SOUTHERN SOLDIER STORIES
[Illustration]
[Illustration: J. E. B. STUART--THE CAVALIER.]
Southern Soldier Stories
By
George Cary Eggleston
Author of “A Rebel’s Recollections,” etc., etc.
With Illustrations by R. F. Zogbaum
New York
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1898
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1898,
By The Macmillan Company.
_Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A._
TO “JOE”
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE “JOE” SO OFTEN
MENTIONED IN THESE STORIES
HE WAS MY LOVED COMRADE IN ARMS, AND A
SHARER IN ALL MY WAR EXPERIENCES
HE IS NOW
Dr. Joseph W. Eggleston
OF RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
PREFACE
The use of the first personal pronoun singular in any of these stories
does not of necessity mean that the author had anything to do with the
events chronicled.
“I tell the story as ’twas told to me.”
CONTENTS
PAGE
How Battles are Fought 1
Joe 7
Around the Camp-fire 11
An Unfinished Fight 18
A Family that had no Luck 22
William 25
A Cradle Captain 29
Who is Russell? 31
“Juanita” 48
Scruggs 52
Joe on Horseback 55
A Rather Bad Night 57
The Women of Petersburg 70
Ham Seay 74
Old Jones’s Dash 76
A Woman’s Hair 80
A Midnight Crime 85
A Little Rebel 90
Twenty-one 97
A Beef Episode 104
Bernard Poland’s Prophecy 107
A Breach of Etiquette 121
The Lady of the Green Blind 124
Youngblood’s Last Morning 128
Billy Goodwin 133
Manassas 137
My Last Night on Picket 143
Griffith’s Continued Story 147
A Cheerful Supper of Cheers 155
How the Tar Heels Stuck 157
“Little Lamkin’s Battery” 159
Curry 171
Gun-boats 175
Two Minutes 179
Si Tucker--Coward and Hero 182
War as a Therapeutic Agent 188
“Notes on Cold Harbor” 191
A Plantation Heroine 203
Two Incidents in Contrast 206
How the Sergeant-major told the Truth 210
Two Gentlemen at Petersburg 215
Old Jones and the Huckster 220
A Dead Man’s Message 223
A Woman’s Last Word 225
An Incomplete Story 228
Random Facts 231
My Friend Phil 237
ILLUSTRATIONS
J. E. B. Stuart--The Cavalier _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“Get up here and do your duty” 30
A Good-bye to a Friend 56
She was singing “Dixie” 91
The last that was seen of Bernard Poland 119
A Dead Man’s Message 224
SOUTHERN SOLDIER STORIES
HOW BATTLES ARE FOUGHT
_A PREFATORY EXPLANATION FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE WHO KNOW NOTHING
ABOUT THE MATTER_
When squads or scouting parties meet each other, they either fight in
an irregular fashion or they run away.
With a systematic battle it is different.
Before a systematic battle, one army selects some place at which to
resist the advance of the other.
The advancing army usually cannot leave the other aside and go on by
another route to the capital city which it wants to reach, because, if
it did, the army left aside would quickly destroy what is called the
advancing army’s “communications.”
To destroy these communications would be to cut off supplies of food,
ammunition, and everything else necessary to an army.
The army which takes the defensive selects some point that can be most
easily defended,--some point where a river or a creek, or a line of
hills, or something else, serves to give it the advantage in a fight.
The enemy must either attack that army there, and drive it out of its
position, or it must “flank” it out, if it is itself to go forward.
To “flank” an army out of position is not merely to pass it by, which,
as explained above, might be dangerous, but to seize upon some point or
some road, the possession of which will compel that army to retire.
Thus, when General Lee could not be driven out of his works at
Fredericksburg by direct attack, General Hooker marched his army up
the river, and by crossing there placed himself nearer Richmond than
General Lee was. This compelled General Lee to abandon his position at
Fredericksburg, and to meet General Hooker in the open field; otherwise
there would have been nothing to prevent General Hooker from going to
Richmond, with a part of his greatly superior force, leaving the rest
of it to check any operations Lee might have undertaken against his
communications.
It is in some such fashion as this that every battle is brought about.
One side is ever trying to get somewhere, and the other side is ever
trying to prevent it from doing so. Incidentally, each army is trying
to destroy the other.
When one army has planted itself in a position of its choice, and the
other advances to attack it, this is what happens:--
The army that is standing still throws out lines of pickets in front to
watch for the enemy’s advance and report it.
The enemy, as he advances, also throws out a cloud of skirmishers to
“feel” of the position and avoid traps and ambushes.
A line of battle often extends over several miles in length, covering
all available ground for attack or defence.
Before the advancing general can determine against what part of his
adversary’s line to hurl his heaviest battalions, he must study the
conditions along that line; namely, by means of his skirmishers.
In the same way the general who is awaiting attack tries to discover
through his skirmishers what his enemy’s plan of battle is, and at what
points he most needs to concentrate his own men.
While awaiting this information he posts his men--cavalry, artillery,
and infantry--wherever he thinks they will be most useful, having
reference all the time to their rapid movement during the battle from
one part of the line to another, as occasion may demand.
He also holds a considerable part of his army “in reserve.” That is to
say, he stations it at points a little in rear of the line of battle,
from which he can order all or any part of it to any point where
strength may be needed.
