dignity, with majesty. There was no charge; that fierce, final onrush
was yet hours away; the little stone wall near that rounded clump of
trees, over which thousands would fight, close-pressed like wrestlers,
was to be for a long time unstained by blood. The Confederate
aggressor, standing in his place, delivered his hoarse challenge; his
Union antagonist standing also in his place, returned thunderous
answer. The two opposed each other—if one may use for passion so
terrible this light comparison—at arm's length, like fencers in a
play.
The business of the young officer was not with these cannon, but with
the infantry, who, crouching before the guns, hugging the ground, were
to bide their time in safety for two hours. Therefore, sitting on his
horse, he still fitted words to his thoughts. The conflict before him
is not a fight for men, it is a fight for mighty engines of war; it is
not a human battle, it is a storm, far above earthly passion.
"Infuriate demons" are these guns, their mouths are ablaze with smoky
tongues of livid fire, their breath is murky, sulphur-laden; they are
surrounded by grimy, shouting, frenzied creatures who are not their
masters but their ministers. Around them rolls the smoke of Hades. To
their sound all other cannonading of the young officer's experience
was as a holiday salute. Solid shot shattered iron of gun and living
trunk of tree. Shot struck also its intended target: men fell, torn,
mangled; horses started, stiffened, crashed to the ground, or rushed,
maddened, away.
Still there was nothing for the young officer to do but to watch. Near
him a man crouched by a stone, like a toad, or like pagan worshiper
before his idol. The young officer looked at him curiously.
"Go to your regiment and be a man!" he ordered.
But the man did not stir, the shot which splintered the protecting
stone left him still kneeling, still unhurt. To the young officer he
was one of the unaccountable phenomena of battle, he was
incomprehensible, monstrous.
He noted also the curious freaks played by round shot, the visible
flight of projectiles through the air, their strange hiss "with sound
of hot iron, plunged into water." He saw ambulances wrecked as they
moved along; he saw frantic horses brought down by shells; he calls
them "horse-tamers of the upper air." He saw shells fall into
limber-boxes, he heard the terrific roar which followed louder than
the roar of guns; he observed the fall of officer, of orderly, of
private soldier.
After the first hour of terrific din, he rode with his general down
the line. The infantry still lay prone upon the ground, out of range
of the missiles. The men were not suffering and they were quiet and
cool. They professed not to mind the confusion; they claimed
laughingly to like it.
From the shelter of a group of trees the young officer and his general
watched in silence. For that "awful universe of battle," it seemed now
that all other expressions were feeble, mean. The general expostulated
with frightened soldiers who were trying to hide near by. He did not
reprove or command, he reminded them that they were in the hands of
God, and therefore as safe in one place as another. He assured his
young companion of his own faith in God.
Slowly, after an hour and a half, the roar of battle abated, and the
young officer and his general made their way back along the line. By
three o'clock the great duel was over; the two hundred and fifty guns,
having been fired rapidly for two hours, seemed to have become mortal,
and to suffer a mortal's exhaustion. Along the crest, battery-men
leaned upon their guns, gasped, and wiped the grime and sweat from
their faces.
Again there was deep, ominous silence. Of the harm done on the
opposite ridge they could know nothing with certainty. They looked
about, then back at each other questioningly. Here disabled guns were
being taken away, fresh guns were being brought up. The Union lines
had suffered harm, but not irreparable harm. That centre for which the
young officer had trembled was still safe. Was the struggle over?
Would the enemy withdraw? Had yesterday's defeat worn him out; was
this great confusion intended to cover his retreat? Was it—
Suddenly, madly, the young officer and his general flung themselves
back into their saddles, wildly they galloped to the summit of that
wave-like crest.
What they saw there was incredible, yet real; it was impossible, yet
it was visible. How far had the enemy gone in the retreat which they
suspected? The enemy was at hand. What of their speculations about his
withdrawal, of their cool consideration of his intention? In five
minutes he would be upon them. From the heavy smoke he issued,
regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, his front half a mile
broad, his ranks shoulder to shoulder, line supporting line. His eyes
were fixed upon that rounded clump of trees, his course was directed
toward the centre of that wave-like crest. He was eighteen thousand
against six thousand; should his gray mass enter, wedge-like, the
Union line, yesterday's Union victories, day before yesterday's Union
losses would be in vain.
