PLEASANTON'S ADVANCE ON CULPEPER--CROSSING THE
RAPPAHANNOCK--THE FIGHT AND THE CALAMITY OF RAWSON'S
CROSS-ROADS--TAKING OF CULPEPER--PLEASANTON'S VOLUNTEER
AIDE--TOWNSEND VERSUS COLES--THE MEETING OF TWO WHO LOVED
EACH OTHER--AND THE LITTLE RIDE THEY TOOK TOGETHER.
On Sunday the thirteenth day of September, 1863, and Monday the fourteenth,
but principally on the former day, took place that running fight which
displayed some of the very noblest qualities of the federal cavalry shown
during the War for the Union, and which is better entitled than otherwise
to be designated as the Battle of Culpeper. One of the first conclusive
indications was given in that fight, that while the rebel cavalry, which at
the beginning of the war was certainly excellent, had been running down
from the giving out of their trained horses, and the deterioration of the
quality of their riders through forced conscription,--the Union cavalry, at
first contemptible in force and inefficient in comparison to their very
numbers, had every day been improving as fast as augmenting, until they had
become the superiors of what the best of their foes had been at the
beginning of the contest. War can make any thing (except perhaps statesmen)
out of a given quantity of American material; but it can unmake as well,
when it strains the material existing and creates a forced supply for the
vacant places of the dead and the vanquished, out of the infirm and the
incapable; and before the end of this conflict the lesson will have been so
closely read as never to need a repetition.
The rebels held Culpeper and the south bank of the Rappahannock, and had
held the whole of that line for weeks, formidable in their occasional
demonstrations, but still more formidable in what it was believed they
_might_ do by a sudden crossing of that dividing stream at some moment
when the Union forces should be deficient in vigilance, preoccupied, or
otherwise embarrassed. They were to be driven back if possible, from their
threatening front, or if not driven back, at least struck such a blow as
would make early offensive operations on their part improbable. These were
the intentions, so far as they can be known and judged, which led to the
crossing of the Rappahannock at that particular juncture.
At three o'clock on the morning of that Sunday which was to join with so
many other days of battle during the rebellion in proving that "there are
no Sabbaths in war,"--at an hour when the thick darkness preceding the dawn
hung like a pall over the banks of the rugged stream and the hostile forces
that fringed it on either side--the cavalry camps on the north side of the
Rappahannock were all astir. All astir, and yet all strangely quiet, in
comparison with the activity manifested. No mellow bugle rang out its notes
of reveille; there was no rattle of drum or shrieking of fife; the laggard
sleeper was awakened by a touch on the shoulder, a shake, or a quick word
in his ear. Horses were saddled in silence; and at the commands: "Prepare
to mount!" "Mount!" given in the lowest possible tones that could command
attention, the drowsy blue-jacketted, yellow-trimmed troopers, all
be-spurred and be-sabred as if equal foes to the horses they were to ride
and the enemies they were to encounter,--vaulted lightly or swung
themselves heavily, according to the manner of each particular man, into
their high peaked McClellan saddles that seemed to be all that was left
them of their old leader. The squadrons were formed as quietly and with as
few words as had accompanied the awakening and the mounting; for if a
surprise of the enemy's force was to take place, it was a matter of the
highest consequence that no loud sound or careless exclamation should reach
the ears of the wary pickets and wide-awake videttes of the rebels hugging
close the banks on the south side of the narrow river.
The preparations were at last and hastily completed, long before the gray
dawn after the moonless night had begun to break over the Virginia hills
lying dark and cool to the eastward. Perhaps that very morning had been
selected for the attack because on the night before the new moon had made
its appearance and there was no tell-tale lingerer to throw an awkward
gleam on an accoutrement and thus tell a story meant to be concealed.
Troopers clustered together and formed squadrons, squadrons were merged
into regiments which in turn swelled to brigades and brigades to divisions.
It was only then that the extensive nature of the movement, which had
Pleasanton at the head and Buford, Gregg and Kilpatrick all engaged in the
execution, could have been conjectured even by an eye capable of peering
through the darkness. It seemed scarcely an hour after the first awakening
when the formation was complete and the order to "March!" given; and there
was not even yet a gleam of red in the eastern sky when the whole command
was in motion.
This large cavalry force, under Pleasanton as we have said, was composed of
three divisions, commanded respectively by Buford, Gregg and Kilpatrick,
all Brigadiers. The Rappahannock was crossed at as many different points,
Buford with the First going over at Starke's Ford; Gregg, with the Second,
at Sulphur Springs, four miles distant; and Kilpatrick, with the Third, at
Kelly's Ford, nine miles farther down and thirteen miles distant from the
place of crossing of the First. Stuart, the famous "Jeb," with his
confederate cavalry, was known to be in force on the elevated ground at and
around Culpeper Court House, with his pickets and videttes extending to the
very edge of the Rappahannock; and a wide sweep of the Union force was
believed to be necessary to circumvent him. Detachments of rebel troops
were also known to hold all the prominent points between Culpeper and
Brandy Station, where the brigades of Lomax and W. F. H. Lee were lying.
Pleasanton was over the river, with all his force before broad daylight--so
rapid and successful had been the movement. The roads were dry and in as
good order as Virginia roads are ever allowed to be by the powers that
preside over highways; and the force, still in the three divisions, swept
southward as silently as iron-shod animals have the capacity for bearing
iron-accoutred riders. Napoleon _la Petit_ had never yet succeeded in
introducing gutta-percha scabbards for the swords of his troopers and
gutta-percha shoes for their horses, even into the French cavalry; and the
Yankee troops of Pleasanton had all the disadvantages of the usual rattling
of bridle-bits, the clattering of sabres within steel scabbards, and the
pounding of multitudinous hoofs upon the hard dry earth, the latter
occasionally a little muffled by an inch of gray powdery dust, choking the
riders as it made their advance less noisy.
