FREDERICKSBURG
Snow lay deep on the banks of the Rappahannock, in the forest, up and
down the river, on the plain about the little city, on the bold heights
of the northern shore, on the hills of the southern, commanding the
plain. The snow was deep, but somewhat milder weather had set in.
December the eleventh dawned still and foggy.
General Burnside with a hundred and twenty thousand blue troops
appointed this day to pass the Rappahannock, a stream that flowed across
the road to Richmond. He had been responsible for choosing this route to
the keep of the fortress, and he must make good his reiterated, genial
assurances of success. The Rappahannock, Fredericksburg, and a line of
hills masked the onward-going road and its sign, _This way to Richmond_.
"Well, the Rappahannock can be bridged! A brigade known to be occupying
the town? Well, a hundred and forty guns admirably planted on Stafford
Heights will drive out the rebel brigade! The line of hills, bleak and
desolate with fir woods?--hares and snow birds are all the life over
there! General Lee and Stonewall Jackson? Down the Rappahannock below
Moss Neck. At least, undoubtedly, Stonewall Jackson's down there. The
balloon people say so. General Lee's got an idea that Port Royal's our
point of attack. The mass of his army's there. The gunboat people say
so. Longstreet may be behind those hills. Well, we'll crush Longstreet!
We'll build our bridges under cover of this fortunate fog, and go over
and defeat Longstreet and be far down the road to Richmond before a man
can say Jack Robinson!"
"Jack Robinson!" said the brigade from McLaws's division--Barksdale's
Mississippians--drawn up on the water edge of Fredericksburg. They were
tall men--Barksdale's Mississippians--playful bear-hunters from the cane
brakes, young and powerfully made, and deadly shots. "Old Barksdale"
knew how to handle them, and together they were a handful for any enemy
whatsoever. Sixteen hundred born hunters and fighters, they opened fire
on the bridge-builders, trying to build four bridges, three above, one
below the town. Barksdale's men were somewhat sheltered by the houses on
the river brink; the blue had the favourable fog with which to cover
operations. It did not wholly help; the Mississippians had keen eyes;
the rifles blazed, blazed, blazed! Burnside's bridge-builders were
gallant men; beaten back from the river they came again and again, but
again and again the eyes of the swamp hunters ran along the gleaming
barrels and a thousand bronzed fingers pulled a thousand triggers. Past
the middle of the day the fog lifted. The town lay defined and helpless
beneath a pallid sky.
The artillery of the Army of the Potomac opened upon it. One hundred and
forty heavy guns, set in tiers upon the heights to the north, fired each
into Fredericksburg fifty rounds. Under that terrible cover the blue
began to cross on pontoons.
A number of the women and children had been sent from the town during
the preceding days. Not all, however, were gone. Many had no place to go
to; some were ill and some were nursing the ill; many had husbands,
sons, brothers, there at hand in the Army of Northern Virginia and would
not go. Now with the beginning of the bombardment they must go. There
were grey, imperative orders. "At once! at once! Go _where_? God knows!
but go."
They went, almost all, in the snow, beneath the pallid sky, with the
shells shrieking behind them. They carried the children, they half
carried the sick and the very old. They stumbled on, between the frozen
hills by the dark pointed cedars, over the bare white fields. Behind
them home was being destroyed; before them lay desolation, and all
around was winter. They had perhaps thought it out, and were headed--the
various forlorn lines--for this or that country house, but they looked
lost, remnant of a world become glacial, whirled with suddenness into
the sidereal cold, cold! and the loneliness of cold. The older children
were very brave; but there were babes, too, and these wailed and wailed.
Their wailing made a strange, futile sound beneath the thundering of the
guns.
One of these parties came through the snow to a swollen creek on which
the ice cakes were floating. Cross!--yes, but how? The leaders consulted
together, then went up the stream to find a possible ford, and came in
sight of a grey battery, waiting among the hills. "Oh, soldiers!--oh,
soldiers!--come and help!"