To the young officer, enemies though they were, they seemed admirable.
They had but one soul; they would have been, under a less deadly fire,
opposed by less fearful odds, an irresistible mass. Before them he saw
their galloping officers, their scarlet flags; he discerned their
gun-barrels and bayonets gleaming in the sun.
His own army was composed also; it required no orders, needed no
command; it knew well what that gray wall portended. He heard the
click of gun-locks, the clang of muskets, raised to position upon the
stone wall, the clink of iron axles, the words of his general, quiet,
calm, cool.
"Do not hurry! Let them come close! Aim low and steadily!"
There came to him a moment of fierce rapture. He saw the
color-sergeant tipping his lance toward the enemy; he remembered that
from that glorious flag, lifted by the western breeze, these advancing
hosts would filch half its stars. With bursting heart, blessing God
who had kept him loyal, he determined that this thing should not be.
He was sent to Meade to announce the coming of the foe; he returned,
galloping along the crest. Into that advancing army the Union cannon
poured shells; then, as the range grew shorter, shrapnel; then,
canister; and still the hardy lines moved on. There was no charging
shout, there was still no confusion, no halt under that raking fire.
Stepping over the bodies of their friends, they continued to advance,
they raised their muskets, they fired. There was now a new sound,
"like summer hail upon the city roofs."
The young officer searched for his general, and could not find him. He
had been mounted; now, probably wounded, possibly killed, he was down
from his horse.
Then, suddenly, once more, the impossible, the incredible became
possible, real. The young officer had not dreamed that the
Confederates would be able to advance to the Union lines; his
speculation concerned only the time they would be able to stand the
Union fire. But they have advanced, they are advancing still farther.
And there in that weak centre—he cannot trust his own vision—men are
leaving the sheltering wall; without order or reason, a "fear-stricken
flock of confusion," they are falling back. The fate of Gettysburg, it
seemed to his horrified eyes, hung by a spider's single thread.
"A great, magnificent passion"—thus in his youthful emotion he
describes it—came upon the young man. Danger had seemed to him
throughout a word without meaning. Now, drawing his sword, laying
about with it, waving it in the air, shouting, he rushed upon this
fear-stricken flock, commanded it, reproached it, cheered it, urged it
back. Already the red flags had begun to thicken and to flaunt over
the deserted spot; they were to him, he wrote afterwards, like red to
a maddened bull. That portion of the wall was lost; he groaned for the
presence of Gibbon, of Hays, of Hancock, of Doubleday, but they were
engaged, or they were too far away. He rushed hither and yon, still
beseeching, commanding, praying that troops be sent to that imperiled
spot.
Then, in joy which was almost insanity, he saw that gray line begin to
waver and to break. Tauntingly he shouted, fiercely his men roared;
than their mad yells no Confederate "Hi-yi" was ever more ferocious.
This repelling host was a new army, sprung Phœnix-like from the body
of the old; to him its eyes seemed to stream lightning, it seemed to
shake its wings over the yet glowing ashes of its progenitor. He
watched the jostling, swaying lines, he saw them boil and roar, saw
them dash their flamy spray above the crest like two hostile billows
of a fiery ocean.
Once more commands are few, men do not heed them. Clearly once more
they see their duty, magnificently they obey. This is war at the
height of its passion, war at the summit of its glory. A
color-sergeant rushed to the stone wall, there he fell; eagerly at
once his comrades plunged forward. There was an instant of fierce
conflict, of maddening, indistinguishable confusion. Men wrestled with
one another, opposed one another with muskets used as clubs, tore at
each other like wolves, until spent, exhausted, among heaps of dead,
the conquered began to give themselves up. Back and forth over
twenty-five square miles they had fought, for three interminable days.
Here on this little crest, by this little wall, the fight was ended.
Here the high-water mark was reached, here the flood began its ebb.
Laughing, shouting, "so that the deaf could have seen it in their
faces, the blind have heard it in their voices," the conquerors
proclaimed the victory. Thank God, the crest is safe!