Spite of the clanking of hoof and steel, however, the advance was made with
such silence and celerity that the greater portion of the rebel pickets on
the southern bank of the Rappahannock were captured, while the
remainder--here and there one scenting danger afar off and holding an
advantage in knowledge of the roads--fled in dismay to report that the
whole Army of the Potomac, sappers and miners, pioneers and pontoniers,
horse, foot and dragoons, was closing in upon Culpeper.
As the morning advanced and the light grew stronger, so that the danger and
the persons of the attacking forces could at once be better distinguished,
skirmishing commenced with that portion of the rebel force, stationed in
more or less strength at various points and called to arms by their pickets
being driven in upon them,--to meet and if possible check the advancing
columns. Not long before they discovered that any effectual check to the
forces which Pleasanton seemed to be pouring down every cross road and
throwing out from behind every clump of woods on the roadsides, was
impossible; and they fell back, skirmishing.
At Brandy Station (droll and unfortunate name, destined to supply more bad
jokes at the expense of the dry throats of the army than almost any other
spot on Virginia soil), a junction of the three divisions of Union troops
was effected; and there, while that disposition was being made, a sharp
fight took place between the First, under Buford, and the rebel cavalry
under Colonel Beale of the Ninth Virginia. But that struggle, though sharp,
was only of brief continuance: out-foughten, and it must be confessed,
outnumbered, the enemy was driven back from the Station and pursued
vigorously.
While the gallant Buford was thus occupied with the First, Gregg, with the
Second division was making a detour to the right and pouring down his
troopers upon Culpeper from the north by the Ridgeville road, driving
before him upon the main body at the Court House a rebel brigade that had
held the advance, under General Lomax (an officer whose name, we may as
well say, apropos of the bad jokes of war-time, had caused nearly as many
of those verbal outrages upon English, as the unfortunate Brandy Station
itself).
Kilpatrick, meanwhile, with his Third division had not been idle. (When was
he ever known to be idle, except when others held him in check, or
ineffective except when some other than himself misdirected his dashing
energy?) He had swept around to the left, nearly at the same time that
Gregg made the detour to the right, and striking the Stevensburgh road
advanced rapidly from the east towards Culpeper and the right of the
enemy's position, which rested on Rawson's Cross-Roads, two miles
south-east of the Court-House. The rebels here made a stubborn resistance,
and steel met steel and pistol-shot replied to sabre-stroke as it had not
before done that day; but the odds were a little against them; they were
outflanked by that incarnate "raider" of the Sussex mountains of New
Jersey, who no doubt could trace back some drop of his blood to Johnny
Armstrong the riever of the Scottish border, or the moss troopers of the
Bog of Allen in Ireland; and they fell back to the town and beyond it,
taking up new positions which they were not destined to hold much longer
than those they had abandoned.
But this brief shock of battle between the division of Kilpatrick and the
rebels opposed to it, did not roll away from the little hamlet of Rawson's
Cross-Roads without the enacting of one of those sad tragedies, in the
shedding of the blood of non-combatants, which seem so much more painful
than the wholesale but expected slaughter of the field. Near the crossing
of the roads there stood one brick house, of two stories, the only one of
that material in the vicinity. This house, when Kilpatrick came up, was
occupied by the rebel sharp-shooters, partially sheltered by the thick
walls and bringing down the federal cavalry from their saddles at every
discharge of their deadly rifles. Such obstructions in the way of an
advance, especially when they destroy as well as embarrass, are not apt to
be treated with much toleration by those who have the power to sweep them
away; and immediately when the imminence of the danger was discovered, one
of the federal batteries was ordered up to dislodge the sharp-shooters. It
dashed up with all the celerity that whipped and spurred and galloping
horses could give it, halted within point-blank range, unlimbered, and sent
shell, canister and case-shot into and through the obnoxious edifice in a
manner and with a rapidity little calculated upon by the mason who quietly
laid his courses of bricks for the front and side-walls, in the quiet years
before Virginia secession. The sharp-shooters were soon silenced and
dislodged--at least all of them who were left after the last deadly
discharge of missiles had been poured in by the battery; and the house was
at once occupied, when the firing ceased, by a detachment of Union cavalry
dismounted for that service. When those men entered the half-ruined
building they first became aware of this extraordinary and deplorable
tragedy, in which a little blood went so far in awakening regret and
horror. They heard cries of pain and shrieks of distress and fear, echoing
through the building, in other accents than those which could belong to
wounded soldiers--the tones of women! And in the cellar they found the
painful solution of the mystery--more painful far, to them, than a hundred
times the death and suffering under ordinary circumstances. In that cellar,
among smoke, and blood and dust, were huddled twenty or thirty
non-combatants, men, women and children; and in their midst lay an old man,
quite dead and the upper part of his head half carried away by a portion of
shell, while fallen partially across his legs was the body of his son of
sixteen, his boyish features scarcely yet stilled in the repose of death
from a ghastly hurt that had torn away the arm and a part of the shoulder.
Two women lay near, one dying from a blow on the temple which had driven in
the bones of the skull like the crushing of an egg-shell, and the other
uttering the most heart-rending of the cries and groans under the agony of
a crushed leg and a foot literally blown to atoms. A sad sight!--a
harrowing spectacle, even for war-time! And how had it been occasioned?
