The mob engulfed the buggies and carriages of Congressmen and picnickers who had come out from Washington to see the fun. A rebellion crushed at a blow!
Stuart at the head of his Black Horse Cavalry, his saber flashing, cut his way through this mob again and again.
When the smoke of battle lifted, the dazed, ill-organized ambulance corps searched the field for the first toll of the Blood Feud. They found only nine hundred boys slain and two thousand six hundred wounded. They lay weltering in their blood in the smothering heat and dust and dirt.
The details of men were busy burying the dead, some of their bodies yet warm.
The morning after dawned black and lowering and the rain began to pour in torrents. Through the streets of Washington the stragglers streamed. The plumes which waved as they sang were soaked and drooping. Their gorgeous, new uniforms were wrinkled and mud-smeared.
The President called for five hundred thousand men this time. The joy and glory of war had gone.
But war remained.
War grim, gaunt, stark, hideous—as remorseless as death.
CHAPTER XXXIX
In a foliage-embowered house on a hill near Washington Colonel Jeb
Stuart, Commander of the Confederate Cavalry, had made his headquarters.
Neighing horses were hitched to the swaying limbs. They pawed the ground, wheeled and whinnied their impatience at inaction. Every man who sat in one of those saddles owned his mount. These boys were the flower of Southern manhood. The Confederate Government was too poor to furnish horses for the Cavalry. Every man, volunteering for this branch of the service, must bring his own horse and equipment complete. The South only furnished a revolver and carbine. At the first battle of Bull Run they didn't have enough of them even for the regiments Stuart commanded. Whole companies were armed only with the pikes which John Brown had made for the swarming of the Black Bees at Harper's Ferry. They used these pikes as lances.
The thing that gave the Confederate Cavalry its impetuous dash, its fire and efficiency was the fact that every man on horseback had been born in the saddle and had known his horse from a colt. From the moment they swung into line they were veterans.
The North had no such riders in the field as yet. Brigadier-General Phillip St. George Cooke was organizing this branch of the service. It would take weary months to train new riders and break in strange horses.
Until these born riders, mounted on their favorites, could be killed or their horses shot from under them, there would be tough work ahead for the Union Cavalry.
A farmer approached at sunset. He gazed on the array with pride.
He lifted his gray head and shouted:
"Hurrah for our boys! Old Virginia'll show 'em before we're through with this!"
A sentinel saluted the old man.
"I've come for Colonel Stuart. His wife and babies are at my house.
He'll understand. Tell him."
The farmer watched the spectacle. Straight in front of the little portico on its tall staff fluttered the Commander's new, blood-red battle flag with its blue St. Andrew's cross and white stars rippling in the wind. Spurs were clanking, sabers rattling. A courier dashed up, dismounted and entered the house. Young officers in their new uniforms were laughing and chatting in groups before the door.
An escort brought in a Federal Cavalry prisoner on his mount. The boys gathered around him and roared with laughter. He was a good-natured Irishman who could take a joke. His horse was loaded down with a hundred pounds of extra equipment. The Irishman had half of it strapped on his own back.
A boy shouted:
"For the Lord's sake, did you take him with all that freight?"
An escort roared:
"That's why we took him. He couldn't run."
The boy looked at the solemn face of the prisoner and chaffed:
"And why have ye got that load on your own back, man?"
Without cracking a smile the Irishman replied:
"An' I thought me old horse had all he could carry!"
The boys roared, pulled him down, took off his trappings and told him to make himself at home.
Inside the house could be heard the hum of conversation, with an occasional boom of laughter that could come from but one throat.
Work for the day completed, he came to the door to greet his visitor. The farmer's eyes flashed at the sight of his handsome figure. He was only twenty-eight years old, of medium height, with a long, silken, bronzed beard and curling mustache.
He waved his hand and cried:
"With you in a minute!"
His voice was ringing music. He wore a new suit of Confederate gray which his wife had just sent him. His gauntlets extended nine inches above the wrists. His cavalry boots were high above the knee. His broad-brimmed felt hat was caught up on one side with a black ostrich plume. His cavalry coat fitted tightly—a "fighting jacket." It was circled with a black belt from which hung his revolver and over which was tied a splendid yellow sash. His spurs were gold.
A first glance would give the impression of a gay youngster over fond of dress. But the moment his blue eyes flashed there came the glint of steel. The man behind the uniform was seen, the bravest of the brave, the flower of Southern chivalry.
For all his gay dress he was from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, every inch the soldier—the soldier with the big brain and generous, fun-loving heart. His forehead was extraordinary in height and breadth, bronzed by sun and wind. His nose was large and nostrils mobile. His eyes were clear, piercing, intense. His laughing mouth was completely covered by the curling mustache and long beard.
He had darted around the house on waving to his visitor and in a minute reappeared, followed by three negroes. He was taking his minstrels with him on the trip to see his wife.
The cavalcade mounted. He waved his aides aside.
"No escort, boys. See you at sunrise."
The farmer's house was only half a mile inside his lines. When the army of the North was hurled back into Washington he had sent for his wife and babies and arranged for their board at the nearest farmhouse.
The little mother's heart was fluttering with love and pride. Richmond was already ringing with the praises of her soldier man. They were recruiting the first brigade of Cavalry. He was slated for Brigadier-General of the mounted forces. And he was only twenty-eight!
Stuart sprang from his horse and rushed to meet his wife. She was waiting in the glow of the sunset, her eyes misty with joyous tears.
It was a long time as she nestled in his arms before she could speak.
Her voice was barely a whisper.
"You've passed through your first baptism of blood safely, my own!"
"Baptism of blood—nothing!" He laughed. "It wasn't a fight at all. We had nothing to do till the blue birds flew. And then we flew after 'em. Oh, honey girl, it was just a lark. I laughed till I cried—"
She raised her eyes to his.
"And you didn't see my dear old daddy anywhere?"
"No. I wish I had! I'd have taken the loyal old rascal prisoner and made you keep him till the war's over."
"It is over, isn't it, dear?"
"No."
"Why, you've driven the army back in a panic on Washington. They'll ask for peace, won't they?"