In a great battle, involving large bodies of troops, each corps or
division commander must do in a smaller way what the general-in-chief
does on a larger scale. Each has charge of the battle on a certain part
of the line. Each must take care of things within his own jurisdiction,
and be ready at a moment’s notice to respond to the demand of the
commanding general for troops with which to help out elsewhere.
These are the generalities. Let us now come to the battle itself.
When the skirmishers of the advancing army meet the skirmishers of the
resisting army, there is apt to be some pretty hot fighting for a time,
and sometimes the artillery is considerably involved in it. But this is
not the real thing; it is a mere preliminary to the actual battle.
The army that is standing on the defensive holds its lines in
position--every battery placed where it will do the most good, and
every infantryman lying down and taking the utmost advantage of every
tree stump, log, or inequality of the ground, to protect himself as
much as possible.
The men on horseback are either in front with the skirmishers, minutely
observing the strength and movements of the enemy, or, having finished
that work, are thrown out at the two ends of the lines, called
“flanks,” to watch there for possible movements of the enemy that might
be otherwise unobserved. They are within call of any part of the line
where need of them may arise.
While the skirmishers are doing their work, the heaviest strain of war
falls on the nerves of the men in line of battle.
They have nothing to do but wait.
They wait with the certain knowledge that in a few minutes the
advancing army will throw men forward, and thus convert its skirmish
line into a line of attack; while on their own side they know that
their skirmish line, after making all of discovery that temporary
resistance can accomplish, will fall back, and that then the crucial
conflict will begin.
Then comes the uproar of battle,--the dust, the blood, the advance,
the retreat, the shock of arms, the murderous volleys of the infantry,
the thunder storm of artillery; in short, the final desperate
conflict of determined men for the mastery, all of them directed by
cool-headed commanders, sitting on their horses at points of vantage
for observation, and directing a reinforcement here, a withdrawal of
men there, the hurrying of artillery to one point, an onset of cavalry
at another, and at a critical moment an up-and-at-them charge with the
bayonets. That usually ends matters one way or the other at the point
involved. For only two or three times in any war do men with fixed
bayonets on one side actually meet in physical shock men armed with
fixed bayonets on the other.
Wherever there is advantage on either side, the general commanding
that side throws troops forward in as heavy masses as possible to make
the most of it. If one line or the other be broken, every conceivable
effort is made to convert the breach into victory. And if victory
comes, the cavalry thunder forward in pursuit and in an endeavor to
convert the enemy’s defeat into rout.
This is only a general description. I hope that no old soldier on
either side will read it. It is not intended for such as they. It is
written _virginibus puerisque_, and for other people who don’t know
anything about the subject. It is printed here in the hope that it may
enable such persons a little better to understand these stories of
strenuous conflict.
JOE
Joe was very much in earnest at Pocotaligo, South Carolina, where a
great little battle was fought on the 22d of October, 1862.
That is to say, Joe was not quite seventeen years old, was an
enthusiastic soldier, and was as hot headed as a boy well can be.
We had two batteries and a few companies of mounted riflemen--three
hundred and fifty-one men all told--to oppose the advance of five
thousand. We had only the nature of the country, the impassability
of the marshes, and the long high causeways to enable us to make any
resistance at all.
Before the battle of Pocotaligo proper began, we went two miles below
to Yemassee and there made a stand of half an hour.
Our battery, numbering fifty-four men, received the brunt of the attack.
Joe had command of a gun.
His men fell like weeds before a scythe. Presently he found himself
with only three men left with whom to work a gun.
The other battery was that of Captain Elliot of South Carolina; and
Captain Elliot had just been designated Chief of Artillery. Elliot’s
battery was really not in action at all. Joe seeing Captain Elliot,
and being himself full of the enthusiasm which insists upon getting
things done, appealed to the Chief of Artillery for the loan of some
cannoneers with whom to work his gun more effectively. Captain Elliot
declined. Thereupon Joe broke into a volley of vituperation, calling
the captain and his battery cowards, and by other pet names not here to
be reported.
I, being Joe’s immediate chief, as well as his elder brother, commanded
him to silence and ordered him back to his gun. There he stood for
fifteen minutes astride a dead man and pulling the lanyard himself. At
the end of that time we were ordered to retire to Pocotaligo.
Joe was flushed, powder grimed, and very angry; so angry that even
I came in for a part of his displeasure. When I asked him, in order
that I might make report for the section, how many shots he had fired,
he blazed out at me: “How do I know? I’ve been killing Yankees, not
counting shots.”
“How many rounds have you left in your limber-chest, Joe?” I asked.
He turned up the lid of the chest, and replied: “Five.”
“And the chest had fifty, hadn’t it, when you went into action?”
“Of course.”
“Then you fired forty-five, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I suppose so, I don’t know! Confound these technicalities, anyhow!
I’m _fighting_, not counting! Do your own arithmetic!”
It wasn’t a very subordinate speech for a sergeant to make to the
commander of his section, but Joe was my brother, and I loved him.
At Pocotaligo he fought his gun with superb devotion and effect. But he
remained mad all over and clear through till two o’clock that night. At
that hour I was able to persuade him that he had been indiscreet in his
remarks to the Chief of Artillery.