Are men wounded and broken by the thousands, do they lie in burning
thirst, pleading for water, pleading for the bandaging of bleeding
arteries, pleading for merciful death? The conquerors think of none of
these things. Is night coming, are long marches coming? Still the
conquerors shout like mad. Is war ended by this mammoth victory? For
months and months it will drag on. Is this conquered foe a stranger,
will he now withdraw to a distant country? He is our brother, his ills
are ours, these wounds which we have given, we shall feel ourselves
for fifty years. Is this brave young officer to enjoy the reward of
his great courage, to live in fame, to be honored by his countrymen?
At Cold Harbor he is to perish with a bullet in his forehead. Is not
all this business of war mad?
It is a feeble, peace-loving, fireside-living generation which asks
such questions as these.
Now, thank God, _the crest is safe_!
IV
THE BATTLE-GROUND
Mercifully, Mary Bowman, a widow, whose husband had been missing since
the battle of Gettysburg, had been warned, together with the other
citizens of Gettysburg, that on Thursday the nineteenth of November,
1863, she would be awakened from sleep by a bugler's reveillé, and
that during that great day she would hear again dread sound of cannon.
Nevertheless, hearing again the reveillé, she sat up in bed with a
scream and put her hands over her ears. Then, gasping, groping about
in her confusion and terror, she rose and began to dress. She put on a
dress which had been once a bright plaid, but which now, having lost
both its color and the stiff, out-standing quality of the skirts of
'63, hung about her in straight and dingy folds. It was clean, but it
had upon it certain ineradicable brown stains on which soap and water
seemed to have had no effect. She was thin and pale, and her eyes had
a set look, as though they saw other sights than those directly about
her.
In the bed from which she had risen lay her little daughter; in a
trundle-bed near by, her two sons, one about ten years old, the other
about four. They slept heavily, lying deep in their beds, as though
they would never move. Their mother looked at them with her strange,
absent gaze; then she barred a little more closely the broken
shutters, and went down the stairs. The shutters were broken in a
curious fashion. Here and there they were pierced by round holes, and
one hung from a single hinge. The window-frames were without glass,
the floor was without carpet, the beds without pillows.
In her kitchen Mary Bowman looked about her as though still seeing
other sights. Here, too, the floor was carpetless. Above the stove a
patch of fresh plaster on the wall showed where a great rent had been
filled in; in the doors were the same little round holes as in the
shutters of the room above. But there was food and fuel, which was
more than one might have expected from the aspect of the house and its
mistress. She opened the shattered door of the cupboard, and, having
made the fire, began to prepare breakfast.
Outside the house there was already, at six o'clock, noise and
confusion. Last evening a train from Washington had brought to the
village Abraham Lincoln; for several days other trains had been
bringing less distinguished guests, until thousands thronged the
little town. This morning the tract of land between Mary Bowman's
house and the village cemetery was to be dedicated for the burial of
the Union dead, who were to be laid there in sweeping semicircles
round a centre on which a great monument was to rise.
But of the dedication, of the President of the United States, of his
distinguished associates, of the great crowds, of the soldiers, of the
crape-banded banners, Mary Bowman and her children would see nothing.
Mary Bowman would sit in her little wrecked kitchen with her children.
For to her the President of the United States and others in high
places who prosecuted war or who tolerated war, who called for young
men to fight, were hateful. To Mary Bowman the crowds of curious
persons who coveted a sight of the great battle-fields were ghouls;
their eyes wished to gloat upon ruin, upon fragments of the weapons of
war, upon torn bits of the habiliments of soldiers; their feet longed
to sink into the loose ground of hastily made graves; the discovery of
a partially covered body was precious to them.
Mary Bowman knew that field! From Culp's Hill to the McPherson farm,
from Big Round Top to the poorhouse, she had traveled it, searching,
searching, with frantic, insane disregard of positions or of
possibility. Her husband could not have fallen here among the Eleventh
Corps, he could not lie here among the unburied dead of the Louisiana
Tigers! If he was in the battle at all, it was at the Angle that he
fell.