Down hastened a detachment, eager, respectful, a lieutenant directing,
the very battery horses looking anxious, responsible. A soldier in the
saddle, a child in front, a child behind, the old steady horses planting
their feet carefully in the icy rushing stream, over went the children.
Then the women crossed, their hands resting on the grey-clad shoulders.
All were over; all thanked the soldiers. The soldiers took off their
caps, wished with all their hearts that they had at command fire-lit
palaces and a banquet set! Having neither, being themselves without
shelter or food and ordered not to build fires, they could only bare
their heads and watch the other soldiers out of sight, carrying the
children, half carrying the old and sick, stumbling through the snow, by
the dark pointed cedars, and presently lost to view among the frozen
hills.
The shells rained destruction into Fredericksburg. Houses were battered
and broken; houses were set on fire. Through the smoke and uproar, the
explosions and detonations and tongues of flame, the Mississippians beat
back another attempt at the bridges and opened fire on boat after boat
now pushing from the northern shore. But the boats came bravely on,
bravely manned; hundreds might be driven from the bridge-building, but
other hundreds sprang to take their places--and always from the heights
came the rain of iron, smashing, shivering, setting afire, tearing up
the streets, bringing down the walls, ruining, wounding, slaying! McLaws
sent an order to Barksdale, Barksdale gave it to his brigade.
"Evacuate!" said the Mississippians. "We're going to evacuate. What's
that in English? 'Quit?'--What in hell should we quit for?"
Orders being orders, the disgust of the bear-hunters did not count. "Old
Barksdale" was fairly deprecating. "Men, I can't help it! General McLaws
says, 'General Barksdale, withdraw your men to Marye's Hill.' Well, I've
got to do it, haven't I? General McLaws knows, now doesn't
he?--Yes,--just one more round. _Load! Kneel! Commence firing!_"
In the late afternoon the town was evacuated, Barksdale drawing off in
good order across the stormed-upon open. He disappeared--the Mississippi
brigade disappeared--from the Federal vision. The blue column, the 28th
Massachusetts leading, entered Fredericksburg. "We'll get them all
to-morrow--Longstreet certainly! Stonewall Jackson's from twelve to
eighteen miles down the river. Well! this time Lee will find that he's
divided his army once too often!"
By dark there were built six bridges, but the main army rested all night
on the northern bank. December the twelfth dawned, another foggy day.
The fog held hour after hour, very slow, still, muffled weather, through
which, corps by corps, all day long, the army slowly crossed. In the
afternoon there was a cavalry skirmish with Stuart, but nothing else
happened. Thirty-six hours had been consumed in crossing and resting.
The Rappahannock, however, _was_ crossed, and the road to Richmond
stretched plain between the hills.
But the grey army was not divided. Certain divisions had been down the
river, but they were no longer down the river. The Army of Northern
Virginia, a vibrant unit, intense, concentrated, gaunt, bronzed, and
highly efficient, waited behind the hills south and west of the town.
There was a creek running through a ravine, called Deep Run. On one side
of Deep Run stood Longstreet and the 1st Corps, on the other, almost at
right angles, Stonewall Jackson and the 2d. Before both the heavily
timbered ridge sank to the open plain. In the woods had been thrown up
certain breastworks.
Longstreet's left, Anderson's division, rested on the river. To
Anderson's right were posted McLaws, Pickett, and Hood. He had his
artillery on Marye's Hill and Willis Hill, and he had Ransom's infantry
in line at the base of these hills behind a stone wall. Across Deep Run,
on the wooded hills between the ravine and the Massaponax, was Stonewall
Jackson. A. P. Hill's division with the brigades of Pender, Lane,
Archer, Thomas, and Gregg made his first line of battle, the divisions
of Taliaferro and Early his second, and D. H. Hill's division his
reserve. His artillery held all favourable crests and headlands.
Stuart's cavalry and Stuart's Horse Artillery were gathered by the
Massaponax. Hills and forest hid them all, and over the plain and river
rolled the fog.