“Maybe I was,” he said, grasping my hand; “but you’re not to worry, old
fellow; I’ll stand the consequences, and you’re the best that ever was.”
Nevertheless I did worry, knowing that such an offence was punishable
without limit in the discretion of a court-martial. It was scarcely
sunrise the next morning when I appeared at Captain Elliot’s
headquarters. I had ridden for half an hour, I suppose, my mind all
the time recalling a certain military execution I had seen; but this
morning I imagined Joe in the rôle of victim. I had not slept, of
course, and my nerves were all on edge.
I entered headquarters with a degree of trepidation which I had never
felt before.
Captain Elliot was performing his ablutions as well as he could, with a
big gourd for basin. He nodded and spoke with his head in the towel.
“Good fight, wasn’t it? We have a lot of those fellows to bury this
morning. Pretty good bag for three hundred and fifty-one of us, and it
was mainly your battery’s cannister that did it.”
I changed feet and said, “Y--e--s.”
I thought to myself that that was about the way _I_ should take to “let
a man down easy” in a hard case.
The captain carefully removed the soap from his ears, then turning to
me said: “That’s a _fighter_, that brother of yours.”
“Yes,” I replied; “but, captain, he is very young, very
enthusiastic, and very hot-tempered; I hope--I hope you’ll
overlook--his--er--intemperateness and--”
“THUNDER, MAN, DO YOU SUPPOSE I’VE GOT ANY GRUDGE AGAINST A FELLOW THAT
FIGHTS LIKE THAT?” roared the gallant captain.
As I rode back through the woods, it seemed to me about the brightest
October morning that I had ever seen, even in that superb Carolina
climate.
AROUND THE CAMP-FIRE
It was a kind of off-night, the 23d of October, 1862, twenty-four hours
after the battle of Pocotaligo, on the South Carolina coast.
We had to stop over there until morning, because the creek was out of
its banks, and we couldn’t get across without daylight. There were only
about a dozen of us, and we had to build a camp-fire under the trees.
After supper we fell to talking, and naturally we talked of war things.
There wasn’t anything else to talk about then.
There was the long-legged mountaineer, with the deep voice, and the
drawl in his speech which aided the suggestion that he kept his voice
in his boots and had to pump it up when anything was to be said.
Opposite him was the alert, rapid-speaking fellow, who had come in as a
conscript and had made a superb volunteer,--a fellow who had an opinion
ready made on every subject that could be mentioned, and who was
accustomed to wind up most conversations with a remark so philosophical
as to seem strangely out of keeping with the rest of the inconsequent
things that he had said. Then there were the two mountaineers who
never said anything because they never had anything to say. They had
reached that point of intellectual development where the theory is
accepted that there ought to be thought behind every utterance; and
under this misapprehension they abstained from utterance.
Joe was there, but Joe wasn’t talking that night. Joe was surly and
sullen. He had had to kill his horse at Pocotaligo the day before, and
all the honors he had harvested from that action had not reconciled
him to the loss. The new horse he had drawn was, in his opinion, “a
beast.” Of course all horses are beasts, but that isn’t precisely what
Joe meant. Besides, he had received a letter from his sweetheart just
before we left camp,--she’s his wife now, and the mother of his dozen
or more children,--in which that young woman had expressed doubts as
to whether, after all, he was precisely the kind of man to whom she
ought to “give her life.” Joe was only seventeen years of age at that
time, and he minded little things like that. Still again, Joe had the
toothache. Besides that, we were hungry after our exceedingly scant
meal of roasted sweet potatoes. Besides that, it was raining.
All the circumstances contributed to make us introspective and
psychological in our conversation.
The long-legged mountaineer with the deep voice was telling some
entirely inconsequent story about somebody who wasn’t known to any of
us, and none of us was listening. After a while he said: “He was that
sort of a feller that never felt fear in his life.”
From Joe: “There never was any such fellow.”
The long mountaineer: “Well, that’s what he _said_, anyhow.”
From Joe: “He lied, then.”
“Well,” continued the long-legged mountaineer, “that’s what he said,
and he sort o’ lived up to it. If he had any fear, he didn’t show it
till that time I was tellin’ you about, when he went all to pieces and
showed the white feather.”
“There,” growled Joe, “what did I tell you? He was lying all the time.”
The postscript philosopher on the other side of the fire broke in,
saying: “Well, maybe his breakfast went bad on him that morning. An
overdone egg would make a coward out of the Duke of Wellington.”
Joe made the general reflection that “some people locate their courage
in their transverse colons.”
“What’s a transverse colon?” asked one of the mountaineers. Joe got up,
stretched himself, and made no answer. Perhaps none was expected.
“Well,” asked the long-legged mountaineer, “ain’t they people that
don’t feel no fear?”
The glib little fellow quickly responded: “Let’s find out. Let’s hold
an experience meeting. I suppose we’re a pretty fairly representative
body, and I move that each fellow tells honestly how he feels when he
is going into battle; for instance, when the skirmishers are at work
in front, and we know that the next two minutes will bring on the
business.”
“Infernally bad,” growled Joe; “and anybody that pretends to feel
otherwise lies.”
The postscript philosopher replied: “I never saw _you_ show any fear,
Joe.”
