horses, flour, and fresh meat, sugar, coffee, sutlers' stores of every
kind, wines, spirits, cigars--oh, everything! The artillery groaned and
swore, but obeyed orders. Leaving Capua behind, it strained along the
Hancock road in the wake of the pursuing cavalry and the fleeing
Federals.
The main body of the latter, well in advance and with no exhausting
march behind them to weaken horse and man, reached the Potomac by the
Hancock road at a point where they had boats moored, and got clean away,
joining Lander on the Maryland shore. The lesser number, making for Sir
John's Run and the Big Cacapon and followed by some companies of
Ashby's, did not so quickly escape. The Confederate advance came,
artillery, horse, and skirmishers, upon the river bank at sunset. All
around were great rolling hills, quite bare of trees and covered with
snow, over which the setting sun threw a crimson tinge. Below was the
river, hoarsely murmuring, and immediately upon the other side, the
clustering Maryland village, with a church spire tall and tapering
against the northern sky. About the village was another village of
tents, and upon a hilltop frowned a line of guns. Dusk as it was, the
Confederate batteries unlimbered, and there opened an artillery duel,
shells screaming from north to south and south to north across the river
yet stained with the sunset glow.
That night the infantry remained at Bath, warmed and comforted by the
captured stores. They came like a gift from the gods, and as is usual
with that gift they disappeared in a twinkling. In the afternoon the
three arms met on the river bank. The sky was again a level grey; it was
evident that a snowstorm was brewing. There was not a house; except for
the fringe along the water's edge there was hardly a tree. The hills
were all bare. The snow was packed so hard and so mingled with ice that
when, in the cannonading, the Federal missiles struck and tore it up the
fragments were as keen and troublesome, almost, as splinters of shell.
There was no shelter, little wood for burning. The men gazed about them
with a frown of uneasiness. The storm set in with a whirl of snow and
with a wind that raved like a madman and broke the spectral white arms
of the sycamores by the river. In a short time there was a shifting,
wonderful, numbing veil streaming silent from the grey heavens. It was
almost a relief when dark came and wrapped the great, lonely, ghostly
countryside. This night the men disregarded the taboo and burned every
available fence rail.
In the morning a boat was put across the half-frozen river. It bore a
summons to Lander to surrender, the alternative being a bombardment of
the town. "Retaliation for Shepherdstown" read Jackson's missive. Ashby
bore the summons and was led blindfold through the streets to
headquarters. Lander, looking momently for reinforcements from
Williamsport, declined to surrender. Ashby passed blindfolded out of the
town, entered the boat, and came back to Stonewall Jackson. The latter
waited two hours, then began to throw shells into the town. Since early
morning a force had been engaged in constructing, two miles up the
river, a rude bridge by which the troops might cross. The evening before
there had been skirmishes at Sir John's Run and at the Big Cacapon. A
regiment of Loring's destroyed the railroad bridge over the latter
stream. The Federals withdrew across the river, leaving no command in
Morgan County.
Throughout the afternoon McLaughlin's battery dropped shells into
Hancock, but an hour before dark came orders to cease firing. A
scout--Allan Gold--brought tidings of heavy reinforcements pouring into
the town from Williamsport and Hagerstown. So heavy were they that
Jackson, after standing for five minutes with his face to the north,
sent orders to discontinue work upon the bridge. Romney, when all was
said, not Hancock, was his destination--Kelly's eight thousand in
Virginia, not Lander's brigades across the line. Doubtless it had been
his hope to capture every Federal in Bath, to reach and cross the
Potomac, inflict damage, and retire before those reinforcements could
come up. But the infantry which he commanded was not yet his "foot
cavalry," and neither knew nor trusted him as it was to know and trust.
The forces about him to-day were not homogeneous. They pulled two ways,
they were not moulded and coloured as they were to be moulded and
coloured, not instinct with the one man view as they were to become
instinct. They were not iron as he was iron, nor yet thunderbolts of
war. They could not divine the point and hour of attack, and, sooth to
say, they received scant assistance from the actual wizard. They were
patriot forces, simple and manly souls ready enough to die for their
cause, but few were yet at the arrowhead of concentration as was this
man. They were to attain it, but not yet. He looked at the north and he
looked at his complaining legions, and he strode off to his bivouac
beneath a solitary tree. Here, a little later he gave orders to his
brigadiers. The Army of the Northwest would resume the march "at early
dawn."
In the harsh coldness of the morning they retraced the road to Bath, a
frightful road, a road over which an army had passed. At noon they came
to Bath, but there was hardly a pause in the town. Beneath a sky of
lead, in a harsh and freezing wind, the troops swung slowly into a
narrow road running west through a meagre valley. Low hills were on
either side--low and bleak. Scrub oak and pine grew sparsely, and along
the edges of the road dead milkweed and mullein stood gaunt above the
snow. The troops passed an old cider press and a cabin or two out of
which negroes stared.