It hid the North as it hid the South. Burnside's great force rested the
night of the twelfth in and immediately about Fredericksburg--Hooker and
Sumner and Franklin, one hundred and thirteen thousand men. "The balloon
people" now reported that the hills south and west were held by a
considerable rebel force--Longstreet evidently, Lee probably with him.
Burnside repeated the infatuation of Pope and considered that Stonewall
Jackson was absent from the field of operations. Undoubtedly he had
been, but the shortest of time before, down the river by Port Royal. No
one had seen him move. Jackson away, there was then only
Longstreet--strongly posted, no doubt. Well! Form a great line of
battle, advance in overwhelming strength across the plain, the guns on
Stafford Heights supporting, and take the hills, and Longstreet on them!
It sounded simple.
[Illustration: THE VEDETTE]
The fog, heavy, fleecy, white, persisted. The grey soldiers on the
wooded hills, the grey artillery holding the bluff heads, the grey
skirmishers holding embankment and cut of the Richmond, Fredericksburg
and Potomac Railroad, the grey cavalry by the Massaponax, all stared
into the white sea and could discern nothing. The ear was of no avail.
Sound came muffled, but still it came. "The long roll--hear the long
roll! My Lord! How many drums have they got, anyway?"--"Listen! If you
listen right hard you can hear them shouting orders! Hush up, you
infantry, down there! We want to hear."--"They're moving guns, too! Wish
there'd come a little sympathizing earthquake and help them--'specially
those siege guns on the heights over there!"--"No, no! I want to fight
them. Look! it's lifting a little! the fog's lifting a little! Look at
the guns up in the air like that! It's closed again."--"Well, if that
wasn't fantastic! Ten iron guns in a row, posted in space!"--"Hm! brass
bands. My Lord! there must be one to a platoon!"--"Hear them marching!
Saw lightning once run along the ground--now it's thunder. How many men
has General Ambrose Everett Burnside got, anyhow?"--"Burnside's been to
dances before in Fredericksburg! Some of the houses are burning now that
he's danced in, and some of the women he has danced with are wandering
over the snow. I hope he'll like the reel presently."--"He's a good
fellow himself, though not much of a general! He can't help fighting
here if he's put here to fight."--"I know that. I was just stating
facts. Hear that music, music, music!"
Up from Deep Run, a little in the rear of the grey centre, rose a bold
hill. Here in the clinging mist waited Lee on Traveller, his staff
behind him, in front an ocean of vapour. Longstreet came from the left,
Stonewall Jackson from the right. Lee and his two lieutenants talked
together, three mounted figures looming large on the hilltop above Deep
Run. With suddenness the fog parted, was upgathered with swiftness by
the great golden sun.
That lifted curtain revealed a very great and martial picture,--War in a
moment of vastness and grandeur, epic, sublime. The town was afire;
smoke and flame went up to a sky not yet wholly azure, banded and barred
with clouds from behind which the light came in rays fierce and bright,
with an effect of threatening. There was a ruined house on a high hill.
It gave the appearance of a grating in the firmament, a small dungeon
grating. Beyond the burning town was the river, crossed now by six
pontoon bridges. On each there were troops; one of the long sun rays
caught the bayonets. From the river, to the north, rose the heights, and
they had an iron crown from which already came lightnings and thunders.
There were paths leading down to the river and these showed blue, moving
streams, bright points which were flags moving with them. That for the
far side of the Rappahannock, but on this side, over the plain that
stretched south and west of the smoke-wreathed town, there moved a blue
sea indeed. Eighty thousand men were on that plain. They moved here,
they moved there, into battle formation, and they moved to the crash of
music, to the horn and to the drum. The long rays that the sun was
sending made a dazzle of bayonet steel, thousands and thousands and
thousands of bayonets. The gleaming lines went here, went there,
crossed, recrossed, formed angles, made a vast and glittering net. Out
of it soared the flags, bright hovering birds, bright giant blossoms in
the air. Batteries moved across the plain. Officers, couriers, galloped
on fiery horses; some general officer passed from end to end of a
forming line and was cheered. The earth shook to marching feet. The
great brazen horns blared, the drums beat, the bugles rang. The gleaming
net folded back on itself, made three pleats, made three great lines of
battle.