It would seem that on the approach of the cavalry and the commencement of
fighting in the neighborhood, this party of non-combatants had crowded into
this house--no doubt long to be known in the local traditions of the place
as that of James Inskip,--and taken refuge in the cellar, believing that in
it, as the only brick house in the vicinity, they would be safest from the
missiles of the opposing forces. And so they would have been, safe enough
beyond a doubt, had not the rebel commander, unaware of the presence of
non-combatants in the building, or heedless of the common law of humanity
not to expose them to unnecessary danger in any military operation,
recklessly placed his sharp-shooters in shelter there and thus drawn the
fire of the fatal battery. Two or three of the shells, crashing through the
house, had fallen into the cellar and exploded in the very midst of the
trembling skulkers in their place of fancied security,--with the sad
results that have been recorded, and which none more deeply deplored than
the men who had unwittingly slaughtered the aged and the helpless. Some of
the Richmond papers told harrowing stories, a few days after, of the
"inhuman barbarity of the dastardly Yankees who wantonly butchered those
inoffensive men and helpless women and children in James Inskip's house at
Rawson's Cross-Roads"; but they forgot, as newspapers on both sides of the
sad struggle have too often done during its continuance, to add one word of
the explanatory and extenuating circumstances!
By the time that Kilpatrick, with the Third, had concluded the episode of
Rawson's Cross-Roads and driven the opposing forces back upon the town,
Buford, with the First, after chasing the rebel cavalry under Beale to
moderate satisfaction, had come up from the south, and the junction of the
three divisions was accomplished.
On the elevated site of Culpeper and in the uneven streets of that old town
which bears, like so many of its compeers, shabby recollections of English
aristocracy that for some cause seem to suit it better than the thin
pretence of democratic government,--there Stuart, than whom the rebellion
has developed no more restless or more active foe of the Union cause,
appeared determined to make a last and effectual stand. With a celerity
worthy of his past reputation he placed sharp-shooters in houses that
commanded the Union advance, planted batteries at advantageous positions in
the streets, and threw up barricades of all the unemployed carts and wagons
and all the idle timber and loose fence-rails lying about the town, in a
manner which would have endeared him to the Parisians of the time of Louis
Philippe. Right and left and on every hand, defending these obstructions
and supporting the batteries, dashed his mounted "Virginia gentlemen," once
the very Paladins of their knightly class, when Fauquier and the White
Sulphur saw the pleasant sport of tilting at the ring in the presence of
the bright-eyed Queens of Beauty of the Old Dominion,--now brought down to
the level and compelled to contest the fatal advance, of a "horde of Yankee
tailors on horseback"!
General Pleasanton, the actual as well as nominal head of the Union
advance, held his position on an eminence a short distance east of the
town, from which an excellent view of the whole situation could be
commanded, and whence he directed all the movements with the rapidity of a
soldier and the coolness of a man thoroughly in confidence with himself and
well assured of the material of his command. He had won with the same
troops before, even when placed at disadvantage: that day he felt that the
game was in his own hands and that he could play it rapidly and yet
steadily. The thing which worst troubled him as from that little eminence
he looked out from under his bent brows, over the scene which was to
witness so short, sharp and decisive a conflict,--was the knowledge how
seriously the stubborn resistance offered by the rebels was likely to peril
the non-combatants in the town, and how inevitably, from the same cause,
the old town itself, just tumble-down enough to be historical and
picturesque, must suffer from the flying shot and shell that know so little
mercy. He had hoped, the first surprise succeeding, to take Culpeper
against but slight resistance; and it was no part of his plan (it never
_is_ part of the plan of any truly brave man!) to batter the town if that
measure could be avoided; but the balances and compensations of war are
appreciable if not gratifying, musketry on one side is nearly sure to be
answered in kind by the other, and artillery (when there happens to be any,
and wo to the party without the "big guns" when the other has them at
command!)--artillery has a very natural habit of replying to the thunderous
defiance sent out by its hostile kinsmen. Culpeper, too well defended, was
not the less certain to be taken, while it was the more certain to bear
marks of the conflict that only the demolition of half its buildings could
erase.
God pity and help the residents of any town given up to the ruthless
passions of a fierce soldiery--to plunder and rapine and murder,--after
what is so inadequately described as "taking by _storm_"! When for the
moment hell is let loose upon the earth, as if to teach us that if we have
yet something of the god lingering in our fallen manhood, we have yet
something of the arch-fiend remaining to show how we accompanied him in
his fall. When roofs blaze because a reckless hand has dashed a torch
therein in the very wantonness of destruction. When the golden vessels of
the church service and the sacred little memorials of happy hours in
boudoir and bed-room are alike torn from their places, dashed into pieces
and ground under armed heels, as if the inanimate objects bore a share of
the wrong of resistance and could feel a part of the suffering meted out to
it. When murder is for the time licensed and the blood of the defender of
his door-stone and his hearth dabbles his gray hair on one or the other of
those sacred places, and there is no thought of punishment for the red
hand, except as God may silently mete it in the years to come.
When--saddest and worst of all,--the matron is outraged before the eyes of
her bound and blaspheming husband; and young girls, the peach-bloom of
maidenhood not yet brushed from the cheek, are torn shrieking from the arms
that would shelter them, to be so polluted and dishonored by a ruffian
touch that but yesterday would have seemed impossible to their dainty flesh
as the rising up of a fiend from the lower pit to rend the white garments
of one of the redeemed in heaven,--so polluted and dishonored that a prayer
for the mercy of death bubbles up from the lips at the last word before
resistance becomes insensibility.