“That’s because I’m too big a coward to show it,” said Joe.
Even the two reticent mountaineers understood that.
One of them was moved to break the silence. At last he had, if not a
thought, yet an emotion to stand sponsor for utterance.
“_I_ always feel,” said he, “as though the squegees had took hold of
my knees. There ain’t anything of me for about a minute--exceptin’ a
spot in the small of my back. I always wish I was a woman or a baby, or
dead or something like that. After a while I git holt of myself and I
says to myself, ‘Bill, you’ve got to stand up to the rack, fodder or no
fodder.’ After that it all comes sort of easy like, you know, because
the firin’ begins, and after the firin’ begins you’re doin’ somethin’,
you see, and when you’re fightin’ like, things don’t seem so bad. I
s’pose you’ve all _noticed_ that.”
From Joe: “In all the works on psychology it has been recognized as
a universal principle, that the mind when occupied with a superior
consideration is able to free itself from considerations of a lesser
sort.”
The mountaineer looked at him helplessly and said nothing.
The postscript philosopher began: “I shall never forget my first
battle. It wasn’t much of a battle either, but it was lively while it
lasted. Unfortunately for me it was one of those fights where you have
to wait for the enemy to begin. I was tender then. I had just left
home, and every time I looked at the little knickknacks mother and the
girls had given me to make camp life comfortable,--for bless my soul
they thought we _lived_ in camp,--every time I looked at these things I
grew teary. There oughtn’t to be any bric-à-brac of that kind given to
a fellow when he goes into the army. It isn’t fit. It worries him.”
He was silent for a minute. So were the rest of us. We all had
bric-à-brac to remember. He resumed:
“We were lying there in the edge of a piece of woods with a sloping
meadow in front, crossed by a stone wall heavily overgrown with vines.
At the other edge of the meadow was another strip of woods. The enemy
were somewhere in there. We knew they were coming, because the pickets
had been driven in, and we stood there waiting for them. The waiting
was the worst of it, and as we waited I got to feeling in my pockets
and--pulled out a little, old three-cornered pincushion. Conscience
knows I wouldn’t have pulled out that pincushion at that particular
minute to have won a battle. I’ve got it now. I never had any use for
a pincushion because I never could pin any two things together the way
a woman can, but a man can’t make his womenkind believe that: I’ve
kept it all through the war, and when I go back home--if it suits the
Yankees that I ever go back at all--I’m going to give it as a souvenir
to the little sister that made it for me. And I’m going to tell her
that it was that pincushion, little three-cornered thing that it is,
that made a man out of me that day.
“My first thought as I pulled it out was that I wanted to go home and
give the war up; but then came another kind of a thought. I said, ‘The
little girl wouldn’t have given that pincushion to me if she hadn’t
understood that I was going off to fight for the country.’ So I said to
myself, ‘Old boy, you’ve got to stand your hand pat.’ And now whenever
we go into battle I always brace myself up a little by feeling in my
breeches pocket and sort of shaping out that pincushion.”
From Joe: “It’s a good story, but the rest of us haven’t any
pincushions. Besides that, it’s raining.” I couldn’t help observing
that Joe drew that afternoon’s letter out of his pocket and fumbled it
a little, while the long-legged mountaineer was straightening out his
limbs and his thoughts for his share in the conversation. He said in
basso profundo: “The fact is I’m always so skeered just before a fight
that I can’t remember afterwards how I did feel. I know only this much,
that that last three minutes before the bullets begin to whistle and
the shells to howl, takes more out of me than six hours straightaway
fightin’ afterwards does.”
From Joe: “There must be a lot in you at the start, then.”
There were still two men unheard from in the experience meeting. Some
one of us called upon them for an expression of opinion.
“I donno. I never thought,” said one.
“Nuther did I,” said the other.
“Of course you didn’t,” said Joe.
Then the postscript philosopher, rising and stretching himself,
remarked: “I reckon that if any man goes into a fight without being
scared, that man is drunk or crazy.”
Then we all lay down and went to sleep.
AN UNFINISHED FIGHT
Jack Swan was the best swordsman in the regiment--probably the best in
the army. Jack was a Marylander, who came south singing “My Maryland,”
and heartily believing in the assertion of that song that
“She breathes, she burns, she’ll come, she’ll come,
Maryland, my Maryland!”
Like most men from border states he represented a house divided against
itself. In his case the division was peculiarly distressing.
He was an enthusiastic Southerner. His twin brother was an equally
enthusiastic Union man. The one was in the one army as a matter of
conscience, and the other in the other for precisely the same reason.
It was always a grief to Jack that this separation had come between him
and the curly-headed twin brother, with whom he had slept in infancy,
and who had been his comrade until that terrible fratricidal war had
parted them.
He used to talk with us about it around the camp-fire, and was
especially sad over it when any of us managed to get off for a day or
a week to visit our homes. His home was beyond the lines; and in all
that country for which he was fighting there was no human being whom he
could call kin.
He had this comfort, however, that his brother and he were never likely
to meet in the conflict of arms. For to avoid that the brother had
betaken himself to the West and was serving in Mississippi. But there
was always the terrible chance that in the shifting of troops they two
might some day, unknown to each other, be fighting on opposite sides
of the same field. That, in fact, is what happened at Brandy Station,
and it happened more dramatically than either of the brothers had
anticipated.