The grey leaders on the hill to the south gazed in silence. Then said
Lee, "It is well that war is so terrible. Were it not so, we should grow
too fond of it." Longstreet, the "old war horse," stared at the
tremendous pageant. "This wasn't a little quarrel. It's been brewing for
seventy-five years--ever since the Bill-of-Rights day. Things that take
so long in brewing can't be cooled by a breath. It's getting to be a
huge war." Said Jackson, "Franklin holds their left. He seems to be
advancing. I will return to Hamilton's Crossing, sir."
The guns on the Stafford Heights which had been firing slowly and singly
now opened mouth together. The tornado, overpassing river and plain,
burst on the southern hills. In the midst of the tempest, Burnside
ordered Franklin to advance a single division, its mission the seizing
the _unoccupied_ ridge east of Deep Run. Franklin sent Meade with
forty-five hundred Pennsylvania troops.
Meade's brigades advanced in three lines, skirmishers out, a band
playing a quickstep, the stormy sunlight deepening the colours, making a
gleaming of bayonets. His first line crossed the Richmond road. To the
left was a tiny stream, beyond it a ragged bank topped by brushwood.
Suddenly, from this coppice, opened two of Pelham's guns.
Beneath that flanking fire the first blue line faltered, gave ground.
Meade brought up four batteries and sent for others. All these came
fiercely into action. When they got his range, Pelham moved his two guns
and began again a raking fire. Again the blue gunners found the range
and again he moved with deliberate swiftness, and again he opened with a
hot and raking fire. One gun was disabled; he fought with the other. He
fought until the limber chests were empty and there came an imperious
message from Jeb Stuart, "Get back from destruction, you infernal,
gallant fool, John Pelham!"
The guns across the river and the blue field batteries steadily shelled
for half an hour the heavily timbered slopes beyond the railroad. Except
for the crack and crash of severed boughs the wood gave no sign. At the
end of this period Meade resumed his advance.
On came the blue lines, staunch, determined troops, seasoned now as the
grey were seasoned. They meant to take that empty line of hills,
willy-nilly a few Confederate guns. That done, they would be in a
position to flank Longstreet, already attacked in front by Sumner's
Grand Division. On they came, with a martial front, steady, swinging.
Uninterrupted, they marched to within a few hundred yards of Prospect
Hill. Suddenly the woods that loomed before them so dark and quiet
blazed and rang. Fifty guns were within that cover, and the fifty cast
their thunderbolts full against the dark blue line. From either side the
grey artillery burst the grey musketry, and above the crackling thunder
rose the rebel yell. Stonewall Jackson was not down the river; Stonewall
Jackson was here! Meade's Pennsylvanians were gallant fighters; but they
broke beneath that withering fire,--they fell back in strong disorder.
Grey and blue, North and South, there were gathered upon and above the
field of Fredericksburg four hundred guns. All came into action. Where
earlier, there had been fog over the plain, fog wreathing the hillsides,
there was now smoke. Dark and rolling it invaded the ruined town, it
mantled the flowing Rappahannock, it surmounted the hills. Red flashes
pierced it, and over and under and through roared the enormous sound.
There came reinforcements to Meade, division after division. In the
meantime Sumner was hurling brigades against Marye's Hill and Longstreet
was hurling them back again.
The 2d Corps listened to the terrible musketry from this front. "Old Pete's
surely giving them hell! There's a stone wall at the base of Marye's Hill.