This wreck of a "storm" of human license is terrible--so terrible that the
effects of the convulsions of nature, the tempest, the tornado and even the
earthquake, sink into insignificance beside them. Heaven be praised that
during the War for the Union, called by our English cousins so
"fratricidal," we have as yet known no Badajos or even a sacking of Pekin!
But only second to such scenes in horror and scarcely second in terror,
have been some of those supplied when the battle issue of the two armies
was joined near some quiet country town before lying peaceful and
inoffensive, or when military necessity has made its houses temporary
fortifications and its streets the points of desperate attacks and as
desperate defences. Then what crashing of shot and shell through houses;
what demolition of all that had before been sacred; what huddling together
of the frightened and the defenceless who never before dreamed that, though
war was in the land, it would break so near to _them_; what mad gathering
of valuables and impotent preparations for flight that would be more
dangerous than remaining; what whistling of bullets that seemed each
billeted for a defenceless breast; what thunderous discharges of cannon
that made every non-combatant limb quiver and every delicate cheek grow
bloodless; what shouts in the street and cries of terror and dismay within
doors; what trembling peeps through half-closed shutters, with an imagined
death even in every such momentary exposure; what cowerings in cellars and
hidings beneath piles of old lumber in garrets; what reports of defeat or
victory to the party that was feared or favored; what claspings of children
and ungovernable weepings of hysteria; what prayers and what execrations;
what breakings-up and destructions of all that had been, and what
revelations of the desolation that is to be!
Such, since the breaking out of the rebellion, has been the situation of
many a before-peaceful town, in many a State that once rested happily under
the shadow of the Eagle's wing. And such was the situation of one fated old
town that day, when Gregg from the north, Kilpatrick from the east and
Buford from the south, came up almost simultaneously and their forces
charged recklessly into the streets of Culpeper Court-House. The excitement
and confusion in the town at once became all that we have so feebly
endeavored to indicate--women shrieking in terror, soldiers groaning with
their wounds, children crying from fright; and blended with these and a
hundred other inharmonious sounds, the shouts in the street, the bugle
calls, the hissing of bullets, the rumble of artillery wheels, the broken
thunder of the feet of trampling horses, the occasional crash of
half-demolished houses, and the hoarse roar of the batteries as they
belched out their missiles of death and destruction. Culpeper, for a short
period, was a veritable pandemonium in miniature; and no detail can add to
the force of that brief but comprehensive description.
Near the railroad bridge spanning the little stream running nearly through
the centre of the town, the rebels had discovered a strategic point of no
little consequence, and they had posted there a battery of several pieces,
well served and annoying the advance of the Third division very materially.
The battery seemed to be placed there, not only to obstruct the advance but
to protect a train of cars just then being loaded by the rebels above, with
munitions and other articles of consequence, preparatory to a start down
the railroad southward. Battery D., Second New York Artillery, ordered for
that service, ran up its sections at a gallop, unlimbered and poured in
shot and shell, grape and canister upon the train, in such disagreeable
rapidity as sent the half loaded cars away towards the Rapidan with all the
speed that could be suddenly mustered. Still the battery at the bridge
remained, firing rapidly and cutting up the head of Kilpatrick's column in
a manner calculated to make the General gnash his teeth in indignation. The
space to the bridge was uphill, accordingly raked downward by the rebel
fire; the bridge itself was narrow and the footing for horses seriously
damaged by the railroad tracks that crossed it with their switches and
lines of slippery iron. Still it was known that that bridge must be
cleared, at any cost, or the advance through Culpeper would be a most
bloody one if accomplished at all. Just as Kilpatrick was about to order a
charge of cavalry to clear that bridge and if possible capture the pieces,
his intention seemed to be anticipated and a squadron of Stuart's cavalry
rode down and took post, dismounted, behind the battery, in position to
support, while three or four companies of rebel riflemen followed, ready to
do deadly execution with their pieces against any troops attempting to
charge, and to fall upon that force with resistless fury at the moment of
their weakness, if the guns should be ridden over! No pleasant prospect,
as the Sussex raider thought, and for a moment he apparently wavered in
intention, while the battery played heavily and every instant saw one or
more of his best troopers biting the dust of the causeway below.
But this momentary indecision, whether or not it would have continued much
longer of his own volition, was not destined to do so when the will of
another came into play. A horseman dashed rapidly over to the spot where
Kilpatrick was momentarily halted, from Pleasanton a few hundreds of yards
away, running a fearful gauntlet of the enemy's fire, as he did so, from a
battery that had just wheeled into position and opened down a narrow
cross-street to the left,--spoke a few quick words to the General and then
awaited the movement that was to follow. And it was not long that he or the
commander who sent him needed to wait. The command had been: "Clear that
bridge and take the battery, at all hazards!" and Kilpatrick only needed
that support of his own judgment to order a charge which he would have been
best pleased, if he could only have gone back to be a Colonel for a few
moments, to lead in person. His eye rolled questioningly over the Third for
a moment, and then the rapid words of command followed. Only a certain
number of cavalry could be employed upon that dangerous service, without
making the carnage greater by throwing the troopers literally in the way of
each other; and it was the Second New York, Harris Light Guard, a troop
which had already won honor on every field touched by the hoofs of their
horses,--called out for that quick, sharp, perilous duty that every
squadron in the command probably coveted.