"They won't, honey. I know 'em too well. They'll more than likely ask for a million volunteers."
"It's not over, then?"
"No, dear little mother. I'll be honest with you. Don't believe silly talk. We're in for a long, desperate fight—"
"And I've been so happy thinking you'd come home—"
"Your home will be with me, won't it?"
"Always."
"All right. This is the beginning of my scheme for the duration of the war. I'm going to get you a map of Virginia, showing the roads. I'll get you a compass. There'll always be a little farmhouse somewhere behind my headquarters. Our home will be in the field and saddle for a while."
He kissed his babies and ate his supper laughing and joking like a boy of nineteen. The table cleared, he ordered a concert for their entertainment.
Bob, the leader of his minstrels, was a dandified mulatto who played the guitar, the second was a whistler and the third a master of the negro dance, the back step and the breakdown.
Bob tuned his guitar, picked his strings and gazed at the ceiling. He was apparently selecting the first piece. It, was always the same, his favorite, "Listen to the Mocking Bird." He played with a plaintive, swaying melody that charmed his hearers. The whistler amazed them with his marvelous imitation of birds and bird calls. The room throbbed with every note of the garden, field and wood.
The mother's face was wreathed in smiles. The boy shouted. The baby crooned. The first piece done, the audience burst into a round of applause.
Bob gave them "Alabama" next, accompanied by the whistler and his bird chorus.
Stuart laughed and called for the breakdown. Bob begins a jig on his guitar, the whistler claps and the sable dancer edges his way to the center of the floor in little spasmodic shuffles. He begins with his heel tap, then the toe, then in leaps and whirls. The guitar swelled to a steady roar. The whistler quickens his claps. And Stuart's boyish laughter rang above the din.
"Go it, boy! Go it!"
The dancer's eyes roll. His step quickens. He cuts the wildest figures in a frenzy of abandoned joy. With a leap through the door he is gone. The guitar stops with a sudden twang and Stuart's laughter roars.
And then he gave an hour to play with his children before a mother's lullaby should put them to sleep. He got down on his all fours and little Jeb mounted and rode round the room to the baby's scream of joy. He lay flat on the floor with the baby on his breast and let her pull his beard and mustache until her strength failed.
The children were still sound asleep when they sat down and ate breakfast before day.
At the first streak of dawn he was standing beside his horse ready for the dash back to his headquarters and the work of the day.
The shadow had fallen across the woman's heart again. He saw and understood. He put his hand under her chin and lifted it.
"No more tears now, my sweetheart."
"I'll try."
"We may be here for weeks."
"There'll be another fight soon?"
"I think not."
"For a month?"
"Not for a long time."
"Thank God!"
A far-off look stole into his eyes.
"It will be a good one though when it comes, I reckon."
"There can be no good one—if my boy's in it."
"Well, I'll be in it!"
"Yes. I know."
She kissed him and turned back into the house, with the old fear gripping her heart.
CHAPTER XL
The early months of the war were but skirmishes. The real work of killing and maiming the flower of the race had not begun.
The defeat had given the sad-eyed President unlimited power to draw on the resources of the nation for men and money. His call for half a million soldiers met with instant response. The fighting spirit of twenty-two million Northern people had been roused. They felt the disgrace of Bull Run and determined to wipe it out in blood.
Three Northern armies were hurled on the South in a well-planned, concerted movement to take Richmond. McDowell marched straight down to Fredericksburg with forty thousand. Fermont, with Milroy, Banks and Shields, was sweeping through the Shenandoah Valley. McClellan, with his grand army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, had moved up the Peninsula in resistless force until he lay on the banks of the Chickahominy within sight of the spires of Richmond.
To meet these three armies aggregating a quarter of a million men, the
South could marshall barely seventy thousand. Jackson was despatched
with eighteen thousand to baffle the armies of McDowell, Fremont,
Milroy, Shields and Banks in the Valley and prevent their union with
McClellan.
The war really began on Sunday, the second of June, 1862, when Robert E. Lee was sent to the front to take command of the combined army of seventy thousand men of the South.
The new commander with consummate genius planned his attack and flung his gray lines on McClellan with savage power. The two armies fought in dense thickets often less than fifty yards apart. Their muskets flashed sheets of yellow flame. The sound of ripping canvas, the fire of small arms in volleys, could no longer be distinguished. The sullen roar was endless, deafening, appalling. Over the tops of oak, pine, beech, ash and tangled undergrowth came the flaming thunder of two great armies equally fearless, the flower of American manhood in their front ranks, daring, scorning death, fighting hand to hand, man to man.
The people in the churches of Richmond as they prayed could hear the awful roar. They turned their startled faces toward the battle. It rang above the sob of organ and the chant of choir.
The hosts in blue and gray charged again and again through the tangle of mud and muck and blood and smoke and death. Bayonet rang on bayonet. They fought hand to hand, as naked savages once fought with bare hands. The roar died slowly with the shadows of the night, until only the crack of a rifle here and there broke the stillness.
And then above the low moans of the wounded and dying came the distant notes of the church bells in Richmond calling men and women again to the house of God.
There was no shout of triumph—no cheering hosts—only the low moan of death and the sharp cry of a boy in pain. The men in blue could have moved in and bivouaced on the ground they had lost. The men in gray had no strength left.
The dead and the dying were everywhere. The wounded were crawling through the mud and brush, like stricken animals; some with their legs broken; some with arms dangling by a thread; some with hideous holes torn in their faces.
The front was lighted with the unclouded splendor of a full Southern moon. Down every dim aisle of the woods they lay in awful, dark heaps. In the fields they lay with faces buried in the dirt or eyes staring up at the stars, twisted, torn, mangled. The blue and the gray lay side by side in death, as they had fought in life. The pride and glory of a mighty race of freemen.
The shadows of the details moved in the moonlight. They were opening the first of those long, deep trenches. They were careful in these early days of war. They turned each face downward as they packed them in. The grave diggers could not then throw the wet dirt into their eyes and mouths. Aching hearts in far-off homes couldn't see; but these boys still had hearts within their breasts.