The conflict at Brandy Station was perhaps the greatest cavalry fight
of the war. It was the one contest in which large bodies of armed and
trained horsemen, under the greatest cavalry leaders on either side,
met fairly in conflict with little or no interference from troops of
other arms.
It was the only contest of the kind, so far as I know, in which highly
expert swordsmen met each other fairly in single combat. There was on
both sides a chivalric feeling akin to that of the “knights of old,”
which prompted men not to interfere when two well-matched cavaliers met
each other with naked blades.
Jack Swan was naturally eager for a fray of this sort. He knew and
mightily rejoiced in his superb skill with the sabre.
He watched anxiously for his opportunity. Presently it came.
A singularly lithe young fellow from one of the Northern regiments met
and slew, in the open field, one of our officers. Thereupon Jack turned
to his captain and said: “If I have your leave, captain, I’d like to
try conclusions with that young fellow myself. He seems to know how to
handle sharp steel.”
The captain nodded assent, and Jack put spurs to his horse. The two men
met in midfield. They crossed swords as a couple of gladiators might,
while a thousand eyes watched anxiously for the result.
It was manifestly to be a contest of experts, a battle of the giants,
for both men were above the average in height and weight, and both knew
every trick of the sabre.
Their swords drew fire from each other’s edge at the first onset.
Then they paused strangely and looked at each other. Then Jack
deliberately threw his sabre upon the ground and uncovered his head.
His adversary could have run him through on the instant, but the action
of Jack seemed to give him pause. He stopped with his sword poised at
the tierce thrust. He leant forward eagerly and gazed into the calm
eyes of the Confederate. Then he, too, abandoning his purpose, threw
his weapon to the ground.
We were all eagerness and curiosity; and neither our eagerness nor our
curiosity was relieved when the two men grasped each other’s hand,
swung their horses around, and each returned unarmed to his own line.
When Jack rode up he had just six words of explanation to make.
“That man,” he said, “is my twin brother.”
That seemed to be all there was to say. “Blood is thicker than water.”
A FAMILY THAT HAD NO LUCK
There were two instances of supreme heroism in the Civil War. One was
upon the one side, the other upon the other.
One was the charge of Pickett’s Southerners at Gettysburg. The other
was the heroic series of assaults, made by the Northern troops on
Marye’s Heights, at Fredericksburg.
General Lee’s works in the last-named battle were high up on the hill.
Crossing the field in front of them was a sunken road--a perfect
breastwork already formed. The main body of the army was in the works
above; but a multitude of us were thrown forward into the sunken road.
The enemy knew nothing of this geographical peculiarity. But their
first advance revealed the impossibility of breaking Lee’s lines at
that point. The column that advanced was swept away as with a broom
before it got within firing distance of the works it supposed itself
to be attacking. The men knew what that meant. Wiser than their
general, they saw the necessity of selecting some other point of
attack. Nevertheless when their commander persisted, they six times
came unflinchingly to an assault which every man of them knew to be
hopeless. This may not have been war, but it was heroism.
We who faced them there honored it as such.
Just as we tumbled into the sunken road, an old man came in bearing
an Enfield rifle and wearing an old pot hat of the date of 1857 or
thereabouts. With a gentle courtesy that was unusual in war, he
apologized to the two men between whom he placed himself, saying: “I
hope I don’t crowd you, but I must find a place somewhere from which I
can shoot.”
At that moment one of the great assaults occurred. The old man used his
gun like an expert. He wasted no bullet. He took aim every time and
fired only when he knew his aim to be effective. Yet he fired rapidly.
Tom Booker, who stood next to him, said as the advancing column was
swept away: “You must have shot birds on the wing in your time.”
The old man answered: “I did up to twenty year ago; but then I sort o’
lost my sight, you know, and my interest in shootin’.”
“Well, you’ve got ’em both back again,” called out Billy Goodwin from
down the line.
“Yes,” said the old man. “You see I had to. It’s this way: I had six
boys and six gells. When the war broke out I thought the six boys
could do my family’s share o’ the fightin’. Well, they did their best,
but they didn’t have no luck. One of ’em was killed at Manassas,
two others in a cavalry raid, and the other three fell in different
actions--’long the road as you might say. We ain’t seemed to a had
no luck. But it’s just come to this, that if the family is to be
represented, the old man must git up his shootin’ agin, or else one o’
the gells would have to take a hand. So here I am.”
Just then the third advance was made. A tremendous column of heroic
fellows was hurled upon us, only to be swept away as its predecessors
had been. Two or three minutes did the work, but at the end of that
time the old man fell backward, and Tom Booker caught him in his arms.
“You’re shot,” he said.
“Yes. The family don’t seem to have no luck. If one o’ my gells comes
to you, you’ll give her a fair chance to shoot straight, won’t you,
boys?”
WILLIAM
It was during the long waiting time.
The battle of Manassas had been fought in July, and for months
afterward, there was nothing for us to do. We had failed to assail
Washington, and the enemy was not yet sufficiently recovered from his
demoralization--the completest that ever overcame an army--to assail us.
We had time, therefore, to quarrel among ourselves.
Two men had met in a glade in a thicket some distance from the camp.