The gallant Second received the order with loud cheers that came nigh to
imitating the well-known rebel fox-hunting yell, for some of their best
fellows had fallen ingloriously and the human tiger was not only unchained
but set on horseback. They formed column by fours with a rapidity which
told of the fierce hunger of conflict; and when the bugles rang out the
charge, the dusty and smoke-stained riders returned their now-useless
carbines to their slings, drew sabres, and driving their spurs rowel deep
into the flanks of horses that seemed almost as anxious as themselves,
dashed forward towards the bridge. Their ringing shouts did not cease as
they galloped on, and their sword-blades, if they grew thinner in number,
still gleamed as brightly as ever in the sunlight, as they measured that
narrow but fatal space, while round after round of grape and canister,
carbine-bullets, musket-balls and rifle-shots, burst into their faces and
mowed down their flanks as they swept on. Saddles were emptied, horses went
down with cries of pain more fearful than any that man can utter, and brave
men went headlong into the dust from which they would never rise again in
life. But the progress of the charging squadron did not seem to be delayed
a moment. The rebel gunners of the battery were reloading for yet one more
discharge, when, just in the midst of that operation, over the bridge and
upon them burst the head of that column which seemed as if nothing in the
way of human missiles had power to stay it. Before the gray and begrimed
cannoniers could withdraw their rammers the troopers were in their midst.
Then followed that fierce cutting and thrusting of artillery swords and
cavalry sabres, that interchange of revolver-shots and crushing of human
bones under the feet of trampling horses, incident to the taking of any
battery that is sharply attacked and bravely defended. A little of this,
but still under heavy fire from behind,--and the guns were captured, with
all their men and horses left alive.
And yet the work of the Second New York in that quarter was by no means
finished. That steady and murderous fire continued from up the street, as
the infantry and the dismounted cavalry of the support fell back; and it
was only by one more sweeping charge that the annoyance could be removed.
Scarcely any one knew whence came the voice that ordered that second
charge, but the blood of the troopers was up and they made it gallantly. In
three minutes thereafter a broken and flying mass, far up the street, was
all that remained of the supporting force; but a fearfully diminished
number of the cavalrymen rode back to assist in sending the captured
battery to the rear. We shall have occasion, presently, to know something
more of these two charges, undoubtedly the most spirited events of a day on
which all the Union troops and many of the rebels reflected honor upon the
causes they supported.
Immediately after the clearing of the bridge a gallant dash was made by
Gen. Custer, the "boy general with the golden-locks" (the man who has made
a solemn vow, it is said, never to shorten those locks until he rides
victoriously into Richmond) leading the charge in person, with portions of
the First Vermont and First Michigan cavalry, against a section of a
battery, stationed nearly a quarter of a mile beyond the bridge and within
a hundred or two yards of the front of Stuart's main body. These pieces
were worked by as obstinate a set of gray-backs as ever rammed home a rebel
cartridge; and the gunners, defiant of Custer's detour to the left to
escape a direct raking fire, and apparently relying upon the main body
lying so near them, continued to load and fire until the federal leader and
his men were literally on the top of the pieces and fairly riding them
under foot. Guns and caissons were taken, while the support relied upon
seemed to be so paralyzed by the daring of the whole affair as scarcely to
offer any resistance,--the horses hitched to the pieces, the guns limbered
up, and the rebel gunners even forced to mount and drive their lost cannon
to join the others in the rear!
A considerable rebel force of cavalry, artillery and infantry were by this
time in full retreat below the town, along the line of the Orange and
Alexandria railroad; and the Fifth New York cavalry were sent in pursuit.
The gallant troopers of the Fifth charged at a gallop the moment they came
within sweeping distance of the foe, but the high embankment of the road
broke the charge, and the detour necessary to make a more advantageous
approach deprived the gallant boys of their half-won laurels and allowed
the flying enemy to escape.
While Kilpatrick was thus engaged, Buford and Gregg, with the First and
Second, had been by no means idle. Dashing into the town, each from his
chosen direction, the troopers of each leaped barricades and drove the
rebels before them wherever encountered upon open ground; and a part of the
force of either division, dismounted, skirmished from corner to corner and
dislodged the sharp-shooters one by one from all their holes and
hiding-places. Sometimes stubbornly resisted, at others seeming to have no
foe worthy of their steel, the three divisions won their way through the
old town; and the cavalry of Stuart, up to that time so often declared
invincible, were at last driven pell-mell out of Culpeper and back to the
momentary refuge of Pony Mountain. Even there they were again dislodged,
the First Michigan cavalry accomplishing a feat which might have surprised
even Halstead Rowan of this chronicle--routing a whole brigade by charging
up a hill so steep that some of the riders slipped backwards over the tails
of their horses, their saddles bearing them company!
The town of Culpeper was finally occupied at one o'clock, P. M.; and not
many hours after the ridge behind it and Pony Mountain were in the hands of
the dashing cavalrymen. Retreating towards the Rapidan, they were pursued
towards Raccoon Ford on the left and centre by Buford and Kilpatrick with
the First and Third divisions, while Gregg, with the Second, pushed a heavy
Rebel force before him to Rapidan Station. By nightfall the rebels had been
driven to the north bank of the Rapidan, where both forces bivouacked that
night in line of battle.
Monday morning saw the recommencement of hostilities and the retreat of the
rebels to the south side of the river, leaving the federal forces to hold
the country between the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, with all the
strategic points therein, Culpeper included. Stuart, it was said, had
often boasted that "no Yankee force could drive _him_ from Culpeper!" and
if such a boast was really made and afterwards so signally disproved by the
"horde of Yankee tailors on horseback," the fact only furnishes one more
additional proof to Benedick's declaration that he would live and die a
bachelor, so soon followed by his marriage with Beatrice,--that humanity is
very uncertain and that human calculations are fallible to a degree painful
to contemplate!