The fog-rimmed lanterns flickered over the fields peering into the faces on the ground.
The ambulance corps did its best at the new trade. It was utterly inadequate on either side. It's always so in war. The work of war is to maim, to murder—not to heal or save.
The long line of creaking wagons began to move into Richmond over the mud-cut roads. Every hospital was filled. The empty wagons rolled back in haste over the cobble stones and out on the muddy roads to the front again.
At the hospital doors the women stood in huddled groups—wives, sweethearts, mothers, sisters, praying, hoping, fearing, shivering. Far away in the field hospitals, the young doctors with bare, bloody arms were busy with saw and knife. Boys who had faced death in battle without a tremor stood waiting their turn trembling, crying, cursing. They could see the piles of legs and arms rising higher as the doctors hurled them from the quivering bodies. They stretched out their hands in the darkness to feel the touch of loved ones. They must face this horror alone, and then battle through life, maimed wrecks. They peered through the shadows under the trees where the dead were piled and envied them their sleep.
The armies paused next day to gird their loins for the crucial test. Jackson was still in the Shenandoah Valley holding three armies at bay, defeating them in detail. His swift marches had so paralyzed his enemies that McDowell's forty thousand men lay at Fredericksburg unable to move.
Lee summoned Stuart.
When the conference ended the young Cavalry Commander threw himself into the saddle and started Northward with a song. Determined to learn the strength of McClellan's right wing and confuse his opponent, Lee had sent Stuart on the most daring adventure in the history of cavalry warfare. Stuart had told him that he could ride around McClellan's whole army, cut his communications and strike terror in his rear.
With twelve hundred picked horsemen, fighting, singing, dare-devil riders, Stuart slipped from Lee's lines and started toward Fredericksburg.
On the second day he surprised and captured the Federal pickets without a shot. He dreaded a meeting with the Cavalry. His father-in-law, General Cooke, was in command of a brigade of blue riders. He thought with a moment's pang of the little wife at home praying that they should never meet. Let her pray. God would help her. He couldn't let such a thing happen.
He suddenly confronted a squadron of Federal Cavalry. With a yell his troops charged and cleared the field. They must ride now with swifter hoofbeat than ever. The news would spread and avengers would be on their heels. They were now far in the rear of McClellan's grand army. They had felt out his right wing and knew to a mile where its lines ended.
They dashed toward the York River Railroad which supplied the Northern army, surprised the company holding Tunstall's Station, took them prisoners, cut the wires and tore up the tracks.
On his turn toward Richmond when he reached the Chickahominy River, its waters were swollen and he couldn't cross. He built a bridge out of the timbers of a barn, took his last horse over and destroyed it, as the shout of a division of Federal Cavalry was heard in the distance.
With twelve hundred men he had made a raid which added a new rule to cavalry tactics. He had ridden around a great army, covering ninety miles in fifty-six hours with the loss of but one man. He had established the position of the enemy, destroyed enormous quantities of war material, captured a hundred and sixty-five prisoners and two hundred horses. He had struck terror to the hearts of a sturdy foe, and thrilled the South with new courage.
Jackson's victorious little army joined Lee at Gaines' Mill on the twenty-seventh of June, and on the following day McClellan was in full retreat.
On the first of July it ended at Malvern Hill on the banks of the James.
Of the one hundred and ten thousand men who marched in battle line on
Richmond, eighty-six thousand only reached the shelter of his gunboats.
The first great battle of the war had raged from the first of June until the first of July. Fifty thousand brave boys were killed or mangled on the red fields of death. Washington was in gloom. The Grand Army of more than two hundred thousand had gone down in defeat. It was incredible.
Richmond had been saved. The glory of Lee, Jackson and Stuart filled the South with a new radiance. But the celebration of victory was in minor key. Every home was in mourning.
Six days later Stuart once more clasped his wife to his heart. It had been a month since he had seen her. The thunder of guns she had heard without pause. She knew that both her father and her lover were somewhere in the roaring hell below the city. Stuart never told her how close they had come to a charge and counter charge at the battle of Gaines' Mill.
The old, tremulous question she couldn't keep back:
"You didn't see my daddy, did you, dear?"
Stuart shouted in derision at the idea.
"Of course not, honey girl. It's not written in the book of life. Forget the silly old fear."
"And they didn't even scratch my soldier man?"
"Never a scratch!"
She kissed him again.
"You know I've a little woman praying for me every day. I lead a charmed life!"
She gazed at his handsome, bronzed face.
"I believe you do, dearest!"
CHAPTER XLI
McClellan fell before the genius of Lee, and Pope was put in his place.
They met at Second Manassas. The new general ended his brief campaign in a disaster so complete, so appalling that it struck terror to the heart of the Nation. Lee had crushed him with an ease so amazing that Lincoln was compelled to recall McClellan to supreme command. When the toll of the Blood Feud was again reckoned twenty-five thousand more of our brave boys lay dead or wounded beneath the blazing sun of the South.
The Confederate Government now believed its army invincible, led by Lee.
In spite of poor equipment, with the men half clad and half barefooted,
Lee was ordered to invade Maryland. It was a political move, undertaken
without the approval of the Commander.
As the gray lines swept Northward to cross the Potomac into Maryland,
Lincoln was jubilant. To Hay, his young secretary, he whispered:
"We've got them now, boy. We've got them! The war must speedily end. Lee can never get into Maryland with fifty thousand effective men. The river will be behind them. I'll have McClellan on him with a hundred thousand well-shod, well-fed, well-armed soldiers and the finest equipment of artillery that ever thundered into battle.
"McClellan's on his mettle. His army will fight like tigers to show their faith in him. They were all against me when I removed him. Now they'll show me something. Mark my words."
Luck was with McClellan. By an accident Lee's plan of campaign had fallen into his hands. Yet it was too late to forestall his first master stroke. In the face of a hostile army of twice his numbers Lee divided his forces, threw Jackson's corps on Harper's Ferry, captured the town, Arsenal and Rifle Works, twelve thousand five hundred prisoners and vast stores of war material. Among the booty taken were new blue uniforms with which Jackson promptly clothed his men.