McLaws and Ransom are holding it--sorry for the Yanks in front."--"Never
heard such hullabaloo as the great guns are making!"--"What're them
Pennsylvanians down there doing? It's time for them to come on! They've got
enough reinforcements--old friends, Gibbon and Doubleday."--"Good
fighters."--"Yes, Lord! we're all good fighters now. Glad of it. Like to
fight a good fighter. Feel real friendly toward him."--"A
thirty-two-pounder Parrott in the battery on the hill over there exploded
and raised hell. General Lee standing right by. He just spoke on, calm and
imperturbable, and Traveller looked sideways."--"Look! Meade's moving. _Do
you know, I think we ought to have occupied that tongue of land?_"
So, in sooth, thought others presently. It was a marshy, dense, and
tangled coppice projecting like a sabre tooth between the brigades of
Lane and Archer. So thick was the growth, so boggy the earth, that at
the last it had been pronounced impenetrable and left unrazed. Now the
mistake was paid for--in bloody coin.
Meade's line of battle rushed across the open, brushed the edge of the
coppice, discovered that it was empty, and plunging in, found cover. The
grey batteries could not reach them. Almost before the situation was
realized, forth burst the blue from the thicket. Lane was flanked; in
uproar and confusion the grey gave way. Meade sent in another brigade.
It left the first to man-handle Lane, hurled itself on, and at the
outskirt of the wood, struck Archer's left, taking Archer by surprise
and creating a demi-rout. A third brigade entered on the path of the
first and second. The latter, leaving Archer to this new strength,
hurled itself across the military road and upon a thick and tall wood
held by Maxey Gregg and his South Carolinians. Smoke, cloud, and forest
growth--it was hard to distinguish colours, hard to tell just what was
happening! Gregg thought that the smoke-wrapped line was Archer falling
back. He withheld his fire. The line came on and in a moment, amid
shouts, struck his right. A bullet brought down Gregg himself, mortally
wounded. His troops broke, then rallied. A grey battery near Bernard's
Cabin brought its guns to bear upon Gibbon, trying to follow the blue
triumphant rush. Archer reformed. Stonewall Jackson, standing on
Prospect Hill, sent orders to his third line. "Generals Taliaferro and
Early, advance and clear the front with bayonets."
_Yaaaiih! Yaaaiiih! Yaaaaihh!_ yelled Jubal Early's men, and did as they
were bid. _Yaaaaiiih! Yaaiiihhh! Yaaaaiiihhhh!_ yelled the Stonewall
Brigade and the rest of Taliaferro's, and did as they were bid. Back,
back were borne Meade's brigades. Darkness of smoke, denseness of forest
growth, treachery of swampy soil!--all order was lost, and there came no
support. Back went the blue--all who could go back. A. P. Hill's second
line was upon them now; Gibbon was attacked. The grey came down the long
slopes like a torrent loosed. Walker's guns joined in. The uproar was
infernal. The blue fought well and desperately--but there was no
support. Back they went, back across the Richmond Road--all who could
get back. They left behind in the marshy coppice, and on the wooded
slopes and by the embankment, four thousand dead and wounded. The Light
Division, Taliaferro and Early, now held the railroad embankment. Before
them was the open plain, and the backward surge to the river of the
broken foe. It was three o'clock of the afternoon. Burnside sent an
order to Franklin to attack again, but Franklin disobeyed.
Upon the left Longstreet's battle now swelled to giant proportions.
Marye's Hill, girdled by that stone wall, crowned by the Washington
Artillery, loomed impregnable. Against it the North tossed to
destruction division after division. They marched across the bare and
sullen plain, they charged; the hill flashed into fire, a thunder
rolled, the smoke cloud deepened. When it lifted the charge was seen to
be broken, retreating, the plain was seen to be strewed with dead. The
blue soldiers were staunch and steadfast. They saw that their case was
hapless, yet on they came across the shelterless plain. Ordered to
charge, they charged; charged very gallantly, receded with a stubborn
slowness. They were good fighters, worthy foes, and the grey at
Fredericksburg hailed them as such. Forty thousand men charged Marye's
Hill--six great assaults--and forty thousand were repulsed. The winter
day closed in. Twelve thousand men in blue lay dead or wounded at the
foot of the southern hills, before Longstreet on the left and Stonewall
Jackson on the right.