Such were the general features of the crossing of the Rappahannock and the
Battle of Culpeper, one of the sharpest cavalry affairs of the war, and
perhaps more important as illustrating the reliability to which the Union
horse had attained from a beginning little less than contemptible, than
from the mere military advantage gained by the movement. It now becomes
necessary to descend to a few particulars connected with the event of the
day, and briefly to trace the influence on the fortunes of some of the
leading characters in this narration, exercised by the advance of General
Pleasanton and his dashing brigadiers.
It has been seen that at a certain period of that day the division of
Kilpatrick was held temporarily in check by the rebel battery posted at the
railroad-bridge, and that for a moment the General, aware of the necessity
of removing the obstruction if the direct advance through Culpeper was to
be continued, yet hesitated in ordering the charge which must be made in
the face of such overwhelming difficulty, until a peremptory direction from
Pleasanton left him no option in the matter. And it is to personal
movements of that particular period that attention must at this moment be
directed.
Just when he made the discovery through his field glass of the havoc being
wrought by the rebel battery and the momentary hesitation, Pleasanton, who
did not happen to be in the best of humors with reference to it, was placed
in the same situation in which Wellington for a few moments found himself
on the day of Waterloo, when he employed the button-bagman with the blue
umbrella under his arm, to carry some important orders. He was, in short,
out of aide-de-camps. One by one they had been sent away to different
points, and it so chanced, just then, that none had returned. Something
very much like an oath muttered between the lips of the impatient veteran
of forty, and one exclamation came out so that there was no difficulty in
recognizing it:
"Nobody here when everybody is worst wanted! I wish the d--l had the whole
pack of them!"
"Perhaps _I_ can do what you wish, General."
The words came from a young man in civilian's dress--gray pants and
broad-brimmed felt hat, but with a military suspicion in his coat of light
blue flannel,--who stood very near the commander, his horse's bridle over
arm and a large field glass in hand, and who had apparently been scanning
with much interest a scene of blood in which it was neither his duty nor
his disposition to take part.
"You?" and the veteran turned upon him, with something very like a laugh on
his lips. "You? Humph! Do you know what I want?"
"Some one to carry an order, I suppose!"
"Exactly! Over that causeway, to Kilpatrick at the bridge. Do you see how
that flanking battery to the left is raking every thing, and the one in
front is throwing beyond Kil's position? The chances are about even that
the man who starts never gets there! Now do you wish to go?"
"No objection on that account!" was the reply of the young man, who seemed
to be on terms of very easy intimacy with the General, as indeed he was,--a
privileged visitor, who had accompanied him in the advance, but eminently
"unattached" and thus far neither fighting nor expected to fight.
"The d--l you haven't! Well, ----, that is certainly cool, for _you_! Never
mind--if you like a little personal taste of what war really is, take
this," and he scribbled a few words on a slip of paper on his raised
knee--"take this and get it to Kilpatrick as soon as you can. If you do not
come back again, I shall send word to your family."
"Oh, yes, thank you, General; but I shall come back again!" He had swung
himself into the saddle of his gray, while Pleasanton was writing, and the
veteran held the paper for one instant in his hand and looked into his face
with a strange interest. What he saw there seemed to satisfy him, and he
handed the paper with a nod. The volunteer aide-de-camp received it with a
bow, and the next moment was flying towards the front of the Third, riding
splendidly, running the gauntlet that has before been suggested, but
untouched, and delivering his orders in very quick time and at emphatically
the right moment. The important movement which immediately followed has
already been narrated, in its bearing on the result of the day; but there
were other effects not less important when personal destinies are taken
into the account.
Gregg, who espied something on the right, that was likely to be hidden from
Kilpatrick until it discovered itself by unpleasant consequences, had sent
over an aide with a word of warning; and nearly at the same moment when the
volunteer messenger from Pleasanton reached the brigadier, the officer from
Gregg rode rapidly up from his direction. Both delivered their messages in
a breath, and then both fell back at a gesture from the General. The aide
from Gregg was turning his horse to ride back again to his post, when he
caught a glance at the somewhat strangely attired man who had come in from
Pleasanton. From his lower garments that glance naturally went up to his
hat, and thence, by an equally natural movement, to his face. The dark
brows of the officer bent darker in an instant, and perhaps there was that
in his gaze which the other _felt_, (there are those who assert that such
things are possible), for the next instant there was an answering glance
and another pair of brows were knitted not less decidedly. Those two men
were serving (more or less) in the same cause, but they looked as little as
possible like two warm-hearted comrades in arms--much more as if they would
have been delighted to take each other by the throat and mutually exert
that gentle pressure calculated to expel a life or two!
Pleasanton was just calling out the Second to take the battery and clear
the bridge. While he was doing so, the evil genius of one of those men
drove them into collision. The messenger from Gregg, who wore the
shoulder-straps and other accoutrements of a Captain on staff service, but
with a cavalry sabre at his belt,--after the pause of a moment and while
the other was still fixedly regarding him, spurred his horse close up to
the side of the gray ridden by the civilian, and accosted him in a tone and
with a general manner that he seemed to take no pains to render amiable:
"What are _you_ doing here?"
"On staff service, Captain. How is your head?" was the reply, with quite as
much of sneer in the tone as the other had displayed of arrogance.