They were taking their quarrel very seriously, and had met to fight it
out without the formality of seconds or other familiar frills of the
duello. They crossed sabres.
It was then that Billy Gresham broke through the bushes and interposed.
Billy was a recognized “character.” He was a phenomenal egotist, but he
rarely used the first personal pronoun singular. Instead of saying “I”
or “me,” he usually said “William.” But he said it with an unctuousness
and appreciation of its significance that cannot be described in words.
Also Billy Gresham always did what he pleased, without a thought of
having to give an account of his conduct to anybody. His extraordinary
loquacity was a perfect safeguard against any possible challenge of
resentment. He could talk anybody down and close the conversation at
his own sweet will. The worst that his adversary could do was to laugh
at him, and Billy didn’t mind that in the least. He regarded it rather
as a grateful tribute to his humor.
Just as the two men crossed swords, Billy broke through the bushes,
and interposed his blade--with a very good imitation of stage
heroism--between the combatants. Then, with all the authority of an
expert in a matter he knew nothing about, he proceeded to lay down laws
of his own extemporaneous invention for the governance of single combat.
“Stop, gentlemen!” he cried out. Then, laying his sword on the ground
between them, he said: “You must not cross my sword with yours,
gentlemen. To do that would be to put an affront upon William which
only blood could efface, and it must be the blood of the offender--not
the gore of private William Gresham.”
The two men had come to a pause, of course. Equally of course, they
were smiling at the ridiculousness of Billy Gresham’s interference and
the absurdity of his chatter.
Still their purpose to fight remained in undiminished intensity. Seeing
this, Billy resumed his talk.
“If you are determined to fight,” he said, “you can do so. Far be
it from William to interrupt a prearranged engagement for mutual
dissection between two of his friends. But William always likes to have
a little money up on the probabilities.”
Then pulling out a pocket-book, which was fat with humorous newspaper
clippings, but which both men knew to contain nothing more valuable,
he caressed it lovingly and said: “Before you proceed, William wants
to bet one hundred dollars to ten with one or both of you--you can
make it a thousand dollars to a hundred, if you prefer--that neither
of you two sublimated idiots can give William a reasonable excuse for
this quarrel. Come now, before you enter upon the business of mutual
slaughter, make a bet that will provide in some degree for the loved
ones dependent on you.”
By that time both men were laughing, for, after all, their quarrel was
a trifling one. They would not have quarrelled at all if the intensity
of the nervous strain put upon them by the war had been relieved by
active duty.
“Now,” said Billy, “William has another bet to make. He offers a
hundred to one that if the colonel catches you fellows at this sort
of idiotic performance, he’ll take the ‘honor’ out of both of you by
making you grub stumps for weeks to come. Put up your swords and shake
hands, or else take the bets.”
The absurdity of the situation ended it. Billy remarked: “Now let
William give you a tip. There is the enemy to fight; and if William
does not hopelessly misunderstand the temper of George B. McClellan’s
army, they will give us all the fighting we want without anything of
this sort.”
It was Billy who, at the end of the war, protested his loyalty to the
Southern cause by vowing that he would never send a letter unless
it could go under cover of a Southern postage-stamp. I am credibly
informed that for thirty odd years he has kept this vow.
It must have spared him a great deal of trouble.
A CRADLE CAPTAIN
They said we had robbed the cradle and the grave to recruit our army.
We had.
The cradle contingent acquitted itself particularly well.
He was a very little fellow. He was said to be fourteen years old.
He didn’t look it. In his captain’s uniform he suggested the need of
a nurse with cap and apron. But when it came to doing the work of a
soldier the impression was different.
It was in 1864, late summer. We were in the trenches outside a
fortification engaged in bombarding Fort Harrison, below Richmond. The
enemy had captured that work, and it was deemed necessary to drive him
out. To that end we had been sent from Petersburg to the north side of
James River, with twenty-two mortars to rain a hundred shells a minute
into the fort preparatory to the infantry charge.
A gun-boat had been ordered up the river to help in the bombardment.
The gun-boat mistook _us_ for Fort Harrison and opened upon our
defenceless rear. Its shells were about the size and shape of a street
lamp, and they wrought fearful havoc among us.
The Cradle Captain had charge of the signal operator--a stalwart
mountaineer of six feet four or so.
The Cradle Captain ordered him to mount upon the glacis and signal
the ship to cease firing. The man was not a coward; but the fire was
terrific. He hesitated. That Cradle Captain leaped like a cat upon the
glacis, which the shells were splitting every second. He pulled out two
pistols. He presented one at each side of the mountaineer’s head. Then
in a little, childish, piping voice he said: “Get up here and do your
duty, or I’ll blow your brains out.”
We rejoiced that the lead, which at that moment laid the little
soldier low, came from the enemy’s guns, and not from our own mistaken
comrades. The Cradle Captain was glad, too, for as he was carried away
on a litter, he laughed out between groans: “It wasn’t our men that did
it, for I had made that hulking idiot get in that signal all right,
anyhow.”
[Illustration: “GET UP HERE AND DO YOUR DUTY.”]
WHO IS RUSSELL?
I saw him for the first time in 1862.
We were stationed on the coast of South Carolina, and never was there
an idler set of soldiers than we.