Lee met McClellan at Antietam and waited for Jackson to arrive from
Harper's Ferry.
When McClellan's artillery opened in the gray dawn, more than sixteen thousand of Lee's footsore men had fallen along the line of march unable to reach the battlefield. The Union Commander was massing eighty-seven thousand men behind his flaming batteries. Lee could count on but thirty-seven thousand. He gave McClellan battle with his little army hemmed in on one side by Antietam Creek and on the other by the sweeping Potomac.
The President in Washington received the news of the positions of the armies and their chances of success with exultation. As the sun rose a glowing dull red ball of fire breaking through the smoke of the artillery, Hooker's division swept into action and drove the first line of Lee's men into the woods. Here they rallied and began to mow down the charging masses with deadly aim. For two hours the sullen fight raged in the woods without yielding an inch on either side. Hooker fell wounded. He called for aid. Mansfield answered and fell dead as he deployed his men. Sedgwick's Corps charged and were caught in a trap between two Confederate brigades concealed and massed to meet them. Sedgwick was wounded and his command barely saved from annihilation.
While this struggle raged on the Union right, the center saw a bloodier tragedy. French and Richardson charged the Confederate position. A sunken road crossed the field over which they marched. For four tragic hours the men in gray held this sunken road until it was piled with their bodies. When the final charge of massed blue took it, they found to their amazement that but three hundred living men had been holding it for an hour against the assaults of five thousand. So perfect was the faith of those gray soldiers in Robert E. Lee they died as if it were the order of the day. It was simply fate. Their Commander could make no mistake.
Burnsides swung his reinforced division around the woods and pushed up the heights against Sharpsburg to cut Lee's only line of retreat. He forced the thin, gray lines before him through the streets of the village. On its outer edge he suddenly confronted a mass of men clad in their own blue uniform.
How had these men gotten here?
He was not long in doubt. The blue line suddenly flashed a red wave squarely in their faces. It was Jackson's Corps from Harper's Ferry in their new uniforms. The shock threw the Union men into confusion, a desperate charge drove them out of Sharpsburg, and Lee's army camped on the field with the dead.
For fourteen hours five hundred guns and a hundred thousand muskets thundered and hissed their message of blood. When night fell more than twenty thousand of our noblest men lay dead and wounded on the field.
Lee skillfully withdrew his army across the Potomac. Safe in Virginia he rallied his shattered forces while he sent Stuart once more in a daring ride around McClellan's army.
Again McClellan fell before the genius of Lee. Burnsides was put in his place.
They met at Fredericksburg. Burnsides, the courtly, polished gentleman, crossed the Rappahannock River and charged the hills on which Lee's grim, gray men had entrenched. His magnificent army marched into a death trap. Lee's batteries had been trained to rake the field from three directions.
Five times the Union hosts charged these crescent hills and five times they were rolled back in waves of blood. A fierce freezing wind sprang up from the North. The desperate Union Commander thought still to turn defeat into victory and ordered the sixth charge.
The men in blue pulled down their caps and charged once more into the jaws of death. The lines as they advanced snatched up the frozen bodies of their comrades, carried them to the front, stacked the corpses into long piles for bulwarks, dropped low and fought behind them. In vain. The gray hills roared and blazed, roared and blazed with increasing fury. Darkness came at last and drew a mantle of mercy over the scene.
The men in blue planted the frozen bodies of their dead along the outer line as dummy sentinels and crept through the shadows across the river shattered, broken, crushed. They left their wounded. Through the long hours of the freezing night the pitiful cries came to the boys in gray on the wings of the fierce North winds. They crawled out into the darkness here and there and held a canteen to the lips of a dying foe.
At dawn they looked and saw the piles of the slain wrapped in white shrouds of snow. The shivering, ragged, gray figures, thinly clad, swept down the hill, stripped the dead and shook the frost from the warm clothes.
Burnsides fell before the genius of Lee and Hooker was put in his place.
Fighting Joe Hooker they called him. At Chancellorsville a few months later he led his reorganized army across the same river and threw it on Lee with supreme confidence in the results. He led an army of one hundred and thirty thousand men in seven grand divisions backed by four hundred and forty-eight great guns.
Lee, still on the hills behind Fredericksburg, had sixty-two thousand men and one hundred and seventy guns. He had sent Longstreet's corps into Tennessee.
Hooker threw the flower of his army across the river seven miles above Fredericksburg to flank Lee and strike him from the rear while the remainder of his army crossed in front and between the two he would crush the Confederate army as an eggshell.
But the unexpected happened. Lee was not only a stark fighter. He was a supreme master of the art of war. He understood Hooker's move from the moment it began. His gray army had already slipped out of his trenches and were feeling their way through the tangled vines and underbrush with sure, ominous tread. In this wilderness Hooker's four hundred guns would be as useless as his own hundred and seventy. It would be a hand-to-hand fight in the tangled brush. The gray veteran was a dead shot and he was creeping through his own native woods. On this beautiful May morning, Lee, Jackson, and Stuart met in conference before the battle opened. The plan was chosen. Lee would open the battle and hold Hooker at close range. Jackson would "retreat." Out of sight, he would turn, march swiftly ten miles around their right wing and smash it before sundown.
At five o'clock in the afternoon while Lee held Hooker's front, Jackson's corps crept into position in Hooker's rear. The shrill note of a bugle rang from the woods and the yelling gray lines of death swept down on their unsuspecting foe. Without support the shattered right wing was crushed, crumpled and rolled back in confusion.
At eight o'clock Jackson, pressing forward in the twilight, was mortally wounded by his own men and Stuart took his command. The gay, young cavalier placed himself at the head of Jackson's corps and charged Hooker's disorganized army. Waving his black plumed hat above his handsome, bearded face, he chanted with boyish gaiety an improvised battle song:
"Old Joe Hooker,
Won't you come out o' the Wilderness?"
His men swept the field and as Hooker's army retreated Lee rode to the front to congratulate Stuart. At sight of his magnificent figure wreathed in smoke his soldiers went wild. Above the roar of battle rang their cheers:
"Lee! Lee! Lee!"