"What do you call yourself just now?--'Horace Townsend' still?" was the
Captain's next inquiry.
"To most others, yes: to you, Captain Hector Coles, just now, I am--" and
he bent his mouth so close to the ear of the other that he could have no
difficulty in hearing him, though he spoke the last words in a hoarse
whisper that has even escaped _us_!
"I thought so, all the while!" was the reply, an expression of malignant
joy crossing the face. "The same infernal coward--I knew it!"
The face of the man who had been Horace Townsend seemed convulsed by a
spasm of mortal agony the instant after, but it gave place almost as
quickly to an expression of set, deadly anger, the eyes blazing and the
cheeks livid. He leaned close to the Captain and even grasped his arm as if
to make sure that he should not get away before he had finished his whole
sentence.
"Captain Hector Coles," he said, still in the same low, hoarse voice, but
so near that the other could easily hear--"you called me the same name five
or six weeks ago at the Crawford House, and I am afraid that I _proved_
that it belonged to _you_!"
"I told you that I would kill you some day for that impertinence, and I
_will_!" was the reply of the Captain, terrible anger in his face.
"No--if you kill me at all, and I do not think you will,--it will be
because you believe me, with good reason, something more of a favorite with
a lady whose name it is not necessary to mention, than yourself!"
This insulting boast of preference and allusion to Margaret Hayley were
quite as well understood as they needed to be. There was another livid
cheek, just then, and a fierce answering fire in the eye which told how
deeply the barb rankled. But before the Captain could speak, to utter words
that must have been equally bitter and blasphemous, the civilian continued:
"You challenged me for what I said at the White Mountains, Captain Hector
Coles--you man with a swimming in the head! I refused your challenge then,
but I accept it now. If you are not the coward you called _me_, you will
fight me here and instantly!"
"Here and now?" These were all the words that the surprised and possibly
horrified Captain could utter.
"Exactly!" was the reply, the voice still low and hoarse but rapid and
without one indication of tremor. "I told you that I was on staff service.
So I am. I have just brought General Kilpatrick orders from General
Pleasanton to clear that bridge and take the battery yonder that is doing
us so much damage. Ah! by George--there goes another of our best fellows!"
This as a round shot came tearing into the ranks just ahead, killing one of
the troopers and his horse. Then he resumed, in the same low rapid tone:
"You see those New York boys forming there, to do the work. Ride with them
and with _me_, if you DARE, Captain Hector Coles, and see who goes
furthest! That is my duel!"
"_I?_--I am on staff duty--not a mere cavalryman!" There was hesitation in
the voice and deadly pallor on the cheek: the civilian heard the one and
saw the other.
"Refuse to go with me and fight out our quarrel in that manner," the
excited voice went on, "and by the God who made us both, the whole army
shall know who is the coward! More--" and again his mouth was very near to
the ear of the other--"_she_ shall know it!"
There are spells by which the fiend can always be raised, without much
doubt, however troublesome it may be to find any means by which to lay him
afterwards. To Captain Hector Coles there was one conjuration irresistible,
and that had been used in the present instance. Shame before the whole army
was nothing--it may be doubted, in fact, whether he had not known something
of that infliction before at least a portion of the army, and survived it
without difficulty. But shame before Margaret Hayley, after the boasts he
had used, the underrating of others in which he had indulged, and the
worship of physical courage which he knew to be actually a foible in her
nature?--no, that was not to be thought of for one moment! Better wounds or
death, out of the way of both which he had before so skilfully kept, than
that! This reflection did not occupy many seconds, and his heavy brow was
as black as thunder as he turned short round in the saddle and almost
hissed at his tempter:
"Come on, then, fool as well as coward, and see how long before I will
teach you a lesson!"
Horace Townsend--as he must still be called--did not say another word in
reply. The Light Guard were by that time formed for the charge, and he
merely said, in the hearing of all:
"Come--the Captain and I are going to take a ride with the boys! Who will
lend me a sword?"
The strange demand for a moment drew general attention to him, and among
other regards that of Kilpatrick. The idea of a civilian throwing himself
into such a charge seemed to strike him at once, and before one of the
orderlies could draw out his weapon and present it, the General had handed
his, with the words:
"Here is mine!--Mind that you bring it back again!"
Kilpatrick unslung his sword and held up the scabbard with the blade, but
the new volunteer merely drew out the blade with a bow and driving spurs
into his gray dashed forward to the head of the column, Captain Hector
Coles close beside him. Perhaps no two men ever went into battle side by
side, with precisely the same relative feelings, since carving up men with
the broadsword became a profession. Neither, it seems almost certain, had
the least thought of devotion to the country, of hatred to the rebellion,
or even of _esprit du corps_, moving him to the contest. The one was intent
upon revenging an insult received long before, by getting the other killed
in proving him a coward,--and may have had another but still personal
motive: that other was equally anxious to keep up his own reputation in the
eyes of a woman, and to get removed out of his way a man whom he believed
to be a rival, but who was really no more in his way than Shakspeare's
nobody who "died a' Wednesday." Both half blind with rage and hate, and
both, therefore--let the truth be told--bad soldiers! Both following a
petty whim or facing death as a mere experiment, and neither with the most
distant thought of the fate that rode close behind, to protect or to slay,
and each alike inevitably!
Just then the bugle rang out, the commands "Column forward! Trot, march!