Before long they crossed a creek and began to climb. All the landscape
was now mountainous. To the right, as the way mounted, opened a great
view, white dales and meadows, far winter forests, and the long, long
wall of North Mountain. There was small care for the view among the
struggling soldiers. The hills seemed perpendicular, the earth
treacherous glass. Going up, the artillerymen must drag with the horses
at gun and caisson; going down the carriages must be held back, else
they would slide sideways and go crashing over the embankment. Again and
again, going down, the horses slipped and fell. The weight of metal
behind coming upon them, the whole slid in a heap to the bottom. There
they must be gotten to their feet, the poor trembling brutes! and set to
the task of another hill. The long, grey, halting, stumbling, creeping
line saw no beauty in the winter woods, in the arched fern over the
snow, in the vivid, fairy plots of moss, in the smooth, tall ailanthus
stems by the wayside, in the swinging, leafless lianas of grape, pendent
from the highest trees, in the imposing view of the mountains. The line
was sick, sick to the heart, numbed and shivering, full of pain. Every
ambulance and wagon used as ambulance was heavy laden; at every
infrequent cabin or lonely farmhouse were left the too ill to travel
farther. The poor servants, of whom there were some in each company,
were in pitiable plight. No negro likes the cold; for him all the hot
sunshine he can get! They shivered now, in the rear of the companies,
their bodies drawn together, their faces grey. The nature of most was of
an abounding cheerfulness, but it was not possible to be cheerful on
this January road to Romney.
The army crossed Sleepy Creek. It was frozen to the bottom. The cedars
along its shore stood so funereally, so crape-like and dark, the
sycamores were so clay-white and long of arm, the great birds slowly
circling above a neighbouring wood of so dreary a significance, that the
heart sank and sank. Was this war?--war, heroic and glorious, with
banners, trumpets, and rewarded enterprise? Manassas had been war--for
one brief summer day! But ever since there was only marching, tenting,
suffering, and fatigue--and fatigue--and fatigue.
Maury Stafford and the Reverend Mr. Corbin Wood found themselves riding
side by side, with other mounted officers, in advance of Loring's
leading regiment. The chaplain had experienced, the day before, an ugly
fall. His knee was badly wrenched, and so, perforce, he rode to-day,
though, as often as he thought the grey could stand it, he took up a man
behind him. Now, however, he was riding single. Indeed, for the last
mile he had uttered no pitiful comment and given no invitation.
Moreover, he talked persistently and was forever calling his companion's
attention to the beauty of the view. At last, after a series of short
answers, it occurred to Stafford to regard him more closely. There was a
colour in the chaplain's cheek and he swayed ever so slightly and
rhythmically in his saddle. Stafford checked his horse, drew his hand
out of an ice-caked gauntlet, and leaning over laid it on the other's
which was bare. The chaplain's skin was burning hot. Stafford made a
sound of concern and rode forward to the colonel. In a minute he
returned. "Now you and I, Mr. Wood, will fall out here and just quietly
wait until the wagons come by. Then the doctor will fix you up nicely in
the ambulance.... Oh, yes, you are! You're ill enough to want to lie
down for awhile. Some one else, you know, can ride Pluto."
Corbin Wood pondered the matter. "That's true, that's very true, my dear
Maury. Fontaine, now, behind us in the ranks, his shoes are all worn
out. Fontaine, eh? Fontaine knows more Greek than any man--and he'll be
good to Pluto. Pluto's almost worn out himself--he's not immortal like
Xanthius and Balius. Do you know, Maury, it's little wonder that
Gulliver found the Houyhnhnms so detesting war? Horses have a dreadful
lot in war--and the quarrel never theirs. Do but look at that
stream!--how cool and pleasant, winding between the willows--"
Stafford got him to one side of the road, to a small plateau beneath an
overhanging bank. The column was now crawling through a ravine with a
sheer descent on the right to the frozen creek below. To the left,
covering the mountain-side, were masses of evergreen kalmia, and above
them tall and leafless trees in whose branches the wind made a grating
sound. The sleet was falling again--a veil of sleet. The two waiting for
the ambulance looked down upon the grey soldiers, grey, weary, and bent
before the wind. "Who would ever have thought," said the chaplain,
"that Dante took an idea from Virginia in the middle of the nineteenth
century? I remember things being so happy and comfortable--but it must
have been long ago. Yes, my people, long ago." Dropping the bridle, he
raised his arm in a gesture usual with him in the pulpit. In the fading
light there was about him an illusion of black and white; he moved his
arm as though it were clad in the sleeve of a surplice. "I am not often
denunciatory," he said, "but I denounce this weary going to and fro,
this turning like a dervish, this finding that every straight line is
but a fraction of a circle, this squirrel cage with the greenwood never
reached, this interminable drama, this dance of midges,--
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the selfsame spot,
And much of Madness and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot--
Is it not wonderful, the gold light on the mountains?"