From line to line, division to division, the word leaped until the wounded and the dying joined its chorus.
The picket lines were so close that night in the woods they could talk to one another. The Southerners were chaffing the Yanks over their many defeats, when a Yankee voice called through the night his defense of the war to date:
"Ah, Johnnie, shut up—you make me tired. You're not such fighters as ye think ye are. Swap generals with us and we'll come over and lick hell out of you!"
There was silence for a while and then a Confederate chuckled to his mate:
"I'm damned if they mightn't, too!"
The morning dawned at last after the battle and they began to bury the dead and care for the wounded. Their agonies had been horrible. Some had fallen on Friday, thousands on Saturday. It was now Monday. Through miles of dark, tangled woods in the pouring rain they still lay groaning and dying.
And over all the wings of buzzards hovered.
The keen eyes of the vultures had watched them fall, poised high as the battle raged. The woods had been swept again and again by fire. Many of the bodies were black and charred. Some of the wounded had been burned to death. Their twisted bodies and distorted features told the story. The sickening odor of roasted human flesh yet filled the air.
It was late at night on the day after, before the wounded had all been moved. The surgeons with sleeves rolled high, their arms red, their shirts soaked, bent over their task through every hour of the black night until legs and arms were piled in heaps ten feet high beside each operating table.
Thirty thousand magnificent men had been killed and mangled.
The report from Chancellorsville drifted slowly and ominously northward. The White House was still. The dead were walking beside the lonely, tall figure who paced the floor in dumb anguish, pausing now and then at the window to look toward the hills of Virginia.
Lee's fame now filled the world and the North shivered at the sound of it.
Volunteering had ceased. But the cannon were still calling for fodder. The draft was applied. And when it was resisted in fierce riots, the soldiers trained their guns on their own people. The draft wheel was turned by bayonets and the ranks of the army filled with fresh young bodies to be mangled.
Hooker fell before Lee's genius and Meade took his place.
The Confederate Government, flushed with its costly victories, once more sought a political sensation by the invasion of the North. Lee marched his army of veterans into Pennsylvania.
At Gettysburg he met Meade.
The first day the Confederates won. They drove the blue army back through the streets of the village and their gallant General, John F. Reynolds, was killed.
The second day was one of frightful slaughter. The Union army at its close had lost twenty thousand men, the Confederate fifteen thousand.
The moon rose and flooded the rocky field of blood and death with silent glory. From every shadow and from every open space through the hot breath of the night came the moans of thousands and high above their chorus rang the cries for water.
No succor could be given. The Confederates were massing their artillery on Seminary Ridge. The Union legions were burrowing and planting new batteries.
Fifteen thousand helpless, wounded men lay on the field through the long hours of the night.
At ten o'clock a wounded man began to sing one of the old hymns of Zion whose words had come down the ages wet with tears and winged with human hopes. In five minutes ten thousand voices, from blue and gray, had joined. Some of them quivered with agony. Some of them trembled with a dying breath. For two hours the hills echoed with the unearthly music.
At a council of war Longstreet begged Lee to withdraw from Gettysburg and pick more favorable ground. Reinforced by the arrival of Pickett's division of fifteen thousand fresh men and Stuart's Cavalry, he decided to renew the battle at dawn.
The guns opened at the crack of day. For seven hours the waves of blood ebbed and flowed.
At noon there was a lull.
At one o'clock a puff of white smoke flashed from Seminary Ridge. The signal of the men in gray had pealed its death call. Along two miles on this crest they had planted a hundred and fifty guns. Suddenly two miles of flame burst from the hills in a single fiery wreath. The Federal guns answered until the heavens were a hell of bursting, screaming, roaring shells.
At three o'clock the storm died away and the smoke lifted.
Pickett's men were deploying in the plain to charge the heights of Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand heroic men were forming their line to rush a hill on whose crest lay seventy-five thousand entrenched soldiers backed by four hundred guns.
Pickett's bands played as on parade. The gray ranks dressed on their colors. And then across the plain, with banners flying, they swept and climbed the hill. The ranks closed as men fell in wide gaps. Not a man faltered. They fell and lay when they fell. Those who stood moved on and on. A handful reached the Union lines on the heights. Armistead with a hundred men broke through, lifted his red battle flag and fell mortally wounded. The gray wave in sprays of blood ebbed down the hill, and the battle ended. Meade had lost twenty-three thousand men and seventeen generals. Lee had lost twenty thousand men and fourteen generals.
The swollen Potomac was behind Lee and his defeated army. So sure was
Stanton of the end that he declared to the President:
"If a single regiment of Lee's army ever gets back into Virginia in an organized condition it will prove that I am totally unfit to be Secretary of War."
The impossible happened.
Lee got back into Virginia with every regiment marching to quick step and undaunted spirit. He crossed the swollen Potomac, his army in fighting trim, every gun intact, carrying thousands of fat Pennsylvania cattle and four thousand prisoners of war taken on the bloody hills of Gettysburg.
The rejoicing in Washington was brief. Meade fell before the genius of
Lee, and Grant, the stark fighter of the West, took his place.
The new Commander was granted full authority over all the armies of the Union. He placed Sherman at Chattanooga in command of a hundred thousand men and ordered him to invade Georgia. He sent Butler with an army of fifty thousand up the Peninsula against Richmond on the line of McClellan's old march. He raised the army of the Potomac to a hundred and forty thousand effective fighting soldiers, placed Phil Sheridan in command of his cavalry, put himself at the head of this magnificent army and faced Lee on the banks of the Rapidan. He was but a few miles from Chancellorsville where Hooker's men had baptized the earth in blood the year before.
A new draft of five hundred thousand had given Grant unlimited men for the coming whirlwind. His army was the flower of Northern manhood. He commanded the best-equipped body of soldiers ever assembled under the flag of the Union. His baggage train was sixty miles long and would have stretched the entire distance from his crossing at the Rapidan to Richmond.
