Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
discussing. They had long since discovered that war is never romantic
and seldom exciting, but a monotonous round of tiresome duties,
enlivened at rare intervals by dangerous episodes. They had become
familiar with its constant accompaniment of privations—bad weather, wet
bivouacs, and wretched roads, wood that would not kindle, and rations
that did not satisfy. They had learned that a soldier’s worst enemy
may be his native soil, in the form of dust or mud; that it is possible
to march for months without firing a shot or seeing a foe; that a
battle is an interlude which breaks in at rare intervals on the long
round of digging, marching, bridge-building, and road-making; and that
the time of the fiercest fire-eater is generally occupied in escorting
mule-trains, in mounting guard, in dragging waggons through the mud,
and in loading or unloading stores. Volunteering for perilous and
onerous duties, for which hundreds had eagerly offered themselves in
the early days, ere the glamour of the soldier’s life had vanished, had
ceased to be popular. The men were now content to wait for orders; and
as discipline crystallised into habit, they became resigned to the fact
that they were no longer volunteers, masters of their own actions, but
the paid servants of the State, compelled to obey and powerless to
protest.
To all outward appearance, then, in the spring of 1863 the Army of
Northern Virginia bore an exceedingly close resemblance to an army of
professional soldiers. It is true that military etiquette was not
insisted on; that more license, both in quarters and on the march, was
permitted than would be the case in a regular army; that officers were
not treated with the same respect; and that tact, rather than the
strict enforcement of the regulations, was the key-note of command.
Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the Confederate soldiers were
exceedingly well-conducted. The good elements in the ranks were too
strong for those who were inclined to resist authority, and the amount
of misbehaviour was wonderfully small. There was little neglect of
duty. Whatever the intelligence of the men told them was necessary for
success, for safety, or for efficiency, was done without reluctance.
The outposts were seldom caught napping. Digging and tree-felling—for
the men had learned the value of making fortifications and good
roads—were taken as a matter of course. Nor was the Southern soldier a
grumbler. He accepted half-rations and muddy camping-grounds without
remonstrance; if his boots wore out he made shift to march without
them; and when his uniform fell to pieces he waited for the next
victory to supply himself with a new outfit. He was enough of a
philosopher to know that it is better to meet misery with a smile than
with a scowl. Mark Tapley had many prototypes in the Confederate ranks,
and the men were never more facetious than when things were at their
worst. “The very intensity of their sufferings became a source of
merriment. Instead of growling and deserting, they laughed at their own
bare feet, ragged clothes, and pinched faces; and weak, hungry, cold,
wet and dirty, with no hope of reward or rest, they marched cheerfully
to meet the warmly clad and well-fed hosts of the enemy.”[9]
Indomitable indeed were the hearts that beat beneath the grey jackets,
and a spirit rising superior to all misfortune,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine,
was a marked characteristic of the Confederate soldier. Nor was it only
in camp or on the march that the temper of the troops betrayed itself
in reckless gaiety.[10] The stress of battle might thin their ranks,
but it was powerless to check their laughter. The dry humour of the
American found a fine field in the incidents of a fierce engagement.
Nothing escaped without remark: the excitement of a general, the
accelerated movements of the non-combatants, the vagaries of the army
mule, the bad practice of the artillery—all afforded entertainment. And
when the fight became hotter and the Federals pressed
resolutely to the attack, the flow of badinage took a grim and peculiar
turn. It has already been related that the Confederate armies depended,
to a large degree, for their clothing and equipments on what they
captured. So abundant was this source of supply, that the soldier had
come to look upon his enemy as a movable magazine of creature comforts;
and if he marched cheerfully to battle, it was not so much because he
loved fighting, but that he hoped to renew his wardrobe. A victory was
much, but the spoils of victory were more. No sooner, then, did the
Federals arrive within close range, than the wild yells of the Southern
infantry became mingled with fierce laughter and derisive shouts. “Take
off them boots, Yank!” “Come out of them clothes; we’re gwine to have
them!” “Come on, blue-bellies, we want them blankets!” “Bring them
rations along! You’ve got to leave them!”—such were the cries, like the
howls of half-famished wolves, that were heard along Jackson’s lines at
Fredericksburg.[11] And they were not raised in mockery. The
battle-field was the soldier’s harvest, and as the sheaves of writhing
forms, under the muzzles of their deadly rifles, increased in length
and depth, the men listened with straining ears for the word to charge.
The counterstroke was their opportunity. The rush with the bayonet was
never so speedy but that deft fingers found time to rifle the
haversacks of the fallen, and such was the eagerness for booty that it
was with the greatest difficulty that the troops were dragged off from
the pursuit. It is said that at Fredericksburg, some North Carolina
regiments, which had
repulsed and followed up a Federal brigade, were hardly to be
restrained from dashing into the midst of the enemy’s reserves, and
when at length they were turned back their complaints were bitter. The
order to halt and retire seemed to them nothing less than rank
injustice. Half-crying with disappointment, they accused their generals
of favouritism! “They don’t want the North Car’linians to git
anything,” they whined. “They wouldn’t hev’ stopped Hood’s
Texicans—they’d hev’ let _them_ go on!”