At last the ambulance appeared--a good one, captured at Manassas. The
chaplain, still talking, was persuaded stiffly to dismount, to give
Pluto's bridle into Stafford's hand, and to enter. There were other
occupants, two rows of them. Stafford saw his old friend laid in a
corner, on a wisp of straw; then, finding Fontaine in the ranks, gave
over the grey, and joined the staff creeping, creeping on tired horses
through the sleet.
Cavalry and infantry and wagon train wound at the close of day over a
vast bare hilltop toward Unger's Store where, it was known, would be the
bivouac. The artillery in the rear found it impossible to finish out the
march. Two miles from Unger's the halt was ordered. It was full dark;
neither man nor brute could stumble farther. All came to a stand high up
on the wind-swept hill. The guns were left in the road, the horses led
down the slope and picketted in the lee of a poor stable, placed there,
it seemed, by some pitying chance. In the stable there was even found
some hay and corn. The men had no supper, or only such crumbs as were
found in the haversacks. They made their fires on the hillside and
crouched around them, nodding uneasily, trying to sleep with faces
scorched by the flame and freezing backs. They put their feet in the
sodden shoes to the fire, and the poor, worn-out leather fell into yet
greater holes. There was some conjecture as to how far the thermometer
stood below zero. Some put it at forty, but the more conservative
declared for twenty. It was impossible to sleep, and every one was
hungry, and the tobacco was all out. _What were they doing at home, by
the fire, after supper, with the children playing about?_
At dawn the bugles blew. Stiff and sore, racked with pains and aches,
coughing, limping, savagely hungry, the men rose. Time was to come when
even a dawn like this would be met by the Confederate soldier with
whimsical cheer, with greetings as to an oft-encountered friend, with a
courage quaint, pathetic, and divinely high--but the time was not yet.
The men swore and groaned. The haversacks were quite empty; there would
be no breakfast until the wagons were caught up with at Unger's. The
drivers went down the hillside for the horses. When they came to the
strength that had drawn the guns and looked, there was a moment's
silence. Hetterich the blacksmith was with the party, and Hetterich
wept. "If I was God, I wouldn't have it--I wouldn't have a horse treated
so! Just look at Flora--just look at her knees! Ah, the poor brute!" So
frequent had been the falls of the day before, so often had the animals
been cut by the carriages coming upon them, that many were scarred in a
dreadful fashion. The knees of Flora had been badly cut, and what
Hetterich pointed at were long red icicles hanging from the wounds.
At Unger's the evening before, in a narrow valley between the silver
hills, the infantry stacked arms, broke ranks, and listened with sullen
brows to two pieces of news. At Hanging Rock, between Unger's and
Romney, the advance, composed of a regiment of militia and a section of
artillery, had come into touch with the enemy. The militia had broken,
the two guns had been lost. "Fool Tom Jackson" was reported to have
said, "Good! good!" and lifted that right hand of his to the sky. The
other tidings were to the effect that the troops would rest at Unger's
for three days, to the end, chiefly, that the horses might be
rough-shod. Rest--delicious sound! But Unger's! To the east the
unutterably bleak hills over which they had toiled, to the west Capon
Mountain high and stark against the livid skies, to the south a dark
forest with the snow beneath the trees, to the north long, low hills,
with faded broomsedge waving in the wind. Upon a hilltop perched a
country store, a blacksmith shop, and one or two farmhouses, forlorn and
lonely in the twilight, and by the woods ran Buffalo Run, ice upon the
shallows to either bank.
In the morning, when the artillery was up, when breakfast was over, roll
called, orders read, the army fell to the duties upon which paramount
stress had been laid. All the farriers, the drivers, the men who had to
do with horses, went to work with these poor, wretched, lame, and
wounded friends, feeding them, currying them, dressing their hurts and,
above all, rough-shoeing them in preparation for the icy mountains
ahead. The clink of iron against iron made a pleasant sound; moreover,
this morning, the sun shone. Very cold as it was, there was cheer in the
sky. Even the crows cawing above the woods did not sound so dolefully. A
Thunder Run man found a tree laden with shrivelled persimmons. He was up
it like a squirrel. "Simmon tree! Simmon tree!" Comrades came hurrying
over the snow; the fruit was dropped into upheld caps, lifted toward
eager mouths. Suddenly there flamed a generous impulse. "Boys! them poor
sick fellows with nothing but hardtack--" The persimmons were carried to
the hospital tents.