Lee's army had been recruited to its normal strength of sixty-two thousand. Again the wily Southerner anticipated the march of his foe and crept into the tangled wilderness to meet him where his superiority would be of no avail.
Confident of his resistless power Grant threw his army across the Rapidan and plunged into the wilderness. From the dawn of the first day until far into the night the conflict raged. As darkness fell Lee had pushed the blue lines back a hundred yards, captured four guns and a number of prisoners. At daylight they were at it again. As the Confederate right wing crumpled and rolled back, Long-street arrived on the scene and threw his corps into the breach.
Lee himself rode forward to lead the charge and restore his line. At sight of him, from thousands of parched throats rose the cries:
"Lee to the rear!"
"Go back, General Lee!"
"We'll settle this!"
They refused to move until their leader had withdrawn. And then with a savage yell they charged and took the field.
Lee sent Longstreet to turn Grant's left as Jackson had done at Chancellorsville. The movement was executed with brilliant success. Hancock's line was smashed and driven back on his second defenses. Wardsworth at the head of his division was mortally wounded and fell into Longstreet's hands. At the height of his triumph in a movement that must crumple Grant's army back on the banks of the river, Longstreet fell, shot by his own men. In the change of commanders the stratagem failed in its big purpose.
In two days Grant lost sixteen thousand six hundred men, a greater toll than Hooker paid when he retreated in despair.
Grant merely chewed the end of his big cigar, turned to his lieutenant and said:
"It's all right, Wilson. We'll fight again."
The two armies lay in their trenches watching each other in grim silence.
CHAPTER XLII
In Lee's simple tent on the battlefield amid the ghostly trees of the wilderness his Adjutant-General, Walter Taylor, sat writing rapidly.
Sam, his ebony face shining, stood behind trying to look over his shoulder. He couldn't make it out and his curiosity got the better of him.
"What dat yer writin' so hard, Gin'l Taylor?"
Without lifting his head the Adjutant continued to write.
"Orders of promotion for gallantry in battle, Sam."
"Is yer gwine ter write one fer my young Marse Robbie?"
Taylor paused and looked up. The light of admiration overspread his face.
"General Lee never promotes his sons or allows them on his staff, Sam. General Custis Lee, General Rooney Lee, and Captain Robbie won their spurs without a word from him. They won by fighting."
"Yassah! Dey sho's been some fightin' in dis here wilderness. Hopes ter God we git outen here pretty quick. Gitten too close tergedder ter suit me."
The clatter of a horse's hoofs rang out in the little clearing in front of the tent.
Taylor looked up again.
"See if that's Stuart. General Lee's expecting him."
Sam peered out the door of the tent.
"Dey ain't no plume in his hat an' dey ain't no banjo man wid him.
Nasah. Tain't Gin'l Stuart."
"All right. Pull up a stool."
"Yassah!"
Sam unfolded a camp stool and placed it at the table. A sentinel approached and called:
"Senator William C. Rives of the Confederate Congress to see General
Lee."
Taylor rose.
"Show him in."
The Senator entered with a quick, nervous excitement he could not conceal.
"Colonel Taylor—"
"Senator."
The men clasped hands and Taylor continued to watch the nervous manner of his caller.
"My coming from Richmond is no doubt a surprise?"
"Naturally. We're in pretty close quarters with Grant here to-night—"
Rives raised his hand in a gesture of despair.
"No closer than our Government in Richmond is with the end at this moment, in my judgment. I couldn't wait. I had to come to-night. You have called an informal council as I requested?"
"The moment I got your message an hour ago."
Taylor caught his excitement and bent close.
"What is it, Senator?"
Rives hesitated, glanced at the doors of the tent and answered rapidly.
"The Confederate Congress has just held a secret session without the knowledge of President Davis—"
He drew from his pocket a letter and handed it to the Adjutant.
"You will see from this letter of the presiding officer my credentials.
They have sent me as their agent on an important mission to General
Lee."
He paused as Taylor carefully read the letter.
"How soon can I see him?"
"I'm expecting him in a few minutes," Taylor answered. "He's riding on the front lines trying to feel out Grant's next move. He is very anxious over it."
"This battle was desperate?" Rives asked nervously.
"Terrific."
"Our losses in the two days?"
"More than ten thousand."
"Merciful God—"
"Grant's losses were far greater," Taylor added briskly.
"No matter, Taylor, no matter!" he cried in anguish, springing to his feet. He fought for control of his emotions and hurried on.
"The maws of those cannon now are insatiate! We can't afford to lose ten thousand men from our thin ranks in two days. If your army suspected for one moment the real situation in Richmond, they'd quit and we'd be lost."
"They only ask for General Lee's orders, Senator. Their faith in our leader is sublime."
"And that's our only hope," Rives hastened to add. "General Lee may save us. And he is the only man who can do it."
He stopped and studied Taylor closely. He spoke with some diffidence.
"The faith of his officers in him remains absolutely unshaken?"
"They worship him."
"My appeal will be solely to him. But I may need help."
"I've asked Alexander and Gordon to come. General Gordon did great work to-day. It was his command that broke Hancock's lines and took prisoners. I've just slated him for further promotion. Stuart is already on the way here to report the situation on the right where his cavalry is operating."
The ring of two horses' hoofs echoed.
"If Stuart will only back me!" Rives breathed.
Outside the Cavalry Commander was having trouble with Sweeney, his minstrel follower, an expert banjo player.
Stuart laughed heartily at his fears.
"Come on, Sweeney. Don't be a fool."
The minstrel man still held back and Stuart continued to urge.
"Come on in, Sweeney. Don't be bashful. I promised you shall see General
Lee and you shall. Come on!"
Taylor and Rives stood in the door of the tent watching the conflict.
"Never be afraid of a great man, Sweeney!" Stuart went on. "The greater the man the easier it is to get along with him. General Lee wears no scarlet in his coat, no plume in his hat, no gold braid on his uniform. He's as plain as a gray mouse—"
Stuart laughed and whispered:
"He's too great to need anything to mark his rank. But he never frowns on my gay colors."
"He knows," Taylor rejoined, "that it's your way of telling the glory of the cause."