She had not been able to begin her search immediately after the battle
because there were forty wounded men in her little house; she could
not prosecute it with any diligence even later, when the soldiers had
been carried to the hospitals, in the Presbyterian Church, the
Catholic Church, the two Lutheran churches, the Seminary, the College,
the Court-House, and the great tented hospital on the York road.
Nurses were here, Sisters of Mercy were here, compassionate women were
here by the score; but still she was needed, with all the other women
of the village, to nurse, to bandage, to comfort, to pray with those
who must die. Little Mary Bowman had assisted at the amputation of
limbs, she had helped to control strong men torn by the frenzy of
delirium, she had tended poor bodies which had almost lost all
semblance to humanity. Neither she nor any of the other women of the
village counted themselves especially heroic; the delicate wife of the
judge, the petted daughter of the doctor, the gently bred wife of the
preacher forgot that fainting at the sight of blood was one of the
distinguishing qualities of their sex; they turned back their sleeves
and repressed their tears, and, shoulder to shoulder with Mary Bowman
and her Irish neighbor, Hannah Casey, they fed the hungry and healed
the sick and clothed the naked. If Mary Bowman had been herself, she
might have laughed at the sight of her dresses cobbled into trousers,
her skirts wrapped round the shoulders of sick men. But neither then
nor ever after did Mary laugh at any incident of that summer.
Hannah Casey laughed, and by and by she began to boast. Meade,
Hancock, Slocum, were non-combatants beside her. She had fought whole
companies of Confederates, she had wielded bayonets, she had assisted
at the spiking of a gun, she was Barbara Frietchie and Moll Pitcher
combined. But all her lunacy could not make Mary Bowman smile.
Of John Bowman no trace could be found. No one could tell her anything
about him, to her frantic letters no one responded. Her old friend,
the village judge, wrote letters also, but could get no reply. Her
husband was missing; it was probable that he lay somewhere upon this
field, the field upon which they had wandered as lovers.
In midsummer a few trenches were opened, and Mary, unknown to her
friends, saw them opened. At the uncovering of the first great pit,
she actually helped with her own hands. For those of this generation
who know nothing of war, that fact may be written down, to be passed
over lightly. The soldiers, having been on other battle-fields,
accepted her presence without comment. She did not cry, she only
helped doggedly, and looked at what they found. That, too, may be
written down for a generation which has not known war.
Immediately, an order went forth that no graves, large or small, were
to be opened before cold weather. The citizens were panic-stricken
with fear of an epidemic; already there were many cases of dysentery
and typhoid. Now that the necessity for daily work for the wounded was
past, the village became nervous, excited, irritable. Several men and
boys were killed while trying to open unexploded shells; their deaths
added to the general horror. There were constant visitors who sought
husbands, brothers, sweet-hearts; with these the Gettysburg women were
still able to weep, for them they were still able to care; but the
constant demand for entertainment for the curious annoyed those who
wished to be left alone to recover from the shock of battle.
Gettysburg was prostrate, bereft of many of its worldly possessions,
drained to the bottom of its well of sympathy. Its schools must be
opened, its poor must be helped. Cold weather was coming and there
were many, like Mary Bowman, who owned no longer any quilts or
blankets, who had given away their clothes, their linen, even the
precious sheets which their grandmothers had spun. Gettysburg grudged
nothing, wished nothing back, it asked only to be left in peace.
When the order was given to postpone the opening of graves till fall,
Mary began to go about the battle-field searching alone. Her good,
obedient children stayed at home in the house or in the little field.
They were beginning to grow thin and wan, they were shivering in the
hot August weather, but their mother did not see. She gave them a
great deal more to eat than she had herself, and they had far better
clothes than her blood-stained motley.
She went about the battle-field with her eyes on the ground, her feet
treading gently, anticipating loose soil or some sudden obstacle.
Sometimes she stooped suddenly. To fragments of shells, to bits of
blue or gray cloth, to cartridge belts or broken muskets, she paid no
heed; at sight of pitiful bits of human bodies she shuddered. But
there lay also upon that field little pocket Testaments, letters,
trinkets, photographs. John had had her photograph and the children's,
and surely he must have had some of the letters she had written!
But poor Mary found nothing.