Before the sun was halfway to the meridian a curious spectacle appeared
along the banks of Buffalo Run. Every hundred feet or so was built a
large fire. Over it hung a camp kettle, full of water--water hot as the
fire could make it. Up and down the stream an improvised laundry went
into operation, while, squad by squad, the men performed their personal
ablutions. It was the eighth of January; they had left Winchester upon
the first, and small, indeed, since then had been the use of washing
water. In the dire cold, with the streams frozen, cleanliness had not
tempted the majority, and indeed, latterly, the men had been too worn
out to care. Sleep and food and warmth had represented the sum of
earthly desire. A number, with ostentation, had each morning broken the
ice from some pool or other and bathed face and hands, but few extended
the laved area. The General Order appointing a Washerman's Day came none
too soon. Up and down Buffalo Run, in the zero weather, the men stripped
and bathed. Soap was not yet the scarce and valuable commodity it was to
become; there was soap enough for all and the camp kettles were filled
from the stream as soon as emptied. Underclothing, too, flannel and
cotton, must be washed.... There came discoveries, made amid "Ughs!" of
disgust. The more fastidious threw the whole business, undergarment and
parasites into the fire; others, more reasonable, or without a change of
clothing, scalded their apparel with anxious care. The episode marked a
stage in warfare. That night Lieutenant Coffin, writing a letter on his
last scrap of pale blue paper, sat with scrupulously washed hands well
back from the board he was using as a table. His boyish face flushed,
his lips quivered as he wrote. He wrote of lilies and moss rose-buds and
the purity of women, and he said there was a side of war which Walter
Scott had never painted.
Three bleak, pinched days later the army again took the road to Romney.
Four miles from Unger's they began to climb Sleepy Creek Mountain,
mounting the great, sparsely wooded slope like a long line of warrior
ants. To either hand the view was very fine, North Mountain to the left,
Capon Mountain to the right, in between a sea of hills and long deep
vales--very fine and utterly unappreciated. The earth was hostile, the
sky was hostile, the commanding general was hostile. Snow began to fall.
Allan Gold, marching with Company A, began to think of Thunder Run, the
schoolhouse, and the tollgate. The 65th was now high upon the
mountain-side and the view had vastly widened. The men looked out and
over toward the great main Valley of Virginia, and they looked
wistfully. To many of the men home was over there--home, wife, child,
mother--all hopelessly out of reach. Allan Gold had no wife nor child
nor mother, but he thought of Sairy and Tom, and he wondered if Sairy
were making gingerbread. He tried to smell it again, and to feel the
warmth of her kitchen--but then he knew too well that she was not making
gingerbread! Tom's last letter had spoken of the growing scarcity; flour
so high, sugar so high. Everybody was living very plainly, and the poor
were going to suffer. Allan thought of the schoolhouse. It was closed.
He could see just how it looked; a small unused building, mournful,
deserted, crumbling, while past it rushed the strong and wintry torrent.
He thought suddenly of Christianna. He saw her plainly, more plainly
than ever he had done before. She looked starved, defeated. He thought
of the Country. How long would the war last? In May they had thought
"Three months." In the flush of triumph after Manassas they had said "It
is over." But it wasn't over. Marching and camping had followed, fights
on the Peninsula, fights on the Kanawha, at Leesburg, at Cheat Mountain,
affairs in the far South; and now McClellan drilling, organizing,
organizing below Washington! with rumours of another "On to Richmond."
When would the war be over? Allan wondered.
The column, turning to the right, began to descend the mountain, a long,
slipping, stumbling downward going, with the snow falling heavily and
the wind screaming like a banshee. At the foot was a stretch of bottom
land, then, steep and rocky, grimly waiting to be crossed, rose Bear
Garden Ridge. High Top loomed behind. The infantry could see the
cavalry, creeping up Bear Garden, moving slowly, slowly, bent before the
blast, wraith-like through the falling snow. From far in the rear, back
of the Stonewall Brigade, back of Loring, came a dull sound--the
artillery and the wagon train climbing Sleepy Creek Mountain. It was
three o'clock in the afternoon--oh, leaden weariness, hunger, cold,
sickness, worn-out shoes--
Back upon the mountain top, in the ambulance taken at Manassas, Mr. Corbin
Wood, better than he had been for several days, but still feverish, propped
himself upon the straw and smiled across at Will Cleave, who, half carried
by his brother, had appeared beside the ambulance an hour before. Swaying
as he stood, the boy protested to the last that he could march just as well
as the other fellows, that they would think him a baby, that Richard would
ruin his reputation, that he wasn't giddy, that the doctor in Winchester
had told him that after you got well from typhoid fever you were stronger
than you ever had been before, that Mr. Rat would think he was malingering,
that--that--that--Richard lifted him into the ambulance and laid him upon
the straw which several of the sick pushed forward and patted into place.