"Sure! He just laughs at my foolishness and gives me an order to lick a crowd that outnumbers me, three to one."
He took hold of Sweeney's arm.
"Don't be afraid, old boy. Marse Robert won't frown on your banjo.
He'll just smile as he recalls what the cavalry did in our last battle.
Minstrel man, make yourself at home."
Sweeney timidly touched the strings, and Stuart wheeled toward Rives.
"Well, Senator, how goes it in Richmond?"
Rives answered with eager anxiety. His words were not spoken in despair but with an undertone of desperate appeal.
"Dark days have come, General Stuart. And great events are pending.
Events of the utmost importance to the army, to the country, to General
Lee."
"Just say General Lee and let it go at that," Stuart laughed. "He is the army and the country."
He turned to Taylor.
"Where's Marse Robert?"
"Inspecting the lines. He fears a movement to turn our flank at
Spottsylvania Court House."
"My men are right there, watching like owls. They'll catch the first rustle of a leaf by Sheridan's cavalry."
"I hope so."
"Never fear. Well, Sweeney, while we wait for General Lee, Senator Rives needs a little cheer. We've medicine in that box for every ill that man is heir to. Things look black in Richmond, he tells us. All right. Give us the old familiar tune—Hard Times and Wuss Er Comin'!—Go it!"
Sweeney touched his strings sharply.
"You don't mind, sir?" he asked Taylor.
"Certainly not. I like it."
Sentinels, orderlies, aides and scouts gathered around the door as Sweeney played and sang with Stuart. The Cavalryman's spirit was contagious. Before the song had died away, they were all singing the chorus in subdued tones. Sweeney ended with Stuart's favorite—Rock of Ages.
General John B. Gordon joined the group, followed by General E.P.
Alexander.
Taylor called the generals together.
"Senator Rives, gentlemen, is the bearer of an important message from the Confederate Congress to General Lee. I have asked you informally to join him in this meeting."
Rives entered his appeal.
"I am going to ask you to help me to-night in paying the highest tribute to General Lee in our power."
Gordon responded promptly.
"We shall honor ourselves in honoring him, sir."
"Always," Alexander agreed.
Rives plunged into the heart of his mission.
"Gentlemen, so desperate is the situation of the South that our only hope lies in our great Commander. The Confederate Congress has sent me to offer him the Dictatorship—"
"You don't mean it?" Stuart exploded.
"Will you back me?"
The Cavalry leader grasped his hand.
"Yours to count on, sir!"
"Yes," Gordon joined.
"We'll back you!" Alexander cried.
Rives' face brightened.
"If he will only accept. The question is how to approach him?"
"It must be done with the utmost care," Alexander warned.
"Exactly." Rives nodded. "Shall I announce to him it once the vote of
Congress conferring on him the supreme power?"
"Not if you can approach him more carefully," Alexander cautioned.
"I can first propose that as Commanding General he might accept the peace proposals which Francis Preston Blair has brought from Washington—"
"What kind of peace proposals?" Gorden asked sharply.
"He proposes to end the war immediately by an armistice, and arrange for the joint invasion of Mexico by the combined armies of the North and South under the command of General Lee."
Alexander snapped at the suggestion.
"By all means suggest the armistice first. General Lee won his spurs in Mexico. The plan might fire his imagination—as it would have fired the soul of Caesar or Napoleon. If he refuses to go over the head of Davis, you can then announce the vote of Congress giving him supreme power."
The general suddenly paused at the familiar sound of Traveler's hoofbeat.
The officers stood and saluted as Lee entered. He was dressed in his full field gray uniform of immaculate cut and without spot. He wore his sword, high boots and spurs and his field glasses were thrown across his broad shoulders.
He glanced at the group in slight surprise and drew Stuart aside.
"I sent for you, General Stuart, to say that I am expecting a courier at any moment who may report that General Grant will move on Spottsylvania Court House."
He paused in deep thought.
"If so, Sheridan will throw the full force of his cavalry on your lines, to turn our right and circle Richmond."
Stuart's body stiffened.
"I'm ready, sir. He may reach Yellow Tavern. He'll never go past it."
In low, tense words Lee said:
"I'm depending on you, sir."
Stuart saluted in silence.
Lee turned back into the group and Taylor explained:
"I have called an informal meeting at the request of Senator Rives."
Lee smiled.
"Oh, I see. A council of both War and State."
Rives came forward and the Commander grasped his hand.
"Always glad to see you, Senator. What can we do for you?"
"Everything, sir. Can we enter at once into our conference?"
"The quicker the better. General Grant may drop in on us at any moment without an invitation."
Rives smiled wanly.
"General Lee, we face the gravest crisis of the war."
"No argument is needed to convince me of that, sir. Grant's men have gripped us with a ferocity never known before."
"And our boys," Alexander added, "in all the struggle have never been such stark fighters as to-day."
"I agree with you," Lee nodded. "But Grant is getting ready to fight again to-morrow morning—not next month. His policy is new, and it's clear. He plans to pound us to death in a series of quick, successive blows. His man power is exhaustless. We can't afford to lose many men. He can. An endless blue line is streaming to the front."
"And that's why I'm here to-night, General," Rives said gravely.
"Grant is now in supreme command of all the Armies of the Union. While he moves on Richmond, Butler is sweeping up the James and Sherman is pressing on Atlanta. We have lost ten thousand men in two-days' battle. In the next we'll lose ten thousand more. In the next ten thousand more—"
"We must fight, sir. I have invaded the North twice. But I stand on the defense now. I have no choice."
"That remains to be seen, General Lee," Rives said with a piercing look.
"What do you mean?"
"A few days ago, your old friend, Francis Preston Blair, entered our lines and came to Richmond on a mission of peace. He has now before Mr. Davis and his Cabinet a plan to end the war. He proposes that we stop fighting, unite and invade Mexico to defend the Monroe Doctrine. Maximilian of Austria has just been proclaimed Emperor in a conspiracy backed by Napoleon. The suggestion is that we join armies under your command, dethrone Maximilian, push the soldiers of Napoleon into the sea, and restore the rule of the people on the American Continent."