We were in the midst of a great war, it is true, and ours was a
fighting battery with dates on its battle banner; but on the coast we
had literally nothing to do. The position of our camp was determined
by military geography, and it could not be changed. A fight was
possible any day, and now and then a fight came. But we knew in advance
precisely where it must be waged, and until our foemen chose to bring
it about, we had no occasion for marching or bivouacking. They were on
the sea islands. We were on the mainland. We had no means of crossing
to the islands. They could cross to the mainland whenever they pleased.
When they came, it was our business to meet them and keep them from
reaching the line of railroad along the coast.
Every little stream and every little inlet was bordered by an
impassable morass, which could be crossed only by way of a high and
narrow causeway. The places where the roads crossed the streams were,
therefore, the predestined battlefields. We were stationed with
reference to these crossings.
We idled away the time, and like all idle people near a small railroad
station we knew of the comings and goings of everybody in the country
round about.
Everybody, that is to say, except Russell.
His coming was a mystery. In fact, he did not come at all. He simply
appeared one evening as a looker-on at roll-call.
There was no way by which he could have come to Pocotaligo except by
train; and we knew that he had not come by train. The whole body of us
regularly attended the incoming of every train, and promptly pumped all
the news out of every arriving passenger.
Russell had not come by train. Therefore Russell had not come at all.
Yet there he was.
He was a comely young fellow. So shapely were his limbs and so exact
the proportions of his frame that no one, without a second look at
him, would have realized his symmetry, his extraordinary strength, or
his activity. His head was a study for the sculptor. In limbs, torso,
features, complexion, and bearing he stood there in the Southern sunset
a very model of manly beauty.
When the roll-call was ended, he came up to me, and, touching his hat
gracefully, introduced himself.
“My name is William Russell. I shall be obliged if you will let me
remain with your men over night. I shall probably ask to enlist
to-morrow.”
His words were simple enough, and his manner was that of a modest
gentleman; but there was that in his voice that fascinated me beyond
measure. Had any other stranger come up to me with a like request, I
should have questioned him closely, and possibly have turned him over
for the night to the hospitality of one of the messes. With Russell I
did nothing of the sort. He was a gentleman visiting our camp. I could
do no less than invite him to sup and lodge with me. He had sought no
such hospitality, but when I offered it, he frankly accepted it.
I found him to be a particularly agreeable guest. He talked fluently,
but modestly, on all subjects as they arose. Before my brother officers
came into my quarters for our nightly game of whist, I had discovered
that Russell was not only a man of broad general education, but one
thoroughly familiar with English, German, and French literature as
well. We learned very indirectly that he had travelled extensively,
and that travel had wrought in him its perfect work in making him an
agreeable companion.
The next morning he expressed a wish to enlist with us. He persisted
in this, in spite of our assurances that our rude, uncultivated
mountaineers were not fit companions for him.
After his enlistment he carefully avoided everything like presumption
upon our previous hospitality, or upon his own evident superiority. He
knew the distinction between officers and enlisted men, and he observed
it with a rigidity wholly unknown in our rather democratic service. I
was glad sometimes to seek him out when I wanted a companion, and on
such occasions he responded promptly to my invitations, but he never
once came to my quarters, or those of any other officer, uninvited.
He was always quiet and modest, and it was only by accident that we
learned little by little how many and varied his accomplishments were.
It was not only that he never boasted; he was even shy of letting us
find out for ourselves how many things he could do surprisingly well.
The men had built a number of gymnastic structures, and of afternoons
their contests of strength and skill were attended by everybody in the
neighborhood. For more than a month Russell looked on as a casually
interested spectator. One afternoon, however, some of our best gymnasts
were trying to accomplish a new and rather difficult feat. When they
were ready to abandon the attempt as hopeless, Russell modestly said
to the most persistent one among them: “I think if you will reverse the
position of your hands you can do that.”
The man reversed his hands, but awkwardly.
“Not that way; let me show you,” said Russell. And going to the bars he
quickly did the thing himself with no apparent exertion whatever. Then,
as if in mere wantonness of strength and skill, he went rapidly through
a series of gymnastic feats of the most difficult sort imaginable,
ending the performance with a number of somersaults that would have
done honor to an acrobat. When he had done, we all clapped hands and
shouted our applause. Russell simply blushed as a woman might and went
to his hut.
I never knew him to touch the bars again, so averse was he to anything
like display.
When I ventured to ask him in private one day how and where he had
acquired his skill, he replied: “Oh, I have no skill to speak of in the
matter. It’s merely a trick or two I picked up at a German university.”
In this way we learned one thing after another about the man, though
he vouchsafed us no information concerning his past history, except so
much as we had discovered in mustering him into service. That consisted
of but one fact: that William Russell was born in Kentucky; and that
isolated fact was a falsehood, as Russell afterwards informed me.
One day, some months after his enlistment, there was an explosion in
camp.
A chief of caisson had been tinkering with a shell from the enemy’s
camp which had not burst. It exploded in his hands, literally blowing
one of them off midway between the wrist and the elbow. When I came to
the poor fellow he was lying on the ground, the blood spurting from the
severed artery.
The surgeon and all my brother officers had ridden away, no one knew
whither, and I was completely at a loss to know what to do. Before I
had time to decide anything, Russell pushed his way through the throng,
drew out his handkerchief, knotted it, and quickly tightened it around
the man’s arm.