The surgeon gave a restorative. The elder brother waited until the boy's
eyes opened, stooped and kissed him on the forehead, and went away. Now
Will said that he was rested, and that it was all a fuss about nothing
anyway, and it was funny, travelling like animals in a circus, and wasn't
it most feeding time anyway? Corbin Wood had a bit of bread which he
shared, and two or three convalescents in a corner took up the circus idea.
"There ain't going to be another performance this year! We're going into
winter quarters--that's where we're going. Yes, siree, up with the polar
bears--" "And the living skeletons--" "Gosh! I'm a warm weather crittur!
I'd jest like to peacefully fold the equator in my arms an' go to sleep."
"Oh, hell!--Beg your pardon, sir, it just slipped out, like one of the
snake charmer's rattlers!" "Boys, jes' think of a real circus, with all the
women folk, an' the tarletan, an' the spangles, an' the pink lemonade, an'
the little fellers slipping under the ropes, an' the Grand Parade coming
in, an' the big tent so hot everybody's fanning with their hats--Oh, Lord!"
"Yes, and the clown--and the ring master--" "_What d'ye think of our ring
master?_" "Who d'ye mean? _Him?_ Think of him? I think he's a damned clown!
Don't they call him Fool Tom--"
Will rose from the straw. "While I am by, I'll allow no man to reflect
upon the general commanding this army--"
A Georgian of Loring's, tall, gaunt, parched, haggard, a college man and
high private astray from his own brigade, rose to a sitting posture.
"What in hell is that young cockerel crowing about? Is it about the
damned individual at the head of this army? I take it that it is. Then I
will answer him. The individual at the head of this army is not a
general; he is a schoolmaster. Napoleon, or Caesar, or Marlborough, or
Eugene, or Cromwell, or Turenne, or Frederick wouldn't turn their heads
to look at him as they passed! But every little school-yard martinet
would! He's a pedagogue--by God, he's the Falerian pedagogue who sold
his pupils to the Romans! Oh, the lamb-like pupils, trooping after him
through flowers and sunshine--straight into the hands of Kelly at
Romney, with Rosecrans and twenty thousand just beyond! Yaaah! A
schoolmaster leading Loring and all of us! Let him go back to Lexington
and teach the Rule of Three, for by God, he'll never demonstrate the
Rule of One!"
He waved a claw-like hand. "Kindly do not interrupt. Stiff, fanatic,
inhuman, callous, cold, half mad and wholly rash, without military
capacity, ambitious as Lucifer and absurd as Hudibras--I ask again what
is this person doing at the head of this army? Has any one confidence in
him? Has any one pride in him? Has any one love for him? In all this
frozen waste through which he is dragging us, you couldn't find an echo
to say 'One!' Oh, you needn't shout 'One!' You're not an echo; you're
only a misguided V. M. I. cadet! And you don't count either, chaplain!
With all respect to you, you're a non-combatant. And that Valley man
over there--he doesn't count either. He belongs to the Stonewall
Brigade. He's one of Major-General T. J. Jackson's pet lambs. They're
school-teachers' favourites. All they've got to do is to cheer for their
master.--Hip, hip, hooray! Here's Old Jack with his hand lifted and his
old cap pulled low, and his sabre carried _oblikely_, and his 'God has
been very good to us to-day, men!' Yaaah--Look out! What are you about?"
The cadet and the Valley man threw themselves across the straw, upon the
Georgian. Corbin Wood crawled over and separated them. "Boys, boys!
You're quarrelling just because you're sick and tired and cold and
fretful! Try to be good children. I predict there'll come a day when
we'll _all_ cheer like mad--our friend from Georgia, too--all cheer like
mad when General Jackson goes by, leading us to victory! Be good now. I
was at the circus once, when I was a little boy, when the animals got to
fighting--"
The way over Bear Garden was steep, the road a mere track among
boulders. There were many fallen trees. In places they lay across the
road, abatis thrown there by the storm to be removed by half-frozen
hands while the horses stood and whinnied. The winter day was failing
when Stonewall Jackson, Ashby, and a portion of the cavalry with the
small infantry advance, came down by precipitous paths into Bloomery
Gap. Here, in a dim hollow and pass of the mountains, beside a shallow,
frozen creek, they bivouacked.