Gallop, march! Charge!" rang out in quick succession, and away dashed the
Second, with the results that have already been foreshadowed in the general
account of the movement. But though armies and the various smaller bodies
that form armies, are great aggregates of manhood, they are something more;
and who can measure, in reading an account of that bridge so gallantly
carried, that attack so splendidly repulsed, or that point of battle held
against every odds, with the conclusion--"Our loss was only two hundred [or
two thousand], in killed and wounded,"--who can measure, we ask, the amount
of personal suffering involved in that movement and its result?--who can
form any guess at the variety of personal adventure, depression,
elevation, hope, fear, delirious joy and maddening horror, going to make up
that event spoken of so flippantly as one great total?
The rebel battery beyond the bridge had been throwing round shot and shell,
as has already been observed, reaching far beyond Kilpatrick's front and
doing heavy damage. It was inevitable that as the advance of the attacking
column was seen, that fire should be redoubled. And before they had crossed
half the intervening distance the rain of bullets from the supporting rebel
riflemen began to blend with the fall of heavier projectiles, making a very
storm of destructive missiles, more difficult for horsemen to breast than
any opposing charge of their own weight could have been, splitting heads,
crashing out brains, boring bodies full of holes from which the blood and
the life went out together, and hurling horses and riders to the ground
with such frequency that wounded men had their little remaining breath
trampled out by their own comrades and every fallen animal formed a
temporary barricade over which another fell and became disabled. Through
the air around them rang the scream of shell and the shrill whistle of
bullets, blended with the inevitable cry that rose as some bullet found a
fatal mark, and the roar of agony when a horse was hurled desperately
wounded and yet living to the ground. The shout with which the troopers had
at first broken into their charge, did not die away; and it did not cease,
in fact, until the command had done its work--until the battery was taken
and the supports scattered by the supplementary onset; but with what sounds
it was blent before the cavalrymen reached the rebel guns, only those who
have listened to the same horrible confusion of noises can form the most
distant idea. To all others the attempt at description must be as vague as
the thought of Armageddon or the Day of Falling Mountains!
If those sights and sounds cannot be described, who shall describe the
sensations of those who then for the first time rode point-blank into the
very face of death? Not we, certainly. The very man who has experienced
them can tell no more, one hour after, of what existed at the time, than
one moment's rift in a drifting cloud reveals of the starlit heaven above.
What Captain Hector Coles really felt when first meeting that iron and
leaden storm so unlike the usual accompaniments of his "staff service," may
be guessed but can never be known. He rode on gallantly, at least for a
time: that was quite enough.
What the _ci-devant_ Horace Townsend experienced may be easily enough
indicated, and in one word--_madness_. He was stark, raving mad! The anger
felt a few moments before; the novelty of the position; the motion of a
horse that bore him nobly: the sword, that was no holiday weapon but a
thing of might and death, clasped by his unaccustomed but nervous hand; the
shouts of fierce bravery, the groans of anguish and the scream of missiles;
above all, the rousing for the first time of that human tiger which sleeps
within most of us until the fit moment of awakening comes--no witches'
cauldron on a blasted heath ever brewed such a mixture to craze a human
brain, as that he was so suddenly drinking; and it may be said that his
rational self knew nothing of what followed. He was riding on--it might
have been on horseback on the solid earth, in a fiery chariot through the
air, or on the crest of a storm-wave at sea--he could have formed no idea
which. When he came within striking distance of the foe, he was swinging
that heavy sword of Kilpatrick's, at something, everything, he knew not
what, that seemed to stand in his way. Nothing appeared to hurt him,
nothing to stop him or the gallant gray he rode. There was a red mist over
his eyes, and the thunder of twenty judgments rang in his ears: he knew no
more. He was mad, stark mad--so drunk with the wine of human blood and the
fiendish joy of battle, that the powers of heaven might have looked down in
pity on him as upon a new and better developed descendant of the original
Cain, smiting all his brothers to a death that could not satisfy the hot
thirst of his evil soul.
Only once he seemed to be for a moment clearly conscious. It was when they
rode full upon the battery, trampling down men and horses and sabring every
thing that had life, but under a fire which seemed to rain from the opened
windows of hell. He saw a man who had thus far kept at his side, recoil,
rein his horse backward, leap over the fallen friends and foes who barred
his flight, and dash down the track towards the bridge. He saw, and knew
Captain Hector Coles; and in his madness he had reason enough left to shout
"Aha! Coward! Coward!" and then the red mist closed again over his eyes and
he fought on. He did not see what followed before the flying man reached
the bridge--the fragment of a shell that struck him in the back and
literally tore him in pieces, horse and rider going down and lying stone
dead together.
He could not have told, under oath, who gave the command for that
supplemental charge upon the supporting force. And yet _his_ tongue uttered
it, and he was in the front, still waving his sword through the red mist
and letting it fall with demoniac force upon every thing that stood in his
way,--when the last hope of the rebels was thus broken. He had known but
little, most of the time: after that he knew literally nothing except that
his fierce joy had turned to pain. As if through miles of forest he heard
the notes of the bugles sounding the recall; and he had a dim consciousness
of hearing the soldiers speaking of him in words that would have given him
great pleasure had he been alive to appreciate them! Then he was back at
the bridge. Kilpatrick was there, somebody cheered, and the General held
out his hand to him. He tried to hand him back the sword that had done such
good service, said: "I have brought it--back--" and spoke no more. Then and
only then, as he fell from his blown and beaten gray, they knew that his
first charge had a likelihood of being his last--that a Minie bullet,
received so long before that some of the blood lay dried upon his coat,
had passed through him from breast to back,--thank God not from back to
breast!--so near the heart that even the surgeon could not say whether it
had touched or missed it!