“Will you please hold that steadily?” said he in the calmest possible
voice to one of the excited men. Then turning to me and touching his
cap, he said: “Will you allow me to go to the surgeon’s quarters for
some necessary things? I think I may help this poor fellow.”
“Certainly,” I replied, “if you can do anything for him, do it by all
means.”
He walked rapidly, but without a sign of excitement, to the hospital
tent, and returned almost immediately with some bottles, bandages, and
a case of instruments.
Turning to me he said: “Will you do me the favor to put your finger on
the corporal’s pulse and observe its beating carefully? If it sinks or
becomes irregular, please let me know immediately.”
With that he saturated a handkerchief with chloroform, and using a
peremptory form of speech for the first time in my experience of him,
he ordered one of the men to hold it to the wounded corporal’s nose.
“What are you going to do?” I asked in astonishment.
“I am going to amputate this man’s arm, if you have no objection,” he
returned, as he opened the case of instruments. And he did amputate
it in a most skilful manner, as the surgeon testified on his return.
The operation over, Russell gave minute directions for the care of the
wounded man.
My astonishment may well be imagined. The men, however, were not
surprised. Their faith in Russell was unbounded already. They had so
often seen him do as an expert things that nobody had imagined him
capable of doing at all, that they had come to think him equal to any
emergency, as indeed it seemed that he was.
For myself, I am free to confess that my curiosity was sharply piqued.
I determined to question Russell in detail about himself and his past
at the first opportunity. When the opportunity came, however, the
man’s modest dignity so impressed me that I could not bring myself to
do anything so rude and discourteous. I contented myself with saying:
“Why, Russell, I didn’t know you were a surgeon?”
“I can hardly claim to be that,” he replied, “though I gave some little
attention to the subject while I was abroad.”
It then occurred to me to suggest the propriety of his asking for
a surgeon’s commission, as it really seemed a pity that a man so
accomplished as he should remain a private in a company made up almost
entirely of illiterate mountaineers. He refused to entertain the idea
for a moment, saying: “I am entirely contented with my lot and do not
care to change.”
One day, not long after this occurrence, I was playing at chess
with Russell. Apropos of something or other, I told him an anecdote
illustrative of Japanese character.
“Pardon me,” he replied, “but you are misinformed,” and straightway
he proceeded to tell me many interesting facts with regard to the
Orientals, all of which were evidently the result of personal
observation. I presently discovered, as I thought, that Russell had
been an officer in the United States navy, and that he had gone to
Japan with Commodore Perry’s expedition.
When a month or two later our battery was sent to a little place
immediately on the water, and a good deal of boat service was expected
of us, our first care was to train our mountaineers in the use of oars
and sails. With the exception of Russell, Joe, and myself, not a man
in the battery knew the difference between a mast and a keel. It was
determined, therefore, to divide the company into boat’s crews for
drill, and to make of Russell chief drill sergeant.
When the order providing for this was read on parade, Russell said
nothing. But I had hardly reached my quarters before he came, cap in
hand, asking to see me in private.
“I must beg you to excuse me from this boat-drill duty; I really can’t
do it.”
“But you must,” I returned. “The men must be taught to handle the
boats, and your skill and experience are quite indispensable.”
“But I have no skill or experience in the matter,” he replied. “The
truth is I do not even know the nomenclature of a boat. I do know the
bow from the rudder, but that is the extreme limit of my knowledge on
the subject.”
This, from an ex-naval officer, was certainly rather odd, but I could
not bring myself to question this modest gentleman further on the
subject, or even to suspect his veracity, in which I had learned to
repose the most implicit confidence.
He was not at all averse to boating duty in itself. On the contrary,
when an oar was put into his hands, his supple muscles lent themselves
with a will to the severe physical strain. The man seemed even to
rejoice in the opportunity thus given him to bring his magnificent
strength into play. When his fellows quitted the boats in utter
weariness he, still fresh, would betake himself to a little shell and
row her about for hours in mere wantonness of unexpended vitality.
But he knew nothing of boating. He was as awkward as possible at first.
He learned rapidly, however, and soon became a graceful oarsman and an
expert sailor.
I was puzzled. I could not reconcile the man’s stories of naval service
with his evident ignorance of everything pertaining to a boat. Yet I
could not doubt the truthfulness of any of his statements. Nobody who
knew his gentleness, his modesty, and his translucent integrity as I
did could possibly entertain doubt of his truthfulness. The man’s face
was of itself a certificate of his entire trustworthiness. His conduct
and his manners were unexceptionable always. The man himself was the
embodiment of truth.
Accordingly, when I observed some tattoo marks on his arm one day,
which he told me were put there while he was in the navy, it did not
occur to me to question him as to the truth of that story. On the
contrary, I thought at the moment of a possible explanation of the
whole matter: Perhaps he had been a surgeon in the service, and if so
his technical ignorance of boating was not altogether unaccountable. I
was surprised, however, to see that the letters on his arm were not “W.
R.” but “W. W.”--a fact of which he volunteered an explanation.
“My name is not Russell,” he said, “but Wallace. Though for a good many
years I have preferred to use my mother’s rather than my father’s name.”