From the other side of Bear Garden, General Loring again sent Stafford
forward with a statement, couched in terms of courtesy three-piled and
icy. The aide--a favourite with his general--had ventured to demur. "I
don't think General Jackson likes me, sir. Would not some other--"
Loring, the Old Blizzard of two years later--had sworn. "Damn you,
Maury, whom does he like? Not any one out of the Stonewall Brigade!
You've got a limberer wit than most, and he can't make you cower--by the
Lord, I've seen him make others do it! You go ahead, and when you're
there talk indigo Presbyterian!"
"There" was a space of trampled snow underneath a giant pine. A picket
on the eastern side of the stream pointed it out, three hundred yards
away, a dark sentinel towering above the forest. "He's thar. His staff's
this side, by the pawpaw bushes." Stafford crossed the stream, shallow
and filled with floating ice, climbed the shelving bank, and coming to
the pawpaw bushes found Richard Cleave stooping over the small flame
that Tullius had kindled and was watchfully feeding with pine cones.
Cleave straightened himself. "Good-evening, Stafford! Come to my tiny,
tiny fire. I can't give you coffee--worse luck!--but Tullius has a
couple of sweet potatoes."
"I can't stay, thank you," said the other. "General Jackson is over
yonder?"
"Yes, by the great pine. I will take you to him." The two stepped from
out the ring of pawpaws, Stafford, walking, leading his horse. "General
Loring complains again?"
"Has he not reason to?" Stafford looked about him. "Ugh! steppes of
Russia!"
"You think it a Moscow march? Perhaps it is. But I doubt if Ney
complained."
"You think that we complain too much?"
"What do you think of it?"
Stafford stood still. They were beside a dark line of cedars, skirting
the forest, stretching toward the great pine. It was twilight; all the
narrow valley drear and mournful; horses and men like phantoms on the
muffled earth. "I think," said Stafford deliberately, "that to a
Napoleon General Loring would not complain, nor I bear his message of
complaint, but to General Jackson we will, in the interests of all,
continue to make representations."
"In the interests of all!" exclaimed Cleave. "I beg that you will
qualify that statement. Garnett's Brigade and Ashby's Cavalry have not
complained."
"No. Many disagreeable duties are left to the brigades of General
Loring."
"I challenge that statement, sir. It is not true."
Stafford laughed. "Not true! You will not get us to believe that. I
think you will find that representations will be forwarded to the
government at Richmond--"
"Representations of disaffected soldiers?"
"No, sir! Representations of gentlemen and patriots. Remonstrances of
brave men against the leadership of a petty tyrant--a diseased mind--a
Presbyterian deacon crazed for personal distinction--"
Cleave let his hand fall on the other's wrist. "Stop, sir! You will
remember that I am of Garnett's Brigade, and, at present, of General
Jackson's military family--"
Stafford jerked his wrist away. He breathed hard. All the pent
weariness, irritation, wrath, of the past most wretched days, all the
chill discomfort of the hour, the enmity toward Cleave of which he was
increasingly conscious, the very unsoundness of his position and
dissatisfaction with his errand, pushed him on. Quarrel was in the air.
Eight thousand men had, to-day, found their temper on edge. It was not
surprising that between these two a flame leaped. "Member of Garnett's
Brigade and member of General Jackson's military family to the
contrary," said Stafford, "these are Russian steppes, and this is a
march from Moscow, and the general in command is no Napoleon, but a fool
and a pedant--"
"I give you warning!"
"A crazy Barebones masquerading as a Cromwell--"
The other's two hands on the shoulders of General Loring's aide had
undoubtedly--the weight of the body being thrown forward--the appearance
of an assault. Stafford's foot slipped upon the freezing snow. Down he
came to the earth, Cleave upon him. A voice behind them spoke with a
kind of steely curtness, "Stand up, and let me see who you are!"
The two arose and faced Stonewall Jackson. He had come upon them
silently, out from the screen of blackening cedars. Now he blocked their
path, his lips iron, his eyes a mere gleaming line. "Two squabblers
rolling in the snow--two staff officers brawling before a disheartened
army! What have you to say for yourselves? Nothing!"
Stafford broke the silence. "Major Cleave has my leave to explain his
action, sir."
Jackson's eyes drew to a yet narrower line. "Your leave is not
necessary, sir. What was this brawl about, Major Cleave?"
"We quarrelled, sir," said Cleave slowly. "Major Stafford gave
utterance to certain sentiments with which I did not agree, and ... we
quarrelled."
"What sentiments? Yes, sir, I order you to answer."
"Major Stafford made certain statements as to the army and the
campaign--statements which I begged to contradict. I can say no more,
sir."
"You will tell me what statements, major."
"It is impossible for me to do that, sir."