But if they relieved their own pressing wants at the expense of their
enemies, if they stripped the dead, and exchanged boots and clothing
with their prisoners, seldom getting the worst of the bargain, no
armies—to their lasting honour be it spoken, for no armies were so
destitute—were ever less formidable to peaceful citizens, within the
border or beyond it, than those of the Confederacy. It was exceedingly
seldom that wanton damage was laid to the soldier’s charge. The rights
of non-combatants were religiously respected, and the farmers of
Pennsylvania were treated with the same courtesy and consideration as
the planters of Virginia. A village was none the worse for the vicinity
of a Confederate bivouac, and neither man nor woman had reason to dread
the half-starved tatterdemalions who followed Lee and Jackson. As the
grey columns, in the march through Maryland, swung through the streets
of those towns where the Unionist sentiment was strong, the women,
standing in the porches, waved the Stars and Stripes defiantly in their
faces. But the only retort of “the dust brown ranks” was a volley of
jests, not always unmixed with impudence. The personal attributes of
their fair enemies did not escape observation. The damsel whose locks
were of conspicuous hue was addressed as “bricktop” until she screamed
with rage, and threatened to fire into the ranks; while the maiden of
sour visage and uncertain years was saluted as “Ole Miss Vinegar” by a
whole division of infantry. But this was the limit of the soldier’s
resentment. At the same time, when in the midst of plenty he was not
impeccable. For highway robbery and housebreaking he had no
inclination, but he was by
no means above petty larceny. Pigs and poultry, fruit, corn, vegetables
and fence-rails, he looked upon as his lawful perquisites.
He was the most cunning of foragers, and neither stringent orders nor
armed guards availed to protect a field of maize or a patch of
potatoes; the traditional negro was not more skilful in looting a
fowl-house;[12] he had an unerring scent for whisky or “apple-jack;”
and the address he displayed in compassing the destruction of the
unsuspecting porker was only equalled, when he was caught _flagrante
delicto,_ by the ingenuity of his excuses. According to the Confederate
private, the most inoffensive animals, in the districts through which
the armies marched, developed a strange pugnacity, and if bullet and
bayonet were used against them, it was solely in self-defence.
But such venial faults, common to every army, and almost justified by
the deficiencies of the Southern commissariat, were more than atoned
for when the enemy was met. Of the prowess of Lee’s veterans sufficient
has been said. Their deeds speak for themselves. But it was not the
battle-field alone that bore witness to their fortitude. German
soldiers have told us that in the war of 1870, when their armies,
marching on Paris, found, to their astonishment, the great city
strongly garrisoned, and hosts gathering in every quarter for its
relief, a singular apathy took possession of the troops. The
explanation offered by a great military writer is that “after a certain
period even the victor becomes tired of war;” and “the more civilised,”
he adds, “a people is, the more quickly will this weakness become
apparent.”[13] Whether this explanation be adequate is not easy to
decide. The fact remains, however, that the Confederate volunteer was
able to overcome that longing for home which chilled the enthusiasm of
the German conscript. And this is the more remarkable, inasmuch as his
career was not one of unchequered victory. In the spring of 1863, the
Army of the Potomac, more numerous than ever, was still before
him, firmly established on Virginian soil; hope of foreign
intervention, despite the assurances of the politicians, was gradually
fading, and it was but too evident that the war was far from over. Yet
at no time during their two years of service had the soldiers shown the
slightest sign of that discouragement which seized the Germans after
two months. And who shall dare to say that the Southerner was less
highly civilised than the Prussian or the Bavarian? Political liberty,
freedom of speech and action, are the real elements of civilisation,
and not merely education. But let the difference in the constitution of
the two armies be borne in mind. The Confederates, with few exceptions,
were volunteers, who had become soldiers of their own choice, who had
assumed arms deliberately and without compulsion, and who by their own
votes were responsible that war had been declared. The Germans were
conscripts, a dumb, powerless, irresponsible multitude, animated, no
doubt, by hereditary hatred of the enemy, but without that sense of
moral obligation which exists in the volunteer. We may be permitted,
then, to believe that this sense of moral obligation was one reason why
the spirit of the Southerners rose superior to human weakness, and that
the old adage, which declares that one volunteer is better than three
pressed men, is not yet out of date. Nor is it an unfair inference that
the armies of the Confederacy, allied by the “crimson thread of
kinship” to those of Wellington, of Raglan, and of Clyde, owed much of
their enduring fortitude to “the rock whence they were hewn.”
And yet, with all their admirable qualities, the Southern soldiers had
not yet got rid of their original defects. Temperate, obedient, and
well-conducted, small as was the percentage of bad characters and
habitual misdoers, their discipline was still capable of improvement.
The assertion, at first sight, seems a contradiction in terms. How