Five thousand was the grey loss. The Rockbridge Artillery had fought
near the Horse Artillery by Hamilton's Crossing. All day the guns had
been doggedly at work; horses and drivers and gunners and guns and
caissons; there was death and wounds and wreckage. In the wintry, late
afternoon, when the battle thunders were lessening, Major John Pelham
came by and looked at Rockbridge. Much of Rockbridge lay on the ground,
the rest stood at the guns. "Why, boys," said Pelham, "you stand killing
better than any I ever saw!"
They stood it well, both blue and grey. It was stern fighting at
Fredericksburg, and grey and blue they fought it sternly and well. The
afternoon closed in, cold and still, with a red sun yet veiled by drifts
of crape-like smoke. The Army of the Potomac, torn, decimated, rested
huddled in Fredericksburg and on the river banks. The Army of Northern
Virginia rested with few or no camp-fires on the southern hills. Between
the two foes stretched the freezing plain, and on the plain lay thick
the Federal dead and wounded. They lay thick, thick, before the stone
wall. At hand, full target for the fire of either force, was a small,
white house. In the house lived Mrs. Martha Stevens. She would not leave
before the battle, though warned and warned again to do so. She said she
had an idea that she could help. She stayed, and wounded men dragged
themselves or were dragged upon her little porch, and within her doors.
General Cobb of Georgia died there; wherever a man could be laid there
were stretched the ghastly wounded. Past the house shrieked the shells;
bullets imbedded themselves in its walls. To and fro went Martha
Stevens, doing what she could, bandaging hurts till the bandages gave
out. She tore into strips what cloth there was in the little meagre
house--her sheets, her towels, her tablecloths, her poor wardrobe. When
all was gone she tore her calico dress. When she saw from the open door
a man who could not drag himself that far, she went and helped him, with
as little reck as may be conceived of shell or minie.
The sun sank, a red ball, staining the snow with red. The dark came
rapidly, a very cold dark night, with myriads of stars. The smoke slowly
cleared. The great, opposed forces lay on their arms, the one closely
drawn by the river, the other on the southern hills. Between was the
plain, and the plain was a place of drear sound--oh, of drear sound!
Neither army showed any lights; for all its antagonist knew either might
be feverishly, in the darkness, preparing an attack. Grey and blue, the
guns yet dominated that wide and mournful level over which, to leap upon
the other, either foe must pass. Grey and blue, there was little
sleeping. It was too cold, and there was need for watchfulness, and the
plain was too unhappy--the plain was too unhappy.
The smoke vanished slowly from the air. The night lay sublimely still,
fearfully clear and cold. About ten o'clock Nature provided a spectacle.
The grey troops, huddled upon the hillsides, drew a quickened breath. A
Florida regiment showed alarm. "What's that? Look at that light in the
sky! Great shafts of light streaming up--look! opening like a fan!
What's that, chaplain, what's that?--Don't reckon the Lord's tired of
fighting, and it's the Judgment Day?"
"No, no, boys! It's an aurora borealis."
"Say it over, please. Oh, northern lights! Well, we've heard of them
before, but we never saw them. Having a lot of experiences here in
Virginia!"--"Well, it's beautiful, any way, and I think it's terrible. I
wish those northern lights would do something for the northern wounded
down there. Nothing else that's northern seems likely to do it."--"Look
at them--look at them! pale red, and dancing! I've heard them called
'the merry dancers.' There's a shooting star! They say that every time a
star shoots some one dies."--"That's not so. If it were, the whole sky
would be full of falling stars to-night. Look at that red ray going up
to the zenith. O God, make the plain stop groaning!"