"My orders are always possible of execution, sir. You will answer me."
Cleave kept silence. The twilight settled closer; the dark wall of the
cedars seemed to advance; a hollow wind blew through the forest. "Why, I
will tell you, sir!" said Stafford impatiently. "I said--"
Jackson cut him short. "Be silent, sir! I have not asked you for your
report. Major Cleave, I am waiting."
Cleave made a slight gesture, sullen, weary, and determined. "I am very
sorry, sir. Major Stafford made certain comments which I resented. Hence
the action of a moment. That is all that I can say, sir."
Stafford spoke with curt rapidity. "I said that these were Russian
steppes and that this was a march from Moscow, but that we had not a
Napoleon to soften privation for us. I said that the Stonewall Brigade
was unduly favoured, that the general commanding was--"
He got no further. "Silence, sir," said Jackson, "or I will bring you
before a court martial! You will come with me now to my tent. I will
hear General Loring's latest communication there." He turned upon
Cleave. "As for you, sir, you will consider yourself under arrest, first
for disobedience of orders, second for brawling in camp. You will march
to-morrow in the rear of your regiment."
He towered a moment, then with a jerk of his hand went away, taking with
him the officer from Loring. Stafford had a moment in which to make a
gesture of anger and deprecation--a gesture which the other acknowledged
with a nod; then he was gone, looking back once. Cleave returned to
Tullius and the small fire by the pawpaw bushes.
An hour later when his regiment came down into Bloomery Gap, he found
the colonel and made his report. "Why, damn it all!" said the colonel.
"We were backing you for the brush. Hunting weather, and a clean run
and all the dogs of war to fawn upon you at the end! And here's a paltry
three-foot hedge and a bad tumble! Never you mind! You'll pick yourself
up. Old Jack likes you first-rate."
Cleave laughed. "It doesn't much look like it, sir! Well--I'm back with
the regiment, anyway!"
All that night it snowed, snowed hard. When the day broke the valley had
the seeming of a crowded graveyard--numberless white mounds stretching
north and south in the feeble light. A bugle blew, silver chill;--the
men beneath the snow stirred, moaned, arose all white. All that day they
marched, and at dusk crossed the Capon and bivouacked below the shoulder
of Sand Mountain. In the morning they went up the mountain. The road was
deep sand, intolerably toilsome. The column ascended in long curves,
through a wood of oak and hickory, with vast tangles of grape hanging
from the trees. Cavalry, infantry, artillery, wagon train, stragglers,
the army came slowly, slowly down Sand Mountain, crossed the slender
levels, and climbed Lovett's Mountain. Lovett's was long and high, but
at last Lovett's, too, was overpassed. The column crept through a ravine
with a stream to the left. Grey cliffs appeared; fern and laurel growing
in the clefts. Below lay deep snowdrifts with blue shadows. Ahead,
overarching the road, appeared a grey mass that all but choked the
gorge. "Hanging Rock!" quoth some one. "That's where the guns were
lost!" The army woke to interest. "Hanging Rock!... How're we going to
get by? That ain't a road, it's just a cow path!--Powerful good place
for an ambush--"
The column passed the rock, and leaving the pass came into open country.
Before the leading brigade was a creek, an old covered bridge now almost
burned away, and the charred ruin of a house. By the roadside lay a dead
cow; in the field were others, and buzzards were circling above a piece
of woods. A little farther a dog--a big, brown shepherd--lay in the
middle of the road. Its throat had been cut. By the blackened chimney,
on the stone hearth drifted over by the snow, stood a child's cradle.
Nothing living was to be seen; all the out-houses of the farm and the
barn were burned.
It was the beginning of a track of desolation. From Hanging Rock to
Romney the Confederate column traversed a country where Kelly's troops
had been before it. To well-nigh all of the grey rank and file the
vision came with strangeness. They were to grow used to such sights,
used, used! but now they flamed white with wrath, they exclaimed, they
stammered. "What! what! Just look at that thar tannery! They've slit the
hides to ribbons!--That po' ole white horse! What'd he done, I
wonder?... What's that trampled in the mud? That's a doll baby. O Lord!
Pick it up, Tom!--Maybe 'twas a mill once, but won't never any more
water go over that wheel!... Making war on children and doll babies and
dumb animals and mills!"
Now as hereafter the immediate effect was almost that of warmth and
rest, food and wine. Suddenly the men began to say, "Old Jack. Wait till
Old Jack gets there! Just wait till Old Jack and us gets there. I reckon
there'll be something doing! There'll be some shooting, I reckon, that
ain't practised on a man's oxen!--I reckon we'd better step up,
boys!--Naw, my foot don't hurt no more!"
A mounted officer came by. "General Jackson says, 'Press forward, men!'"