Lee looked at him steadily.
"Mr. Davis refuses to listen to this proposal?"
"Only on the basis of the continued division of our country. Lincoln
naturally demands that we come back into the Union first, and march on
Mexico afterwards. Mr. Davis refuses to come back into the Union first.
And so we end where we began—unless we can get help from you, General
Lee—"
"Well?"
"The Confederate Congress has sent me as their spokesman to make a proposition to you."
He handed Lee the letter from the Congress.
"Will you issue as Commanding General an order for an armistice to arrange the joint invasion of Mexico?"
"You mean take it on myself to go over the head of Mr. Davis, and issue this order without his knowledge?"
"Exactly. We could not take him into our confidence."
"But Mr. Davis is my superior officer and he is faithfully executing the laws."
"You will not proclaim an armistice, then?"
Lee spoke with irritation.
"How can you ask me to go over the head of my Chief with such an order?"
Alexander pressed forward.
"But you might consider a proclamation looking to peace under this plan—if you were in a position of supreme power?"
"I have no such power. I advised our people to make peace before I invaded Pennsylvania. I have urged it more than once, but they cannot see it. And I must do the work given me from day to day."
"We now propose to give to you the sole decision as to what that work shall be."
"How, sir?"
"I am here to-night, General, as the agent of our Government, to confer on you this power. The Congress has unanimously chosen you as Dictator of the Confederacy with supreme power over both the civil and military branches of the Government."
"And well done!" cried Gordon.
"We back them!" echoed Alexander.
"Hurrah for the Confederate Congress," shouted Stuart—"the first signs of brains they've shown in many a day—"
He caught himself at a glance from Rives.
"Excuse me, Senator—I didn't mean quite that."
Lee fixed Rives with his brilliant eyes.
"The Confederate Congress has no authority to declare & Dictatorship."
"We have."
"By what law?"
"By the law of necessity, sir. The civil government in Richmond has become a farce. I acknowledge it sorrowfully. Your soldiers are ill clothed, half starved, and the power to recruit your ranks is gone. The people have lost faith in their civil leaders. Disloyalty is rampant. In the name of ultra State Sovereignty, treason is everywhere threatening. Soldiers are taken from your army by State authorities on the eve of battle. Men are deserting in droves and defy arrest. You have justly demanded the death penalty for desertion. It has been denied. Bands of deserters now plunder, burn and rob as they please. You are our only hope. You are the idol of our people. At your call they will rally. Men will pour into your ranks, and we can yet crush our enemies, or invade Mexico as you may decide."
"He's right, General," Gordon agreed. "The South will stand by you to a man."
Alexander added with deep reverence:
"The people believe in you, General Lee, as they believe in God."
A dreamy look overspread Lee's face.
"Their faith is misplaced, sir! God alone decides the fate of nations. And God, not your commanding General, will decide the fate of the South. The thing that appalls me is that we have no luck. For in spite of numbers, resources, generalship—the unknown factor in war is luck. The North has had it all. At Shiloh at the moment of a victory that would have ended Grant's career, Albert Sydney Johnson, our ablest general, was shot and Grant escaped. At the battle of Chancellorsville in these very woods, Jackson at the moment of his triumph-Jackson my right arm—was shot by his own men. To-day Longstreet falls in the same way when he is about to repeat his immortal deed—"
He paused.
"The South has had no luck!"
Alexander eagerly protested.
"I don't agree with you, sir. God has given the South Lee as her Commander. Your genius is equal to a hundred thousand men. And in all our terrible battles, at the head of your men, again and again, as you were to-day, with bullets whistling around you, you've lived a charmed life. You're here to-night strong in body and mind, without a scratch. Don't tell me, sir, that we haven't had luck!"
Stuart broke in.
"You're the biggest piece of luck that ever befell an army."
Lee rose.
"I appreciate your confidence and your love, gentlemen. But I've made many tragic mistakes, and tried to find an abler man to take my place."
"There's no such man!" Stuart boomed. "Give the word to-night and every soldier in this army would follow you into the jaws of hell!"
Lee's eyes were lifted dreamily.
"And you ask me to blot out the liberties of our people by a single act of usurpation?"
Alexander lifted his hand.
"Only for a moment, General, that we may restore them in greater glory.
The truth is the Confederate Government is not fitted for revolution.
Let's win this war and fix it afterwards."
"I do not believe either in military statesmen or political generals.
The military should be subordinate always to the civil power—"
"But Congress," Rives broke in, "speaking for the people, offers you supreme power. Mr. Davis has not proven himself strong enough for the great office he holds."
Lee flared at this assertion.
"And if he has not, sir, who gave me the right to sit in judgment upon my superior officer and condemn him without trial? Mr. Davis is the victim of this unhappy war. I say this, though, that he differs with me on vital issues. I urged the abolition of Slavery. He opposed it. So did your Congress. I urged the uncovering of Richmond and the concentration of our forces into one great army for an offensive—"
Rives interrupted.
"We ask you to take the supreme power and decide these questions."
Lee replied with a touch of anger.
"But I may be wrong in my policies. Mr. Davis is a man of the highest character, devoted soul and body to the principles to which he has pledged his life. He is a statesman of the foremost rank. He is a trained soldier, a West Point graduate. He is a man of noble spirit—courageous, frank, positive. A great soul throbs within his breast. He has done as well in his high office as any other man could have done—"
He looked straight at Rives.
"We left the Union, sir, because our rights had been invaded. Our revolution is justified by this fact alone. You ask me to do the thing that caused us to revolt. To brush aside the laws which our people have ordained and set up a Dictatorship with the power of life and death over every man, woman and child. For three years we have poured out our blood in a sacred cause. We are fighting for our liberties under law, or we are traitors, not revolutionists. We are fighting for order, justice, principles, or we are fighting for nothing—"
A courier dashed to the door of the tent and handed Lee a message which he read with a frown.
"This discussion is closed, gentlemen. General Grant is moving on Spottsylvania Court House. My business is to get there first. My work is not to jockey for place or power. It is to fight. Move your forces at once!"