One morning, late in August, she sat beside her kitchen table with her
head on her arm. The first of the scarlet gum leaves had begun to
drift down from the shattered trees; it would not be long before the
ground would be covered, and those depressed spots, those tiny wooden
headstones, those fragments of blue and gray be hidden. The thought
smothered her. She did not cry, she had not cried at all. Her soul
seemed hardened, stiff, like the terrible wounds for which she had
helped to care.
Suddenly, hearing a sound, Mary had looked up. The judge stood in the
doorway; he had known all about her since she was a little girl;
something in his face told her that he knew also of her terrible
search. She did not ask him to sit down, she said nothing at all. She
had been a loquacious person, she had become an abnormally silent one.
Speech hurt her.
The judge looked round the little kitchen. The rent in the wall
was still unmended, the chairs were broken; there was nothing else
to be seen but the table and the rusty stove and the thin,
friendless-looking children standing by the door. It was the house
not only of poverty and woe, but of neglect.
"Mary," said the judge, "how do you mean to live?"
Mary's thin, sunburned hand stirred a little as it lay on the table.
"I do not know."
"You have these children to feed and clothe and you must furnish your
house again. Mary—" The judge hesitated for a moment. John Bowman had
been a school-teacher, a thrifty, ambitious soul, who would have
thought it a disgrace for his wife to earn her living. The judge laid
his hand on the thin hand beside him. "Your children must have food,
Mary. Come down to my house, and my wife will give you work. Come
now."
Slowly Mary had risen from her chair, and smoothed down her dress and
obeyed him. Down the street they went together, seeing fences still
prone, seeing walls torn by shells, past the houses where the shock of
battle had hastened the deaths of old persons and little children, and
had disappointed the hearts of those who longed for a child, to the
judge's house in the square. There wagons stood about, loaded with
wheels of cannon, fragments of burst caissons, or with long, narrow,
pine boxes, brought from the railroad, to be stored against the day of
exhumation. Men were laughing and shouting to one another, the driver
of the wagon on which the long boxes were piled cracked his whip as he
urged his horses.
Hannah Casey congratulated her neighbor heartily upon her finding
work.
"That'll fix you up," she assured her.
She visited Mary constantly, she reported to her the news of the war,
she talked at length of the coming of the President.
"I'm going to see him," she announced. "I'm going to shake him by the
hand. I'm going to say, 'Hello, Abe, you old rail-splitter, God bless
you!' Then the bands'll play, and the people will march, and the
Johnny Rebs will hear 'em in their graves."
Mary Bowman put her hands over her ears.
"I believe in my soul you'd let 'em all rise from the dead!"
"I would!" said Mary Bowman hoarsely. "I would!"
"Well, not so Hannah Casey! Look at me garden tore to bits! Look at me
beds, stripped to the ropes!"
And Hannah Casey departed to her house.
Details of the coming celebration penetrated to the ears of Mary
Bowman whether she wished it or not, and the gathering crowds made
themselves known. They stood upon her porch, they examined the broken
shutters, they wished to question her. But Mary Bowman would answer no
questions, would not let herself be seen. To her the thing was
horrible. She saw the battling hosts, she heard once more the roar of
artillery, she smelled the smoke of battle, she was torn by its
confusion. Besides, she seemed to feel in the ground beneath her a
feebly stirring, suffering, ghastly host. They had begun again to open
the trenches, and she had looked into them.
Now, on the morning of Thursday, the nineteenth of November, her
children dressed themselves and came down the steps. They had begun to
have a little plumpness and color, but the dreadful light in their
mother's eyes was still reflected in theirs. On the lower step they
hesitated, looking at the door. Outside stood the judge, who had found
time in the multiplicity of his cares, to come to the little house.
He spoke with kind but firm command.
"Mary," said he, "you must take these children to hear President
Lincoln."
"What!" cried Mary.
"You must take these children to the exercises."
"I cannot!" cried Mary. "I cannot! I cannot!"
"You must!" The judge came into the room. "Let me hear no more of this
going about. You are a Christian, your husband was a Christian. Do you
want your children to think it is a wicked thing to die for their
country? Do as I tell you, Mary."