The men did their best. It was very cold, with a high, bitter wind.
Another low mountain presented itself; the road edged by banks of
purplish slate, to either hand great stretches of dogwood showing
scarlet berries, or sumach lifting torches in which colour yet
smouldered. The column came down a steep descent, crossed a creek, and
saw before it Jersey Mountain. Jersey Mountain proved ghastly; long,
high, bare, blown against by all the winds. There had been upon Jersey a
few cabins, a smithy, a mountain school--now there were only blackened
chimneys. The men panted as they climbed; the wind howled along the
crest, the snow began to swirl. At a turn of the road where had been a
cabin, high upon the bank above the men, stood a mountain woman, her
linsey skirt wrapped about her by the wind, her thick, pale Saxon hair
lifted and carried out to its full length, her arms raised above her
head. "Air ye going against them? Air ye going against them? The
lightning go with ye--and the fire go with ye--and the hearts of your
mothers go with ye! Oh-h!--Oh-h-h-h!--Oh-h! Shoot them down!"
It was as though Jersey would never be overpassed. There grew before the
men's eyes, upon the treeless plateau which marked the summit, a small
country church and graveyard. Inexpressibly lonely they looked against
the stormy sky, lonely and beckoning. From company to company ran a
statement. "When you get to that church you're just three miles from
Romney." Up and up they mounted. The cavalry and advance guard, seen for
a moment against a level horizon, disappeared beyond the church, over
the brink of the hill. The main column climbed on through the wind and
the snow; the rear came far behind. The Stonewall Brigade led the main
body. As it reached the crest of Jersey, a horse and rider, a courier of
Jackson's coming from the west, met it, rose in his stirrups, and
shouted, "The damned vandals have gone! The Yankees have gone! They've
gotten across the river, away to Cumberland! You weren't quick enough.
General Jackson says, 'By God, you are too slow!'" The courier even in
his anger caught himself. "_I_ say, 'By God!' General Jackson says, 'You
are too slow.' They've gone--only Ashby at their heels! They've left
their stores in Romney, but they've gone, every devil of them! By God,
General Jackson says, 'you should have marched faster!'"
He was gone, past the brigade, on to Loring's with his tidings. The
Stonewall Brigade left behind the graveyard and the church and began the
long descent. At first a great flame of anger kept up the hearts of the
men. But as they marched, as they toiled down Jersey, as the realization
of the facts pressed upon them, there came a change. The enemy had been
gone from Bath; the enemy had been inaccessible at Hancock; now the
enemy was not at Romney. Cumberland! Cumberland was many a wintry mile
away, on the other side of the Potomac. Here, here on Jersey, there were
cold, hunger, weariness, sickness, clothing grown ragged, shoes between
a laugh and a groan, the snow falling, the wind rising, the day
declining, and misery flapping dark wings above the head of the Army of
the Northwest! Over the troops flowed, resistless, a wave of reaction,
nausea, disappointment, melancholy. The step changed. Toward the foot of
Jersey came another courier. "Yes, sir. On toward New Creek. General
Jackson says, 'Press forward!'"
The Stonewall Brigade tried to obey, and somewhat dismally failed. How
could it quicken step again? Night was coming, the snow was falling,
everybody was sick at heart, hobbling, limping, dog-tired. The _Close
up, men_, the _Get on, men!_ of the officers, thin, like a child's
fretful wail, was taken up by the wind and lost. With Romney well in
sight came a third courier. "General Jackson says, 'Press forward!'--No,
sir. He didn't say anything else. But I've been speaking with a courier
of Ashby's. _He_ says there are three railroad bridges,--one across
Patterson's Creek and two across the river. If they were destroyed the
enemy's communications would be cut. He thinks we're headed that way.
It's miles the other side of Romney." He passed down the column.
"General Jackson says, 'Press forward!'"
_Press forward--Press forward!_ It went like the tolling of a bell, on
and on toward the rear, past the Stonewall Brigade, past the artillery,
on to Loring yet climbing Jersey. Miles beyond Romney! Railroad bridges
to cut!--Frozen creeks, frozen rivers, steel in a world of snow--Kelly
probably already at Cumberland, and Rosecrans beyond at
Wheeling--hunger, cold, winter in the spurs of the Alleghenies, disease,
stragglers, weariness, worn-out shoes, broken-down horses,
disappointment, disillusion, a very, very strange commanding
general--Suddenly confidence, heretofore a somewhat limping attendant of
the army, vanished quite away. The shrill, derisive wind, the grey
wraiths of snow, the dusk of the mountains took her, conveyed her from
sight, and left the Army of the Northwest to the task of following
without her "Fool Tom Jackson."