The display in the heavens continued, luminous rays, faintly
rose-coloured, shifting from east to west, streaming upward until they
were lost in the starry vault. Elsewhere the sky was dark, intensely
clear, the winter stars like diamonds. There was no wind. The wide,
unsheltered plain across which had stormed, across which had receded,
the Federal charges, was sown thick with soldiers who had dropped from
the ranks. Many and many lay still, dead and cold, their marchings and
their tentings and their battles over. They had fought well; they had
died; they lay here now stark and pale, but in the vast, pictured web of
the whole their threads are strong and their colour holds. But on the
plain of Fredericksburg many and many and many were not dead and
resting. Hundreds and hundreds they lay, and could not rest for mortal
anguish. They writhed and tossed, they dragged themselves a little way
and fell again, they idly waved a hat or sword or empty hand for help,
they cried for aid, they cried for water. Those who could not lift their
voices moaned, moaned. Some had grown delirious, and upon that plain
there was even laughter. All the various notes taken together blended
into one long, dreary, weird, dull, and awful sound, steady as a wind in
miles of frozen reeds. They were all blue soldiers, and they lay where
they fell.
There was a long fringe of them near the stone wall and near the railway
embankment behind which now rested the Light Division and Taliaferro and
Early. The wind here was loud, rattling a thicker growth of reeds.
Above, the long, silent, flickering lights mocked with their rosy hue,
and the glittering stars mocked, and the empty concave of the night
mocked, and the sound of the Rappahannock mocked. A river moving by like
the River of Death, and they could not even get to the river to drink,
drink, drink....
A figure kneeling by a wounded man, spoke in a guarded voice to an
upright, approaching form. "This man could be saved. I have given him
water. I went myself to the general, and he said that if we could get
any into the hospital behind the hill we might do so. But I'm not strong
enough to lift him."
"I air," said Billy. He set down the bucket that he carried. "I jest
filled it from the creek. It don't last any time, they air so thirsty!
You take it, and I'll take him." He put his arms under the blue figure,
lifted it like a child, and moved away, noiseless in the darkness.
Corbin Wood took the bucket and dipper. Presently it must be refilled.
By the creek he met an officer sent down from the hillside. "You twenty
men out there have got to be very careful. If their sentries see or hear
you moving you'll be thought a skirmish line with the whole of us
behind, and every gun will be opening! Battle's decided on for
to-morrow, not for to-night.--Now be careful, or we'll recall every
damned life-in-your-hand blessed volunteer of you!--Oh, it's a fighting
chaplain--I beg your pardon, I'm sure, sir! But you'd better all be very
quiet. Old Jack would say that mercy's all right, but you mustn't alarm
the foe."
All through the night there streamed the boreal lights. The living and
the dying, the ruined town, the plain, the hills, the river lay beneath.
The blue army slept and waked, the grey army slept and waked. The
general officers of both made little or no pretence at sleeping. Plans
must be made, plans must be made, plans must be made. Stonewall Jackson,
in his tent, laid himself down indeed for two hours and slept, guarded
by Jim, like a man who was dead. At the end of that time he rose and
asked for his horse.
It was near dawn. He rode beneath the fading streamers, before his
lines, before the Light Division and Early and Taliaferro, before his
old brigade--the Stonewall. The 65th lay in a pine wood, down-sloping to
a little stream. Reveille was yet to sound. The men lay in an uneasy
sleep, but some of the officers were astir, and had been so all night.
These, as Jackson checked Little Sorrel, came forward and saluted. He
spoke to the colonel. "Colonel Erskine, your regiment did well. I saw it
at the Crossing."
Erskine, a small, brave, fiery man, coloured with pleasure. "I'm very
glad, sir. The regiment's all right, sir. The old stock wasn't quite cut
down, and it's made the new like it--" He hesitated, then as the general
with his "Good! good!" gathered up the reins he took heart of grace.
"It's old colonel, sir--it's old colonel--" he stammered, then out it
came: "Richard Cleave trained us so, sir, that we couldn't go back!"
"See, sir," said Stonewall Jackson, "that you don't emulate him in all
things." He looked sternly and he rode away with no other word. He rode
from the pine wood, crossed the Mine Road, and presently the narrow
Massaponax. The streamers were gone from the sky; there was everywhere
the hush of dawn. The courier with him wondered where he was going. They
passed John Pelham's guns, iron dark against the pallid sky. Presently
they came to the Yerby House, where General Maxey Gregg, a gallant
soldier and gentleman, lay dying.
As Jackson dismounted Dr. Hunter McGuire came from the house. "I gave
him your message, general. He is dying fast. It seemed to please him."
"Good!" said Jackson. "General Gregg and I have had a disagreement. In
life it might have continued, but death lifts us all from under earthly
displeasure. Will you ask him, Doctor, if I may pay him a little
visit?"
The visit paid, he came gravely forth, mounted and turned back toward
headquarters on Prospect Hill. In the east were red streaks, one above
another. The day was coming up, clear and cold. Pelham's guns, crowning
a little eminence, showed distinct against the colour. Stonewall Jackson
rode by, and, with a face that was a study, a gunner named Deaderick
watched him pass.
All this day these two armies stood and faced each other. There was
sharpshooting, there was skirmishing, but no full attack. Night came and
passed, and another morning dawned. This day, forty-eight hours after
battle, Burnside sent a flag of truce with a request that he be allowed
to collect and bury his dead. There were few now alive upon that plain.
The wind in the reeds had died to a ghostly hush.
That night there came up a terrible storm, a howling wind driving a
sleety rain. All night long, in cloud and blast and beating wet, the
Army of the Potomac, grand division by grand division, recrossed the
Rappahannock.
The storm continued, the rain and snow swelled the river. The Army of
the Potomac with Acquia creek at hand, Washington in touch, lay
inactive, went into winter quarters. The Army of Northern Virginia,
couched on the southern hills, followed its example. Between the two
foes flowed the dark river. Sentries in blue paced the one bank,
sentries in grey the other. A detail of grey soldiers, resting an hour
opposite Falmouth, employed their leisure in raising a tall signpost,
with a wide and long board for arms. In bold letters they painted upon
it THIS WAY TO RICHMOND. It rested there, month after month, in view of
the blue army.
At the end of January Burnside was superseded. The Army of the Potomac
came under the command of Fighting Joe Hooker. In February Longstreet,
with the divisions of Pickett and Hood, marched away from the
Rappahannock to the south bank of the James. In mid-March was fought the
cavalry battle of Kelly's Ford--Averell against Fitz Lee. Averell
crossed, but when the battle rested, he was back upon the northern
shore. At Kelly's Ford fell John Pelham, "the battle-cry on his lips,
and the light of victory beaming from his eye."
April came with soft skies and greening trees. North and south and east
and west, there were now gathered against the fortress with the stars
and bars above it some hundreds of thousands under arms. Likewise a
great navy beat against the side which gave upon the sea. The fortress
was under arms indeed, but she had no navy to speak of. Arkansas and
Louisiana, Tennessee and North Carolina, vast lengths of the Mississippi
River, Fortress Monroe in Virginia and Suffolk south of the
James--entrance had been made into all these courts of the fortress.
Blue forces held them stubbornly; smaller grey forces held as stubbornly
the next bastion. On the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, within fifty
miles of the imperilled Capital, were gathered by May one hundred and
thirty thousand men in blue. Longstreet gone, there opposed them
sixty-two thousand in grey.
Late in April Fighting Joe Hooker put in motion "the finest army on the
planet." There were various passes and feints. Sedgwick attempted a
crossing below Fredericksburg. Stonewall Jackson sent an aide to Lee
with the information. Lee received it with a smile. "I thought it was
time for one of you lazy young fellows to come and tell me what that
firing was about! Tell your good general that he knows what to do with
the enemy just as well as I do."
Flourish and passado executed, Hooker, with suddenness, moved up the
Rappahannock, crossed at Richard's Ford, moved up the Rapidan, crossed
at Ely and Germanna Fords, turned east and south and came into the
Wilderness. He meant to pass through and, with three great columns,
checkmate Lee at Fredericksburg. Before he could do so Lee shook himself
free, left to watch the Rappahannock, and Sedgwick, ten thousand pawns
and an able knight, and himself crossed to the Wilderness.